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The current issue of ELM was supported by the Ministry of Culture www.estinst.ee contents

no 38. Spring 2014 Jakob Hurt (Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum) (Eesti Hurt Jakob

4 The return of Jakob Hurt or how to get a shaman to use a smartphone by Valdur Mikita

10 Kaupo Meiel: Pärnu journalist and cosmopolitan poet by Veiko Märka

16 Poetry by Kaupo Meiel

18 HeadRead – a literary festival in Tallinn by Jason Goodwin

22 Meelis Friedenthal's "The Bees" by Tiit Aleksejev

27 Andrei Ivanov and the anti-hero of our time by Tarmo Jüristo

32 Short outlines of books by Estonian authors by Brita Melts, Rutt Hinrikus, Maret Vaher and Arno Oja

46 Estonian literature in translation 2013 Compiled by the Estonian Literature Centre

© 2014 by the Estonian Institute; Suur-Karja 14 10140 Tallinn Estonia; ISSN 1406-0345 email:[email protected] www.estinst.ee phone: (372) 631 43 55 fax: (372) 631 43 56 Editorial Board: Peeter Helme, Mati Sirkel, Jaanus Vaiksoo, Piret Viires © Editor: Tiina Randviir Translators: Kalju Kruusa, Marika Liivamägi, Tiina Randviir Language editor: Richard Adang Layout: Marius Peterson Cover photo: Valdur Mikita (Peeter Laurits) Estonian Literary Magazine is included in the EBSCO Literary Reference Center Jakob Hurt (Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum) (Eesti Hurt Jakob 5 The return of Jakob Hurt or how to get a shaman to use a smartphone

by Valdur Mikita

One hundred and twenty-five years have passed since Jakob Hurt (1839-1907) encouraged people to collect and preserve ancient folk heritage. Hurt’s collections gradually developed into the Estonian Folk Poetry Archives and the Estonian National

Museum. There is no doubt that Hurt is among the people who have most influenced

Estonian culture. He lived at the edge of a cultural breakthrough: Estonians were emerging from serfdom and becoming free peasantry, and written culture was gaining ground over the old oral culture. Hurt was lucky: people had recently learned to write, and the old oral heritage was still alive. There was plenty to record, and enough people to do so. The legendary Hurt collections were thus born.

Although the changes during the awakening European nation in literacy. We still have a period were immense, the cornerstone of large number of people stuck in the dim ancient peasant culture – people’s stationary analogue-era, who carry place memory and way of life – remained. This helped to oral heritage in themselves. We have people maintain a unique place memory, already to record, and we have people to record quite rare in Europe, and archaic heritage. them. We are now once again crossing a signifi- Hurt managed to preserve the tail-end of cant cultural border. There is an interesting the old culture. Our changes are even more analogy between today and Hurt’s era. We radical. One phrase is enough to describe have become a leading digital nation, just as them: a stationary way of life. One hundred 150 years ago we had become a leading years ago, the most important person in language landscapes, wandering aimlessly Estonian culture from the point of view of along archaic heritage and real locations of heritage was the folk singer, whereas now it folk tales. Estonians are lucky to live is people living in the country who have between the covers of their epic. stayed put for the best part of their lives. There are few nations in Europe with These are people with the magical cycle of such strong topographical identity. I think this life still intact: they are born and die in the aspect, along with runo songs, is among same place. Today the last generation is Estonia’s most striking cultural achieve- living that carries this several-thousand-year- ments. It seems even more important today old wondrous tradition of Estonian culture. as the old runo song heritage has nearly Our children live in a totally different world. vanished. Such genuine country people may well become unique from the point of view of Crazy huts and stolen faces European culture, just as Hurt’s collections made our 19th century folk singers world Genealogical research in Estonia should famous. This argument rests on purely perhaps slow down a bit; after all, church cultural-theoretical reasoning. Hurt’s registers aren’t going anywhere. The most collections recorded the oral culture that was endangered type of memory is oral heritage. gradually being replaced by written culture, We should instead compile digital family whereas the current cultural breakthrough is archives that record oral heritage. There are linked with the triumph of the digital era. people all around us who are walking Estonian National Museums. The first thing If we somehow managed to document to do is to record the memory and ways of this change, as did Hurt, we would have a thinking of people living in the magical cycle totally unique database describing two of life. significant breakthroughs on the basis of one culture. We should also have more faith in an intuitive manner of gathering heritage. The What is remarkable here is that the best results would come from leaving Estonian culture has maintained a large enough space for the collector’s individuality: number of elements of archaic culture. When a fact supported by numerous large-scale written texts meet the computer, the change memory-gathering projects. The true value is not that enormous, but when a native of information becomes clear in extensive messes with a computer motherboard, compilations of data. If we record a great things get crazy. mass of information, we will probably Place memory is the fastest fading type manage to capture essential elements that of memory in Europe. We still have thou- do not seem important to us at the moment. sands of people preserving traditional place- We should therefore hurry up and do a lore. On the whole, everything that cannot be Jakob Hurt or a Johannes Pääsuke the Googled is valuable today. Place memory is photographer. This could become a later organically connected with the heritage of database for language researchers, natural sacred places, which is singular in ethnographers and folklorists. In ten years’ Europe. It survived here for millennia for the time, it will be far too late to catch this layer simple reason that people were stationary. of memory, because it will simply fall off the Place memory is a kind of Estonian cultural edge of the world. speciality, something that most other nations no longer have. The singularity of the What then should this ‘Hurt’s click’ be? national epic Kalevipoeg lies in the fact that We should primarily photograph and record the story seems to proceed within ancient everything that will disappear in the world of

Elm/Spring 2014 Valdur Mikita (Photo by Jaan Tootsen)

the future. Things we do not really think old photographs, people seem different, about disappear. Some might have heard a more diverse, more expressive. That’s why weird legend about the native Amazon photographers are so keen on native tribes, namely why they are wary of white peoples. people. They happen to believe that whites Another example: what crazy houses the steal their faces. Faces do vanish. Estonian village people live in! Beams from Faces get duller, and the natural diversity old barns, with the boarding done by of facial expressions fades. Most of today’s President Päts in the 1920s and 1930s, and people spend their time inside, wearing the nails hammered in by Leonid Brezhnev, sunglasses and accepting similar ideals of who was the last to invest in Estonian beauty; this creates new, anonymous villages, as a part of the Soviet food features. About twenty kilograms of Garnier programme. Now the elderly sit on their face cream slapped onto our faces during beds, wearing their felt boots and watching our lives leave a mark, and in the end all the telly, while history crumbles away all people have more or less the same faces. In around them. 7 Digital archives could perhaps preserve The law of conservation of animism something of this wild architecture for coming generations. Estonian culture is a miracle, an island in a vanishing world. Although the two dominant factors of our culture, i.e. runo songs and Magical collections of Hurt natural sacred places, both hundreds of years old, have largely disappeared, quite a Although Hurt’s words fell on fertile soil, the bit still survives. practical peasant mind one hundred years ago thought: why the dickens should I, after a If for no particular reason some half-wit punishing day of farm work, waste time recor- cuts down a tree in a cemetery with a blunt ding the ramblings of frail old women? A hund- saw, we do not even bother to condemn him: red years later, people are carrying out world- everyone knows that it is only a matter of level research on the basis of the ramblings of time before the half-wit will be struck down frail old women. The general public still thinks by a horrible revenge of Nature. Crimes it’s a waste of time. against trees are still crimes of the first order in Estonia. The people who think that Hurt’s collections have been sufficiently researched are wrong. This purely shamanist belief dates from Each cultural change endows old materials the Neolithic era and still influences people’s with new meanings. If we managed to massi- view of the world. Estonian natural law is vely document the current cultural changes, essentially animistic. Besides Facebook, the content of Hurt’s collections would change modern Estonians’ social network also as well. They have a much wider meaning than contains trees, dead people and all manner just documenting Estonian culture. Hurt’s col- of weird creatures. lections are a bow to all ancient peoples, of The conservation of animism is therefore whom only a handful remain today. In future, alive in Estonia. Our indigenous culture and a new layer of culture could be recorded, and nature both survive. This is quite a rare a new cultural breakthrough could happen one combination today. The essence of Estonian day. Hurt’s collections thus keep expanding culture is best revealed against the back- over time. ground of a concept that we ourselves often Besides our own culture, the meaning of forget: Estonians are an indigenous people. Hurt’s folklore collections could open up a Indigenous peoples are those who have much wider perspective. been living in their country from the ‘begin- Firstly, we should consider Hurt’s collec- ning of time’. Only a few such peoples tions from the perspective of Estonian and Fin- remain in the world today. Hurt’s collections nish culture. Kalevala is one of the most com- thus represent a few thousand indigenous pact systems of magical thinking ever written peoples whose voices are no longer heard. down; Kalevipoeg is a mighty geo-epic and Hurt’s collections preserve major documents Hurt’s manifesto or digitalising of oral world culture, feeding Estonian and Fin- rural pensioners nish cultures for decades to come. What then is important in Estonian Secondly, there is the significance of Hurt’s culture? The answer is simple: we should try collections for Finno-Ugric culture. to preserve what we consider our native And thirdly, Hurt’s collections form a part culture. The problem is that we are not quite of world culture. They are probably among the certain what Estonian native culture actually best archives of a native people’s oral culture. is. It is not primarily material culture, nor

Elm/Spring 2014 written culture, nor contemporary culture nor We are still largely living according to folk culture in its usual meaning. 19th century cultural norms, which mainly valued authorial culture. Tribal culture has The uniqueness of Estonian culture is its always been a hanger-on. The world cultural genius loci, the topographical manifestation history of today has changed beyond that has lasted for centuries, through the recognition. power of oral archaic culture, in a blend of indigenous culture and indigenous nature. Perhaps because of this strange swing This is a layer which largely originated in the between centre and periphery, Estonian era of shamanism. culture, for the first time, has a chance to establish a dialogue with ancient cultural What then is the ‘genuine’ Estonian traditions of the world, thanks to our magical culture? The traditional division into high and trinity: indigenous nature, culture and popular culture is not quite suitable. Estonian language. These mark our existence as an culture could instead be divided into visible indigenous people. and invisible parts. Our most valuable treasures today are Invisible culture is rarely expressed in an people who have lived in the same place for artwork; it is more a belief or a way of generations, who still have some archaic thinking, which mostly lacks a visible form. It beliefs deep in their souls: a magical is thus easy to miss: the most unique part of amalgam of place memory and animism, the culture is quite elusive. oldest parts in our culture; this is in fact Digital family archives could perhaps traditional, indigenous culture. This magical capture and preserve culture’s invisible blend can no longer be captured by collec- layers, which have been disappearing at ting ancient objects or songs. tremendous speed during the last one Our grandparents no longer make hundred years, whereas the visible part has wooden figurines or tell ancient myths. The increased just as rapidly. Culture in most only bridges to the old culture are strange countries consists of high culture, the flashes, such as the above example of a ‘centre’, and mass culture, heaped at its foot, crime against a tree. whereas the edges have totally worn out. In Estonia, it is the other way round: the centre Hurt’s up-dated manifesto could well is not that brilliant, but the periphery is huge. consist of only one sentence: an unprece- There is something about Estonia that dented plan is spreading amongst people to produces and accumulates the peripheral. digitalise our pensioners! We face the following task: linking the digital resources in Let me point out a significant change that Estonia with traditional culture. How can we has occurred in the world. One hundred unite the oldest cultural layer with the years ago, collecting ancestors’ intellectual newest? How can we sneak a smartphone to heritage had primarily historical value, a shaman? Anyone who can solve this whereas now it has become a magical problem will go down in history. treasure trove for future ways of thinking, models and ideas. All of a sudden, the Time is running out: the magical opening peripheral has become existential, Estonian might be available for a dozen or so years, culture is a refuge for lost worlds, and Hurt’s and then the gates will close. collections have turned into a mighty paradigm. Estonian culture is seen in a totally new light, although the perception is First published in Eesti Postimees on 1 somewhat blurred. January 2014. Kaupo Pärnu journalist and cosmopolitan poet

by Veiko Märka

Kaupo Meiel (38) has published four collec- The second book, Eesti elulood (Estonian Biographies, 2008) is a tions of poetry with very different structures. collection of very brief poems (often 1-2 lines), or rather plays on words. Each has a specific concept, distinctive from In most cases, these cannot be translated at all, for technical reasons the others. As an example of form, Polügrafisti and due to the foreign reader’s lack käsiraamat (A Printer’s Manual, 2006) indeed of background information. The reader, for instance, needs to be well uses a textbook of the same name for printers informed about Estonian film and literary classics, music and even that was published in Tallinn in 1979. The proverbs. The structure is based on the alphabet: every poem is about a poems, too, often focus on the magic and representative of a profession: prosaic nature of printing. What will essen- Astronomer, Botanist, Electrician, Journalist, Photographer... Plus tially change if, instead of one copy, one thou- some non-professions: Alcoholic, Blind Man, Coward, Hindu. And sand are made? The question extends from some areas of activity that might be or might not be professions: Alpinist, printed products to all branches of human Anti-Semite, Conspiracy Theorist, Father Christmas, Runner... One of activity, for example art history: Dead art / Is the poems, for example, is about an no longer art / Baroque is not art / Rococo is IT specialist:

not art / And a Doric column is not art / Only IT Specialist my voice range is packaging is art. Ctrl+Alt 10

