Methis. Studia humaniora Estonica

Järelmõtteid dekadentsist, modernsusest, vabariiklusest / Reflections on decadence, modernity, republicanism

Märt Väljataga — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dekadents ja realism / Decadence and Realism

Matthew Potolsky — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dekadentsist, estetismist ja Karl Ristikivist / On Decadence, Aestheticism, and Karl Ristikivi

Rein Undusk — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Teesid: Artikli esimeses osas esitatakse kontseptuaalne arusaam 19.–20. sajandi vahetuse dekadentsist, käsitledes seda kui allakäigu kunstilise õilistamise esteetilist teooriat. Ühtlasi asetatakse sajandivahetuse dekadents avaramasse kultuuriajaloolisse allakäiguteooriate raamistikku. Artikli teises osas püstitatakse hüpotees Karl Ristikivi kirjanikukarakteri dekadentlikust iseloomust, põhjendades seda Ristikivi loomingule läbivalt omase teelolemise kujundiga, aga eeskätt Eesti kui koha puudumisega Ristikivi olulisimas, pagulasaja loomingus. Toetudes tõsiasjale, et allakäigu mõtet ajaloos on alati iseloomustanud riiklik-poliitilise mõtte nõrkus, visandatakse pilt Ristikivist kui dekadendist, ilmestades seda kõrvutuse kaudu Jaan Krossi ja Lennart Meriga.

This article consists of two parts. The first part undertakes to present the author's conceptual vision of decadence at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, claiming it to have been an essentially artistic ennoblement of decline based on a pre-eminently aesthetical configuration of representation. Alongside this assertion, an attempt is made to place the decadence of the turn of the century within a broader cultural-historical framework, with the aim of making 19th century decadence appear as an actor in a more ample story of thought about decline. Accordingly, the 19th century positive investment in the meaning of decadence is juxtaposed in the article with three historically prior approaches that are characterized not by wilful submission to decadence, as featured in the fin-de-siécle culture, but, quite the contrary, by their resisting decadence via proposing a way out of the deleterious situation it conveys. All three, actually along with fin-de-siécle culture, had drawn from the fall of ancient Rome as a prototype of decadence, but had interpreted it differently and with different proposals for a solution.

First, the idea of decadence could be embraced as part of a cyclical worldview, implying that the decline of a state and its culture is as legitimate a part of every historical process as is fall in the natural world. Accordingly, the Rome that collapsed once should be remedied and its culture transferred—translatio imperii—by the new generations and their states, be it the Carolingian or the Holy Roman Empire, or the Kingdom of France. Second, it could be stated (as in the case of Augustine) that the fall of a secular city is of minor importance as compared to the city of God, which actually gathers strength while the secular city loses it. From this point of view, the ability to read history from another perspective, besides a purely natural or human one, could make us notice ascension where we otherwise see only decline. Third, the stance taken by religious rationalism (Ernest Renan), namely, that decadence is too relative a term to be used for the description of humanity’s wayfaring, reflects the strong Enlightenment belief in the growth of human reason in time, which makes decadence in the long run an inappropriate and senseless concept for history studies.

The second part of the article develops the hypothesis that some eminent features of the oeuvre of Karl Ristikivi, related especially to his historical novels, can be viewed as evolving from the decadent nature of his writerly character. The claim builds, first, on the pervasive motif in Ristikivi of being on the road, made expressly manifest by the author in his announcement that his home and his roots are actually everywhere he has passed through in his life, not just in childhood nor in the homeland. Ristikivi’s trust in the immediacy of the senses and in the momentariness of action displays an affinity with decadent aestheticism, by being enacted, according to this article, in the same frame of coming to grips with reality in a morally deprived world. To accept reality, distorted or decadent, in artificial form is a way of providing it with sense through representative means.

