ABSTRACT
The seashore is first of all obviously the place where the flights started and where many of them ended, but in none of the texts is it a central or dominant motif at first sight. However, at a closer look, devices and means used for portraying the seashore also mediate the central meaningful core of these texts. In Estonian literary history, the works of August Gailit are mostly remembered for their romantic-symbolist language and their characteristically bittersweet humour. Across the Restless Sea, which is based on the letters of a fellow refugee, is the author's last novel and very different from his previous works and style. A Family in Water was painted about three years before the main wave of escapes in the autumn of 1944. Its associations with the event are the result of the text, which was informed by Eerik Haamer's own exile and by the influence that the flight of so many people had on Estonian culture.
