What’s the meaning of life? What is more important, friendship or love? How does one become a writer? Children from all over the world wrote to Tove Jansson with questions, which the author took great time answering personally. A new book explores Tove’s life advice as described in her correspondence with young fans.

Tove Jansson lived a free-spirited life, permeated by both a strong work ethic and a will to play and have fun. Her Moomin books showed her deep understanding of loneliness, of the complexity of relating to others, and of the struggle of trying to find one’s own place in the world. Between the lines of the books, young and old readers understood that the author behind the words has been through a lot and might have a thing or two to say about the important things in life.

Tove Jansson received 1500-2000 fan letters from children and young people all over the world every year. The readers asked Tove for advice on everything from matters of the heart to more practical life skills. Tove took the time to answer all the letters she received thoughtfully; she often read up on matters for weeks and even consulted experts to be able to answer the letters properly. In the recent book Tove Jansson ja maailman lapset (“Tove Jansson and the Children of the World”, currently only available in Finnish), Tove biographer Tuula Karjalainen, author of Tove Jansson: Work and Love, gathers Tove’s letters to fans. In the letters, Tove gives advice on love, the meaning of life, loneliness, how to become a writer, and much more.

On the nature of love

Tove Jansson’s life and works reveal that love is multifaceted and often boundless. For her, there was no great difference between love and friendship – both were equally important and intertwined in human relationships as well as in art. Tove’s own loves, from Sam Vanni to Vivica Bandler, often remained warm friendships even after the romances ended.

In her long-term relationship with Tuulikki Pietilä, love was manifested in sharing everyday life, working together, and understanding each other deeply. They shared a life in the city, the archipelago, and around the world, and it was precisely this shared life that created the strength of the relationship. Love was also evident in Tove’s relationship with her family, whose characteristics live on in the Moomin characters.

In her art, Tove depicted love in many ways. The sea horses in Moominpappa at Sea exude beauty and mystery, while her beloved lyrics to the Autumn Song ooze melancholy, longing, and affection. The song encapsulates Tove’s idea that love is the fundamental force of life – both friendship, companionship, longing, and warm affection.

“How did the Autumn song come about?” asked two boys from Frankfurt in their letter to Tove. She replied in February 1979: 

“– It was late autumn, and I was on an island. I wanted to try to write a love song for people who are no longer young, but of course, it works for people of any age. Actually, I wrote it for a friend of mine that I had drifted apart from, which I had never admitted to myself before. The theme of the song is trying to regain friendship, trust, affection, and love before it’s too late.

Besides, what’s the difference between friendship and love?

Warm regards, TJ”

On labour and love – searching for life’s true purpose

The children writing letters to Tove asked her many questions that she found hard to answer, but the most challenging ones might have been the ones about the meaning of life. In her answers, Tove often pondered whether love or work was more important in life.

In a letter written in 1995, when Tove was 81 years old, she writes: 

“Even after having turned 80, I still haven’t found out what the meaning of life is. Strangely enough. Sometimes I think it is work, sometimes that it’s love and sometimes vice versa…. Wait a while, a year or two, and everything will get better. You have your whole life in front of you. Tove.”

In her letters to her fans, Tove switched back and forth between answering work or love to their questions about the most important thing in a person’s time alive. Both love and work were essential to Tove’s existence, and consequently, Work and Love is also the name of Tuula Karjalainen’s biography of Tove Jansson.

That work and love were Tove’s mottos in life, is seen concretely in the ex-libris she made for herself in 1947. The latin phrase on the ex-libris, labora et amare (not quite correct grammatically, but noteworthy is that the word work comes first), serves as a premonition of how work often took over, even though she tried to balance the two. 

In her answers, Tove also stressed the importance of finding a vocation that one loves, as work is such an important part of the meaning of one’s life. She also wrote that the meaning of life is to be curious, to be grateful, and to have the courage to live life to the fullest, as long as one does not harm others. 

