Poetry
The Baltic Elegies
Ivar Ivask · 1987
Synopsis
A cycle of elegies written in English from the spring of 1986, under the shock of Chernobyl, and composed for the most part on the Irish coast. The poet says what it is to be born in the north-east of Europe, in a singular culture threatened by indifference to the balance of nature, by nuclear weapons and by accelerated Russification; he runs through the history and fate of the three Baltic countries and their desire for freedom, and addresses all Balts rather than Estonians alone.
Context
Ivask, who had begun in German, had been writing his poems in Estonian since 1958. This time he chose English, which he regarded as the common language of the exiled Balts and the most widespread in the world, so as to be heard by the whole diaspora and beyond; he explains this in an introduction. Valters Nollendorfs translated it into Latvian for the journal Jaunā Gaita, and the cycle also appeared in a trilingual edition, in English, Latvian and Estonian. An echo of Thomas Gray's elegy has been seen in it.
Who it is for
A cycle of poems in English, which can be read in its original language. It helps to know that the author read and spoke the three Baltic languages.
Prizes and reception
Published in some fifteen editions and four languages between 1987 and 2001, the cycle has since been translated into many languages.