Estonia Waiting for the Great Estonian Novel

affinities with nature poetry. The clear, desolate land- modernists. Yet he remains a surprisingly obscure figure scape of the title story, where two figures compete to see on the cultural scene. It is as if his uncompromising and Estonia who will be the first to fly, is majestic in its simplicity and sometimes exceedingly dark existentialism scares off the sharp definition. proponents of a more cheerful view of literature’s role. In his more overtly sci-fi volume Det sällsamma djuret I find it hard to imagine Magnus Hedlund sitting on a från norr, Gustafsson creates a supporting structure in the sofa in a TV studio, discussing the main protagonist of his form of a framing narrative, in some respects more pow- novel Snittet (The cut, 1999): a man who has been sub- erful in impact than the stories themselves. Such framing jected to a lobotomy tries desperately to puzzle together devices are not so uncommon in the genre, and Gustafs- the mutilated bits of identity he has left. I find it hard to son is following in the footsteps of, for example, Stansis- see how anyone could have anything to add to such a law Lem in The Cyberiad and Clifford D. Simak in City. novel, in any case. It is its own argument, refined to severe In Gustafsson’s collection, the year is 40 000 A.D., and and beautiful prose in which not a word is superfluous. the individual stories are tales a space lord tells himself With this new book, Hedlund completes the trilogy he to while away the time as his flagship Pascal II is accel- began with Snittet. The second part was published in erating through space. To make the stories more inter- 2003 under the title Mylingen i Kov (The Ghost Boy of Kov). esting, he divides himself up into eight aspects. In Odöda, odrömda we meet an isolated, ninety- year- Eight officers are sitting in the mess, entertaining one old woman living in a little flat from which the only view another with stories that always seem to start with some is of a car park and a six-lane motorway. Her inner life is theoretical philosophical dilemma and that are more mangled by age and jumbled memories. While we have often than not set way back in the twentieth century, in no proper idea of what belongs to the world and what ex- some exotic place on the margins called Planet Earth. ists solely in her imagination, there is a daughter who Few would claim that characterization is one of Lars comes to visit and a carer from social services. Gustafsson’s strong points, and I doubt he has ever heard In this trilogy, Hedlund’s particular interest – like that of cyberpunk. He allies himself to the company of more of his unofficial mentor Beckett – has been in trying to cerebral sci-fi dignitaries, names like Arthur C. Clarke and identify the anatomical, cerebral and essential bound- the Strugatsky brothers. And he does it with great credit. aries of human existence. His treatment of this theme – Lars Gustafsson’s two excursions, now back in print, or rather, these themes – is shocking, yet at the same time simply serve to underline that a good science fiction or somehow consoling. fantasy novel retains its relevance long after fiction’s more He is one of Sweden’s most valuable treasures and as Märt Väljataga limited slices of modern life have lost theirs. This autumn far from a representative of a national literature as one the industrious Gustafsson is bringing out a new novel, can get. Or perhaps just the opposite. promising more stories in the realms of magical realism. Waiting for the Great Estonian Novel Translation by Sarah Death But the most significant literary event in Sweden this year must surely be Magnus Hedlund’s Odöda, odrömda While the Great Estonian Novel has yet to be written, writes poet and critic Märt Väl- (Undead, undreamed, 2008), published in the spring. jataga, the range of fiction in Estonian is sufficiently wide to serve as an indicator of Hedlund has been a central figure in Swedish literature the hopes and fears, anxieties and obsessions, of post-communist Estonia. From the for at least thirty years – as a writer, and as an introducer autobiographical to the historical realist and allegorical, Estonian novelists have suc- and translator, particularly of Beckett and the French cessfully developed a variety of styles to respond to post-Cold War experience. 