Marie Under: Poems

SPRING

4.

Now once again on us these white nights fall,
no sleep is had by heavens, land or sea,
or the expectant blood of this humanity:
desire like embers burning in the soul.

These white nights are like silver fetters, chains:
and all the scents in flowers’ silk embrace
have woken trembling in their secret place
as from afar the waters bring refrains.

Then golden hair flies streaming in the breeze
and large eyes sparkle with a secret glow –
Who wove these dreams around me in the air?

And red and redder swell my lips with ease –
No one can kiss away and make them go,
the countless kisses that have ripened there.


KEVAD

4.

Nüüd jälle tulevad need valged ööd,
kus und ei saa ei taevas, maa, ei meri,
ei inimlaste ootus-ärev veri,
kus ihad hinges hõõguvad kui söed.

Need valged ööd kui hõbevalged keed:
kõik lõhnad õite siidilises süles
on sala värisedes ärgand üles,
ja mingit kauget laulu toovad veed. 

Siis kuldseis juustes lehitsemas tuuled
ja suuris silmis salaline sära –
Kes kõik need unelmad mu ümber palmind!

Ja puna-punasemaks paisumas mu huuled –
ei suuda keegi suudelda neilt ärä,
mis lugemata suudlusi sääl sääl valmind.


 
SOMEWHERE

Over a lonely path
half bent in two I walk,
always keeping my eyes
on time’s hurrying clock.

Beside the lonely path
the last flower freezes in air.
Death reaps time and fortune,
somewhere, somewhere...

Somewhere a house is waiting
Remember it where you stand!
Endure now, endurer,
waiting somewhere is a land.

Somewhere a house is waiting,
waiting somewhere is a land –
Endure now, endurer:
the heart will not ease its demand.


KUSAGIL

Üle üksiku raja
kõnnin poolkummargil,
silmad alati aja
ruttaval osutil.

Ääres üksiku raja
külmetab viimne lill.
Surm niidab õnne ja aja
kusagil, kusagil...

Kusagil ootab üks maja –
Mäleta mäleta!
Kannata, kannataja,
kusagil ootab üks maa...

Kusagil ootab üks maja,
kusagil ootab üks maa –
Kannata, kannataja:
südänt neist lahti ei saa.


poems translated from Estonian by David McDuff

Walker on Water

Unnamed Press, U.S.A., have published a new collection of prose pieces by the Estonian poet Kristiina Ehin, Walker on Water. An excerpt from Ilmar Lehtpere's translation:

Lately I’ve discovered that my husband’s head opens at the back. I hadn’t noticed that before. There’s a hatch there. When Jaan comes home after a tiring day at work, he opens the hatch and takes his brains out. They steam on the table, but Jaan stretches his legs out on the sofa and looks at me with his happy, drowsy eyes.

ELM - autumn issue

The autumn 2009 issue of ELM (Estonian Literary Magazine) is now available online. Its contents include a good many poetry-related items, to celebrate the birth in 1609 of Reiner Brockmann, who among other things wrote the first poem in the Estonian language. In an introductory essay, Marju Lepajõe presents the life and work of Brockmann, and also lists some of the anniversary events, which include an international conference. There are English versions of poems by Timo Maran, and an account of Moonstruck - the first international Full Moon Poetry Festival, which was held at Luhtre Farm and Haimre Village Hall in Raplamaa county under a full moon from the 12th till the 16th of September, with guests including Sujata Bhatt, Viggo Madsen, Mathura, Lauri Sommer, Kauksi Ülle, Andres Ehin, Ly Seppel and Ban'ya Natsuishi. Shetland poet Lise Sinclair writes of

the memory of walking in the Estonian forest; the particular trees and people met; hearing the songs and the stories; the cranes from beneath the surface of the lake; music and dancing; the night dogs; haiku voices of Estonian and Japanese; and the absolute warmth of friendship, sauna, dark bread... all are now as immediate as the moon appears on Shetland and Estonia at the same time and we are joined by those silver threads, woven through the sky of a whole winter.

Moira

By Doris Kareva

1

Life is not a story,
life is creation.

Is it true that we are given
all that we wish for?

Is it true that we are given
all that we deserve?

Is it true that we are overtaken
by all that we avoid?

Time, you fleeting one,
raker of surprises --

life is not a story,
just hope and creation.


2

Every thought that is thought to the end
becomes a butterfly, freeing itself.

Like a breaker falling on the springtime.

This storm
that you breathe, heart from top to toe.


3

Of love and death,
of debts, karma and dharma
I thought that morning too,
in my breath
as I held your back, your shoulder,
your sleep and the pulsing hours
until the operation.


4

Remind me what life is like
without memory, without fire —
a cave in a grey dawn coma,
a wound that doesn't hurt
although it suppurates.
(An absurd moloch, yes,
but methodical.)

Remind me that life is an arc,
not logical.


5

I age into beauty,
free of the buckle of hope
that thrashed my youth
with disillusionment’s belt.

Pain is the fear of pain.
Fear is the fear of fear.
The base of all pyramids is
the moment.


6

As you lean into that awesome abyss
your word falls like a stone
from the hurting, juicy
throbbing heart of life's fruit.

The circles fade and grow weaker.
And from the truth-soil a tree will arise,
as a picture darkening amidst flames
may give birth to sparks.


