JÜRI TALVET
2. Estonian Postmodern Poetry
To treat now the theme of Estonian postmodern poetry, I inevitably will have mention a series of names which do not say much to Western postmodern centres. The only exception might be Jaan Kaplinski (b. 1941), who has seen several of his books translated into English and whose work has also been to some extent discussed in the previous issues of In terlittera ria (e.g.
Soovik 1999). I myself have attempted to analyze some key issues of his work and that of another leading poet in the last thirty years, Hando Runnel (b. 1938), in Talvet 1999. Despite apparently anti
podal ideological differences between the two poets — the former a cosmopolitan and a universalist, the latter a nationally orientated conservative — deep existential roots can be seen in the work of both of them. The former’s biocentric individualism and the latter’s ethnocentric collectivism — as I have tried to define, respectively, their basic discourses — have in common a profound worry about either the global ecological state in the traditional sense (Kaplinski) or the human and ethnic ecology (Runnel). Put simply, both accept life, with all its organic species, and both reject human alienation of any kind. There are movingly personal and confessional elements in the work of both, but neither of them is limited to the exclusively personal or intimate area of feelings.
Both rejected the conception of the “s e lf’ imposed by the Soviet
authorities in some of their most mature work (as Kaplinski’s Õhtu toob tag asi kõik, 1985, and Runnel’s P unaste õhtute pu rpur, 1982), seeking to transgress either into the wider world (Kaplins
ki), showing that the “other”, the “foreigner” (nearly always an
“enemy” for the Soviet authorities) could share the intimate “s e lf’
of the Estonian in his/ her opposition to the alienated Soviet “s e lf’.
Especially symbolic in this sense are (from the above mentioned books) Kaplinski’s poem “I Saw Yunichiro to Tallinn” and Runnel’s “(***) Here in Estonia Lived an Englishman”. For its brevity, I will reproduce here only the latter:
HERE IN ESTONIA LIVED AN ENGLISHMAN,
I knew indirectly. '
He was bom in England,
and had finished his schools с u m 1 a u d e . Then he taught Estonians in Estonia, gained admirers for his virile mind, and rode a bike, as in a dark time, with a flashlight in his hand.
(Trans, by J. Talvet and H. L .Hix) All the rich intimate associations this poem provides can hardly be followed in translation, though, it must also be admitted that a young Estonian reading it today in the original Estonian would not be in a much better situation than a foreign reader. To a more experienced Estonian reader, who has shared with Runnel the long vegetation in the half-darkness of the Soviet period, the first line
“Here in Estonian lived an Englishman” recalls at once the isolated and alienated atmosphere where we lived only a dozen years ago.
“An Englishman” means literally “one Englishman” (in the Esto
nian, a language which does not use articles, “one” (üks) preceding the noun puts a special stress on it). The English professor Arthur Robert Hone (1915-1972), who in the post-war Tartu taught English literature and some Spanish at Tartu University, was indeed until the beginning of the 1970s the only Englishman living in Estonia and the only foreigner residing in Tartu (an officially semi-closed town until the beginning of the 1980s). A neutral description of that Englishman’s background follows, intentionally and forcefully elliptical, as in the times of writing the poem
Transgressing the Borders of the “S e lf’ in Postmodern Poetry 171
disclosing the authentic facts about how a British citizen could settle in Soviet Estonia, was forbidden. “Gained admirers for his virile mind” is another hint at the defectiveness of the official
“s e lf’: something that in a democratic society would be normal — living and exercizing one’s profession — , is here described as an especially “virile” deed. The final lines show best the interior shift of the poem from a neutral and almost dry factual description to a symbolic existential image of a brave teacher who by casting light in the darkness of the Soviet regime aspires to transgress the alienated “s e lf’ and discover the authentically human “s e lf’, to be shared likewise by the Estonians, the English, the Russians, or whatever nationalities.
In some cases, notably that of Paul-Eerik Rummo (b. 1942), too openly precipitant attempts to transgress the “borders” established by the alienated “s e lf’ were immediately halted by the censorship.
Rummo’s cycle of poems S aatja a a d ress ( ‘The Sender’s Address”), written between 1968 and 1972, after his extremely successful and hailed debut, had to circulate for years in the manuscript form. Only a part of the poems could appear in 1985, while the whole cycle, including verses like “in a country where Marx supported by armoured cars has not resolved a single real problem / in a country where self-engendered existentialism for tens of years has helped many to preserve their existence and subsist” for the first time were published in 1989.
A similarly desperate desire to transgress the “borders” of alienation and step into a freer and more humane sphere of exis
tence, inspired the work of Juhan Viiding (1948-1995), a profes
sional actor and poet who in the fourth year of Estonia’s restored independence decided to leave this world committing suicide.
However, much more than in the case of Rummo, the alienated
“s e lf’ in Viiding’s poetry resides inside an ordinary Estonian him
self; he thus, to some extent, could foresee the anguish that is still haunts the everyday life of a good many of Estonians after the country’s rejoining the “free” market-type Western society.
