Jaan Kaplinski Research Articles

Rethinking Soviet Selfhood in the Era of the Anthropocene: From the Foucauldian Paradigm to the Naturecultural Theory of the Subject

Anthropogenic climate change necessitates rethinking the role of academic scholarship. This article addresses the question of Soviet subjecthoods from the perspective of one's affective connection to natural environments, while keeping in mind the multiscalarity of subjecthood. It traces a genealogy of environmentally-attuned selfhoods in the late Soviet-era sociocultural imagination and positions this model within the context of present-day understandings of subjecthood in Soviet studies. Soviet-era subjects did not make sense of their lives, aims and accomplishments solely in relation to the Soviet state, but also in relation to things closer at hand and in relation to ideas and conditions of a global and planetary scale. In Alberts Bels's and Jaan Kaplinski's writings, the environmentally conscious subject emerges as multiscalar: a subject who identifies both with its direct, affectively experienced environment, but who also realizes the boundedness of local, global, and planetary processes. The ethical attitude of reverence for life, promoted by Albert Schweitzer, together with the widely shared concern about both local-level environmental damage and the future of the planet provide the context for late Soviet multiscalar naturecultural subjecthood.

Three Contemporary Russian Poets and Biblical Tradition: Sergey Zavyalov, Natalia Chernykh, Jaan Kaplinski

The poets in question belong to different generations, as well as different cultural, ethnic, and even religious backgrounds. Ethnically Mordvinian Zavyalov (b. 1957), who is also a noted scholar and translator from Ancient Greek and Latin, and ethnically Russian Chernykh (b. 1969), who is trained as a librarian and grew up among hippies, are both Eastern Orthodox Christians. Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021), half Polish and half Estonian, was born and died a Roman Catholic, yet for a considerable part of his life, until his gradual switch from the Estonian language to Russian, considered himself a “pagan.” The article focuses on these poets’ different forms of engagement with the Holy Scripture and practices of the Christian Church. Zavyalov’s groundbreaking experimental poem Advent: Leningrad, 1941 (Рождественский пост, 2009) intertwines fragments of liturgical services and recommendations for fasting around the time of Christmas with the voices of the besieged city, dying from famine during WW II. His poem’s cathartic effect is remarkable: the death is negated by Christ’s birth and history starts anew. His most recent poem I Saw Jesus: And He Was Christ (Я видел Иисуса: и Он был Христос, 2022), which will be discussed in this article, engages with the Holy Scripture and the practices of the Russian Orthodox church in an even more direct way. Chernykh’s poetry of recent decades deals with the relevance of the Bible for a practicing Christian in a largely non-Christian world. Furthermore, Kaplinski’s posthumous Russian collection Winged Fingerprint (Отпечаток крылатого пальца), which is to be published in 2022, can be described as a dialog with the Biblical God and death “after the end of everything.” The most prominent voice in Estonian letters, Kaplinski transforms his later lyrical poetry written in Russian into a spirited prayer for the salvation of everything seemingly “insignificant”, left out of “larger history”.

Meisterlikud õpipoisid. Jaan Kaplinski ja tema hingesugulane Tomas Tranströmer / Masterful Servants: Jaan Kaplinski and his soulmate Tomas Tranströmer

