The phenomenon of ethnofuturism
in contemporary Estonian literature
Ethnofuturism is a term probably unknown
to most of the people dealing with literary criticism. The word was
born spontaneously among a small group of young writers and artists
in Tartu in the late 1980's. The term was invented to mark their creative
method and outlook upon life, but after propagating it, the word established
itself quite firmly in Estonian literary consciousness and spread outside
Estonia's borders. Besides introducing ethnofuturism the current paper
aims to deal with the phenomenon of how the notions marking new literary
movements emerge and how they fix into the consciousness of the literary
public.
The birth of the notion of ethnofuturism
should be connected with two literary organisations - the "Hirohall''-group
of young writers acting from 1988 to 1991 in Tartu and the Estonian
Kostabi-Society. To understand what the literary group and the Society
really meant, the background of Estonian literary life of the 1980's
should be explained briefly. The awakening of the national spirit in
late 1980's also reached into literature and besides bringing along
political freedom it also affected literary life. Literature was in
fashion, so were literary societies, organisations and groups. The literary
groups which emerged in the late 1980's were formed exactly the same
way as these during the first years of the Republic of Estonia in 1917-18,
when, for example, the literary group "Siuru" was established.
Parallels were quite obvious and deliberate. "Siuru" was considered
of an example of an archetyped literary group - scandalous, striking,
pertaining to a salon and striving for aestheticism. In their manifestos
and works the young writers of the "Hirohall''-group referred back
to "Siuru" sometimes even quoting it by their behaviour or
in their poems. At this moment the existence of any group was a value
itself. The whole of Estonian literature was prepared and waiting for
the birth of the literary groupings. Some other groups appeared (e.g.
"Wellesto"), but "Hirohall" was the only one with
a fixed ideology and creative tendency. In fact the "Hirohall''-group
was a small one, with only five members. The group consisted of the
poets Karl Martin Sinijärv, Sven Kivisildnik, Kauksi Ülle and Valeria
Ränik and the prose writer Jüri Ehlvest. At the same time a broader
organisation - the Estonian Kostabi-Society - was formed on the bases
of "Hirohall". The Society was established for practical reasons.
It was registered in September 1989 as a legal entity with its own statute,
bank account and stamp - a status which it still retains today. One
of the reasons for forming the Society and "Hirohall" was
the euphoria accompanied by the sense of political freedom, the joy
of self-acting was overwhelming and realised itself in many different
forms. The spirit of the revolutionary period was affecting all the
members as they realised the potential inherent in the new world. In
1989 business and art still seemed to be at far extremes. Speaking about
money was considered totally improper among the people connected with
culture. The Kostabi-Society tried to change this mentality. The spiritual
lead was taken from Estonian-American artist, Kalev Mark Kostabi who
by his outlook on life represented the complete unity of money and art,
raising money to the same level as art. Through his life and work he
tried to destroy "the Van-Gogh-type-poor-artist" myth, affirming
that the artist ( as well as the poet ) can be also rich. The ideologists
of the Kostabi-Society -mostly Karl Martin Sinijärv and Sven Kivisildnik
- were impressed by this point of view and stressed it particularly
in their statements. They advertised themselves without shame, declared
themselves to be genii and came out with shocking statements, wrote
ordered poems for money - false reticence was far from it! The exemplar
and slogan was one of Kalev Mark Kostabi' s sentence - so called kostabism:
"Say not "a real artist", say "I'"'. From the
very beginning the group used strong and systematic self-advertizing
through different media channels, partly veraciously, partly bluffing.
More concrete output was achieved through the publishing house of Kostabi-Society
during 1989-91. Being one of the first private publishing houses in
Estonia, it published eight books during two years, mostly the collections
of poems by members of the Society. From 1991 to 1993 an alternative
culture newspaper named "Kostabi" came out.
The term ethnofuturism was created by
the "Hirohall''-group and propagated together with the Estonian
Kostabi-$ociety. This promising and intriguing term can be broadly defined
as follows: ethnofuturism is joining the archaic, prehistorical, ethnic
substance peculiar to our nation with the modern, sometimes even futuristic
form. Or vice versa - the archaic form (e.g. runo-song) with a contemporary
vision of the world. Ethnofuturism can be also related with surrealism,
but it is more nationalistic in its manifestos strongly stressing national
diversities. No doubt one of the reasons for the rise of ethnofuturism
was an elevated interest in the history of the nation, its folklore
(especially folk songs and ancient belief) and everything else that
stressed the diversity of the nation. Particularly the authors of "Hirohall"
had dived deeply into folklore and tried to capture the archaic spirit
of the Estonian nation in their poems and other works.
The creative work of the ethnofuturists
centred on poetry. Language was the main object concerning the linguistic
experiments (e.g. neologisms and new forms of poetry created by Sinijärv
and Kivisildnik) as well as the use of the dialects (e.g. Kauksi Ülle's
works in South-Estonian language). Extremely specific were the works
of Valeria Ränik. She had lived most of her life in Russia and learned
the Estonian language only with the help of dictionaries and books.
