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154 LITERATÛRZINÂTNE, FOLKLORISTIKA, MÂKSLA
fast. You have nothing but pity for those who lose a manuscript and then boast that
they can restore 98% of it. Wretched creatures. You can restore nothing. Because
whatever you write is born for that unique moment only. You are insured in Lloyd’s.
If something is lost, you get the money back. And you move on. Not backwards. Indeed
you think that in the work of those restorers that 98% is trash and it is only the
missing 2% that are creative, new, unique. /…/ You have to act like Woody Allen.
Spit on conventions. You have to produce, produce, produce incessantly. Until the
time comes when critics are talking about your previous work, the readers are reading
the new one, and you are talking about the coming one. Before long, the critics
are completely fooled and there is nothing to prevent you from freely entertaining
people. On–line. Real time. 24/7/365. /…/” 23 .
In the fast–paced vibrantly energetic cadences of the passage, one can, of course,
easily detect direct American literary and, perhaps even more obviously, cinematic
influences. Kender himself has repeatedly and emphatically spoken about his admiration
for and spiritual affinity with Tarantino. But one can also look at the text as a
straightforward credo of a young Estonian out to conquer the world – a reading rendered
all the more plausible by Kender’s own ambivalence about his status as a writer,
his refusal to take on the high moral responsibilities traditionally associated with the
role. What is more, judging by Kender’s phenomenal success, the credo is clearly
shared by the majority of Estonians of at least his own generation. And the credo
celebrates nearly every American value listed above.
What is more, an Estonian would recognize in the passage a not–so–hidden polemic
with the Grand Old Man of Estonian literature, the Nobel–nominee Jaan Kross,
who did indeed lose a manuscript and declared that he had been able to restore 98%
of it. However, it is not the personal polemic that is significant here (in an interview
Kender actually admits to rather liking Kross’s novels), nor even a clash of generations,
but rather an impassioned refutation by Kender – and his impressively large
following – of the whole set of values, indeed the ethos, predominant in prewar independent
Republic of Estonia and adhered to by resistance culture throughout the Soviet
period, an ethos, as already mentioned, of predominantly German origin. The
Estonian writer Tõnu Õnnepalu has perceptively pointed out that the anti–German
ideology of prewar Estonia was, paradoxically, thoroughly German in its deeper layers24
. Perhaps this is not so paradoxical, after all, as the German masters, though
hated, were also actively emulated since the beginning of the Estonian National Awakening
(a movement that itself was, of course, rooted in Herderian ideology). Jaan
Kross, with the bulk of his work devoted to the exceptional Estonians who at various
historical periods have managed to break free from their own ethnos and, as it were,
become Germans, epitomizes this German ethos in more ways than one, starting with
his choice of themes and the values he espouses up to his own manner of writing –
meticulous, craftsmanlike, given to display of erudition, with passages carefully
wrought and assiduously polished, every detail exuding the aura of the Teutonic style
Kender’s revolt against this ethos is symptomatic of a general, though gradual,
shift in newly independent Estonia from German to American values, as witnessed,
for example, by the switchover of the Estonian mainstream press from the German
paradigm, with its long, discursive, reflective, abstract essays, to the American one25 .
The gradual nature of the shift and a continued coexistence of the two mentalities,