Марина Тервонен (Marina Tervonen)
Marina Tervonen (born 3 October 1953) a poet and translator living in Estonia and writing mostly in Russian.
Tervonen was born in Tallinn. She has the education of a librarian-bibiliographer. Her poems were first published in the Russian-language journal Tallinn in 1981. From 1986, Tervonen worked for a longer time at the editorial office of the Russian-language literary journal Raduga where she also published her own poems and translations of Estonian poetry and prose. Marina Tervonen has been a member of the Estonian Writers’ Union from 2005.
In 1997, Tervonen published, in cooperation with Doris Kareva, the bilingual poetry collection Kammertoon (‘Concert Pitch’), which includes reciprocal translations by the two authors. For the poetry collection Ületamine (‘Surpassing’, 2003), which consists of poems in both Estonian and Russian, Tervonen received the Literature Endowment Annual Award. This book does not include any translations. Some poems have been written in Russian, and they highlight Tervonen’s “Russian-speaking soul”. These are more physical and passionate; the poems written in Estonian, on the contrary, are more metaphysical. Both sides are united by confessional sincerity, which tends to religiosity. The author considers poetry a means by which she can connect with and speak to the otherworld.
Marina Tervonen is a fertile translator of Estonian literature into Russian. She has translated Marie Under’s and Doris Kareva’s poems and Rein Veidemann’s prose books as well as children’s books by several authors.
L. P. (Translated by I. A.)
Books in Estonian
Poetry
Doris Kareva, Marina Tervonen, Kammertoon = Камертон. Tallinn: D. Kareva; M. Tervonen, 1997. 125 lk.
Преодоление = Ületamine. Таллинн: М. Тервонен, 2003. 76 lk.