Estonian Elegy
By Jüri Talvet
()
About this ebook
Jüri Talvet
Born in 1945 in Pärnu, Estonia, Jüri Talvet exemplifies the international public intellectual. His poetry and essays have been translated into numerous languages. In 1997 he was awarded Estonia’s highest poetry honor, the Juhan Liiv Prize, and in 2009 he was invited to be one of the 54 poets to compose “The European Constitution in Verse.”
Read more from Jüri Talvet
Of Snow, Of Soul Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Call For Cultural Symbiosis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Estonian Elegy
Related ebooks
None but the Nightingale: An Introduction to Chinese Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrand Larcenies: Translations and Imitations of Ten Dutch Poets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNegative Space Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kobzar of the Ukraine. Illustrated: Being Select Poems of Taras Shevchenko Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTestament - Anthology of Romanian Verse - English language only: English Language Only Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Siege Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The American Mind: The E. T. Earl Lectures Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Poetry and Prose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVise and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art, and Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry of Stephen Vincent Benet - Young Adventure: "We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAstatine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAcanthus and Wild Grape Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrief Homage to Pluto and Other Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wells of Venice: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYoung Adventure, a Book of Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Literary History of the English People From the Origins to the Renaissance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCanting Arms: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Plotzk to Boston Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry Of Robert Nichols - Volume 1: Ardours & Endurances Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Living Theatre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unknown Places Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Kassandra Plan: N.A., #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLa Serenissima: The Story of Venice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGeorge Eliot, The Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Iceland Fisherman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What's Left of the Night Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5
Poetry For You
The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEdgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Estonian Elegy
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Estonian Elegy - Jüri Talvet
JURI TALVET
ESTONIAN ELEGY
SELECTED POEMS
Essential Poets Series 161
TRANSLATED BY H.L. HIX
Guernica
Toronto – Buffalo – Lancaster (U.K.) 2008
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on the Translation
Believe What Signs You Like
Estonian Elegy
New Travel
Today I Planned to Rest
What Appears, Appears
Debt
Raven’s Ontology
Opus Nigrum
Carousel and Gioconda
The Soul’s Progress
Sweet Pea’s Smell Above the Wanderer
Bridges, Roads
Surprises of Climate
Sunday Morning
On Losing a Passport
When Asked How We Defend It
Intimate Knowledge
Naked, Halfway
Godspeed
The Human Forest
A Dream of Germany, 1988
Suppose Dust Belonged Only to the Beyond.
Spring and Powder
La Fontaine’s Admonition
Blasphemous
Thus, Liberty
On Consecrating the Flag
Yesterday I Was an Andalusian Dog
All Had to Be Simple
My Life with Noise
Do You Know How to Peep Through Curtains?
The Case of Marc
Intimate Discourse
From Santiago’s Road
Ossian’s Songs
Synergetic
21st Baltic Elegy
Love
Afterword by H.L. Hix
Acknowledgments
The author and translator thank the Northwest Review and its editor John Witte for the first publication of From Santiago’s Road,
The Review and its editor Raúl Peschiera for the first publication of La Fontaine’s Admonition,
On Losing a Passport,
Believe What Signs You Like,
Ossian’s Songs,
The Raven’s Ontology,
and Surprises of Climate,
and Rampike and its editor Karl E. Jirgens for Estonian Elegy.
We also extend our deepest thanks to the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) for a grant that, after a year of our working by mail across an ocean and eight time zones, enabled us to work for a week in the same room.
We thank Eesti Kultuurkapital (Traducta) for its kind support.
We are thankful to R. W. Stedingh, poet, scholar and translator, whose suggestions helped polish the manuscript.
A Note on the Translation
Custom dictates that translators lament the travails and impossibilities of translation. I want instead to report on its joys. Because this project opened a door for me into a new language, I felt none of the loss of meaning that poems inevitably endure going from one language to another, only the gain of meaning I experienced by participating in them. Translation
after all is a serious distortion of my part of the process, since I knew no Estonian when we started.
Our procedure was simple. Mr. Talvet, who is fluent in Estonian, Russian, Spanish, and English, sent literal
translations, in response to which (after looking up each of the words of the original in my Estonian dictionary) I produced a poetic
translation, to which he suggested changes on the occasions when the license I had taken resulted in significant inaccuracies. After having produced in this way a complete draft of the manuscript, we spent a week together in Boston revising the draft into a more polished book.
My previous experiences learning languages began with the skeleton or the clothing: the skeleton in the case of Latin and Greek, where I was taught declensions and conjugations first, with the result that I can still say hic haec hoc
all the way through but can