Estonian Literature

[Eric]

Estonian Literature in English Translation

Until the Soviet Union fell apart, of which Estonia had been an involuntary member from 1944 to 1991, translations of Estonian literature into English were confined almost exclusively to Soviet publications, mostly anthologies of stories.

They were mostly published in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (ESSR) by the Perioodika publishing house, and first had to get the nihil obstat and imprimatur from the local KGB Cultural Department, that masqueraded under the innocuous acronym VEKSA. Anyway, there must have been some decent, loyal Estonians working at KGB headquarters, people who managed to persuade the authorities to publish certain authors who, even now, are regarded as good ones, e.g. Jaan Kross.

Kross, of course, knew how to make compromises with the powers that be. So one of his stories Wounds appeared in English in 1984. As it was set during the panic that ensued when Baltic Germans were fleeing Estonia to the Third Reich in the late 1930s, and put Germans in a bad light, the KGB okeyed its publication. A safely historical story of his, entitled Four Monologues on the Subject of Saint George was so safely historical that the KGB okeyed that one too (although it was in some way a veiled criticism of Soviet life; Kross was subtle and careful).

Unfortunately, these stories were almost buried alive in anthologies with silly names. Who would have guessed that The Love that Was was a good anthology of 18 Estonian stories in English? Ditto The Sailors' Guardian with a further dozen? Or that The Glade With Life-Giving Water was a similar anthology with stories from all three Baltic republics? One mercifully straightforward title was the 1981 anthology Estonian Short Stories.

Estonia left the Soviet Union in 1991, and joined the EU in 2004. So now it can promote its own literature.

The first two websites to consult are as follows -

The Estonian Literature Information Centre:

http://www.estlit.ee/

And the Estonian Institute which produces a mag in English about Estonian literature:

http://www.einst.ee/literary/ (click on the issue numbers under the femme fatale in the hat [poet Betti Alver]; contents in the scrollable buff-beige left-hand column)

That should give you a pretty good idea about what authors exist, including ones writing right now, anno 2008.

I'll write more about specific authors another time.

[Eric]

Two more anthologies, while I'm thinking about this topic:

The Play: another of those weirdly named Soviet Perioodika anthologies, but with 21 stories in English by 12 authors.

But more importantly for the general reader and Amazon browser, there is a 1996 anthology of stories published by Northwestern Press in Illinois, USA, entitled Estonian Short Stories (not to be confused with the other, Soviet, one with the same name).

This second book contains stories by such familiar authors as Jaan Kross and Mati Unt, also by good ones such as Arvo Valton, Maimu Berg, Mari Saat, and others you will never have heard of.

Details at:

http://www.amazon.com/Estonian-Stori.../dp/081011240X

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-lis...8289592&sr=1-1

And a review at:

http://www.einst.ee/literary/reviews...stories_01.htm

***

Some of the other anthologies are available at:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?ie=UTF8&in...stonian&page=1

[Eric]

Here's an Estonian author (and painter of pictures) that I'd like to translate, Toomas Vint, and information about one of his books described in detail:

At the Weekend. Playing (N?dalavahetusel. M?ngides)

Published by Varrak [publishers], 1999. pp.166
Toomas Vint has during c:a 25 years found recognition as a writer and an artist. In the second half of the 1990s he has published a book, in most cases a novel, each year. His novels and short stories tell us about a modern man who tries to oppose himself to banality, who fights alone and with himself. Often he loses and adapts himself to the rules of the world he despises.

Ideal landscapes in Vint?s works are unreachably beautiful and empty, people he depicts are outside of these ideal landscapes and dream in vain about harmony. The subject of Vint?s recent novels is the position of art and artists in the contemporary time, his characters often have to live different roles to achieve their goals.

