Tammsaare was born in
Järva County, in the municipality of
Albu, in the village of
Vetepere,
Estonia. The son of a farmer, he came from a poor background but managed to collect enough money for his education. His family was quite enlightened for the time, with his father ordering newspapers, which was something most Estonian farmers didn't do. He studied in
Väike-Maarja and
Tartu at the
Hugo Treffner Gymnasium, and afterward at the
University of Tartu where he studied law. Tammsaare's studies were interrupted by
tuberculosis in 1911. He spent over a year in a sanatorium in
Sochi – where his museum house is open to the public – and the following six years in his brother's farm in
Koitjärve, Estonia (now part of the
Põhja-Kõrvemaa Nature Reserve), reading works of
Cervantes,
Shakespeare, and
Homer. His younger sister, Maria Hansen, was the mother of Tammsaare's nephew, actor
Arno Suurorg. In 1918, when Estonia
became independent, Tammsaare moved to
Tallinn. It was here that Tammsaare wrote prose works based on the history and lives of the
Estonian people that gained him a prominent place in Estonian literature. Tammsaare was interested in
philosophy and
psychology. His novels reflect the ideas of
Bergson,
Jung and
Freud. He was, however, skeptical about cosmopolitanism. "European culture" he wrote, "is something to be overcome if one wishes to see the triumph of love, justice, and humanity spoken of so glibly". Like
Carl Robert Jakobson and
Jaan Tõnisson's
Tartu Renaissance group, he believed that Estonian culture was best served by farmers and intellectuals from rural backgrounds. His work was influenced at various stages by
Oscar Wilde,
Knut Hamsun and
André Gide, but, above all, the Russian realists. "In the whole of world literature," said Tammsaare, I have never read anything to compare to the Russians... there is no one to compare to
Tolstoy,
Dostoevsky or
Gogol"... Dostoevsky "really disturbed me: I lived in a waking dream under his influence. I was especially gripped by
Crime and Punishment. == Bibliography ==