The Wall Street Journal - 14.03.2020 - 15.03.2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, March 14 - 15, 2020 |C11

‘I

’VE GOT TObecome free myself
if I’m to be free in my painting,”
Tove Jansson writes to her mother
in February 1938. Jansson, 23, has
left her family in Helsinki to study
art in Paris. She might not feel “free,” but
she’s having an unabashedly good time, as she
recounts in her frequent letters home. By night,
she scopes out clubs like the Boule Blanche and
the Cave Apache. By day, she attends the École
des Beaux-Arts, wearing her best yellow under-
pants in case fellow students yank her skirt
over her head—one of the school’s rowdy
initiation rites. She wears a fur coat to “mooch”
along the Seine, and when a bookseller says,
“Ça va, little wolf,” you know she’s delighted,
because she tells her brother Per Olov all about
it. “I wish I could be at home with all of you,”
she writes, but clearly, she has a taste for travel.
In “Letters From Tove,” editors Boel Westin
and Helen Svensson bring together more than
50 years of Jansson’s correspondence with the
friends, lovers and family members who meant
the most to her. Readers who loved the
Moomintroll chapter books, who remember the
Moomin comic strips that made her a house-
hold name, or perhaps are among the cultish
devotees of her autobiographical novel “The
Summer Book” will find much to enjoy in this
collection, which reveals Jansson as a complex,
passionate and exceptionally hardworking
artist. You may even come away agreeing with
Philip Pullman’s assessment that she is a genius,
though not all geniuses would be such good
company over nearly 500 pages. Sarah Death,
who translated the letters from the Swedish,
gives Jansson a casual voice that makes her
already forthright manner especially appealing.
Perhaps Jansson felt so comfortable in Paris
because it was her parents’ first home together.
Her father, Viktor, a Finnish sculptor, and
mother, Signe, a Swedish graphic designer,
lived in the city early in their marriage, and
conceived Jansson, their first child, there.
When her father went off to fight in the
Finnish Civil War, mother and child became
exceptionally close, and remained so. Jansson
referred to her mother as “Ham,” but in the
early letters she is most often “Beloved.”
Though a prototype for warm, stable Moomin-
mama—the matriarch of Jansson’s family of
adventurous, bohemian cartoon trolls—Ham
set an example as a working artist that
inspired Jansson’s own unflagging work ethic.
Jansson’s father, whom she called “Faffan,”
was another matter. He came home from war
a changed man, difficult, depressive and pro-
German. He had, Jansson acknowledges in a
1968 letter, the qualities of Moominpapa. His
conservatism clashed with Jansson’s liberal
views, and the dynamic between her parents
soured her on marriage: “I see the way Faffan,
the most helpless, most short-sighted of us all,
tyrannises the whole house, I see that Ham is
unhappy because she’s always said yes, covered
up, given in. Given up her life and got nothing
in return but children that men’s war will kill.”

Faffan and Jansson were at odds until she at

last left her parents’ apartment for good and

moved into her own studio at the age of 28.

The family, including Jansson’s two younger

brothers, continued to come together for holidays

in the Finnish archipelago. The island as an

otherworldly utopia recurs throughout her books,

notably as the paradise threatened by environ-

mental degradation in “Comet in Moominland.”

Some of Jansson’s best writing evokes the

islands’ dramatic beauty. In a 1967 letter to her

friend Maya Vanni, she writes, “The darkness on

an island such as this is like standing at the end

of the world and all the night sounds are inten-

sified, giving an impression of utter solitude—

nature no longer frames one’s existence, but

hurls it to the periphery and imposes its

sovereign domination.” In 1947, two years after

publishing the first of the nine Moomin novels,

she and her brother Lars signed a 50-year lease

for the island of Bredskär. Family life there

becomes a cherished constant, particularly after

1954, when she begins drawing Moomin comics

for a British newspaper syndicate. At times,

Jansson says, she feels “like an India ink machine.”

Readers who come to the letters without

prior knowledge of Jansson’s life and circle

will find they are charmed but sometimes

frustrated by this volume, which is slight on

notes and arranged in a less than intuitive way.

At first the editors’ choice to arrange the

letters by recipient isn’t too troublesome, but

eventually there are some odd overlaps. One

of these occurs in 1966, when Jansson receives

the highest honor in children’s literature, the

international Hans Christian Andersen Award.

With that inmind, Jansson’s decision to tell her

parents, in 1946, that she’d fallen in love with

Vivica Bandler, shows a certain recklessness.

