Ulfven är besviken på IKL
More Josephine Baker trivia: Örnulf (”Ulfven” among friends) Tigerstedt was a Finland-Swedish fascist poet and political activist in the 1920’s and 1930’s. IKL was a small but loud quasi-fascist party on the political scene in Finland in the 1930’s and 40’s. They did not get along:
I wanted authority and heroic achievements and the pack seconded by hissing at Josephine.
I haven’t been able to find out whether Tigerstedt liked Josephine Baker or not. Probably, he only thought that IKL was a bunch of smallminded puritans who couldn’t focus on the important things in Finnish politics, such as shooting Bolsheviks, abolishing democracy and worshiping great men.
Tigerstedt hated socialism and capitalism with equal fervour. What he was looking for was a “gentleman’s fascism” - monarchist, religious, both cynical and romantic. He even romanticised his own decadent, modernist, quarreling age:
“Yes, those were the days. Lucky were those who lived in Ukko Pekka’s [president Pehr Evind Svinhufvud] days. Then the destiny of the world walked on razor’s edge. What decisions, what parties, what men! Yes, in those days, living was joyful!” (ÖT, “Världen och vi”, Granskaren Dec. 1934
A typical quote of an elitist intellectual, drunk on a dream of power, dancing on top of the “masses”. Poor ignorant masses, complaining about their low wages and hungry children, they don’t know how lucky they are.
(Quotes from Göran O:son Waltå, Poet under Black Banners – The Case of Örnulf Tigerstedt and Extreme Right-Wing Swedish Literature in Finland 1918 – 1944. Almqvist & Wiksell, Uppsala 1993)