Poetry
Amores
Not translated into English
Henrik Visnapuu · 1917
Synopsis
Love and nature poems of frank sensuality, in which the body and desire are spoken of without the precautions of Estonian poetry of the time. From the wet spring to the summer nights, the pieces move from impulse to melancholy and refuse received truths. The music of the verse, made of rhymes, repetitions and coined words, carries everything along, and grammar itself takes liberties there that the written language had not yet allowed.
Context
The collection appeared in Tallinn in 1917 under the imprint of the Siuru group, founded the same year: seventy-eight pages after which his contemporaries made him the country's foremost poet. He was at first judged vulgar; his musicality and his refusal of received truths are now thought to have raised Estonian poetry to a new level. A second edition appeared in Tartu as early as 1919, and the first was reprinted in facsimile in 1990.
Who it is for
A slim volume of verse in Estonian, never published in French. It is worth knowing that its author coins words, plays on the Southern dialects and mistreats grammar, and that this was part of the scandal.
Prizes and reception
It placed its author, alongside Marie Under, in the front rank of the poets of the Siuru group.