Luuletajad Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021) ja Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015), keda lahutas raudne eesriie, kasvasid üles väga erinevates maailmades. Ent siiski said neist hingesugulased. Artiklis osutan, kuidas nende läheduse tuuma iseloomustas sügavalt juurdunud hoiak, mis põhines ökoloogiast inspireeritud maailmatunnetusel. Tugevasti lihtsustades võiks öelda, et oma egosse investeerimise asemel nägid mõlemad luuletajad end millegi suurema teenritena. Nad hindasid mõlemad kõrgelt avatuks jäävat vaadet enestele, oma tööle ja maailmale, millesse nad kuulusid. Kui nende egod viibisid pidevas taandumises, avardus nende vastuvõtlikkus maailma suhtes ning köitvus luuletajatena.
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 Separated by the Iron Curtain, Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021) and Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) grew up in very different worlds. And yet, they became soulmates. What then informed the core of their kinship? This article aims to show that it was above all a deeply rooted sentiment grounded in an ecologically inspired view that brought the two poets together. To put a complex matter all too simply, Jaan Kaplinski and Tomas Tranströmer saw themselves as servants of something bigger: they shared a profoundly felt sense of “openness,” something which also lies at the heart of their success as poets.
 In Jaan Kaplinski’s and Tomas Tranströmer’s work and habits of thought, this core sentiment left easily overlooked but nevertheless telling traces. They include, as this article points out, their conversation concerning the translation of an essential term in Eastern thought, namely śūnyatā (emptiness). Tranströmer followed Kaplinski’s unique suggestion, which was meant to capture more of the essence and spirit inherent in the term śūnyatā. As a consequence, in the final version of one of his best-known poems, entitled “Vermeer”, Tranströmer changed to “openness” what in Buddhism is commonly referred to as “emptiness”.
 Yet probably more significantly, what above all held Kaplinski and Tranströmer captive, as this article also aims to show, is a reversal in our understanding of the ego. Collectively, both poets agreed, we, as human beings, would be well advised to embrace a less intrusive role in the world to which we belong. Importantly, what Kaplinski and Tranströmer advocated does not amount to an impoverishing stance. On the contrary: only when we step away from our previous deeply entrenched positions of human dominance, both poets agreed, a richer world and more sustainable sense of self can come into view. To at least gain a glimpse of the fuller complexity of what brought both poets together, the observations offered in this article are meant to help us understand how, for Kaplinski and Tranströmer, changes in our view of the ego embody “openness”. Instead of increased ego noise, they urged the merit of a more modest ego. Not preoccupied with themselves, their goals and desire to intervene, both poets wrote poems focussed on the diminished ego as a key value. The more we step into the background – Kaplinski and, together with him, Tranströmer believed – the more the world opens up and the more we ultimately flourish.
 In addition to seeing “openness” surface in their self-effacing view of themselves, and, associated with it, their concentration on a vision of a world beyond human design, this article furthermore draws attention to another equally prominent manifestation of “openness” that brought both poets together: how can language make “openness” appear, they asked? We are invited to consider several intertwined answers Tranströmer and Kaplinski offered. They include embracing the untamed and stepping away from any decorative use of language – “all rhetoric must be left behind,” Tranströmer, echoing Kaplinski, categorically insisted; evoking the self-cancelling of language itself; or moving altogether beyond language: seeking to transcend it by employing a theme, introducing a practice, or setting up a signpost, all meant to point away from language.
 And finally, in league with “openness”, “silence” also constitutes a shared recurring theme in Kaplinski’s and Tranströmer’s work, as this article suggests. In order to better explain the importance of “silence”, the article draws attention to American composer John Cage. Informed by the altogether different logic of “openness” Cage employed, for him “silence” became the performance, as it were, and the ambient sounds of the concert hall its music. Acting as a particularly compelling embodiment of “openness” – not unlike the blank page of the poet, the unpublished manuscript of the writer, or the white canvas of the painter – “silence” too united Jaan Kaplinski and Tomas Tranströmer, as servants in their masterful quest for “openness”.

Avatusse astudes. Jaan Kaplinski ja Ilmar Laabani loome kokkupuuted ja mitmekesisus. / Approaching Openness: Convergence and Diversity in the Creative Universes of the Poets Jaan Kaplinski and Ilmar Laaban.

The special issue of Methis on literature and openness brings together the oeuvres of two remarkable Estonian authors with an international scope: Jaan Kaplinski and Ilmar Laaban. They were poets, translators, essayists, original thinkers and public intellectuals whose works have travelled far beyond the boundaries of Estonian literature. Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021) published more than 60 books in Estonia and equally many abroad, as his work has been translated into more than 30 languages. Ilmar Laaban (1921–2000) fled Estonia for an exile in Sweden to escape Soviet occupation in the spring of 1943. He has left his mark on Estonian literary history with his surrealist collection of poetry Rroosi Selaviste (1957) and practising the genre of text sound poetry in Estonian, Swedish and French.
 
 Jaan Kaplinski’s name was put forward as a possible candidate for the Nobel prize in literature on several occasions. Laaban, who was well acquainted with contemporary European literature and its authors, translated into Swedish poems by the German-Jewish poet Nelly Sachs who received the Nobel prize in 1966, while Kaplinski rendered into Estonian poetry by Tomas Tranströmer, the Swedish recipient of the prize in 2011. Kaplinski also pointed out that it was the anthology 19 moderna franska poeter (1948), co-edited by Laaban and Erik Lindegren, that had given Tranströmer an impetus towards becoming a poet. In addition, similarities of outlook have also been observed between Tranströmer and Kaplinski himself. For instance, Ivar Ivask, a long-time editor-in-chief of the Oklahoma-based journal World Literature Today, underscored the significance of openness in Tranströmer’s poetry, while his dedicatory poems to Kaplinski and Laaban connect the authors with such notions as scope, infinity, openness, eternity and freedom. Openness appears as the core concept in this cluster of notions related to a lack of boundaries and contractedness in time, space and society that becomes manifest in the oeuvres of both Kaplinski and Laaban. Their works are also characterised by an intense engagement with the semantic possibilities afforded by different languages as well as employing linguistic regularities towards the end of formal innovation.
 