At the Weekend. Playing is wholly devoted to role games. People living in one and the same house in Lasnam?e ? a district of Tallinn, (meaning ? ordinary people from the most Soviet-style district of the city), go to spend a summer weekend on an empty island in the sea near the city. The organiser of the trip quite unexpectedly makes the whole company play role games. The first person narrator, who usually likes to be on the same wavelength with the company and to identify with the collective, this time distances himself from the group and wanders off to the island. He finds two other groups of people, who also play role games, but of slightly different nature. The narrator meets a woman, who reads a novel, the main character of which goes through all the same things that happen to the narrator on the island. Finally he meets a writer, who has already written a book about the things that are still to happen on the island. Vint?s book encloses a number of meditations on subjects that can be grouped as ? life during the Soviet time and now, society and the state, art and literature, and finally, the god.

In the beginning of the book the main character thinks like the others, everything is confused up and expressed in everyday clich?s, all others are talking just the same way. Finding himself a character in a play led by somebody else, he suddenly faces many questions, which he has to disregard, or he has to find the answers. This realisation proves to be unexpectedly terrible. The book is in a modern and easily readable style, it discusses both the problems faced by people of the post-socialist society and existential problems.

Text by Janika Kronberg and Rutt Hinrikus
First published in the Estonian Literary Magazine

*

Toomas Vint. Here are some of his paintings:

http://www.maal.ee/kunstnikud/vinttoomas/vinttoomas.htm

http://www.haus.ee/?s=naitus&z=toimund&nid=80

And about him as a writer, in English:

http://www.estlit.ee/index.php?id=614

The only translations appear to be into French and Finnish; so no help there.

But a few reviews in English are at:

http://www.estlit.ee/index.php?id=688

The novel I'd like to translate is called "A Never-Ending Landscape":

http://www.estlit.ee/index.php?id=889

Whether I do, depends on whether I can interest an Amercian or British publishing house.

[Eric]

And another book by Toomas Vint, as yet untranslated:

Toomas Vint

A Never-Ending Landscape L?ppematu maastik

Published by Varrak [publishers], 1997. pp.255
The novel A Never-Ending Landscape is actually one part of a triptych, which the author, an artist and a writer Toomas Vint, presented in 1997. Just before the novel appeared, he wrote an essay Reasons and Consequences for the magazine "Looming", and participated in a joint exhibition of four artists called Unfinished Landscape. The dust jacket of the book shows the author?s painting bearing the same name. The publication of this novel was a major cultural event and even created a minor scandal, as one well-know art critic recognised himself as the prototype of one harshly caricatured character. The critics, however, recognised the aesthetic values of A Never-Ending Landscape ? witty (self-)parody, inventive composition and postmodernist form.

The theoretical model of A Never-Ending Landscape is supported by the statements that the today?s modern art is mostly generated by the ideas originating from the left-wing radicalism of the 1960s, and that mediocrity, and the skilful use of the mass media, push artists to the top of an elitist culture. According to the author, postmodernist art can easily be profaned and an artist can easily prove to be a charlatan. In his essay Vint proves these claims by referring to the works of an imaginary theorist Richard Bonnaire. These works are cited in the novel as well, where we can find, even in the names of the characters, some hints to Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Joseph Beuys, not to mention the figures who shape the art life in Estonia.

A Never-Ending Landscape is a work with a cyclical composition, where one and the same story is presented from three different points of view. This is the story about a writer, who prepares to write a novel about a man who, in turn, is planning a novel called A Never-Ending Landscape. The three synchronous parts of the novel are each written in a different key: the first part gives the story in a more or less traditional way, the second part presents the same plot almost as a crime novel, and the basis for the third and the most subtle part has been Anton Chekhov?s short story The Lady with the Dog. The story opens when a Minister of the Estonian Republic suggests that the main character, a writer (the author?s alter ego), spend some time on a forest farm of the firm Perfect Holidays with the aim of spying after them. There is reason to believe that the owner of the firm, a one-time student of Joseph Beuys, has connections with the Greenpeace movement and eco-terrorism. During what follows, the main character?s own views and attitudes towards the modern world are made clear.

