Leino, Kasimir Agathon

(pseudonym of Kasimir Agathon Lönnbohm). Born Feb. 17, 1866, in Paltamo; died Mar. 8, 1919, in Helsinki. Finnish writer.

In 1898, Kasimir Leino and his brother Eino founded the literary journal Nykyaika. In his first collection, Poetic Experiments (1888), and in the collections of short stories Elli From Emmala (1886) and From Life (1889), Leino realistically described the life of the Finnish peasantry. In the collections of poems Amid Cross-waves (1890) and On the Watery Expanse (1893), Leino depicted the hard life of the poor peasantry and spoke out against conservative government and bourgeois ideology. Pessimistic motifs predominate in the collection Poems (1895). Leino also wrote Jaakko Ilkka and Klaus Fleming (1901), a historical drama in verse about a 16th-century peasant uprising in Finland.