Hitaasti kudotut nopeat hetket. Kirjoittamisen assosiaatiosta 1900-luvun suomalaisessa proosassa

Abstract

Kirjailijan työssä assosiaation hetket ovat korvaamattomia. Ne ovat niitä lyhyitä tuokioita, jolloin kirjoittamisessa tuntuu yhdistyvän mitä erilaisimpia aineksia. Assosiaation hetkissä tekstiin syntyy kerroksellisuus ja merkityksellisyys.

YTL Olli Jalosen väitöstutkimus käsittelee assosiaatiota proosateosten tekemisessä. Tutkimuksen perusaineistona on sata teosta, yksi romaani tai novellikokoelma 1900-luvun jokaiselta vuodelta. Assosiaatiota kirjoittamisessa ja käsityksiä siitä on tutkittu paitsi haastattelemalla kirjailijoita ja analysoimalla heidän kirjoituksiaan ja esitelmiään myös etsimällä tekstin tiheitä kohtia ja erittelemällä lehtikritiikkejä.

Tekijälähtöisesti assosiaatiota on tutkittu Suomessa hyvin vähän. Monelle kirjailijallekin omat assosiaation hetket ja hetkien sarjat ovat salaperäisiä ja tuntemattomaan kätkeytyviä virtoja jostakin minuuden syvyyksistä. Kuinka hirvittävä säkki meidän muistimme on , Kerttu-Kaarina Suosalmi on kuvannut sitä mielen kerroksellista varastoa, josta kirjoittamisen prosessissa syntyy uutta. Assosiaation hetki on erilainen eri ihmisillä mutta myös yhden ihmisen eri hetkinä. Se ei ole pysäytyskuva vaan virtaavaa tapahtumista. Jokaisella kirjailijalla on oma ainutlaatuinen kirjoittamisen assosiaationsa. Samoin on assosiaation hetkien tunnistaminen ja niiden kuvaaminen vaihtelevan yksilöllistä.

Hellevi Salminen on verrannut aivojensa työtä kirjoittamisessa kompostin käymiseen ja pöyhimiseen. Matti Yrjänä Joensuu on sanonut saavansa silloin parhaimmillaan "näkemisen silmät". Kirjailijoiden assosiaatiokuvauksista voi löytää myös paljon yhteisiä piirteitä. Samat aihepiirit toistuvat. Yleisimmin vertaukselliset kuvat liittyvät uneen, veteen ja kaivon kaltaiseen pimeään tilaan, josta kuitenkin pystyy ammentamaan aina uudestaan uutta. Lapsuuden ja nuoruuden omien kokemuksellisten mielikuvien tärkeyttä korostavat lähes kaikki kirjailijat.

Olli Jalosen väitöstutkimus erittelee laajan aineiston avulla assosiaation hetkien sijaa ja merkitystä kaunokirjallisuuden tekemisessä. Siinä käsitellään perusteellisesti myös tekstin tihentymiä ja teoksen konsipiaatiota, joka tarkoittaa sitä prosessia, kun teksti vähitellen kehittyy valmiiksi teokseksi. Tutkimuksen tuloksia ja sen yksityiskohtaisia kuvauksia luovan prosessin tärkeimmistä vaiheista voi soveltaa myös muihin luoviin taiteisiin ja esimerkiksi innovaatioihin.

Suomalaiset kirjailijat ovat viime vuosina käsitelleet kirjoittamiseen liittyviä asioita elämäkerrallisten romaanien lisäksi myös tutkimuksissa ja esseeteoksissa. Olli Jalosen väitöskirja on mukana tässä vahvistuvassa suuntauksessa, jossa kirjailijat ovat ottamassa kirjallisuudentutkimusta taas uudelleen myös kirjailijoiden kontolle.

Swift Moments Slowly Woven. Association in Twentieth-century Finnish Prose.