Elm/Spring 2014 Meiel

His third collection, Mu sokid on terved (My His fourth and latest book, Pursata Vesuu- Socks Are Intact), was published in 2010, i.e. vile (Eruption to Vesuvius, 2013) is no longer at the time when the European economic crisis pure poetry, because the author has added a had struck Estonia the hardest. It maps social longer prose text to several poems, explaining predicaments. Already the first lines are docu- why and how they were born. These bear the mentary and dismal: every morning / walking common title “Author’s comments” and consi- to work / down empty Rüütli Street / with its derably expand the book’s content. Reaching shops gone broke / with its sales assistants / middle age forced Meiel to ponder personal now living / below the poverty line / because problems and anxieties, an experience that the newly opened department store / in the everyone goes through. For example, bringing city centre stole their / customers and faith and up children in an urban environment: kid we dignity / I feel ashamed / that I don’t mend my make you out of glass / and take you to nursery socks. school / where the teacher Auntie has a ham- mer / in the evening we return for the bits and During the writing of this book, another pieces / and glue them together back at home disaster struck the author’s home-town of Pär- // at the weekend we’re given the hammer to nu: flooding, which claimed ‘only’ one human take home / the family has to be involved in life, but caused enormous damage. Several the education / to break and to glue / to break poems describe this. For example: the rece- and to glue. ding water took away / the old woman’s / coffin money / the kroons and dollars / as well as Several of Meiel’s poems are not expres- decayed roubles / she had / kept / in a tin box sions of emotion, but logical constructs. For / kept / from spending / kept / away from her example, The Wall consists of 66 names, drunkard son / kept / in her mind mainly of well-known people, which contain the As in his first book, the third features longer word “stone” in different languages: Albert texts with epic content. Personal memories of Einstein, Aleksis Kivi, Brian Epstein, Sharon childhood and his younger years appear as Stone, Rammstein, Rolling Stones, Stone new themes. His social criticism concentrates Roses, Roy Lichtenstein, Gertrude Stein, the on more than the economic crisis. The poet is Flintstones, Frankenstein ... All nicely in alpha- also keen on global trends: printed books are betical order, with the stones forming a wall. less read, and they are becoming elitist values, almost like before printing was invented: it’s I look at the poor because I am sad today only for the successful / that books are made today / and the poems are read on tv / only to Meiel’s poetry has always revealed his the successful profession. He is a journalist. And not your usual hack, but the head of the opinion page lity: in the beginning God created / an event / at Pärnu Postimees. A fairly high position, on The Creation of Heaven and Earth / then God the one hand and, on the other, a daily contact created / the heaven and the earth. with people’s deepest worries and problems. In one poem, Meiel lists vastly different Hence the peculiarity of his authorial position, ways to use a newspaper: build a fire in a stove, uniting personal comfort and social empathy. put it under a cat, into your shoes to keep On the one hand, it displays sincere sympathy warm, under the sun etc. It is in fact quite im- with people working in shops in the main street possible to distinguish where journalism ends of Pärnu who have lost their jobs and, on the in his poems and where pure poetry begins. other, he expresses the view that there is no (Hopefully there aren’t similar problems when point saving on socks and mending them reading his newspaper articles!) Sometimes because of a sense of solidarity. This phrase he is open about his profession, without adding sums up his credo: I look at the poor / because any poetic spice: As a rule, the person whose I’m sad today. This, indeed, could be Meiel’s question finds its way into the column “A slogan. Reader Asks” has never read anything. He also distances himself with dignity from He admits that he has had only a few the victims of the flooding: he lives on the fourth moments in his life that have forced him to write floor... a poem. However, it once happened in central I ask Meiel who is more useful to whom: Pärnu, when he was sitting with a bottle of good poet-Meiel to journalist-Meiel or the other way wine (probably at a street cafe), it was drizzling, round? And do they sometimes clash? a pretty old house was on fire in the next street, and some young musicians were playing Mo- “The writer Meiel occasionally lends the zart and Vivaldi at an open-air concert. Meiel journalist Meiel a poetic touch, which is not sums up this intense poetic experience as a really suitable for the press, and the journalist true journalist: 7 lines, 16 words, 106 charac- Meiel introduces topical motifs to the writer ters with spaces, 97 characters without spaces. Meiel. In daily life, the balance of power tends to be in favour of the journalist, which is also If we try to define Meiel’s poetry as a whole, true of the body. Who provides bread for the we could compare it with an equilateral triangle. body? Yes – the journalist, and not the writer. The first side is purely language-focused word- It is not a clash, but a dictatorship!” play, the second is social criticism of Estonian life, and the third side, especially evident in A journalist writing poems is a rare pheno- the last two books, is pushing the myths that menon in Estonia. As a journalist writing poems belong among the global, everlasting founda- and residing in Pärnu, Meiel is unique. Still, tions of world culture towards the absurd. A his poems, even those dealing with Pärnu, ob- typical example is Resetting Jesus (2010), serve society in general. The old woman in where Jesus returns to the contemporary world the above example could have lost her savings and starts annulling his previous deeds and somewhere else, for instance in a fire. And words: money changers can go back to the shops going bankrupt could be seen all over temples, the healed sick, paralysed, madmen Estonia at that time: in my home street in Tallinn and lepers are ill again, etc. The author poses the flower shop was turned into a pawnshop. a new challenge to Jesus: get a bank loan, a Meiel has also tackled politics, ridiculing the normal job, find a wife, have children and die increasingly common habit of people in power at 83 of arteriosclerosis. Because that is so trying to please “the people” through populism: much harder. rappers are invited to the president’s reception and the guests listen to them in solemn silence, He equates the seven levels in Dante’s like listening to Christmas carols. Meiel can Inferno with cycling and skiing. The protagonist also move in the seemingly opposite direction successfully gets through the seven circles of from crucial day events, without losing topica- Inferno and Purgatory, but during the sixth

Elm/Spring 2014 circle of Paradise he is lapped by the leaders med various punk bands, playing rhythm and and must quit the race. bass guitar. His poetry has frequent musical references and is influenced by music. He ma- On the basis of the closing lines of Shakes- kes no secret of the fact that one of his favou- peare’s Romeo and Juliet, For never was a rite bands is the English group The Tiger Lilies, story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her whose music is a mixture of surrealism, punk Romeo, he composes no fewer than fifteen and classical cabaret. He is no longer involved very sad stories set in our present day. in music-making, although during his mid-life Meiel writes: It’s just not so simple in these crisis some of his friends have suggested re- times of tense toughness, when the bees and turning to punk. Under the fictitious name Al- butterflies are being written about only by lah Pugatchova (after the famous Russian sin- uninspired graphomaniacs of kitsch without ger Alla Pugatchova), he is involved in a group even the most basic knowledge, to add a bit interested in virtual art that displays their pos- of sincerity to poems otherwise slipping to- ter-format work at pugatchova.blogspot.com. wards narcissism and often into factual inade- Hasn’t he considered moving to Tallinn or quacy, which is, though, quite skilfully veiled Tartu, “closer to culture”? with arrogance and assurance. Meiel does not give a direct answer, but Thanks to the above-mentioned triangle, refers to his journalistic career: “I cannot Meiel himself has certainly succeeded. There answer this. If I said that I have never been is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his claims offered another job somewhere else, it might and world-view. At a time when we are all get- seem that I am no good whatsoever. If I said ting huge loads of information from the Internet, that jobs have been offered, it might seem that information of drastically uneven quality, sin- I am sitting here because I’m some sort of a cerity is among the few criteria that can be trus- Pärnu patriot.” ted. There is probably also a means of esca- pe for poetry in the labyrinth of Internet texts He has no plans to move: “It’s quite nice without proper beginnings or ends. here and there are many interesting people.” If Kaupo could choose a time to live in, Daniil Harms and Tiger Lillies when would he choose and who would he like The dates of the collections of poetry to be? testify that the author was over thirty when “The moral of Woody Allen’s magnificent the first appeared. What did he do before? film Midnight in Paris was incredibly simple: Kaupo Meiel’s life has always been linked the era where you find yourself never seems with Pärnu. He was born there and lived there the golden age, but it becomes a golden era until he graduated from secondary school. As for a later generation. I do not share this view. have most Estonian writers, he ended up at I live in a golden era and am its typical repre- the University of Tartu, where he studied sentative. However, if I had to choose – consi- literature and folk poetry. He started his literary dering my anarchist soul trapped in my bour- activities by writing lyrics for his band. In the geois shell – I would be Emperor Flavius Ro- only Soviet Estonian humour magazine, Pikker mulus Augustus. More precisely, the literary (Thunder), he discovered the influential Rus- character Romulus the Great, based on him, sian classic of the absurd Daniil Harms, whose as he is in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play of the style and topics (the life of famous writers) same name.” Meiel later used himself. Literary club named after a top communist Meiel has been a journalist since 1992, from 1999 onwards at Pärnu Postimees: ini- Despite the ridiculous wish of Pärnu people tially as a cultural editor, and later as the opi- to be different from the rest of Estonia or seem nion editor. Both in Pärnu and in Tartu he for- original, it is a perfectly ordinary Estonian town. Thus Meiel portrays the general Estonian, and a career for himself: the Johannes Barbarus not just someone from Pärnu: an Estonian Centre of Counter-culture. After the Soviet drinks 76 litres of beer in a year / an Estonian Union occupied Estonia in 1940, Johannes adds salt to food exuberantly / an Estonian Vares-Barbarus became the first Soviet Esto- spends the most on books / an Estonian surfs nian prime minister. In 1946 he committed sui- in a computer stolen from Finland ” This re- cide. Just like Meiel, he was not a professional sembles the lines of the Turkish poet NâzIm poet, but instead a doctor. Hikmet from 1962: Estonia / is the smallest I ask what kind of Estonian government socialist state / reading the most poetry per Kaupo would lead. person drinking the most vodka “In my younger years I dressed as a punk Pärnu is the third largest and most impor- and considered myself an anarchist. Now I tant Estonian-speaking city in Estonia. More dress properly and no longer regard myself as or less the same can be said about the impor- an anarchist, but due to those distant times I tance of Pärnu Postimees. Culturally, however, completely lack any desire for power. I would, the town has never been competitive with however, be prepared to head the Estonian Tallinn and Tartu. The money is in Tallinn, as government if it were the last government ever. is the headquarters of all creative associations The government that ends all governments. and most of the homes of their members. Tartu The result would be not only the disappearance has the university, with academic traditions of the state, but of governing itself. To be dating back to 1632. Culture is learned in Tartu, honest, in my nice outfit today I might actually and the knowledge is practised in Tallinn. Most be a bigger anarchist than when I had a Mo- people associate Pärnu with summer and the hawk hairdo and a leather jacket with rivets.” beach, and a few with summer concerts and film festivals. Definitely not with literature. The associations between Meiel and Barbarus are only geographical, whereas Still, nothing is permanent. Meil has cer- much closer ties link Meiel with another Esto- tainly contributed to the recent network of poets nian cultural figure, Johann Voldemar Jannsen in Pärnu; they even published a joint book, (1819-1890). Jannsen was the founder of the Sõnaga näkku (Words into Face). Over ten paper that has provided Meiel with his job, and authors are represented, including some much he also gave the paper its name. Like Meiel, younger and older than Meiel. The key word Jannsen was a poet besides being a journalist. of the book is “punk”. The underground, not (He even wrote the words for the Estonian na- totally up to scratch but sincere, might offer tional anthem.) Meiel’s current workplace is Pärnu the best opportunity to find its place in next to Jannsen’s monument and he was on the sunshine of Estonian culture, next to Tal- the committee that selected the winner of the linn, where brains and money flourish, and the monument competition. academically spiritual Tartu. Meiel has not thought of himself as a punk for a long time. In Tourist guides always need legends to go his latest collection, Meiel again reveals a new with various sights. Meiel has thought of one side: he has taken the most primitive anony- concerning Jannsen’s sculpture. It goes like mous Internet comments about Estonian politi- this: the person who strokes the relief text of cians and amplified them to extreme ridicule. the bronze newspaper the bronze Jannsen is holding will get only good news in the future. Since one of the most prominent writers, Kivisildnik, has settled in Pärnu, publishing is Now we just have to wait until Meiel writes booming, especially in the field of modern new words for the Estonian national anthem. poetry. Kivisildnik’s publishing house JI (Divine Future generations will then have a reason to Revelations) has issued all of Meiel’s books. invent legends about his monument as well. We should mention here that the place where Pärnu writers gather is named after the best known Pärnu poet, who also made quite Poetry translated by Kalju Kruusa

Elm/Spring 2014 Kaupo Meiel (Photo by Scanpix) * * *

Once upon a time, an ancient man invented writing. He sketched down his notes and thoughts to spare himself from repeating them.