 20th-century intellectual history, that provided the context for the creative growth of both authors, involved remarkable cases of addressing of the openness concept, notably by figures such as the philosopher Karl Popper and the semiotician Umberto Eco. Popper famously launched his concept of open society as one in which an individual has to face personal decisions, which opposes it to a magical or tribal totalitarian society. In the artistic realm, Eco discussed the open work that involves the audience’s collaboration with the author in detecting meaningful arrangements in the work, making artistic response an interactive process. Such plurality and multiplicity accompanies formal innovation that correlates with a modern, avant-garde feeling for life. The 20th century also gave rise to personality psychology that considers openness to be one of the key personality dimensions, the so-called Big Five. In psychology, openness involves receptivity to new experiences, creativity, intellectual curiosity, and an advanced aesthetic sense. Recent studies have shown that particularly the presence of the latter two components tends to be in correlation with an environmentally aware outlook.
 
 Kaplinski and Laaban belonged to different generations and spent their formative years in markedly different conditions yet were united in the attention they paid to language as a system of signs and to studying its possibilities in their creative work, which in Kaplinski’s case was framed by an explicitly ecological take on life. The present special issue on literature and openness comprises six studies concentrating on facets of Jaan Kaplinski’s and Ilmar Laaban’s creative universes by literary scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. In addition, the issue includes two articles that deal with representing trauma in literature and theoretical issues in digital humanities. The issue concludes with the section of theory mediation presenting a translation of Ilmar Laaban’s Swedish-language article “Musiken, samhället, revolutionen” (“Music, society, revolution”, 1969) that is accompanied by a commentary by Hasso Krull.

Kuidas jääda ellu? Jaan Kaplinskiga antropotseenis / How Are We to Survive? With Jaan Kaplinski in the Anthropocene

Kuidas jääda ellu? Jaan Kaplinskiga antropotseenis / How Are We to Survive? With Jaan Kaplinski in the Anthropocene

Tuulest tulek. Jaan Kaplinski luule tuuline maailm / Coming from the Wind: The Windy World of Jaan Kaplinski’s poetry

Artikkel käsitleb tuule esinemisviise Jaan Kaplinski luuleloomingus, vaadeldes neid peamiselt kultuuriloolise ja fenomenoloogilise rõhuasetusega looduskirjanduse poolt pakutavas raamistikus. Kaplinski poeetilises ilmas võib juba olemuslikult avatusega seotud, tõkkeid ületav tuul kaasa aidata luuletuste avarama geograafilise või luulemina poolt vahetult aistitava ruumi mitmemõõtmelisele ülesehitamisele või seostuda eri traditsioonidest pärinevate religioossete ja mütoloogiliste kujutelmadega, esineda personifitseeritult või kosmoloogilise maailmaloova nähtusena. Kirjaniku tuuletõlgendused tõusevad traditsioonilisema, tuult eelkõige metafoorina kasutava poeetilise lähenemise taustal jõuliselt ning omanäoliselt esile.
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 There is an international anthology of wind literature entitled Nobel Winds and Breezes (2009) that has come into existence because of the hunch its would-be compiler Alexande Mohr had about people’s awareness of the wind in daily life, in comparison with which literature seemed to prefer showcasing rare and spectacular storms rather than mundane winds that would affect people’s everyday behaviour. To check this hypothesis, Mohr compiled the anthology, asking how Nobel laureates from the period 1901-2008 have employed the motif of the wind, what aspects of the phenomenon they have rendered to their readers, how they have used it in structuring their works, and what kind of wind experiences they have found worth sharing. These questions form a backdrop for the present article’s discussion of wind as it emerges in Jaan Kaplinski’s poetry. To create a more detailed context for the observation of Kaplinski’s winds, the article charts some dimensions of the treatments of the wind that have been brought into relief in the relevant works by such nature writers, phenomenologically inclined philosophers and ethnographers as David Abram, Jan DeBlieu, Tim Ingold and Lyall Watson. Their ideas and suggestions are set side by side with Kaplinski’s own take on the wind that attributes to it characteristics of a mythological or religious divine breath, and, accordingly, compares it to a source of inspiration in creating both life and poetic art.
 The ensuing discussion sets out to detect the occurrences of winds and their different facets in Kaplinski’s poetry and compares these with the conceptualisations presented above. The dimension to head the list of wind manifestations in Kaplinski’s poems is the wind that emerges as a geographical phenomenon – the real wind, as it were. Such wind can be characterised by the direction from which it is blowing, it introduces different elements of the weather and can overcome spatial distances, boundaries and obstructions. This type of wind can be directly experienced with the help of the senses and it contributes to the constructing of the sensory space of the poems. In addition to this type, what is also significant in Kaplinski’s work is the mythological wind that can roam across the whole of the universe; it has a role in human creativity and an ability to cross the boundaries of the sensible world as well as those between the human interior space and the realm external to it. In addition to these, two minor yet distinct kinds of wind can be detected in Kaplinski’s poems. There is the personified wind who materialises as a character that may boast certain features of a trickster figure, with whom humans can communicate, and who displays vague elements of being embodied or having a particular nature; and, last but not least, a type of wind that emerges in Kaplinski’s verse is the cosmological wind that is not contained within the world, but appears to be an inherent part of its structure as a synecdochal pars pro toto side by side with the Sun.
 In comparison with the map of Nobel winds provided by Mohr, Kaplinski’s windy world stands out as deviating from the emerging patterns, even though the methodology used in compiling the anthology may admittedly have affected the results and rendered the material too generalised to draw conclusions on any particular author’s poetics in comparison with it. Still, also a survey of wind motifs in earlier Estonian poetry conducted by the literary scholar Õnne Kepp displays results that appear to be considerably more metaphoric than Kaplinski’s multi-dimensional conceptualisation of the notion. Thus it can be suggested that Kaplinski’s idiosyncratic poetics of the wind stands out as a complex original creation full of multifaceted and surprising observations of the natural phenomenon.

