Artur Alliksaar

Artur Alliksaar (born April 15, 1923 in Tartu ; † August 12, 1966 there ) was an Estonian poet .

education

Artur Alliksaar went to school at the renowned Hugo-Treffner-Gymnasium in Tartu and then studied law at the University of Tartu in 1941/1942 . From 1943 he fought voluntarily on the German side in World War II against the Red Army . After the war he stayed with the Estonian resistance movement of the Forest Brothers .

exile

From 1944 to 1949 he was an employee in the railway administration of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic . In 1949 he was arrested by the Soviet occupation authorities for alleged treason , sentenced to 25 years in exile and imprisoned. From 1949 to 1957 Alliksaar lived in various internment camps in Narva and Mordovia and in exile in the Vologda Oblast . In 1957 an amnesty brought him freedom.

In 1958 Alliksaar returned to Tartu, where he worked in a beer factory , construction and railroad until his death . During this time he was friends with the influential Estonian writers Andres Ehin and Ain Kaalep .

Works

Artur Alliksaar was strongly influenced by Rainer Maria Rilke . The main lyrical work could only be published after his death, but at least it was approved by the Soviet censors. So far as a book have been published:

• "Nimetu saar" (play, 1966)
• "Olematus võiks ju ka olemata olla" (anthology, edited by Paul-Eerik Rummo , 1968)
• "Luule" (1976)
• "Väike luuleraamat" (1984)
• "Päikesepillaja" (selection collection, 1997)
• "Alliksaar armastusest" (2002)

In addition, Alliksaar has translated poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Sergei Jessenin and Anna Ahmatova masterfully into Estonian .

Appreciation

Artur Alliksaar's lyrical work is strongly philosophically inspired. It stands out from the concrete reality. His poetry attaches importance to the sound of the sentences, uses paradoxical expressions, is linguistically creative and shaped by images. Recurring themes are death, love, blood, pain, evening, night and sand. Alliksaar's poems reflect the experience of a life marked by war and deportation, which nevertheless has unbroken faith in the human spirit.

His poetry is also characterized by a special virtuosity of language, which can be seen in the titles of some of the poems, which read as follows: “A fragment from the table speech from the jubilee dinner of nonsense, which was held when it turned out that it was for the funeral feast is still too early ”; “The Concert of Toilets”; “Sonata for two cannons, not a single piano and any number of opinions”; “The non-existence could also be non-existent”. In many cases, however, his poems also contained concrete political statements, which made publication difficult in Soviet times, such as: “Remember: / Human nature should change its posture every now and then / because whoever writhes for a long time / can later on command no longer stretch. "

German translations

In 1994 Alliksaar published a short cycle of poems in German in the magazine Estonia , translated by Gisbert Jänicke .

Secondary literature

• Gisbert Jänicke: The wind dances in the hazel trees, in: Estonia 1/1994, pp. 31–33.
• Artur Alliksaar mälestustes. Koostanud Henn-Kaarel Hellat . Tartu: Ilmamaa 2007. 240 pp.
• Margit Mõistlik: On raske vaikida ja laulda mul. Artur Alliksaare elust. Tallinn: Menu Kirjastus 2011. 208 pp.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Artur Alliksaar: Päikesepillaja. Tartu: Ilmamaa 1997, pp. 87, 89, 191, 310.
2. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt : History of Estonian Literature. From the beginning to the present. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 2006, pp. 639–640.
3. ↑ For individual references, see Cornelius Hasselblatt: Estonian Literature in German Language 1784–2003. Bibliography of primary and secondary literature. Bremen: Hempen Verlag 2004, p. 28.