Keywords: Bernard Kangro, poetry as testimony, trauma, World War II
The article discusses six poems from the poetry collection Põlenud puu (Charred tree, 1945) and three cycles from the collection Varjumaa (Shadowland, 1966), both published in exile by Estonian author Bernard Kangro (1910–1994). Those autobiographical poems and cycles are interpreted as a testimony, testifying not only to the author’s personal experiences of the World War II, but also in the name of the other Estonian refugees and in the name of those who suffered and perished in their home country. The article analyses Kangro’s themes, motifs and figures of speech associated with traumatic experience and…

Keywords: etymology of bynames, place names and folk names
The article challenges again the widespread belief that the folk name Mulks derives from the Latvian word muļķis, muļķe ’stupid, fool’. The article explores in detail the spread of the byname Mulk and Mulgi in its various forms in early modern Estland, Livland and Kurland and comes to the conclusion that it was strikingly more common in Estonian-speaking areas than in the Latvian-speaking ones. In principle, the word muļķis could fit as a byname, but village dwellers generally preferred more specific words to designate other community members. The byname and place name Mulgi in the Estonian-speaking areas does not have to have one single root…

Keywords: verse prosody, Estonian verse typology, Russian versification studies, Jaak Põldmäe, Andrei Kolmogorov, Mikhail Gasparov
The article addresses the contribution of Jaak Põldmäe (1942–1979), former Assistant Professor of the University of Tartu, to the knowledge of Estonian versification. Before Jaak Põldmäe’s innovative studies, Estonian verse had been analysed within individual systems, without even wondering about the possible number and internal articulation of such systems. Jaak Põldmäe managed to answer both the questions, also demonstrating that a purely quantitative verse is not marginal at all, and that free verse is far from anarchic inside. To reach these results, he carefully studied the…

Keywords: self-mention, Master’s thesis, scientific language, metadiscourse, discourse analysis
The requirement that a scientific text should be neutral and objective not only affects substantive issues, but alsolinguistic choices, including how to refer to oneself. The Estonian language offers numerous relevant options, the most natural of which are the first-person singular (for a single author) (Töös analüüsin. . . . ’In the thesis I analyse. . . .’) and the first-person plural (for collective authorship) (Töös analüüsime. . . . ’In the thesis we analyse. . . .’), both of which make an explicit mention of the author’s presence in the text, whereas the third person (Autor ­analüüsib. . . . ’The author analyses. . . .’), a metaphoric person (Töö…

Keywords: folkloristics,, history of science, 1960s, humanities, information technology, Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian Folklore Archives
The article recollects a debate between humanities scholars published in two Estonian newspapers  – Sirp ja Vasar and Edasi – in 1967 and 1968. One of the main issues was the prospective implementation of computers and information technology in the preservation of humnities collections as well as in data processing and retrieval in the Estonian SSR. The other hub of the discussion was the Fr. R. Kreutzwald National Literay Museum at the ESSR Academy of Sciences and its folklore department (Estonian Folklore Archives), also touching upon the problems and functions of the…

Keywords: core text, base text, classic, archi-text, rhizome, structure, literature
The article discusses the synonyms, equivalents and connotations of the Estonian term tüvitekst ’core text, seminal text; lit. stem text’, which in the new century has gained popularity both in Estonian criticism and in the Estonian media. The notion was first introduced in Estonia by orientalist Linnart Mäll, who studied and translated the basic works of Oriental thought, which he called humanistic base texts. These are fundamental classical texts that consolidate the past and build the future by shaping the mentality of communities and the discourses to follow. Literary scholar Jaan Undusk…

Keywords: knowledge of language(s), multilingualism, foreign language learning, Finnish language learning, language prestige
Traditionally, the metaphor of a Finnish-Estonian „linguistic bridge” has been used to refer to the competence in both languages on either side of the Gulf of Finland. The focus of this article is on the teaching of and competence in Finnish on the Estonian side. Over the recent 75 years the numbers of the Estonian people skilled in Finnish has grown from 0.5 % of the population in 1934 to 12.9 % in 2011, that is from 5729 to 167 315 people. This growth of Finnish proficiency in Estonians has to…

