Karl Ristikivi - Early Life and Education in Estonia

Early Life and Education in Estonia

Karl Ristikivi was one of the first Estonian writers to create a comprehensive panorama of his country's urbanization. Once in Swedish exile, he also wrote the first Estonian surrealist novel, a work that is strongly influenced by existentialist philosophy. He orchestrated an impressive cycle of seventeen novels plus other books into a polyphonic unity with a time scale that embraces European history over two millennia. His invention and use of a complicated system of myths and symbols could be compared to the approach of the school of semiotic writers. Humanism, Christian religion, and traditional ethics are, however, the chief legacy of his works.

Ristikivi was born on 16 October 1912 in Varbla in western Estonia to an unmarried maidservant, Liisu Ristikivi, and was baptized Karp Ristikivi in the Russian Orthodox congregation to which his mother belonged. He spent his childhood on various farms where his mother found employment. In 1920 he entered a village school and suffered humiliation because of his illegitimacy and his frail physique.

He obtained some knowledge of literature and history by reading old German books that he found in the attic of a local manor house; although he did not know the language at first, he enjoyed looking at the pictures and asked grown-ups about the meaning of the texts. In the process he shaped his own imaginary world of medieval knights and Christian ideals.

His interest in history and talent for learning languages made Ristikivi an academic success at the village school. In 1927 a rich relative offered him an opportunity to continue his studies, and Ristikivi attended the Tallinn Commercial School and the Tallinn College; he graduated from the latter institution in 1932. The reminiscences of older residents of the city sparked Ristikivi's interest in the first period of urbanization in Estonia at the end of the nineteenth century.

Ristikivi began his literary career writing stories for family magazines, and in the 1930s he published a series of children's books with animal characters: The Flying World ("Lendav maailm", 1935), The Blue Butterfly ("Sinine liblikas", 1936), Pals ("Semud", 1936), and Chums ("Sellid", 1938). The money he received for these works enabled him to enroll in the department of geography in the faculty of mathematics and natural sciences of the University of Tartu in 1936, where he chose sociology as his main subject.

While at the university he was active in the left-wing Estonian Students' Society Veljesto. Ristikivi graduated Tartu University cum laude in 1941.