Interlitteraria

Poetry in the Vanguard of Nation-Building and Cultural Ecology

Jüri Talvet — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Poetry in the Vanguard of Nation-Building and Cultural Ecology

Fearlessness and Resistance in the Gulag: Estonian Prison Camp Poetry

Rebekka Lotman — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

During and after the Second World War, over 50,000 Estonians were sent to Soviet prison and forced labour camps. Within these camps, some of the repressed Estonians developed their own subculture – prison camp poetry, secretly written on sheets of paper and also memorised. The poems examined in the article were composed predominantly during the latter half of the 1940s and the 1950s, within various prison camps situated in the Karaganda Region, the Kazakh ASSR (Spassky), the Komi ASSR (Vorkuta, Intalag, and Ukhta), Mordovia (Dubravslag), the Gorki Oblast (Unzhlag) and the far northern camps of Kolyma and Krasnoyarsk Krai (Norilsk). The focus of this article is on the emotional depth of these poems and how they encapsulate feelings of fear and fearlessness, despair and hope, anger and sorrow, vengefulness and loathing. The article demonstrates how not succumbing to fear became a survival strategy within a regime of terror for Estonian Gulag poets, and how poetry provided diverse avenues for exploring this approach. Fear was transformed in various ways: Artur Alliksaar’s poetry confronts the possibility of cataclysm with beauty, while the lyrical selves of Valve Pillesaar, Leenart Üllaste, and Helmut Joonuks chose to shut down their minds. Venda Sõelsepp and Annus Rävälä, on the other hand, replaces his fear with sarcasm, while Enno Piir and Enn Uibo’s poems call for terror to be turned against the system itself.

Adam Mickiewicz in Search of Lithuanian National Identity

Aušra Jurgutienė — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Adam Mickiewicz’s multicultural national identity, based on his claim Sum gente lituanus, natione autem polonus, was created over the several centuries that followed the Lithuanian Grand Duchy’s formation of the union with the Polish kingdom. Thus, it is no surprise that his reception in the literatures of these respective countries became so complicated. It was not only the Lithuanians and Poles who strayed into fruitless arguments as to which country could lay more claim to him, but disputes also constantly arose even within the relevant societies: did he belong to their national literature or was he foreign to it? In Lithuania two alternative traditions of reception formed: one faction (Jonas Basanavičius, Jonas Aistis, Faustas Kirša) erased him from Lithuanian culture and national identity, the same way as it treated all of the Polonised Lithuanian nobility; while others (Antanas Baranauskas, Maironis, Motiejus Gustaitis, Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė, Vincas Krėvė, Stasys Šalkauskis, Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas, Julijonas Lindė-Dobilas, Antanas Maceina, Petras Juodelis, Justinas Marcinkevičius, Vytautas Kubilius, etc.), supported a positive reception, honouring him as “a genius of the Lithuanian spirit”. The article will demonstrate the impact of Mickiewicz’s poetry on the conceptions of Lithuanian national identity presented by two Lithuanian cultural philosophers, Šalkauskis and Maceina, and will briefly discuss its more significant variations in Lithuanian romantic and neo-romantic literature. Referencing Mickiewicz’s work reveals qualities of mysticism, syntheticism and Prometheanism in Lithuanian literature and in the concept of national identity itself. The problem of Mickiewicz as foreign to Lithuanians (being foreign in some aspects to Poles as well) and his incompatibility with any notions of ‘purity’ of national identity at this time encourages one to delve into varied regional cultural relationships and the openness and complications of national identity more deeply.

La poésie lyrique, un outil d’unification linguistique et politique

Anne-Marie Le Baillif — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Lyric poetry as a tool to unify language and politics points of view. We propose to examine how lyric poetry was used as a politic tool by French kings of the Renaissance period (1515–1589). In France, the building of a specific identity starts with François I Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1539): all official documents previously in Latin, had now to be in French. The second act was Defence et Illustration de la langue française published by Joachim du Bellay in 1549 ruling on the use of vernacular language in lyrical poetry. Both events gave impetus to the unification of the language, not only in official documents but also in everyday life. As each province had its own idioms, the proposal was ambitious.