Then he heard Socrates and put down his stories. Then he wrote Capital.

Meanwhile he set down the countless sonnets by Shakespeare, wrote Sentimental Education and Tammsaare’s Collected Works.

As Kerouac, he put down a line every day. Now all this is meaningless.

The Use of Newspaper

In fish crates In wet boots In mushroom baskets * * * In berry baskets In onion baskets In ovens I don’t watch In kitchen stoves the morning show Under cats nor the evening news In default of sand Under the soles I see to it Of filthy shoes I get On top of the head up in the morning Under the sun and sleep in the evening

you needn’t be Stephen Hawking to see everything vanish into a black hole you needn’t watch the morning show nor the evening news to see it – to see it you have to get up and sleep poetry by Kaupo Meiel

Elm/Spring 2014 * * *

Electrician every morning I was walking to work seen down empty Rüütli Street in a bad light with its shops gone broke with its sales assistants now living Photographer below the poverty line my kids because the newly opened department store are pretty in the city centre stole their as pictures customers and faith and dignity I feel ashamed Waiter that I don’t mend my socks can I I cannot find serve you any excuses for myself a purpose? I don’t know how I could learn though Stage Director I don’t want this is no argument don’t start an Estonian artist Toomik once walked to create through Prague a scene here carrying a large placard with the slogan My cock is clean! Animal Protector in my hometown I have problems let with my socks barking dogs that are too new bark and clean and free from holes I have to go and visit Missionary all those sales assistants I know and their one-time customers one by one all the to admit that my socks positions have no holes though and I am happy about it I am guilty before you I have betrayed you Sports Doctor I have made my contribution to it the time that you are doing bad is out that you have no food to give to your child of joint that you have unpaid rent that your roof is leaking Zoo Keeper that you have no business he to be on Rüütli Street in the morning is our true where now I’m the only one walking elephant terrible wearing my clean hole-free socks HeadRead a literary festival in Tallinn

by Jason Goodwin

The Estonian capital, Tallinn, stands on the Baltic at the head of the Gulf of Finland,

barely 100 miles from St Petersburg. Once a constituent soviet republic of the USSR,

the tiny country of a million inhabitants, speaking a language closely related but not

the same as Finnish, has become a fully fledged EU country, and a member of NATO.

Most Estonians will have used the internet in the last week. The most northerly of

the Baltic states, Estonia has reasserted its traditionally open, Scandinavian links

and manners.

Tallinn is about the size of Bristol or Lyon, Tallinn has 51 protected trees and 48 but it carries more weight. It is the seat of na- protected stones, 30 or so publishing tional government and home to the nation’s houses, and five daily newspapers, one political class, to native and foreign diplomats, published in Russian. The national airport is artists, doctors, lawyers, designers, architects, fifteen minutes from the centre of town. game developers, the money and the media. From it you can take the shortest airline Because Tallinn is small, you get the impres- journey between two capitals in the world: sion that everyone knows everyone else. The the twenty minute flight from Tallinn to delicious little mediaeval capital is more like Helsinki gives you just enough time to Copenhagen than St Petersburg. It is in fact unwrap a boiled sweet. From the port at much older than the Russian city, with a un- Tallinn ships ply all across the Baltic. In one equalled set of city records going back to the sense, Tallinn’s hinterland is not just the 14th century. Estonian countryside but a ring of cities – St Petersburg, Helsinki, Riga, Stockholm. Yet it It also has the most unfettered internet is small enough to walk round in an after- access, and the cleanest air, in the world. It noon. has 52 museums, 18 concert halls, 7 cinemas and a zoo. Public transport in None of this quite explains what makes Tallinn is free for residents. An orthodox the HeadRead Festival so successful. In church is dedicated to St Nicholas. So, too, part, I suspect it’s to do with the seasonal is one of the Lutheran churches. The thaw. Estonians hunker down like bears for Ukrainian Greek-Catholic church is dedica- the long winter, when temperatures drop to ted to The Mother of God with Three Hands. twenty below, and the days are unremittingly

Elm/Spring 2014 19

dark; but come Spring they are ready to chirrup like birds. Then comes HeadRead. It is a portent of Summer, when those who can will take off for the countryside. Other festivals around Europe may be bigger, or more focused on genre, but none do quite so much to showcase the work of writers from different traditions, by Kärt Kukkur) working in separate genres – or in none; writers from different backgrounds and countries, at different stages in their writing careers. It’s this mix that draws so many of the world’s leading writers to the HeadRead Jason Goodwin (Photo festival, and explains why authors as popular and diverse as Boris Akunin and Hargla and Selina Guinness, Vincent David Mitchell, Tom Stoppard and Jennifer Woods, Natasha Cooper, Marina Stepnova... Johnston, have all spent time at Head- From the moment guests arrive to the Read over recent years. The line-up is moment they leave, every event – every talk, always spectacular. Zinovy Zinik brought every interview – is a shared event. There is his unique brand of surreal penetration to a genuine camaraderie among the visitors, the stage, sharing a topsy turvy story of built out of their shared experiences at the mistaken identity and false memory. Rawi festival, out of the easy hospitality of their Hage discussed exile and taxi driving. Estonian hosts and publishers, and out of an Madeleine Thien bore witness to the appreciation of the mysterious alchemy that dislocation of Cambodia. Simon Sebag has assembled them all here, in Tallinn, at Montefiore talked about Stalin with the the beginning of summer. PM. Christopher MacLehose described his career as a publisher of international HeadRead puts everyone together, fiction and memoir. M.C. Beaton reduced weaving the conversation between the an audience to helpless laughter – and writers themselves, and between them and afterwards declared she had never met so their audience. The formal events punctuate many nice people in one place. Sofi a sequence of friendly receptions, parties Oksanen talked about recent history; xyz and dinners, and conversation continues in recalled the opposition movements of the the cafes, and in the lobbies. For many of us post-War world. The list goes on – Nabila it epitomizes what time spent with writers Sharma and Claus Ankersen, Indrek and readers ought to mean. So often at festivals a writer parachutes of World War II, and the Russian annexation in, delivers his or her thoughts, and then rolls led to what has been called ‘silent opposition’. aside to make way for the next event: this is It expressed itself in private as opposed to pub- E the production line model of a festival, the lic conversation, in the home language rather classroom model. Literary Fordism is an than the official language of the Soviet state. efficient way of promoting a book: title, name It expressed itself in listening, too. As the check, content. Add a signing session – and ‘Soviet west’, Estonia and the other Baltic the job’s done. republics were closest to the edge of the free But HeadRead is a lot more interesting, world. Half Estonia could pick up Finnish tv. for authors and their readers – it’s like a fantas- And when it came to listening to the signals tical weekend in a rambling country house, or from Moscow, Estonians were particularly a gathering of a Round Table. Needless to say attentive, poised to seize independence on the Tallinn has its fairytale aspects, too – its spires eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse. and city walls, its lower and upper town, the Since the 1990s, Estonia has developed cobbled streets, the promenade along the into a European state, normal, integrated, shore. Tallinn has an almost allegorical quality, facing the common variety of troubles and to those of us who come from cities more challenges; more than half the people of this sprawling and diffuse: where else would one young country weren’t born when Estonia find a playwright discussing freedom with a separated from the USSR. Estonians don’t president, or listen to a talk delivered to an speak with one voice, or address themselves audience sprinkled with ambassadors and to one issue. But the voice is important – the Cabinet Ministers? Here are writers, used to need to speak, so often suppressed, the describing our world, or distilling a common urge to self-expression, and freedom, and experience of it, in conversation with the people the telling of stories. Even as Europeans, who are shaping it. What that entails is a sha- language expresses who they are. ring of viewpoints, at the very least. History has something to do with it, too, Writers may be in a good position to appre- and the experience of language. Estonia, small ciate that experience, which echoes their own. as it is, exists through an identity expressed in Writers deal in language: it is what interests a common language and a shared history. them. They create, and record, many voices, Always in danger of being swamped by larger too – their own, the voices of others, voices of and more powerful neighbours – Tallinn itself the past and of the imagination. In Estonia, it was re-founded by Danes in the 13th century – feels language still matters: freighted with allu- Estonians maintained their identity through sions, accretions, rhymes and hidden echoes culture, song and verse. The power of the writ- of the shared past. And with it remains the ten word was long ago enshrined in the advent instinct to listen – to hear on their own terms of Protestantism, with its emphasis on written the voices from elsewhere. testament and the vernacular language. Where Last year, before the festival began, I The Book mattered, books may, too: by the had a chance to visit Hiiumaa, the second of late 19th century, almost every Estonian was Estonia’s bigger islands, ringed with literate. The world’s first farming newspaper, extraordinary lighthouses beaming out to Tartu Maarahva Nädalaleht, was an Estonian- sea. At night, in the silence on the edge of language publication begun in 1806. the Baltic, in that eerie crepuscular half-light Nonetheless this regional Finno-Ugric of the Estonian summer, I listened to an language was, at best, overlooked both by the astonishing sound I have rarely, if ever, German landholders and the Russian authori- heard before. A sound that has vanished ties, until in 1918 it provided the justification from much of Europe, where perhaps there for an independent Estonian republic. The are few people left to listen to it. It was the fragile state could not survive the power play singing of nightingales in the woods.

Elm/Spring 2014 Estonian culture and literature

The Estonian Institute has been introducing Estonian culture to the world since 1989. Besides the traditional fields of art and cultural exchange, we cover society and nature, and the environment more generally. The Institute has representation offices in Helsinki and Budapest.

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More information about Estonian literature can be found in the booklet The World of Estonian Literature, available in three languages. Estonian Art appears twice a year, and we have booklets on a number of other topics as well. Estonian society, history and nature is introduced at www.estonica.org

www.estinst.ee [email protected] fb.com/EstonianInstitute Meelis Friedenthal 22 The Bees Publishing house Varrak, Tallinn 2012

by Tiit Aleksejev

The protagonist of the novel The Bees is Laurentius Hylas, a Dutch scholar from

Leiden University. The plot unravels in the course of six days in 1696 in Livonia, mainly in Tartu. On a hill that is crumbling, according to a poet. In fact, all of Livonia is crumbling. Apocalyptic events are in store: a famine is getting worse, the Great

Northern War, plague, the destruction of Old Tartu, and the deportation of its inhabitants. In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction 2, says the prophet. He is right. Everything material surrounding Laurentius is destined to burn, get smashed or rot. The only way out is sublimation, finding your real home.

This is exactly what the story is about.

The Bees has two dimensions. One is on the fate of Livonia. As a result, the allegorical and alchemical. Here the author character of Laurentius Hylas acquires a displays his knowledge of philosophy, totally different meaning. theology and humoral medicine. All this can The allegorical dimension bubbles and be summarized by the term ‘spiritual foams like Doctor Faustus’s retort, but is science’. Laurentius’s observations are also kept under control to the end and provides connected with the state of his soul. the novel with depth. The author, a doctor of According to 17th century belief, the eye was theology, writes about things he knows very the mirror of the soul, and the Livonian well, where he feels completely at home. natural conditions probably influence the protagonist’s condition in a very direct On the other hand, The Bees is a genre- manner. Veering a bit towards mysticism, the pure historical novel, a plausible description main character’s evil eye and the black bile of a long-lost world. The historical aspect of fermenting in him may well have an impact the novel might not have been the author’s

