“The author has called it an epic. Why not? According to the structure and the used material from the mythology and folklore of different peoples, it successfully fits into the epic genre, even more, it proves that even today an epic poem can be written,” writes poet Guntars Godiņš in the foreword of the book.
After the publication of the epic in 2004, the Estonian poet Kalev Kesküla asked the author in the newspaper “Eesti Ekspress” why he decided to write an epic, is it even possible nowadays, is our time epic enough?
Hasso Krull replied: “Yes, the epic is often considered a closed genre. All the great, medium and small epics are said to have already been written; today’s large format is the novel, the medium is the short story or play, and the small is the poem. However, in reality, modern man lives in many times at the same time. The main literary forms today are oral and written, reaching their ‘listener’ or ‘reader’ through television or audio and video recordings. If we study this cross-genre literature from a sufficient distance, we can find a lot of mythical and epic material in it.”
“The question now is whether all the mythic and epic layers have been activated that could help modern man create his own cosmos? I think not. Yes, there are a black thousand ancient stories, forgotten fables, ancient cosmogonies, which could appeal to us at least as strongly as those stories currently circulating in culture. This is also the theme of the epic.”
“Hasso Krull has successfully fused the motifs of sagas, legends and ancient folk songs of Aboriginal, Tlingit, Maori, Mongolian, Polynesian, Old Norse, Ancient Greek and other peoples into the text of the epic. The aboriginal motif of Gullibung and the boomerang is impressive. Gulibanja throws a boomerang – symbolic of the son Wangal – which always returns. But once, throwing it over the sea, the boomerang disappears. Realizing that an accident has happened, Gulibanja goes to look for his son. No less important for the epic is the Icelandic Njala motif about Torgrím and Gunnar, as well as the aboriginal stories about the eagle and the coyote carrying the basket with the Sun and the Moon, or the coyote and the old man who learned to put his eyes on a tree.”
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The book series “New Classic” is published with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania. It publishes the translations of the Estonian and Lithuanian works of the winners of the Baltic Assembly Prize in Literature. Publication of works by award-winning Latvian authors has begun in Lithuania and Estonia, but so far they are only a few publications.
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2023-09-08 13:22:15
#Estonian #poet #Haso #Krulls #epic #Metr #Demeter #published