7

“Beauty is bounty,
balance is wisdom,
thought is deed,
truth is power.”

Simpler polishing
on a hunchback stone
is made only by water's
wordless tomb.

The Greek word moira (μοῖρα) literally means a part or portion, and by extension one's portion in life or destiny.

translated from Estonian by David McDuff

Marie Under: Au Jardin du Luxembourg

Les murs s'écartent! Il y avait encore de la verdure sur terre!
Comme Moïse l'eau, quelqu'un a fait surgir un jardin du rocher.
Il y a de la terre! Le jardinier a ouvert la bouche de la terre de la vallée de vie
par un long tuyau il conduit l'eau sur le gazon.

Par tout le parc les platanes portent le ciel,
et quelques-uns dans leur cime l'oiseau espiègle du soleil.
Pigeons gris et bruns, gorge jaune renflée:
l'un tend le bec vers le bassin, l'autre frappe une pomme de pin.

Et les taches claires fuient, suivies de leurs ombres,
par l'ouverture de l'allée, sur le gravier humide.
Devant, par-delà une étincelante robe d'eau,
on voit des naïades la hanche qui s'étire.

Autour de la vasque de la fontaine, un million de fleurs
plus de couleurs et de nuances que l'arc-en-ciel
Là les enfants attendent des bateaux, qui dans l'île
sont allés, au milieu du lac plein de rires:

au-dessus vibrent les arcs des rayons d'eau,
Déjà là-haut des feuilles sèches se déchirent
plus bas s'ouvre une fleur tandis que les autres tombent:
c'est le duel vie-mort... automne-printemps.

Et les massifs de fuchsias: les flacons des fleurs
versent encore un brevage bleu et rose.
Là les artistes et leurs modèles
rompent le pain d'un nouvel amour.

Déjà par endroits a pali le drap vert du gazon,
mais le jet d'eau, clair, écume:
blanc de haut en bas comme un cerisier...
Les statues sont seules: la bouche qui chantait est fermée.

Mais les moustaches tombantes de Flaubert parlent d'ascétisme,
Verlaine est amer comme s'il buvait de l'absinthe;
George Sand, si féminine: les plis de pierre de la manche
ne laissent pas deviner l'encre sur ses doigts.

*

Les murs s'écartent et il y a encore de la verdure sur terre!
Comme Moïse l'eau, quelqu'un a fait surgir un jardin du rocher.
Il y a de la terre! Le jardinier a ouvert la bouche de la terre de la vallée de vie
par un long tuyau il conduit l'eau sur le gazon.

translation by courtesy of Leopoldo Niilus


LUXEMBOURGI AIAS

Et hargneb müüristik! Et veel on maa pääl haljust!
Kui Mooses vee, löönd keegi aia kaljust.
On mulda! Aednik avand maa suu: eluorust
vett juhib üle rohtmaa pikast torust.

Plataanid kandmas taevast pargist läbi,
ja mõne ladvas päikse edev lind.
Pruun-hallid tuvid, kummis koldne rind:
kel püüab vesiriba nokk, kel toksib käbi.

Ja helkjaid laike pageb, varjud järgi,
allee avausest üle rõske kruusa.
Ees läbi sätendava vesisärgi
on näha näkineitsi ringutavat puusa.

Fontääni vaagna ümber miljon lilli: värve
ja toone enam neil kui vikerkaarel.
Sääl lapsed laevu ootavad, mis saarel
käind, keset naerust kumisevat järve,

mis üle vesikiirte vibud värisemas, -
Ju ülal juivi lehti kärisemas,
all kargab lahti õis, kui teised pudenevad:
on elu-surma kahevõitlus - sügis-kevad.

Ja fuksiate tarad: õilmepudelid
veel kallutavad sini-roosat jooki. -
Sääl kunstnikud ja nende mudelid
on murdmas uue armu katsekooki.

Ju siin-sääl luitund muru roheline kalev,
on purskkaev aga vahutav ja valev:
see valge üleni kui kirsipuu...
Raidkujud endamisi: kinni laulusuu.

Askeetlusest kuid lausuvad Flaubert'i laskund vurrud,
Verlaine on mõru nagu rüübates absinti;
George Sand nii naiselik: need kivikäikse kurrud
ei lase aimata ta sõrmil tinti.

*

Et hargnes müüristik ja veel on maa pääl haljust!
Kui Mooses vee, löönd keegi aia kaljust.
On muida! Aednik avand maa suu: eluorust
vett juhib üle rohtmaa pikast torust.

Marie Under: Two Poems

Marie Under: Two Poems

Marie Under was born on March 27, 1883, in Tallinn, Estonia, where she spent her childhood. She attended a German-language school. The poetry of Goethe and Schiller was among the earliest things she read. As a member of the "Young Estonia" aesthetic movement in the years before the First World War, she developed a modernistic style, influenced by French literary models, and translated the poetry of Rimbaud, among others. Her first collection was published in 1917, and was followed over the years by many more. She and her husband, the poet Artur Adson, left Estonia before the Soviet occupation of 1944, and settled in Sweden. Marie Under died in 1980.

QUESTION

We saw those berries, overripe and glowing,
in weak and tepid light of the October sun
persisting red as blood, in right full-growing,
without much inkling of the winter clouds to come.

And then a wind-gust brushed those heavy bunches:
and some of them burst, falling to the ground
on wilted grass, soon after, under branches
gold leaves with purple berries lay around.

