The Same River

Sisukord:Jaan Kaplinski autobiograafiliste sugemetega romaani «Seesama jõgi» tegevus toimub 1960-ndate aastate Tartus ja kujutab endast nooruki eneseotsinguid. In The Same River, an unnamed student-poet is tormented by twin but often conflicting urges for sexual and spiritual fulfilment. A desperate need to lose his virginity leads him to veer between feelings of romantic love and lust, with the young women he meets becoming objects both of chivalric adoration and dark sexual fantasies. His more esoteric leanings lead him to seek out the Teacher, a theologian and linguist, whom the student hopes will be his guide and mentor. But the Teacher is, in fact, a bitter and misanthropic man in poor health, harbouring a secret passion that will lead the two men ultimately to an impasse. Meanwhile, the student's future is compromised when he is hauled by the KGB for disseminating banned poetry, a situation as absurd as it is alarming. Through all this runs the Emajõgi, the Mother River. This is where the young man goes when he wants to think, where he believes the meaning of life is revealed to him – the same river in which, after everything becomes too much, he considers ending it all In Jaan Kaplinski's semi-autobiographical novel these adolescent trials – set against the backround of Tartu, Soviet Estonia, and its surrounding countryside in the early 1960s – are told with the deadpan humour of an older man looking back at his very serious younger self, and many will empathize with the young man's experience of that difficult age between youth and adulthood when you know where you want to go but have no idea how to get there.