Reiner Brockmanni värsside vältimatusest
The Inevitability of Reiner Brockmann’s Poems

Summary/Abstract: Reiner Brockmann (1609–1647), the author of the first poems in Estonian, taught Greek to Tallinn Gymnasium and later worked as pastor at Kadrina (Tristfer). Despite the considerable number of studies published on Brockmann over the past decade there is still no unanimity either in the interpretation of his poetry or its positioning in Estonian literary history. The possible reasons could be as follows: (1) Brockmann’s Estonian verses have hitherto been analysed separately from the rest of his works, which include poems in Greek, Latin and German, and (2) too little consideration has been given to the concept of humanistic education, which has, after all, a decisive role in 16th and 17th-century aesthetics, including interpretation of poetic texts. The article attempts to remedy the situation by providing a survey of the fundamental line of thought behind the humanistic treatment of education, language and poetry from Erasmus to Martin Opitz. The conclusion reads that the emergence of the first Estonian poems in the 1630s was, in a way, a matter of course. Reiner Brockmann may be characterized as a transitional poet with a deep humanistic background, who was open to poetic innovation in Germany as well as in Estonia.

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