Henry Parland

Henry George William Parland (29 July 1908 – 10 November 1930) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet, novelist and culture journalist in the Finn-Swedish and Lithuanian press.

Biography The Parland family, originally McFarlaine, is thought to have originated in Scotland. Henry Parland's father, Oswald Frank Parland, was an engineer on the Russian Railways and, through the expansion of the railway network, came to travel around in his job in Tsarist Russia at the time. The family settled in Tikkala, Finland. Parland's mother was Ida Maria Sesemann. Henry Parland was the eldest of four brothers, three of whom became writers. The others were Oscar Parland and Ralf Parland.

Parland grew up in a multilingual environment. German and Russian were spoken at home, and French and English were also spoken through contacts with the cultural and business world. Parland learned Finnish from working-class children in Tikkala and Swedish only after the family moved to Kauniainen.

Parland attended a Swedish school in Grankulla, near Helsinki, at the age of fourteen. He graduated from Grankulla Samskolan in 1927. He then studied law at the University of Helsinki from 1927 to 1929. He showed an early interest in art and writing and became part of a circle centered around the poet Gunnar Björling. Parland also moved in with Björling and apparently lived a dissolute artistic life. After becoming financially insolvent by signing bills of exchange, Parland was sent to his maternal uncle, Vasilij Sesemann, in Kaunas, the Lithuanian capital at the time. From 1929, Parland had a secretarial position at the Swedish consulate in Kaunas. During his time in Lithuania, he also worked for Lithuanian newspapers. He fell ill with scarlet fever the following year and died at the age of 22. Parland's archive is held by the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland.

Reception Ghita Barck was one of the first to draw attention to Parland with her master's thesis on Parland's writing. Despite this, greater interest in Parland was not aroused until 1964 when his brother, Oscar Parland, published his collected poems and his prose productions.

Henry Parland is considered one of the foremost figures in modernism. His writing was far ahead of its time and is still alive and relevant today. In the 1970s, a new stage in Parland's posthumous fame occurred when Finnish semiotic circles drew attention to Parland's contacts with the Russian formalists and highlighted him as a pioneer of Finnish semiotics. His work Den modernistiska dikten ur formalistisk synpunkt is considered the first work to introduce semiotics in Finland.

Author Gunnar Björling wrote: "Henry Parland brought a new generation of irreverence and hilarious irony, and during his short life, he gave impulses and unforgettable companionship. A candle lit in life's stupor!"

Parland's works received several reviews after they were published. For example, the collection volume Återsken (1932) was noted by reviewers such as Elmer Diktonius in Arbetarbladet and Olof Enckell in Hufvudstadsbladet, both of whom had reviewed his earlier works, as well as Hagar Olsson in Svenska Pressen and Xerex in Tammerfors Aftonblad. Another of Parland's collections, Hamlet sade det vackrare (1964), was reviewed by, among others, Arto Kytöhonka in Keskisuomalainen, Pekka Piirto in Helsingin Sanomat and Helmer J. Wahlroos in Borgåbladet.

At the Gothenburg Book Fair in 2005, a seminar was arranged around Parland's writing. Stella Parland, author, literary critic and relative of Henry Parland, participated.