Elm/Spring 2014 main aim – he may have preferred the is even more significant here than ‘time’. It allegorical dimension – but as the plot of The is possible to deceive the reader about your Bees is quite realistic, you cannot escape knowledge of the era, but not about your history. knowledge of the place. The historical and allegorical dimensions The Estonian poet Ivar Ivask wrote are constantly in dialogue and, as always, an about taking root and expanding, more excellent method in a text loaded with precisely about one’s home place and a symbols and meanings is to have the homely place which is not quite your own, melancholic protagonist quietly losing his but where you feel good. I, for example, mind. Or the snapping of whatever shackles enjoy Venice. I know that’s not that original, and harasses his mind, to choose a but this is how it is. I am thinking and description more faithful to the era. Swar- writing about Venice, and this brings the ming out of the beehive. lagoon, villas and canals closer with every line. The perspective changes, as happens Laurentius’s journey takes him through when you take a water-taxi into the city. 17th century Tartu streets and the lecture halls This kind of experience can be the same on of the Academia Gustaviana. He meets Rector the historical plane. Let us take 18th Below and other university lecturers, although century Venice, which I mostly know thanks his main effort is dedicated to the struggle with to the paintings of Canaletto and Guardi. I himself. Laurentius Hylas’s earthly body is in have stood in front of these paintings, fact a real alchemical battlefield, where a cons- examined them carefully, and allowed them tant defensive struggle rages. Laurentius is hel- to flow through me. I know what is depicted ped by everything sparkling, resplendent and in them better than some real landscapes. exhilarating. There is not much that is golden Better than some towns I have passed in 1696 Tartu. The colourful parrot Clodia, who through which have not had an impact on brings relief to the protagonist, does not last me. Unlike the Venice of Canaletto and more than one day in this barbaric forsaken Guardi. Which of these towns is in fact place, disappearing down the throat of a closer, that of the 18th century or the starving Estonian. The soul of the bird reap- contemporary town? What is real is what pears in the shape of a pretty girl, who has the matters to the viewer: this is an old truth. same name as the parrot. Clodia indeed res- cues Laurentius, through honey and bees, But these are relics, says the reader; which once again has its own hidden meaning. the creature has been dead for ages, This is all of the novel, and at the same time maybe for millennia. So? Death is part of nothing, because Friedenthal’s novel can be the story, maybe the most significant part. read through several types of glass, both At the moment when we begin the telling, sparkling and dark. I chose the kind through the story has mostly already ended. It is which we can observe the setting of the story then completed. Clarified. and reflect on the unity of place. Now about the setting of The Bees: The historical novel as a literary genre Tartu anno Domini 1696. This city has been should not provide the author with an extra lucky: the cloak of the Mother of God has advantage. All requirements for a prose text been hanging over it. The town was, still hold: the characters should be develo- however, blown up in 1708, leaving only the ped, the dialogue should be credible, and remains of bastions, a few bits of wall and the text must flow, from one pause to the chimneys, and the skeletons of churches. next. In addition, however, the author must The farmers in the neighbourhood arrived know the chosen environment and the era, and dug up the town like moles, hoping to he must feel at home there and, even more, find hidden treasures in the cellars. The he should want to feel at home there. ‘Place’ result was more or less total destruction. Meelis Friedenthal (Photo by Scanpix)

However, the heartwood or core strength. After the war, native Narva citizens remained and is still there. What makes were not allowed to return to their home Tartu so resistant to time? The peculiarity of town. Tartu citizens stayed on, and with its urban space? The river? The hill? them, the idea of the town. It seems the Cathedral? Bastions? Other towns have all unity of place is crucial here, as is not being of these too. A river circles Narva, with the disrupted, allowing the same group of people Alexander church towers in the centre and to carry on. even the bastions are still there. But the Maybe towns function like people: if heartwood of Narva is gone. Narva is like a memories survive, people survive. But tree with a hollow trunk. It’s true that 1944 memories are not necessarily true. We walk practically finished the town off, but not more through historical Tartu and imagine that we than the Russian troops did in Tartu in 1708. are in a Swedish-era settlement. But we are The way Narva was rebuilt after the war was not. The idea of Tartu is just as fictitious as a hideous crime. The landmarks in Narva, Meelis Friedenthal’s historical novel. As any which are associated with the urban picture, historical novel. It is just as difficult to evoke however, survived. Landmarks around which pre-Northern War Tartu as it is Akkon during urban noise gradually emerged again. Why the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Maybe even does one town change beyond recognition more difficult. Not a single authentic while another survives? Is there even an panoramic view of 17th century Tartu has answer to this question? survived. Nor, in fact, one from the 16th It seems that the key to a town is not in century; the best known panorama, which its buildings, but in its people and in dates from 1553, is actually a fantasy memories of the town, which people carry in originating from the 18th or 19th century. We themselves. In the idea of the town, in its do not have a single engraving depicting an

Elm/Spring 2014 urban view of 17th century Tartu. There is first-year students is taking place. Compared only a drawing of the location of houses in with the 19th century fraternity members, the Big Market. There are also a few detailed today’s members are mere choir boys. All urban descriptions (unlike Akkon). We do truly horrible c And only about twenty years have Erik Dahlberg’s geometric plan from later we can read about Bernard Kangro’s 1696. We have the configurations of 17th sunny Tartu, full of pretty girls in summer century fortifications, and an engraving dresses who all smell of violets. In the first depicting the siege of the town in June 1704. three books of Kangro’s cycle of novels, the However, these are not nearly enough to get town is resplendent, sunny and mysterious. a good overview of Tartu. We have no idea Just like Clodia. Later the tale becomes what the town looked like, and we will never dismal and tragic. Like Meelis Friedenthal’s. know. Every town is a spiritual state. Frieden- The historian Margus Laidre,3 who has thal’s Tartu is one of them. And Friedenthal’s produced a thorough monograph on story, and possibly the story of Tartu, swirls modern-period Tartu thinks that in the 18th around the soul. This is what the bees in the century the town may have resembled title actually mean. A hive of bees that Heidelberg, which also has a hill with a leaves and then returns. Or returns to some castle and a river. In any case, there were no other place. To some other time. wooden residential houses intra muros, as A historical novel must create a reality of Friedenthal’s novel suggests. All of the its own, just like any other type of novel, buildings within the town walls were of stone except this reality should relate to the past: for military reasons. The suburbs were some bridges or at least bridgeheads should wooden, and were burnt down during every emerge. Friedenthal has successfully single siege. created these connections and, although The stone town Tartu, with houses reading with the eye of a historian some squeezed tightly together c A thousand details in his Tartu descriptions can be miles from today’s town, full of green areas questioned, the reality of his novel as a left from World War II. For us, these are whole is credible. This is also true of his associated with the essence of Tartu, its entire Old Livonia. The protagonist’s journey idea. They have nothing to do with historical in a stagecoach is splendid, as is his walk by Tartu. Or perhaps they do now, after 70 the River Emaj?gi. Such episodes stick in years. Has it been long enough for the story your memory. It is quite possible that the to become clear? 17th century Tartu described by Friedenthal will play the same role for Estonian readers Reading The Bees I was reminded of as the 17th century Paris described by Siegfried von Vegesacki’s Baltic Tragedy, Alexandre Dumas. Historians have demo- which describes pre-World War I Tartu. Von lished that Paris. But readers remember. Vegesacki’s recollections and Laurentius’s impressions are amazingly similar. The Tartu Other Estonian writers, e.g Herbert Salu of the Baltic German is dark, bleak and and Mait Metsanurk, have of course written deserted. Members of fraternities race on about the famine in 1695–1697 and the fall sleighs along nocturnal streets and hurl wine of Tartu, but Friedenthal’s Tartu has an bottles against walls. The burghers are too immediacy that is missing elsewhere. One scared to appear in their windows c Black reason is the changed views of readers and ruins on Toome Hill, with crows cawing the writing technique as compared to books above them. The only light comes from the written a long time ago. However, this is not houses owned by the fraternities, where about the advantages of a more modern uncontrollable drinking and humiliation of the approach. Sometimes it is not an advantage at all, but a curse. When the author deals with the past, he can easily pick up the burden of others who have written about the same period or event. The Bees has no such burden: it is completely fresh. We now finally get to the real strengths of Friedenthal’s novel: background knowledge, skill in combining different perceptions and language usage. The first, which we briefly tackled at the beginning of this review, interests me the least. The author of a historical novel must know the ‘domesticated’ period; he must be able to navigate there, but it has to be perfectly natural. If the author starts showing off his knowledge, he will sacrifice his work. To the altar of history, as it were. But it is a poor sacrifice, because the result is not history and it is not literature either. I tend to think that there aren’t many people who seek knowledge in historical novels. There are other texts better for knowledge. Friedenthal has managed to avoid this hazard; his protagonist is a scholar for whom philosophy, theology, medicine and optics are the normal environment. Each character remains in his element. Now about perceptions. Here is where The Bees really gets interesting. Friedenthal successfully combines the visual, sounds and smells (stenches, to be precise). The sound track for every- thing is the splashing and dripping of water: it is raining most of the time, everything is seeping, soaked and leaking, and in that sense the atmosphere in The Bees resembles David Fincher’s film Seven. Only the crime is missing, although something sinister is always in the air. Something has gone awry and the whole country is spoilt. The result of the above-described is a multi-faceted percep- tion, which seems like a gust of foul-smelling air. After finishing the novel, a literary friend remarked: ‘when I was reading it I felt the smell of rot and it did not go away.’ The same happened to me. Still, The Bees is not a novel about jumping into filth. What makes the book fascinating is the protagonist’s progress through sordidness and squalor towards catharsis. The reader can expect an alchemical ending, changing elements; it would not do to explain here how all this happens. Some have complained that the grand finale of The Bees never arrives and that the boat full of symbols and allegories sinks before getting safely into harbour, but I disagree. The Bees does have a proper ending, although a bit out of the ordinary. The Bees is written in a beautiful and cultivated language. The text lives and flows and is hugely enjoyable. It is all natural. It is obvious that the text has been carefully composed, but there is no visible effort. This, of course, could mean that the novel required a lot of effort, but let this remain the author’s secret. Just like Laurentius Hylas’s real role and meaning in pre-destruction Tartu. Secrets must remain secrets: a sign of good literature.

Elm/Spring 2014 IvanovAndrei 27 and the anti-hero of our time

by Tarmo Jüristo

“For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.”

Theodor Adorno

When the Cultural Endowment of Estonia translation was there for everyone to buy announced its annual prize winners for 2011, and read, it was as if the book itself never a minor public row broke out in the Estonian existed. press over the peculiar absence of one This somewhat silly and embarrassing particular name among the nominees. The situation revealed many thorny questions writer in question was Andrei Ivanov, whose that had been lying dormant. Although new novel Peotäis põrmu (A Handful of Dust) Estonia has a substantial Russian-speaking had recently been published in Estonian, and minority from the days of the Soviet had been very well received by readers and occupation, this has been next to invisible critics alike. In previous years, Ivanov had on the literary scene. Only in the last couple gained renown by being nominated in 2010 of years has there been an emergence of as the best Russian language writer in Russian-sounding names on the book Estonia, and publishing a couple of novellas covers produced by Estonian publishing (in translation) to high critical acclaim. In houses, and with Ivanov establishing his addition, his novel ðÕÔeÛecÔ×Ée èaÎÕÍaÎa presence this issue had become impossible Îa ÌoÌÌaÎÄ (A Journey of Hanuman to to ignore. Lolland) had made it onto the short list of the Russian Booker Prize in 2011. However, with Ivanov himself has repeatedly expres- A Handful of Dust there was a peculiar sed his indifference towards the literature- problem that proved to be a nuisance: since it and culture-taxonomical confusions around was translated from the manuscript and his person and his work, saying that he “just never actually published in the original writes” in order to “unburden his heart”. On language, it did not fit into any of the existing the one hand, it would indeed be tempting categories of the annual literary prizes of the to ignore the whole theme and read Ivanov Cultural Endowment of Estonia. Although the as “just literature”, without paying attention

