Location
Performers
Description
Words echo. Their resonance is our soul.
Juhan Liiv, Marginalia
This lecture explores the principles of “art for art’s sake” and “music above all” in Estonian literature. It examines the poetics of sound in our first modernist poet, Juhan Liiv, and the deep music in the works of a dual modernist A. H. Tammsaare.
The analysis leads to Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli. The predecessor of the composer’s method of reduction is the method of separation used by Juhan Liiv.
Juhan Liiv (1911): “Just as one false note ruins an entire piece of music, so every unnecessary word ruins the music of language, its power. Let joining or separating be painstakingly pure, so that not a single superfluous word weakens or tires the bearer of the main idea.”
Arvo Pärt (1968): “True wisdom is found in reduction, in letting go of the unnecessary.”
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If patriotic bliss was the countenance of Koidula’s poetry, then for Liiv the act of writing poetry in the correct way became the meaning of life. This is a defining feature of modernism — the poem as a whole is more important than its subject matter or form separately. Through intense reflection and relentless poetic labor, the author of “Snowflake” developed a distinct and innovative method. Its foundation was the principle of contrast and analytical differentiation. Unity, or synthesis, arises spontaneously once differentiation has been undertaken “with contempt for death.” Love each blade of grass on its own: dull sand — empty field — cloudy sky — towards the forest — goes the heath path… Everything superfluous is left out. The result is the poem “Autumn.”
Liiv, who once wished to become a musician, was no fool, but one of the most methodical poets in Estonian literature.
Juhan Liiv: “Before drawing up contrasts, bring similar elements together, throw the unfit to the other side — then come forth greatly! /…/ Separate and choose, separate with contempt for death! One day what has been separated will draw itself violently together — carrying you with it — creation!”
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Liiv’s sensitivity to the inner resonance between soul and language passed on to A. H. Tammsaare. This happened under the influence of Jakob Tamm, the Parnassus and schoolmaster at Väike-Maarja. The young Anton Hansen also began to search for the world’s “original harmony” (Juhan Liiv, “Music”), where cosmic grains of sand dance in the same rhythm (A. H. Tammsaare, “The Shapes of The Shadows”).
Our national author went on to create a deep music of prose — a psychologically realist-symbolist method in which God begins to speak from within our own juniper bush. In world literature, Tammsaare stands as a rare kind of modernist: a powerful epic writer whose prose is at the same time subtly musical. It is music hidden in the deep structure of prose. Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Hamsun meet Baudelaire, Verlaine and Liiv.
A few brief detours will be made to discuss the early Young Estonia movement, other musical poets and prose writers, and the later “tree people.”
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Arne Merilai (b. 1961) is Professor of Estonian Literature and National Studies at the University of Tartu and a writer. He has published several works of literary theory, two novels, and two poetry collections. His dissertation “The Estonian Ballad 1900–1940” was published in 1991. He is the author of the innovative monograph Pragmapoetics. The Theory of Two Contexts (2003), the article collection published in England Estonian Pragmapoetics, from Poetry and Fiction to Philosophy and Genetics (2023/2024), and the extensive anthology The Estonian Ballad (2003).
Together with Õnne Kepp he wrote a study of Estonian exile poetry (1994), and with Epp Annus and Anneli Saro the textbook Poetics (2003/2007). Merilai has edited numerous literary collections, organized dozens of conferences, and published a large number of essays and critical writings. His studies, essays, and reviews are collected in the volumes The Meaning of Happiness. Critical Emotions 1990–2010 (2011), The Spinning Wheel Maker: Critical Constructions, 1990–2011 (2011), and Placing the Piece on the Board. Establishing Interpretations 2012–2022 (2022).
A light show based on his screenplay, The Spirit of Tartu, was shown at the ruins of Tartu Cathedral during the anniversary celebrations of the Estonia’s National University (2019). His novel Tree People. A Fairy Tale received the Cultural Endowment of Estonia’s Prose Prize in 2025. A comprehensive overview of his life’s work has just been published in the series Eesti Mõttelugu— the article collection Estonian Poetics (2026).
The lecture will be in Estonian.
Everyone is welcome.
