A Large and Spectacular Monument to a Small Nation

I have never understood why people are surprised by the cultural achievements of small countries, given that small countries are just as much part of world culture as large countries, or possibly even more so as they are less likely than large countries to fall into the trap of cultural autarky. Though they sometimes do, as in the case of Ireland in the early decades of independence, though no one has been able to accuse Ireland of that for quite some decades. It long ago found its political and cultural self-confidence. One of Tammsaare’s novels, I Loved a German (published by Vagabond Voices), deals with precisely this subject: the sociological and psychological problems of nations whose independence has only just released them from centuries-long oppression. It takes time to learn the new role, and lose that ingrained sense of inferiority, which Estonia was experiencing at around the same time as Ireland.
 

But today I want to write about the most ambitious project Vagabond Voices has ever embarked on, and it was originally the incredibly ambitious project of above-mentioned A.H. Tammsaare, the prolific writer and translator whose life spanned Estonia’s transition from western dominion of the Tsar’s extensive empire to independent state in the north-east of Europe. A very small country indeed, Estonia is a clear example of how a small population of slightly over one million speakers can produce a significant literature even in the midst of a troubled history – or perhaps because of it. Tammsaare died shortly before the first Soviet annexation, and thus his life coincided with a period of continuous cultural assertion, which proved to be strong enough to take it through the next more difficult stage in its history.

The work I refer to is Truth and Justice, a pentalogy (if like me you didn’t know this term, that’s five volumes) consisting (all five books together) of around 2,500 pages and a total wordcount of roughly 875,000. Before those figures alarm you so much that you switch to the next e-mail in your inbox, let me reassure you that I only want to speak about Volume I, which has a mere 185,000 words and 572 pages. When first published in 1926, this volume had no title other than Truth and Justice, possibly because the idea of a pentalogy or even a trilogy had not yet occurred to the author. We have followed others in calling this volume Vargamäe, the name of the fictional area consisting of two warring farms, where nearly all the novel unfolds.

This is the volume that deals with the peasantry and its struggle in a marshy and rocky landscape where some have been driven, presumably by demographic pressures, to seek a living. It is the scene for a tragic war against unyielding nature, and in spite of its length, it is dense with the themes of ambition, rivalry, reason, spontaneity, love, callousness, the treatment of women and children, the generational trajectory, ambitions crushed and, at the end, the faint suggestion of a changing world beyond the autarky of peasant life (they built their own houses, made their own shoes, clothes, beer, roads, and they sold some of their produce, but purchased very little). Beyond this self-sufficient world are towns, factories, newspapers, railways, wars, revolutions and in any case hectic change, but for these you will have await the publication of our other four volumes (Volume II will be out in September 2021, and from there on one a year).
 
If you read this War and Peace of the peasantry and its tragic sacrifice in the face of extreme odds – not without a few elements of the tragicomic – you will learn a great deal about another nation and its culture, just as you do about a very different kind of nation and another class, when you read Tolstoy’s masterpiece. And to some extent it is not just Estonia’s past but also the past of all Europeans who mainly descend from the European peasantry. This is particularly true in Scotland and Ireland where landownership followed very similar patterns and the terrain and crops were also similar, though our peasantries were treated even more brutally.
 
This pentalogy is only part of Tammsaare’s enormous output, and his work as a translator should also be mentioned. While his style and technique are unique, he was extremely well-acquainted with what was happening elsewhere in European literature. He translated from English, Swedish and Russian. There is in his work a great range of literary methods suited to the chosen subject. Tammsaare is an important figure in European literature who has been ignored for too long in the English-speaking world. I have already come across some surprises during the work we’ve already done, and I will undoubtedly come across some more as we work our way through the remaining four volumes of the pentalogy. It is a journey you may want to join during the enforced idleness or otium of these Covid days which, leaving aside the tragic deaths and sacrifices occurring around the world, have perhaps taught us to rethink the relationship between humans and other animals, and indeed the planet that sustains us all.

  Allan Cameron, Glasgow, May 2020