Debora Vaarandi

Born Sept. 18 (Oct. 1), 1916, in the town of Voru. Soviet Estonian poet. Member of the CPSU since 1940.

Vaarandi studied at the University of Tartu. She was a participant in the antifascist coup d’etat of June 1940. Her first collection Under the Flaming Sky (1945) included poems from the period of the Great Patriotic War. Her books To the Roar of the Surf (1948) and On a Clear Morning (1950) contain lyric verses and narrative poems about postwar socialist construction in Estonia. Vaarandi attained a high level of artistry in her verse collections Dreamer by the Window (1959) and The Grain of the Coastal Plains (1965). Vaarandi’s poems are permeated with civic feeling; they are marked by emotionalism, suppleness, and contemporaneity. Her journalism and travel notes were published in the book entitled Cities Which Renew Old Memories (1964). Vaarandi has been awarded three orders.