Bandler, who was married, worried Jansson

would blow her cover. “Yes,” Jansson bragged,

“I have been indiscreet, still am and will con-

tinue to be.” Ham says nothing when Jansson

comes out to the family. Faffan, however, “is so

indignant about the erotic details that he’s

barely noticed how much it gives away about him.”

Though relationship drama makes for fun

reading, Jansson’s letters amount to something

more significant and rare: a brilliant artist’s

account of her life, written in real time.

Epistolary immediacy sometimes obscures her

accomplishments. The Moomins made Jansson

famous. In her letters, they take second billing.

Being asked to create the first Moomin comic

strip was surely a significant event in Jansson’s

career. That’s not how it felt to her in December

1947 when she wrote to a friend. A troubled

romance was foremost in her mind, and she

only mentioned the comic strip because the

commission had caused her lover to fly into a

jealous rage. Readers who want to supplement

the letters with an outright biography can

turn toeditor Boel Westin’s “Tove Jansson:

Life, Words, Art” or Tuula Karjalainen’s “Tove

Jansson: Work and Love” (both 2014), but the

intimate view the letters give of us Jansson’s

efforts to “become free” as a woman and an

artist make them a stand-alone pleasure.

Ms. Smith, a former children’s books editor

at the New York Times Book Review, teaches

at Johns Hopkins University.

An editors’ note about the award precedes a

letter to Tuulikki Pietilä, the Seattle-born

artist-engraver who became Jansson’s life

partner in the mid ’50s. And then a second,

almost identical note appears roughly 30 pages

later, in the midst of Jansson’s letters to her

mother. Similarly, a rapturous letter to a friend

about a new love affair is separated by almost

90 pages from concurrent, passionate letters to

that new lover. Readers may feel a little whip-

lash as they are yanked back and forth in time.

The multiple pet names and codes Jansson

uses in the letters create interesting doublings

with her books. Vivica Bandler, Jansson’s

collaborator in theater work and her first

lesbian lover (known sometimes as Vifslan),

appears in the Moomin books, lightly disguised,

as one half of a pair of twin souls who speak a

Spooner-ish language and share a huge, glowing

ruby that they keep in a suitcase. Ghosts and

mymbles (also present in the Moomin world)

are code, in the letters, for lesbians and lovers.

These codes function as in-jokes and as protec-

tion for Jansson’s “ghost” friends, because

homosexuality was illegal in Finland until 1971.

In books and comics, Jansson

created an endearing family

of bohemian trolls. Her letters

reveal her own Moominlike desire

to make a life full of love and art.

Letters From Tove

By Tove Jansson

Edited by Boel Westin & Helen Svensson

Minnesota, 496 pages, $25.95

BYSARAHHARRISONSMITH

A Ghost in Moominland

FANTASISTJansson (1914-2001), with a Moomintroll doll, in Helsinki, 1954.

EHTIKUVA/SHUTTERSTOCK

BOOKS

‘All things are so very uncertain, and that’s exactly what makes me feel reassured.’—TOO-TICKY, IN TOVE JANSSON’S ‘MOOMINLAND MIDWINTER’

A

picture-

book

account

of Ben

Franklin’s

boyhood

that

will

hearten

young

day-

dreamers

and their

parents.

CHILDREN’S

BOOKS

MEGHAN

COXGURDON

WHENBenjamin Franklin was

young, he wanted nothing so

much as to run away to the sea.

“All Benjamin desired was to be

a sailor,” Michael Rosen writes

in“A Ben of All Trades”

(Candlewick, 30 pages, $16.99),

a picture-book account of the

great man’s Boston boyhood.

To the exasperation of Ben’s

father, though, “all he appeared

to be was an aimless wool-

gatherer.” In this genial and

atmospheric account, the boy’s

lack of direction will give readers

ages 5-12 a glimpse of a very

different world from their own.

As Mr. Rosen tells it, the

young Ben can’t find satisfac-

tion in any sensible trade. He

doesn’t want to join his father

in soap- and candle-making (“I

fear my mind is unsuited to the

craft, sir,” he explains). He can’t

bring himself to spend more

than a few days apprenticed to

a joiner, “sanding and drilling

and fitting the same joints over

and over”; nor does he show

any aptitude for the work of

boot-sewing or dowel-making.

The light is unfailingly warm in

Matt Tavares’s realistic illustra-

tions: golden behind the jutting

bowsprits of the sailing vessels

Ben admires; lemon on the

trees and water as he swims

in a millpond using handmade

paddles; darker gold as the boy

and his disappointed father

walk at sunset along the water.

