Heiti Talvik balanced self-doubt with faith in his calling

Literary historian Aivar Kull examines Heiti Talvik’s inner struggle and ambitions as he found his way into literature in an article published by ERR.

Becoming a writer may appear simple today: pick up a pen, write and publish. But the creation of work with lasting value always requires two things: a strong sense of self-criticism and a full understanding of one’s calling.

While studying the life of poet Heiti Talvik, who lived from 1904 to 1947, Kull said he had found these seemingly opposing tendencies especially successfully united in him. Talvik had serious doubts and hesitation, but also a firm belief in his mission, which could offer an example to young authors today.

The earliest surviving examples of Talvik’s poetry date from 1923. His first poems appeared in little-known publications, including “Videvik” in Lilulii in 1924 and “Tütarlapsele, keda nii väga armastin” in Urikivi in 1926. Neither poem was included in his collection “Palavik”; both were republished for the first time in Bernard Kangro’s “Arbujad” in 1981.

The cycle “Enne Palavikku” in the selected collection “Legendaarne”, published in Tartu by Ilmamaa in 2004 and 2007, makes it possible to follow the development of the beginning poet in detail. According to literary scholar Karl Muru, who compiled the collection, only a few “arrogant epigrams” about fellow students remained unpublished among the known texts. Talvik himself used that description.

Eve Annuk, who studied Talvik’s early poems more closely, questioned whether he had written those epigrams. Her article provides an overview of the young poet’s decade of poetic experiments, which were influenced by expressionism, before “Palavik”.

Talvik appears to have recognised his true calling in the autumn of 1923. In a letter to the editors of Looming on October 16, 1924, he wrote that a year had passed since he had devoted himself entirely to poetry, sacrificing all his personal interests to that inclination, and that he would continue to do so gladly.

Talvik made his publishing debut in Looming with the poem “Eel äikest” in the magazine’s second issue of 1925. His second poem, “Rändaja”, appeared in the next issue. It was later published in a substantially revised form under the title “Simmanil” in “Palavik”.

These early verses already show that the beginning poet did not limit himself to neutral descriptions but created energetic movement:

Horizon is feverish,
the world sinks into black.
Behind the lighthouse shutters
a fiery eye is blazing.

Nearly all of Talvik’s letters to the editors of Looming, as well as to Friedebert Tuglas and Aino Kallas, reveal strong self-criticism. His search for himself sometimes reached the point of self-flagellation.

“At present I need nothing else but faith in myself,” he wrote on January 1, 1924. On November 18, 1928, he added: “For some reason I now need more than ever an encouraging word of recognition from a competent source. I myself lack the strength to say that word to myself.”

When sending poems to Looming, Talvik added a note: “Undoubtedly, most of the poems sent are very weak.” Nevertheless, all 10 poems were published in the magazine in 1929.

Looming became Talvik’s main publishing outlet. Between 1925 and 1939, the magazine published his poems 16 times, as well as four pieces of literary criticism.

The poems “Kui mustavad udud” and “Ristimine”, however, were printed in the 1928 collection of young writers, “Dünamis I. Mõtteid võitlevast vabariigist”. The collection’s angry social criticism unfortunately overshadowed its fiction and even provoked several furious reactions.