Viiding who until 1975 wrote under the pseudonym of Jüri Üdi (George Marrow), gained by a special playfulness (rapid changes from irony to self-irony, from the grotesque to cordiality, witty puns, colloquial speech, abundant quotations and pastiches)
immense popularity among the Estonian reading public, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. A younger critic and poet Hasso Krull, a disciple himself of Western postmodern and deconstructionist discourses, has seen in Viiding a great forerunner of Estonian postmodern poetry and a most radical revolutionizer of the poetic language (e.g. Krull 1998).
Indeed, Viiding / Üdi brought into Estonian poetry a new
“lightness” of style. This made him differ, for instance, from Hando Runnel, whose ironic poetry still mostly has carried (overt or hidden) satirical accents. Krull has seen Viiding’s “new quality”
in a kind of a lingual “hyper-ellipticity” (ib. 593). In a sense, yes.
The kind of a narration where one “story” is suddenly interrupted and interwoven by another “story” (which has no continuation) is one of the favourate poetic devices of Viiding, especially in his period of being Jüri Üdi. (By the way, in the first two lines of the above quoted poem by Runnel the same poetic recourse can vividly be observed). However, I could add that the charm of Viiding’s poetry may not even reside so much in his stylistic ellipticity than in an intentionally over-stressed narrative complete
ness — a kind of a super- or -hyper-narrativity. A good many of his poems are narrated in short, often repeated phrases. In their abundance they form a style that coincides with that of the official Soviet ideology: an infantile goodness emanating from the all
knowing Party, the daily repetition of the clear truths of the Marxist-Leninist alphabet, in whatever cue or scale. Imitating this official semi-infantile style Viiding at the same time skilfully introduced a dissonant tragic tonality. Thus he retreats from the official “s e lf’ (which is “official” in the sense that it is hypo
critical, though its masque of childishness was never completely devoid of a genuine childish sincerity) to the deeper “s e lf’, well aware of the limits and the tragedy of an individual human life. At the same time that deeper “s e lf’ itself is not anything complete, firm in its opposition to the official “s e lf’, but thoroughly vulnerable, open to the seductions of the official ideology, as well as the earthy pleasures, a reward for conformity in those times.
In my opinion, more by far than in the work of Viiding, one could see a pre-postmodem revolt against the official “s e lf’ and its truths in the poetry of Andres Ehin (b. 1940). Unlike Kaplinski,
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Runnel or Viiding, Ehin does not attempt to oppose the (semi-) absurd language of the official “s e lf’ by a language of deeper human content (however hidden or hypersymbolic), but chooses to face the absurd by another absurd — relying on surrealist imagery, consciously devoid of any fixed or firm (fundamental) signifi
cance. The deficiency of reality can thus be seen in its lack of meanings, in the absurd and grotesque series of loosely connected images, which often rely on puns and sound effects. Ehin has remained faithful to his poetic credo until today, but I think it is significant what he says in one of his poems in 1988:
I can’t join any teachings
but the teachings (not to mention the teachers) join passionately with me
over and over again I find that some of them
have sucked themselves onto my ankle with their jaws in the muddy bottom of time’s river overwhelming pluralism fixes itself to my instep
I realise that kind of thing’s inevitable but every now and then
I lift my foot and brush them off
because in spite of everything I want to belong to my own self
(Trans, by the author and R. Caddel) Thus Ehin has prefigured in his poem one of my central thesis:
pluralism, lack of meanings, an absolute relativism and fragmen
tation themselves, when fetishized, become another “great narra
tive” which in essence does not differ from those against which it was initially directed. Though a great admirer of the poetry of Artur Alliksaar (1923-1966) — Estonia’s (and maybe one of Europe’s) greatest “language poet” — Ehin has not — and I think to his advantage — directly followed Alliksaar’s poetic discourse
based on a brilliant interplay of meanings with assonances and alliterations. Amidst accumulated series of absurd images sud
denly meanings appear, gaining in their effect just by the sudden
ness of movement in a poem’s “sleeping body”.
Lastly, I would mention the work of two woman poets, Ene Mihkelson (b. 1944) and Mari Vallisoo (b. 1950) who in my opinion have powerfully contributed to the Estonian transmodem poetic discourse at the turn of the millennium. Their work is deeply personal, with the intimate plane strongly prevailing over
“mankind’s great themes”. However, they both manage to elevate — by different means — the personal and the particular to a universal dimension. Their “transmodemness” can be seen in the fact that they both abandon the traditional romantic-symbolist line of poetry, profoundly rooted in the Estonian tradition, in which the employment of the regular rhyme metres (especially quatrains) has been quite common even in the most recent time. Mihkelson has written almost exclusively in unrhymed free verse, often making intentionally the verse rhythm differ from the phrase rhythm (i.e.
starting new phrases in the middle of a line) and abandoning interpunctuation. Though these features are by no means new in international poetics, their constant use by Mihkelson has meant undermining a longer tradition in Estonian poetry. Vallisoo, on her part, has not abandoned rhyme, but has used it in a much freer manner, in verses for the most part not submitted to a fixed regular metrical rhythm. Besides, she has skilfully introduced accents from popular speech, while a part of her work is, in fact, written in the dialect spoken in the eastern part of Estonia, near the Lake Peipus, or the border with Russia. In the case of both Mihkelson and Vallisoo these new and more flexible formal patterns have served to convey in a highly individualized manner a poetic discourse rich in philosophical shades.
