I wish
I met someone who speaks the truth just for one minute. Erno Paasilinna.
(Ruumisarkun nauloja. Otava 1999) Ruumisarkun nauloja is
a collection of aphorisms that was published in 1999. The same year
I painted this self-portrait. Erno had lost his faith in the honesty
of people, if he ever had had any. He was at odds with the world.
He called newspaper editors publicly shitlickers and was almost
taken to court for defamation. "Look for an honest person and
you will find poor men". In one of his last TV appearances,
Paasilinna compared man with the rat. Both of them populate the
earth with equal persistence, destroying everything they come across
with. They rush in herds to everything new. The fate of the poor
did not leave him in peace. "The coffin is here the first abode
of many a poor man." This is the sentence that closed "The
homepage of the poor" in Erno's book of aphorisms. |