The protagonist of Nikolai Baturin’s novel The Heart of the Bear is an experienced and skilful and able hunter Niika, who lives in Siberia. He has spent most of his life in the solitude of woods, where a human being has to face both the dangers of the world and the depths of his own soul. The novel is centred on an extreme situation of existential nature. Masterful descriptions of nature and exact details of everyday life first give the impression of a realistic work, representing man’s battle with nature, and an instant parallel to E. Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea crops up.

But the cyclically flowing time marks the novel with a magic seal. The hunter’s progress in the woods is both temporal and timeless; apart from a spatial journey this is also a progress in his own soul, as well as in the mythical consciousness of the Nordic peoples. Niika the human being does not overthrow nature, but attempts to live in harmony with it. He has tasted the fruits of civilization, but has turned away from them. An ancient Nganassan, a guide of his fate, a mysterious Other, who follows all the events of his life, lives in Niika. In this duality, which is sometimes rendered in the form of a dialogue, Niika is placed on the border of two worlds – between primeval nature and civilization, mythical and historical time, sustainable living and the mentality of limitless wasting. Preferring the laws of nature to those enforced by men, the hunter chooses the former of these polarities, because he conceives happiness as something that is useful to nature.

The reality depicted in the novel acquires a full magical dimension when Niika catches a strange mute woman, who probably suffers from polar madness, in an empty wood. Her behaviour reminds us of a she-bear. They name their child Ursula (in Latin, ursus stands for bear). According to the beliefs of the peoples of the polar areas, the bear’s heart is the centre of all existing, thus we could interpret Niika’s meetings with the bear woman as his reaching the sources of perception, just as Alejo Carpentier has represented a journey to the mythical consciousness of Latin America in his novel The Lost Steps.

The Heart of the Bear, one of the most unique novels in the Estonian literature of the late 20th century, is an exotic Nordic odyssey of a traveller, who eventually reaches his real home. This is a philosophical book; its ethical sentiment has lost nothing of its relevance, affirming the idea that primeval and redeeming power can be found in all living creatures and in traditions.

Text by Janika Kronberg