Aare Pilv at 50: A Professional Nationalist and a Relativist Platonist

On 15 April 2026, Aare Pilv, Junior Researcher at the Under and Tuglas Literary Institute, celebrated his jubilee. To mark the occasion, the journal Keel ja Kirjandus published an interview with him.

Johanna Ross

A Professional Nationalist and a Relativist Platonist

A Conversation with Aare Pilv

For Keel ja Kirjandus, you are primarily a literary scholar, but your range of active roles is in fact much broader. What does this multiplicity give you?

It allows for a kind of “change of regime” — I can hardly imagine being only an academic researcher (that would feel too dry), or only a freelance writer (then I would have to treat creative work as an obligation in order to justify myself), or working permanently in theatre (which I would avoid, if only because theatre professionals spend a considerable amount of time in windowless spaces). I might perhaps imagine myself as a professional translator: it combines both research and creativity.

I very much enjoy the community around the Translators’ Section of the Writers’ Union, because it brings together the best qualities of both academic and intuitively creative people. The more different “regimes” there are, the more ways there are to articulate the world. That, I think, is my core interest — in what ways can one structure and express lived experience of the world.

Read the full interview in the April 2026 issue of Keel ja Kirjandus.