Suits, Gustav

Born Nov. 18 (30), 1883, in the volost (small rural district) of Kastre-Vōnnu, now Tartu Raion; died May 23, 1956, in Stockholm. Estonian poet and literary scholar.

Suits graduated from the University of Helsinki in 1910. Between 1917 and 1919 he was a political activist and member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. From 1921 to 1944 he was a professor at the University of Tartu. Suits was a vocal opponent of fascism. He emigrated to Finland in 1944 and then to Sweden.

Suits was first published in 1899. He was a founder and leader of the literary group Noor-Esti (Young Estonia). Suits’ innovative verse, collected in Fire of Life (1905), Land of Winds (1913), and All a Dream (1922), marked a new stage in the development of Estonian poetry. The last collection of his poetry, Fire and Wind (1950), which was published in Stockholm, reflects the hopelessness of life in a foreign country and shows evidence of anti-Soviet émigré influences. In the field of literary scholarship, Suits specialized in the study of early Estonian literature; his History of Estonian Literature was published in 1953.