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Estonia

 

There is no haiku society in Estonia. I guess there are about 100 Estonians who write haikus. Most part of famous poets have written some haikus. There are no poets dedicated on haikus exclusively. Poets, who write mostly other genres of poetry, write haikus sometimes. I have not heard about plans of setting up a society. there is no organized haiku life, but there is an anthology of Estonian haiku published in 1980 (Estonian title of it: "Kõik siin maailmas.

Valimik Eesti haikusid. Koostanud Mart Mäger. Tallinn, "Eesti Raamar", 1980, 264 pages). The first Estonian haikus were written already before the First World War by our symbolist poet Ernst Enno. These haikus have not preserved. The first Estonian tankas, written by Arthur Valdes, are preserved. They were published in 1917 (almanach "Siuru" I). The first translations of haikus of Basho were made by Ormi Arp in 1925. Poet Johannes Barbarus published his first haikus in 1930.

A famous poet, professor of theology and polyglott Uku Masing has both translated and written himself lot of haikus and tankas on the thirties and forties. He had remarkable erudition in Japanese poetry on the twenties already. He had the great influence on the young generation on the sixties - very many poets began to write haikus on the sixties. After the sixties Estonian production of haikus has diminished, but it never ceased.

Here and there in Estonian schools teachers propagate haiku writing among their pupils. They consider haikus as a good vehicle to train creative spirit of pupils.

The greatest enthusiast of haikus has been the composer of our haiku anthology Mart Mäger (1935-1993), who wrote haikus also himself under the pseudonyme Väino Vesipapp. He had an idea of creating haiku club or haiku society in Estonia. But it was never done really. Haiku has connections with Estonian poetical tradition. The touch of nature in Japanese haiku and Estonian old folklore lyrics (regivärss) is similar - there is religious similarity also: Estonian pre-Christian religion maausk and Japanese shinto have the same main features. The images of moon and cuckoo-bird in Estonian regivärss and in Japanese haiku are almost the same.

In 19. century our famous poet Juhan Liiv wrote short poems about nature and its meaning to the human psyche - these poems were very much like haikus. Juhan Liiv did not know anything about Japanese poetry.

Estonian language is an agglutinative one. Its grammar has lot common features with Japanese, Korean and Mandjurian. Japanese people are very able to learn Estonian or Finnish quickly. Their pronunciation is very good also. Russians are disable to learn Estonian or Finnish well and their pronunciation is very bad also. Germans are better on it, but not so good as Japanese.

The sequence of words in a sentence is very free in Estonian. It is quite important in writing haikus - you have much more possibilities of composing words.