We focus on Ronsard, the most representative poet of the catholic party during the civil wars of religion, which begin in 1562. In 1566 Ronsard begins his politic career with Les Hymnes, a long poem that celebrates on the catholic dynasty of the Valois family. Agrippa d’Aubigné, as a protestant poet, appreciate the poem enough to recommend it to everybody – lyric poetry rising above religious opinion.

After the death of Henri II, Ronsard became a sort of diarist of Catherine de Medici’s politics, as expressed in his Discours des misères de ce temps 1562 and Continuation du discours des misères de ce temps. These texts, which justify the catholic positions of the queen, were published in 10-page booklets to be accessible to the population. The protestants poet including Chandieu, gave a violent answer to these one sided catholic texts. For all the Calvinist, mass is a disgusting ‘théophagie’.

During her regency, Catherine de Medici organised a two-year (1562– 1564) visit around the kingdom with her son, Charles IX, in order for people to meet their king. This would be today a sort of ‘enterprise of communication’. It was never done before. Ronsard was required, as a spokesman, to follow the huge royal caravan, contributing to the development of words and new forms of lyric poetry. He wrote various entertainments according to the occasion or place of performance, later collected in Elegies, Mascarades et Bergeries, published by Buon in 1566.

After the court returned to Fontainebleau and Paris, Ronsard continued La Franciade, a text he began in 1549. He was also required to manage the reception of Polish ambassadors who came to Tuileries and Fontainebleau to fetch the duke of Alençon (the future king Henri III of France) as new elected polish king. The official artist Antoine Caron has left paintings and drawings of these entertainments. Ronsard’s politic works in connection with the poets of the period change not only the language but also the way of thinking as it was the first step to centralism, which was the aims of the French kings.

The same phenomenon took place in the nineteenth century, after the French Revolution in 1789, when poets were needed to bring the people together during a period of inspiration that drew them away from violence. They built a new image of the Renaissance, mixing history and imagination. In 1851, Les Châtiments, in which the poem titled “Le manteau Imperial” (1853) is one of the most ferocious, Victor Hugo protested against “le coup d’état” of Napoléon III. This text denied that Napoleon III was the fair successor of Napoleon I. To place France in context in the history of humanity, Hugo published La Légende des siècles (1859), a long text in alexandrine form which recalled the theme of Franciade: both texts aim to enshrine the history of the French kingdom. In Estonia, when Estonians needed to assert the history of their origins, the same phenomenon took place in 1857 with Kreutzwald’s Kalevipoeg.

Lyric poetry is used in tension periods to claim a strong, original and uniform voice in the face of difficulties. In France, in the sixteenth century, lyric poetry was at the origin of a new way of life.

Christian Felix Weiße’s Poetry in Latvian and Estonian Literature

Ave Mattheus, Pauls Daija — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The article analyzes the translations of Christian Felix Weiße’s poems in Latvian and Estonian within the context of cultural transfer during the age of Enlightenment. Translations of Weiße’s poems were of great significance because they paved the way for the emergence of secular poetry in both languages. First translations appeared in the 1770s, and others followed in the next decades. While the first Latvian translations were connected to the popular enlightenment efforts of Baltic German pastor Gotthard Friedrich Stender and addressed to the peasant readers, the first Estonian translations were written in the context of experiments with the language and addressed to the Baltic German intellectual elite. First translations that were addressed to Estonian peasants appeared in the early 19th century. The frame of reference of the poems was transformed when they were addressed to peasant reading public: they acquired didactic meaning. At the same time, these translations demonstrated the poetic possibilities of Estonian and Latvian languages. The analysis as a case study reveals the multifaceted influence of German poetry on Estonian and Latvian literary cultures.

