There are people who come to our world to leave not only bright memories, but also things that will live on for centuries and give bright feelings. We will tell you about such a person, this is Tove Jansson. A brief biography, the most famous works and quotes await you in an article about a mysterious storyteller from distant cold Finland.
Who is Tove Jansson?
The Finnish writer Tove Jansson is known all over the world. Her works, mostly written for children, do not leave indifferent adults. The world fame Jansson brought a series about a funny and cute family of Moomins.
The secret of the writer's works' popularity is in her kind characters, interesting stories, unobtrusive, easy author's language. Children all over the world know her heroes. Many books are filmed.
The highlight of her works is that the heroes of Jansson were created by her from beginning to end. The writer not only wrote a series of books about them, but she herself illustrated them. Therefore, Moomin trolls are so unusual and at the same time as if alive.
Biography of Tove Jansson
This amazing writer was born in a talented unusual family. It happened in 1914 in Finland.
Mum Tove - Signe - was a famous artist from Sweden. She not only painted amazing landscapes and portraits, but also was an illustrator (that is, she created pictures for books and designed them).
Father - Viktor Jansson - was a talented sculptor, whose work adorned many museums and art houses in Finland.
Tove Jansson was born first in a creative family. Later, two more brothers were born, who also went along the path of art: one became a photographer, and the second an artist.
There is evidence that her mother was from the famous Hammarsten family in Sweden, which was famous for its representatives, among whom were people of creativity and politics.
The writer spent all her childhood in the summer months with her grandmother in Sweden. There was almost near the sea, which the girl enjoyed and which whispered to her fabulous stories of future books.
At fifteen, the girl will leave for Sweden not for a summer vacation, but to study at the College of Fine Arts. The writer will successfully graduate and will be trained in Italy and France, Great Britain and Germany. At the end of the practice, Tove returns home, where he does not sit idly by. Here she is from 10 years old - a full-time illustrator of the magazine, which she continues to do after her arrival, plus she makes cartoons and illustrations to order.
Glory will come to Tuva after its magical tales of the wonderful Moomin Valley - the valley where the Moomin family lives.
Interesting facts about the life of a writer
The biography of Tove Jansson shows the life of the writer quite smooth and stable. So it was in reality, and the reason for this is the soft, complaisant character of Tove, her reasonableness and good nature. Kind heroes remind her of herself in many ways - cute, cheerful, dreaming of interesting adventures and riddles.
Books about funny Moomins and things with copyright symbols brought Tuva a huge income. But she led a rather modest and inconspicuous life, her most expensive acquisition was the purchase of the island of Klovharun in the Gulf of Finland. A writer’s summer house was built here, where she spent every summer and worked fruitfully.
The rest of her life, the writer Tove Jansson spent in her house in Helsinki and in a summer residence on the island of Klovharun with a close friend - an artist named Tuulikki Pietilya. After the death of the writer, it was she who inherited the property of Tuva. And the artist became the prototype of the cute Tuu Tikki from the story “Magic Winter”, which Tuulikki was very proud of.
Finland loved her storyteller Tove very much. So, her eightieth birthday was celebrated by the whole country. From everywhere, Moomins watched the surprised tourists, and the celebration ended with a grandiose firework. In the same way, the beloved storyteller was escorted throughout the country to the last journey. And the day of her death - June 27, 2001 - became the day of national mourning.
Copyrights to books were received by the will of the writer her niece Sophie.
Tove - artist and sculptor
The biography of Tove Jansson hides an interesting fact. She was not only a writer, but also expertly created unusual characters in her books, drew them and sculpted from clay. Favorite characters were all the same Moomins.
Jansson herself emphasized more than once that she was not a writer, but an artist. In support of this, one can bring her amazing wall paintings in the building of the city hall of Hamina and the painting of the altar in the church of the city of Teuva. But no matter how proud she is of her talent for Tuva painting, she is known throughout the world as a writer and author of stories about Moomin trolls.
Artworks
Thanks to magical tales, once famous, Tove Jansson woke up. Her works are full of kindness and peace, lovely smiling creatures and interesting adventures. Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated a lot. But the story “The Wizard's Hat” made her famous throughout the world. It has been translated into almost forty languages of the world and is included in the school curriculum in many countries.
The whole life of the mummy-troll family is devoted to eight stories, the most famous of which are “Moomin and Comet”, “Magic Winter”, “Wizard's Hat”, “Moomin-Papa and the Sea”. In the last story, the biography of Tove Jansson is echoed. For children, her books are an interesting fairy tale, for adults - a real storehouse of philosophical views on life and a subject for study.
Where did the Moomin come from?
There are heroes who are recognizable and unusual in a crowd of book and movie characters. These are the Moomins Tove Jansson. The biography of the writer tells that when Tuva did not leave for her grandmother, she and her family spent summer vacations in a summer house on a small island. Here, as the favorite niece of the writer Sofia tells, the toilet on the street was covered with thick cardboard. On its walls, all family members loved to write something to each other, and sometimes engage in real epistolary battles. Once, Tove’s brother wrote a quote from Kant, and the girl, not finding what to answer him, painted a mysterious sweet creature. Then the future author of world famous short stories called this creature "the most ugly one she has ever seen." This was a draft of the world's first Moomin. And the prototype of the magical Mumi-dol was this cute island.
Tove Jansson. Quotes and interesting phrases
The writer not only created the Moomin image beloved by children and adults of the whole world, she also filled her works with amazing phrases with a hidden meaning. Many of them have not become aphorisms, such as, for example, the phrase from the story “Everything about the Moomins”: “Anyone who eats pancakes with jam cannot be so terribly dangerous.” Here she writes: "When you have a desire to do something, you need to ... do not wait until this mood passes."
In her collection "Summer Book", the writer describes the smell as "a thin blanket, woven from memories." It is worth reading the books of this amazing writer, reading into every phrase, because she can tell and show us so much, teach and amuse, carry away into the world of philosophy and fantasy.
Why do you need to read the works of Tove Jansson?
The books of such a writer as Tove Marika Jansson became a real asset to the world of literature. A biography will not tell us so much about her as her books do. Many literary scholars, exploring Jansson’s tales, said that her heroes and family living in the fabulous Mumi-dol are the embodiment of the author’s childhood, a look at the world of a child that an adult woman could keep in herself. Almost sixty years have passed since the writing of the first book about funny trolls, and its popularity and relevance is still at its peak. Her cute characters are full of such a bright faith in goodness and justice, that involuntarily you yourself are charged with this faith, and the world seems better and brighter.
In addition, the stories are not so simple as it might seem at first glance. Many researchers revealed elements of Buddhism, Kant's philosophy, and Christianity in its subjects. The works of Tove Jansson captivate readers with their simplicity, lightness and very deep, unexpected philosophical content.