Kaplinski joon ja Rummo sädemed. Struktuurivõrdlus / Kaplinski’s Line and Rummo’s Sparks: A Structural Comparison

Artikkel analüüsib Jaan Kaplinski ja Paul-Eerik Rummo luuletuste struktuuri visualiseeriva pragmapoeetika abil. Käsitlus lähtub Roman Jakobsoni loodud poeetilise funktsiooni lingvistilisest teooriast, mis tõlgendab luulet kui seotud kõnet. See tähendab keele paradigmavälja elementide projitseerimist kõne süntaksiteljele ehk keelevaramu parallelismide korrastatud suunamist värssidesse. Kaplinski tekstide semantiline kumulatsioon, mis koondub luuletuse kujundliku sõnumi kui juhtmotiivi ümber, ilmutab tavalisest suuremat paradigmaühtsust. Rummolik struktuur läheneb veelgi enam sünkroonilisele paradigmaväljale, millega kaasneb süžeelisuse tugevam fragmenteerumine. See võib viia nii narratiivi kui ka keelelise sidususe kohatise vaibumiseni.
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 The article discusses the structure of Jaan Kaplinski’s and Paul-Eerik Rummo’s poetry through making use of visualising pragmapoetics. The discussion proceeds from Roman Jakobson’s linguistic theory of the poetic function that treats poetry as bound speech. This involves projecting elements from the paradigm field of language on the syntax axis of speech, that is, systematised directing into verse of parallelisms to be found language.
 The semantic accumulation of Kaplinski’s texts that condenses around the poems’ figurative message emerging as a leitmotif demonstrates a paradigmatic unity greater than that commonly found in traditional poetry, which finds expression in the amplification of catalogues or lists of words and concepts. For instance, the ballad “Üks kuningas oli kord maata” (“Once there was a king without a kingdom”) contains 22 references to the motif of land/earth and 27 to the king and his crown/throne. Around this, motifs of waiting, feeling sad, growing old, dying and decaying, as well as a rich vocabulary connected with burials become consolidated. The 18-sentence text “Luuletused on elanud maakeral juba eotseenist saadik…” (“Poems have been living on Earth since the Eocene epoch”), that reminds of an entry in a reference work, includes altogether 23 references to the word/concept “poem” that is in a substitutive dialogue with the word and concept “elephant” that the text proceeds from; thus, it contains twice 23, that is altogether 46, accumulating references. These form a dense paradigmatic web (rhizome) with points of converence that is brought together into a plotted narrative that dynamically sketches the semantic field and foregrounds it.
 The catalogue structure of Rummo’s poetry is similar to that of Kaplinski, but it often comes even closer to the synchronic paradigmatic field, which is accompanied by an increased fragmentation of a lyrical-narrative plot. This may lead to a noticeable decrease of both thematic and linguistic coherence, which on occasion can even approach glossolalia. If Kaplinski is consistent in retaining his ideological plotline that runs through the expanded paradigm field of his text as a leitmotif and keeps it together, Rummo in his “casting of sparks”, as he puts it in one of his poems, can employ parallel alternative plot rudiments and a narrative that has a tendency to disperse. To put it as a metaphor, one is characterised by a method reminiscent of a single-furrow plough, the other has the effect of a hay rake with multiple teeth. It can be claimed that, in comparison with Kaplinski’s structure, Rummo’s structure as a secondary modelling system employs an additional formal filter of the next level that finds expression in an increased fragmentation of the expression axis and a more pluralised explication of the paradigm field than in Kaplinski’s case. If Kaplinski’s model represents a clear creation of clarity, then Rummo’s is more of a dispersed creation of clarity. The former as a “less complex” method has proved to be quantitively more fruitful, the latter seems more “experimental” in its turn. Their similarities and differences prove them both to be of a high artistic value.