A peculiar characteristic of Ristikivi’s historical novels created in exile is that they lack almost any contact with Estonia, be it understood in the sense of plot, characters, or milieu. The argument of the present article is that this substantial lack in the author, who is otherwise highly engaged in Estonian exile culture, mirrors the decadent distrust in the material world, which is compensated, again in a decadent way, by the signs of religious hope appearing under the overall decline of matter. Set side by side with the authors of historical fiction in contemporary Estonia, for example with Jaan Kross and Lennart Meri, whose wish to plead historical initiative in their works is undeniable—as is made manifest in their pretension to tell the historical truth about Estonia—, Ristikivi’s escapist attitude comes even more into relief. Actually, Ristikivi is not only missing Estonia but overturns in a decadent way some explanatory patterns that Estonian history writing used to lean on. Addressing the Medieval Crusades, a sensitive topic for Estonian history writing, not from the angle of their Northern unfolding, as would concern Estonians, but tackling them instead in idealist terms as events transpiring in the Holy Land, is a mark of relinquishing national history in favour of a decadent perspective, However, let it be stressed, the article asserts the decadence of Ristikivi in no other terms than in the typological sense of culture.

Esteet Visnapuu ja tema „loov rahvuslus“ / Aesthete Visnapuu and his “Creative Nationalism”

Aare Pilv — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Teesid: Artikkel vaatleb Henrik Visnapuu manifestatiivseid tekste tema 1910. aastate futurismiperioodist kuni 1930. aastate programmtekstini „Loov rahvuslus“. Andrew Hewitti käsitluse „Fascist Modernism“ taustal on vaadeldud, kuidas Visnapuu futurism kandis juba eos rahvuslikku hoiakut ja kuidas tema hilisem rahvuslus oli oma aluspõhja poolest futuristlik utoopia, kus rahvust ei tulnud mitte konserveerida, vaid alles luua nagu kunstiteost. Artikkel kuulub ühte sarja kahe eelmise artikliga Barbarusest ja Semperist, kus jälgin 20. sajandi algupoole estetistlike loojate liikumist utopistlike ideoloogiate suunas.

This article belongs to the same series as the two previous articles (Pilv 2004; 2005), which examined the relationship between the aestheticist artistic stance of Johannes Barbarus and Johannes Semper and their ideologization. Here, a similar development is examined using the example of Henrik Visnapuu’s manifesto texts, specifically the intertwining of futurism and nationalism in his ideas. I try to observe how the aesthetic and poetic way of thinking is important in the foundation of 20th-century utopian-totalitarian ideologies as forms of expression of modernism, and I outline this precisely through the arc of creative work and choices of individuals, not as a general speculation.

I distinguish between aestheticism and avant-gardism, which have much in common (criticism of modern capitalism, poetic innovation, etc.), but which differ in their orientation: aestheticism (and decadence as a part of it) is rather individualistic and directed towards the past or timelessness, while the avant-garde (and futurism as its core) is directed towards the future and has an egalitarian way of thinking. There is a distinction between principles; in the work of individual artists, they appear side by side. I rely on Andrew Hewitt’s treatment of “Fascist Modernism”, which, in analysing the relationship between Marinetti and Italian fascism, shows that the clear opposition of aesthetics and politics is precisely an invention of aestheticism, which later led to the specific interweaving of these spheres, developing into the avant-garde. In Hewitt’s view, the avant-garde brings to an end the mutual tension between the earlier decadent aestheticism and politics, so that art itself becomes the avant-garde of social and historical self-realization.

Visnapuu achieved wider recognition in 1913–14, when he published futuristic manifestos in the publications of the Moment group. It is possible that he received the initial impetus for this from Semper’s introduction to Italian futurism, although in terms of form he was more based on the Russian cubo-futurists, and he also had close contact with the ego-futurist Igor Severjanin. Visnapuu also briefly collaborated with Barbarus (who was later the main representative of cubo-futurism in Estonian poetry), but their paths diverged when Tarapita’s group took an unequivocally leftist line.

The “Order of Momentists” (1914) is notable for manifesting an aesthetically centred attitude to life and for seeing a viable national culture as the goal, which is born through decadent fermentation and putrefaction. In his texts from the end of the decade, Visnapuu demands an artistic revolution from the young generation, the goal of which is “a great and beautiful synthesis of national culture”. The central concept in Visnapuu’s ideology is “cruel, brutal, shameless, beautiful and happy life”. Life is opposed to the “dragon” - the mob and the bourgeoisie, who fetter free creativity. The glorification of life, together with the fermenting creative crisis, also fills the manifesto “The New Moment” (1920).