Collective Awareness and Lyrical Poetry: The Emergence of Creole Literary Culture in the Archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe

Ewa A. Łukaszyk — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The problem discussed in the article is the emergence of the autonomous literary system on the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, a former Portuguese slave emporium, as well as coffee and cocoa producing colony. Several concurrent narrations concerning the emergence of the Santomense literary system are presented. One of them accentuates the groundbreaking role of a particular institution, Casa dos Estudantes do Império; other narrations inscribe the literature of the tiny archipelago in a larger system of Portuguese-speaking literature (Lusophony). The author of the present article postulates a radical enlargement of the chronological and cultural perspective, including the legacy of the Angolars (rebellious slaves) and their collective awareness in the genesis of the local literary tradition, in parity with such elements as the legacy of the Portuguese colonizers and free Creole social groups (Forros). It could be a way of overcoming the Eurocentric “chronopolitics” that remained valid also in the postcolonial studies, associating the decolonial processes, on the one hand, with the metropolis as a place where the decolonial thought took shape, and on the other, with the chronology, rhythms, and trends of its literary evolution.

World Literature and Mythology: Guarantees of Freedom of Man and Nation in Sigitas Geda’s Poetry

Karolina Bagdonė — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, the author uses the theory of intertextuality (Julia Kristeva, Gérard Genette, Marco Juvan) to analyse reflections on the openness of cultural identity and Europeanness in Sigitas Geda’s (1943–2008) poetry and his commentaries. The objective is to discuss how resistance to Soviet ideology could be constructed in mythological and world-literary contexts. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s vision of the universality of World Literature has remained important in Geda’s work. The Lithuanian poet adopted and applied it in his work by creating a mythological foundation as a unifying universal, a synthesis of Lithuanian and various national cultures. In this way, he conveyed a deeper sense of European identity, coming from the intertexts of modern World Literature (especially the poetry of François Villon, Johannes Bobrowski, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Paul Celan). Geda freed the imagination of a reader constrained by the Soviet occupation and directed it towards the universal world.

Missing Poetry: A historiography of Albanian Literature during the Communist Regime

Edlira Macaj — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The paper aims at a panoramic view of the partial representation of Albanian poetry in the texts of the history of Albanian literature published during the dictatorship period (1945–1990). The fragmentary presentation of Albanian poetry and poets in informative scholarly and university texts on literature highlights the complications and the problems derived from this one-sided representation. The information gained only after the fall of the dictatorship, changed the situation regarding the literary values specifically related to poetry. What crucial representative texts on Albanian literary history were published during the dictatorship? Who were the most noticeable authors and poets, and why were they set aside, censored, imprisoned, executed, and not published? The answers suggest that only thanks to political change and awareness of literature can the reader today reassess this missing part of Albanian literature in historical texts published during the communist regime.

The methodology relies on a historical, analytical, and critical approach to the most representative authors and their texts that is intertwined with factual data. The conclusions reinforce the idea that any evaluation of the literary process dictated by extra-literary principles damages the natural literary process. The revitalisation of literature after the 1990s, although with much delay, restored the natural process of aesthetic assessment. Now we can reassess the best part of that missing poetry.

The Seasons by James Thomson and the Baltic German Poetry about the Seasons in the Era of Baltic Enlightenment

Kairit Kaur — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Since 2016 one of my research topics has been the Baltic German reception of English poetry through the lens of cultural historical book collections in Estonia. One of my findings has been that James Thomson’s The Seasons belonged among the most often received works of English poetry by Baltic Germans in Estonia, after James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian and John Milton’s Paradise Lost and followed by Edward Young’s Night-Thoughts. (Kaur 2018: 375) Except for Milton’s, these works are almost unknown to modern Estonian readers. Therefore a few words to introduce Thomson and his famous work should be said.