20 21 n 2005, statistics revealed that the most popular But the local librarians, tough and assertive ladies that Perhaps due to the sheer smallness of the population, quarter is handed out as stipends to individual writers, author in Estonia, if judged by public library they usually are, were not taken aback by the criticism. the Estonians could not afford to have separate cultures, and the remaining quarter is spent on literary awards, loans, was the American romance writer Nora Public libraries are important centres of local social ac- and the Writers’ Union in Soviet Estonia included com- festivals, research, conferences, presentations, and other Roberts, followed by Sandra Brown and Agatha tivity, they argued, and their financing depends to a cer- munists and collaborators as well as nonconformists public events. I Christie. The grand old man of Estonian letters, tain extent on attendance. The task of the libraries is as and dissidents. In many post-communist countries, the These two benevolent institutions may have uninten- Jaan Kross (b.1920) managed a place at the end of the top much to meet the demands of readers as to shape them. Writers’ Unions split or dissolved after the Velvet Revo- tionally contributed to creating a situation in which writ- twenty. It ought not to have been a huge surprise, since it Anyway, the egocentric, obscure, and obscene works of lutions. However, the Estonian Writers’ Union is still in ing is quite separate from readers’ interest and does not is a truism that bestsellers sell better and are read more contemporary Estonian authors are surely not the right a good shape – probably in a better shape than Estonian much bother itself with making advances to the public. widely than other books. According to the UNESCO Index stuff with which to bait visitors. The latter point, though writing itself. One may assume that literature – like other human ac- Translatorium, Agatha Christie is the second most trans- not explaining the absence of world classics from many Sociologically speaking, literature and culture in gen- tivities – springs from the mortal sins, though in Estonia’s lated author in the world (after Walt Disney Co.) and Nora public libraries, does contain a grain of truth. eral had a threefold role under the Soviet regime. They case it cannot be greed, since the only time in Estonian Roberts is thirtieth, one place before Karl Marx. The debate gradually exhausted itself. There is still no functioned as a substitute for consumerism, as an ex- literary history when writing made anyone rich was dur- But the statistics also showed that public libraries centralized acquisition policy, for better or for worse. In pression of collective identity, and as a safety valve, en- ing the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods. Vanity is a themselves were complicit in the results. The recent ac- cooperation with the public libraries, the Writers’ Union abling public discontent to be channelled into certain more plausible candidate: in a small nation it is easier for quisition of romances and other genre novels far ex- organized a series of reading tours, although the results controlled directions. In a wider historical perspective, a writer to become famous than read. If you have pub- ceeded the acquisition of the so-called «literary novels», are not visible in the latest loan statistics. If the conflict eastern European nationalism can be seen as a quasi-lit- lished a book and also happen to be young and good- whether Estonian or foreign, classical or contemporary. is seen as being between backward librarians who do not erary enterprise, in which writers played at least as big a looking, you will be especially likely to catch the atten- The romance publishers in Estonia have targeted their care about literature and spoiled writers who do not care role as politicians. In the mid-1990s, under regained in- tion of the media, although it won’t increase your sales production quite specifically at public libraries and not about readers, then a suitable response would be: A dependence and market capitalism, the number of nov- significantly. at bookstore customers. plague on both your houses! els published annually dropped dramatically and liter- One may think that a natural state of literary affairs Internet databases reveal that in extreme cases, village But the debate was more telling than that. First, it at- ature underwent a brief identity crisis. During the Cold is such where the author writes and the product is bought libraries hold 15 copies of Barbara Cartland on their lim- tested to the fact that the authority of the Estonian Writ- War, Philip Roth quipped that in the West everything goes by many interested readers or supported by a few gener- ited shelf-space and not a single work by Leo Tolstoy, not ers’ Union is still intact. Literary life in Estonia revolves and nothing matters, while in the East nothing goes and ous patrons. In the Estonian case, the readers who mat- to mention the great names of Estonian literature. While around this organization of three hundred members. everything matters. Estonia’s recent history has verified ter are mostly the critics or fellow writers, and the main almost all small local libraries subscribe to the gossip True, not all are poets, novelists, or playwrights, since this (Jaan Kaplinski’s 1992 allegory of transition, «From provider, however indirectly, is the State.

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