Kristiina EhinCritiques

The thirst is the same in all of us
Review of the self-published hardcover edition (2020) crowdfunded through Hooandja

Janu on... is a beautifully designed collection of Estonian poetess Kristiina Ehin's recent work which looks back on her family's history and then that of all Estonians and the entire world towards the beginnings of the current pandemic. It is elaborately illustrated with the graphic collage works of Gabriela Urm which incorporate archival and present day photographs with drawings.

Many of the poems have introductions by Ehin to describe her inspirations or reasons for writing them. My favourites in the collection were the extended family tributes Minu suguvõsa naised (My Family's Women) and Minu suguvõsa mehed (My Family's Men).

Ehin is also known as a popular song lyricist, and the collection includes one recent song lyric, see Link below.

Trivia and Links
The Hooandja (Estonian: Momentum Giver) crowdfunding campaign for Janu on kõikidel üks was funded here.

The Curly Strings music video for the poem Mind nad kätte ei saa! (They Won't Catch Me!) with lyrics by Kristiina Ehin, can be seen here, It includes English translation subtitles. Ehin wrote the poem to commemorate Eeva Talsi's (lead singer & violinist of Curly Strings) grandfather's escape from the Soviet Communist deportations in March 1949.

There is something special about Kristiina Ehin's poetry. Somehow it is summarised in the first poem in this book: 'I so want to tell you, how pine trees smell in my language, and irises, how water babbles in my language over granite stones' and this is just what her poetry does - and the words release visions of Estonia

The poems of this author just bring Estonia to life and they are all so accessible.Stand out ones for me were Sisters dear sisters and The child plays.

Ehin's poems are beautiful and straightforward to understand despite their grounding in Estonia, its language, history and vulnerability. She writes about hopes and fears of generations, of families and relationships, the beauties of the countryside and natural world and the anxiety of proximity of a super power. There is no escape from fear - ‘Even I have seen Putin in a dream/Just like most of the women I know...I knew I had to teeter on the wispy border between yes and no/Like all of Europe’ page 77. And then there is the language, the Estonian language and its importance. What great words there are, for instance, ‘mutimullahunnikutest’ - molehills, I suspect, page 86.

Original Estonian edition of "Walker on Water"

I read the excellent translation by Ilmar Lehtpere first and reviewed it a few years ago.

The quirkiness of these modern fairy tales is accentuated in the Estonian original by the texts being printed in landscape format, so that you read the book sideways so to speak. and with the often surreal drawings by the author interspersed. Both of those elements were dropped in the English translation.

My dilemma in rating this one was that Ehin separates the poetry into 1 Prelude and 4 main sections and each of those is preceded by a 1 page prose segment that relates stories of Ehin's female ancestors. Some of the earliest ones may be imagined and apocryphal but they have the ring of family stories passed down through the generations. There are archival family photos that accompany the stories. Ehin adds to the authentic aura by making these entries in hand-written format, as if they were scraps of diaries or letters.

These glimpses into the past are often dramatic incidents such as plague sickness visiting a family, a mother bargaining with suitors seeking to marry her daughters, relatives imprisoned during the Nazi occupation during WWII, a woman told to pack one suitcase in 1 hour before her exile to Siberia during the Soviet era, living conditions in a Siberian work-camp etc.

Can you guess the dilemma? These prose segments are more intriguing and fascinating than the poetry they are meant to introduce. Not that there is anything wrong with the poetry itself. It just seems as if the two should be separate books.

This is an extremely quirky set of adult fairytale-like magic-realism stories, some of which have running connections and others which are standalones. It is a translation by Kristiina Ehin's regular English language translator Ilmar Lehtpere of the Volume 2 Short Stories (https://www.librarything.com/work/15224702/111332230) in the 2 volume Estonian language set Viimane Monogaamlane: Luuletused ja jutud (The Last of the Monogamicans: Poems and Stories) (https://www.librarything.com/work/13781471).

Choosing the first story "Walker on Water" for the English title was likely for ease of usage. Both in Estonian and English, "Monogaamlane" (Monogamican) is an invented word which would seem to be a combination of Monogamy and Mohican. So it is more like "The Last of the Monogamous Ones". I don't think most would get the joke in English until they've read the book where most of the stories do deal with marriage relationships (most of them quite fantastical and surrealistic). But the title itself would likely seem so odd to an English audience that using the first story "Walker on Water" for the title probably seemed easier.

"Walker on Water" is actually my favourite of these, especially as Ehin has also expanded it into novella length where she uses the short story as the basis for a performance piece of a 100-year old woman speaking about her life and her water-walking abilities. One of those Estonian language performances is even available as a CD audiobook Vetelkõndimisest (About Walking on Water) (https://www.librarything.com/work/13707974).

As with all of Lehtpere's translations, this is absolutely perfectly done. The stories are odd and quirky in the original Estonian as well. You could probably read all sorts of things into these, whether as a commentary on regular human relationships or between nation states. Or just enjoy them for pleasure.

Kristiina Ehin's Estonian language story narration/performance of "Vetelkõndimisest" (About Walking on Water) was broadcast on Estonian Public Radio's "Raadio Ööülikooli" (Radio NightUniversity) in 2010 in a 55 minute version. You can still hear that edit at their archives at http://www.ylikool.ee/et/13/kristiina..., along with a more recent broadcast called "Tuleneelamisest" (About Swallowing Fire). The 55-minute version edits out most of the musical contributions of folk musician Sofia Joons who provides song and fiddle pieces to act as interludes to the story transitions. Some of the music is restored in this 67-minute Audio CD version which was released in 2012. The music in the original live performance was likely longer still, as the music fades out in parts of the CD.

"About Walking on Water" is a theatrical performance piece/lecture in that Kristiina Ehin is embodying the character of a 100-year-old woman who is telling stories about her life and family with occasional references to fairy tales and Kalevala legends such as the smith Ilmarinen's Forging of the Sampo. Much of the life story has a true-to-life Estonian-woman-living-in-the-20th-century from 1910 to 2010 sensibility to it. However, there is also a strong magic realism element involved, in that the woman's part-time hobby is literally "walking on water". The two story elements come together most dramatically in a segment where the woman is escaping with her family from the Soviet-Russian invasion forces in 1944 on a ship that is bombed and sunk by the invaders in the Gulf of Finland. The woman proceeds to save her children by picking them up and carrying them the rest of the way by walking across the water to safety in Sweden. Whether you are prepared to accept the magic realism elements to the story will probably determine how much you will enjoy it. And you also have to be prepared to suspend belief that Ehin's young voice is that of an older person. On the audio CD there is a fun post-lecture bonus track where Kristiina Ehin continues in 100-year-old woman character mode to answer questions from the live audience.

Ehin manages to weave a world of mythical fantasy into a contemporary reality with sublime ease. These surreal folklore/fairy tales are delightfully drawn with emphatic symbolism; they're vivid, extraordinary yarns that suck you into their otherworldliness and allow you to soar and explore their themes. Resonating with honesty and empathy, some are simple langorous fun, others more complex and moralistic. All are intriguing and written with the same flair and imagination - they are beautifully decorative tales and definitely reward consideration of the narrative.