Jyrki Nummi, Professor of Finnish literature, has researched the prose, lyrical poetry and drama of Aleksi Kivi as part of the birth of Finnish literature in the 19th century. In this process, where Finnish literature was consciously created according to the model of great literary traditions and classics, Kivi’s works offer a multifaceted research area. Kivi familiarised himself with world literature, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes in their Swedish translations. He had a good knowledge of the classics of antiquity and the renaissance and an intimate knowledge of the Bible and the psalms, and he incorporated traditions both small and large into his work. At the beginning of the 20th century, Viljo Tarkiainen already investigated the writer’s inspirations and models. Tarkianen’s background was nevertheless in positivist source-based research, and he failed to progress from authenticating the works to an analysis of the results of the creative process of integration. In contrast, modern research is interested, for instance, in how biblical quotes offer a limitless source of comedy throughout Kivi’s entire literary production, how the multiple plots of renaissance comedy are built into Nummisuutarit (Heath Cobblers), how classical symposium literature shapes the dialogical structures in Seven Brothers or how the symmetry and predimental nature of Homeric epic poetry is manifested in Seven Brothers.

There have also been changes in how Kivi himself is viewed. The picture of a bruised, downtrodden and misunderstood poet was an important symbol of identity for turn-of-the-century artists and later for the Finnish speaking academic elite of the newly independent country. There is no longer a demand for this picture, and the image of an unlearned, natural genius has given way to that of a determined, professional writer well aware of his ability.