to his person or the temporal or spatial toward a minor literature”, trans. Dana contexts of his stories and novels. On the Polan, Univ. of Minnesota Press 1986, p. other hand, this kind of “innocent reading” 17.) Through this other story, the reader would be quite complicated for various sees a world that did not exist before, reasons. together with people who up to now were invisible, and in the centre the first-person Ivanov’s works that have been so far hero of Baltic-Russian extraction, “whose published in Estonian are all separate and collar is buttoned up and whose heart is autonomous texts, which nevertheless flowing over with contempt.” This world is unfold in the shared narrative world with futile and bleak, with leaden-grey skies, it relatively clear spatial and temporal boun- stinks and makes you vomit, it oppresses daries. The temporal frame begins in the and frustrates, and it is a world where the 1970s and extends to the present, although past has been lost and where children the focus is in one way or another on the remain unborn. The protagonist of Ashes rapidly changing 1990s and the relevant describes his own relationship with this world outcomes. Spatially, the action (or rather as follows: “I have been looking at the world inaction) of My Danish Uncle and A Journey with the eyes of someone who has risen of Hanuman to Lolland mainly takes place in from the fire and the ashes as a phoenix, Denmark; Ashes and A Handful of Dust having previously been dragged through mostly deal with Tallinn. Or rather a town copper pipes in the form of faeces. I have called Tallinn, which contains familiar places seen a world where I was hunted with dogs, and features, but is not quite the real Tallinn. lured with hookers and money, injected in Something is wrong here, not as it should lobbies and public toilets. A world where I be. This is especially evident in Ashes, have been shot at, nearly frozen to death, where houses in the street at the edge of the chased, beaten, betrayed that has tested my marshland in the Pääsküla area quietly slide resilience. A world that I did not invent, a down the slope, inch by inch. world that was not invented for me, a world Against this weird and dislocated world, where I am a stranger.” the central characters of his works also have Alienation and being an alien are central a common contour and, although Ivanov has themes for Ivanov, running through all his avoided specifically emphasising this unity, works. His protagonist is never at home there are too many interlinking motifs to go anywhere: he is an illegal immigrant in unnoticed. It is equally difficult not to notice Scandinavia, returning to his home town he similarities with Ivanov’s own biographical fails to recognise it: “everything has shifted, facts, something the writer has admitted as if some mischievous illusionists had himself: “autobiography is the ground upon put up carnival mirrors everywhere”. His which I establish the gardens of my fabrica- relationships fall apart, he feels estranged tions.” Ivanov’s short stories and novels are from old friends, and people in the street deeply personal, both in form and content. cast suspicious glances in his direction, As for identity, their first-person narrators ready to grab their mobile phones from their have also “fallen between two chairs”: a Andrei Ivanov (Photo by Scanpix) by (Photo Ivanov Andrei pockets and make calls where necessary. Russian man without citizenship, born in But he has no way out as “they have divided Tallinn, who left Estonia in the 1990s and up the entire world, nowhere to hide any spent years in Scandinavia, unable to settle more, firms everywhere, affiliated comp- anywhere. As a result, Ivanov’s work is pure anies, bureaucrats.” There are people littérature mineure, where the individual everywhere with their own incomprehensible theme becomes “all the more necessary, lives and things to do, and Ivanov’s prota- indispensable, magnified, because a whole gonist does not fit in. other story is vibrating within it.” („Kafka: Another motif linked with alienation is the current, trying to halt the world.” They suffering. “Suffering – this is the only reason desperately try to find any kind of foothold, for consciousness,” says Dostoyevsky in his which however keeps slipping away from novel Notes from Underground, a shadow of them. Their best intentions come to nothing, which runs through Ivanov’s entire oeuvre. their aspirations turn out to be pointless, and The protagonist of A Journey of Hanuman they are stuck in the same place, without and A Handful of Dust even suffers physi- getting anywhere. The ensuing hopeless- cally. He has headaches, ulcers and ness is not ennobling, and does not lead to gallstones, his feet rot in cheap Polish shoes the intellectual emancipation and the sense and he feels queasy. However, suffering also of absurd of novels by Sartre or Camus: this has a deeper, a Dostoyevskian dimension in is Bardamu’s anxiety in Céline’s novel Ivanov’s books. It is not just a symptom or a Journey to the End of the Night. reaction to the external environment: it is the In the foreword of A Hero of Our Time, above-mentioned essential disharmony and Lermontov says: alienation, which cannot be cured or eased. Nor can it be escaped or resisted - as this "A Hero of Our Time, my dear readers, is resistance itself would be a farce. This is indeed a portrait, but not of one man. It is a something that has been woven into the portrait built up of all our generation's vices texture of Ivanov’s world and which constitu- in full bloom You will say that the cause of tes the conceptial starting point of his texts. morality gains nothing by this book. I beg your pardon. People have been surfeited Ivanov’s internationally best known and with sweetmeats and their digestion has most acclaimed book, Hanuman’s Journey to been ruined: bitter medicines, sharp truths, Lolland, describes the adventures of two are therefore necessary.” deadbeats in Denmark – where something is always rotten – in what seems to be a Ivanov offers the reader precisely such picaresque novel. The title clearly refers to bitter medicines and sharp truths. The the Ramayana, an epic tale of a prince heroism of his first-person narrator is not in forced into exile and his years-long journey victories and achievements, but in defeat, with his faithful companion, the monkey king. personal desperation and misunderstanding. In Hindu mythology, Ra-ma is an “ideal He is destined, like Ahasverus, to wander person”, an avatar of the god Vishnu, who aimlessly without finding peace, although his has adopted the shape of a mortal in order suffering has nothing to do with anything he to demonstrate dharma, the right and might have done himself; there is no “guilt” virtuous life. The same question is faced except that he is what he is: a non-human, daily by the heroes of all Ivanov’s books: semi-fabricated product. He suffers for and how to remain human in the world out of joint instead of us, walking on his endless road which is anything but humane – a world that amidst everyday stifling stupidity. His guide denies his humanity, in a world that does not is Hanuman and his hell is other people. Like allow them humanity. Pechorin, his portrait – or rather his reflec- tion – shows the evils of our generation in The fundamental problem of Ivanov’s full bloom. heroes is aptly summed up by Theodor Adorno’s famous remark in the 18th In his work, Ivanov naturally talks about fragment of Minima moralia: “There is no something much wider and more general right life in the wrong one.” Just like Adorno, than the trials and tribulations of an illegal Ivanov understands the impossibility of immigrant in Denmark or about the Estonian moral life in today’s world. The characters of Russians’ problems in Tallinn. He is not his stories drift through life, “moving against moralising, does not point his finger or

Elm/Spring 2014 choose sides, but because of this his position from which the heroes books contain criticism that concerns us in Ivanov’s stories address us, all. In A Handful of Dust, Leonid has a and also a viewpoint he offers job in an international telemarketing us. His perception has been company, but it is just as empty and “torn by force from existence”, pointless as Potapov’s efforts in and there are many losses in Hanuman’s Journey to sell the rubbish the process. He has no comfort he has dragged home from a garbage zone, no tranquil bourgeois life, dump. Both struggle to live, but their which he can see many people lives are bleak and without purpose. living around him. His existen- They are like “crabs who crawl back- ce is steeped in a sense of wards into the future”, but they at least failure; there is nothing certain feel discomfort, they suffer. They are and secure there, and very alive the way how Scandinavians in their little that is pleasant, but this is safe and comfortable existance are not. exactly why we can see, through him, something we Despite its overwhelming pessimism cannot or would not see in and desolation, Ivanov’s narrative world ourselves. The kind of is nevertheless not irrevocably lost. This alienation, exclusion and is most evident in A Handful of Dust, rootlessness Ivanov describes where the final scene resounds with the is no longer only a problem of same unearthly calm as in the last words the Russians in Estonia, and it of The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, which is not a problem that only inspired the novel. Borrowing again from people in Estonia have to face. Adorno, we could say that Ivanov’s Ivanov is most certainly not novels are “the attempt to contemplate an easy and happy read. His all things as they would present texts are elegant and ironic, 31 themselves from the standpoint of they can occasionally even be redemption”: funny, but in the end they Adorno, Minima moralia: “Knowledge always leave a sense of has no light but that shed on the world bristling unease: they are “the by redemption all else is reconstruc- axe for the frozen sea inside tion, mere technique. Perspectives must us” (Kafka). In an interview, be fashioned that displace and estrange Andrei Ivanov noted that it did the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and not matter to him if he had crevices, as indigent and distorted as it many readers now, instead he will appear one day in the messianic wished to continue to have light. To gain such perspectives without readers for a long time to velleity or violence, entirely from felt come. Considering his work so contact with the objects – this alone is far, we can certainly say that the task of thought.” he deserves both. Such a perspective, according to Adorno, assumes a location that is a bit further away from the field of existence, This article was first published whereas every possible perception has in Vikerkaar in December 2013 to be “torn by force from that existen- ce .” This is precisely the unique EstonianShort Outlines of Books by

by Brita Melts, Rutt

Janika Kronberg and New York. Two writers are his companions Travels with Six Guides on two journeys each: Karl Ristikivi took (Rännud kuue teejuhiga) Kronberg first to Rome and then on a longer Tallinn: GoGroup, 2013. 248 p road trip to Greece and Italy. The most exotic ISBN 9789949941841 destinations were realised thanks to the colourful life of the diplomat, politician and writer Karl Ast Rumor. Kronberg followed his The literary and cultural-historical book Travels footsteps to Brazil and then to India and Sri with Six Guides is not an ordinary travelogue Lanka. that reflects the traveller’s subjective journeys and impressions. Janika Kronberg (b. 1963), The texts of the traveler with six guides a literary historian and the director of the thus always oscillate between two parallel Estonian Literary Museum, travels in an times: in the writer’s own time, i.e. today’s unusual way. On his journeys, he is primarily landscapes, and in the time established by a hunter, following in the footsteps of prominent the writers’ biographies and archives, Estonian writers abroad. This book contains capturing the inspiration experienced and eight journeys with six writers-guides. All of recorded by these six writers. However, this them are acclaimed classics of Estonian kind of parallel structure and creative culture, and mainly exiles. Friedebert Tuglas, blending of landscapes involve more than the founder of professional Estonian prose and literary journeys. The gaze of Kronberg as a literary criticism, travelled extensively during ‘hunter’ is broad and notices everything of his years in exile in 1905–1917 in Europe; interest. His descriptions therefore include Kronberg follows him through Spain. The the necessary information about the relevant founder of the Estonian historical novel, Eduard countries’ history, politics, geography and Vilde, sought material in 1904 among exiles in history of culture, along with imagological the Crimea, and Kronberg repeats the same notes, and hints at the writer’s own bio- journey one hundred years later. The poet Ivar graphy and personal fantasies, so that the Grünthal, who lived in exile in Sweden after book creates a sort of interdisciplinary World War II, went to America in 1963, and labyrinth. At the same time, the author has forty years later Kronberg meets the same skilfully avoided amassing eclectic facts. people in New York. He follows the poet Henrik Most of the travelogues that follow particular Visnapuu’s journeys through Germany, Austria narrative journeys are fascinating for several

Elm/Spring 2014 Authors

Hinrikus, Maret Vaher and Arno Oja

reasons. Firstly, the reader experiences thoroughly and with pleasure sinks into sensory perceptions: the enjoyment of smells, everything alien with all his senses. Being a sounds, memories and imagination diverges vagabond and an archivist adventurer, the into factual chains of association, as well as journeys in the book simultaneously take into invented forays. The book naturally also place in different times and spaces, and contains mappings of tastes on trips: more than even in literary works: besides his guides, once, the author emphasises the significance Kronberg occasionally teams up with of tasting local food, although he does not really characters from books! The landscapes he explain the tastes to the reader. Secondly, travels through thus become part of trying to be documentary while using historical literature, his creative work is supplemented material, Kronberg quite liberally sprinkles with factual reality, and this symbiosis fantasies into his travel notes and thus enriches the reader. approaches fiction. Poetic licence occasionally rules over reality, and this is intentional. The author of Travels with Six Guides Helen Kallaste Kogutud hetked Janika Kronberg (Photo by Scanpix) (Collected Moments) Tallinn: Verb, 2012. 78 pp ISBN: 978-9949-9281-6-3

Collected Moments is a collection of poetry distinguished by its masterful language and spicy word-play; it is witty and inventive, but also private and emotional to the core. However, its subjective, fragile and senti- mental world is entirely open, not closed in like private (confessional) poetry often tends to be. This is a terse book from a mature and skilful author, gathering the poems written during a relatively long period of time, mainly 2002-2008, and some later ones. For

33 Collected Moments, Helen Kallaste was images alternate with simple views of slums, given the 2013 Betti Alver award for a of an old woman on the street, of descrip- remarkable debut work, as well as an tions of everyday interiors and snapshots of alternative award, Siugjas Sulepea. This autumn in the town. There are also poems award is annually given to the best work of describing the author’s bus trip to Greece, the previous literary year that is in danger of and a simple, cute lullaby. Kallaste plays with going undeservedly unnoticed. But Helen routine details of everyday life, weaving Kallaste’s book of poetry could not remain them into phrases of exalted words, and with undeservedly unnoticed because, quoting womanly charms and faces, but at the same the jury of the debut award, the author has time, we get glimpses of colourful fantasies, systematically proved her ability (not folkloric motifs and even philosophical randomly and temporarily) to expand her questions and problems of identity: how can literary thoughts. Let us hope that she will one and the same body possibly contain a persevere. woman, a child, a mother, a common person, a person who is about to depart and Actually, Kallaste is no longer a fledgling “the thirst for revelations of a quiet mad- young author: she started publishing in the woman” late 1990s as a member of the literary group Tallinna Noored Tegijad. But her debut Kallaste has said that the reason why she collection came out more than a decade writes poetry is her need to interpret, contemp- later, and for a good reason: we only rarely late and experience events and emotions: see a debut work of such maturity that, at poetry is a means of clarifying one’s private the same time, displays the author’s path of world and putting it in order. This can also be trials and development. Kallaste’s associati- seen in Kallaste’s sensitive language and the ve and pure lyrics are often presented in the convincing tonality of her poems. The poet form of rhythmical texts, using alliteration knows, “Each of my stolen heartbeats/ beco- and end rhymes, thus being related to mes a chain of the truth, the act and the effect.” classical poetry. On some pages, the author The deeply private perspective of Kallaste’s also shows her mastery of free verse. poetry leads to emphatic generalisations about Kallaste brings together the traditional human errors, guilt, temptations, yearnings, features of Estonian women’s poetry, which passions and fears, which all spring from a started with Marie Under and Betti Alver: deeply experienced source. In poetic langua- youthful exhilaration and a deep thirst for life, ge, this is “the yearning to be human.” BM together with passionate bravado and playful lightness, which collide with philosophical intuition, memories, women’s worries and Eda Ahi seriousness, mysticism, and changing and Gravitatsioon noble feelings that range from love and (Gravitation) empathy to painful nightmares. The collec- Tallinn: Verb, 2013. 56 pp tion unleashes a truly complex lyrical world, ISBN 9789949947324 where we meet dancers and tightrope walkers, shapers of dreams, angels and As a contrast to the socially sensitive and ghosts, werewolves and soulful white self-centred and the free verse that has cranes. established itself as the mainstream of Here “the dreams become nightmares”, Estonian modern poetry and rarely strives “fever welters on pillows,/ a long-nailed for more than mere oscillation between self- fever, /the greedy one, my last lover”, and centred pain and vanity, a remarkable poetry the dreams leave behind visible welts and debut emerged a couple of years ago. It has “the net of memories, in tangles around her even been called an homage to classic feet/ catches her, sends her astray”. Such rhymed and rhythmical poetry. This talented

