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[FROM THE ARCHIVE | I Long to Read More in the Book of You: Moomins Creator Tove Janssonâs Tender and Passionate Letters to the Love of Her Life]( âAll things are so very uncertain, and thatâs exactly what makes me feel reassured,â [says Too-ticky]( trying to comfort the lost and frightened Moomintroll under the otherworldly light of the aurora borealis. A decade after Tove Jansson (August 9, 1914âJune 27, 2001) dreamt up her iconic Moomin series â one of those [works of philosophy disguised as childrenâs books]( populated by characters with the soulful wisdom of The Little Prince, the genial sincerity of Winnie-the-Pooh, and the irreverent curiosity of the Peanuts â she dreamt up Too-ticky, the sage of Moominvalley, warmhearted and eccentric and almost unbearably lovable. Too-ticky came aglow in Janssonâs artistic imagination from [the same spark that galvanized Emily Dickinsonâs poetry]( â her adoration of the woman who was already becoming the love of her life. Tove Jansson, 1956 (Tove Janssons arkiv / University of Minnesota Press) At the 1955 Christmas party of Helsinkiâs Artistsâ Guild, Jansson found herself drawn to the record player, impelled to take over the eveningâs music. Another artist â the Seattle-born Finnish engraver, printmaker, and graphic arts pioneer Tuulikki âTootiâ Pietilä â was impelled to do the same. They shared the jubilant duty. I picture the two of them at the turntable, sipping spiced wine in rapt, bobbing deliberation over which of the yearâs hits to put on next â the year when rock and roll had just been coined, the year of Nat King Coleâs âIf I May,â Elvisâs âBaby Letâs Play House,â and Doris Dayâs âLove Me or Leave Me.â I picture them glancing at each other with the thrill of that peculiar furtive curiosity edged with longing, having not a glimmering sense â for we only ever recognize the most life-altering moments in hindsight â that they were in the presence of [great love]( a love that would last a lifetime. Tove was forty-one, Tooti thirty-eight. They would remain together for the next half century, until death did them part. The tender delirium of their early love and the magmatic core of their lifelong devotion emanate from the pages of [Letters from Tove]( ([public library]( â the altogether wonderful collection of Janssonâs correspondence with friends, family, and other artists, spanning her meditations on the creative process, her exuberant cherishment of the natural world and of what is best in human beings, her unfaltering love for Tooti. What emerges, above all, is the radiant warmth of her personhood â this person of such uncommon imagination, warmhearted humor, and stubborn buoyancy of spirit, always so thoroughly herself, who as a young woman had declared to her mother: Iâve got to become free myself if Iâm to be free in my painting. Tove Janson: Smoking Girl. Self-portrait, 1940. (National Galley Finland / private collection) In a soaring letter penned in the first days of their first summer together, while Tooti was on mainland Finland for a residency and Tove was home on the small island in the BorgÃ¥ archipelago where she spent her summers, she writes: Beloved, I miss you so dreadfully. Not in a desperate or melancholy way, because I know we shall soon be with each other again, but I feel at such a loss and just canât get it into my head that youâre not around any more. This morning, half awake, I put a hand out to feel for you, then remembered you werenât there, so I got up very quickly to escape the emptiness. And worked all day. After sharing the mundanities that make a shared life â mundanities radiating her sweetness of spirit: reports of bringing home some mud for the swallows from the nearby bay, reports of using up all the raisins, âall our raisins,â on a batch of the home-brewed Finnish kilju â she loops back to the bittersweetness of Tootiâs absence: It was a fine night, calm and quiet, and I still couldnât take it in that you werenât here, kept half turning round to see what you were doing or to say something to you. [â¦] Wherever I go on the island, youâre with me as my security and stimulation, your happiness and vitality are still here, everywhere. And if I left here, you would go with me. You see, I love you as if bewitched, yet at the same time with profound calm, and Iâm not afraid of anything life has in store for us. Tove Jansson (University of Minnesota Press) The following day â a gloomy, rainy day, with the encircling sea âgrey and austereâ â Tove tells Tooti that while hauling stones to build a fire terrace, she began conceiving of a new Moomin story â âa story about the sea and different sorts of solitude.