The most famous, and most translated, Estonian writer today, Jaan Kaplinski (born 1941), started his literary life as a poet in what are termed the Golden Sixties of Estonian literature. Born in Tartu, the son of a Polish lecturer and a French-language philologist he participated in various types of culture as a boy and in his youth, starting with linguistics. He went on to take an interest in the philosophy, anthropology, ecology and botany of traditional cultures, plus their religious beliefs. Kaplinski has written essays, plays and has translated. Over the past few years, he has cultivated an intellectual style of prose and enriched Estonian literature with his travel writing. He has lectured and given talks in Vancouver and Calgary, Ljubljana and Trieste, Taipei and Stockholm, Bologna and Cologne, London and Edinburgh. He has also been Writer-in-Residence at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales. His wide-ranging thoughts about contemporary nature, in the broadest sense of the word, can be found on his website at: http://jaan.kaplinski.com/

Kaplinski has himself said that his poetry is part of an expression of a love for the world, a long poetic list of people and things which he appreciates. This declaration of love certainly also has its therapeutic function, aimed at nature and individuals, culture and society at one and the same time, seeing nature as one whole and trying to return to the pristine purity of paradise. One important matter is the allusion in his first poetry collection to Buddhism - where he suggests that his wisdom is some two thousand years old. Kaplinski, who is otherwise critical of religion as a whole, has remained involved with the religions of the East to this day.

Although he has become the central and most productive Modernist in Estonian poetry, Jaan Kaplinski has avoided routine and has tried to connect to the basic flow of poetry by constant change. He has written songlike poetry with rhythm and rhyme, poems that are sparsely worded and also towers of syllables, plus prophetic long poems. Lately he has poeticized the simple things in everyday life by writing poetry in colloquial language, devoid of metaphorical reference. He has written poetry directly in the English and Finnish languages, also in the southern regional brand of the Estonian language: Võro kiil.

Kaplinski's poetry has been written by a European humanist who has grown very aware of, and interested in, Eastern cultures.

Jaan Kaplinski has written poetry and essays in parallel. At the end of the 1980s he published a prose poem entitled "Through the Woods" (Läbi metsa) and an autobiographical collection of prose "Where the Night Came From" (Kust tuli öö). His three works from the late 1990s are all more philosophical excursions in prose where Kaplinski discusses those woes most pressing mankind by way of parable and allegory.

The first part of Hektor is the diary of an intelligent mutant dog, the second the confessions of his creator, a geneticist. As always with an artificial being, Hektor suffers from loneliness and broods on the imperfect nature of human society. He sees the waped nature of civilisation as reflected in mankind who has challenged nature in its own pride. Eye tells of a paranoid theologist imaginary tale and scenes of challenge by magical gods. A Chinese magus puts a simple question to the creator: why did God create parasites or destructive evil in the world? But in the hierarchy of the gods, no one takes responsibility for imperfection and in the end all achievements get tangled in paradox. The protagonist of the third tale Real Numbers creates an esoteric view of the world based on numerology and the Kabbala, trying to find a relation between real numbers and angels, in order to restore the pristine world of before the Fall.

Kaplinski's prose works are written in a neutral almost characterless style and remind us of Ancient Chinese parables or philosophical dialogues. In order to achieve this distance from the reader, the author often uses diaries, confessions, appendices and notebooks as the form into which he casts his thoughts. The answers to fundamental questions are sought in genetics, theology, mathematics, religion, semiotics and mathematics, yet all that is arrived at is paradox. Although the works contain an element of dreamworlds, they do not belong to the usual type of science-fiction, but are more reminiscent of the works of Borges or Hesse - the challenging of the gods in Eye reminds one of the magic theatre in "Steppenwolf", a magical train of thought where people are merely biological waves in the brains of a god, and here Kaplinski appears to be influenced by the American philosopher Alan Watts, who claims the world to be the dream of a mad god. As a critic of religion Kaplinksi's sympathies lie with Buddhism and he opposes the revolution of the West to the evolution of the East and posits Western technological development as the reason for global problems.

Kaplinksi's soulmate, Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that philosophy is an expression of itching. Kaplinski causes an "itch" with his sharp wit and erudition written in prose which is none the less easy to read when he touches upon the sore points of human existence.