Tuglas ja Dostojevski. Mõtteid novellist "Poeet ja idioot"
Tuglas and Dostoevsky: on Tuglas's Poeet ja idioot ("Poet and Idiot")

Summary/Abstract: The paper is focused on an essential moment in the literary development of Friedebert Tuglas, dating from the early 1920s. Discussing the short story Poeet ja idioot (1924) the author analyses its ideological and thematic layers, their formation, and certain parallels between the story and Tuglas's essays from the two first decades of the 20th century. The conclusion reads that during the first years of the young Estonian Republic Tuglas was keen on redefining certain basic principles of the aesthetic programme of the Young Estonian (Noor-Eesti) literary grouping, including their interpretation of Evil, or the demonic element. Evil as a positive, constructive element active in the process of creating a new culture (which had been Tuglas's idea manifested in his essays Põrgu väravas ("At the Gates of Hell"), Kalevipoeg and Kirjanduslik stiil ("Literary Style"), as well as in the so-called "Devil's Apology" of 1908) is revaluated in the short story "Poet and Idiot" as well as in his writings on current affairs and in his correspondence. Readers can find an important literary code for Tuglas's story in the novel "Demons" (1872) by F. Dostoevsky, while some of its characters (Nikolay Stavrogin, Pyotr Verhovensky) can be regarded as literary prototypes of the protagonists of the story.

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