Livia Viitol
Poems
Livia Viitol (born 18 December 1953) is an Estonian poet, translator and literary historian.
Viitol was born in Tallinn as the daughter of a veterinarian and a sculptor, attended Jõgisoo Primary School (1960–1964) and Tallinn Secondary School No. 10 (1964–1971) and studied Estonian philology and Finno-Ugric languages at the University of Tartu (1971–1976). From 1976–1978, she worked as a proofreader of the Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, from 1976 to 1992 as proofreader and technical editor of the journal Linguistica Uralica. In 1981, she worked as a teacher at Tallinn Evening Secondary School No. 5. From 2001–2005, Viitol was chief treasurer of the Eduard Vilde and A. H. Tammsaare House Museum in Tallinn, and from 2003–2005 its acting director. From 1993–2001, and since 2005, she has been a freelancer, in the current century working mainly for the Libri Livoniae publishing company and contributing to translating of literature from Latvian and Livonian into Estonian. Viitol has been a member of the Estonian Writers’ Union since 2006.
Viitol’s first short story was published in 1973 in the newspaper of the University of Tartu. Since 1988, her work has been published in the journals Vikerkaar and Looming and the newspapers Sirp and Maaleht; interviews, articles and book reviews have also appeared in several other newspapers, e.g., Hommikuleht, Päevaleht and Postimees.
She has published five poetry collections (the first of them, entitled Pääl ja sees (‘On and In’, 1991), contained emotional and thoughtful lyrical poetry in free verse; the latest, published in 2020, has been described as melancholic), one children’s book — Ilmakoer Muki (‘Forsaken Dog Muki’, 2000) and one collection of stories. Her short story Õpetajanna saabumine (‘The Arrival of the Schoolmistress’) was published in the collection Eesti novell 2020 (‘Estonian Short Story 2020’) and won the Friedebert Tuglas Short Story Prize. Viitol’s poetry has been translated into English and Latvian.
A significant part of her life’s work is the nearly 400-page monograph on Eduard Vilde (2012), for which she received the Eduard Vilde Prize in Literature.
From Latvian, Viitol has translated the texts by Juris Kronbergs, Nora Ikstena, Aleksandrs Čaks and Valentīns Jākobsons, which have appeared both as books and in periodicals, especially in the journal Looming. In addition, she has written introductions and afterwords to Latvian literary works and in 2008 delivered a series of lectures on Latvian literature at the National Library of Estonia together with Guntars Godinš. She has also prepared an exhibition on Hungary’s literary relations with Estonia (together with the Estonian Institute, 2009).
In 2000, she received the annual award of the newspaper Sirp for mission-sensitive journalism and poetry, in 2017 the Estonian-Latvian language award for translating of Ivask and Jakobsons, and in 2019 the 5th class of the Latvian Cross of Recognition.
M. K. (Translated by I. A.)
Books in Estonian
Poems
Pääl ja sees. Tallinn, 1991, 72 lk.
Läti pääsuke. Riia: Petergailis, 2002, 72 lk.
Ajalootund. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 2009, 63 lk.
Ebavere mäel. Tallinn: Libri Livoniae, 2018, 80 lk.
Suur suleaeg. Tallinn: Libri Livoniae, 2020, 79 lk.
Children’s literature
Ilmakoer Muki. Tallinn: Koolibri, 2000, 64 lk.
Prose
Jutte ja novelle. Tallinn: Libri Livoniae, 2014, 136 lk.
Monographs
Eduard Vilde. Tallinn: Tänapäev, 2012, 375 lk.
