Eino Leino

(pseudonym of Eino Lönnbohm). Born July 6, 1878, in Paltamo; died Jan. 10, 1926, in Tuusula. Finnish writer.

Leino studied at the University of Helsinki. His first collections of lyrical poems include many which were written in the spirit of folk songs, such as Ballad of the Great Oak (1896) and One Hundred and One Songs (1898). His play Pentti Pääkkönen (1905) and the novel Tuomas Vittikka (1906) are directed against the social elite. The novel Jaana R ö nty (1907) is devoted to the revolutionary events of 1905 in Russia. Social and philosophical concerns dominate the poems in the collections Winter Night (1905) and Frosts (1908). In his play Salt of the Earth (1911), Leino presented an unfavorable picture of the Finnish bourgeois intelligentsia. He wrote six series of plays entitled Masks (1905–11) and the cycle Kalevala on Stage (1911). In the years 1911–13 he published the antibourgeois tetralogy Slave, which showed the influence of the European decadent school. Tragic themes become stronger in Leino’s later lyrics, as in his collection The Wind-kantele (1919). He also wrote the novel An Illustrated Book of My Life (1925).