Estonian Elegy: Forms of Mourning in Contemporary Poetry

Abstract

This article examines how contemporary Estonian poetry engages with the experience of death and mourning. Focusing on seven twenty-firstcentury collections devoted entirely to the loss of a loved one, it shows how bereavement generates distinct poetic strategies that reshape both the lyric form and the self. The study proposes a fourfold typology of mourning poetics: memorial, which sustains the presence of the deceased through memory and image; self-transformative, which charts the mourner’s inner reconfiguration; displaced, in which grief is refracted into fragments, objects, or irony; and abyssal, where mourning resists narrative and dwells in a state of existential suspension. Through close readings of works by Triin Paja, Berit Petolai, Vootele Ruusmaa, Martin Algus, Peeter Sauter, Anti Saar, and Tõnis Vilu, the article demonstrates how Estonian elegy continues to evolve in the twentyfirst century. Rather than resolving loss, these texts explore its paradoxes, transforming personal bereavement into a broader meditation on memory, temporality, and cultural identity.