Toomas Vint?s novel is a grand aesthetic game, in the course of which many set standards of politics, social and moral life are thoroughly examined. Above all, the cultural situation at the end of the century.

Text by Janika Kronberg and Rutt Hinrikus
First published in the Estonian Literary Magazine

[Eric]

Here's some more information about Estonian literature, which I posted somewhere else and am repeating here for those interested. Some things have been presented here already:

I've translated six books from over the Estonian over the past 15 years (one does remain unpublished, alas; one is forthcoming), there are some things available in the English language:

1) "Treading Air", Jaan Kross, Harvill, London, 2003. That book has a ten-page introduction, where I (Eric Dickens is my full name, as in Charles) put the book in context. It's a realist novel about a young man's experience of war, invasion, love life, etc.

2) "Things in the Night", Mati Unt, The Dalkey Archive Press, Illinois, 2006. That book has an 18-page afterword (i.e. an introduction at the end of the book), plus endnotes. This is the weird postmodernist novel I have described in great detail elsewhere.

Even if you only read the introduction and afterword, and not the rest of the book, you will come away with the idea that the Estonians, a nation that has suffered a lot, write a whole volume of literature.

If you want to wallow in doom & gloom, there's another translation of mine:

3) "The Poet and the Idiot and Other Stories", Friedebert Tuglas, The Central European University Press, Budapest, 2007. Some of these stories fit the Gothic bill quite nicely.

But as for the Great Estonian Whatever, there is an article on the fact that no one has written a Great Estonian Novel yet. This is available on Eurozine:

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/200...jataga-en.html

I don't entirely approve of this article, as it implies that Estonia should be waiting around for a book that is perfect, great. There are lots of Estonian authors that simply get on with it, not worrying whether their novels will be great. But M?rt V?ljataga does give examples of a few good authors. Read it.

There is, as far as I'm aware, no women-only publisher in Estonia (such as Persephone in the UK). The are postmodernists, modernists, absurdists, gay writers, lesbian writers, historical novelists, all sorts. And, of course, I haven't read everything myself. Look at the following website:

http://www.estlit.ee/index.php?id=1958

Look at the headings in yellow letters to the left of your screen. Under Estonian Author Profiles, you'll find lots. Interesting writers (in my opinion) are, with asterisks by those already available in English:

Prose:

Mehis Heinsaar
Jaan Kross*
Viivi Luik*
Ene Mihkelson
Mihkel Mutt
Eeva Park
Mats Traat
Mati Unt*
Arvo Valton*
Toomas Vint
T?nu ?nnepalu [real name] / Emil Tode / Anton Nigov [pseudonyms]*

Poetry:

Kristiina Ehin
fs*
Jaan Kaplinski*
Doris Kareva
Viivi Luik
Ene Mihkelson
Hando Runnel
Triin Soomets
Elo Viiding*
Juhan Viiding

***

[nnyhav]

I'll repeat what I said, and asked, a couple years ago:

27.2.06: I'm now into and out of, 28.2, Mati Unt's Things in the Night, which has gotten short shrift in the reviews I've seen; it's not as unstructured as claimed, having some relation (distant, familial) both to OBrien's At Swim-Two-Birds and to Nabokov (Ada's L disaster, second person address ... Thulean aside: does Pale Fire's Conmal nod in the direction of Georg Meri?); so far, and in the end, it works, for me, at least (though the popscience errors [intentional, not translational] distract). (The afterword mentions Marju Lauristin's 2004 tribute, "Mati Unt's Blogosphere", but it's not available online, in English anyway.)

So, this tribute, extending your own, is it to be found anywhere?

[Eric]

Nnyhav (what does stochastic mean?):

Let the reviewers say what they like. It's a free world. But I had spotted "Things in the Night" in the mid-1990s, and was hoping against hope that some publishing house would one day recognise its value. Dalkey did. I chose to translate that particular book, so if it is thought to be rubbish, derivative or unreadable by others, I am responsible for forcing it onto them.