â A decade later, that idea would become Pappan och havet, literally translated as âthe father and the sea,â but published in English as [Moominpappa at Sea]( â the most soulful and contemplative of the Moomin stories. (How much of the history of art and science is strewn with the private storms and solitudes of its creators, invisible to the eye that beholds the resulting creation â the echoes of [Herman Melvilleâs unrequited love]( in Moby-Dick, the shadows of [Ernst Haeckelâs staggering loss]( in his scientific obsession and its artistic halo, the ruddering role of Rachel Carsonâs love for Dorothy in [the making of the environmental movement]( Moominpappa at Sea, 1965 But even this grey solitude is aglow with Toveâs love for Tooti. In a passage from the same letter that begins with a poetic piece of koan-like logic, she writes: It always tends to be easier to go than to stay â even if youâre happy being with the one you are leaving. [â¦] Waiting is a sheer pleasure when itâs for you â and the calm awareness that all I have to do is add together a number of days, and weâll see each other again. After a disarming veer into the pragmatic thoughtfulnesses that sweeten a shared life â âThank you for the fly swatter my darling, it seems extremely effective.â â she adds: Iâm so unused to being happy that I havenât really come to terms with what it involves. Suddenly my arms are heaped full of new opportunities, new harmony, new expectations. I feel like a garden thatâs finally been watered, so my flowers can bloom. A week later, as Tove patiently awaits her beloved but misses her more and more achingly, she echoes philosopher Simone Weilâs observation that [âthose who do not love each other are not separatedâ]( and writes: Summer is moving on through its stages and sometimes I feel so melancholy that you arenât here. But perhaps itâs good to have a bit of distance between us. I know now that I couldnât possibly be more attached to you, in a harmonious and happy way that can only grow stronger and more tender. But Iâve known that all along. The following week, she composes a gorgeous letter aglow with the sentiment at the heart of every marital vow: Beloved, Now my adored relations have finally gone to sleep, strewn about in the most unlikely sleeping places, the chatter has died down, the storm too, and I can talk to you. Thank you for your letter, which felt like a happy hug. Oh yes, my Tuulikki, you have never given me anything but warmth, love and good cheer. Isnât it remarkable, and seriously wonderful, that thereâs still not a single shadow between us? And you know what, the best thing of all is that Iâm not afraid of the shadows. When they come (as I suppose they must, for all those who care for one another), I think we can maneuver our way through them. And then, in one of those touching Toveisms, she pivots on a happy heel from the breathtakingly romantic to the pragmatically, affectionately blunt: If you write in Finnish, please could you be a dear and use the typewriter; your handwritingâs a bit tricky sometimes. Then, just as nimbly and joyously, she pivots right back to the romantic: I miss those quiet June days when you were piecing together your mosaic or whittling away at some knotty bit of wood and it was possible to listen, contemplate and explore how we felt. [â¦] Tuulikki, I long to read more in the book of you. I long for you in every way, and Iâm more alone with all these people around me than when I was wandering about on my own, thinking of you. She ends the letter with the first tentative drawing of Too-ticky, which she describes to Tooti as âa new little creature that isnât quite sure if itâs allowed to come in!â before signing the letter âYour Tove.â The strange and wondrous creature did come in â into Toveâs heart, into the Moomin universe â and never left. Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä, later in life, near their island home. (Tove Janssons arkiv) Complement this fragment of the thoroughly delightful [Letters from Tove]( with other masterpieces from the canon of great love letters by luminaries of creative culture: [Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert]( [Vladimir Nabokov to Véra Nabokova]( [Iris Murdoch to Brigit Brophy]( [Hannah Arendt to Martin Heidegger]( [John Cage to Merce Cunningham]( [Kahlil Gibran to Mary Haskell]( [Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett Browning]( and [Oscar Wilde to Alfred âBosieâ Douglas](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving
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KINDRED READINGS: [Emily Dickinsonâs Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert]( * * * [Herman Melvilleâs Passionate, Beautiful, Heartbreaking Love Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne]( * * * [How Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West Fell in Love]( * * * [âDraculaâ Author Bram Stokerâs Extraordinary Love Letter to Walt Whitman]( * * * [The Other Great Gertrude-and-Alice Love Story: The Life and Legacy of Pioneering Photographer and Bicyclist Alice Austen]( * * * A LONGTIME LABOR OF LOVE: [The Universe in Verse: A Poetic Animated Celebration of Science and the Wonder of Reality]( * * * A SMALL, DELIGHTFUL SIDE PROJECT: [Uncommon Presents from the Past: Gifts for the Science-Lover and Nature-Ecstatic in Your Life, Benefitting the Nature Conservancy]( [---]( You're receiving this email because you subscribed on TheMarginalian.org (formerly BrainPickings.org). This weekly newsletter comes out each Wednesday and offers a hand-picked piece worth revisiting from my 15-year archive.
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