And hand in hand we walked uphill together
and pushed by the capricious wind's bad weather,
eye to eye, as in anxiety, we asked:

our love's moist, joyful red in present flowering,
will life's breeze carry it away, devouring,
or will it fall to the grave's soil, and last?



CHRISTMAS GREETINGS 1941

I walk the silent, Christmas-snowy path
that goes across the homeland in its suffering.
At each doorstep I would like to bend my knee:
there is no house that doesn't know mourning's sting.

The spark of anger flickers in sorrow's ashes,
the mind is hard with anger, soft with pain:
there is no way of being pure as Christmas
on this white, pure-as-Christmas lane.

Alas, to have to live such stony instants,
to carry on one's heart a coffin lid!
Not even tears will come now any more -
that gift of mercy also died and hid.

I'm like someone rowing backwards:
eyes permanently set on past -
backwards, yes - yet reaching home at last ...
my kinsmen, though, are left without a home...

I always think of those who were torn from here...
The heavens echo with the cries of their distress.
I think that we are all to blame
for what they lack - for we have food and bed!

Shyly, almost as in figurative language,
I ask without believing it can come to pass:
Can we, I wonder, ever use our minds again
for sake of joy and happiness?

Now light and darkness join each other,
towards the stars the parting day ascends.
The sunset holds the first sign of the daybreak -
It is as if, abruptly, night expands.

All things are ardent, serious and sacred,
snow's silver leaf melts on my lashes' flame,
I feel as though I'm rising ever further:
that star there, is it calling me by name?

And then I sense that on this day they also
are raising eyes to stars, from where I hear
a greeting from my kinsfolk, sisters, brothers,
in pain and yearning from their prison's fear.

This is our talk and dialogue, this only,
a shining signal - oh, read, and read! -
with thousand mouths - as if within their glitter
the stars still held some warmth of breath inside.

The field of snow dividing us grows smaller:
of stars our common language is composed....
It is as if we d started out for one another,
were walking, and would soon meet on the road.

For an instant it will die away, that 'When? When?'
forever pulsing in you in your penal plight,
and we shall meet there on that bridge in heaven,
face to face we'll meet, this Christmas night.

translated from Estonian by Leopoldo Niilus and David McDuff

Uku Masing - 100th anniversary

Uku Masing (1909-1985) spent his childhood in the Russian Empire, and after the age of thirty was again confined to the prison-house of the Soviet Union. His 100th anniversary is in August of this year, so he deserves a mention.

I was reminded of his existence when reading today's Eesti Päevaleht (one of the two leading Estonian dailies), when the paper's cultural correspondent Andres Laasik wrote an article about him and a new DVD documentary called Uku Masingu maastikud (Uku Masing's Landscapes; 2009; director Enn Säde). Three films have been made about him previously.

The article accentuates the fact that Masing lived in internal exile for years. He was a theologist, polyglot and poet, and his poetry was metaphysical, so the Soviet authorities frowned on it. During Estonian independence in the late 1930s he had become part of the poetry movement Arbujad (Soothsayers), who were brought together by Anglophile poet and translator Ants Oras, who was greatly influenced by T.S. Eliot. Other poets of this group included some that would become major Estonian poets such as Betti Alver, Bernard Kangro and Kerti Merilaas. During the 1930s, Masing studied Arabic and Ethiopian, as well as theology, at Tartu University and wrote an Estonian grammar of Hebrew during that decade.

During WWII, Masing and his wife helped a Jew avoid capture and supplied him with necessities, thus earning them the Vad Yashem title of Righteous Among Nations. Later on, he helped investigate war crimes committed at the Klooga Nazi concentration camp.

After WWII, and after contracting tuberculosis, Masing worked quietly to avoid drawing the attention of the Soviet authorities to himself. He nevertheless managed to translate the New Testament and other parts of the Bible into Estonian between 1974 and 1983 and wrote several theological books, one of which on Buddhism.

Swedish exile Estonian author and translator Peeter Puide, mentioned earlier on this blog, wrote a novel about Masing called Till Bajkal, inte längre (To Baikal, No Further - a quote from one of his poems; 1983).

I shall be translating some of Uku Masing's poems in due course. Many were first published in Estonian in exile publications in Canada and elsewhere, although Masing never went into exile himself.

There are English articles about Uku Masing in the context of Bible translation, plus Lauri Sommer's translations of two of his poems in the Spring 2009 issue of the Estonian Literary Magazine, but this is not yet available online. However, there are translations of two of Masing's other poems by Ivar Ivask and Küllike Saks here. And there is an article entitled Religious vision in modern poetry: Uku Masing by Vincent B. Leich here.

Igor Kotjuh: "An Esseme on Nostalgia"

Igor Kotjuh has written what he terms "essemes". The word "esseme" has been created analogously to words such as "morpheme", "grapheme" and "sememe", to denote the smallest unit of an essay. Kotjuh’s three "essemes" are on the subjects of nostalgia, on chance, and on literature and the meaning of life. Here is the first of these, a poem in blank verse about the said subject:

AN ESSEME ON NOSTALGIA

I long for the pen and the piano keyboard, I long
for the moment, a dream, someone dear and never met.
I long for the rain in the sultriness of summer and for the sun
on a misty day, I long for peace within and grow angry
when time stagnates. I was born in the Soviet Union,
and I have seen how Estonia has become a daughter of Europe.
I do not know which childhood I should recall,
for that reason I dare not dream or make plans.