Jaan Kaplinski and his contacts with the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics

Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021), Estonian poet, essayist and public intellectual, sadly passed away earlier this year. To commemorate him, we publish some excerpts from a conversation with him that was recorded in 2018 and in which, among other topics, we also talked about Kaplinski’s relationship with semiotics and his personal contacts with eminent scholars of the Tartu-Moscow School.

Zweisprachigkeit in den Literaturen Estlands

Bilingualism in the Literatures of Estonia. In a multilingual cultural space such as the (former and contemporary) Baltic region, bilingualism, both oral and written, has been rather normality than exception. This also finds an expression in the literatures of this region. In the following I will examine the phenomenon of bilingualism and multilingualism in the literatures of Estonia in history and today. First, I will examine the historical forms of bilingualism before the foundation of the Republic of Estonia, against the background of the complicated oral and written language relations throughout history. Then I explore their topicality in the interwar and Soviet periods, and today. I also ask about the motivation of the authors to change or mix languages in their work, whether to reach a wider audience or a new poetic quality. Examples are from the work of Paul Fleming, Reiner Brockmann, Jacob Johann Malm, August Kitzberg, Ivar Ivask, Jaan Kaplinski, Igor Kotjuh, Øyvind Rangøy and Veronika Kivisilla.

Autoritõlke teoreetilisest ja praktilisest väärtusest Jaan Kaplinski luuletuse "Valgus ei saagi vanaks" näitel / On the theoretical and practical significance of self-translation on the example of Jaan Kaplinski's poem "Light Does Not Get Old"

Autoritõlke teoreetilisest ja praktilisest väärtusest Jaan Kaplinski luuletuse "Valgus ei saagi vanaks" näitel / On the theoretical and practical significance of self-translation on the example of Jaan Kaplinski's poem "Light Does Not Get Old"

Древний Рим в иносказательном контексте позднесоветской культуры: три “исторических” стихотворения

This paper offers a genealogy of Roman-themed writing in recent Russian cultural history, with special attention for so-called “Soviet antiquity” – that is, the extent to which allusions to the history of Ancient Rome were used and allowed within officially accepted Soviet literature. The author maps and compares different instances of interest towards Roman antiquity among poets of the second half of the twentieth century. She demonstrates that there was a strong tendency towards using Roman subject matter as part of the Aesopian language of the time, transforming covert messages into explicit expressions of the author’s viewpoint. More pointedly, the author unpacks the social and literary context of Rome-inspired Jaan Kaplinski’s (‘Vercingetorix’) and David Samoilov’s (‘Remus and Romulus’) lyric poetry, as well as their relationship with Classical subject matter and nineteenth-century civil poetry. The analysis also traces how Roman mythologemes developed in writings by coeval poets. In their work, ancient exempla morph into a source for ideological and literary creation. Bulat Okudzhava’s poem ‘Roman Empire’ is analysed as an act of reflection about the tradition of allegory in civil poetry, and as a mark of the poet’s weariness of Aesopian language in historical situations like the decline of the Roman Empire.

Ajalooline müüt Jaan Kaplinski draamas „Neljakuningapäev“ [Historical Myth in Jaan Kaplinski’s "Day of the Four Kings"

