Published in 1984, ‘Yksinäisyys ja uhma‘ (‘Loneliness and defiance’) is a collection of essays on literature by Finnish author Erno Paasilinna that won the ‘Finlandia Prize‘ in 1984. Paasilinna was a Finnish writer and journalist who received several literary prizes, and whose works have been translated into Estonian, Hungarian, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian and Latvian. He has been titled the “national cynic laureate” and “official state critic” due to his uncompromising views and lack of admiration for his human fellows: his incisive analysis of power and the powerful shook the fundaments of Finnish society, but were widely recognized to be impartial. The writers Reino, Mauri and Arto Paasilinna are his brothers. ‘Loneliness and Defiance’ contains eleven essays on literature, essays on how the writer confronts the world and how the world meets the writer. ‘A Short Textbook’ deals with universal truths, outlining the boundaries and enclosures in which the writer must operate including those one forms for him or herself. Paasilinna reflects on the difficulty and possibility of writing truthfully, on the role of the publisher, and the teaching of literature. He sees four different attitudes to power: the challenger, the collaborator, the silencer and the rogue. The second part of the book, ‘Loneliness’, contains essays on Eino Leino, Vasili Shukshin, Pentti Linkola and Pentti Haanpää: these four different writers have in common an uncompromising attitude to themselves and to what they have to say, a desire to describe the world as well as they ever could and to remain honest about what they see, often at the cost of loneliness.
