Khaava, Anna

(Anna Haava; pen name of Anna Rosalie Haavakivi). Born Oct. 3 (15), 1864, in the volost (small rural district) of Pala, Tartumaa District; died Mar. 13, 1957, in Tartu. Soviet Estonian poet. People’s Writer of the Estonian SSR (1954).

The daughter of a peasant, Khaava graduated from the Tartu Higher School for Women in 1884. Her work was first published in the 1880’s. Khaava’s collections Verses (vols. 1–3, 1888–97) and Crisscrossing Waves (1910) contain primarily love songs in a romantic style. Civic themes and themes of social criticism are prominent in her collections Waves (1906), Children of the North (1913), and About Our Times (1920). In her later collections Life Is Good All the Same (1930) and I Sing an Estonian Song (1935) the principal themes are loneliness and dissatisfaction with life in bourgeois Estonia. Khaava’s poetry is simple and emotional; many of her poems have been set to music. Her principal prose work is Scenes From the Life of Estonia (1911; 2nd ed., 1972). She translated various works by Shakespeare, Goethe, and F. von Schiller. Khaava was awarded the Badge of Honor.