Ajalooline naidend voimaldab end žanrina erinevalt tolgendada – nii sužeepohise rekonstruktsiooni kui ka kaasaegse allegooriana. 1960.–1970. aastate eesti draamas kasutasid mitmed autorid umberutleva moistukone vormi, et kasitleda teemasid, mille otsene valjendamine olnuks keeruline voi isegi voimatu. Uht kujukamat naidet pakub siin Jaan Kaplinski draama „Neljakuningapaev“, milles 1343. aasta Jurioo ulestousu sundmused on asetatud kaasaegse suvilapeo konteksti. Tekkinud paralleel osutus sedavord konekaks, et naidendi esmalavastus Tallinna Draamateatris 1977. aastal peaaegu maha vaikiti ning sisuliselt isegi keelustati. Kumme aastat hiljem Eesti NSV Riiklikus Noorsooteatris lavale joudnud „Neljakuningapaeva“ uustolgendus, mis lahtus uksnes valisest sundmusekujutusest, ei omandanud aga esmalavastusele ligilahedastki tahendust. Seega eeldab ajalooline muudidraama tolgendajatelt nii allegooriale sobivat kunstilist nagemust kui ka selle kontseptuaalselt veenvat lahtimotestamist. Votmesonad: muudidraama, Jurioo ulestous, Jaan Kaplinski, ajalooline muut, allegooriline draama ----------- This paper examines the phenomenon of historical myth, presented in the form of a piece of theatre. Jaan Kaplinski’s historical and allegorical drama Day of the Four Kings is presented as a prime example. The play is based on a well-known historical event, namely the brutal murder of ancient Estonian chiefs by German conquerors during the rebellion of 1343 (St. George’s Night Rebellion). As Estonian theatre researcher Piret Kruuspere has noted, during the 1970s, re-tellings of national history on the Estonian theatre stage were clothed in metaphors, allusions and secret codes – Aesopian language. In addition to this secret code, the author of Day of the Four Kings used a kind of doubling, placing historical events into the setting of a contemporary house party. This change of perspective causes some degree of alienation as well as amplifies the essential allegorical message of the drama. Representing the real run of historical events, the play is effectively communicating with a contemporary audience, dealing with the problems and themes closely connected with contemporary society. In addition to its allegorical meaning, the play underlines the importance of maintaining ethnical and archaic values and warns against sacrificing these in return for short-time utilitarian purposes. The allegory of the play was even too obvious, so that the first production of the play (in 1977) was practically banned by the official powers of Soviet Estonia. Contrary to the first stage performance of the play, the second attempt – which took place a decade later – was an unfortunate example of the disappearance of the mythical dimension of the drama. This kind of poor production was no longer able to overcome the historical-cultural and national psychological contradictions inherent in the play. The analysis is mainly based on reviews of the play from the period as well as the social and cultural conditions in existence when the theatrical versions were staged. It is easy to conclude that during the process of producing this kind of stage play, it is far more fruitful to accent all kind of allusions and allegorical metaphors than to simply follow the formal development of the external plot. If the mythical dimension disappears, the message of the play loses its essential meaning. Keywords: mythology, mythical drama, St. George’s Night Rebellion, Jaan Kaplinski, historical myth, national myth, deconstruction, allegorical drama

Euroopa-ihalusest taasiseseisvusperioodi autobiograafiates / European Identifications in Post-Soviet Estonian Life Writing

Teesid: Artikkel käsitleb Euroopat kui identiteedi ja minaduse sõlmpunkti ja enesevahenduse mõõdet kolmes omaelulookirjutuslikus teoses, mille autoritel on väljapaistev positsioon eesti (kirjandus)kultuuris: Jaan Krossi „Kallid kaasteelised“ (2003a, 2008), Jaan Kaplinski „Isale“ (2003) ja Tõnu Õnnepalu „Flandria päevik“ (2007). Artikkel keskendub sellele, kuidas küsimused suhestumise trajektooridest Euroopa mäluruumiga haakuvad Krossi, Kaplinski ja Õnnepalu teostes esiletuleva enesemääratlusliku raamiga, neist lähtuvate vastastikuse kõnetuse võimaluste ja oma aegruumi tunnetuse pidepunktidega. Kuigi tegemist on eesti keeles ilmunud ning eesti kultuuriruumi lugejale suunatud teostega, seostuvad neis väljajoonistuvad enesemääratluse teljed viimastel aastakümnetel hoogustunud laiemate aruteludega ühtse Euroopa mäluraami ning identiteedi võimalikkusest ja selle toimimise tingimustest. In recent years, the question of the possibility of a shared frame of memory and identity in Europe, its desired manifestations and practices for attaining it as well as its obstacles and limitations to it have gained prominence in scholarly debates in a number of disciplines. In terms of the division between the East and West of Europe, these discussions take as their starting point the collapse of the Soviet system in 1989 as well as the European Union enlargement in 2004. Far from uniform, the exceedingly complex and contrasting ranges of arguments have put forward a varied palette of perspectives and suggestions about possible and desirable implications of Europe in different socio-political and cultural configurations. Taking these debates as my starting point, the current article offers an analysis of three life writing works by contemporary Estonian authors and intellectuals, Kallid kaasteelised (Dear Fellow Travellers, 2003, 2008) by Jaan Kross, Isale (To My Father, 2003) by Jaan Kaplinski and Flandria päevik (The Flemish Diary, 2007) by Tõnu Õnnepalu where Europe emerges as a noteworthy if not central aspect of construction of subjectivity and processes of identity/identification. Written in Estonian and therefore not accessible for wider international readership, these life writing works can nevertheless be viewed as negotiating for a position within the space of European memory and narration but also challenging it by asking how and by whom does the conditioning of the shared and the recognition of the specific take place and to what extent does it proceed along the (old) binaries of centre/margin, self/other, East/West. The anecdotal structure of Kross’ monumental and canonic memoir follows the lives of a great number of the author’s ‘fellow travellers’. Although many life stories are narrated primarily in relation to Estonian history, Kross also makes a consistent and self-conscious effort to envision a wider space of existence, most importantly, that of a European space of human agency and interaction. Dear Fellow Travellers proposes a (textual) configuration of Europeanness where the narrating subject is self-conscious both of its authoritative identity-forming position and the limits of that authority that inevitably erode that identity and metaphorically leave open a space of narration for the other. In Jaan Kaplinski’s confessional epistolary address to the author’s Polish father who died in the Gulag shortly after the birth of his son and in Õnnepalu’s semi-fictional diaristic text emerging from an obligation to write during a stay in a writers’ residence in Belgium in Vollezele, the question of subjectivity and (European) identity do not unravel primarily via an emphasis on the ruptures of the period of occupation. Instead, these works engage with questions of Europeanness on a larger and also more volatile frame of the politics of positioning in the contemporary relating to questions of cultural diversity, the local/global relationship and Europe’s simultaneously tight and leaky boundaries. In the work of Kaplinski and Õnnepalu, these boundaries are being drawn and dissolved both on the level of sociopolitical and cultural functioning of Europe but sometimes independently of the larger public processes, via processes of the construction of individual identities as well as via acts of communication and interactions with other people.

