Jaan Kaplinski

Jaan Kaplinski

Jaan Kaplinski Estonian poet, essayist, and translator JAAN KAPLINSKI (1941, Tartu) is a university instructor of philosophy, sociology, and history. His mother was Estonian and his father a Pole who vanished during the Second World War in the Gulag. He has a diverse array of interests, ranging from Estonian philology to the study of Celtic and Indian myth and Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. He has published poetry and essays in Estonian, Finnish, and English. His most recent work, If Heidegger had been Mordvinian, has sparked considerable discussion and debate.

ESTONIANS, FINNS, HUNGARIANS, TURKS AND MONGOLS

An Essay on Language In his book Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Friedrich Nietzsche claims that “the people native to the Ural-Altaic language region (where the concept of the subject is the most rudimentary) are very likely to look at the world differently and discover different modes and manners for themselves