{"id":49413,"date":"2026-09-08T15:10:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T15:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/i-long-to-read-more-in-the-book-of-you-moomins-creator-tove-janssons-tender-and-passionate-letters-to-the-love-of-her-life\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T15:10:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T15:10:42","slug":"i-long-to-read-more-in-the-book-of-you-moomins-creator-tove-janssons-tender-and-passionate-letters-to-the-love-of-her-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/i-long-to-read-more-in-the-book-of-you-moomins-creator-tove-janssons-tender-and-passionate-letters-to-the-love-of-her-life\/","title":{"rendered":"I Long to Read More in the Book of You: Moomins Creator Tove Jansson\u2019s Tender and Passionate Letters to the Love of Her Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m so unused to being happy that I haven\u2019t really come to terms with what it involves\u2026 I feel like a garden that\u2019s finally been watered, so my flowers can bloom.\u201d<\/h3>\n
\n

\"I<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAll things are so very uncertain, and that\u2019s exactly what makes me feel reassured,\u201d says Too-ticky<\/a>, trying to comfort the lost and frightened Moomintroll under the otherworldly light of the aurora borealis. <\/p>\n

A decade after Tove Jansson<\/strong> (August 9, 1914\u2013June 27, 2001) dreamt up her iconic Moomin series \u2014 one of those works of philosophy disguised as children\u2019s books<\/a>, populated by characters with the soulful wisdom of The Little Prince, the genial sincerity of Winnie-the-Pooh, and the irreverent curiosity of the Peanuts \u2014 she dreamt up Too-ticky, the sage of Moominvalley, warmhearted and eccentric and almost unbearably lovable. <\/p>\n

Too-ticky came aglow in Jansson\u2019s artistic imagination from the same spark that galvanized Emily Dickinson\u2019s poetry<\/a> \u2014 her adoration of the woman who was already becoming the love of her life. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Tove Jansson, 1956 (Tove Janssons arkiv \/ University of Minnesota Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the 1955 Christmas party of Helsinki\u2019s Artists\u2019 Guild, Jansson found herself drawn to the record player, impelled to take over the evening\u2019s music. Another artist \u2014 the Seattle-born Finnish engraver, printmaker, and graphic arts pioneer Tuulikki \u201cTooti\u201d Pietil\u00e4 \u2014 was impelled to do the same. They shared the jubilant duty. I picture the two of them at the turntable, sipping spiced wine in rapt, bobbing deliberation over which of the year\u2019s hits to put on next \u2014 the year when rock and roll<\/em> had just been coined, the year of Nat King Cole\u2019s \u201cIf I May,\u201d Elvis\u2019s \u201cBaby Let\u2019s Play House,\u201d and Doris Day\u2019s \u201cLove Me or Leave Me.\u201d I picture them glancing at each other with the thrill of that peculiar furtive curiosity edged with longing, having not a glimmering sense \u2014 for we only ever recognize the most life-altering moments in hindsight \u2014 that they were in the presence of great love<\/a>, a love that would last a lifetime. Tove was forty-one, Tooti thirty-eight. They would remain together for the next half century, until death did them part. <\/p>\n

The tender delirium of their early love and the magmatic core of their lifelong devotion emanate from the pages of Letters from Tove<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the altogether wonderful collection of Jansson\u2019s correspondence with friends, family, and other artists, spanning her meditations on the creative process, her exuberant cherishment of the natural world and of what is best in human beings, her unfaltering love for Tooti. What emerges, above all, is the radiant warmth of her personhood \u2014 this person of such uncommon imagination, warmhearted humor, and stubborn buoyancy of spirit, always so thoroughly herself, who as a young woman had declared to her mother: <\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve got to become free myself if I\u2019m to be free in my painting.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"
Tove Janson: Smoking Girl<\/em>. Self-portrait, 1940. (National Galley Finland \/ private collection)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a soaring letter penned in the first days of their first summer together, while Tooti was on mainland Finland for a residency and Tove was home on the small island in the Borg\u00e5 archipelago where she spent her summers, she writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Beloved,<\/p>\n

I miss you so dreadfully. Not in a desperate or melancholy way, because I know we shall soon be with each other again, but I feel at such a loss and just can\u2019t get it into my head that you\u2019re not around any more. This morning, half awake, I put a hand out to feel for you, then remembered you weren\u2019t there, so I got up very quickly to escape the emptiness. And worked all day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After sharing the mundanities that make a shared life \u2014 mundanities radiating her sweetness of spirit: reports of bringing home some mud for the swallows from the nearby bay, reports of using up all the raisins, \u201call our raisins,\u201d on a batch of the home-brewed Finnish kilju \u2014 she loops back to the bittersweetness of Tooti\u2019s absence:<\/p>\n

\n

It was a fine night, calm and quiet, and I still couldn\u2019t take it in that you weren\u2019t here, kept half turning round to see what you were doing or to say something to you.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

