Alexander Jacoby
reviews an anthology of modern Estonian verse, edited by Doris Kareva
“Cannot
the language of this land / Rising to the heavens / in the wind of song / seek
eternity for itself?” asked the pioneering Estonian-language poet Kristjan Jaak
Peterson (1801-1822). At the time, Estonia was part of the Russian Empire,
while its major city, Reval (now Tallinn) was populated by a German-speaking
elite, as was its university at Dorpat (today’s Tartu). For Peterson, a student
at that university, the decision to write in Estonian was a revolutionary one.
But in the two centuries since, despite having barely a million native
speakers, the Estonian language has evolved a remarkably rich literary culture,
which survived even the active promotion of Russian during half a century of
Soviet occupation. As editor Doris Kareva, who is herself one of Estonia’s
leading modern poets, writes: “For Estonians poetry has always been more than
just poetry, not so much a form of entertainment as a way of keeping their
language alive.”
A
reasonably broad selection of Estonian prose literature has appeared in
English, most notably the work of one of the masters of modern historical
fiction, Jaan Kross. Anthologies of Estonian poetry in translation appeared as
early as the 1950s. But this new selection of modern Estonian verse brings us
up to date, gathering poems by one major writer of the late Soviet period,
Juhan Viiding, and five younger poets active mainly in the years since 1991,
when Estonia regained its independence.
The
poets represented are highly diverse. Juhan Viiding writes on existential
themes, with a keen sense of the baffling quality of life: “So much is given to
us, and still we are perplexed.” This poet, who could write, “Truly, above all,
I dread death,” ironically took his own life in 1995. His daughter, Elo
Viiding, addresses political themes, and women's issues in particular, in a
voice of biting irony. Hasso Krull is a fine descriptive poet, but also another
existentialist, for whom our knowledge of mortality is reminiscent of our
anticipation of the end of a period of warm weather, something known
intellectually that cannot be accepted emotionally. Triin Soomets' verse has a
sensuality which is at ease with carnal and romantic subject matter, but which
is also apparent in her tribute to the distinctive textures of the “seething
wheeling / whirlpool weaving / rampant romping / seesaw seeking / breathless
tending” Estonian language itself. The youngest poet represented here, Jürgen
Rooste (b.1979), produces what editor Kareva aptly describes as “dionysian
poetry […] an effervescent mix of raging rock, blues and beat, howl and prayer,
lucidity and delirium”. Alongside these five poets writing in standard
Estonian, the anthology includes the work of a leading regional poet, Kauksi
Ülle, who writes in the Võro language of Southern Estonia, and draws on the
homely imagery of rural life as well as on aspects of local legend.
The
diversity of subject matter is reflected in a formal variety. Most of the poets
represented in this volume write primarily in free verse. But several of Juhan
Viiding's poems are in regular metrical forms with fixed rhyme schemes; while
Kareva claims that he “revolutioned the language of Estonian poetry”, this
technical discipline also links him back to older poetic traditions. Some of
the younger writers too, such as Triin Soomets, make intermittent, irregular
use of rhyme and more frequent use of assonance.
The
poems are presented in parallel text. While non-native readers of Estonian are
few, even the reader who knows no Estonian, or who recognises only a few words,
may find the original text useful, since it clarifies some of the formal
intricacies which are necessarily lost in translation. Thus, reading the
literal rendering of a haunting twelve-line poem by Soomets (first line “Only
darkness in shadows” in English), one is able at the same time to note the
alliteration in the Estonian on the letter “v”, the direct verbal correspondence
between “sõrm” (“finger”) and “sõrmus” (“ring”), and the shared initial
syllable of “horisonti” (“horizon”) and “hommik” (“morning”).
The
parallel-text format would seem to encourage literal translation, but the
poems, which have been put into English by various hands, display a variety of
approaches. Juhan Viiding's rhyming poems sometimes emerge in unrhymed form,
but in other cases, a presumably less literal translation finds equivalents for
the original rhymes; in one example, the Rubaiyat-like rhyme scheme of a poem
entitled “Morning” is preserved exactly in the first stanza of the translation,
as if to exemplify the form, before being abandoned in subsequent stanzas. The
diverse practices on show represent a wide-ranging set of responses to the
perennial problem of how best to recapture what is lost in translation.
Editor
Kareva provides an enlightening and informative introduction to this valuable
anthology, which opens up new perspectives on Estonian literature and the
modern Estonian experience to English-speaking readers. In one poem, Juhan
Viiding speaks of “a tiny regret that not every notion translates to another
tongue.” It is a mark of the excellence of this collection that the reader's
regrets about this are no more than tiny.
