Quick Facts
Biography
Henrik Visnapuu (2 January 1890 [O.S. 21 December 1889] in Helme Parish, Viljandi County, Livonia – 3 April 1951 in Long Island, New York, United States) was a well-known Estonian poet and dramatist.
Life
Henrik Visnapuu first attended the village school in Reola (today in Ülenurme Parish) and college in Sipe (today in Kambja Parish) and the municipal school in Tartu. In 1907, he graduated from the grammar school in Narva after taking final exams in education and taught at various schools as a primary school teacher. by 1912 he moved to Tartu and taught Estonian literature at the local high school for girls. At the same time he attended lectures in philosophy at the University of Tartu. Visnapuu worked since 1917 as a journalist at the Tallinna Teataja, then until 1935 he worked as a freelance journalist and author. From 1935 to 1944 he was culture secretary in the department of the Information Agency of the Estonian state. With the approaching Soviet occupation of Estonia and the return of the Red Army, Henrik Visnapuu fled to Germany in 1944 and in 1949 moved to the United States, where he died on Long Island, New York.
Work
Henrik Visnapuu debuted with his lyrical works in 1908. He was one of the most important Estonian poets in the 1920s and 1930s, until the end of Estonian independence and the return of the Soviet Russian regime, when he was forced to go into exile. Besides Marie Under, he was one of the most influential members of the literary group "Siuru" (founded in 1917), which was strongly influenced by Symbolism. Henrik Visnapuu's poems are mainly of the futuristic and expressionistic genre.
Miscellaneous
- Visnapuu's poems were used by composer Eduard Tubin in his "Requiem for Fallen Soldiers" (1979)