Gustav Suits ( in Võnnu,

Tartu County Tartu County ( et, Tartu maakond or ''Tartumaa'') is one of 15 counties of Estonia. It is located in eastern Estonia bordering Põlva County, Valga County, Viljandi County and Jõgeva County. The area of Tartu County is , which covers 6.9% of ...

Livonia Livonia ( liv, Līvõmō, et, Liivimaa, fi, Liivinmaa, German and Scandinavian languages: ', archaic German: ''Liefland'', nl, Lijfland, Latvian and lt, Livonija, pl, Inflanty, archaic English: ''Livland'', ''Liwlandia''; russian: Ли ...

– 23 May 1956 in Stockholm, Sweden) is considered one of the greatest

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n poets.W. K. Matthews, ''The Background and Poetry of Gustav Suits. A Study in Estonian Symbolism'', American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 9, No. 2. (Apr., 1950), pp. 116–127. He was also an early leader of the literary movement group Noor-Eesti (

Young Estonia Young Estonia () was a neo-romantic literary group established around 1905 and led by the poet Gustav Suits and short story writer Friedebert Tuglas. Other members of the group included Villem Grünthal-Ridala and Johannes Aavik. Gustav Suits ...

Childhood and education

Suits was born in the parish of Võnnu to teacher Hindrik Suits and Liis Suits (née Kerge). He had an older sister, Ann. In 1895, Suits moved to

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast o ...

to study at the Alexander Gymnasium. Suits so enjoyed this bustling university town and its intellectual centers that he became determined to become a part of its literary society. By the time he was 16 years old, the newspaper ''Uus Aeg'' (''New Time'') published his first critical essay. In 1899, the newspaper published his first poem, ''Water Lilies''.

Literary career

In 1901, Suits began spending his summers tutoring in the

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and French languages. In the same year, he founded the literary society "Friends of Literature" (Kirjanduse Sõbrad), a group that included A. H. Tammsaare, who was to become Estonia's greatest novelist. The society published a journal called "Rays" (Kiired). Between 1905 and 1916, Suits was closely connected to the Estonian literary movement group known as Noor-Eesti, or

. In these years, Noor Eesti became publicly active, bringing

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an influence into Estonian literature and influencing European literature with Estonian styles. Between 1917 and 1919, Suits was politically active in the

Estonian Socialist Revolutionary Party The Estonian Socialist Revolutionary Party ( et, Eesti sotsialistide-revolutsionääride partei, ESRP) was a political party in Estonia during the early 20th century. History The ESRP was founded in Estonia in 1905 as a branch of the Russian Soc ...

In 1921, Suits became the first person to teach literature in Estonian at a post-secondary school level. Until he left the post in 1944, he published a multitude of research essays focusing on

Estonian literature Estonian literature ( et, eesti kirjandus) is literature written in the Estonian language (c. 1,100,000 speakers) The domination of Estonia after the Northern Crusades, from the 13th century to 1918 by Germany, Sweden, and Russia resulted in few ...

. Suits founded the Estonian Academic Literary Society in 1924. In 1941, Suits experienced the loss of his home. It, along with hundreds of manuscripts, burned to the ground. In 1944, Suits and approximately 70,000 other Estonians fled the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

-occupied Estonia. He and his family lived in Stockholm, Sweden, where Suits wrote most of his poetry and many of his research papers.

Themes and style

Suits's poetry combines extremely personal and very general elements. Frequently, it addresses Estonian history and the fate of humanity. His early poetry reflects the

revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

brewing in Estonia between 1900 and 1917 and the youth movement. His poems contain militant, romantic and disappointed tones after the revolution. Suits uses

symbolism Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: Arts * Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism ** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries ** Russian sym ...

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...

s and

allusion Allusion is a figure of speech, in which an object or circumstance from unrelated context is referred to covertly or indirectly. It is left to the audience to make the direct connection. Where the connection is directly and explicitly stated (as ...

s frequently.

Selected works

* ''The Fire of Life'' * ''The Land of Winds'' (''Tuulemaa'') *''All is But a Dream'' *''Fire and Wind''

Death

In 1956, Suits contracted a serious illness and died. He is buried in the

Skogskyrkogården Skogskyrkogården (; ) is a cemetery located in the Gamla Enskede district south of central Stockholm, Sweden. Its design, by Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz, reflects the development of architecture from Nordic Classicism to mature functiona ...

References