Unforced Flourishing: Understanding Jaan Kaplinski by Thomas Salumets

<i>Unforced Flourishing: Understanding Jaan Kaplinski</i> by Thomas Salumets

Kodu käsitlused Jaan Kaplinski luules

The article focuses on the evolution of the concept of home in the poetry of Jaan Kaplinski, one of the internationally most acclaimed Estonian poets. The discussion draws on the understanding of the notion of home emerging in the classic works of the phenomenologically inclined human geographers Edward Relph and Yi-Fu Tuan, as well as the influential French philosopher Gaston Bachelard.Kaplinski’s early poetry features lonely wanderers who have been cast into the world; their being on the road is eternal with no points of security or attachment. Such poetry tends to be a poetry of homelessness that accepts the lack of the feeling of being at home. If the concept of home does appear, it is an abstract rather than a denoted space that can be experienced with the senses in an unmediated way.* This is connected with the human condition – being cast into the world in a state of existentialist alienation, the acknowledgement of which is the only way of creating a certain sense of belonging and fellow feeling with other people. It is difficult to differentiate between the feelings of being at home or in non-home in Kaplinski’s early poetry, which thus often features what might be termed as existentialist homes.For Bachelard, a home provides one with a sense of security, which the phenomenologist sees as being connected with one’s childhood home. When homes related to particular buildings appear in Kaplinski’s verse, these do not guarantee such security. They are perishable, crumbling houses that may disappear, particularly in a fire like that which consumed the centre of Tartu, the poet’s childhood home town, during WWII. Yet the texts that feature such an understanding of home become more dependent on bodily memory, on an actual reliving of space. The home that is retrospectively connected with the past may replace the more abstract existentialist home, but is no source of security, serving as an ephemeral home.However, Kaplinski’s poetic homes gradually develop the quality of being inhabited, appearing as nodes of lived relationships between people – interpersonal homes. Family members whose space is such a home, are now related to a certain location where the home space has developed around them. In addition to being the result of intimate relationships within a family, such a home that occupies a particular place requires permanent engagement and care to make it retain the quality of an intimate space; it needs to be inhabited and maintained.When a home acquires boundaries as a place, it is necessarily surrounded by non-place, an undivided space offering a plethora of possibilities for movement and travel, being away from home and the possibility of returning, particularly of returning to the second home in the country, experienced as authentic and intimate in Kaplinski’s verse. The house, the shell of the home, now becomes established with a certainty that allows leaving it without the sense of it disappearing. While the poet occasionally still contemplates [or, “reflects on”] being an exile in Estonia, his father having been originally from Poland, and thus questions the sense of rootedness connected with the concept of home, the real home is still defined by the presence of children rather than by ancestors.Kaplinski’s poetry moves towards a dialectic of home and homelessness, reminiscent of Bachelard’s dialectic of the internal and the external. The dialectic home finds a continuation in the internalised home that does not require descriptions or, for that matter, even mention, for its existence is so self-evident. Home as a self-evident starting point, a place from which the poetry originates, is rather more characteristic of the poet’s later work that has moved towards the Relphian state of existential insideness. While a strict periodisaton of the evolution of the concept of home in Kaplinski’s poetry may not be feasible, it still manifests a general tendency of movement towards a stronger sense of being at home in a particular place, a greater intimacy and acceptance.