The speech “The War of Liberation and Creation” (1919) is interesting; the avant-garde search for new forms, nationalism, racial ideology and left-wing revolutionism are combined; national independence is necessary for the freedom of the people, while revolution is for the freedom of the individual. Visnapuu distances himself from both the Bolsheviks’ attempts at ideological control and the economic pressure of the bourgeoisie on art, and here one can sense the search for a third way that was active in Europe at the time: how to keep criticism of the bourgeoisie separate from the left-wing position of class struggle.

In the early 1920s, Visnapuu engaged in a polemic with left-wing literati, highlighting the importance of the original racial/ethnic unconscious in the creation of national culture and rejecting the epigonism of European culture by Noor-Eesti (Young Estonia), accusing them of interrupting the natural development of culture.

Visnapuu’s ideological and utopian searches revived in the early 1930s, when he began to contribute to the mouthpiece of the right-wing populist-authoritarian Vaps movement, writing about the need for the spiritual rebirth of the nation. The most central text of that time, however, is “Creative Nationalism”, published in the collected works of the student corporation Sakala. In it, Visnapuu finds that nationalism has been discredited by business interests and must be creatively rethought. True creation is national, true nationalism is racial. He distinguishes between, on the one hand, programmatic nationalism, which adopts ready-made forms from the outside and is often exploited in private economic and political interests, and, on the other, creative nationalism. Creative nationalism is not tied to any political system and is above class (Visnapuu also gives examples of this from the Soviet Union), but most importantly, it consists in recognizing that the nation is not yet ready; it is still fermenting, and the national character has yet to be created; the national form has to be invented. This conception of nationalism is futurist and aesthetic. It is noteworthy that Visnapuu uses the formula “universal in content, national in form”—this is reminiscent of the main slogan of the Soviet cultural policy at the same time, which is also of avant-garde origin.

The freedom fighters (the Vaps movement) were banned, but Visnapuu became an ideologist of Konstantin Päts’s authoritarian regime in 1935. Thus, Visnapuu’s development can be interpreted in the spirit of Hewitt: in a sense, the inherent fate of utopian aestheticism and avant-garde is always to fail—to realize and then to disintegrate, to be realized as disintegration.

Naisküsimus ja dekadentsi mustrid Sophia Vardi novellis „Esimesed tuuled“ (1914) ja Alma Ostra jutustuses „Aino“ (1923) /The Woman Question and Patterns of Decadence in Sophia Vardi’s Short Story „First Winds“ (1914) and Alma Ostra’s Novella „Aino“ (1923)

Merlin Kirikal — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Teesid: Artikli teema on kahe fin de siècle’i kirjandusliku dekadentsi näite, Marta Lepa (pseud. Sophia Vardi) novelli „Esimesed tuuled“ (1914) ja Alma Ostra jutustuse „Aino“ (alustatud 1914, ilmus 1923) omavaheline sünergia ning poleemika teiste kaasaegsete tekstidega, eelkõige Friedebert Tuglase novelliga „Midia“ (1908) modernse naisõigusluse ning dekadentsi esteetika pinnalt. Uurimus annab ülevaate käsitletavate teoste vormilistest iseärasustest ja sisulisest problemaatikast, kaardistab eesti nn uue naise proosa olukorra enne Esimest maailmasõda ning analüüsib ilukirjandustekste esteetilisest ning poliitilisest aspektist, keskendudes mh seksuaalsuse representatsioonidele.

This article explores how two early 20th-century Estonian women writers—Marta Lepp (pseud. Sophia Vardi) and Alma Ostra—responded to and reshaped prevailing ideas about femininity, creativity, sexuality and social change, respectively in the short story “Esimesed tuuled” (“First Winds”, 1914) and the novella “Aino” (started in 1914, published in 1923). These texts are examined in relation to the eminent local writer Friedebert Tuglas’s 1908 short story “Midia”, a characteristic example of male-authored Estonian Decadence. Besides employing distinctly Decadent tropes and techniques, these three texts share another common feature: a self-conscious, highly analytical New Woman protagonist. Through close reading, the article shows how Vardi’s and Ostra’s prose works engaged with the literary tradition represented by Tuglas while also developing a distinctly feminist aesthetic tied to early modern Estonian debates about gender and the New Woman.

