Jaan Kaplinski (born January 22, 1941,
TartuFor the French captain, see Jean-François TartuTartu is the second largest city of Estonia. In contrast to Estonia's political and financial capital Tallinn, Tartu is often considered the intellectual and cultural hub, especially since it is home to Estonia's oldest and most renowned university....
) is an
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
n
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, philosopher, and culture critic. Kaplinski is known for his independent mind, focus on global issues and support for
left-wingIn politics, left-wing, political left, leftist and the Left are terms used to describe a number of positions and ideologies. They are most commonly used to refer to support for changing traditional social orders or for creating a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and privilege...
/liberal thinking. He has been deeply influenced by Eastern philosophical schools (
taoismDaoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennia and the West for over two centuries. The word 道, Tao , means "path" or "way", although in Chinese folk religion and philosophy it has taken on more...
and especially
buddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
).
Kaplinski studied languages and
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
at Tartu University, graduating as a French philologist in 1966, and has worked as a translator, editor, and sociologist, until the sociology laboratory was banned at the university by the Soviet authorities.
Kaplinski has published numerous collections of poems, prose, and essays.
Jaan Kaplinski (born January 22, 1941,
TartuFor the French captain, see Jean-François TartuTartu is the second largest city of Estonia. In contrast to Estonia's political and financial capital Tallinn, Tartu is often considered the intellectual and cultural hub, especially since it is home to Estonia's oldest and most renowned university....
) is an
EstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russian Federation...
n
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, philosopher, and culture critic. Kaplinski is known for his independent mind, focus on global issues and support for
left-wingIn politics, left-wing, political left, leftist and the Left are terms used to describe a number of positions and ideologies. They are most commonly used to refer to support for changing traditional social orders or for creating a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and privilege...
/liberal thinking. He has been deeply influenced by Eastern philosophical schools (
taoismDaoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennia and the West for over two centuries. The word 道, Tao , means "path" or "way", although in Chinese folk religion and philosophy it has taken on more...
and especially
buddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
).
Kaplinski studied languages and
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
at Tartu University, graduating as a French philologist in 1966, and has worked as a translator, editor, and sociologist, until the sociology laboratory was banned at the university by the Soviet authorities.
Writings
Kaplinski has published numerous collections of poems, prose, and essays. He has translated writings from
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
,
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
,
SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
,
ChineseChinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, including the
Tao Te ChingThe Tao Te Ching or Dao De Jing , originally known as Laozi , is a Chinese classic text. Its name comes from the opening words of its two sections: 道 dào "way," Chapter 1, and 德 dé "virtue," Chapter 38, plus 經 jīng "classic." According to tradition, it was written around the 6th century BC by the...
, and
SwedishSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish...
, the work of
Tomas TranströmerTomas Tranströmer is a Swedish writer, poet and translator, whose poetry has been deeply influential in Sweden, as well as around the world....
.
Kaplinski's own work has been translated into
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken...
,
NorwegianNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants ...
,
SwedishSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish...
,
DutchDutch is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language, and over 5 million people as a second language.
"1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language...
,
IcelandicIcelandic is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. Its closest relatives are Faroese and certain Norwegian dialects such as Telemark dialect and Sognamål....
,
HungarianHungarian is a Uralic language unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries...
,
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
,
LatvianLatvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
,
LithuanianLithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
,
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
,
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
,
BulgarianBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except the Macedonian language, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite...
, and
CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. Czech is similar to and mutually intelligible with Slovak and, to a lesser extent, to Polish and Sorbian. - Official status :Czech is widely...
. His essays deal with environmental problems,
philosophy of languagePhilosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...
, classical Chinese poems, philosophy,
buddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
, and Estonian nationalism.
Kaplinski was one of the authors and initiators of the so-called
Letter by the Forty (
Neljakümne kiri) action. A letter signed by well-known Estonian intellectuals protesting against the behaviour of the authorities in
Soviet-annexed EstoniaThe Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic , often abbreviated as Estonian SSR or ESSR, was a republic of the Soviet Union, administered by and subordinated to the Government of the Soviet Union...
was sent to the main newspapers of the time. Although not openly dissident, the letter was never published in the press at that time and those who signed were repressed using administrative measures.
Politics
He was member of
RiigikoguThe Riigikogu is the parliament of Estonia. All important state-related questions pass through the Riigikogu...
(the Estonian parliament) from 1992 to 1995. He was originally a candidate on the
Centre PartyThe Estonian Centre Party is a centrist, social liberal party in Estonia. Keskerakond is a member of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party. It has the largest membership of an Estonian party, with over 12 000 members....
list, but soon became an independent representative. Since 2004 he has been a member of the
Estonian Social Democratic PartyThe Social Democratic Party is a social democratic party in Estonia, led by Jüri Pihl. It has been a member of the Party of European Socialists since 16 May, 2003 and a member of the Socialist International since November 1990....
. In the 2005, the local government elections he ran in Tartu and was ESDP's first candidate in their list. Jaan Kaplinski was elected as the second Social Democrat candidate (Estonia is using
open listOpen list describes any variant of party-list proportional representation where voters have at least some influence on the order in which a party's candidates are elected...
system in local elections), collecting 1,045 votes.
http://www.vvk.ee/k05/tulemus/tulbad_1217000000_eng.html Jaan Kaplinski was one of those intellectuals who supported
Toomas Hendrik IlvesToomas Hendrik Ilves is the current President of Estonia. He is a former diplomat and journalist, was the leader of the Social Democratic Party in the 1990s and later a member of the European Parliament...
' candidature.
Family
Jaan Kaplinski's mother was Estonian and his father Polish. His father was arrested and killed by the Soviets during the first Soviet occupation in Estonia. Jaan Kaplinski has a daughter from the marriage to his first wife Küllike. He has four sons, including
Lauris KaplinskiLauris Kaplinski is an Estonian author and computer hacker who has created free software and propagated Linux. His father is well-known Estonian philosopher Jaan Kaplinski....
. Jaan's wife Tiia Toomet is also a writer.
Poems
- 'The East West Border...'
- The Wandering Border (Copper Canyon Press
Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit literary publishing company, specializing in the publication of poetry and located in the picturesque town of Port Townsend, Washington. Since 1972, the Press has published poetry exclusively and has established an international reputation for its...
, 1987) (translated by the author with Sam Hamill and Riina Tamm)
- Black Iris (Copper Canyon Press, 1988) (translated by Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov was a British-born American poet.- Early life and influences :Born in Ilford, Essex, England, her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, was Welsh. Her father, Paul Levertoff, immigrated to England from Germany, was a Russian Hassidic Safardic Jew who became an Anglican priest...
)
External links