Reflections

Who Could Hold All the World’s Beauty?

by Joonas Hellerma
ELM 2/2023
•••
The reception of Emil Tode’s Border State (1993) was shaped by multiple elements that were novel to Estonian literature of the time, i...

A Night to Remember

by Maximilian Murmann
ELM 1/2023
•••
On New Year’s Eve a man straggles his way through Stockholm. Although he has been living in the city for quite some time, the narrator...

Now, That’s Certainly Not Literature

by Indrek Koff
ELM 1/2023
•••
Writer Indrek Koff takes a look at literature’s borderlands and asks what peculiarities might arise there. For some reason, I’ve always ...

On Life and Love, Continuously

By Jan Kaus
ELM 1/2022
•••
In Estonia, an interesting cultural discussion is underway, prompted by a call to celebrate Estonian Literature Day. The proposed date is J...

On the Openness of Literature

By Jan Kaus
ELM 2/2020
•••
It isn’t a stretch to assert that literature is an art of solitude. This especially true in comparison with other creative practices: many ...

Memories of Jaan Kross

By Mati Sirkel, Maima Grīnberga and Tiina Ann Kirss
ELM 1/2020
•••
A speech by Mati Sirkel on Jaan Kross’s 80th birthday celebration at the Estonian Drama Theater, 2000Honorable Jaan!If you would allow me t...

A path a quarter-century long

By Krista Kaer
ELM 1/2020
•••
A very long time ago, so long now that it came as a great surprise even to myself, Piret Viires and I were the original editors of Estonian...

Veronika Kivisilla
A perfect day

By Veronika Kivisilla
ELM 2/2019
•••
A perfect day naturally begins early in the morning. That is my time! I hope I never learn to sleep in! I’d never exchange the promisin...

Tiit Aleksejev
Places of writing

By Tiit Aleksejev
ELM 1/2019
•••
Places of writing can be divided into two: those where writing is possible in general, and those that have a direct connection to the subje...

Literature and Diplomacy

by Janika Kronberg
2/2006
•••
Diplomacy and literature, or fine arts in general, can be viewed as the opposing spheres of human activities. In everyday language, diploma...

A Perfect Day

By Eva Koff
ELM 2/2018
•••
"A Perfect Day" is a new ELM column, in which individuals associated with literature in Estonia share their recipes for a perfect day. The f...

The Dodo’s decision

By Maarja Kangro
ELM 2/2018
•••
“Everybody has won and all must have prizes.”   Those are the Dodo’s words in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and both James F. E...

Love doesn’t exist
in a vacuum

By Maarja Vaino
ELM 1/2018
•••
Published in 1935, I Loved a German (Ma armastasin sakslast) was the seventh novel written by the Estonian literary classic A. H. Tammsaare ...

A regular writer’s salary: Really?

By Piret Põldver
ELM 1/2018
•••
Estonia is a small country where people generally can’t make a living purely on art and literature: the market simply isn’t large enough. ...

Fear and loathing
in little villages

By Mari Klein
ELM 2/2017
•••
Over the last few years, the writers Birk Rohelend and Katrin Pauts have set out to enrich the Estonian crime genre with grim, trying tales ...

Estonian Literary Awards
2016

By Piret Viires
ELM 2/2017
•••
Jaan Kaplinski received a lifetime creative achievement award from the Republic of Estonia. Andrei Ivanov was likewise recognized for his cr...

Five Snow Whites
and not a single prince

By Carolina Pihelgas
ELM 1/2017
•••
Writing about female poets, one inevitably arrives at a disturbing thought: why are some women regarded as poets, and others as poetesses? T...

Some who Live the Estonian language

By ELM
ELM 2/2016
•••
The Estonian Literature Center has a magnificent tradition of inviting translators of Estonian literature who hail from all around the world...

The many voices
of Estonian drama

By Heidi Aadma
ELM 1/2016
•••
Ten years ago was the one-hundredth anniversary of professional Estonian theatre. To celebrate the grand occasion, Pärnu’s Endla Theatre mad...

Insanity in Estonian literature

By Maarja Vaino
ELM 1/2016
•••
According to US literary critic Shoshana Felman, insanity is an obsession of contemporary literature: stories being told are almost exclusiv...

The irony of hope

By Adam Cullen
ELM 1/2016
•••
"How’s that—we do have freedom now, don’t we?" Sõrgats insisted. "Well, we do," Lumepart said, "but what am I supposed to do with that?" ...