The article situates these works within fin-de-siècle literary Decadence and the Young Estonia (Noor-Eesti, 1905–1915) movement, which encouraged literary experimentation, including the introduction of modern themes. However, despite some rhetorical support for women’s emancipation among male intellectuals, women’s roles in literature remained constrained by patriarchal and biological determinism. Tuglas’s “Midia”, for instance, features a revolutionary female protagonist whose attempt to transcend her “female nature” through male-coded ideals ultimately ends in an essentialist solution. Drawing heavily on Otto Weininger’s philosophy, this story presents the feminine “core” as biologically and intellectually inferior to the masculine “essence”. Midia’s experiences are mostly filtered through a misogynistic lens, and her symbolic association with chaos, weakness and degeneracy reveals the limitations of male-authored visions of female empowerment.

In contrast, “Esimesed tuuled” and “Aino” can be interpreted as feminist interventions into this discourse. Both texts explore the ambitions of New Women who seek education, independence and erotic fulfilment. While the protagonists of Vardi’s and Ostra’s stories struggle against societal expectations and internalised inferiority, their journeys are rather treated with empathy and complexity. These women figures are not condemned for their aspirations but are instead portrayed as figures navigating a shifting cultural landscape that both excites and alienates them.

The narrative strategies in these stories are important to their feminist reorientation. Tuglas’s narrator is often ironic and distanced, reinforcing the protagonist’s alienation. The narrators of “Aino” and “Esimesed tuuled” are closely aligned with the inner lives of their heroines, offering a more versatile insight into their emotional and intellectual development. This narrative empathy facilitates a more serious treatment of women’s experiences and creates space for self-realisation, emotional intensity and even political critique. For example, the protagonists reflect on their disillusionment with male-dominated revolutionary ideals and envision a future shaped by values often associated with femininity, such as tenderness, intuition and emotional intelligence.

Erotic desire also plays a key role in all three texts, but with significant differences. In “Midia”, female desire is shaped by submission to male power, symbolized by a pistol that represents masculine control. In “Esimesed tuuled” and “Aino”, by contrast, erotic experiences are tied to positivised nature, sensory impressions and imagination. Vardi’s protagonist Linda is inspired by the erotic energy of spring and the exotic allure of Crimea, where she identifies erotically with a Karaim woman—an indirect expression of same-sex desire, placed in a safe, “othered” cultural context. Ostra’s Aino experiences erotic dreams rooted in Estonian folklore, where mythical creatures and natural landscapes become mediums of pleasure and transformation. These depictions challenge heteronormative and male-centric views of female sexuality, embracing ambiguity, multiplicity and fantasy.

Racial and national identity also intersect with these gendered concerns. While Tuglas and Ostra both show a degree of pessimism toward the “Estonian type”, often linking it with weakness or degeneration, Vardi’s story affirms racial-national vitality through the figure of Linda, portrayed as a fair-haired, blue-eyed ideal. However, this affirmation carries its own complications, as it can slide into racial purity discourse. Still, both Ostra and Vardi share a broader critique of male-dominated intellectualism and express hope in the potential of a distinctly feminine cultural ethos.

The study ultimately argues that Vardi’s and Ostra’s texts mark a shift in Estonian literary culture. By (partly) rejecting biologically deterministic and patriarchal portrayals of women, they offered new, more empowering models of womanhood that embraced emotional complexity, erotic agency and feminist introspection.

