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Exile, trauma and nostalgia in Bernard Kangro’s „The Blue Gate”
This article examines exile trauma and the poetics of its representation in Bernard Kangro’s novel „The Blue Gate” (Sinine värav). Exile was first thematized in Bernard Kangro’s poetry, in the first collection he published in Sweden, „The Burned Tree” (1945). However, it was not until 1957, in the novel „The Blue Gate” that exile became a thematic concern in his prose. The working through of his personal trauma in prose fiction, instead of the so-called pure autobiographical genres continued throughout Kangro’s Tartu novels, culminating in his Joonatan trilogy in the beginning of the 1970s. The main reason for this sequence may…
Dialogue and demarcation between history and fiction
The first part of the article deals with the theoretical problem of historical fiction as a means of exploring the historical past. According to the consensual view in the theory of fiction, fictional worlds are inhabited only by fictional entities, so that the Tallinn of Jaan Kross’ historical novels is a fictional Tallinn, although one with a factual counterpart. In this view historical novels cannot be used for exploring the past. In the best case they can be used as sources about the times of their composition. On the other hand there is a tradition represented by certain novelists as…
The transmedial nature of cultural memory
The article assumes that history is kept in cultural memory by reduplication into different languages or media. Each new duplicate version includes a variable part influenced by its author’s contemporary socio-cultural background as well as by the particular medium or language used. On the other hand, transmedia analysis enables to find the invariable core contained in all of the versions.
One of the repeatable wholes in Estonian cultural memory is made up of the artistic texts mediating the escapes over the sea in 1944. The article analyses fragments of three relevant works, namely, August Gailit’s novel Üle rahutu vee („Over troubled…
One of the repeatable wholes in Estonian cultural memory is made up of the artistic texts mediating the escapes over the sea in 1944. The article analyses fragments of three relevant works, namely, August Gailit’s novel Üle rahutu vee („Over troubled…
Historical novels by Rudolf Sirge
The historical novels by Rudolf Sirge provide an opportunity to examine the question how we could and should read the literary works from the Soviet time that have a certain literary value, but which do not fit into the contemporary ideological framework or the „regime of truth”, in a situation where the complicated codes of reception of those times are hidden from us. The paper deals with two cases: first, a comparison of Rahu! Leiba! Maad! („Peace! Bread! Land!”, 1929), a naturalist novel about the revolutionary times of 1917–1918, and its later version Tulukesed luhal („Lights on the River Plain”,…
Challenging expansions
While the interwar literatures of the big, established European nation states afforded historical fiction but a marginal position, the genre did not lose its functionality for the new nations. The late 1930s witnessed a new rise of the Estonian historical novel. This article analyses two of the most emblematic examples of this boom, namely, the Estonian Viking novels Urmas ja Merike („Urmas and Merike”, 1935–1936) by Karl August Hindrey and Läänemere isandad („The Lords of the Baltic Sea”, 1936) by August Mälk. Examining the relations between historical fiction and national history, it contextualizes those works on the background of two…
Aino Kallas: A flight to and from history
Aino Kallas (1878–1956) is considered a Finnish as well as an Estonian author. Her borderline status between the two cultures and her ambivalent oeuvre continue to provide substance for diverse literary historical interpretations, neither has reader interest waned, which has even led to talk of a renaissance of Aino Kallas. The article discusses the writer’s relations with (Estonian) history on which her masterpieces were based. Aino Kallas arrived at the themes from the 14th–17th centuries after a creative crisis making her realize that lack of the blood bond prevented her from delving into specifically Estonian problems and that realism was…
The Mahtra War(s)
This article examines the social relations of gender in Eduard Vilde’s historical novel Mahtra sõda („The Mahtra War”, 1902), focused on the widespread peasant rebellions of 1858 in northern Estland. It is argued that gender is a major axis for the representation of village life as the novel analyzes the intrusion of colonial violence into a peasant family through sexual abuse of young women who worked as servants at the manor and their forced marriages, emphasizing that women’s survival strategies and resistance are shown in the context of gendered social relations. The Trauerspiel of the Mahtra rebellion draws close attention…
From history to fiction and back again
Balthasar Russow’s Livonian Chronicle was not only popular at the time when it was written, but continues to fascinate the readers up to the present. This article is firstly sketching the circumstances of the multiplication of Russow’s own text, secondly mapping the uses of Russow’s Livonian Chronicle in historical fiction and folklore, and thirdly pointing at some features of the chronicle which may lay behind its popularity throughout the centuries.
Both, in the Baltic German and Estonian literature there are numerous examples, where the material from the chronicle has been used in fiction (e.g. Theodor Herman Pantenius, Eduard Bornhöhe, Enn Kippel,…
Both, in the Baltic German and Estonian literature there are numerous examples, where the material from the chronicle has been used in fiction (e.g. Theodor Herman Pantenius, Eduard Bornhöhe, Enn Kippel,…
International cultural memory and rewriting in Koidula’s Juudit
Juudit, ehk Jamaika saare viimsed Maroonlased („Juudit”, or the Last Maroons of Jamaica”, 1870) was published at the height of the Estonian 19th-century ‘National Awakening’ by one of its leading activists, Lydia Koidula (1843–1886). Probably an adaptation of an unknown German source, the novella is set on Jamaica in 1795, in the wake of the French Revolution. It ties the political plot of the Second Maroon War, which was fought by a group of runaway slaves against the planters and the British military, with a fictional inter-racial love-intrigue. The novella transmits a number of earlier thematic and formal patterns associated…
The poetics and politics of Estonian historical fiction
During the past 150 years historical fiction has been one of the key „memory forms” contributing to the making and consolidation of Estonian cultural memory and national history. Nevertheless, it has rarely been studied from that perspective. The introductory article to the special issue on the Estonian historical novel and cultural memory firstly gives an overview of the concept of cultural memory and discusses the perspectives it opens up for the study of the Estonian historical novel. It also suggests some new ways to explore the relationship of historical fiction with other media of cultural memory such as historiography, politics…
Etymological notes (XIV)
Etymologies for the Estonian words asima ‘to seize’, iidne ‘ancient’, kabuhirm ‘panic’, leetrid ‘measles’ and üllitama ‘to publish’ are presented. In the article the verb asima ‘to seize, to grasp, to snatch’ is interpreted as a borrowing from the German word haschen ‘to grip; to catch’. The word iidne ‘ancient’ is explained as a derivative from the stem variant igi– of the noun iga ‘age’, with –g– dropped in grade alternation. The noun kabuhirm ‘panic’ could be a translation loan from the Finnish pakokauhu, with metathesis (Fin pako– = Est pagu-) having taken place in the first component. The word…
Of gnomes and giants
Different material aspects of the book have observable influence on reading practices and the resulting reading customs reflect on the intellectual activities and priorities of different periods. In antiquity scrolls and continuous writing resulted in social and listener-orientated reading practices, while the use of scribes contributed to the somewhat detached character of the text. The spread of the codex format of the book and especially of word-separated writing, which appeared in the medieval period, gave rise to a silent reading tradition, which was more of a meditative character. Silent reading enables the reader to absorb text more quickly and in…