This study investigates association in writing. Its goal is to explore and define the place and significance of unifying associative moments in the process of creating literary prose.Association refers to the combination and convergence of images and abstractions that occurs in the operation of the mind. This creative process, this linking of otherwise disparate layers of thought, also occurs in writing, through associative moments and series of associative moments. Association, known to critics as getting into a groove, a smooth progression of ideas, or a deluge of images, was described by Walentin Chorell, speaking of his own creative process, as the enigmatic ability to effortlessly find just those nouns, adjectives and verbs that the text demands in the moment of writing. Matti Yrjänä Joensuu has said that in this stage of writing he finds eyes to see. The study begins with a discussion of sociation. This is meant to refer to a multiply stratified whole. The human attempt to comprehend stratification is referred to as the sociative mode of perception. Evidence of stratified perception has been preserved all the way down from the early history of humanity. The term association has different uses in different academic disciplines. As an object of literary research, association has been and remains outside the mainstream. Among this theme s early researchers worthy of note is John Livingston Lowes, who investigated the processes of the author s imagination in the birth of a work.

Association in terms of the author has received very little attention. In the absence of a frame of reference from an established research tradition, this dissertation selectively combines different perspectives and observations. The methodological goal is to find suitable methods for approaching association in writing.

This dissertation also relies on the auxiliary concepts of conception and condensation. The clarification of their meaning in relationship to association is a secondary goal of this study. It is assumed that association in the creation of prose can be approached by studying both the condensational points in the text and the formation of the conception of the text. Condensation refers to passages that stand out from the textual setting and that can be abstracted as being comprised of discrete strata. Conception refers to the process by which the overall artistic form and intellectual content of the work comes into being. The scope of this study is prose fiction published in Finland in the twentieth century and written in Finnish or Swedish. The basic data consists of 100 works by 100 authors, one publication from each year. This group of works is called Vuosisadan lukukirja [ The Reader of the Century ]. The emphasis is on writers and writing, but the books and their reception are also discussed. The chapter Kuinka assosiaatiota on luettu? [ How Has Association Been Read ] examines critiques in newspapers and periodicals. These are explored for concepts and observations connected to association. With the help of this inventory of the receptions of the works in question, the discussion attempts to see how the reader can understand the author s creative process through the text.

The critics who have addressed association the most are those who are also authors or literary researchers themselves. The reason may be that they have the most interest in the subject and the most personal experience through their own writing process. The recognition of the subject of association by twentieth-century literary critics has been haphazard, made up more of incidental comments than established viewpoints. The most observations appear in critiques published between 1910 and the end of the 1940 s. This can be explained in terms of the viewpoints holding sway in the critical community, such as an emphasis on psychological factors and biographism. It appears the subject was least recognized from the 1970 s to the 1990 s. This can be explained by the increasing connection of criticism with social themes and the ever-increasing journalismization of criticism. The chapter Epäidenttiset kaksoset [ Fraternal Twins ] moves to an examination of the texts and books. The methodology proceeds by comparing pairs of works. Through a reading of some twenty works from Vuosisadan lukukirja, the chapter investigates where and how association can be seen as the character and structure of the text. Condensations appear bountifully in the works in question, but there are differences in both the quantity and type of the condensations. Each author appears to have his or her own very personal condensation atlas. For example, condensations can be functional, fleeting, anticipatory, linked, multisensory, emotional, or prejudiced. They can lead, among other things, to events, memories, images, sounds, or other sensations. In the text they can appear, for example, as segues, breakthroughs, miniatures, dénouements, or condensations of individual words, clauses, or the entire language of the text. The character of the condensation as a stratified point in the text resists classification according to a single characteristic. Almost always the strata of the condensations are clearly composite and also retain inexplicable elements.

Most features that create the sense of stratification, such as combinations of different moods and sudden shifts in timeframe, are realized through simultaneity of personal time. The reader experiences a feeling of uniqueness and often also of authenticity. The author s self is the glue or bond that holds the strata strongly together and solidifies the section of the text into a condensation. This does not mean that this kind of durable and constructive self is only present in personal or first-person narrative.