Seesama romaan? Jaan Kaplinski „Seesama jõgi” teisel pool Läänemerd

This article focuses on the reception of Jaan Kaplinski’s The Same River (2007; in Swedish 2009) in Sweden and in Estonia. The author of the article compared reviews written about the novel in both countries, assuming that different knowledge about Kaplinski and Estonian culture would evoke a somewhat different reception. Most of the Swedish articles were published in newspapers, which explains why they all were quite short and summary in nature. In Estonia, many longer analyses were published.Although the novel was generally very well received in Estonia, it nevertheless produced polemical responses concerning the possible reading models to apply to it. Some of the Estonian reviewers paid too much attention to its autobiographical matter while others tried to read it as a “genuine” novel. The Swedish reception, on the contrary, received it in neither of these ways. The Same River was regarded as a Bildungsroman but the critics understood that the main character (and his environment) was very similar to the writer, which helped them to recognise the exceptional character of the young man. Although many Swedish critics also discovered the connection between the Teacher and Uku Masing, they did not fall into a discussion about the Kaplinski-Masing relationship. Yet half of the critics pointed out that the lectures of the Teacher became the longueurs of the novel, and some also thought that the character, despite its central role, was more like a shadow figure.The Same River was as well received in Sweden as in Estonia but, compared to Kaplinski’s earlier prose works, the reviews in this case were more ambivalent. The expectations for the novel were higher and the joy in the novel’s debut did not always outweigh the criticism, as it mostly did for Estonians. This means that some slightly more negative headlines also appeared.All in all, as previous knowledge of the reception of The Same River abroad was rather insufficient and even somewhat misleading, this article shows that the reception of Estonian literature abroad deserves more thorough research.

Rahvusliku ajaloo tõlgendusi eesti draamas ja teatris 1970.–1980. aastatel. Interpretations of National History in Estonian Drama and Theatre in the 1970s–1980s

According to theatre scholar Freddie Rokem, theatre portraying or performing historical events is seeking to overcome both the separation and the exclusion from the past, as well as ’striving to create a community where the events from this past will matter again’. This article covers the topic of interpretations of national history in Estonian theatre and in original dramaturgy during the Soviet era, with the focus on aspects like national self-reflection and the relationship to the common past. The main focus is on the 1970s, with examples from Rein Saluri’s, Mati Unt’s and Jaan Kaplinski’s drama productions. During the period in question, re-tellings of national history on Estonian theatre stages were clothed in metaphors, allusions and secret codes – Aesopian language. Within the Soviet cultural context, I analyse if and to what extent theatre of the time displayed resistance, political theatre or social allegory. Theatre was also connected with the principle of playing or playfulness, which on one hand indicates national resistance, national endurance, and a certain survival strategy, but on the other hand indicates the Estonian as being an involuntary homo ludens – the Playing Man, who through various enforced roles is trying to adjust to the whirlwinds of history. Saluri’s first play, the intellectual drama Kulalised (The Guests), opens with an allusion to a drama classic the world over, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, adding a powerful national-symbolic background to the play. The role-play which permeates and structures the play (The Host–The Guest) however, displays allegorical references to changes in the status and self-image of Estonians. In Unt’s play Peaproov (Dress Rehearsal), the principle of playing/acting sheds ironic light on the makers of an historical film and their readiness to create superficially flashy interpretations at any cost: this take acts as an estranging and generalising reflection in a context of general humanism on the one hand and artistic ethics on the other. Kaplinski’s Neljakuningapaev (The Day of Four Kings) is based on a historically familiar tale about four Estonian kings. Here, the take with the play within the play helps amplify the play in both a mythical and a historically-philosophical manner as well as within the polemical stance of the author.

Some recent Baltic poets: The civic duty to be yourself

I do not know whether each believer is as joyful that God exists as I was upon hearing the wood owl call from the ash tree. Jaan Kaplinski

Reflections of Estonia's fate in the poetry of Betti Alver and Jaan Kaplinski

Reflections of Estonia's fate in the poetry of Betti Alver and Jaan Kaplinski

For a New Heaven and a New Earth: Comments on the Poetry of Jaan Kaplinski

For a New Heaven and a New Earth: Comments on the Poetry of Jaan Kaplinski