James Thomson (1700–1748) was an 18th century Scottish poet and playwright. Son of a Presbyterian minister, he studied at the College of Edinburgh to become a minister (1715–1719). However, very soon he found that preaching was not his calling and moved in 1725 to London to commit himself to literary work. There he created his poetic tetralogy in blank verse Winter (first published in 1726), Summer (1727), Spring (1728) and Autumn, which appeared together under the title The Seasons in 1730 (revised version in 1744). Enthusiastic, patriotic and full of love for flora, fauna, people, landscapes and everchanging weather conditions of his surroundings, but also of the wider world, it was received with great admiration by his British compatriots. But not only them: a new fresh interest in nature and especially in the phenomenon of the seasons as well the wish to describe and express them through poetry and other artistic means can be traced in Europe. Some years before Thomson the famous Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi had created his violin concerto The Four Seasons (1718) and a German poet and senator from the city of Hamburg, Barthold Hinrich Brockes, had started to publish his series Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott (Earthly Delight in God) (1721–1748) in which he meticulously described many objects from and views of nature as God’s creations, inspired by English and Dutch physical theology.

The Lithuanianisation of Adam Mickiewicz

Viktorija Šeina — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, I analyse the cultural practices applied by Lithuanian interwar intellectuals seeking to Lithuanianise the great Polish romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz was born to a family of Polish-speaking nobles in a predominantly Belarusian part of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Because his historically themed works had an impact on the Lithuanian national movement, Lithuanian intellectuals sought ways to attribute Mickiewicz to Lithuanian culture.

Mickiewicz, who wrote in Polish, was a stalwart Polish-Lithuanian patriot. As this was in conflict with ethnocultural Lithuanian nationalism, interwar defenders of Mickiewicz’s attribution to Lithuanian literature looked for additional arguments supporting the poet’s Lithuanianness. In this article, I explore two ways that Mickiewicz was Lithuanianised: through a myth surrounding his ethnic origins and by introducing distortions into Lithuanian translations of the poet’s works.

From the end of the nineteenth century, Lithuanians generally saw their local nobility as ‘Polonised Lithuanians’. This view applied to Mickiewicz as well. Without having any factual evidence to support it, the interwar Lithuanian philosopher Stasys Šalkauskis sought to convince readers that Mickiewicz was descended from the Rimvydas clan. Another means of Lithuanianising Mickiewicz was through ideologically motivated editing and distorting translations of his works into Lithuanian. The most striking example of this was a 1927 anthology of the poet’s works compiled by Lithuanian literary historian Mykolas Biržiška.

Tension in Modernist Art and Lyric Poetry at the Beginning of the 20th Century in Estonian Culture: Ernst Enno and Others

Anneli Mihkelev — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Young Estonia group (1905–1919) was at the centre of Estonian literature at the beginning of the 20th century, when Estonian poetry was both experimental and imitative. Gustav Suits was officially the creator of modern Estonian poetry. At the same time there were poets who wrote original poems that did not imitate previous work. Juhan Liiv was one of these, and Villem Grünthal Ridala and Ernst Enno continue in the same vein. Enno’s nature poetry is pantheistic and symbolic, emotional and sensitive to nature, at times suggesting transcendental cognition. He was interested in Oriental religion, which influenced his poetry to become less rational and more mystical. Ridala and Enno also used visual effects, and their texts have been set to music as well as becoming part of the visual arts in films and serials. The paper analyses the verbal texts of Enno and Ridala, and the interaction between visual and verbal texts.

A Western – Chinese Conjoint Attempt to Surmount the Chinese Wall

Jüri Talvet — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Tiao Wang, Ronald Schleifer (authors). Modernist Poetics in China. Consumerist Economics and Chinese Literary Modernism. Palgrave MacMillan, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2022. (Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics). 260 pp., ISBN 978-3-031-00912-9, ISBN 978-3-031-00913-6 (eBook)

Discussing Nature, Ideology, Technology, Spirituality, Literature and Language at the Start of the 21st Century

Lu Jinjin — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Jüri Talvet, Ten Letters to Montaigne: Self and Other. Translated by Jüri Talvet & H. L. Hix. Toronto: Guernica World Editions, 2019. 132 pp.

About the Authors

Interlitteraria — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000