Mart Raud

Mart Raud (actually Martin Raud , born September 14, 1903 in Laanekuru, today rural municipality Pärsti / Estonia , † July 6, 1980 in Tallinn ) was an Estonian writer, poet and playwright.

life and work

Mart Raud attended the village school in Heimtali (today the rural parish of Pärsti) and the parish schools in Paistu and Viljandi . Later he regularly attended lectures in literary studies at the University of Tartu .

Mart Raud made his debut as a poet in 1919. From 1924 he earned his living by writing. His first two anthologies of poetry, Kangastused (1924) and Äitsmik (1925), mainly contained dialect poems from his homeland, the Viljandi district in the local dialect Mulgi . In the poetry collection Rusemed (1927) Mart Raud emerges with grotesque images. During this time he turned to more and more social and societal issues. He also published short prose in the 1920s. As serialized novels appeared in Estonian newspapers Metsa Manni (1924) and Uued inimesed (1925).

In the 1920s, Raud joined the literary movement Arbujad (German about shamans ). After the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940, however, he was loyal to the new rulers and distanced himself from his former literary companions, many of whom were deported to Siberia .

His communist-heroic poetry collections Sõjasõna (1943) and Jõud ja valgus (1948) were published during and after the Second World War . Both are shaped by a life-affirming message. Since the 1960s, thoughts about country and people have been the focus of his work. Both the problems of the individual and those of mankind moved more and more into the center of his poetry. In addition, Raud wrote poems in an ironic tone with a sense of joke and humor as well as epigrams and acrostics . Raud also made a name for himself as a literary critic.

Mart Raud is buried today in the Tallinn Forest Cemetery.

Private life

Mart Raud was the father of the Estonian writer Eno Raud (1928–1996) and the textile artist Anu Raud (* 1943) as well as the grandfather of the writers Rein Raud and Mihkel Raud and the writer and artist Piret Raud . Mart Raud married the Estonian English language specialist and translator Valda Raud (born Aaviste, 1920–2013) in 1941 .

literature

• Cornelius Hasselblatt: History of Estonian Literature. Berlin, New York 2006 ( ISBN 3-11-018025-1 ), pp. 508f.

Web links

• CV, pictures and texts (Estonian)
• Mart Raud 100 in: Oma Vald , No. 8 (69), p. 7, (Estonian; PDF file; 1.00 MB)