Reviewers are not always reliable. They are working for commercial newspapers or magazines, and there are many hidden pressures, either to praise or slate a book. Read the books pages of the serious British and American dailies and weeklies, and you will soon identify group trends, fads and so on.

There is also a dangerous mentality at large that everything must be available in English, or it simply doesn't count as source material. There are people who don't trust translators. If a few more Brits & Yanks read, say, German and / or French, they would get out of the large, but limited, bell jar that the English language has become. But Lauristin's article has, as far as I know, never been translated into any language.

Marju Lauristin (born 1940) is an interesting person. Her parents were avid revolutionaries in the literal sense of the word. Her father, Johannes Lauristin, was a member of the Estonian Communist Party in the 1930s when this was frowned upon under the authoritarian rule of the then President, Konstantin P?ts. Johannes Lauristin died during the evacuation in 1941 as the German Nazis occupied Estonia as the Soviet Communists retreated. Marju's mother (1903-2005) was also a revolutionary. However, the daughter is a respected Professor of Journalism at the University of Tartu in Estonia (where they are not too excited about Communism), and her half-brother, Jaak Allik, was Minister of Culture last decade.

I can assure Nnyhav that it took me myself quite a bit of Googling to re-find references to "Mati Undi blogosf??r", the article by Lauristin to which I was referring. But it was not a convenient invention on my part. The article was published in the Estonian monthly literary magazine Looming, first issue 2004, when Unt celebrated his 60th birthday. This magazine was started back in 1923 by Friedebert Tuglas, the very author I recently translated. And by some miracle, it has survived to the present day. "Looming" does not mean cliffs about to crash on your head, but "creative endeavour". "Loom" is an animal, "looma" to create. I'll look on my shelves tomorrow to see whether I can find the issue in question.

[Eric]

P.S. I'd be very interested to read what the rest of you think about the two Toomas Vint novels, descriptions of which are posted here. As with Unt, I have a hunch that these books could be interesting for British or American readers. But enthusiasm can blind you to the tastes of others.

[Patrick Murtha]

Eric, have you read much of A.H. Tammsaare? I'm very interested in European novelists of the 1875-1950 era, and he is always mentioned as the Estonian classic of that period. It is perhaps unlucky that he missed being translated into English at that time, but so many contemporary translations were edited, sanitized, and linguistically botched that most of the could stand re-doing anyway. I'd be interested to see someone tackle Tammsaare -- does the ELIC or Estonian government ever subsizize translations?

[Eric]

Patrick Murtha:

They say, that if you're a fan of Estonian literature, you're either a Tammsaare man or a Tuglas man. I can't judge; I've never read enough Tammsaare to be able to compare. But now that I've translated a 300-page book of Tuglas' stories into English, I shall have to turn my attention to Tammsaare.

Anton Hansen Tammsaare (1878-1940) is regarded as the greatest Estonian novelist of the 20th century, a precursor to Karl Ristikivi and Jaan Kross.

But he has had bad luck with English. One day, his 5-volume panoranic suite of novels T?de ja ?igus (Truth and Justice) will appear in English. One day...

There is the Wikipedia article on the net:

Anton Hansen Tammsaare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The article gives some idea of the pentalogy, but is rather scatty in that the article-writer is keener to name-drop with names such as Camus, Hamsun, Gide and Zhivago, in a desperate attempt to show that this is a real writer, not some boring provincial.

When I've actually read the five books myself, I'll, write more here. Expect a longish wait.

But to cut through the crap, I can translate bits of the Estonian summary:

I
Based on the farm where Tammsaare grew up. Describes the struggle for land among the ethnically Estonian peasants. At the time the country, then a province of Russia, was run for the Russians by German-speaking barons. So if we are talking about postcolonialism, there is an awful lot to be said about the two groups, Germans and Russians, oppressing the indigenous peasants. Andres is the idealist, his neighbour, Pearu, his opposite. They do not get on. Andres' son dies in the 1905 revolution, Andres receives the knout. This is all real stuff, not fantasy. The women characters are also evidently well defined.

