Saturday, August 9, 2014

Happy 100th Birthday, Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomins, was born August 9, 1914.
 Finland is celebrating.

I love her Moomins because they are adorable and cute and acquainted with suffering.
They say things such as...
 and...
 and...
Ha, ha, no, that last one is Camus. People calligraphy that quote onto greeting cards, but not his lines from the same essay, “Yes, there is beauty and there are the humiliated. ... I would like never to be unfaithful either to one or the other.” *

Jansson, too, was faithful to beauty and humiliation.
 You could imagine her illustrating an edition of, say, Kierkegaard. 

Jansson was a painter and a novelist as well as a cartoonist.
You can see some of her work and read about her life at the  Finnish National Gallery.
__________
You can read Camus' essay "Return to Tipasa" online here.

6 comments:

bink said...

Love the line "All things are so very uncertain And that's exactly what makes me feel reassured."

And that's so true.

Even in movies, when things begin to go too smoothly--too certainly, too easy, it's usually a clue that life is being controlled by some alien creature/mind control/all a dream/or you are in a coma--and need to get back to the real world.

Fresca said...

Right. Too much certainty is a sign that we're being controlled by Landru (Star Trek computer god).

LauraB said...

These photos of Tove remind me of your friend Marz- is it just me or do you see a resemblance? I love the fact that she's wearing pants & is not "dressed up"!

Fresca said...

LAURA: I think she looks rather more like your friend Cady!
I think you'd like Tove--she was a real lifelong working artist... like you!

ArtSparker said...

Love the Moomins.

Fresca said...

ARTSPARKER: I'd have guessed you would. And I love to see you here:
Thanks for visiting!