34 Elm/Spring 2014 newcomer is Eda Ahi (b. 1990), whose first and rhythms of Eda Ahi’s poetry is just “how collection of poems, Maskiball, won the Betti naturally she does all this, what dancing Alver award for best debut work. Critics have steps and turns and smiles full of plenty of said that by choosing the rhymed and meanings her texts contain.” Ahi creates rhythmical verse approach, Ahi has identified these steps and turns with her passionate herself with some different and far-away, choice of words, colourful images and cross- even outdated cultural space. However, Ahi cultural references. is, without doubt, a modern poet who pours Eda Ahi’s second collection of poems, the details and moments of present-day life Gravitatsioon, continues the elegant theme into the lively images of her fascinating of role play or mask play, introduced in her poetic language. Another poet, Jürgen first collection. The lyrical self that in her Rooste, has written that Ahi is not a social poems participates in masquerades with poet in the sense of daily politics, but she playful ease represents the darker sides of surely is a humane poet in the sense of the femme fatale. But one of the carrying “daily poetics”. Due to her gracious language forces found in Ahi’s poetry is the juxtapo- and good sense of form, Ahi deserves sing of opposites as equal temptations: comparison with the golden era of Estonian warm and irritating attitudes, and an poetry in the first decades of the 20th atmosphere that balances on the edge century, and especially with Estonian women between good and bad. She reaches out for poets, from Marie Under to Doris Kareva. both the edges and the core of the world, Kareva has remarked that what is remarkab- and thirsts for both good and evil. For le in the precise form and supple rhymes example, from the poem “To Faust”: “I do not wish to hope that I’ll recur/ behind your

Eda Ahi (Photo by Scanpix) glances. but I hope. // to realise the horror of your embraces/ I do not want to want. but I want.” Such quivering and continuous yearning for ambivalence preserves the grand balance between peacefulness and wisdom, and cleverness and sentimental playfulness. The lyrical self is slightly arrogant and haughty, undoubtedly wilful, charmingly feminine and extremely self-confident; she can find nourishing vitality and the truth and power of life in the otherwise watery “sea of life”, thus defying “eternal longing” and fate. Here and there, Ahi associates fateful moments with characters known from Russian literary classics and conveys dramatic tension through generalised images that are above the private and personal. Ahi has completed her study of Italian language and culture, and her master’s programme focuses on European Union–Russian studies. As a result, she can bring a natural-looking international dimen- sion to her poetry, using Russian literary classics, but also classical and romantic literature, with allusions to Mediterranean

Ene Mihkelson 36 cultures. This again displays a yearning for opposites: on the one hand, the poet firmly holds to Estonian classics of poetry and the signs that shape the Estonian frame of mind but, on the other hand, she states: “but in my veins, instead, there is stirring / the sheer Mediterranean Sea.” In such a way, Ahi creates a visionary mixture of several different cultures and eras, where an important role is played by strong sensuality (tastes, smells, sounds, Mehis Heinsaar (Photo by Scanpix) emotions and bodily pleasures), leading to a lyrical synthesis that supports the classic given a prestigious literary award even features of her poetry. Hers is a far-reaching before he had published his first book. and vital poetry; as a creator, she knows her Heinsaar has published six books of prose limits and opportunities, she boldly answers and a collection of poetry and he is mostly the challenges and she makes her choices appreciated as a master of the genre of with wise persistence, knowing that “we are short stories, having been showered with still so terrifyingly young./ our options have recognition and given several literary not yet been closed./ but in all taverns, roads awards. and rooms/ which at present do not seem to be interconnected,/ we already are on our Heinsaar has been characterised as a way to history.” BM writer who traces the rhythm of being: his characters move in a dream-like way, sometimes coming to a point and achieving something, but in other cases only aimlessly Mehis Heinsaar wandering in the rhythm of being. The main Ülikond idea of his stories is the discovery and (A Suit) sharing of a variety of matters and moments Tallinn: Menu Kirjastus, 2013. 160 pp of the world, conveyed in a supple and ISBN 978-9949-495-73-3 poetic style. His language creates sensatio- nal experiences, his choice of adjectives is more than creative, and his sentences Mehis Heinsaar (b. 1973) is one of the most support and carry on the same cosy and original figures in modern Estonian literature: magical atmosphere that is found in his he is a bohemian who has illegally occupied plots. the flats he has been residing in, he communicates with people in semi-mystical The collection of short stories Ülikond art-related salons, he roams as a vagabond contains 14 stories, written in 2003-2013, through dusky streets or escapes to thick which are of entirely different tonality than forests in northern Latvia to walk around as his previous book Ebatavaline ja ähvardav a solitary hiker, and he sits in cafés and, in loodus (The Weird and Scary Nature) an old-fashioned way, uses a pencil to write (2010), where, compared with the rest of in his notebook. All in all, he gives off the Heinsaar’s works, the author seemed to aura of a pure type of writer in the classical have got lost in a gruesomely grotesque sense. He is a cult writer whose works were thicket of the erotic, entirely alien to the discussed at a special literary conference Heinsaar we are accustomed to. A Suit, when he was only 35 years old, and he was however, shows the characteristics of the Heinsaar long established in our literary (Deep in the Dimness of Life) (2009), which canon: these are stories of dusk and twilight, expresses loneliness, fear, pain, angst and where the characters are carried by a fairy- human suffering. Still, the magical worlds of tale-like breath and landscapes, and magical this collection of stories not only contain interiors are described in great detail and darkness, but also offer us mischievous clarity. Heinsaar has stated that the inspira- adventures and even some tips on how to tion and impulse behind his stories usually outwit Old Age. BM stem from very definite geographical locations: his short stories are always Kaja Kann geographically very specifically grounded, Eratee but time in these stories departs from reality (The Private Road) and vaguely floats, or has even stopped. Hea Lugu.Tallinn 2013. 95 pp. The fictional worlds of Heinsaar’s stories ISBN: 9789949489916 vibrate between the realistic and fantastic; everyday life is inseparable from the Quite a large number of original books are fabulous, magical realism and surrealism. published each year in Estonia to which the But compared with Heinsaar’s earlier works, critics usually pay absolutely no attention. the fantastic element has been greatly Often these books are authored by women. reduced and now his stories are primarily Mostly, women write about relationships and existential. In the best cases, existentialism about fictional colourful lives. In general, is expressed by the overcoming of angst and these books are quite popular among the mental barriers in emotional or spiritual life, public. The number of books containing life and not all of his stories, despite their stories and memoirs is even larger. Such fabulous nature, have happy endings. His works are even more widely read, especially stories can be quite dark and pessimistic, when written by some local celebrity. illustrated by this passage: “There will still come a time when you suddenly discover Kaja Kann’s (b. 1973) book does not that your best friends have betrayed you, belong to any of these groups, but it can still your wife has a lover, your organism has be called a life story. If we search for page been penetrated by an unknown virus that numbers in the book, we see that there are looks like it’s going to cause long-time, none. Time seems to be missing, and the unpleasant and tiring after-effects, your work same days, evenings and mornings are proves to be a disappointment to you and endlessly repeated. The pages are filled with you will never achieve the things that you the same chores and events. We can open were once hoping for and looking forward to. the book at any page, and it is always the There will come a time when all the wide and right place, just as a random meeting can inviting roads that were in front of you prove take place at any time. Somebody is talking to be dead ends, so that one day you find and you may listen or not listen. The yourself scowling at the world like a woun- moment the voice penetrates your cons- ded animal, surrounded by lies and only able ciousness and you start listening to it is the to grind your teeth in powerless rage and very beginning. sadness.” Eratee seems to be searching for an Ülikond, with its “hours of dreaming”, answer to the question of whether real life, a depression, internal and surrounding common routine happening right now, darkness and torturing memories, is in a contains the qualities of dullness or sublimity. strange kind of accord with Heinsaar’s only Will everyday chores take us nearer to collection of poetry, Sügaval elu hämaras permanent values or are they simply a waste of time? Eratee does not directly reflect on nightmarish than others. Usually, they have these questions. On the contrary, the author more to say and more events to describe. How- is a carefully impartial and matter-of-fact ever, Kaja Kann’s book is a healthy and re- describer of things and events. She seems freshing read, it is consistent and polished in to believe that she has found the right path. its own way, and its minimalism seems to hold But the reader may ask: for how long? The a secret. The author says on the back cover book is presented as a diary of a woman. of her book that she decided to create only This woman has had connections with permanent values. She went to live in the theatre: she was a performance artist. country. She writes about this private road that However, she reminisces very little about connects her to the world. Each night she takes that life: she started her diary when she a photo through her window: this is her view moved to the country, and she records her of the world. The book provides a frame for everyday life. The table of contents lists: this view. RH Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Daily routine. The author first writes down a description Kaja Kann of how she fills the potholes in the road to her Eratee house with stones. She tells us that when she (Private Road) bought the house six years ago, she had no idea that the road would cause so much Kaja Kann and OÜ Hea Lugu 2013 trouble. She talks about finding a man as laco- nically as about finding the house. The past A woman who has moved from the city to the can be guessed at, but the narrator does not country spends a year, from spring to spring, elaborate on it; she only describes her days mainly in the company of her rural retreat, her and activities. The man is in Finland, and the diary and herself. Other people come and go woman is in Pardimäe, Estonia. There are re- swiftly, as in a kaleidoscope. They leave a petitive activities: drinking coffee, heating the bright but fleeting impression in the rural soli- sauna, repairing the road, gardening, some tude. Friends and family visit and leave again, practical conversations with neighbours etc. leaving a trace of themselves more as voices The woman only rarely talks about her own on the phone, as they live in town or abroad, life, and treats the people in her life as passers- in a word elsewhere. The mistress of Pardi- by. “When I was renting this flat in the town mäe, however, has come to stay. She planned with my daughter, I did nothing to make it better to live with someone, but the book depicts her for the future. This flat did not feel like my own life alone. The woman is thoroughly fed up with place.” Now, she is creating her own place. the fashionable term “value added”, but there The text is laconic, without any embellishment are no added values in Pardimäe: here you or deep philosophical undertones, nothing need to deal with permanent values. showy. Everything is plainly described: no What then is the heroine of the book metaphors, no symbols. Is it fiction at all? In doing, and what kind of permanent values is order to answer this question, we need to ask she creating? As with other characters in the another one: does the reader read it as notes book, everything is only hinted at, leaving from reality, the story of a woman, without readers the joy of deciding for themselves questioning its trueness to life? what the author has left between the lines: it All right, but why should we read it? There is not easy to guess what these permanent are other writers in Estonian literature who write values could be. Her days are filled with repetitively about the same dull daily routine. wine-drinking, gathering firewood, smoking, Some of them are more poetic, or more heating the sauna, cooking, rescuing 38

Elm/Spring 2014 preserves from the flooded cellar, knitting a daughter is impatient to get as far away from jumper, mowing the lawn, shovelling snow, home as possible, her mother and father but not a word about permanent values. seem to be keeping away from each other Maybe all these little jobs so necessary for and the rest of the family, and there is a country life have in fact become permanent husband from somewhere in Finland who values? has returned there. The rural house was People who spend a lot of time writing bought for him, but he disappears before the reports and filling in application forms are not reader can learn anything about him. Most of really interested in anyone creating perma- the time the man exists outside the book. It nent values, although this might be true only turns out that he will not be coming back in the imagination of the diarist. The former until the end of the book, but the fact that the urban dweller living a rural life has cut rural retreat will be the home of one person herself off from her previous friends, but the instead of a happy couple is vaguely evident cut-off cannot be final. Toiling in the vegetab- even in the first pages. Solitude is something le garden has lost the aura of the olden that is dominant over complicated relations days: growing your own food is no longer the and seems inseparable from Pardimäe. only way to stay alive, and income can be At the same time, the house is a place to earned in other ways. observe the world, as the narrator claims. In the course of reading The Private Solitude is not the same as tormenting Road, there is a growing impression that the spiritual emptiness, as time and her soul are text primarily concentrates on the heroine’s filled with nature. The protagonist’s life in the complicated relationships, although she country is devoted to plants and animals. A keeps describing her solitary existence with cat with kittens joins her at the beginning of ceaseless energy. The book is inundated spring, thus confirming the protagonist’s with relationships or their fragments. The conviction that home is here, and it is not sisters live their own lives, the grown-up easy to give it up. Kaja Kann (Photo by Scanpix) The annual cycle of the narrator’s life Andrus Kivirähk passes without a sequence of dramatic Maailma otsas. Pildikesi events, and her days are filled with mundane heade inimeste elust work. Nothing special happens on most (At the End of the World. Scenes from the days, but this book is indeed about some- Lives of Good People) thing else: something that has lasted and Eesti Keele Sihtasutus.Tallinn. 2013. 390 pp. should continue in the future.

