Boris Hurtta: The Revenge of the Bibliomaniac
(Portti Special English Issue #1)

Boris Hurtta (a pseudonym) is a Finnish writer who has written over fifty short stories during the last ten years, as well as several novels. Some of the novels have been sf/f, some mainstream. Hurtta's speciality is his trademark, archaic language, and stories that very often take place in the past. Hurtta was also one of the main figures in the Finnish Lovecraft boom which swept over the country in the late 80's and early 90's.

Like most Hurtta's stories, The Revenge of the Bibliomaniac isn't science fiction or fantasy. The more accurate description, I suppose, would be 'historical horror'. The story takes place in late 19th century Venice. Luigi Villa, an enthusiastic book collector has been humiliated once too often by the rival and much wealthier bibliophile, Vittorio Marabotti, and Villa decides to take revenge on him. Villa has his victory, but with a high price to pay.

The Revenge of the Bibliomaniac is a story that could very well have been written by Edgar Allan Poe. There's close resemblance with many of the Poe stories, the closest one probably being The Cask of Amontillado. An earlier version of the story was published a decade back in the Finnish literary journal Parnasso, in which the theme was bibliomania. Hurtta, a well-known bibliophile himself, knows what he's writing about and draws for us an accurate, if a rather unflattering picture on how a bibliomaniac's mind works.

There's one thing that's disturbing in the text, however. The aim of Villa's revenge, unlike in Amontillado, is to destroy not Marabotti, but the books themselves. If he can't have the books, then no one shall. As some sort of a bibliophile myself, this kind of reasoning seems quite foreign to me. On the other hand, like the title says, what we're dealing with here, isn't bibliophilia, but bibliomania, a madness, not love for books.

The Revenge of the Bibliomaniac isn't the best Hurtta story I've read, but an interesting piece of fiction nonetheless.

Pasi Karppanen