Boel Westin - Tove Jansson Life, Art, Words

LIFE, ART, WORDS

THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY

Boel Westin

TRANSLATED BY SILVESTER MAZZARELLA

For Tooti

1. Title Page
2. Dedication
3. Im Busy
4. A Really Great One
5. Toves Busy
6. Cennini
7. Self-portraits
8. Biography
9. Family
10. Signe Hammarsten
11. Viktor Jansson
12. Mothers Dynamic Brothers
13. Hammarsten and Jansson
14. The Embryo Artist
15. The Tove Publishing Co.
16. The Storyteller
17. Im a Writer
18. A Free Young Lady
19. The Painter at the Ateneum
20. The Travelling Painter
21. The Janssons Paris
22. Tales of a Painter
23. Longing for Italy
24. The Illustrator
25. Drawing, Politics and Trolls
26. A Mens War
27. Tove and Eva
28. A Mens War
29. Scenarios of War
30. The Family
31. I Just Paint
32. Self-Portraits and One-Woman Shows
33. The Studio in the Tower
34. Colonies for Artists and Forests of Dreams
35. Peace
36. Moomin Tales and Monumental Paintings
37. Moomintrolls Strange Journey
38. A Moominological Story
39. The Creation Story
40. The Original Manuscript
41. The World of Peace
42. The Time of the Apocalypse
43. The Comet and the Prophet
44. Tarzan and Atos
45. Comet in Moominland as a Childrens Book
46. Publication
47. Moomin Passion
48. Moomin Summer
49. The Golden Butterfly
50. The Magic of Love
51. The Publishers Smile
52. Thingumy al Fresco
53. Windrose House
54. Trolls and Humans
55. Between One Sentence and the Next
56. Moomin on the Wall and on the Stage
57. The Queen of Surprises
58. Imagination
59. A New Age
60. The Wild 1950s
61. A Theatre of Pictures
62. Longing for Mother
63. Private Changes
64. Midsummer Nights Dream
65. The Nature of Theatre
66. Jansson the Moominist
67. Dear Mr Sutton
68. The Moomins Grow
69. Moomin Business
70. Painter and Author
71. The Troll Who Stepped out in the Cold
72. Too-ticky
73. Moominland Midwinter
74. The Painter
75. The Enchanter
76. Transformation
77. The Great Journeys
78. A Need for Expression
79. The First Letter from ke
80. Give Me a Picture
81. Spring-Cleaning the Painter
82. The Loving Toffle
83. The Letter
84. A Best-Loved Book
85. Who Will Comfort Astrid?
86. The Invisible
87. A Writer of Childrens Books for Adults
88. The Woman Who Fell in Love with an Island
89. To the Island
90. The Melancholy of Guilt
91. To the Island Again
92. Fathers Book
93. To the Lighthouse
94. Mamma al Secco
95. The Stone and the Story
96. Medals and Revisions
97. Stories of Childhood
98. Sacred Sculpture
99. Moomins Daughter
100. Dreaming of a Valley
101. Towards Paris
102. A Summer of Writing
103. Moominvalley Revisited
104. Nummulites
105. Sorrow
106. A New Family
107. Journeys with Tove
108. Freedom
109. The Listener
110. The Listener Herself
111. The Summer Book
112. Change
113. Sun Cities
114. Drama in Paris
115. The Most Dangerous Journey
116. A Time for Words
117. Writing Oneself
118. New Pictures
119. Work and Love
120. The Black Novel
121. Messages
122. Letters
123. The Last Story
124. End matter
125. Acknowledgements: Godparents
126. Chronology
127. Tove Janssons Published Works
128. Photo credits
129. Index of works
130. Index of people
131. Plates
132. Copyright

CHAPTER

The birth of a very unusual and talented Moomintroll

The Exploits of Moominpapa

Maybe well have a great artist in Tove one day. A really great one!: a young soldier writes from the front to the woman he loves during a fierce civil war. This is Finland in the late winter of 1918. The sculptor Viktor Jansson from Helsinki and the illustrator Signe Hammarsten from Stockholm had been married for a little more than four years when he enlisted on the White (anti-Bolshevist) side in the Finnish civil war, which broke out that January and lasted till May. For young Viktor, barely thirty years old, there was no choice. He was a sculptor who loved his country so much he was prepared to die for it, and for the independence of Finland and a freedom he believed to be his own and everyone elses right.

He begged Signe not to grieve for him. There could be no life without this conflict. My darling Signe. Now your husband is going out to do battle. God be with us and our arms. I may never see you again, wrote Viktor on 14th February, hours before going into battle for the first time. His letters are beautiful and touching, full of the terrible realities of war, but they also tell of the glorious moments when a longed-for letter arrives, of moments with a cigarette in the spring sunlight, and of the joy (his own word) of fighting for his country and for what he believes in more than anything else: his family. These letters, often written in pencil on thin paper, shine with love and longing for Signe and their daughter: our little darling. Their daughter is barely three-and-a-half-years old. She was baptised Tove Marika Jansson.

Signe and Viktor are married on ngsmarn on 17th August 1913 by Fredrik Hammarsten. Next to Signe are her sister Elsa and brother Einar.

Art and family were holy for Viktor Jansson, and Signe and his children would carry this inheritance forward into the world beyond the war. Little Tove represented hope, something to believe in, something to long for and dream about. Gender was irrelevant to Viktor as a father. He never spoke of woman or man, or boy or girl, not even of sculptor or illustrator. He talked of becoming an artist, nothing more. How I love our little girl and long to see you both, he wrote to Signe during a brief respite on Easter Day.

Like all loving fathers he wanted the best for his child. And art held the key to life. Viktor was delighted with the sketches by Tove of old men that Signe sent with her letter, and he wished he could have seen how his daughter stared at the paintings when she was taken to the National Museum. She was his firstborn and would carry his profession of artist into the future.

Viktor Janssons dream became reality. Tove became an artist whose pictures and writings would carry the name Jansson far beyond the borders of Finland and Europe.

Tove Jansson was conceived in Paris, city of art and artists, in the autumn of 1913. When on 9th August the following year she was born in Helsinki, Viktor immediately sent a telegram to his wifes parents at Vstra Trdgrdsgatan 17 in Stockholm: unefille, Signe bien portant[e] (a girl, Signe doing well). Tove came into the world on a Sunday, and next day Signe began The Book of Our Sunday Child. In it she drew her daughter for the first time and wrote on the same page in beautiful script: She was born on Sunday 9th August at five minutes to twelve. Its nice she was a girl. But she was so ugly, awful! Like a little wrinkled old woman. The first sketch, made on the tenth of the same month.