Minä rakastan sinua, minä sanon sen kaikille – vai voiko siitä sittenkään puhua?

Abstract

Love You, I Tell Everyone – Or Is It Still Impossible to Speak About It? The Concept of Love in Mirkka Rekola’s Lyrics of the 1970s, and Its Historical Context The article examines love in Mirkka Rekola’s (born 1931) works Minä rakastan sinua, minä sanon sen kaikille (“I love you, I tell everyone”) (1972) and Kohtaamispaikka vuosi (“Meeting place: year”) (1977). Moreover, it focuses on the historical context of Rekola’s lyrics of the 1970s and argues that it is impossible to study this context without taking into consideration the writer’s homosexuality. The article analyses the concept of love by focusing on the universal theme of distant love (love from afar), which emphasizes love as a spiritual journey. For example, 11th and 12th century troubadour lyrics are famous for their themes of love. The article shows that it is relevant to examine Rekola’s literary works together with Dante Alighieri’s (1265−1321) Vita Nuova (ca. 1294) and Divina Commedia (1321), and with the poems of the sufi mystic Mawlana Rumi (1207−1273). In the light of Dante’s and Rumi’s literary works, distant love appears in Rekola’s poems as an entrance to spiritual and mystical experience. In addition, the examination of the intertextual frame shows that Rekola’s poems archive, and at the same time hide, emotions socially forbidden at the time when the works were published. Furthermore, the article aims to clarify a poetical turning point in Kohtaamispaikka vuosi brought about by love, and which is remarkable in the context of all Rekola’s works published since 1977.