I dash out poems in Cyrillic, they are read in Karelia
in Finnish. My parents, as well as their
parents spoke Russian or Belarusian,
Estonian, Setu, or Ukrainian. Is that not a Babel?
If languages are a part of culture and a great asset
then our family is worth as least as much
as the nobility and should rub shoulders with bankers.
But in fact my father is a tractor-driver, my mother a seamstress.

Monotonous work gives a certain hue
to holidays: you look forward to them to for ages, but
they give rise to a hollow feeling, one of disappointment.
That is probably why I like broad terraces
by the hotels of nobles, where candles flicker
on the tables, from the speakers comes super disco, it is evening,
the rain has subsided, the floor and the chairs glitter from the water
the ceiling of the hall, and hopelessness remains in shadow.

Sadness and enthusiasm! And between them – nothing at all.
Like a sandwich without butter. The best choice for the poor.
And so we arrive at the start, at childhood, social
sorrows, politics, rights. At subsistence and health,
plans and dreams. At contradictions of the heart
and beyond. And it is hard, almost impossible to leave
this jumble unscathed, one’s own and that of others
in order to enter into another life.

Translated from Estonian by Eric Dickens

fs: Riga poems

The Estonian poet fs read several poems in my translation at a poetry event in Riga in 2004. Here are three of them:

*

we are all born in hospitals
long faded corridors
footsteps echo in the silence
the air is filled with the smell
of chlorine and medicines
the walls are steeped in sickness
our names are in the register
everything is under control
papers in the files
the files under lock and key
a guard at the entrance
today no one can get in
to see you
it's getting dark outside
behind the building the mortuary
get your feet off there
says the cleaner

*

these are not your hands, my dear
these are not your hands
turning the knobs of the radio
these are not your hands
that draw the curtains
that open the curtains
and aim a light in my face
these are not your hands
which press a gun into my hand
show me someone's picture
and push money into my pocket
these are not your warm hands
which touch my face
wake in the middle of the night
and lead in an unknown direction
these are cold hands that I feel
these are cruel hands
these are lifeless hands
that give life an aim

*

Tallinn

between the prison and the port
a nice view of the sea

Translated from Estonian by Eric Dickens

fs: two poems

The Estonian poet fs always writes his abbreviated name in small case letters. The name is derived from his original pseudonym François Serpent, his real name being Indrek Mesikepp. Born in 1971, he is now an established member of the Estonian world of poetry. Although the pseudonyms and indeed posed photos, often with dyed hair, make one think of the cliché of the Poet, fs's actual poetry is sober, sometimes melancholy and embedded in everyday life. He is something of a follower of the accomplished Estonian poet Juhan Viiding (1948-1995).

The two poems translated below were published in parallel text, Estonian-Russian, in Igor Kotjuh's translation in the 3/2007 issue of the Russian-language literary magazine or almanac Vozdushnyi zmei. Other Estonian poets translated for this issue included Jürgen Rooste, Aare Pilv, Doris Kareva and Elo Viiding.

PATRIOT

dear Estonian people
good Russian people
don’t hand me over
let me wander a while longer
through the Kristiine shopping mall
in the homely light of the
Prisma food shop
over the slightly dirty
flagged floor
among
the red crisp packets
spotted socks
exotic fruit
several types of salad
pots and pans
Eric Clapton albums
onions and bread
beer and fags
don’t throw me out onto the street
let me do a few more rounds
it’s dark on the street
as soon as I end up there
my mobile will ring
a girl from Scotland
will be crying into the receiver
promising to kill herself
or ruin my life
she’s asking for a chance
to show me something beautiful
give me a chance
it would be beautiful
she wants to go out with me
she’s clearly a nut
dear Estonian people
good Russian people
don’t hand me over to her
let me mooch around the shop
this shop is my homeland
when attacked
everyone becomes a patriot

*

***

I got back from another town
it was late
my head and body ached
I had gone away ill
I had been ill there
and on returning was no better
I ended up watching telly
a film began and ran
and ended
a new film began
I tried to get up and switch off
but I fell asleep
woke up before the end
a large stadium
full of folks
a sniper was killing people
I lay there in bed
no it wasn’t the other way round
he was shooting
I lying there
yep
always the same
yes always the same

*

Translated from Estonian by Eric Dickens

Igor Kotjuh: four poems

One of the more interesting poets of the younger generation in Estonia is Igor Kotjuh. Although he writes most of his poetry in Russian, and is also a translator of Estonian poetry, he has published one collection written in Estonian, entitled Teises keeles (In a Second Language).

It is obvious that given the interaction, or lack thereof, of the two language communities there is a certain amount of tension between them. Kotjuh is one of the people in the field of culture who tries to bridge this gap. His surname could be spelt "Kotyukh", to follow the usual English transliteration of Russian and Ukrainian names. But as he is citizen of Estonia, his name has a fixed Roman alphabet spelling. Spelling can therefore be a cultural, even political, gesture.

