Harald Rajamets

Harald Rajamets (until 1936 Harald Reisenbuk, 13 May 1924 – 12 November 2007) was a translator and poet.

Rajamets was born in Jõhvi parish in Virumaa County in the family of a farmer. He completed Jõhvi Gymnasium in 1942. In 1944, he was drafted to the German army where he had to work as an interpreter. Having retreated from the onslaught of the Red Army to Germany, Rajamets spent the remaining months of the war in hospital. By the end of the war, he had reached Slovenia where he was captured by the Americans. He spent the first year of peace in several prison camps in France and Belgium until in April 1946 when the Americans unexpectedly handed him over to the Soviet forces against his will. His imprisonment in the Russian camps lasted for five months. At the end of 1946, he returned to Estonia. In 1947, Rajamets began to study Finno-Ugric languages at the University of Tartu, but when he had reached the third year, his earlier background led to the threat of repression, and therefore, he considered it right to leave Estonia. In 1951, he went to Ukraine and worked there as an unskilled worker and forwarding agent. When the same threat happened again in Ukraine, he headed to Kamchatka where he could work calmly until returning to Estonia in 1956. Encouraged by his fellow student Ain Kaalep, Rajamets began to translate poetry from Ukrainian as he had acquired the language in Ukraine. He also tried to translate Shakespeare’s sonnets during his university years already.

Harald Rajamets published translations from Ukrainian, Russian, German, English, Italian, Polish, Danish, Swedish and Lithuanian. He translated John Steinbeck’s novel The Winter of our Discontent into Estonian (Me tusameele talv, 1963). He also translated all of Shakespeare’s sonnets and many other poems into Estonian. These appeared for the first time in Volume 7 of Shakespeare’s collected works (Kogutud teosed) in 1975. He was also one of the editors of Shakespeare’s collected works. Rajamets’ last major work was the translation of Dante’s narrative poem Divine Comedy. He had already translated Inferno in the terca rima form close to the original when he changed his mind due to contentual considerations and rendered Dante’s masterpiece into Estonian in iambic pentameter blank verse. Death interrupted his work when he had reached the first songs of the third part of the Divine Comedy, Paradiso. His work was completed by Ilmar Vene and Ülar Ploom. Rajamets has also translated many verses in various works of literature. In addition to translating Western European classics, Rajamets is particularly appreciated as a translator of Ukrainian poetry.

Harald Rajamets was one of the most inventive and talented masters in the history of Estonian poetry translation. He also wrote his own poetry. In 1997, Rajamets published the poetry collection Aeg astuda: vemmalvärse, puhuluulet (‘Time to Move on: Doggerels, Occasional Poetry’) in which he mainly cultivates the limerick verse form.

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

Books in Estonian

Poetry
Aeg astuda: vemmalvärsse, puhuluulet. Tallinn: Varrak, 1997. 184 lk.