Яан Кросс: Жизнь и творчество эстонского писателя

Estonian writer

Jaan Kross (19 February 1920 – 27 December 2007) was an Estonian writer. He won the 1995 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

Born in Tallinn, Estonia, son of a skilled metal worker, Jaan Kross studied at Jakob Westholm Gymnasium, and attended the University of Tartu (1938–1945) and graduated from its School of Law. He taught there as a lecturer until 1946, and again as Professor of Artes Liberales in 1998. In 1940, when Kross was 20, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied the three Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; imprisoned and executed most of their governments. In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded and took over the country. Kross was first arrested by the Germans for six months in 1944 during the German occupation of Estonia (1941–1944), suspected of what was termed "nationalism", i. e., promoting Estonian independence. Then, on 5 January 1946, when Estonia had been reconquered by the Soviet Union, he was arrested by the Soviet occupation authorities who kept him a short while in the cellar of the local NKVD headquarters, then kept him in prison in Tallinn, finally in October 1947, deporting him to a Gulag camp in Vorkuta, Russia. He spent a total of eight years in this part of North Russia, six working in the mines at the Minlag labour camp in Inta, then doing easier jobs, plus two years still living as a deportee, but not in a labour camp. Upon his return to Estonia in 1954 he became a professional writer, not least because his law studies during Estonian independence were now of no value whatsoever, as Soviet law held sway. At first, Kross wrote poetry, alluding to a number of contemporary phenomena under the guise of writing about historical figures. But he soon moved to writing prose, a genre that was to become his principal one.

Kross was by far the most translated and nationally and internationally best known Estonian writer. He received the honorary title of People's Writer of the Estonian SSR (1985) and the State Prize of the Estonian SSR (1977). He also held several honorary doctorates and international decorations, including the highest Estonian order and one of the highest German orders. In 1999 he was awarded the Baltic Assembly Prize for Literature. In 1990 Kross won the Amnesty International Golden Flame Prize. He won the 1995 International Nonino Prize in Italy. He was reportedly nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature during the early 1990s. Because of Kross' status and visibility as a leading Estonian author, his works have been translated into many languages, but mostly into Finnish, Swedish, Russian, German, and Latvian. This is on account of geographical proximity but also a common history (for example, Estonia was a Swedish colony in the 17th century and German was the language of the upper échelons of Estonian society for hundreds of years). As can be seen from the list below by the year 2015 five books of Kross' works have been published in English translation with publishing houses in the United States and UK. But a number of shorter novels, novellas, and short stories were published during Soviet rule (i. e. 1944–1991) in English translation and published in the Soviet Union. Translations have mostly been from the Estonian original. Sometimes translations were however done, during Soviet times by first being translated into Russian and then from Russian into English, not infrequently by native speakers of Russian or Estonian. Nowadays, Kross' works are translated into English either directly from the Estonian, or via the Finnish version. A reasonably complete list of translations of works by Jaan Kross into languages other than English can be found on the ELIC website. Kross knew the German language from quite an early age as friends of the family spoke it as their mother tongue, and Kross' mother had a good command of it. His Russian, however, was mainly learnt while working as a slave labourer in the Gulag. But he also had some knowledge of Swedish and translated one crime novel by Christian Steen (pseudonym of the exile Estonian novelist Karl Ristikivi) from that Swedish. He also translated works by Pierre Jean de Béranger, Honoré de Balzac, and Paul Éluard from French, Bertolt Brecht and Rolf Hochhuth from German, Ivan Goncharov and David Samoilov from Russian, and Alice in Wonderland, Macbeth and Othello from English.

