Myrtti ja alppiruusu by Joel Lehtonen
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"Myrtti ja alppiruusu" by Joel Lehtonen is a collection of travel sketches written in the early 20th century. The work follows a reflective Finnish traveler through Italy, blending vivid landscapes and city scenes with intimate encounters and historical meditation. Lyrical and sensuous, it lingers on everyday life, art, and ruins, with the first-person observer at its center and memorable figures—like a tender landlady and a reborn seminarian—humanizing the vistas. The opening moves
from an Alpine pass into Italy, where a radiant peasant mother in a crowded train becomes the narrator’s living emblem of the country’s promise. In Rome, he settles by S. Pietro in Vincoli, savoring market mornings, palm-dotted squares, and the homely care of Benedetta, an Albanian landlady whose stories of former boarders and lost loves shape a warm domestic idyll. Walks to Janiculum and glimpses of street musicians deepen the city’s atmosphere. A rain-soaked evening on Capitol Hill turns into a trance-like vision of the Forum: temples and emperors rise and fall in his mind as the lullaby refrain “Ninna, ninna e nanna” merges ruin with memory and the Christian takeover. Finally, he visits a Jesuit seminary to meet a converted acquaintance—now renamed and tightly disciplined—observing cloistered routines, brittle zeal, and the cost of ascent from poverty. The section closes by sketching that friend’s lonely, striving youth, hinting at the social fractures beneath the book’s travel scenes. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Lehtonen, Joel, 1881-1934 |
|---|---|
| Title | Myrtti ja alppiruusu |
| Original Publication | Helsinki: Otava, 1911. |
| Contents | Italian portilla -- Idyllistä elämää -- Muinaisella Forumilla -- Orjantappura ja kruunu -- Shelleyn haudalla -- Kevät -- Flora-tarina -- Sisilia -- Adrianmerellä -- Alppijärvi -- Paimen -- Romantiikan lipun alla -- Fata -- Ahasverus alpeilla -- Illalla Firenzessä -- Venetsia -- Jouluyö Maffian ahdistamana. |
| Credits | Tapio Riikonen |
| Language | Finnish |
| LoC Class | DG: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Italy, Vatican City, Malta |
| Subject | Italy -- Description and travel |
| Subject | Switzerland -- Description and travel |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 78769 |
| Release Date | May 27, 2026 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 232 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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