Tuglas, Friedebert
Entry updated 19 July 2021. Tagged: Author.
(1886-1971) Estonian author, born Friedebert Mihkelson, a name he abandoned in 1923 in favour of what had been his pseudonym; active from the early twentieth century, often in exile; in favour with Estonia's Communist rulers until after World War Two, becoming an internal exile around 1950, though his civil rights were restored in 1955; in 1985, the Friedebert Tuglas Museum was opened in Tallinn. Relatively little of his work has been translated into English, though Riders in the Sky: A Selection of Short Stories (coll trans Oleg Mutt from various sources 1982) contains two tales of some interest: "At the End of the World" (1915 source unidentified), a mythopoeic liebestod addressed to a chthonic female giant (see Great and Small); and "The Last Greeting: A Manuscript Found in the Simplon Tunnel" (1941 source unidentified), in which a survivor of World War Three contemplates the arrival of Black nations a thousand years hence, and their bemusement at the relics he inhabits (see Ruins and Futurity). [JC]
Friedebert Tuglas
born Ahja, Pölva Raion, Russia [now Estonia]: 18 February 1886
died Tallinn, Estonia: 15 April 1971
works
- Riders in the Sky: A Selection of Short Stories (Tallinn, Estonia: Perioodika, 1982) [coll: trans by Oleg Mutt from various sources: hb/Endel Palmiste]
- The Poet and the Idiot and Other Stories (Budapest, Hungary: Central European Press, 2007) [coll: trans by Eric Dickens from various sources: pb/]
links
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