Juhani Aho

(pseudonym of J. Brofeldt). Born Sept. 11, 1861, in Lapinlahti; died Aug. 8, 1921, in Helsinki. Finnish writer and journalist. Son of a pastor.

Aho headed the Young Finland group, which struggled for bourgeois-democratic reforms. He was the author of the realistic novellas At the Inn (1884) and The Man From the Fair (1884), taken from popular life. He showed the ruin of the countryside during the development of capitalism (the novella The Railroad, 1884; Crushed by the World, 1894), the life of the bourgeois intelligentsia (All Alone, 1890) and of the students (In Helsinki, 1889), and the vices of the rich landowners (Mr. Hellman, 1886). In 1891, Aho began writing stories that were assembled in the eight-volume collection Shavings. The novel Panu (1897) portrays events from the history of the Finnish people in a spirit of national romanticism. His subsequent works Juha (1911) and Shame (1914), are dominated by abstract psychologism. In 1918–19, Aho wrote the book Fragmentary Thoughts During Weeks of Rebellion, which reflects his dislike of revolutionary methods of struggle.