Keywords: biographical agency, pivotal time, generation of the 1970s, narrative patterns
The article scrutinises the autobiographical stories told by people born in the 1970s. The chosen group spent their adolescent formative years in the whirlwind of the social changes characteristic of Estonia in the 1990s and they found themselves in high positions at an unusually early age, enjoying upward social mobility. The analysis is based on stories elicited from qualitative interviews (biographical, focus-group and in-depth interviews). Specifically, the analysis focused on how the interviewees saw their own role, or agency, and to what extent they referenced the developments in their lives…

Keywords: life writing, embodied theory, affect theory
The article focuses on texts that can be classified as autotheoretical, that is, they are autobiographical texts that simultaneously interrogate theoretical issues and, by their genre liminality, seek to articulate otherwise muted phenomena. The autotheoretical practice of the 2000s can be seen as a continuation of feminist personal criticism of the 1970s–1980s, such as the work of Jane Tompkins and Nancy K. Miller, and an attempt to develop forms of writing outside the prevalent academic hermeneutics of suspicion. Proceeding from the work of Mieke Bal, Roland Barthes and Adriana Cavarero, the article aims to…

Keywords: life-creation, Russian Silver Age, pseudonyms, Peter Pilsky
The article deals with the problem of life-creation (zhiznetvorchestvo) on the ­example of Peter Pilsky’s biography. Life-creation was one of the most significant phenomena of the Russian Silver Age, where being an artist meant absolutely no separation between the person and the author (tvorets ’creator’) in him, i.e. between one’s personal and artistic lives. The article shows how the literary and theatre critic Peter Pilsky formed his „external” biography according to the requirements of the time. In conformity with the credo of life-creation Pilsky pursued his own aesthetic canon: to be an educated…

Keywords: Aino Kallas, biography, literary relations between Finland and Estonia
In the 21st century, Aino Kallas has become one of the most famous female authors in Finnish literary studies. A traditional biography of Kallas had not, however, been published until now.
An artist biography is nowadays a popular nonfiction genre. In recent years, various kinds of biographical questions and aspects have also become more popular in humanities research.
In the new biography (called Aino Kallas. Maailman sydämessä, 2017), Aino Kallas is described as a Finnish-Estonian author, whose authorial figure is very different in Finland and in Estonia. Completely different literary works and themes…

Keywords: life writing, vernacular literacy, folkloristics, oral song tradition, singers, performance
The first part of the article discusses the models and examples of vernacular life writing, including the copious material written down for the archives by Marie Sepp (1862–1943), a country woman from Kolga-Jaani in Central Estonia. Marie Sepp also wrote her own life history based on folklorists’ instructions. Her life history reflects the relational self, considered characteristic of a communal agrarian society and of female writers. The rest of her biographical materials represent the oral tradition of (auto)biographical narration, while many of the small stories can be categorised under genres…

Keywords: folklore collecting, life writing, Jakob Hurt
The focus of this article is on the life writing practices of the members of Jakob Hurt’s folklore collecting network. Jakob Hurt’s campaign of folklore collecting started in 1888. About a year later he felt that the process of collecting was as important as the collected texts and so he asked his correspondents to send him some details about their lives. Hurt’s aim was to publish a special book about the history of the campaign and the people who participated. Though Hurt never wrote the book, the results of his plea are still interesting…

Keywords: Baltic Germans, translation history, memoirs, memory places
The article addresses Baltic-German autobiographical texts as an organic part of Estonian cultural history and memory literature, which is, however, a severed and forgotten part of the collective historical memory. First, the article introduces the volume of the survived Baltic-German textual heritage, and analyses, in a historical perspective, how, why and on what grounds Baltic-German autobiographies have been collected and published. Secondly, the article examines the available Estonian translations of and the present state of research into Baltic-German autobiographies. Thirdly, some concrete biographies are used to exemplify the variety of possible study approaches.…