Finland

Back in the life of the airports. I’m on my way to Finland. I have to admit that if there were a European country to which I had little urge to journey, well, Finland rests high on the list. But this is where the conference is, and to Finland I head. I knew two things about Finland before booking the flight, and I have learned one thing since. When I was in eighth grade Mr. Schweitzer, my junior high school music teacher, played a recording of “Finlandia,” by Sibelius. I don’t remember much about the experience, but whenever I now hear “Finlandia,” I think of Mr. Schweitzer. I know I learned a great deal from him about music. To him I attribute my attraction to folk music, but that is a long and difficult story which I am not interested in telling. The second thing I knew about Finland was that it was where Lenin stayed awaiting the Revolution to begin. When I was doing my research on the American radical novel, I read Edmund Wilson’s Toward the Finland Station. I was a Marxist then; my roots still reside there. And though I don’t recall the reading at all, I can recall exactly where the book sits on my shelf along side my other Marxist tomes.

The third, and newest thing I know about Finland is that during World War II, the Russians invaded Finland and the country aligned itself with the Nazis in opposition. In 1942, the Nazis sent Himmler to Finland to round up its Jews. Rolf Witting, the Finn Foreign Minister, refused to accede to the Nazis demand. When the Nazis said, “Give us your Jews,” the Finns said, “Absolutely not!” No Finnish Jew went to Auschwitz. (The Danes and the Swedes have also their heroic story of saving Jews. And what can we say about the Western European and North American democracies concerning their concern for the Jews?).

I think this is a good way to end the sabbatical. Far from home, far from the university, far from the diurnal. When I return, I return to syllabi, to classlists, to final exams and summer packings.


Until then: even the newer terminals don’t seem to have taken the 21st century into account. There aren’t enough outlets into which to plug our devices. I’m sitting by the only plug I could find and there is no seat near; I am sitting on the floor. I don’t really mind sitting on the floor, but I am a bit concerned about having to get up off it. I think they should have a regulation that electric outlets be placed every so many feet, and certainly on all of the poles holding up the ceiling (I suspect) and separating the gate areas from the walkways. What were they thinking? Better, of whom were they thinking?

I haven’t been out of the country (except, excuse me, to Canada!) since 1991, and before that since the 1980s. I haven’t been to Northern Europe since 1971. I visited Denmark then, in search of Hamlet, the antic Dane. I found him.