Release date is 2025-05-13

Tapio Riikonen

"Muistojen mailta : Runoja by Hilja Liinamaa-Pärssinen" is a collection of poetry written in the early 20th century. The book fuses political memory with intimate lyric, moving between prison cells, winter darkness, and the consolations of nature, work, and love. Its likely topic is the aftermath of civil strife and imprisonment, the suffering of the marginalized, and a stubborn hope for renewal and freedom. The book opens with stark prison poems that address a Red prisoner and depict executions, night terrors, and the machinery of confinement. It then offers compassionate portraits of fellow sufferers—young comrades, orphans, an old inmate, a fallen woman—and a haunting Good Friday service of shamed women. Later cycles turn to grief and yearning, meditations in silence, childhood and spring visions, and a defiant call to tear down walls, endure torture, and rise again; Time and Hunger appear as allegories, and a mother urges her son toward justice. In freer verse the voice breathes open air: red dreams, spring birds and first anemones, orchards and the dignity of free work, a sleeping nation, and a vow to join the struggle. The closing garden of memories forms an intimate love sequence that moves from rapture to loss, carrying the book from trauma toward resilience and both inner and outer freedom. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Helsinki: Kust.Oy Kansanvalta, 1926