Symbols as Means of Creating Cultural Communication and Identity. The Estonian Case

In the present article my main interest is to find out which kind of role symbols play in the self-description of Estonian culture and in the internal communication and how the “cultural formatting” of the society has occurred

About Rhetorical “Gestures” of Estonian Culture

The paper focuses on the analysis of certain phrases of literary origin currently used in Estonian culture. The theoretical-methodological starting point is the paradigm of cultural semiotics. According to the theory the production, exchange, processing and retention of signs (resp information) is by its nature communication. In such communication socio-cultural (having an impact on social relations) and rhetorical (having an impact on the social and cultural discourse) aspects are distinguished. The phrases of literary or other origin (e.g. political texts) used in the language generally differ from the phraseologisms originating from the folklore and idioms in that they are not used for beautifying the language so to say (as a figure of speech) but to refer to the fundamental (meta-communicative) associations and act as passwords of collective identity. Therefore, they can be identified as rhetorical gestures. The article takes a closer look at phrases, which have become rhetorical gestures taken from the masterpieces of Estonian literary culture such as Henrik’s Livonian Chronicles, Fr. R. Kreutzwald’s epic Kalevipoeg (Kalev’s Son), poetry by Juhan Liiv, Kevade (Spring) by Oskar Luts, and Tõde ja õigus (Truth and Justice) by A. H. Tammsaare

Kriitikakunst : uurimus kriitika olemusest ja toimest. Eesti kogemus

http://www.ester.ee/record=b4335432*es

Ühe (suure) kultuurinarratiivi saatus: Noor-Eesti. The Fate of a (Great) Cultural Narrative: Young-Estonia

This focus of this article is the fate of the cultural narrative that has most influenced Estonian culture of the 20th century – Young Estonia. The point of departure for the analysis is Tiit Hennoste’s 2005 essay ”Young Estonia – An Unfinished Project for Self-Colonization”, which I interpret as the interruption of Young Estonia’s ”great narrative”. Hennoste’s demythologizing approach should be regarded in the context of postmodernism (or of postcolonial treatments of literature and art). I argue that the fact that Young Estonia’s models for cultural movements were located in Europe did not automatically lead to the assimilation of 20th century Estonia (literary) culture. Neither did they engage in an automatic copying of European culture; their activities might better be regarded as a process of intertexual enrichment. In what follows, the fate of the narrative of Young Estonia will be traced both in terms of the literary field of Soviet Estonia in the 1950s and 1960s, and in exile. I claim that renewed awareness of the narrative of Young Estonia can be traced to the publication of a collection of Gustav Suits’ Poems in 1959, edited and with an afterword by Endel Sõgel. If one lowers the volume on the vulgar Soviet ideologization in Sõgel’s text, key words that characterize the Young Estonia canon remain in place undisturbed: innovativeness, intellectual greatness, turning point, the social nature of art and literature, consonance of the aesthetic and the ethical. Sõgel’s framing of Young Estonia stands in contrast to its apologetic treatment in the postwar Estonian diaspora. On the one hand, this line of interpretation follows the basic outlines of a critical narrative that developed in the 1920s; on the other, since most of Young Estonia’s authors and followers among the Estonian literary elite had gone into exile in 1944, diaspora interpretations represent a definite literary-political position. In the 1960s a new generation takes it cues from Young Estonia’s narrative, the connecting link between Young Estonia and the 1960s is the work of young poets from the end of the 1930s, Arbujad (the Logomancers). In this context, the author of this article comments at some length on Jaan Kross’ connections with the narrative of Young Estonia. The last third of the article discusses the motives and milieu in which Young Estonia’s narrative was generated, and shows how, over a period of 10 years, Young Estonia developed its assertive autonarrative into a cultural model – a metanarrative

Keele ja Kirjanduse Instituudist ning maailmatasemest

The following writing is dedicated to the Institute of Estonian Language and Literature against the world level. Ülo Tedre and Rein Veidemann try to find an answer to why folklorists write monographs and not articles required by the academic system

Jüri Talveti filoloogiline teekond: hispaaniakeelsest maailmast Eestisse ja tagasi / Jüri Talvet’s Philological Journey: from the Spanish-speaking World to Estonia and Back

