Juhan Liiv: Life and Biography
Juhan Liiv was born on April 30 1864 in Riidma village near Alatskivi. He grew up and lived at Oja farm in Rupsi village – that’s where the museum is now.
Juhan (Johannes) was the youngest of five sons in the family. Juhan studied at the Naelavere village school, the Kodavere parish school, and for a short time also at H. Treffner’s School in Tartu. In his youth, he worked as a journalist for various newspapers. Alongside his work as a journalist, Liiv also pursued creative experiments, publishing poems and short stories in newspapers.
A turning point in Juhan Liiv’s life and work was the short story “Vari” (“The Shadow”), which he wrote in 1892 in a surge of creative inspiration over the course of eight days. However, the short story was not published until 1894. In early 1893, the short stories “Käkimäe kägu” and “Nõia tütar” were also completed. As a result of mental overstrain, signs of mental illness appeared, and in the spring of 1894 Liiv spent several months receiving treatment at the Tartu neurological clinic. After this, already suffering from an incurable mental illness, he moved again to Oja farm in Alatskivi to live with his brother Joosep. There he spent years forgotten by the public, even believed to be dead. Liiv helped his relatives with farm work, followed public life through newspapers, and wrote poetry.
Paradoxically, in this way Juhan Liiv became the first professional writer to create the finest part of his poetic work while living with illness.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Juhan Liiv re-emerged into public life, travelling in Estonia, even publishing some new poems and miniatures in the press. Ill and regarded by society as an outcast, he wrote solely out of an inner compulsion of nature. Liiv’s poetry is characterised by simplicity, sincerity, immediacy, and emotional depth, combined with an extraordinary power of generalisation.
Until the end of his life, Juhan Liiv remained a restless soul, walking long distances on foot in poor clothing, regardless of the weather. In the final years of his life, he wandered from place to place, staying with relatives and friends and never settling permanently anywhere. During periods of illness, Liiv imagined himself to be the son of Tsar Alexander II and an Estonian poet Lydia Koidula, therefore the heir to the Polish throne. He died of tuberculosis on December 1, 1913.
Only a small part of Juhan Liiv’s work was published during his lifetime: the collection “Ten Stories” (1893); the short stories “The Cuckoo of Käkimäe” (1893), “The Shadow” (1894), and “Witch’s Daughter” (1895). The only poetry collection published during his lifetime, was “Poems” (1909).
Liiv’s poetry has been translated to several languages, e.g. English collections “Meel paremat ei kannata. The Mind Would Bear No Better” (2007), “Snow Drifts, I Sing” (2013), “Selected Poems in Estonian and in English”. There are also selections of poetry in German, Finnish, Italian, Spanish etc.
