Arthur Roose

Arthur Roose (pseudonym Ärni Raudoja, 15 August 1903 – 19 March 1929) was a prose writer, critic and translator.

Roose was born in Tartu into a working-class family and studied at Hugo Treffner Gymnasium, which he had to quit in 1921 due to weakened health. He began to send news reports, reviews and anniversary articles to newspapers and worked as a critic, writer and translator in Tartu.

Arthur Roose belonged to the generation of active young critics of the 1920s. He was a very prolific reviewer. From 1923, his reviews and research articles on literary history (for example, about Eduard Vilde and Eduard Bornhöhe) were published, in addition to daily newspapers, in the journals Eesti Kirjandus and Looming. Arthur Roose’s future plans were related to writing of fiction. In the 1920s, he managed to publish the short story Valimise lehed (‘Election Sheets’, 1923, in the magazine Agu) about contradictory world views in a working-class family and the novel Võhrupesa (‘Rat Nest’, 1927). In the novel written in an ironic style, one can sense the influences of symbolism and existentialism. In 1924–1925 and 1928, Roose stayed with relatives in Poland to learn the language. In 1928, he began to manifest mental disorders. Early in 1929, he was taken to the Tartu Neurology Clinic where he caught pneumonia and died a few days later.

Roose mainly translated the prose of the Polish Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont.

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

Books in Estonian

Novels
Wõhrupesa. Tartu: Noor-Eesti, 1927. 276 lk.