Võõras mets. Ene Mihkelsoni proosast
Strange Woods: on the Prose of Ene Mihkelson

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses some common features of Ene Mihkelson's prose. The cue to the texts is an archi-story of a girl coming of age. The central figure is the first-person protagonist, with a smooth emanation over self-invented characters towards more real ones. Places bear real names and may well remind the readers of their own experience. The names of the recurring characters of the archi-story, however, differ from text to text, thus emphasizing the fictional nature of the work. The archi-story is reinforced by certain recurring events and fixed moments (the protagonist's birthyear, her parents' taking to the woods). The scene supports the states of the protagonist's consciousness of the self, manifested mainly as a closed space (room, flat, farmhouse), but sometimes also as an anthropogenous section of the outside (park, garden, street). The woods, being non-anthropogeneous and independent, form a natural opposition. According to the archi-story the woods may have an estranging effect on the people who have crossed their border. The following discussion aims to bind four archi-story features together and to analyse their mutual relations as well as differences between the texts. The basic categories used are Action, Place and Time.

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