Memories are the overarching characteristic of condensations. A chain of memories can be the hastily thrown-up bridge that in addition to starting the moment of association also maintains it. One sudden memory can lead to other memories and almost any event in the present of the narrative can give rise to a bridge widening into the distance-to primal memories, feelings and sensations. By examining the condensations in the text one can comprehend the association present in the writing, but it is only through authors subjective observations, impressions, and descriptions that the subject opens up in its full multiplicity. The chapter Kohti kotimaisia xanaduita [ Towards Domestic Xanadus ] and the chapter Assosiaatio ja proosan kangas [ Association and the Fabric of Prose ] examine writing and the writer more closely. The most important sources of information are the authors themselves. Essays of the type published in Miten kirjani ovat syntyneet [ How My Books Have Been Born ], file interviews, new interviews conducted for this study, and other authorial materials show how authors experience and conceive of association in their creative processes. The final chapters proceed using personal descriptions and the symbolic catalogues that comprise them. Because the perspective of the study emphasizes the author, individuality, experientiality and personality rise to the fore. Individuality refers to the stratified characteristics and manifestations of the self that have taken shape in each author in an entirely unique way. As if writing were a cross-section of the dimensions of the ego, Veijo Meri has said. What a gruesome sack our memories are, Kerttu-Kaarina Suosalmi has said in describing the personal yet communal storehouse of the mind, the source whence anything that is to be born in the process of writing must come. While writing, the moment of association is produced by processes and mechanisms which in terms of their physical and chemical foundations are the same for everyone; but because at the same time it is also produced by individual differences and individualities, it is always a uniquely different moment of combination. It is different for different people, but also at different moments for the same person; nor does a moment indicated stasis or even a repetition of the same thing but rather existence within a changing process. The moment of association is not a static freeze-frame, it is a flow of events. Every author has his or her own unique type of association and way of realizing it concretely. Similarly, the recognition and description of moments of association vary according to the individual. Hellevi Salminen has compared the way her brain works while writing to the fermentation of a compost heap or the process of aerating it. Then again, Christer Kihlman has spoken of the emergence of a book s material as if appearing on a screen-the pictures were singularly clear, they flowed over me and nearly filled me. On the other hand, there are many common features and much similarity that can be found in these descriptions. The same types of metaphor repeat. The most common metaphors relate to dreaming, water, and a dark space similar to a well, from which one can always continue to draw new material again and again.

The spectrum of dream metaphors can be concentrated into the oneirological concept of salience. Salience, a significant or all-import catalyzing and perpetuating feature, is the source of power for association in writing, which, as it were, clears a space and brings along with it a whole stratified sheaf of sensate memory and images. Because of this, the whole that is born from this connection in the moment of association is felt so coherently that it is possible to convey it through writing. Water and stream metaphors are used so generally, yet with such variation between individuals, that this sort of metaphorical catalogue cannot have been born of simple collegial tradition. The basis for the feeling of flowing can, for example, be discovered in the operation of the mind and the physiology of abstract associations or an individual s early development. If the mind is understood as a continuous flow of abstractions, one may also experience feelings of one s mind flowing during the intense thought connected to moments of association. Points of contact between various borderline personality disorders, psychological regression, and association in writing may also partially explain the water imagery. Nearly all authors emphasize the importance of images from childhood and young-adult experiences, as well as those that bubble to the surface from even earlier. By way of definition, one can say that association in writing is a state in which the author is the mostly deeply and significantly inside the text and inside himself simultaneously. It is made up of short moments of association which then combine associatively into a series moments. During moments of association, the stratification and significance is created in the text that is then visible as the uniqueness of the text in the final work and as the final work. Condensations are stratification that has made it all the way into the text. They are not necessarily strictly delineated, but they are distinguishable points in the text. They are not just a property of the text as subjectively experienced by the reader-although they are that too-but rather also a property of the text produced by the moments of association. The conception of a work is the process by which the work develops into a work. Conception progresses through moments of association and is the associative parsing of the work into a whole. The title of my dissertation, Hitaasti kudotut nopeat hetket, expresses the slow processes of accumulation to either side of the rapid strokes of associative moments. The journey described as conception is a slow one, in which moments and series of moments weave together little by little. In the making of a work of literary prose, conception usually takes years. On the other hand, the creation of the possibility for moments of association and their formation just as they are has taken at least the whole span of the author s life history. On either side of striking moments, measured in milliseconds, are years and decades.

- - - In recent years Finnish fiction authors have dealt with matters related to the process of writing in different ways, such as in research studies and essay collections, in addition to biographical novels. My dissertation is part of this trend, which seems to continue to gain strength, in which authors are again taking literary research upon their own shoulders.

Translation by Owen Witesman