II
A change of scenery. The Treffner Grammar School. The protagonist is of peasant background, and an atheist. The schools are the extended arm of the Russian Empire, with all that that entails (e.g. Russification in true colonial wise). The young man is at odds with the headmaster.

III
Now 1905-07 is in the spotlight. These are the revolutionary years, harshly suppressed by the Russian overlords (executions, lashings). Although they didn't know it then, this is the dress rehearsal for 1917.

IV
The protagonist marries. This is the volume with a critique of Estonian (and Russian) society at the time. Criticism of the middle-class way of life.

V
Full circle. Back in the countryside. Life has moved on. Half a century has passed.

As I say, I'll write more here when the description comes from knowledge, as opposed to hearsay, as now.

[Patrick Murtha]

There are in fact two books by Tammsaare in English: the novel Misadventures of the New Satan (Progress Pubishers, 1978) and the children's book Miniatures (Eesti Raamat, 1977).

As for Friedebert Tuglas, two collections of short stories: The Poet and the Idiot (that's your translation, right?) (Central European University Press, 2007) and Riders in the Sky (Perioodika, 1982).

[Mirabell]

excellent essay on estonian literature. it does, however, focus on German reception in the latter part and is written in German, on top of all that

http://www.epa.oszk.hu/00000/00027/00003/pdf/00012.pdf

[Eric]

Thanks, Mirabell, for the Kerttu Wagner essay tip. I'd vaguely heard the name, but know nothing about her. I'll print it out and read it.

Patrick Murtha, I think it is Tammsaare's The Misadventures of a New Satan that a friend of mine is revising, so that it should appear in due course with the Norvik Press, which has just moved to London from Norwich. Because the original translation will have been done via the Russian, and this friend, Chris Moseley, actually knows Estonian. Then, if dreams come true, Tammsaare's big one may also be translated!

As for Tuglas, yes, the poet-idiot book is my translation. I've had the Riders in the Sky selection on my shelves for years. So when I chose which Tuglas stories to translate, I deliberately avoided doing ones that appeared there. That book was translated from the Estonian by Oleg Mutt, the father of the present editor of a leading Estonian literary magazine Mihkel Mutt. (Silly surname, but an interesting chap.) So that book and my translations don't overlap, but complement one another, meaning that about 15-16 stories by Tuglas are available in English.

[Mirabell]

Whats troubling is that she says German translations have mostly been second-hand translations, which means that even though he HAS been translated
I may not want to read it.

[Eric]

I read it rather hastily, but in my opinion the Kerttu Wagner article / essay is excellent on a number of counts:

1) It gives an overview of what incredibly complicated colonialism Estonia has suffered over the past 600-700 years, by the hands of Russians, Germans, Swedes, Poles, Danes, etc.

2) It shows the damage done to a culture when a large percentage of the intelligentsia have to flee abroad.

3) It shows that written culture in the Estonian language had its beginnings, however modest, several centuries ago.

4) It gives some idea of what has appeared in German. The fact that things were once translated via the Russian no longer holds true. I get the feeling that Kerttu Wagner doesn't know Estonian, and she is also limiting herself to Tammsaare and Kross. But there are direct translations into German of works by both these authors.

In principle, I am against indirect translations, but if that was the only way to get a work out of the cultural prison of the Soviet Union, then you had to be grateful.

