Multilingualism and memory in Reijo Roos’s poetry collection <i>tere kas tohib / tere kas võisõ</i>

Aigi Heero

doi:https://doi.org/10.54013/kk824a10

Keywords: multilingualism; translanguaging; memory; sites of memory; Võro language; Baltic Sea; translation strategies; Finnish-Estonian relations.

Reijo Roos is an Estonian-Finnish writer of the younger generation and founder of the youth section of the Estonian Writers’ Union. He grew up in a bilingual family. In 2022, he published his first poetry collection kured kotkad kajakad (“cranes eagles seagulls”), followed in 2023 by the bilingual collection tere kas tohib / tere kas võisõ (“hello, may I”). The latter contains Roos’s original Estonian poems, accompanied by parallel translations into Võro language by Triinu Laan.

This article analyzes tere kas tohib / tere kas võisõ (2023), demonstrating the linguistic means by which multilingualism is constructed in these texts, how it functions as a mnemonic mechanism in poetry, and how it shapes a linguistic-environmental memory space. The theoretical framework draws on the concepts of code-switching, code-mixing and translanguaging as discussed by Till Dembeck and Ofelia García, Pierre Nora’s notion of lieux de mémoire, and Steve Mentz’s understanding of water as a poetic carrier of history and memory.

Empirically, the article distinguishes between code-switching (e.g., Finnish phrases within Estonian texts) and translanguaging (expressions such as “pressbyrånid”, which combine a Swedish stem with Estonian morphology). A distinctive form of multilingual expression emerges in the “keyboard-written language”, which arises when bodily experience and digital writing merge in mobile-phone communication. The analysis also shows how translanguaging produces a hybrid language that does not belong to any single linguistic system (e.g., in the poem elias lönnrot). The analysis of the Võro translations reveals strategies for preserving multilingual effects in translation and discusses translational nuances, such as the capacity of Võro to convey a distinctly warmer tone.

In analyzing the section isapoolne suguvõsa / esä hõim (“paternal lineage”), the article shows how motifs of the sea voyage and the Baltic Sea function as sites of memory in Roos’s poetry, activating layers of childhood, family, and the intertwined histories of two nations (e.g., the Aku Ankka comic as a site of Finnish generational memory; Iku-Turso as a reference to Finnish mythology and history; and travel between Finland and Estonia as a shared site of memory). The final analysis demonstrates that the sea in Roos’s poetry is simultaneously a boundary and a connector, an environmental “archive” that carries both personal and collective histories, while the fluidity of languages reflects the same dynamic. The article’s contribution lies in connecting the poetic function of multilingualism with analytical frameworks drawn from memory studies.

Aigi Heero (b. 1971), PhD, Tallinn University, School of Humanities, Associate Professor of German and Didactics; Researcher (Narva mnt 25, 10120 Tallinn), aheero@tlu.ee

Multilingualism and memory in Reijo Roos’s poetry collection tere kas tohib / tere kas võisõ

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