Kross' novels and short stories are almost universally historical; indeed, he is often credited with a significant rejuvenation of the genre of the historical novel. Most of his works take place in Estonia and deal, usually, with the relationship of Estonians and Baltic Germans and Russians. Very often, Kross' description of the historical struggle of the Estonians against the Baltic Germans is a metaphor for the contemporary struggle against the Soviet occupation. However, Kross' acclaim internationally (and nationally even after the regaining of Estonian independence) shows that his novels also deal with topics beyond such concerns; rather, they deal with questions of mixed identities, loyalty, and belonging. Generally, The Czar's Madman has been considered Kross' best novel; it is also the most translated one. Also well translated is Professor Martens' Departure, which because of its subject matter (academics, expertise, and national loyalty) is very popular in academia and an important "professorial novel". The later novel Excavations, set in the mid 1950s, deals with the thaw period after Stalin's death as well as with the Danish conquest of Estonia in the Middle Ages, and today considered by several critics as his finest, has not been translated into English yet; it is however available in German. Within the framework of the historical novel, Kross' novels can be divided up into two types: truly historical ones, and more contemporary narratives with an element of autobiography. In the list below, the historical ones, often set in previous centuries, include the Between Three Plagues tetralogy, set in the 16th century, A Rakvere Novel / Romance set in the 18th (the title is ambiguous), The Czar's Madman set in the 19th century, Professor Martens' Departure set at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and Elusiveness / Evasion set around 1918. The semi autobiographical novels include Kross' novel about the ultimate fates of his schoolmates, i. e. The Wikman Boys (Wikman being based on his alma mater the Westholm Grammar School – both names are of Swedish origin) a similar sort of novel about his university chums, Mesmer's Circle / Ring; the novel Excavations which describes Kross' alter ego Peeter Mirk and his adventures with archaeology, conformism, revolt, compromise and skulduggery after he has returned from the Siberian labour camps and internal exile out there. And also the novel that has appeared in English translation is titled Treading Air, and most of his short stories belong to this subgenre. A stylistic leitmotif in Kross' novels is the use of the internal (or inner) monologue, usually when the protagonist is trying to think his way out of a thorny problem. The reader will note that every protagonist or narrator, from Timotheus von Bock in The Czar's Madman to Kross' two alter egos, Jaak Sirkel and Peeter Mirk in the semi autobiographical novels, indulges in this. And especially Bernhard Schmidt, the luckless telescope inventor, in the novel that appeared in English as Sailing Against the Wind (2012). Another common feature of Kross's novels is a comparison, sometimes overt but usually covert, between various historical epochs and the present day, which for much of Kross' writing life consisted of Soviet reality, including censorship, an inability to travel freely abroad, a dearth of consumer goods, the ever watchful eye of the KGB and informers, etc. Kross was always very skilful at always remaining just within the bounds of what the Soviet authorities could accept. Kross also enjoyed playing with the identities of people who have the same, or nearly the same, name. This occurs in Professor Martens' Departure where two different Martens figures are discussed, legal experts who lived several decades apart, and in Sailing Against the Wind where in one dream sequence the protagonist Bernhard Schmidt meets a number of others named Schmidt. When Kross was already in his late 70s he gave a series of lectures at Tartu University explaining certain aspects of his novels, not least the roman à clef dimension, given the fact that quite a few of his characters are based on real life people, both in the truly historical novels and the semi autobiographical ones. These lectures are collected in a book entitled Omaeluloolisus ja alltekst (Autobiographism and Subtext) which appeared in 2003. During the last twenty years of his life, Jaan Kross occupied some of his time with writing his memoirs (entitled Kallid kaasteelised, i. e. Dear Co Travellers – this translation of the title avoids the unfortunate connotation of the expression fellow travellers). These two volumes ended up with a total of 1,200 pages, including quite a few photographs from his life. His life started quietly enough, but after describing quite innocuous things such as the summer house during his childhood and his schooldays, Kross moves on to the first Soviet occupation of Estonia, his successful attempt to avoid being drafted for the Waffen SS during the Nazi German occupation, and a long section covering his experiences of prison and the labour camps. The last part describes his return from the camps and his attempts at authorship. The second volume continues from when he moved into the flat in central Tallinn where he lived for the rest of his life, plus his growing success as a writer. There is also a section covering his one year term as a Member of Parliament after renewed independence, and his trips abroad with his wife.

Jaan Kross died in Tallinn, at the age of 87, on 27 December 2007. He is survived by his wife, children's author and poet Ellen Niit, and four children. The President of Estonia (at the time), Toomas Hendrik Ilves, praised Kross "as a preserver of the Estonian language and culture."

"He was one of those who kept fresh the spirits of the people and made us ready to take the opportunity of restoring Estonia's independence." — Toomas Hendrik Ilves