Continuing my crash course in all things Finnish, I've just completed the poet Bo Carpelan's elegiac novel, Axel. Based on the life of Carpelan's great uncle Axel, the novel consists of short narratives about that uncle's life interspersed with entries from his diaries. Axel, deeply moved by music, is unable to either record the music that comes to him during his sleepless nights or to continue playing the violin. What appears to be hypochondria and other nervous disabilities cripple him. In his sorrow and frustration, but also in his sensitivity, perceptiveness and humor, the narrator calls to mind the Kafka of the diaries. The bright spot in his life, which we follow from 1868 until his death in 1919, is his friendship with Sibelius. Love of art, sadness, yearning and, ultimately, peace: all are exquisitely rendered in what must be a master-piece of Finnish literature.