Here are four poems from this collection, which was first published by the Tuum publishing house in 2007:

TO POSTMODERMISM

Everything has been written down, said, described.
With a polished iamb, trochee, dactyl,
amphibrach and anapest.
Cast in sestinas, sonnets,
blank verse and triolets.
Spiced with
masculine, feminine, full,
detached, attached,
paired (though not
in the bar) and cross-rhymes.
Furthermore a cæsura and enjamb-
ement.. Everything said already.

Postmodernism. A great resonance
in literature. A parade of names, a carpet
of quotations. The re-animation of classics,
the cobbling together of plain texts.
A paradise for lazy semioticists
and critics, making the supreme effort
to look down on other themes.

All those “compared with” and “linked to” --
as there wasn’t enough life to go round.
No intrigue. Where is the mousetrap?

Mixing, foregrounding,
appealing to history
and nostalgia –
with such you can start work as a DJ.

Maybe we too are dead,
and the XXI century is advancing in a dream.

Sunses and sunrises,
sensations, tales.

The living resonance is a parrot.
Throw him a word,
and he will repeat it
nimbly. Five times.

Or even more.

I’ve no desire to count them all
for I like the nightingale.

*

RE-READING THE CLASSICS

I’ve got the message!

A poet is free.

And that is why
in his poetry he is
THE ETERNAL BACHELOR

(even though he has been
married for twenty years and has
seven kids).

*

IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

1.

There’s your mother-tongue
and another language.

But the person’s
the same.

2.

There’s yesterday
and there’s poetry

Every poet is a human being.
Not vice-versa.

3.

A person can have a command
of another language

in life or poetry.

from birth
or from later on in life.

This language is always
his eternal second.

*

***

A city spread over several islands,
on the north-western coast of Norway,
with a narrow sound like a trout’s
maw, receiving
barges and cruise liners. The streets
begin at the shore and lead to the shore.
A flock of balconies overlooks the sea.
A city of bright colours, for 20,000
people. During working hours
it is variegated here: shops, factories,
bars... But on Sundays
the city sleeps till lunchtime, the picture
dulls. And a few pensioners
drive back and forth in their expensive cars.

Translated from Estonian by Eric Dickens

Doris Kareva: "In dreams and poetry"

In 1989, as the Soviet Union was crumbling, a number of Estonian poets and prose authors issued an album of work entitled Wellesto. This 150-page album contained, among other things, the work of various Estonian authors who are now famous, but also, for instance, Märt Väljataga's translation of five poems by W.B. Yeats, and Mati Sirkel's translation of a Kafka text, and Kalju Soa's translation of Finnish poems by Ilpo Tiihonen. The imminent escape of Estonia from the Soviet Empire, and 1916 parallels in the case of Yeats, were not lost on Estonian readers. But there were also a couple of translations into foreign languages. One of these was a text, in Pia Tafdrup vein, about the essence of writing poetry by the accomplished Estonian poet Doris Kareva (born 1958) which was translated into both Finnish (Tapio Mäkeläinen) and English (Toomas Hendrik Ilves). Below, Ilves' translation of Kareva's text.

In dreams and poetry

A poem is like a dream – at once a memory and a fantasy; a genuineness that opens up not along the lines of life but the lines of fate; no, not the lot that befalls us, but an eternally present part of the world.

A distant song in the blood: a hymn, a humming, the heart’s rhythm, heard by the child eternally playing alone within us. He raises his head, listens – with the nearing song the ear even distinguishes words – but then it again descends into silence, again on the nether side of response and responsibility. A dream, forgotten before the avenging scourge of consciousness arrives; a letter written in the sand, washed away by the prohibiting tongue of the waves.

Like pearl a poem begins with a grain of sand; the force of inevitability concealed in its self-creation; in it an event no matter how trifling may metamorphose into meaning. The content of a poem is a secret and its form silence. A poem is woven from silence just as an air-thin scarf that effortlessly slips through a ring. A myriad of patterns, signs and ornaments will not change its being; inscrutable as a dream., it reveals only its infinite faces, yet it remains unknown, unfathomable. Yet still, it may strike a lightning-white bridge even between strangers – for often just those separated by gaping worlds hide the same being within.

A poem, a dream, a drug and forgetting still comprise a revelation, an unexpected genuineness, a flight over borders deemed to be real, a recognition, and awakening.

Never, no, never are we more ourselves, never so free and yet fathomlessly alone as in dreams and in poetry – except perhaps in love.
Translated from Estonian by Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Mats Traat - poems, months and Tobias

What's in a month? In the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic around two decades ago the mere mention of February or March set off coded signals. February 24th is the Estonian National Day, whose celebration had been suppressed for half a century by the Soviet occupier. March 9th 1944 was the day when a squadron of Soviet bomber pilots, said to be women and led by a Canadian Communist, demolished several streets in the centre of Tallinn, the Estonian capital. So when Mats Traat published his collection Ajalaulud - luulet 1986-1989 (Songs of the Epoch - poems 1986-1989) in 1990, the casual mention of February or March was no doubt a deliberate act. When Traat was writing this collection, no one yet knew if the Baltic countries would be liberated, or whether there would be a repeat, Baltic style, of the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968.

Rudolf Tobias (1873-1918) was an Estonian composer who wrote an oratorio about Jonah escaping the belly of the whale. And there are, of course, parallels between the collapse of the Assyrian Empire and its capital Nineveh and that of the Soviet Union, with Estonia escaping from the maw of that latter empire.

