LI: Jaan Kaplinski’s linguistic and poetic experiments
LI 2026/1-2/1.3
The aim of the Under and Tuglas Literary Institute of the Estonian Academy of Sciences research project is to examine Jaan Kaplinski’s seemingly ordinary linguistic and poetic experiments, focusing on how his pursuit of naturalness and unforced expression conceals subtle formal innovations in syntax and versification.
Principal investigator
Jaanus Valk, Junior Researcher at the Under and Tuglas Literary Institute of the Estonian Academy of Sciences
Project Description
In his poetry, and in his works of fiction and non-fiction in general, Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021) has left the impression of an author striving for naturalness and unforcedness, who instead of abrupt innovations favours familiar and habitual style of expression. At the same time, a close examination of Kaplinski’s poetry reveals that the unusual is not alien to him either, it is simply that Kaplinski prefers to “mispresent” even the strange for the normal.
The project aims to draw attention to such seemingly ordinary oddities. During 2026, it is planned to address two cases of Kaplinski’s linguistic and poetic experiments.
The first case includes the distinctive syntax developed in the poetry series “Seesama meri meis kõigis” (‘The Same Sea in Us All’) published in the poetry collection “Uute kivide kasvamine” (‘New Stones Growing’, 1977). Namely, the forty poems of the series comprise predominantly of such primary (that is, clause-level) independent constituents, where finite verb forms are avoided. The study will claim it is the influence of Chinese that prompted Kaplinski, who found it compelling, to change the syntax of the Estonian language, in order to eschew restrictive morphological meanings (tense, person, number) and achieve broader poetical sense.
The second case concerns the simultaneous interaction of two different metrical systems in the cycle “Tule tagasi metasekvoia” (‘Come Back Metasequoia’) published in the poetry collection “Tule tagasi helmemänd” (‘Come Back Amber Pine’, 1984). Namely, the twenty poems of the cycle are simultaneously in both accentual and syllabic (but not accentual-syllabic) systems, of which the accentual one is widespread in Estonian poetry, while the syllabic one is rare, raising the question of the perceptibility of the latter. The study will describe Kaplinski’s experiment in terms of versification and discuss the feasibility of introducing syllabic verses in the Estonian poetry.