Märt Väljataga

Märt Väljataga (born 1965) is an Estonian literary scholar, critic, translator, poet and editor. Since 1995, he has been the editor-in-chief of the cultural journal Vikerkaar. He has also taught literary criticism at the Estonian Institute of Humanities, later part of Tallinn University.^[1][2][3]

Väljataga was born and educated in Tallinn. He studied Estonian philology at the University of Tartu and later continued his studies at Indiana University Bloomington in the United States.^[1]

Märt Väljataga entered Estonian literary life in the 1980s, publishing poetry translations and original poems in the press. His first collection, Teine keel ("Second Language"), appeared in 1989 in the poetry cassette Kassett '88, alongside collections by Karl Martin Sinijärv, Tõnu Trubetsky and Ringo Ringvee.^[1][4]

From 1995 onward, Väljataga has been editor-in-chief of Vikerkaar.^[1][2] In addition to editorial work, he has lectured at several universities; Tallinn University has described him as a literary scholar, critic and translator, and as a lecturer at its School of Humanities. The university has also identified his principal research interests as stylistics, diachronic narratology, the history of ideas, aesthetics, literary history and translation studies.^[5][6]

Väljataga has also been active in transnational literary networks. According to his author profile at Eurozine, he organized the 17th European Meeting of Cultural Journals in Tallinn in 2004 and has served on the Eurozine editorial board.^[7]

He has been closely associated with the "Open Estonia Book" (Avatud Eesti raamat) series. The Open Estonia Foundation described him as a member of the series council when the 100th volume was celebrated in 2009, and quoted him as characterizing the series as a kind of "velvet revolution" in Estonian culture.^[8] That same work—as editor of Vikerkaar and curator of the series—was cited when he received the Kultuurivedur honorary title from Postimees.^[9]

Väljataga is known both as a critic and as a translator. The Estonian Writers' Online Dictionary credits him with translations of philosophical and theoretical works by authors including William James, Simon Blackburn, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, David Hume, Thomas Nagel and Roger Scruton, as well as poetry by W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes and others.^[1] Eurozine's author profile likewise describes him as a translator of philosophy and poetry into Estonian.^[7]

His essays on Estonian literature and literary criticism have appeared in international venues including Eurozine, the Austrian journal Wespennest, and Dalkey Archive Press's Context.^[7][10][11]

Among his major book-length projects is Kirjandus kui selline: Valik vene vormikoolkonna tekste (2014), a Tallinn University Press anthology of Russian formalist writing that he compiled and edited.^[12] In 2018 he published Väike inglise luule antoloogia, as compiler, translator and author of the afterword.^[13] HeadRead described the appearance of the anthology as one of the notable Estonian literary events of the previous year and noted that it contained more than 200 poems by 50 authors.^[14]

His poetry has also received scholarly attention abroad. The German Estophile Cornelius Hasselblatt devoted a 2002 essay, "Dichtung und Mathematik", to Väljataga's poetry.^[15]

Väljataga received the Order of the White Star, V class, in 2001.^[16] In 2012 he received the Tallinn University Literary Award in translation for his translations of Vladimir Nabokov's short stories "The Vane Sisters" and "Signs and Symbols".^[17][18]

He has twice won annual awards from the literature endowment of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia: in 2012 for translating Auden's 39 luuletust ja 5 esseed and in 2019 for Väike inglise luule antoloogia and the poetry collection Gladioolid.^[19][20] In 2021 the city of Tallinn awarded him the Tallinn Decoration for his contribution to literary history and literary life.^[21]

• Teine keel (1989)^[1]
• Sada tuhat miljardit millenniumisonetti (2000)^[22]
• Kirjandus kui selline: Valik vene vormikoolkonna tekste (editor and translator, 2014)^[12]
• Väike inglise luule antoloogia (compiler, translator and afterword author, 2018)^[13]
• Gladioolid (2018)^[23]
• W. B. Yeats, Sümbolid. Luuletusi ja esseesid (compiler, translator and commentator, 2023)^[24]

• Media related to Märt Väljataga at Wikimedia Commons
• Märt Väljataga at the Estonian Writers' Online Dictionary
• Märt Väljataga at Eurozine