Ants Oras ja eesti Shakespeare’i-kultuur
Ants Oras and Shakespeare in the Estonian language and culture

Summary/Abstract: The article looks into the role of Ants Oras as the introducer of Shakespeare to the Estonian language and culture. Since Oras was active both in the theoretical and practical fields – he translated Shakespeare into Estonian and wrote analyses of his works and the translations of his works – it can be viewed as a mission for him. Oras has stressed that idea himself by writing repeatedly about the fact that translating Shakespeare is a highly important task for every language and culture. Such an idea, that later has been pronounced by many internationally noted Shakespeare scholars (e.g. Dirk Delabastita), was actually worded in Estonia already before Oras did so, it was done by Johannes Aavik as early as in 1912. The current article focuses on Oras’s writings about Shakespeare in the culture periodicals in Estonia in the 20ies and 30ies of the 20th century and also on his later analyses, written in emigration. During the first period, an interesting “dialogue” was born between Johannes Silvet and Oras – on the pages of the journals Eesti Kirjandus and Looming one can see Silvet’s reviews of Oras’s Shakespeare translations and the latter’s replies to these reviews. In emigration Oras, in his turn, writes about the work of Georg Meri who was the next main translator of Shakespeare into Estonian. The article is an attempt to give a survey of Oras’s conscious work in enriching the Estonian language and culture via translating and analysing the works of Shakespeare.

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