DAY OF REMEMBRANCE


Flowers for those who died on the long road,
in the steppe, the forest, the frost.
Flowers for those that died from hard labour,
hardship, sorrow, hunger,
whose graves have vanished, razed to the ground,
deemed not to exist.


Harsh LP music does not recognise mourning.
Tammsaare keeps silent along with his people.


If you feel humiliation, you are still alive.


We, a people used to hell,
why don’t you get used
to the vale of hell?


Low is the threshold of juniper bushes,
death mows down someone
who never became a socialist hero
far from home, in the deserts of Afghanistan.


Who will count your tears,
who will write down your wounds,
Estonia?

***



IN THE MARCH SUNSHINE



Startled
at the bleakness of the age,
the cracked record of memory.

Thinking vague
waves of incredulity
riding high.


Every question seems childish,
the answers predictable:
together, like one man, jointly.


State monopoly of belief, queue at the vodka shop:
fifty-one people,
six of them women.


A really bad tooth
won’t tolerate cold or heat,
flowers noses can only smell one.


You have been brought out of the earth,
you won’t be going
back in.

***



ADDED INFORMATION ABOUT THE MARCH MISTS



The state where I was born
was soon destroyed,
the house where I first saw the light of day,
burnt down in a battle.
Omnipresent, omnipotent cancer
divide et impere.
Beyond the shield of mist a black figure
loveless, merciless.
Death is freedom. Montaigne
thought that each moment of his life.
And there was light.

***


ON A FEBRUARY NIGHT



Daytime and nighttime flags
fly jumbled together
the stars go out but the sword remains
He wields it in pitch darkness
mercilessly
May God have mercy on those that get in the way
the stars fall the sword remains

***



TOBIAS’ ORATORIO


Stay calm: the thought will not hold sway
whose traces are clotted with blood.
We go to a concert. A rainy evening
May the sounds uplift, the last night is a long way off.
Great is the hunger for light
and the thirst for freedom; raindrops
sparkle on your eyelashes. Stay calm:
Jonah is announcing
the destruction of Nineveh
in Estonia.

*******

Translated from Estonian by Eric Dickens

Mats Traat - an introduction to a poet

Mats Traat (born 1936) has written a long cycle of novels depicting life in the Estonian countryside during Czarist times, Independence, and the Soviet occupation. The farm of Palanumäe stands central in this suite of books. But Traat is also an observant social poet, again focusing on rural life. Critic Janika Kronberg has described Traat's poetry as follows:

"Traat made his début in 1962 with a collection of poetry considered to be close to the soil, and has to date published around twenty collections of poetry and three voluminous selections. With regard to his poetry, the term poetry of social comment has often been employed and this reflects the keenness in the 1960s on science and the technical revolution, plus the exploration of the cosmos, the scepticism of the following decades, and the joys and pains involved in the restoration of the Estonian Republic at the end of the 20th century.

Traat has remained himself. The core of his work involves an ethical pathos and a belief in the retreat of evil before good. His poetry contains a personal lyricism as well as sensitive nature portraits and sharp observations of society, but Traat never makes a cult of form or æstheticism for æstheticism's sake. And when the author, who comes from the south of Estonia, gave his cycle of dialect poems the title I Flee Into the Languages of Tartu then this does not mean that he has turned his back on the world, but that he is deriving strength from ancient expressions and values. Especially significant for Estonian poetry has been Histories From Harala (Harala elulood) which Traat has been adding to for four decades and whose first poems already appeared when Traat first started publishing. It is a collection of epitaphs in the style of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology and where the author uses concision to sketch the lives of a couple of hundred inhabitants of the village of Harala. The author acts as a chronicler, revealing history by way of the biographies, also the hidden tragedy at the departure of human life, a gentle nostalgia and humour and where it is shown that every mortal has a life worth recording for posterity."

Mats Traat is relatively unknown outside of Estonia, compared with people who have also been both prose authors and poets, such as Jaan Kross and Jaan Kaplinski. But you can read more about this author here. This is where I brought together two short essays about him on the World Literature Forum, one by the above critic Janika Kronberg, the other by Livia Viitol.

Over time, I shall be translating poetry by Mats Traat on this blog. Various of his poems are scattered through anthologies, and I translated six of them for the anthology The Baltic Quintet. But not a great deal of his work has appeared in English. I shall not be tackling the dialect poems; in the spirit of "first things first" I shall translate poems written in standard Estonian. But apart from representing rural values, Traat also examines life in southern Estonia, around the university city of Tartu. Three of his poems here, from 1968, as a sampler:

NAÏVE POEM

If I were a weaver,
I'd thread sunrays into a veil
around each grain of sand.

If I were a weaver,
I'd thread a carpet out of rainbows
to cover each park bench.

If I were a weaver,
I'd thread a shawl from lark's songs
and wrap it around my darling.

But I am not a weaver.

***

I draw your portrait in the sand, on pine bark, in myself.
I draw the plan and it is electric.
Then I go and look for a current, to bring the picture to life.

When I finally find you and return,
the wind has trampled the plan, the waters have washed away the portrait.
A toeprint adorns the place where your eye should have been.

***

TOYS

The toy cat has serious claws
the toy dog black fangs
the toy tiger has frightening whiskers

The tin soldier has but a heart of tin
it melts when he sees the princess
the princess utters not a word
a hole melts in the soldier
he is taken to be melted down
the cats dogs tigers laugh
their painted laugh.

