Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

142 Pentti Paavolainen
a letter written by Kivi to Bergbom. Moreover, Bergbom insisted that he
should supervise the rehearsals on behalf of the invalid author. He was not
given permission to enter the New Theatre. What was worse, Bergbom
now accused the theatre of not having had “any intention of paying” the royalties,
something Hertzberg had mentioned to a third person over a beer.
Nikolai Kiseleff was abroad when Bergbom raised the royalty issue
in the press. By the time he returned, nothing could be done. Bergbom
published an article entitled “Protest” in all the Helsinki newspapers (on
13 December 1872), accusing the Swedish Theatre Company of “mercilessly”
exploiting the “weak health of the talented Finnish author”. After
the premiere and the first performance of Flyktingarna, the issue was settled:
Hertzberg as the translator-adaptor, according to custom, promised
to pay half of the royalties to the author’s representative, Bergbom. This
happened within a week and a contract-receipt was signed. The next day
Bergbom published a scathing review in Morgonbladet, though without a
signature. He bullied his young colleague Hertzberg, who had made his
adaptation in good faith, a writer who in the future would do a great deal to
promote Finnish-language literature in Swedish translations. Bergbom accused
Hertzberg of not transmitting the “poetry” of Kivi’s work, which was
somewhat true, although the translation used verse in passages where it is
not found in the original. Two weeks later, on 31 December 1872, Aleksis
Kivi died. The accumulated royalties were now used for his funeral. (Aspelin-Haapkylä
1907, II, pp. 29–36.)
Bergbom’s reaction to the staging of Kivi’s play at the Swedish Theatre
had been almost “hysterical”, which can best be explained by his own guilty
conscience. Bergbom, like many other Fennomans, must have reproached
himself for not having sufficiently supported Kivi, who was the only artistically
original author writing in Finnish. His writing was not as “polished and
beautiful” as the educated class and the gatekeepers of the Fennoman culture
would have liked. Kivi’s humorous realism and down-to-earth comedy
were sometimes too much – if not so much for Bergbom, then for many in
the audiences whom Bergbom wanted to please. For the lower-class audiences,
with their fluent native Finnish, Kivi was not difficult or offensive.
(Paavolainen 2010, pp. 288–290).
Bergbom was now persona non grata in the New Theatre, although he
had sent flowers to the actresses who had appeared in Kivi’s play. Nikolai
Kiseleff’s two colleagues in the theatre’s leadership had had enough. At
their instigation the theatre summoned Bergbom to court for “defamation”
(smädelse). But here Kiseleff did not agree with his colleagues; he alone was