Search results for "Seven Brothers"
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Ability to Measure and Count in Aleksis Kivi’s Seven Brothers
2021
The illiterate brothers’ elementary ability to measure and count fluently is a striking feature in the Finnish author Aleksis Kivi’s Seven Brothers (Seitsemän veljestä, 1870), a novel that was published before the metric system was introduced in Finland. The seven main characters describe their everyday life and environment and make work- related decisions using numbers, amounts, and measures of distance, area, volume, and weight without hesitation. They are also familiar with some elementary calculations. At the same time, their inability to read arouses desperate anguish in them. I analyze the ways the brothers use numbers and measurements, and the importance of these skills in their life…
Measures of the Massive Mountain in Aleksis Kivi’s Play Kullervo
2022
The story of a prisoner inside an enormous steel mountain is embedded in Kullervo, an early Finnish tragedy by 19th-century author Aleksis Kivi. I focus here on the exceptional size of the mountain, as told by the main character, Kullervo. Although the embedded story has aroused admiration in research, the mountain’s size and form do not appear to have done so. If taken literally, and assuming the shape of a double pyramid, at a minimum, the mountain’s surface area would be between that of Earth and Uranus, a planet that Kivi was somehow aware of. The mountain’s maximum surface area and volume would greatly exceed that of the Sun. This mountain cannot be localized in the near environment of…