Bungling and botching, paste-pot and brush

Vilde in journalism, 1882-1889

After leaving school Vilde lived at his parents’ in Karjaküla for two years. His parents would have liked their son to become a bailiff but Vilde hated the idea. He spent his days reading newspapers and books and he said himself that thanks to that he obtained correct Estonian spelling. These days inflamed him with literary zeal. He was seventeen when he wrote his first stories On the Road of Evil and The Man in the Black Cloak.  When he went to offer his first manuscript for publication at the Brandt bookshop in 1882, he met Jakob Hermann Vahtrik who became his close friend for years.

In the autumn of 1883 Vilde was apprenticed at the editorial office of the newspaper Virulane where Juhan Liiv also worked. A small room for which he did not have to pay rent belonged to the apprenticeship and so he started his career in journalism. “I wrote above the line and below the line; I searched for news,  I botched stories together, I made corrections for five days a week and on the sixth day the paste-pot and brush, parcels and addresses were my lot.” (E. Vilde, 1957)

Vilde’s first success came with the publication of his story Two Fingers in the newspaper Postimees in 1887. He became more widely read. This was a springboard to get an editor’s job at the oldest Estonian newspaper Postimees. When he left this job, he spent a few years “loafing carelessly, looking for pleasure and writing a few small books of stories, contributed news to several papers and translated his thrillers. Finally, yielding to the temptation to travel – Berlin.” (E. Vilde, 1957)

These first years of his career were the most careless and cheerful in his life.