*******

This seemingly naïve love poet is the same person who, as a novelist later in life, wrote about the War of Estonian Independence, Russification during various periods, the Forest Brethren guerrilla movement, and the trauma of the kolkhoz system.

Translated from Estonian by Eric Dickens

Friedebert Tuglas - poetry and the threat of Siberia

Given the amount of mockery that the British prime minister is undergoing right now, it may be hard to understand that in Stalinist times a Soviet author could be literally sent to Siberia for the slightest hint of ridicule directed at the Great Leader. Not until 1973, did Estonian author Friedebert Tuglas dare to publish his anti-Stalin poem, and even then he could only hint at whom he was mocking. Tuglas had always been oppositional. As a young man he had gone into exile for a decade, fleeing the Czarist police. Now, in the early 1950s, he was in the doghouse again, thrown out of the Writers' Union of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic for formalism and cosmopolitanism. He eked out a living by translations, signed by friends.

The poem, which I will translate soon in slightly abridged form, was written in 1951, i.e. before Stalin's death, so it was risky for Tuglas to write. Tuglas provides a short introduction, which is as telling as the poem itself:

The year 1951. A coil of poverty and pain had tightened around me, so tight that it hardly allowed me to breathe. I had to somehow fill the empty days and the dangerous sick nights, to prevent me from falling into the ultimate depression. And when nothing else helped raise my spirits, I had to indulge in a kind of improvised correspondence...

The addressee was not entirely improvised. He had real qualities: he wore sideburns and was hoping to build a private house for himself. He even replied on occasion - also in verse.

Everything else about the circumstances needs no commentary. May the Creative Spirit of the reader fill in any gaps - that is an important factor in poetic correspondence!

Such was the feel of Stalinism. Even in the 1970s, you had to be careful. It took a further decade for satirical poetry in Estonia to become entirely threat-free.

Elo Viiding: "Mothers' Day"

Here is the poem Mothers' Day by Elo Viiding, which takes an ironic look at the way mothers are treated politically and socially by public figures full of assumptions and expectations, and is also about the physical side of bringing up children. It was first published in this translated version in an occasional English issue of the Swedish literary magazine 00-tal.

Viiding is just old enough to have have consciously experienced both Soviet and post-Soviet life. But even in post-Soviet Estonia, things are not perfect. Viiding is very much a poet of social comment and observation, whatever the political system of the country. Maybe this poem can be regarded as a kind of anti-Whitmanic rant:

Mothers' Day

On Mothers' Day every child should sing
and give its mother flowers and prime ministers think
that every mother wants to be honoured
and all prime ministers dream
that all women who aren't mothers
will feel simply feel rotten
more rotten than ever before
so the government gives mothers
special advantages
and passes a law on parental salaries

all teachers believe that every mother can be bothered
on Sunday morning at ten o'clock
to come to the Mothers' Day Concert
and every mother regards herself as part of
the social group "mothers"
and every mother is childishly insulted if no one sings for her
or people get annoyed at brutal selfishness of her children
more than about the beautiful two-facedness of society
so that you should be nervous on stage in front of all those mothers
in front of page-boy styled mothers and mothers in hats
and mothers with metallic finish cars
and mothers with nylon handbags and mothers with carrier bags
and mothers with Saint Laurent shadowed eyes
enterprising hawk-eyed single mothers and ostrich housewives
and the few clever fathers who stand at the back of the hall
because they're not allowed to sit they are men and today the mothers are sitting

because it's so nice so nice to sing to complete strangers
do you know your mother's heart
on Sunday morning ten o'clock in the stuffy hall to the gurgle of gastric juices
because if we don't sing to the mothers
they will all die off
not from a lack of sleep or hunger for sex
but because we ruined Mothers' Day for them
and we will have a bad conscience
so bad that we can never return to society

the prime minister thinks
that every mother has a heart of gold
on a chain around her neck
that every mother has read child psychology
that every mother is well acquainted with gender release and with the child's father
that every mother lives in a centrally-heated flat with hot and cold running water
that every mother is a Hansa Bank customer and dreams of obtaining a loan
that every mother wears tracksuit bottoms at home and is slimming
that every mother is happy and every mother ready for motherhood
that postnatal depression is a mere trifle compared with the greater joy
which will come in twenty years' time when life has become six times more expensive

that every mother is healthy and strong and can manage life without moonshine
that every mother has a stable nervous system and avoids injections
that every mother knows at least in the sixth month that she is pregnant
that every mother is older than eighteen years of age
that every mother loves little children
that every mother is a good boss to her children
that every mother sticks her children on the front page of Women's Own
at the first opportunity
that every mother takes her children to some children's activity
don't let them fucking-well play with those young criminals in that sand-pit
that every mother gives her children vegetables and boiled beef for lunch
that every mother has got on damned well in life
and has not been warped by police thrillers on TV
that every mother has a retired grandfather and a grandmother who dandles the children on her knee
so that she doesn't ever have to put it in the crèche as people usually do