Põleva ihu sügis: märkmeid Jaan Oksa proosaluulest / Autumn of the Body on Fire: Notes on the Prose Poetry of Jaan Oks

Ian T. Gwin — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Teesid: Selles artiklis vaatlen uuesti Jaan Oksa kurikuulsat kolmeosalist proosaluuletust „Emased“, „Ihu“, ja „Nimetu Elajas“ (1908–1909). Tuginedes arhiiviallikatele, keskendun „meeleolu“ ja „maastiku“ (paysage) kujunemisele nii poeetiliste vormide kui kujundite tasandil. Väidan, et meeleolu kirjutamine väljendab rahvusluse küsimust, haarates kaasa Vene impeeriumi soolise ja seksuaalse kriisi. Maastik toimib ka ema(maa) ähvardava kujuna. Oks põimib seega oma eksperimentaalses loomingus dekadentsi rahvuslusega ning hilise keisririigi seksuaalkriisi pärandiga, kehastades hullumeelse geeniuse kuju väljasureva ja ohustatud „soo“ – maa-eestlaste – nimel.

This article reconsiders the prose poetry of Jaan Oks—“Females” (Emased), “Body-Flesh” (Ihu) and “The Nameless Beast” (Nimetu Elajas) (1908–09) which have been collated under the title “Breed-Sex” (Sugu) (2004). Drawing on postcolonial and gender studies, I argue that Oks was not only a rural, but also a “provincial” decadent, whose prose poems enacted the decay of the Estonian language and the crisis of race within the decline of the Russian empire. Oks performed the role of a mad genius to the dying, endangered “species” of rural, peasant Estonians. The prose-poems are centred around a symbolist essence of differentiation and the word for gender (sugu), translated as breed-sex, which I read as a conjunction of race and sexuality, subjugation and objectification as colonial subjects and “enfleshment” as serfs. In the prose-poetry’s auto-erotic descriptions, the spectres of a matriarchy repressed under oppressive Christian patriarchies return as the motherly “Females” to engulf the narrator as a viraginous, fatally feminine nature.

Drawing on the analytic language of prior analyses (Luks 2024; Haljak 2024) I argue that Oks’s heretical metaphysics, with its dualistic poles of masculine and feminine, was informed by the colonial history of modernizing Estonia. This analysis follows the thinking of Amber Musser, Heather McClintock, and other post-colonial scholars who address how racialized regulations of gender and sexuality constitute social relations: Oks’s transgressions of sexuality express racial formation and the regulations of nationalism. Though Baltic Germans affected the enculturation of Estonians, and serfdom was ended in 1816 in the Governorate of Estonia, class differences between peasants and elite remained enormous, especially in Saaremaa. In the prose-poems, Oks describes the “flesh” (ihu) of this ethnically charged difference exacerbated by Russian imperialism and cultural aggression.

In the second part of this essay, I argue that the genre of “mood” (meele-olu) figures at two levels in the prose-poems: first within the text—following Schopenhauer’s philosophy—as elliptical descriptions of cyclical desire. Secondly, “moods” operate as the text itself, and represent the author’s attempt to revive Estonian literature through decadence and the prose poem. This second innovation follows Taine’s theory of art, according to which any work of art conveys the inherited “temperament” of a race. Similar to Yeats in his 1903 essay, “The Autumn of the Body” and his attempts to forge an “aristocratic esoteric Irish literature,” for both noble and low-class person, Oks linguistically innovated the Estonian language (Dowling 1986, 247–8). As I demonstrate through his criticism, Oks had not lost the revolutionary fervour of 1905 but rather taken on the self-sacrificial challenge of the “folk” or the incipient Estonian nation. In order to do so, his poetics underwent the “decay of literature,” following the organic metaphor which late Victorians gave nations and languages in their cycles of growth and decay (Dowling 1986, 46).

In the third part, I address the intersection of sex and race in the prose-poem’s poetics of landscape or paysage. I read the aggressive masculinity of Oks’ processual narrator and his preoccupation with the maternal function as expressions of racialized oppression. The third text “Nimetu Elajas” (1.7.1909) Oks labelled with the French term for landscape, paysage, a testament to the recurrence of rural milieu and the countryside throughout the cycle. I refer to the “mother(land)scape” as the description of landscape and mood by way of masochistic sensations of “female” submission. The motifs of domestic animals, livestock and the autumnal countryside repeat themselves within “mother(land)scapes.” The boundary between the body and landscape depended on the “mood” of present experience, which included the pornographic gaze and the affects of racialized difference, both threats to the homogenous ‘nation’ of the Russian empire and symptoms of a degenerate breed (Hearne 2021, 216).