*

Recent translations into German include more authors than only Tammsaare and Kross. But even with Kross there are direct translations, which K. Wagner didn't know about. In the Wiki article, you find:

Vier Monologe Anno Domini 1506 (Michel Sittow). Berlin/Weimar 1974 (Aufbau)
Der Verr?ckte des Zaren (Timotheus Eberhard von Bock). Dt. v. Helga Viira. R?tten & Loening, Berlin 1988 und Hanser, M?nchen 1990, ISBN 3446160396, als TB ISBN 3423206551
Professor Martens' Abreise (Friedrich Fromhold Martens) Hanser, M?nchen 1992, ISBN 3446163638, als TB ISBN 3423119748
Das Leben des Balthasar R?ssow (Balthasar R?ssow). Dt. v. Helga Viira und Barbara Heitkam. R?tten & Loening, Berlin 1986 und Hanser, M?nchen 1995, ISBN 3446163875
Ausgrabungen. Dipa, Frankfurt/M. 1995, ISBN 3763803432 (Reprint angek?ndigt)
Die Frauen von Wesenberg oder Der Aufstand der B?rger. Hanser, M?nchen 1997, ISBN 3446191208

Helga Viira (1920-200?) was one of Kross' ex-wives, a native-speaker of German. And the last two books were definitely translated from the Estonian. The Estonian Literature Information Centre adds another title, stories this time, much the same ones as I translated:

Die Verschw?rung
Vanden?u ja teised novellid
Short Stories
Irja Gr?nholm; Cornelius Hasselblatt
DIPA, 1994
pp.165

*

Then there are other authors available in German:

Mati Unt (1944-2006):

Reden und Schweigen : 2 Erz?hlungen
R??givad ja vaikivad
Short Stories
Cornelius Hasselblatt
dipa, 1992
pp.123

Herbstball. Szenen aus dem Stadtleben
S?gisball: stseenid linnaelust
Novels
Wolfgang K?ppe
Aufbau-Verlag, 1987
pp.236

Maimu Berg (born 1945):

Barbara von Tisenhusen
Kirjutajad
Novels
Irja Gr?nholm
DIPA, 1993
pp.186

Ich liebte einen Russen
Ma armastasin venelast
Novels
Irja Gr?nholm
Gollenstein, 1998
pp.287

Viivi Luik (born 1946):

Der siebte Friedensfr?hling
Seitsmes rahukevad
Novels
Horst Bernhardt
Rowohlt Verlag, 1991
pp.304

Die Sch?nheit der Geschichte
Ajaloo ilu
Novels
Horst Bernhardt
Rowohlt Verlag, 1995
pp.160

And that's just prose

[Mirabell]

I would be very happy if you stopped doing uncommented lists. can't imagine how frustrating and time consuming these are.

[Eric]

I would be very happy if you stopped doing uncommented lists. can't imagine how frustrating and time consuming these are.

Moodiness. Go to the library and discover for yourself.

As I have translated (as opposed to only having read) some Kross and Unt, I know their style and content quite well.

But Luik's Ajaloo ilu / Die Sch?nheit der Geschichte / The Beauty of History available in German and English, is an fine poetic short novel.

I'm not so well up on Maimu Berg.

But Cornelius Hasselblatt, as mentioned twice in the Wagner article, has written an 800-page book on the history of Estonian literature. If you read that you'll know more than me. He and Irja Gr?nholm have translated several modern works. Unt is, if you remember, postmodernist, Kross, realist, Luik, poetic. All good reads.

[Mirabell]

see that was better.
the jan kross balthasar book is oever 1000 pages long, but out of print in my price range. have ordered it from somewhere else.

[Patrick Murtha]

I hope this list remains civil so that I can continue to post on it. I've had to leave almost all my other Internet message boards because the tension level is too high. I'm under doctor's orders because of suffering from depression and anxiety.

Eric, thanks for the clarifications. I really ought to have re-read the thread from the top post, since you had answered some of my questions earlier. But here are a couple more: what are the unpublished and the forthcoming works of Estonian literature that you've translated? Amazon US lists a phantom Kross translation by you, The Day Eyes Were Opened; is that the translation that didn't appear?

Also, what is the Kross translation titled Rock from the Sky? The book apparently exists (published by Victor Kamkin? 1983 or 1984?), but I didn't see it in your Kross list in the Kross thread.

[Mirabell]

I hope this list remains civil so that I can continue to post on it.

Dito. I'm trying to back down a bit. Sorry for the inconvenience I may have caused.