Jaan Kaplinsky - poet and philosopher, dreaming of harmony and peace

STRASBOURG. European literary prize awarded to the poet Jan Kaplinsky.

Founded in 2006, the Prix Européen de Littérature Literary Prize is awarded to authors whose work has made a tangible contribution to the intellectual and cultural heritage of Europe. The award is awarded for the totality of the written works. In 2012, Vladimir Makanin became its owner. The jury noted the depth, grotesque and metaphorical nature of his prose.

The European Prize was a worthy gift for the 75th anniversary of Jaan Kaplinski, a well-known Estonian poet, prose writer, playwright and translator. Acquaintance with Lermontov’s “Airship” and the shock experienced at that moment awakened his poetic talent, dormant in him. He considers Pushkin, Shelley, Lermontov, Baudelaire to be his mentors in literature. A huge influence on the formation of his style was exerted by oriental culture, classical Chinese poetry. For many years he has been an adherent of Buddhist philosophy. His work is open to the world. It reflected the works of the semiotics, to whose circle he belonged due to studies at the University of Tartu, and Buddhist motives, and modernism, and Celtic mythology. In April 2015, the Estonian writer received the “Russian Prize” for the first collection in Russian “White Butterflies of the Night”, intended for Russian-speaking writers living outside of Russia. Among hundreds of works he wrote, there are poems in Estonian, Finnish, English, and his native South Estonian dialect.

Kaplinsky is equally close to the treatises of the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein (Ludwig Wittgenstein) and the Taoist teachings of Chuang Tzu (莊子), who lived in the 300s BC. Therefore, he is not pleased with the growing every day tendency towards the separation of the West and the East in politics and the spiritual sphere. The categories of "own" and "alien" are guided by an increasing number of people. Kaplinsky sometimes also feels like a stranger, since he does not belong completely to any of the cultures, dreaming of a harmonious and peaceful coexistence of different civilizations.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru