Rein Sepa võõrkeelse luule omapärast
On Rein Sepp’s Poetry

Summary/Abstract: The author Rein Sepp (1921–1995) was the Estonian translator of most of the ancient Germanic epics. The special emphasis laid in his correspondence on the significance of „The Elder Edda” for the Estonian people should not distract attention from the oldest work of Germanic heritage, the Old English „Beowulf ”. The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex was revived in the works of Thomas Hardy to whose poetry Rein Sepp’s own English and German language poems, both numbering about a hundred and mostly written in the 1960s and 1970s, display kindred traits of form and feeling. Sepp’s Germanic verse contains elements from the schools of Romanticism and Surrealism, as well as an etymologist’s passion for ancient roots. The dolorous images of nature and time in his German-language poems may recall the poetry of Rilke, while the contemplations on the struggles and transience of life remind one of English First World War poets and hearken back to the mass emigration of the Baltic German population from Estonia in 1939.

• Details
• Contents