Kilpi, Volter
Entry updated 20 April 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1874-1939) Finnish mainstream author born Volter Ericsson and educated at the University of Helsinki; regarded as important in the development of the modern experimental novel (see Modernism in SF) in his country. Late in life he began a Sequel by Another Hand to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726; rev 1735). The unfinished draft Gulliverin matka Fantomimian mantereelle ["Gulliver's Voyage to the Continent of Phantomimia"] (written 1938-1939; 1944) – first published after Kilpi's death by his literary executor – was much later translated and completed by the US scholar, translator and author Douglas Robinson (1954- ) as Gulliver's Voyage to Phantomimia: a transcreation (2020). Here Lemuel Gulliver heads for the North Pole, only for his ship to be sucked into a whirlpool en route; together with three shipmates he undergoes Timeslip 200 years into the future to 1938, where rescuers from England transport them in flying machines to a City probably meant as London. Here the original tale breaks off. Robinson continues Kilpi's projected Satire, returns the adventurers to 1738 via a Time-Travelling plane as confided by Kilpi to his son (albeit with an inadvertent side-trip into biblical times and the Battle of Jericho), and adds mock-academic apparatus in Postmodernist vein, including a critical report on the text by an imagined Finnish scholar. [DRL]
Volter Kilpi [born Volter Ericsson]
born Kustavi, Finland; 12 December 1874
died Turku, Finland: 13 June 1939
works (highly selected)
- Gulliverin matka Fantomimian mantereelle["Gulliver's Voyage to the Continent of Phantomimia"] (Helsinki, Finland: Otava, 1944) [binding unknown/]
- Gulliver's Voyage to Phantomimia: a transcreation (Bucharest, Romania: Zeta Books, 2020) [trans and expansion of the above by Douglas Robinson: pb/]
links
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