Vesiveskis(t) kirjutatud. Mölder Märt Siipsen reaalse ja kujuteldava vee piiril / Written in/about the Watermill: Märt Siipsen on the Border Between Real and Imaginary Water

Abstract

Teesid: Artikkel käsitleb vett mölder Märt Siipseni kirjalikus pärandis. Vaatluse alla tulevad veega seotud ideed ja kujutelmad eri žanrides – luuletustes, arutlustes, päevikutes jms. Artikli keskmes on küsimus vesiveski möldri ja tema kirjutiste ambivalentsest asendist kohalikus veekultuuris. Näeme, kuidas Siipseni kujutatav vesi on kohati väga reaalne ning argielu mõjutav, teisalt aga poeetiline ning kujuteldav; kronoloogilises plaanis toimub liikumine vesiveskimöldri spetsiifilise kogemuse talletamiselt vee üldinimlike tähendustega seotud kirjutistele.

This paper focuses on a ‘water culture’ formed around a tiny watermill in Rõuge Parish in South Estonia at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The Oina watermill was bought by Märt Siipsen in 1883 and he ran it with his family until his death in 1917. Besides being a miller, Siipsen was also a vernacular writer – his personal archive stems from the period 1872–1917 and contains an array of different genres: poems, diaries, account books, religious contemplations, short stories, etc.

Many of these writings touch upon the topic of water – we can discern six different topics revolving around water in his texts: 1) water and the local identity (poems and stories); 2) folkloric water (poems and essays); 3) water in natural sciences (poems and essays); 4) water as a metaphor for interpreting human life (poems, religious contemplations); 5) fears connected with water (poems, life writing); 6) water as a source of livelihood (practical everyday records and life writing). All these topics reflect, and bring out, Siipsen’s previous exposure to different layers of water culture visible in his contemporary culture – although he often uses folklore and folk knowledge, his writing choices hint at knowledge about genres and ways of thinking that were prevalent in newspapers and other modern media – romantic nature poetry, modern scientific worldview, etc.

The most prevalent of the topics is the last one, evident in Siipsen’s writings dedicated to documenting and interpreting the life around himself and his watermill. His attitude towards the watermill as his family’s main source of living could be explained with the help of the notion of conviviality, used by Michael Given to distinguish between different types of watermills. At the one end of the conviviality spectrum are local community-centred watermills that aspire towards sustainability and try to balance the needs of different human and non-human actors. At the other end of the spectrum are colonial watermills run in a top-down manner that ignore the needs of local communities. Given stresses that conviviality is always precarious – the balance between the human and the non-human, or between different parts of the community is never final, and thus a constant (re)adapting needs to be taking place. Siipsen’s relationship with his mill fits into the constant search for the convivial balance – he does not want to become rich, but just to lead a decent life. However, the latter would depend on various factors: the local harvest (if it was bad there was nothing for the mill to grind), relations inside the community (there were quite a few mills in vicinity, so good relations brought in more work), rains (the mill was situated on so small a river that it could be operated only if there were rains). In some years those factors were all met, yet at other times some were not.

In Siipsens’s writings water occurs in two different modalities which both are meaningful through the relationship (and so have power to create water cultures). Firstly, he writes about real water, i.e. the water that has power to run the watermill, that flows in the rivers and rains from the clouds. This water – as depicted in his writings – is important for himself and constitutes part of his experience as a miller. Secondly, he writes about imaginary water – the water that helps to create poetic descriptions of the finality of human life. This kind of water is not connected with his experience as a miller in his writings, while the poetic devices are meant to be understood by readers in general.