Leino, Eino
"Naamioita VI" by Eino Leino is a collection of plays written in the early 20th century. The volume centers on clashes between church power, modern ideas, class and wealth, and the demands of love and conscience; the first play brings an engineer, a parson’s daughter, an obsessive inventor, and a proud cleric into sharp conflict in a rural Finnish parish.The opening of the first play unfolds on a shabby croft at Midsummer, where Johanna prays while her husband Elias, a worn-out tinkerer, exults that his lifelong “perpetual motion” machine is finally almost ready. Their son Antti returns from America with Tyyne, the parson’s daughter, and the lovers debate work, progress, faith, and country, revealing Antti’s contempt for clerical authority and class privilege. When the parson, Pontus Marttila, arrives, he and Antti lock in a tense verbal duel; the father will accept the match only with a church wedding, while Antti insists on a civil union, leaving Tyyne torn. After the parson withdraws, Johanna and Antti speak of Heikki’s death and piety, and Antti rails against charity in place of justice; despite Tyyne’s plea that breaking Elias’s belief might break the man, Antti prepares to confront his father’s illusion. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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