GLR May-June 2026

made Bruuno “a saint for myself; picture of whom has been eternally etched into my soul as an epitome of the wonderful sublimity of a youth, a symbol of manli ness, radiating temporal and infinite beauty.” This carries echoes of Platonic philosophy, which influenced the Sym bolist movement in its theories of art, such as Baudelaire’s idea of correspon dances , and in how the great Symbolist poets lived. Oscar Wilde famously in voked it during his trials in 1895, saying that “the love that dares not speak its name” was for Plato “the very basis of his philosophy.” “I’m not him, and still I feel: I must be come him, become one with him. He looks at me with his lovely face—and my face is wretched and twisted.” Here Kailas combines Platonism and the Finnish Protes tant cult of shame. He’d had a strict reli gious upbringing, taught since childhood that something was inherently flawed and filthy in him—the original sin that could be washed away only by Christ. Kailas seems to have sought this personal savior in his male lovers. He also had an idol whom he’d never met and thus would remain an immaculate ideal of masculine perfection: Juhani Siljo, a poet who’d died in the Finnish Civil War in 1918. Scholars have described Siljo’s works using the term “ethical rigorism.” His poems celebrate warrior-like virtues, stoicism, and cultiva tion of willpower: “My will is like a drawn bow. The sun gave me an order and mean ing: to rise up to the hills of a glorified life, and pass many wrong crossroads.” The pursuit of these ideals had driven Kailas to take part in the Kinship Wars. Ac knowledging his “painful sexual problem” (as he put it in a 1929 letter) drove him into the depths of self-loathing, contemplating suicide. Sarkia, meanwhile, seems to have accepted his shame. “I love you in shame, through toil and trouble; I want you, noth ing else; what else should I seek for?” he wrote. “I will follow you from west to east, and from north to south; I will follow you once death takes you to the Sentence; I will be yours in front of Lord, and half of your guilt is mine.” There’s little ethical rigorism in Sarkia’s works. He was a dreamer, an æs thete, satisfied with glimpses of the ever distant world of ideas. Kailas was determined to fight an eternal, Sisyphean battle against himself. The more he fought, the stronger, more violent, and more uncon trollable his desires grew. By the 1920s, Finland had become inde pendent. The small nation remained in the shadow of a mighty enemy, Russia, which had become the Soviet Union. Thus a cult of patriotic masculinity flourished in Finland during the 1920s and ’30s. Homosexuality

Both poets, Uuno Kailas (above) and Kaarlo Sarkia (right), have been honored with public statues in their native Finland.

was rarely discussed but was associated with degeneracy. The homosexual man was com monly seen as a symbol of the languid fin de-siècle decadence that the newborn Finnish nation should overcome. Mean while, the literary movement of Tulenkanta jat (Torchbearers) embraced everything new, modern, and European. Its adherents de manded Finland “open up the windows to Europe,” because they wanted their country to modernize, to be a valid part of the conti nent. The group’s frontman was Olavi Paavolainen—a dandyish bisexual who was inspired by both Decadent literature (Wilde in particular) and Italian Futurism, a move ment associated with Mussolini’s Fascism. Paavolainen admired masculinity and loathed the stereotype of the effeminate, overcivilized homosexual male—but appar ently didn’t feel shame for his own relation ships. Rather, he celebrated them. Kailas was initially part of the Tulenkan tajat but soon left in favor of the more patri otic Group of May. As a poet, he was conservative with respect to form. He wrote rhymed verse, while Paavolainen and others of the Tulenkantajat eagerly adopted mod ern free verse. Sarkia seems to have had contempt for the stoic warrior type. As a pacifist who later was arrested in Italy after speaking out against Mussolini, he saw such men as materialistic and destructive. Kailas and Sarkia’s romance ended as rapidly and passionately as it had begun. In spring 1932, the lovers had a quarrel so harsh that for a while they disappeared from each other’s lives. In his final letter to Sarkia, Kailas wrote that Sarkia was “of too delicate substance, while I was of too rough.” He praised Sarkia’s good nature, apologized for his own recklessness, and admitted having been “hysteric.” Despite these differences, in other ways they may have been too similar. Both were grandiose,

secretly insecure men with larger-than-life passions and expectations for each other. Kailas’ letter is telling: “I understand well that I am not, nor will I ever be, as good as you; you, quite straightforward, told me that.—Why did you want to wear a robe of humility, when I saw and wanted to see an ideal in you?” They occasionally met later but never be came as close as before. Sarkia portrayed the romance as a beautiful but vanishing dream in a poem appropriately titled “Daalia-uni” (“A Dream of Dahlias”). It im plies that Sarkia was too resigned for the great, idealistic love that Kailas may have expected: “Love, the wandering bird, could not make a nest into my heart, where au tumn already paints leaves red.” Later in 1932, Kailas traveled abroad to treat his tu berculosis. He never returned, dying in Nice, France, on March 22, 1933. This was a great shock to Sarkia, who survived with tuberculosis until 1945. Kailas and Sarkia were considered es sential to the Finnish literary canon during their lifetimes and have remained so. Nonetheless, their love—and homosexual ity—long remained undiscussed. Same-sex relationships were decriminalized in Fin land in 1972, but afterward a restriction was written into law: the so-called “para graph of encouraging,” which blocked pos itive depictions of same-sex relationships and wasn’t abolished until 1999. Only in this century has the love of these cele brated poets been discussed openly among Finnish scholars and literature enthusiasts. There is finally a place for queerness in our literary canon—for our own Verlaine and Rimbaud. Artemis Kelosaari is an author based in Helsinki, Finland. History and queer mas culinity are prevalent themes in his works.

May–June 2026

23