Wherever I go on the island, you\u2019re with me as my security and stimulation, your happiness and vitality are still here, everywhere. And if I left here, you would go with me. You see, I love you as if bewitched, yet at the same time with profound calm, and I\u2019m not afraid of anything life has in store for us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"
Tove Jansson (University of Minnesota Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The following day \u2014 a gloomy, rainy day, with the encircling sea \u201cgrey and austere\u201d \u2014 Tove tells Tooti that while hauling stones to build a fire terrace, she began conceiving of a new Moomin story \u2014 \u201ca story about the sea and different sorts of solitude.\u201d A decade later, that idea would become Pappan och havet<\/em>, literally translated as \u201cthe father and the sea,\u201d but published in English as Moominpappa at Sea<\/em><\/a> \u2014 the most soulful and contemplative of the Moomin stories. (How much of the history of art and science is strewn with the private storms and solitudes of its creators, invisible to the eye that beholds the resulting creation \u2014 the echoes of Herman Melville\u2019s unrequited love<\/a> in Moby-Dick<\/em>, the shadows of Ernst Haeckel\u2019s staggering loss<\/a> in his scientific obsession and its artistic halo, the ruddering role of Rachel Carson\u2019s love for Dorothy in the making of the environmental movement<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

\"\"
Moominpappa at Sea<\/em>, 1965<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But even this grey solitude is aglow with Tove\u2019s love for Tooti. In a passage from the same letter that begins with a poetic piece of koan-like logic, she writes:<\/p>\n

\n

It always tends to be easier to go than to stay \u2014 even if you\u2019re happy being with the one you are leaving.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

Waiting is a sheer pleasure when it\u2019s for you \u2014 and the calm awareness that all I have to do is add together a number of days, and we\u2019ll see each other again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After a disarming veer into the pragmatic thoughtfulnesses that sweeten a shared life \u2014 \u201cThank you for the fly swatter my darling, it seems extremely effective.\u201d \u2014 she adds:<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019m so unused to being happy that I haven\u2019t really come to terms with what it involves. Suddenly my arms are heaped full of new opportunities, new harmony, new expectations. I feel like a garden that\u2019s finally been watered, so my flowers can bloom.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A week later, as Tove patiently awaits her beloved but misses her more and more achingly, she echoes philosopher Simone Weil\u2019s observation that \u201cthose who do not love each other are not separated\u201d<\/a> and writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Summer is moving on through its stages and sometimes I feel so melancholy that you aren\u2019t here. But perhaps it\u2019s good to have a bit of distance between us. I know now that I couldn\u2019t possibly be more attached to you, in a harmonious and happy way that can only grow stronger and more tender.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve known that all along.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The following week, she composes a gorgeous letter aglow with the sentiment at the heart of every marital vow:<\/p>\n

\n

Beloved,<\/p>\n

Now my adored relations have finally gone to sleep, strewn about in the most unlikely sleeping places, the chatter has died down, the storm too, and I can talk to you.<\/p>\n

Thank you for your letter, which felt like a happy hug. Oh yes, my Tuulikki, you have never given me anything but warmth, love and good cheer.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it remarkable, and seriously wonderful, that there\u2019s still not a single shadow between us? And you know what, the best thing of all is that I\u2019m not afraid of the shadows. When they come (as I suppose they must, for all those who care for one another), I think we can maneuver our way through them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And then, in one of those touching Toveisms, she pivots on a happy heel from the breathtakingly romantic to the pragmatically, affectionately blunt:<\/p>\n

\n

If you write in Finnish, please could you be a dear and use the typewriter; your handwriting\u2019s a bit tricky sometimes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Then, just as nimbly and joyously, she pivots right back to the romantic:<\/p>\n

\n

I miss those quiet June days when you were piecing together your mosaic or whittling away at some knotty bit of wood and it was possible to listen, contemplate and explore how we felt.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

Tuulikki, I long to read more in the book of you. I long for you in every way, and I\u2019m more alone with all these people around me than when I was wandering about on my own, thinking of you.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

She ends the letter with the first tentative drawing of Too-ticky, which she describes to Tooti as \u201ca new little creature that isn\u2019t quite<\/em> sure if it\u2019s allowed to come in!\u201d before signing the letter \u201cYour Tove.\u201d The strange and wondrous creature did come in \u2014 into Tove\u2019s heart, into the Moomin universe \u2014 and never left. <\/p>\n

\"\"
Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietil\u00e4, later in life, near their island home. (Tove Janssons arkiv)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Complement this fragment of the thoroughly delightful Letters from Tove<\/em><\/strong><\/a> with other masterpieces from the canon of great love letters by luminaries of creative culture: Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert<\/a>, Vladimir Nabokov to V\u00e9ra Nabokova<\/a>, Iris Murdoch to Brigit Brophy<\/a>, Hannah Arendt to Martin Heidegger<\/a>, John Cage to Merce Cunningham<\/a>, Kahlil Gibran to Mary Haskell<\/a>, Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett Browning<\/a>, and Oscar Wilde to Alfred \u201cBosie\u201d Douglas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

\n

newsletter<\/h3>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m so unused to being happy that I haven\u2019t really come to terms with what it involves\u2026 I feel like a garden that\u2019s finally been watered, so my flowers can bloom.\u201d \u201cAll things are so very uncertain, and that\u2019s exactly what makes me feel reassured,\u201d says Too-ticky, trying to comfort the lost and frightened Moomintroll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 12:15:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}