The elusive question of the meaning of life stayed with Tove until her old age. In an undated letter from the 1990s, Tove writes with the hindsight of an older person:

“And as for the meaning of life, when I was twenty, I thought I understood almost everything, but now that I am eighty, I understand less and less. The worst thing is that I don’t remember what I understood when I was twenty…”

How Tove Jansson comforted the lonely

During her lifetime, Tove Jansson received many letters from children and young people who felt lonely and isolated. Their letters repeatedly expressed a feeling that nobody cared about them – and Tove took these letters seriously. Responding to them was often difficult and even irritating, but at the same time important: she knew that each child’s experience was significant to them, even if it might seem insignificant to adults.

The letters from children and young people were also reflected in Tove’s work. One Swedish boy signed his message with the name Knyttet (Toffle) and said that he was always left alone. His letter inspired Tove to create the picture book Vem ska trösta knyttet? (Who Will Comfort Toffle?), in which a lonely character finds courage by saving another. Tove believed that readers could find comfort in seeing someone in the book who was even more afraid than they were, yet still managed to cope.

Tove herself did not experience distressing loneliness as an adult; for her, being alone was voluntary, even a luxury. However, she understood the many shades of loneliness. Perhaps that is why Moominvalley features both Snufkin’s content loneliness and Fillyjonks’s terrible, involuntary loneliness.

For many readers, the characters in the Moomin stories are a mirror of their own feelings. Some feel like the sad Misabel, others recognize themselves in Miffle, who cannot fit in anywhere, and others identify with the lonely Groke. In a letter from 1957, a young reader identifying as a Misabel, writes to Tove: 

“Dearest Snufkin, 

I have started writing at least five letters to you, and have not yet gotten past the opening sentence. I am beginning to fear that you will laugh at my silly words and throw my letter in the trash. This is supposed to be a thank-you letter. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to you, Snufkin, for teaching at least one Misabel to laugh. THANK YOU! – –

With sincere gratitude,
Your happy Misabel”

Tove’s books gave words to experiences that were difficult to talk about and offered comfort when the rest of the world did not listen, just as Tove comforted children and young people in her personal letters to them. This role was not always easy to carry, especially for someone who did not have any professional training in therapy work. 

Tove Jansson’s advice to aspiring authors

The young Moomin book readers writing to Tove often opened up to her about their dreams for the future, and several of them had aspirations to become writers, just like their idol Tove Jansson. She was generous in giving general advice on writing, and at times she seemed to be acting as a kind of non-paid encouragement and guiding service for young writers. She freely shared her thoughts on her own writing process, her motivation, and her everyday grind.

She described being an author like this in a letter: “Writing is a lonely profession, but not a bad one: perhaps it can be a source of comfort to someone, despite everything. Be open and leave things open—for the reader as well.”.

She always encouraged the letter writers to hold on to their dream of becoming an author, and emphasised that the lust to write is the most important thing to maintain. Without a strong and conscious desire to write, nothing good will arise. “Don’t lose your desire, and don’t worry about anything else” was her most common advice. In a letter to a young girl in 1969, Tove writes:

“It’s not so dangerous not to know what you’re getting into as long as you have the desire. I am absolutely certain that desire is the most important thing. When you have a genuine desire, it doesn’t matter what you attach it to. Genuine desire is the prerequisite for everything, and when you immerse yourself in it completely, it is possible to succeed.”

Tove also gave advice on more prosaic things like where to find and when to contact a publishing house. The most important advice was that the aspiring authors should write about things that were close to them, that were personal and important to themselves. She did, however, also advise them to go towards the things they feared and write about them. Tove also sent the letter writers long lists of books and authors that she recommended they read.

Tove sometimes received texts that the young writers wanted her to comment on, in some cases in very thick piles. Answering all the thousands of letters she received yearly took a big chunk of her time, so giving feedback on texts was not really an option. However, she always made an effort not to hurt the young writers’ feelings when she had to decline giving them feedback. 

The excerpts from the letters are taken from Tuula Karjalainen’s book Tove Jansson ja maailman lapset and freely translated from Finnish.