Autumn 2013

sex are much more moderate than those in
his earlier books. Sauter has turned into a
lyricist, confessor and a gentle meditator, his
slang-packed dialogues have become milder
and there are even some hints of existential
inner monologues (“Is the routine world only
a masked room in a large loony-bin, or is the
loony-bin still one room in the large world?”)
The new book is frankly autobiographical:
the characters carry the same names as in
real life, and all the described events have
happened to Sauter in his real life. The book
opens with a post-divorce situation, and a
search for escape from the resulting
loneliness. “I hit on women directly, like
hoping that they will all at once send me
packing, and that’s what they do. This is the
post-divorce brittleness. I don’t want to talk
about love. I don’t need any romanticism, but
I also don’t want to be alone.”
Sauter depicts in his immediate, descriptive
and plain style the bohemians’ communal life
in an old wooden house, the death of the protagonist’s
(i.e. the writer Sauter’s) son and his
close relations with his daughter. The story
ends at the moment when Peeter is again wearing
a ring with the inscription “Don’t leave me
alone”, and Laura is wearing another one with
a similar inscription.
This is “a love story” in a direct sense, a
story of finding and cherishing love until
there is somebody “together with whom I’d
want to be silent when lying together in our
grave. It’d be good to live with somebody
with whom you’d want to be dead together.”
This is a story of sadness, tiredness of life,
approaching old age, and love. As surprising
for Sauter as it may seem, it is a complete
narrative. A middle-aged writer, “pot-bellied,
with a beer glass in his hand, grey hair a
mess, like any half-crazy middle-aged
Estonian writer”, he wants to show and
prove that he is not alone and sad but
striving for happiness and well-being, for
“quiet joyful peace”. But, now and then, he
deliberately steps into embarrassing
situations to find some absurdity in life and
to avoid excessive seriousness and matterof-factness.
The protagonist writer writes
because writing can offer company and
chase away loneliness. It offers you a mirror
and a silent conversation partner with your
own face – in literature you can meet your
alter ego.
This book gives us a summary that is
characteristic of the writer’s life, and of the
work itself: “Life is an empty, clueless
existence, without great connections,
obligations and even without any will. But
this is the best. Like a nobody nowhere. I
could say that I have fulfilled my dream of
becoming a loser.” BM
Elo Viiding
Teised
(The Others)
Tallinn: Tuum, 2012. 174 pp
ISBN 9789949918683
Elo Viiding (b. 1974) was not even an adult
when she debuted as a mature and original
poet in 1990. The “star children”, described
in one of her short stories, who have “sharp
minds and quick wits and establish their own
rules everywhere they go” and who “could,
despite the surrounding rigidity, create a
world where it was possible to talk about
everything, where there was no place for
stupidity and obedience, caution and
prejudice” were, obviously, not a motif found
in an empty space. In all of Viiding’s nine
collections of poetry and three collections of
short stories, her subject matter includes the
being of woman, dissatisfaction with
woman’s place and opportunities in society,
as well as corporeality, psychoanalytical
puzzles, and intellectual sharp irony and
social criticism. Viiding’s relations with the
world are brittle and full of anxiety; there is
not much space for empathy because
Viiding’s stakes are high, but they meet a
dead end: she protests against the bourgeoisie,
against superficiality and mental
weakness, against soullessness and the lack
of individuality. This is the protest of a