Poetry
Sonetid
Not translated into English
Marie Under · 1917
Synopsis
A sequence of sonnets in which a woman speaks of love and desire without detour: waiting for the lover, insomnia, separation, a white gate at the end of the garden. Nature is experienced there through all the senses at once, colours, scents and sounds mingled, in imagery as ornate as a boudoir, and the fixed form, rigorously held, contains a spontaneity that overflows. The ecstasy of amorous surrender is its central motif.
Context
The first collection by its author, it appeared in Tallinn in 1917 under the imprint of the Siuru group, which had just formed around her, and was reprinted three times within the year, a rare thing in Estonia. Young readers adopted it at once; older ones, and the bourgeois public, were shocked by its erotic frankness. The book unites a strict metre and a free spontaneity, and opens a series of collections that made her the most popular voice of her generation.
Who it is for
About sixty pages in Estonian; four of these sonnets appeared in French in the 1970 selection, La pierre ôtée du cœur. You should know that this is its author's first book.
Prizes and reception
It made its author popular overnight and set the tone for a whole generation of readers.