Violent saga of civilizations seems familiar

The Estonian writer Andrus Kivirahk’s recently translated novel, “The Man Who Spoke Snakish,” has arrived at an exceedingly propitious moment: If you can believe the headlines, the world is presently beset by a clash of civilizations, a culture war between the secular modernity of the West and the medieval religious fanaticism symbolized by the ISIS insurgency.

Back in the mid-19th century the Germans termed such struggles a kulturkampf and that, quite simply, is the theme of Kivirahk’s rather tumultuous Tolkien-like epic set in early medieval Estonia, where forces of modernity and tradition clash in a primeval struggle for the Baltic nation’s soul — and it’s future. Sound familiar?

When the novel opens, Estonians are abandoning their lives foraging in the forest in droves for an agrarian life in villages where they learn to grown grain and eat bread. Supervising this cultural metamorphosis are foreign conquistadores whom Kivirahk calls the “iron men,” but are actually German knights and their attendant monks who are determined to civilize the primitive Balts and convert them to Christianity.

Pushback to this foreign intrusion comes from a young man named Leemet who, as the narrative progresses, become the last man to speak Snakish, the hissing-like language of adders that permits humans to converse with — and control — animals, a phenomenon that allows forest people to live in harmony with nature.

Say a few words of Snakish to a ferocious wolf and he’s putty in your hands. Ditto for deer, hares, etc. who step-up happily to be slaughtered.

At its essence, this book is a Bildungsroman, a coming of age saga about a young man reconciling with a world experiencing seismic change. Among his mentors is Uncle Vootele, a voice of reassuring sanity among the True Believers on either side of the debate about the One True Way: “modern” Christianity and ancient animism. “One person believes in sprites and visits the sacred grove and another believes in Jesus and goes to church,” observes Uncle Vootele. “It’s just a matter of fashion.”

At the novel’s conclusion, Leemet and his legless grandfather make a savage last stand against the foreigners but are eventually vanquished — and Leemet retreats back into the forest to protect the spirit of ancient Estonia as the last man who spoke Snakish. A strange, wondrous book.