In the final section, I turn to the third part of the cycle, “The Nameless Beast,” and further philosophical interpretations. Oks’s prose-poetry represents desiring-production as a pornographic transgression, what I call “porno-theology,” while his metaphysics may also be compared with Indian and Buddhist cosmological descriptions of the madness of the afflictions, disturbances in the mind of all living beings. In contrast to a Christian metaphysics, I follow the Schopenhauerian influence and suggest that the affective labour of the moods also can be read as the practice of viewing all beings as mothers in potentially infinite cycles of rebirth. Read as a compassionate act, the ecstatic self-immolation of the author-narrator becomes an autumn of the body on fire.

Intersensoorne dekadents: kolm värvilist eestikeelset „Saloméd“ ja üks häälekas 1919. aasta lavatõlgendus / Intersensory Decadence: Three Colourful Estonian Versions of Salomé and a Vocal Stage Interpretation from 1919

Maria-Kristiina Lotman, Katiliina Gielen — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Teesid: Käesolev artikkel uurib Oscar Wilde’i ühevaatuselise dekadentliku näidendi „Salomé“ kolme eestikeelset tõlget: Aleksander Tassa käsikirjalist versiooni (1917), mille ta tõlkis arvatavasti vene keelest, Henrik Visnapuu (1919) eeldatavasti prantsuse keelest eestindatud ja esmakordselt 1919. aastal lavastatud teksti ning Linnar Priimäe (2023) tõlget inglise keelest. Seejärel keskendume „Salomés“ esineva dekadentliku sümboolika kirjeldustele intersensoorsete assotsiatsioonide kaudu, mida loovad näidendis verbaalsel tasandil rõhutatud värvid ja hääl. Vaatleme Wilde’i teksti verbaalse tasandi koodide transleerimist 1919. aasta lavastuses ja selle retseptsioonis.

The article explores the history of theatre translation in Estonia, focusing specifically on the case of Oscar Wilde’s one-act symbolist-decadent tragedy Salomé. It offers a comparative analysis of three Estonian translations – Aleksander Tassa’s manuscript version (1917, likely translated from Russian), Henrik Visnapuu’s rendition (1919, probably based on an indirect translation), and Linnar Priimägi’s recent translation (2023, from English). Particular attention is given to how decadent symbolism – especially colour and sound – is transmitted through intersemiotic processes from page to stage. The study examines the 1919 premiere at the Estonian Drama Theatre, analysing how visual and auditory codes were transformed in performance and interpreted by contemporary critics.

In Salomé, colour and sound function as integral elements of Wilde’s decadent aesthetic, operating as complex, multi-layered sensory code systems. However, Decadent discourse frequently subverts conventional symbolism: white may signify both innocence and cruelty; black may suggest death as well as purity; purple and gold evoke majesty alongside moral decay. The language of the play is marked by recurring visual and auditory motifs, generating a synesthetic texture of colour and sound. Salomé is described through imagery of whiteness, silver and pallor. In contrast, Jokanaan’s colour is black; red transitions in meaning from seduction to bloodshed and guilt. Sound imagery is similarly prominent: voices are depicted as seductive, irritating, or terrifying, while silence functions as a powerful marker of dramatic tension. Wilde’s dramaturgy is grounded in rhythmic repetition and ornate similes, producing a ritualistic and incantatory cadence.

The three Estonian translations exhibit notable differences in their handling of key stylistic and symbolic features. Tassa’s (1917) version demonstrates a tendency toward literalism, marked by syntactic awkwardness and likely influenced by mediation through Russian. Visnapuu’s (1919) translation adopts a more fluid and poetic register but frequently omits repetition and modifies colour terminology, possibly to accommodate the demands of stage performance. Priimägi’s 2023 translation adheres more closely to the English source text, maintaining Wilde’s rhythmic repetitions and deliberate structural patterning. Across all three translations, there is a consistent tendency to substitute colour terms with near-synonyms. For instance, “black” is variously rendered as “dark” or “pitch-black,” while “scarlet” appears inconsistently, thereby weakening the coherence of Wilde’s decadent colour symbolism.

