The Border of Defence: Europe and Russia

Abstract

This poem, The East-West Border’ (1987), by the Estonian poet Jaan Kaplinski admirably epitomizes the idea that the frontier between East and West is not just a line on a map or even a geographical border. Instead, it is a constantly shifting frontier moulded in the course of history by changing political conditions and cultural identities.

The East-West border is always wandering,

sometimes eastward, sometimes west,

and we do not know exactly where it is just now:

In Gaugamela, in the Urals, or maybe in ourselves,

so that one ear, one eye, one nostril, one hand, one foot,

one lung and one testicle or one ovary

is on the one, the other on the other side. Only the heart,

only the heart is always on one side:

if we are looking northward, in the West;

if we are looking southward, in the East;

and the mouth doesn’t know on behalf of which or both

it has to speak.

Jaan Kaplinski (1992: 9)