Anna Haava

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Anna Haava (photograph from the 1920s)

Anna Haava (born October 3, July 15 / October 15, 1864 greg. In Kodavere , today the rural community of Pala , Estonia ; † March 13, 1957 in Tartu ) was an Estonian poet and translator .

Life

Anna Haava was born Anna Rosalie Haavakivi into the family of an Estonian farmer. The family attached great importance to the education of the daughters. Anna Haava first received lessons at the Pataste mõis estate, then in a German-speaking private school in Saare-Vanamõisa and, from 1878, in the Hoffmann private school in Tartu. From 1880 to 1884 she attended the secondary school for girls in Tartu and graduated as a private tutor.

In the years 1892 to 1894 she stayed at various healing institutions in Germany, later she worked in a deaconess institution in Fürstenwalde near Berlin . She then worked as a tutor and nurse in Russia from 1894 to 1899 , including in Saint Petersburg and Novgorod . The loneliness abroad as well as the death of her mother in 1898 and her sister Liisa a few years earlier left a big mark on her psyche.

Around the turn of the century Anna Haava moved as a housekeeper at the court of her brother into the Livonian Haavakivi (German Bloody Stone ). She later worked as an editor of the Postimees newspaper and from 1906 as a freelance writer and translator. In 1909 she finally moved to Tartu, Livonia, where she lived largely withdrawn until her death. She died very old as one of the most respected poets of Estonian literature and is buried in the Raadi cemetery in Tartu.

plant

Anna Haava made her debut as a poet in 1886. Between 1888 and 1897 her poetry was published in three volumes under the title Luuletused ("Poems"). The two volumes of poetry Lained (1906) and Ristlainetes (1910) followed. In the poetry collection Põhjamaa lapsed (1913), she mainly published love poetry of unprecedented authenticity and intensity. In 1920 Meie päevist appeared , in which Haava also addressed socially critical tones. In 1924 the anthology of poems Anna Haava luuletuskogu appeared . This was followed siiski on elu ilus (1930), Laulan oma eesti laulu (1935) and Järelpõiming (1936). Her poems have often been set to music by Estonian composers.

Anna Haava also published prose . Her collected aphorisms appeared in 1911 under the heading Peotäis tõtt (1900). Väikesed plays pildid Eestist (1911) in the milieu of her childhood . It was not until 2006 that her autobiography, Mälestusi Laanekivi Manni lapsepõlvest, was published posthumously in print.

Anna Haava has translated numerous classics into Estonian , including William Shakespeare , Franz Grillparzer , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller , Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, Russian literature and pieces from Greek mythology .

German translations

Anna Haava has not published a separate book in German, but around 25 of her poems translated into German have been published in newspapers and anthologies. Some particularly popular poems have also been published several times, and in various translations and transcriptions. This includes Anna Haava's most famous and often set poem Ei saa mitte vaiki olla (1890), which in a fairly free translation by Martha Dehn-Grubbe reads as follows:

No, my dear, I cannot keep silent,
suppress song and pain. -
Silence would have been wrong,
because it would break my heart.

I just want to sing very softly,
the zither sound comes out softly,
so that you, my very best, are
not disturbed by the singing.

But if the storm wind
drove my songs to you, you
would only be scolded yourself:
why are you so dear to me!

literature

  • Ello Säärits: Anna Haava. Elu ja loomingu lugu. Ilmamaa, Tartu 2007, ISBN 978-9985-77235-5 .
  • Cornelius Hasselblatt: History of Estonian Literature. From the beginning to the present. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2006, ISBN 3-11-018025-1 , pp. 304-308.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ In 1939 she officially changed her name to Anna Haava
  2. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt : Estonian Literature in German 1784-2003. Bibliography of primary and secondary literature. Bremen: Hempen Verlag 2004, pp. 40–41.
  3. ↑ Ei saa middle vaiki olla. Retrieved March 13, 2014 (video on YouTube).
  4. ↑ We're going home. Estonian poetry and prose. Adaptations by Martha v. Dehn-Grubbe. Karlsruhe: The Karlsruher Bote 1962, p. 41.
personal data
SURNAME Haava, Anna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Haavakivi, Anna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian poet
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Kodavere (today: rural municipality of Pala , Estonia )
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1957
Place of death Tartu , Soviet Union (today: Estonia )