The 1919 production at the Estonian Drama Theatre, directed by Paul Pinna with stage and costume design by avant-garde artist Ado Vabbe, emerged as a significant cultural milestone, signalling a transition from theatrical realism to modernist aesthetics in Estonia. Vabbe’s design eschewed orientalist exoticism in favour of large, symbolically coded colour fields – black representing Jokanaan’s asceticism, red signifying passion, and yellow connoting jealousy. Although material shortages constrained the full execution of Vabbe’s scenographic vision, contemporary critics noted a heightened stylistic coherence compared to earlier productions. The casting of dancer Elmerice Parts in the role of Salomé foregrounded corporeal expression and movement, despite the limited choreographic directives in Wilde’s original text. Critics’ reactions varied, with some praising visual symbolism and others finding elements grotesque or inconsistent.

The study highlights the transformative nature of intersemiotic translation from verbal to visual and auditory media. In the 1919 Salomé, certain symbolic associations were retained (e.g., colour coding of characters’ thematic roles), while other textual elements were altered or omitted. The translation of sound imagery was also a crucial factor: the prophetic disembodied voice of Jokanaan and moments of staged silence were integral to Wilde’s symbolism and were recognized by reviewers, though not always in their original decadent sense.

In the broader cultural context, Salomé is placed within the reception of decadence in Estonia. Decadent and symbolist aesthetics entered Estonia at the turn of the 20th century via translation, with Wilde’s works arriving later than in Western Europe. The Salomé myth was popular in Estonian literature, art and dance during the 1910s–1920s, providing a vehicle for exoticism, eroticism and artistic experimentation. Wilde’s play, rich in sensory symbolism, proved adaptable to theatrical innovation and remains significant for discussions of intersensory translation in performance.

In conclusion, the analysis demonstrates that both linguistic and intersemiotic translation choices shape the reception of Wilde’s decadent symbolism in new cultural environments. The three Estonian translations show substantial differences in their fidelity to the source, their handling of repetition and their preservation of colour and sound motifs. The 1919 production’s visual and auditory interpretations both reflected and transformed Wilde’s sensory codes, illustrating the complex processes involved when literary decadence is adapted from page to stage.

Rubén Darío ja o-ga modernism hispaaniakeelses Ameerikas ehk dekadents kui võimalus kultuuriliseks iseseisvuseks / Rubén Darío and Modernismo in Spanish-speaking America: Decadence as an Opportunity for Cultural Independence

Klaarika Kaldjärv — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Teesid: Hispaaniakeelse Ameerika kirjandus sõltus oma viiesaja-aastase ajaloo jooksul enamasti emamaast, kunsti- ja kirjandusvoolud jõudsid kolooniasse hiljem ja lahjendatud kujul. Esimest korda muutus see vahekord sajandivahetusel, hispaaniakeelse luule esteetilise revolutsiooniga, mis sai mõjutusi prantsuse sümbolismist ja mille nimeks oli modernism ehk hispaania keeles modernismo. O-ga modernismi alusepanija Nicaragua kirjanik Rubén Darío on kogu hispaaniakeelse maailma olulisemaid luuletajaid, „luulevürst“, kelle eklektilist ja kohati vastuolulist luulet on eesti keelde tõlkinud Ain Kaalep ja Jüri Talvet. Rubén Darío mõju hispaaniakeelsele kirjandusele võimaldab samuti käsitleda keskuse ja perifeeria teemat maailmakirjanduses.

The article examines modernismo, a literary movement that emerged in Spanish America at the turn of the 20th century, as the first culturally autonomous literary current within the Spanish-speaking world. Unlike earlier periods when artistic trends arrived in the colonies belatedly and in diluted form, modernismo marked a reversal in cultural direction, whereby the periphery—particularly Latin America—began shaping and exporting its own aesthetic innovations. Central to this movement was the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, whose eclectic and often contradictory poetry introduced a new poetic sensibility inspired by French Symbolism, Decadence, and Parnassianism, yet uniquely adapted to the Latin American context.

