Avaa tiedosto - Doria

empty room with a trace of an inhabitant is one of the most frequent occurring images in
Carpelan’s writings.
A central conclusion in the second part of the thesis concerns the question of when a
thing is a thing (for example, only a stone) and when it is a sign (for example, a worn
lamp that has belonged to someone who has been dear). For a person conducting research
into literature it can be difficult to stop constantly interpreting the forms of spatiality as
metaphorical. Are the images of rooms and buildings metaphorical, inner images of
persons, or are they quite simply nothing more or less than concrete and fixed rooms and
buildings? They are both at the same time. What is important to point out, concerning the
emphasis on spatiality, is that Carpelan even explicitly indicates the room, not in its
metaphorical sense and the metaphysical depth it includes, but the unnoticed humble, yet
constantly present, nature of the room in which we live.
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In the third part of the thesis the focus is on the novel Urwind (1993). Urwind is the work
in which Carpelan makes the most use of architectural elements and schemes. For the
basis of the novel Carpelan returns again to his childhood world of the ‘backyard’ as both
a centre for the world and comprehensive form of existence. In scene after scene, Urwind
illustrates that the emphasis on the room/space in his writings has a phenomenological
and sensual foundation. The places Daniel Urwind visits and remembers help him to reexperience
his life. Architecture – the rooms he has lived in – has shaped him. The spatial
structures and places he has lived in have characterised his entire view of the world, his
dreams about where he wants to travel, where he would prefer to live, and which places
he would particularly avoid. A mapping out of the rooms in his life gives a topographical
map that simultaneously appears to be a personal portrait. The novel Urwind is a portrait
and such a topographical map. If the inner life of individuals has a form in Carpelan’s
poetical universe then it is a dreamlike and dynamic jumble of the places where they have
lived.
The main character, Daniel Urwind, personifies the poetics of openness and a
fundamental outsider perspective on human life as a whole. The world is observed
through the window overlooking the backyard. The ideal way of seeing is both
experienced and innocent. Urwind, similar to many other of Carpelan’s works can be read
as a defence of lonely and misunderstood people. Carpelan illustrates time and again in
his books that persons who differ from the norm have hidden abilities.
Daniel Urwind’s inner and real self is invisible since he lives in a world where people
only see the visible, and perhaps not even that. His concealment involves isolation, but
this brings with it room for fantasy and a peaceful clarity. According to Colin Wilson’s
analysis in The Outsider (1956), that I mention in connection with Urwind, the origin of the
outsider problematic lies in the fact that the outsider does not believe in the mendacious
reality that the others (the general public, society) live in. From his backyard perspective,
or what I call “the place under the table”, Carpelan’s protagonists see, something other,
something above the ordinary, the all embracing true and fantastic reality that is hidden
behind the great drama. What Daniel Urwind does, by making the invisible visible, is to
create a world where invisible individuals, like he himself, can live.
The concept of an all embracing universe constitutes an excellent breeding ground for
an analogous way of thinking. That is to say, a way of thinking that is interconnected by
correspondences and similarities between various phenomena. Carpelan’s poetic universe
is built up dialectically and it is visibly orientated: lightness and darkness, heaviness and
lightness, happiness and sorrow, summer and autumn constitute some of the most
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