Jukka Sarjala, Turun romantiikka. Aatteita, lukuvimmaa ja yhteistoimintaa 1810-luvun Suomessa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2020. Historiallisia Tutkimuksia 283. Illustrated, 267 pp.

The monograph deals with early Romanticism in the city of Turku, Finland, in the 1810s. Turku Romanticism, as it is known, was based on the literary and intellectual activities of the students, masters and docents of the Imperial University of Turku. These youngsters and academic teachers were keen on acquainting themselves with Romantic ideas and undercurrents in Sweden and Germany. Besides paying attention to the literary culture of the period, this book focuses on the universities of Northern Europe, post-Kantian philosophy, media, academic activism, Bildungsidee, the interest in folk poetry and student unrest. The main objective is to analyse and scrutinise the networks of the students and their collaborators, partly in Sweden as well. The monograph gives the first overall presentation of this topic in Finnish.

See also the publisher’s website: https://kirjat.finlit.fi/sivu/tuote/turun-romantiikka/2716305

On 12 November 1841 it was still dark, hours before sunrise, when Franz Liszt entered the city of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony. His watch had just turned 6:00 a.m. when he arrived at his local hotel and took a three hours’ nap before breakfast. In the afternoon, he improvised a matinée performance at the home of a local citizen and in the evening he gave a public concert at 7 p.m. Very early next morning he continued to Bielefeld where he gave a solo recital the same day, on 13 November. This rhythm of life was typical of Franz Liszt, the virtuoso who was known as ‘a dazzling wizard, a showman and superman of the keyboard’.

This is my visualization on Liszt’s hectic concert tours during his Glanzperiode n 1839–1847.