The main distinguishing feature in M ihkelson’s poetry, from her first collections at the end of the 1970s, is its strongly stressed introspection. The “se lf’ to be analyzed is not really an object, but is hidden in the poet herself so deeply that she has constant difficulties in ex-pressing it, or dragging it to the light of clarity.
This has certainly meant a radical pessimism, contradicting both the official Soviet “se lf’, the euphorically nationalist “s e lf’ of the
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newly independent Estonia, as well as the light joking and self- confident irony so widespread in the postmodern “mainstream” art.
In a poem of the collection Tuhased tiiv a d ( ‘Ashy W ings’, 1982) Mihkelson says:
Yes of Estonia I would still testify but how could I speak of her if I am of the same
matter the same tongue in my mouth the only one this tiny people
has had for centuries Probably
I have not existed and there was no land distinct from the people
So I won’t be reciting the popular anthem I am
only a particle in this blood union
(Trans, by J. Talvet and H. L. Hix) The “borders” of the “s e lf’ in Mihkelson thus remain intransigent, though the poet never abandons her efforts to transgress them, towards an ethic integrity, which can be conjectured (though obscurely) in the closeness to Nature.
Whereas Mihkelson’s main discourse is heavily burdened with a radical and fundamentalist search of the “s e lf’, Vallisoo, though essentially a poet of tragic inspiration, has been able to introduce in her poetic vision lighter shades of (popular) humour and wisdom, which facilitate distance, a capability to embrace a tragedy — taking place in an intentionally trivialized micro-space, full of humble everyday objects — into a macrocosmic all-human (mythological) discourse. The charm of Vallisoo’s poetry emerges for the most part from swift transitions from the trivial (concrete, everyday, local, earthy) to the mythical, and vice versa, as a playful de-mythologizing is one of the main poetic means by which she, often bitterly ironical, discloses the hidden shades of man’s (man-kind’s) “s e lf’. If Mihkelson still has a broader socio
political order as a vaguely guessed background of her own intransigent “s e lf’, Vallisoo tends to overlook those backgrounds
completely, moving directly and exclusively between the intimate and the universal (mythical).
In her latest work, playfully allusive and ironic images have gained more weight, without deafening, however, shifts to tragic and embittered undertones. The interior movement becomes espe
cially tense and meaningful, as Vallisoo generally develops them in a reduced poetic space, making different speeches and voices intermingle. Thus, a poem from her latest collection A insu se o levik (‘The Present of the Singular’, 2000):
Heroes Between Themselves
Where have you come from? Where are you going?
Oh, just hurrying to a heroic deed.
Passing by — a man was there on a rock, bound, a bird
annoyed him.
I unbound him from the rock.
And yourself? What’s on your mind?
With a kid over the sea I have to settle accounts.
On my way I visited some comers of the world — ports, an island, where a girl was ruined.
No more time to speak.
(Trans, by J. Talvet and H. L. Hix) The mythological “short story” of the poem is at the same time universal and local. The first stanza alludes to the universal myth of Prometheus, though the poet never mentions directly his liberator, the hero Heracles. His heroic deed, realized “passing by”, has been traditionally interpreted as returning light to human
kind, the beginning of the process that we call civilization, in defiance of the tyrant God (religion). The second stanza, on the contrary, presents by further allusions the local Estonian hero Kalevipoeg (the protagonist of the Estonian epic taking its title
Transgressing the Borders o f the “S e lf ’ in Postmodern Poetry 177
23
after his name, K a levip o eg, or The Son o f K a le v, by Fr. R. Kreutz
wald, published in 1861). The latters “heroic deeds” look rather grotesque, compared with those of Heracles: he brawls with a neighbouring Finnish lad and sends to destruction a maid from an island.
The opposition of two heroes, however, is far from being unambiguous, to the disadvantage of Kalevipoeg. Both make their
“great deeds” “passing by”, reflecting thus, in the same way, the superficial development of the Western civilization, which relying on the imposition of power (force) and reason, has left little if any room for sensibility, for understanding peoples and nations as uni
que individuals. Besides, one can interpret the poem as a (feminist) protest against masculine tyranny — the hint at the male egoism and individualism which has lead the Western civilization to its historic “victories”, is clear enough.
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate the necessity to step a little aside from the postmodern “mainstream” poetry and try to appreciate different voices emerging from world’s “obscure”
border areas and peripheries. By doing so, we can reach, perhaps the understanding that genuine poetry of whatever time, and also genuine postmodern poetry, has been and will always be searching for its authentic “s e lf’, which can hardly be defined or decreed by aesthetic or political “centres”.
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