Teesid: Artikkel esitab bio-bibliograafilise ülevaate luuletaja, esseisti, kirjandusteadlase, tõlkija ning õppejõu Jüri Talveti (s 1945) loomingulisest teest. Talveti kui erakordselt laiahaardelise loomingulise isiksuse panus hispaaniakeelse kirjandusruumi vahendamisel ja uurimisel Eestis on jätnud püsiva jälje. Tema viljeldava komparativismi keskmeks olev võrdlus ei piirdu üksnes võrreldavate objektidega, vaid viib põimumiste ja mõjutuste väljaselgitamisele ning uue sünteesini. Niisugune lähenemine võimaldab Talvetil esitada mitmeid eesti kirjanduskultuuri keskseid autoreid ja teoseid maailmakirjanduslikus kontekstis. Luuletajana esindab Talvet hingestatud intellektuaalsust, milles intertekstuaalsed osutused toimivad kultuuridevahelise sillana.   The article presents a bio- and bibliographical overview of the creative work of Jüri Talvet (born in 1945) – a poet, essayist, literary scholar, translator and university professor. The creative scope of Talvet is exceptionally wide and his decades-long contribution to the mediation and exploration of the Spanish-speaking literary space in Estonia has left permanent traces. The comparative method cultivated by Talvet does not border merely on the literary texts considered but lead to the establishment of reciprocal impact and a new level of synthesis. Terms such as “symbiosis”, “symbiotic unity” and “synthesis” play an important role in Talvet’s contemplations of life, literature and culture; they are not only part of his epistemological ’toolkit’ but also represent a relation of value. In the semiotic approach such discourse may be viewed as the replacement of binary structure with a ternal one, a change elaborated already by Talvet’s most famous colleague Juri Lotman in 1992 when his intellectual testament Culture and Explosion was published: “Ternal structures retain certain values of the previous period by shifting them from the periphery into the centre.” For Talvet “the greatest literature of all times” has a symbiotic basis. Talvet’s approach to different literary cultures has enabled him to present several central authors of Estonian literary culture and their work in the context of world literature. One of the most outstanding results of such process is the re-discovery and re-conceptualization of the personality and the creative work of Juhan Liiv. Talvet’s method follows the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin and Juri Lotman, the essays of Michel de Montaigne’ and the 20th century existentialists Miguel de Unamuno, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Talvet’s “philological journey” is reflected best in his compilation and editing of the Spanish-Estonian Dictionary that was published in 1983. The other part of Talvet’s oeuvre is his mental and spiritual journey in which the philological undercurrent layer formed in Estonian, Spanish, Catalan and also in English performs as a threshold into literary cultures in the Estonian and other languages of the world. Everything based on it deserves deep respect: Talvet’s time as the lecturer and since 1992 the professor of world literature at the University of Tartu, his school of comparative literary research, founding of the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature together with international conferences and multi-language scholarly journal Interlitteraria; his essays carried by the ideas of enlightenment and spiritualism; his creative philosophical and poetic work, and his noteworthy research of Estonian literature highlighting the best creative works and their authors within the framework of world literature. From this aspect it is symptomatic that Talvet as a literary scholar completed his opus magnum in 2012, when the monograph on Juhan Liiv’s poetry was published. In the gallery of great Estonian learned men, poets and translators, the great predecessors of Talvet are Gustav Suits, Johannes Semper and Ants Oras. The intellectual affinity between Talvet and his friend Ivar Ivask is even more intense. “To understand “periphery” as a wider unit that is no less important from the intellectual aspect than the “centre”” – this is how Talvet summarises Ivask’s mission as a poet, an intellectual and the mediator of Estonian literature in the consciousness of the world (Talvet 2003: 524). This applies also to Talvet’s own spiritual and intellectual journey. In 2005, a collection of articles and essays of more than five hundred pages carries a poetic title The Irrefutable Border (Tõrjumatu äär), referring to the inevitability of crossing borders and multiple meanings of the proximity of the border. In Estonian poetry Talvet has positioned himself as a spiritually intellectual poet where intertextual manifestations act as an intercultural bridge. Yet the initial source of tension forming the basis of his imagery is still an individual’s emotionally experienced life. It corresponds to Talvet’s conception of genuine spirituality that “emerges from the depth of life [---] creates itself anew, does not let itself be “summarised” as complete or definite.

Küsimus eesti kultuurist [The Question of Estonian Culture]

The aim of the article is to focus on the meaning of the term “Estonian culture”. The starting point is the phenomenological-semiotic assumption that “Estonian culture” can be observed as a kind of sign, in which “Estonia” is the signifi er and “Culture” is the signifi ed. One of the most widespread approaches to Estonian culture is related to the issue of identity: how are the Finno-Ugric tribes on the shores of the Baltic Sea consolidated as an ethnos, how has the ethnos developed into a community, the community developed into a nation and the nation into a cultural nation? It is possible to identify a narrative “stratifi cation”, which has had a certain impact on the collective consciousness of Estonians, within a process proceeding from Benedict Anderson’s thesis, which has become the common platitude of the nation as an imagined community (in this context: stories told). It is not possible to overestimate the “imaginative” and “uniting” role of literature, which forms the very core of Estonian culture, in this narrative. The author has long been fascinated by the att itude created or “distilled” from imaginarity, or the same question presented by Ilmar Talve, one of the most outstanding Estonian and Finnish ethnologists, at the beginning of his epic approach to Estonian cultural history: “How has this litt le nation, despite all its losses and the pressure applied to it, survived throughout its harsh history?” The answer provided in the article seems simple, but hopefully it is not simplistic: it has happened due to the existence of the compendium “country-nation-language”, which forms the very core of Estonian culture. The Estonianness of Estonian culture lies in the culture of existentiality, focused on the question “to be or not to be?”. This is the particularity described by the Baltic-German literary scientist Cornelius Hasselblatt as “a peculiar mixture”, “which other cultures do not possess in that kind of form.” This “existentiality” is based on the Estonian discourse present in Estonian literary texts and thought, and is not particularly related to the multicharacteristic features of Estonian culture. As it is not possible to identify Estonia in a pure and idiosyncratic form based on characteristic features, “Estonia” in this approach can not be handled as an att ributive or adjective signifi er in regard to “culture”. Here, “Estonia” is an adverb or, expressed with some amplitude, a cultural adverb: the inevitable condition (conditio sine qua non) and “formaliser” Estonianness in Estonian culture. Keywordsphenomenological-semiotic aspect of culture, Estonianness, the core texts of Estonian Cultur