Besides the text, there are also photo- Andrus Kivirähk (b.1970) is the most produc- graphs, taken daily of the same place: the tive and most popular contemporary author in garden, neighbouring houses in the distance Estonian literature. He tops the best-seller lists, and the changing seasons. This is an but has also harvested more literary prizes and ordinary view from an ordinary house, easily awards than any other author. He may not be confused with many other views across the number one author for the whole Estonian Estonia. There are hardly any people about; population, but he at least places in the top someone occasionally glimpsed disappears ten. He has written in all genres except poetry, in the next photograph. Only Pardimäe is the or at least he has not published poetry. Kivirähk same, although nothing much is seen of the debuted in the mid-1990s and he has, in two house either. Even the road beyond the gate decades, published more than thirty books. He is not visible. This is a private road – for only is an extraordinarily skilled and enjoyable one person, not others – and thus it cannot narrator, and he uses natural and colloquial be revealed. language and plenty of direct speech: his heroes are often characterised by their speech. One day, however, this gate could lead The garrulous characters talk incessantly, back to the wider world outside. However, without listening to or understanding others. first it is necessary to wait and see. The Thus, their speech at times consists only of protagonist waits for the spring water to unrelated monologues. disappear from her cellar. Her mother reminds her that not everything depends on Kivirähk always writes about the same her daughter. This proves to be true enough: subject: average Estonians with their endless the next spring the water disappears from prejudices, common beliefs and patterns of be- the cellar in a week. Other problems might haviour, their deep distrust and general caution get solved when people realise that a single in dealing with the world. Book by book, he person cannot always control the world, has built a small world, taking only rare excur- nature does not depend on people, and sions to other areas and among other types of people cannot influence the decisions of characters, such as actors (Liblikas and Vol- others. Sometimes you have to just watch demar) and children (Lotte). Some of his books almost everyone near and dear leave. use more extravagant material and more noti- Country people go to town, and townspeople ceable colours (Rehepapp and Ussisõnad). His go abroad. tumbling and fantastic world is funny and posi- tive, and most of his characters are sure that Someone, however, needs to stay in the life is fine. The darker side of life, the despair country. Not everyone can live this type of that settles into the core of being, does not life: each person must make his own become tragic or elevated in Kivirähk’s treat- decisions, as you can exist only by making ment, but rather becomes more or less gro- your own decisions. Maybe one of the tesque. The grotesque is Kivirähk’s natural permanent values that can only be created element; his grotesque is not horrible, dark or in Pardimäe is understanding your own cruel, but usually funny. His world looks like wishes and following them. All of us may ours, but it is slightly different, and inhabited have our own Pardimäes. MV by a species slightly different than us. We are

Elm/Spring 2014 shown their fussy and bustling (and sometimes cannot know whether somebody is going to incomprehensible and puzzling) everyday life. give them the signal for action. And if such an We truly believe that we are not like that. opportunity turns up at the end of the world, we can only hope that we have correctly Maailma otsas is a book about “small understood the point. RH people”. We meet a whole gallery of characters whom we may even have met in real life: the mother Malle with her various phobias, her middle-aged son Eevald, whom Robert Kurvitz she bosses around in various ways, and Püha ja õudne lõhn many others. These people are connected (Holy and Horrible Smell) by the old wooden house where they all Tallinn: ZA/UM, 2013. 240 pp reside, and by different small activities that ISBN 9789949330638 fill their days and sometimes give rise to hopes or dreams, which need to be control- led with the help of the bottle. People meet “Charlottesjäl. This holiday resort near Vaasa and drift apart, they have common friends swallowed the four Lund girls. Together with and acquaintances, and everything has their small bones and skin showing bikini already happened and is constantly borders, a whole era vanished.” These repeated. sentences open the debut novel Püha ja õudne lõhn of the musician and scriptwriter One of the characters who plays a more Robert Kurvitz (b. 1984), a member of the central role, Ülo, owns a bar called Opos- group ZA/UM, which draws together writers, sum, which offers only one course of food, artists and photographers. On the title page, which varies from day to day. The people the book is described as a prologue to a who visit the bar and whose paths cross cycle of novels. It seems to be a film-like there are also one-course-per-day-people. thriller, constructed in episodes and taking They are not pretentious and only rarely do huge leaps in space and time; as a result, it some of them wish for something unex- is probably quite hard to make sense of it. pected, such as a trip to the end of the However, despite its fragmentation and the world. But maybe they all already are at the avoidance of linearity, the novel has end of the world and they should try to find managed unusually seamlessly to merge out how to escape from this end, where time and space. The author has called his Madam Aino summarises her cultural thirst book a kind of “geopolitical dream” that is not each time after having bathed her dog: “I like exactly magical realism or fantasy, but it when everything is done in a cultured way.” something in between. In simple words, the This and several other chapters of the book book is a monumental fusion of the realistic can be treated as independent short stories. and the fantastic. Püha ja õudne lõhn (The jury of the Friedebert Tuglas short story stormily mixes together the features of award should pay close attention to them.) several different literary genres, including The story about Malle and Kalju’s visit to the elements of crime fiction, science fiction, graveyard and their talk about the screen geopolitical dreams, futurist temptations, version of The Lord of the Rings particularly psychological rummaging, psychedelic resembles a short story. experiments and realist motifs between the same covers. Kalju is presented as nothing more than a very friendly simple-minded chap. But we need The thoroughly jumbled plot of the narrative to be careful: Kivirähk’s text is no innocent and has, in a laconic and seemingly simplistic way, straightforward description. When he tells us been summarised on the back cover of the that such friendly chaps are very obedient, we book: “On the last day but one of the summer holiday, the four daughters of Minister of Edu- does not dominate the other. Kurvitz has cation Ann-Margret Lund go missing on a pub- admitted that, as a musician, he has haunted lic beach. A newly consecrated cruise ship his public with a “wall of guitar sounds and goes missing on her virgin cruise with a thou- crazy ambition”. A similar desire to haunt can sand and five hundred passengers on board. be found in his book, and the result is Three classmates of the girls have not given aesthetically enjoyable. BM up the investigation of their disappearance even twenty years later. The world is falling into ruins, but the hope of finding the Lund girls is still not yet lost.” The book is about the search Ülo Mattheus for the girls who went missing without a trace Tema salajane palve a couple of decades before (every now and (His Secret Prayer) then, new bits of information emerge about this Tallinn: Tuum, 2013. 208 pp mysterious case); each new episode is accom- ISBN 9789949948246 panied by the horrible and inevitable forebo- ding of the end of the world: not only people and vehicles go missing, but somewhere, even The prose author and journalist Ülo Mattheus a landmass loses one sixth of its total area. (b. 1956) has published his works with long One of the sentences often repeated in the intervals between them: Tema salajane palve book is: “The whole world is a zone of imme- is only his seventh book of fiction published diate enthroponetic catastrophe.” To render all during his more than thirty-year-long literary this, the author has inserted crazy fantasies career. He debuted in the 1980s with intellec- between quite realistic details. With a sugges- tual Borgesian short stories inhabited by tive and dynamic style and rich language, the strange characters; they are full of mysticism author constructs a complex and strange, but and resemble true myths by bringing out the enjoyably active alternate world, where ten- irrational in human life. He has continued these sions are stretched over endless gaps and epi- themes in his novels, where the often unspeci- sodic pieces of the story end up with uncertain fied milieu is full of Buddhist feeling. Mattheus solutions, because nothing is ultimately solved. is able to create atmospheres where the real Perhaps this is an intentional aim of the “pro- and the imaginary, the temporal and the eternal logue”: “Sometimes, the solved disappearance are mixed to such an extent that if differentia- is the saddest one.” ting between them is not downright impossible, it is at least totally unnecessary. Readers may be at a loss when facing the crazy plot and flaming style of the novel. The plot of Tema salajane palve moves in Critics are divided as to whether it is a very an intermediate region between reality and the good or a very bad book. But Kurvitz has imaginary, where both space and time have constructed a truly convincing alternative been fragmented: the present, past and future world, adding sensual ecstasies to its can all appear in the same space, and in the already actively humming space-time: in daily life of the same protagonist. This novel describing different bouquets of smells and of philosophical and mythical texture has been tastes, pleasures and enchantments, divided into two parts: the first part is set mainly extreme passions and physically experien- in present-day Estonia, and the second part ced magic, the author releases his words in develops mostly in the dream-like silence of an intense and baroque flow. Püha ja õudne the Himalayan slopes. The characters are able lõhn is a novel of a new generation. Its plot and form are almost over-designed, but one 42

Elm/Spring 2014 to travel geographical distances, but also cross 1) time is in one moment, 2) time is not real, between the worlds of the living and the dead: but imaginary, 3) time is change, and 4) time the boundaries between life and death are comes to an end. This develops into the hazy. The opening sentences of the book warn realisation that a moment, frozen in the air, the readers that different lines of life and time can contain the whole world and all of life. are mixed up: “The living intermingle with the The novel ends when a man in monk’s dead, time and memories are mixed into an robes, reading mantras by the bed where the inseparable bundle, continuously creating new comatose woman is lying, suddenly realises links and connections.” Memories of the past that “ he knows that time will come to its and the future appear simultaneously. The plot end; it is just as long as you perceive it to be. is surrounded by a thick ring of irrationality, but A second can be as long as an eternity if you such uncertainty between two worlds can hide sense it that way, and all of life can be only some unexplainable clarity or even emotional one second long if you look back at it at the lucidity. The characters are strange, even moment of departure.” supernatural figures, and they are characte- When enchantment, love, the despair of ristic of Mattheus’s works: shamans, Tibetan loneliness, Nordic crispness, existential sorcerers and demons. The most remarkable questions, the philosophy of time, Tibetan among them is the Tibetan sorcerer, active all beliefs, the bleakness of life and luxurious through the book, who “has just exited from passion are presented all together in a single his body and now roams everywhere, in the vortex, this can only result in a strangely real world and dream world, in the earthly world impressive and unique book that will make and heavenly world, in his real body and in his its readers reflect on life and death, time and spiritual body”. His appearance is announced eternity, feelings and values of life, and their by a repulsive odour, he continually mutters fragile and transient boundaries. BM mysterious prayers and he thinks that the protagonist is an incarnated lama. The protagonist of the book, a journalist, falls in love with a woman who has slipped Maarja Kangro into a coma after a traffic accident; in his imagination, he enjoys pleasures during his search for a path to spiritual perfection. His journey embodies sightings of miraculous things and events, and he tries to capture

the exaltation of being that would give Ülo Mattheus (Photo by Scanpix) meaning to his life. Similarly to Mattheus’s earlier books, Tema salajane palve is also carried by a strongly Buddhist world-view; the Buddhist philosophy is presented in a sophisticated way, having an almost wordless effect on the readers and avoiding domination or lecturing. The philosophy of time is a unique feature of the novel. Reflections on the meaning and the subjective perception of time develop into the framework for the whole book, presen- ting four definitions of time in four chapters: Dantelik auk with the “beautiful glowing blood of oranges” (Dante-like Hole) (Klaasnuudlid, Glass Noodles, p.93) when Ed. by Kajar Pruul, Ill. by Kirke Kangro somewhere in a writer’s residence we see Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, Tallinn, 2012. 142 pp the mushy remains of somebody’s over- salted dinner in a rubbish bin. “It was delicious” mutter all the proper and well- In this book, Maarja Kangro (hereafter MK) mannered members of the party (p. 85). shows herself to be a European to the core, These are the same people who think that without giving up her national identity: the fact that the Nobel Prize was given to starting with the opening page of the book, Herta Müller (a woman writer) was simply the text is full of foreign loan words and uzhas (a horror, in Russian). foreign-language (Italian, German and English) expressions. She tells us about the We should note that the angel of hell perfective aspect of the verb, in passing who had slipped into the world from the mixing it with parallel realities and entropy. “Dante-like hole” was not any old angel but Within the limits of imagination, everything is the fallen archangel Lucifer, banished from ‘incrustable’, ‘opaque’ and ‘transcendent’! heaven. It is clear that it’s Lucifer, because who else would know that God, when The plots of this collection of short looking at his creation, “ultimately pities the stories are carried mainly by female poor himself” (p. 69) and that “the unmentio- narrators, denoted simply by I, S. or Z. The nable name of God could well be a BS main tonality of the stories is established in name” (p. 2)? On page 10, the ex-archangel the title story of the book, where the first- gives an almost imperceptible hint that this is person narrator, accompanied by the eco- already his seventh visit to the earth. And orange boy Marco, whom we can see on any since this, MK’s second, book of prose supermarket counter, travels in the land of contains just seven stories (written in 2011- geysers, Iceland. They arrive at a boiling 2012), we can conclude that Lucifer is pool that oozes sulphuric vapours; one of the present in all of them. travellers believes that this is the historical “Dante-like hole”, but the other one thinks In the middle of a peeled orange, the that this is only “a small hell-hole, stinking of Prince of Hell discovers the post-socialist (or rotten eggs” (p. 8), from which shines out the post-colonialist) Eastern Europe, where destructive glow of the “sun of black rays” everything is almost the same, whether in (the Rumanian Emile Cioran). Slovenia, Estonia or Belarus. Although people feel love even in these places and The rays of the sun in the sky, however, women “want to go crazy for somebody and take on an ever brighter orange hue. That is tell them lusty nonsense” (p. 29), their men because an angel from an invisible hell has tend to be “impassive jerks” who are all full meanwhile slipped out of the hole. It of the “postajannaja [my italic – A.O.] s***” of penetrates and inhabits the narrator’s body the near past (p. 31). This, in turn, explains and also peels the orange. I am sure that the MK’s verbal invention “intelligiibel”. This is a “opaque and transcendent” Marco has Russian-language compound word (ÉÎÔeÌØ nothing much against this. We are not going = intelligentsia (a derogatory general term); to meet him again, but throughout the rest of ÇÉ6eÌØ = doom, destruction), clearly the book, the orange sun is shining in the indicating the doom or destruction of the sky and all of the pages are full of the smell intelligentsia, or a dead intellectual. (even if synthetic), segments of oranges and pieces of orange peel. Even the images on The north-gazing, short-tempered “Dane the cover of the book are similar to reddish of the South” (danese = Dane in Italian) slices of oranges. We meet for the last time Giulio Danesi tries to see Lithuania, which