that every mother is in fact a human being and every mother is a woman

and that every mother dreams of nothing else but becoming a mother
that every mother takes part in the family forum on the net
that every mother has something to give her child
that every woman regards her offspring as her primary duty
that every woman lives for others and never for herself
that every woman wants to serve her country and her people
that every woman wants to get up early in the morning
that every woman can be bothered to wake up six times a night
that every woman has a bad conscience if she can't produce enough milk
so necessary for the immune system take a look at the scientific research
which divides children up into breast-fed ones and sick ones
that every woman conceives naturally and that every woman is fertile
that every woman wants to give birth in a maternity home
that every woman manages to combine a career with motherhood
that every childless woman regards her life as empty and incomplete
that every woman rushes headlong to buy a pregnancy test
when the right time comes when the biological clock rings relentlessly
she grabs the first best reasonably suitable father
that every woman only wants to talk about her pregnancy
that every woman afterwards wants to teach the non-pregnant
that birth is a special experience not especially unbearable pain
that the three months after birth need to be got used to
that pregnancy isn't an illness, just simply a natural state of affairs
that hormonal changes don't affect our psyche that much
that hormonal changes are sometimes even enjoyable

that every woman likes her primary biological function
that every woman's behaviour is governed by her primary biological function
that every woman's existence is governed by her primary biological function

that every woman thinks of this as a trifling problem
if anyone makes a big thing about motherhood
which is so natural
then every problem is, believe you me,
easy to solve by the government and the mothers themselves

that every supermarket wants
that children honour their mothers
make your mother happy and give her something cheap
something which costs less than 500 crowns
because your mother deserves it
because of you dear child don't buy wrinkle cream
but load some yoghurt, cornflakes or muesli
into your shopping basket
go and ask her for those 300 crowns gift money
and buy her a nice rejuvenation emulsion
every mother enjoys the bargain prices around Mothers' Day
and doesn't pay the January rent because of Christmas presents

and every child wants to say thank you
for its existence
a childishly guilty thank-you
and wants say
to the prime minister
thank you that I'm alive

every mother wants to be sublime and noble
and feel that a child's life depends on her
every mother wants to be selfless and not to belly-ache
every mother manages to cope
whenever she wants don't forget whenever she wants
and every mother believes that those who aren't mothers
should be obliged to feel bad about it
because they have nobody simply nobody who in their old age
will treat them as well as they do now
in a word to pay them back for their trouble
you should always live with recompense in mind
you should always expect recompense

thanks to mothers

as soon as every woman reads women's literature and dreamy prose
as a time of peace arrives dear people
as no one has claims any more
as we are many and we have plenty of serotonin and endorphine
as we all get under one another's feet and jump for joy thanking god
as no one gets irritated any longer or drive people to despair
then our dear mothers will have fulfilled their mission

and even women writers will get their just rewards
when they have children and when when they are nicely buried
when their creative endeavours are good beautiful and safe
and when they agree nicely with their readers
or when they suddenly become children's writers
when they are finally steered onto the right way
when they are translated into several languages
and invited to attend seminars
in whose breaks you can eat a sausage roll
and drink coffee from a plastic cup

even the prime-minister knows
that no woman any longer reads poetry
especially that which is inhuman and subversive to society
and for which no prizes or medals are given
and especially if it is written by quasi-women
and especially when they do it well
yet no one of us can admit it, let's be honest
better write or do something useful

what, let them think for themselves, come on, time to guess yourself

On Mothers' Day every child should sing
and give their mothers flowers and prime-ministers know
that mothers are the only ones who listen to their speeches
because they are mothers

***
Translated from Estonian by Eric Dickens

Tartu book festival and Umberto Eco

On 6th May 2009, semioticist Umberto Eco will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Tartu, Estonia. He is, of course, better known for his novel "The Name of the Rose", but is also an academic in a field shared by, for instance, the late Yuri Lotman, one of the founders of the Moscow-Tartu School of Semiotics.

The visit by Eco coïncides with the Tartu book festival, called the Prima Vista, which will be in Tartu from 7th-9th May, then spend a day in nearby Viljandi, and a day in Pärnu, hosted by poet Doris Kareva. This year's patron in Tartu itself will be the poet Andres Ehin, whose daughter Kristiina's poetry has been translated into English.

Unfortunately, they haven't really developed the English-language part of the Prima Vista website, so that there is a chatty article about vowels, but no programme. For it to become truly international, the organisers must see to it that there are more contacts with abroad in future years. A flying visit by Umberto Eco, plus one by the "Russian Agatha Christie" Alexandra Marinina are not yet enough to put this Tartu book festival on the map. There is some simultaneous interpretation between Estonian and Russian, as a number of Estonia-Russian poets will read their works. And there is a bit of a Finnish presence too. But all the events described still remain very much ones by Estonians for Estonians. A good deal of reaching out and coordination will be needed in future years if this festival is to become truly international. But maybe the Estonians are happy to keep it the way it is.

Nordic Haiku

For some reason which may be connected with a northern liking for taciturn concision, the modern Japanese verse form known as haiku is often encountered in the work of Nordic poets. Here are some Swedish examples. And here are some haiku by the Estonian poet Andres Ehin. The trick for the translator is to observe the 17-syllable rule (not always easy to follow when the poems migrate to English). I tried my hand at this poem from Pia Tafdrup's haiku collection Boomerang:

Tærsklen til døden:
Månemørkt indre rige
-- passagers lysflod.

The threshold of death:

Moon-dark inner kingdom

-- lightflood of passages.

No, it's definitely not as easy as it looks, and somehow the English versions never look quite as "compressed" as the originals.