Researchers’ Night about Energy and Literature

We invite everyone to join us on September 25, 2026, at 5 PM at the Under and Tuglas Literary Institute museum for a Research Salon held as part of Researchers’ Night Festival, where we will explore the relationship between energy and literature.

We will delve into the surprising connections between literature—and culture more broadly—and energy in the first half of the 20th century. We will ask whether everything really is energy, as believed by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who was born in Riga in 1853 and whose ideas also influenced the young Friedebert Tuglas to some extent. How was energy understood at the time, and how did writers create poetry and prose brimming with energy?

Programme

17:00 — Academician Jaan Undusk gives a talk on energetist thinking at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries

17:45 — Poet Aare Pilv reads energy poetry, followed by literary scholar Merlin Kirikal reading energy prose

The event will be held in Estonian.

The project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (grant agreement No. 101305266).