At last, we learn, Ben was

indentured at the age of 12 to

his brother James, who owned

a print shop. It marked the

beginning of a consequential

future. Ben Franklin (1706-90)

became, of course, one of the

leading figures of Revolutionary

times: a printer, humorist,

essayist and pamphleteer as

well as, Mr. Rosen reminds us,

an “inventor, ambassador,

political leader, journalist,

editor, college president,

scientist and postmaster.”

Not bad for a woolgatherer, eh?

The words “light pollution”

never appear in Sue Soltis’s

“The Stars Just Up the Street”

(Candlewick, 32 pages, $16.99),

a lovely picture book for chil-

dren 4-8, but it is the thing that

vexes a smallgirl namedMabel.

From listening to her grand-

father’s stories of his boyhood

on the prairie, Mabel knows that

the sky holds more than the

measly five stars that she can

count from her surburban bed-

room window. One evening, she

and her grandfather stroll up

the street to a park where the

heavens are wider and darker.

Sure enough, Mabel can count

many stars there, but still—if

people turned off their lights,

wouldn’t more be visible? In

Christine Davenier’s glowing

ink-and-watercolor pictures we

see the child and her grand-

father going door-to-

door to persuade

their neighbors

to turn off their

lights and come

stargazing. But

if they’re to

witness the full

grandeur of the

firmament, they

will need to per-

suade the mayor to switch

off all the streetlights—and the

mayor is the grouchy sort.

“The Stars Just Up the

Street” pairs nicely with Sara

Gillingham’s stylish portraits of

17 constellations,“Animals in

the Sky” (Phaidon, 32 pages,

$12.95). With its Q&A text and

board-book heft, it’s aimed at

children 2- to 4-years old, but

the illustrations will be useful

for any young person scanning

the night sky in search of

distinctive star arrangements.

“I have fins and gills, and a tail

to help me swim,” one page

reads. “I live in the ocean in

a big group called a school!

What animal in the sky am I?”

Fold out the page and there are

two pictures of the constella-

tion known as the Southern

Fish, one showing a fleshed-out

blue-and-gold body, as if there

really were a fish in the sky (see

below), and the other displaying

the star pattern as set in the

real sky. In a nod to practicality,

Ms. Gillingham urges children

to have an adult help them hunt

down the sky animals and notes:

“A star map or a smartphone

can help.”

The Walt Disney Co.

may have

limitations,

but as a

colonizer of

classic children’s literature its

power is unsurpassed. Children

today are likelier to know Mary

Poppins from the 1964 Disney

film than from P.L. Travers’s

novels; Winnie-the-Pooh from

his animated Disney persona

than from A.A. Milne’s stories;

and the Little Mermaid in her

guise as a rebellious Disney

princess than as the delicate,

yearning creature from the tale

by Hans Christian Andersen.

With each translation from text

to the screen, something has

been sacrificed—Travers’s

wryness, Milne’s quirkiness,

Andersen’s mysticism—so it’s

always worth going back to the

originals. That’s easy enough

with Travers and Milne, who

both wrote in English. With

Andersen, who wrote in Danish,

most families will read a

translation. A new rendering

by Misha Hoekstra,“The Little

Mermaid” (Pushkin Children’s,

64 pages, $9.99), which

includes a second Andersen

tale, “The True-Hearted Tin

Soldier,” brings out the beauty,

clarity and vigor of Andersen’s

storytelling.

The prose is perfect for

reading aloud, with crisp

sentences and evocative

descriptions that make

connections between the

real world and the imagined

one. Young listeners will be

hooked from the first para-

graph: “Far out at sea, the

water is as blue as corn-

flower petals and as clear

as the purest glass. Yet it’s

very deep—deeper than the

reach of any anchor rope. You’d

have to stack a lot of steeples

on top of each other to reach

from the bottom to the surface.

And down at the bottom is

where the sea folk live.” Who

wouldn’t want to hear the rest?

Children who have known

the Little Mermaid only as

Disney’s Ariel will find some

surprises here. Andersen’s

sea-girl makes painful sacrifices

that do not appear on film, and

though her story does have a

happy ending, as does the film,

it doesn’t result in her marriage

to a human prince but in a

kind of spiritual exaltation.

Definitely not Disney.

Master of Woolgathering

THIS WEEK

A Ben of All Trades

By Michael J. Rosen

Illustrated by Matt Tavares

The Stars Just Up the

Street

By Sue Soltis

IllustratedbyChristineDavenier

Animals in the Sky

By Sara Gillingham

The Little Mermaid

By Hans Christian Andersen

Translated by Misha Hoekstra

PHAIDON