Elm/Spring 2014 has barely escaped “the decline of the French thinkers: “hommage au West”, as Mitteleuropa and almost as Jacques Lacan et Hélène Cixous.” Germany (“Giulio ja Leedu küsimus”, “Giulio In Estonia, the literary world is and the Problem of Lithuania”), but he still mostly led by men, and some- himself exhibits a serious “intelligiibel” times this may take quite a strange tendency. For him, Königsberg is a Lithua- form. In the story Zürii (Jury), a group nian city and Immanuel Kant’s native of functionaries, assumed to be language was Lithuanian. For such a connected with a literary competition, sacrilege, he is punished by the Old Man of arrive at an author’s home. They Lake Ülemiste, who sends him an allergy- start a quarrel, steal things and beat inducing virus, which causes an upper up the owner. Although another (the respiratory infection. true?) jury allegedly exists some- We can see that there is a book inside where, the main prize of the competi- the book: between MK’s texts, her sister and tion is given to Paul Kass, the man artist Kirke Kangro has inserted her own who was beat up by the ‘jury’. book of drawings, whose pictorial messages In the closing story of the book, help to interpret the messages of the texts. Saluut (Salute), the male writer On page 97, just before the story Chick lit ja Rebane goes to a village library to tõlkekristused (Chick Lit and Translation meet his readers. On his way there, Christs), there is a full-body portrait of MK. having just been given a speeding Actually, she is this very “translation, ticket, he suddenly notices strange publication and reading Christ” (p. 103), fireworks (which may actually be the three-in-one. signal fires of hell, lit by Lucifer, who This same story develops a new type of was temporarily residing in the library Silvergate between the author (or the female girl Helen and who is now preparing writer Z, similar to the author) and one of her to leave the earth, and intends that ex-lovers. Namely, the critic Silver voices his only Rebane see this). But Rebane is opinion at the presentation of Z’s new book unable to see a symbol in the that all women’s writing is actually chick lit, ‘salute’. At his destination, his only striving to become best-sellers. The term is listener dies on the spot and Rebane used in English in the text, denoting feels strongly out of place. He could something like ‘enlightened chick lit’, whose be the driver of the hearse, but the ideal would be the well-known TV serial Sex angels of hell do not need such and the City. As far as MK goes, she is services. Lucifer leaves Helen behind definitely a writer and an enlightened and slips back into the Dante-like woman, but by no means a chick or the hole. Until the next time. author of chick lit. In conclusion, I should say that This untranslated English phrase chick lit MK’s short stories do not follow the could in this context well be coupled with the classical form of the genre, but they French-language word jouissance (here, a definitely are short stories, and they woman’s joy and pleasure, often with a are interesting and sometimes even sexual undertone). Adding here a healthy impish pieces of literature. AO dose of the salt of poststructuralist feminism, we can see that a couple’s serving of food that is delivered to a single woman in the story Homaarid kahele (Lobster for Two) actually symbolises homage to two great 45 2013 Estonian Literature

Bulgarian Liiv, Juhan Malin, Jaan Snow Drifts, I Sing Heräämisiin. Valikoima Jaan Aleksejev, Tiit Lumi tuiskab, mina laulan Malinin ja Luulurin runoja ðoËÌoÎÎÉÞecÔ×oÔo Harvey Lee Hix, Jüri Talvet Luulet Palveränd Guernica, 2013 Hannu Oittinen Dora Janeva-Mednikarova pp. 108 ntamo, 2013 Avangard Print, 2013 pp. 68 pp. 353 Mathura Currant Beads Raud, Mihkel Traat, Mats Sõstrahelmed Rapa roiskuu çÒaÄÉÎaÔa Îa ÕÞÉÔeÌÑ Ilmar Lehtpere, Sadie Murphy Musta pori näkku Pommeri aed Allikaäärne, 2013 Hannu Oittinen Dora Janeva-Mednikarova pp. 72 Like Kustannus Oy, 2013 Avangard Print, 2013 pp. 300 pp. 230 A.H. Tammsaare Finnish Kotiinpaluu Tõde ja õigus V English 8+8: Estonian and Finnish Juhani Salokannel Poetry Otava, 2013 Ehin, Kristiina Claes Anderson, Esa Hirvonen, pp. 634 1001 Winters – 1001 talve Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen, Aapo Ilmar Lehtpere Ilves, Mihkel Kaevats, Kätlin The Bitter Oleander Press, 2013 Kaldmaa, Doris Kareva, Riina pp. 264 Katajavuori, Kalju Kruusa, Juha French Kulmala, Kalle Niinikangas, Eeva Ehin, Kristiina Park, Susanne Ringell, Jürgen Hargla, Indrek In a Single Breath Rooste, Triin Soomets, Katariina L'énigme de Saint-Olav Ühe hingetõmbega Vuorinen Apteeker Melchior ja Oleviste Ilmar Lehtpere NyNorden, 2013 mõistatus Cross-Cultural Communications, pp. 219 Jean Pascal Ollivry 2013 Gaia Editions, 2013 pp. 52 Aleksejev, Tiit pp. 635 Pyhiinvaellus Best European Fiction 2014, Palveränd Kivirähk, Andrus anthology Hannu Oittinen L'homme qui savait la langue des Emil Tode Sammakko, 2013 serpents Adam Cullen pp. 368 Mees, kes teadis ussisõnu Dalkey Archive Press, 2013 Jean-Pierre Minaudier pp. 420 Hargla, Indrek Attila, 2013 Apteekkari Melchior ja pp. 440 Contemporary Estonian Poetry: pyövelin tytär A Baltic Anthology. Book Three Apteeker Melchior ja timuka tütar Raud, Piret Eva Liina Asu-Garcia, Eric Jouko Vanhanen Le thé des poissons et autres Dickens, Sam Hamill, Harvey Moreeni, 2013 histoires Lee Hix, Kalju Kruusa, Brandon pp. 406 Natuke napakad lood Lussier, Miriam Anne McIlfatrick- Jean Pascal Ollivry Ksenofontov, Elin Sütiste, Jüri Hvostov, Andrei Rouergue, 2013 Talvet, Riina Tamm, Jayde Will Memoirs pp. 93 UNO Press, 2013 Sanna Immanen pp. 270 Moreeni , 2013 Raud, Piret pp. 309 Sa majesté Ver-de-Terre et autres Ehin, Andres folles princesses Teistmoodi The Dragonflies Dance in Heaven Jõerüüt, Jaak printsessilood (poetry, trilingual: Estonian, Muuttuvainen Jean Pascal Ollivry English, Japanese) Muutlik Rouerque, 2013 David Cobb, Jim Kacian, Ilmar Raija Hämäläinen pp. 152 Lehtpere, Ban’ya Natsuishi, Taimi Basam Books, 2013 Paves, Fujitomi Yasuo pp. 403 Vadi, Urmas Ars Orientalis MTÜ, 2013 Etonnantes écritures européennes pp. 108 Kross, Jaan pour la jeunesse Sattumien summa. Näidendid Contra, Mari Vallikivi Yhdeksän novellia Editions théatrales, 2013 Kondas Meets Contra Üheksa novelli Jean Pascal Ollivry Eva Liina Asu-Garcia, Brandon Jouko Vanhanen pp. 444 Lussier, Johannes Vallikivi Moreeni, 2013 Kondase keskus, 2013 pp. 308 pp. 104

Elm/Spring 2014 in Translation Compiled by the Estonian Literature Centre

German Latvian Keränen, Mika õËpaÄeÎÎÙÊ opaÎÖe×ÙÊ Look, Kairi Aleksejev, Tiit ×eÌocÉÐeÄ Ville macht sich auf die Socken Sve-tcelojums Igor Kotjuh Leemuripoeg Ville teeb sääred Palveränd Kite, 2013 Irja Grönholm Maima Gri-nberga pp. 87 BaltArt-Verlag, 2013 Mansards, 2013 pp. 192 pp. 376 Kivastik, Mart A×ÔoÐopÔpeÔ c ÖeÎoÊ É ÌoÛaÄØÀ Hargla, Indrek Autoportree naise ja hobusega - KPD, 2013 Hungarian Aptiekars Melhiors un Olevistes bazni-cas nosle-pums pp. 255 Apteeker Melchior ja Oleviste Hargla, Indrek mõistatus Kivirähk, Andrus Melchior, a patikárius és a Szent Maima Gri-nberga CÔapÙe cËaÚËÉ ÄÌÑ ×ÚpocÌÙÈ Olaf-templom rejtélye Zvaigzne ABC, 2013 Vanad muinasjutud täiskasvanutele Apteeker Melchior ja Oleviste pp. 320 Vera Prohhorova mõistatus KPD, 2013 Nóra Racz Kivirähk, Andrus pp. 119 Metropolis Media, 2013 Skaistais dzi-vnieks: sta-sti pp. 312 Ilus loom: Jutud Pervik, Aino Maima Gri-nberga KaË pa6oÔaÔØ ÐpeÚÉÄeÎÔoÍ Park, Eeva Mansards, 2013 Kuidas töötada presidendina Breviárium pp. 228 Lena Bljum Breviaarium KPD, 2013 Nóra Kõhalmy, Krisztina Korencsi, Kivirähk, Andrus pp. 72 Bence Patat, Viktória Tóth Liels un mazs, 2013 Észt Intézet – Pluralica, 2013 pp. 143 Ristikivi, Karl pp. 80 OcÔpo× ÞÕÄec Imede saar Lithuanian Nikolai Karaev Tungal, Leelo KPD, 2013 Irish . . Drauge mergaite ir suauge, pp. 254 . Ehin, Kristiina `zmone´ s Lume lõplik minek Seltsimees laps ja suured inimesed Imeacht Deireanach An tSneachta . . Imeachd Dheireannach Danute Sirijos Giraite Scottish Gaelic An t-Sneachda Gimtasis zodis,`´ 2013 Rody Gorman pp. 216 Ehin, Kristiina Coisceim, 2013 Lume lõplik minek Imeacht Deireanach An tSneachta Macedonian Imeachd Dheireannach An t-Sneachda (trilingual) Italian Ehin, Kristiina Rody Gorman ëeÒËaÔa Îa ÎaÄpeaÌÉcÔoÔ Coisceim, 2013 Aleksejev, Tiit Sürrealisti tütar Il pellegrinaggio Julijana Velichkovska Palveränd ðî÷ ðÕ6ÌÉËaÃÉ, 2013 Daniele Monticelli pp. 84 Serbian Atmosphere Libri, 2013 pp. 288 A.H. Tammsaare Russian Kõrboja peremees Japanese Heinsaar, Mehis Ehin, Andres ÷oÌÛe6ÎÙÊ É ÇÒoÚÎÙÊ ÍÉÒ Spanish The Dragonflies Dance in Heaven ÐÒÉÒoÄÙ David Cobb, Jim Kacian, Ilmar Ebatavaline ja ähvardav loodus P. I. Filimonov Talvet, Jüri lehtpere, Ban’ya Natsuishi, Taimi Kite, 2013 Del sueno, de la nieve Paves, Fujitomi Yasuo pp. 160 Unest, lumest Ars Orientalis MTÜ, 2013 Albert Lázaro-Tinaut pp. 108 Hvostov, Andrei Olifante, 2013 CÔÒaÓÔÉ Ðo CÉÌÌaÍÑÜ pp. 182 Sillamäe passion Memoirs P.I. Filimonov Kite, 2013 47 pp. 392 Maarja Kangro (Photo by Scanpix)