Aita Kurfeldt

Aita Kurfeldt (until 1936 Auguste Therese Kurfeldt, surname from 1936 Hanko and Kurfeldt-Hanko; also published translations as Justa Kurfeldt; first name from 1939 Aita, 2 January 1901 – 2 November 1979) was a translator.

Kurfeldt was born in Tallinn in the family of a small merchant. In 1907–1917, she studied at L. N. Belyayeva’s private gymnasium, in 1920–1924 at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Tartu (interrupted her studies for economic reasons), and in 1924–1927 ballet at Gerd Neggo’s studio. In 1930–1931, she worked as a dancer at the Estonia Theatre. In the 1930s, she published articles on dance in Estonian newspapers. As doctors advised her to give up ballet, she started working as a professional translator. From 1936, Kurfeldt continued her university education in the speciality of Estonian philology and folklore. In 1942, she defended her Master of Philosophy degree with a thesis on ethnology.

Kurfeldt has written the short monograph Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (published in 1934) and published articles on the art of dance. She has translated 40 books in whole or in part from French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish.

The Estonian readers can read, for example, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Alejandro Carpentier’s The Lost Steps, Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe, Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, Anatole France’s At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque, Rafaello Giovagnoli’s Spartacus, Alexei Tolstoy’s The Road to Calvary and several other masterpieces of world literature in her translation.

As a translator, Kurfeldt reached a remarkable level.

She was a member of the Estonian Writers’ Union from 1967.

L. P. (Translated by I. A.)

Books in Estonian

Monographs
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Tartu: Eesti Kirjanduse Selts, 1934. 159 lk.