The article frames modernismo within the broader (post)colonial condition of Spanish America. Drawing on Alejandro Mejías-López’s hypothesis, it argues that modernity itself was born not in Europe but through the Iberian colonization of the Americas in the 16th century. Spanish American intellectuals thus faced a dual displacement: while inheriting the legacy of Spanish civilization, they were also marginalized by the emerging Eurocentric hierarchy that labelled Iberia—and by extension, its former colonies—as premodern and backward. In this context, modernismo became a means of reclaiming agency: culturally displacing Spain by appropriating European avant-garde aesthetics while simultaneously provincializing the former imperial centre. Spain’s loss of its last colonies in 1898 was both a geopolitical and symbolic rupture, which coincided with the shifting centre of the Spanish-language literary world from Madrid to Latin America.

Modernismo was characterized by its highly stylized language, metrical experimentation, and synesthetic imagery. It merged seemingly incompatible currents—symbolism, decadence, realism, criollismo—often drawing from exotic, mythological and archaic sources. While critics in both Spain and the Americas derided it as overly aesthetic and “Frenchified,” its internal contradictions allowed it to function as both an escape from underdevelopment and a critique of modernity. It was denounced for its supposed alienation from local realities and for corrupting Castilian purity. Yet, paradoxically, this very marginality enabled modernismo to challenge imperial linguistic hegemony and construct a new cultural identity for Spanish America, rooted not in imitation, but in creative transformation.

At the turn of the 20th century, both Estonia and Latin America—despite their vastly different historical and geographical contexts—sought cultural emancipation. In Estonia, the Noor-Eesti (Young Estonia) movement challenged Germanic and Russian cultural dominance, aiming to modernize Estonian culture by selectively borrowing from a wide array of European traditions. Both movements represent “young nations” striving to assert cultural identity through innovation rather than imitation. Scholars such as Jüri Talvet have drawn parallels between Rubén Darío and Estonian poet Juhan Liiv, emphasizing their temporal synchronicity and shared cultural marginality. Talvet refers to Nicaragua as a “distant small nation,” and characterizes modernismo as early modernism and symbolism. While Spanish was not a minor language, Latin American writers still had to liberate their literary voice from European (specifically Spanish) dominance.

Theoretical models by Pascale Casanova and Franco Moretti have framed world literature in terms of centre-periphery dynamics, with Paris as the literary “Greenwich Meridian.” However, critics argue that such models overlook the agency of peripheries. For example, Darío's creative appropriation of French symbolism was not passive imitation but an active expropriation of literary capital that transformed Spanish-language poetry. His innovations enabled a broader literary modernization across Latin America and even influenced Spanish poets like García Lorca. Critics such as Efraín Kristal and Mejías-López contend that Latin American modernismo should not be reduced to a derivative version of French aesthetics but recognized as a movement with its own philosophical and aesthetic goals. These goals included cosmopolitanism, the redefinition of literary authority and the assertion of Latin American subjectivity.

Rubén Darío’s poem Filosofía (1905) explores themes of life, existence and the human inability to rationally explain them. Unlike his earlier, more harmonious and colourful works, this eight-line alexandrine poem is dense and conceptual. It reflects a Catholic worldview of acceptance and conformity: life is an illusion, a theatre where each creature plays a divinely assigned role. Darío draws on medieval bestiaries, emphasizing that all beings—both beautiful and ugly—are part of God’s creation and must accept their fate without question. The poem pairs creatures associated with evil or ugliness (spider, toad, crab, mollusc) with symbols of beauty or divinity (sun, God, rose, woman), suggesting a cosmic order governed by mysterious Norms under the Almighty’s control. The closing image of a bear dancing in moonlight symbolizes humans as puppets compelled to live and perform in this enigmatic world. Estonian translations by Ain Kaalep and Jüri Talvet reflect subtle differences in tone and interpretation but maintain the poem’s philosophical core. Filosofía exemplifies modernismo’s engagement with metaphysical questions and illustrates how Latin American literature innovatively reinterpreted European traditions.