Through creating poems in the form of
runo-song, the deeper understanding of archaic cognition of life was
reached. At the same time, according to the principles of ethnofuturism,
everything was combined with the present time.
The creative work of the ethnofuturists
reached outside the borders of literature. Their names were connected
with several "out-of-literature" activities. They came up
with happenings and performances. Their activities were accompanied
by scandals both in the press and in public cultural life. Besides their
literary activities, all the authors had deliberately built-up strong
personal images. Literature crossed its own borders, trifling was total,
attaining the dimensions that for people used to regular literary life
were hard to get accustomed to and often hard to understand. The borders
between literature and real life vanished. Game and reality became as
one. How original and spontaneous the concept of ethnofuturism in Estonian
society was, is not yet quite clear. But one hint should be given concerning
the terms of provincialism and periphery. Up to late the 1980's Estonia
was a typical "closed society" where information from the
rest of the world arrived spasmodically and in a deformed way. Intuitively
more alert creative people seized the ideas spread in from Europe. The
ethnofuturists had a good knowledge of their own national culture, but
their ideas about literary theories and practises in the broader world
were quite limited. Therefore the ethnofuturists linked themselves with
the period of the 1920's in Estonian literature which was extremely
apt to literary groupings. At the same time they did not realise that
by their work and theories they were actually representing a pure European
postmodern world view. No doubt the postmodern key-words presented by
lhab Hassan in Paracriticisms: Seven Speculations of the Times (Urbana,
III, 1985, pp. 123-24) fit well with the theories of the ethnofuturists:
antiform, anarchy, performance, happening, decreation, text, combination,
idiolect, desire, schizophrenia, irony, etc. Enhancing the comical by
opposing it with the heroic; breaking the barrier between art and pleasure
- these principles of postmodernism can also be found in the manifestos
of the ethnofuturists. At the same time we cannot forget about the turning
to the past - here the parallels can be found by recalling Umberto Eco:
"Past /—-/ must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently."
(Postscript to "The Name of the Rose". Postmodernism, Irony,
The Enjoyable. In: The Postmodern Reader. Ed. by Ch. Jencks. London
1992, pp. 73-75.) Or trifling: "With the postmodern, it is possible
not to understand the game and yet to take it seriously." (U. Eco,
ibid.) Ethnofuturism broke into the conventional modernistic discourse.
Therefore it is understandable that those people who were used to modernistic
literature were astonished and the critics who had been acquainted with
postmodernistic theories got the best contact with the works of the
authors of "Hirohall".
What was a logical, universal process
for the rest of the world, acquired here, in Estonia, on the periphery
of Europe, specific local, provincial form. A stressing of national
identity became the main difference from the rest of Europe. In ethnofuturism
the identification with the whole world was achieved through the nation.
The same, ethnofuturistic ideas are referred to in the term nationalistic
cosmopolitism, which aroused great interest in Estonia in the early
1990's leading to the corresponding conference in 1990. So, to sum it
up, ethnofuturism can be called a local, peripherial and provincial
outgrowth of postmodernism.
Quite unexpectedly the notion of ethnofuturism
has become a term used to mark a special world view and creative method
even outside Estonia. The term has spread among young Finno-Ugric writers
and artists. The Conference of Finno-Ugric Young Authors on Ethnofuturism
took place in May, 1994 in Tartu, with the participance of representatives
of all the Finno-Ugric peoples. The conference was organised by the
Foundation "Fenno-Ugria" and the Estonian Kostabi-$ociety.
Later, in writing an overview of the conference, the representative
of "Fenno-Ugria", Andres Heinapuu, mentioned: "The social
demand for the term "ethnofuturism" really existed at the
time. It was taken into use immediately. I have never heard an Estonian
using the word with such self-evidence." And finding that in the
contemporary postmodernistic world the Finno-Ugric nations with new
high-level cultures have much greater possibilities to preserve their
ancient originality than, for example, the Estonians and Finns had in
the last century, Heinapuu also noted: "It may happen that the
Estonian peripherial ethnofuturism might become central among other
Fenno-Ugric nations and turn their cultures from peripherial into central
at the same time." (Eesti Ekspress 20.05.1995)
The theory of ethnofuturism has been developed
further in Estonia. Literary critic Kajar Pruul has found new ethnofuturistic
authors and works (e.g. H. Runnel, M. Mutt, E. Tode) and compared ethnofuturism
with ethnosymbolism, so creating new terms at the same time (Kultuurileht
30.06.1995). So, what has happened, is that from a word what was at
first a trifling flash of wit, a considerable literary idea has developed.
By now "Hirohall" as well as
the Kostabi-Society to some extent have become literary historical phenomena.
The members are separated from each other, even institutionalised due
to their jobs. But the authors of "Hirohall" and the persons
connected with them represent a strong and specific generation in Estonian
culture.
The word ethnofuturism was born spontaneously,
as half joke - half truth. Nevertheless, by now it is rooted in Estonian
literary consciousness and, as the Irish professor of literature Angela
Bourke from Dublin University College has so strikingly remarked, terms
born accidentally and spontaneously often hit the point much more precisely
than sophisticated academic theories.
