Empiirisen minän kokemuksia : heijastussymboliikka Eeva-Liisa Mannerin tuotannossa

Abstract

The study examines reflection symbolism in the poetry of Eeva-Liisa Manner and how it affects to the world view of her artistic works. Eeva-Liisa Manner uses reflection symbolism in order to grasp experiences not otherwise accessible. By using reflection symbolism the poet may change complicated experiences to simple events, e. g. to walk into the mirror or through the mirror to death. Eeva-Liisa Manner chooses the reflection symbolism to express the most important metamorphoses such as the passage from life to death, from world to emptiness and from consciousness to unconsciousness etc. By collecting all the contexts of reflection symbols I have founded a basic structure from which all the transformations of these symbols derive. They are manifested in nine image themes: art as a reflection of life; reflection as an image of the self; another kind of world as reflection; the mirror that reflects another time. Art as a reflection of life -theme is well-known in many important theories of art e. g. in Platonic and Marxist theories. Eeva-Liisa Manner has noted how the elements of a poem are carried instaneously through the mirror. This implies the idea of the poem as a mirror of life. The reflection as an image of the self includes also Narcissos -theme which is one of the most interesting among the themes using mirror symbolism. In trying to find himself man tries to find wholeness. Another kind of world as reflection -figure theme belongs to the same pattern as the fantasy world behind the mirror in Lewis Carrols Through the Lookin-Glass. Eeva-Liisa Manner uses the motif in manyfold rich ways. The self of the poem can walk through the mirror to a world of harmony or a world of death. The reflection may show the world as shadow or as emptiness or death. The reflection can change time to another. Manner has developed an interesting idea of time as a landscape which means that time lies around man and world. All the time levels exist simultaneously with the experience of today.