Maailmakirjanduse kodustamise küsimusi
On the Problems of Domestication of World Literature

Summary/Abstract: The article is centred on some key problems of the reception of world literature, especially as viewed from smaller and peripheral cultural areas, like Estonia. The author claims that while the threat of acculturation, triggered by mass literature of the Western power centres, especially the U.S., is absolute, cultural openness still remains an imperative for small cultures. The reception of world literature has been and remains a pivotal factor in the formation and existence /survival of any nation and national culture. The capacity of a culture’s resistance to ideological-political as well as economical adaptation and domination – in its negative, levelling sense – directly depends on the intellectual vanguard of a nation. Since the 1920s a small but strong literary elite consisting of ”frontier-intellectuals” or ”creative-synthetic personalities”, as the author defines them, have laid a sound basis for the reception of world literature in Estonia. This process, in terms of an intense dialogue with the world, still continues. In the same context, the ”visibility” and ”invisibility” of the intellectuals who started to ”domesticate” world literature in Estonia, as well as the interrelations between author and interpreter are discussed. Contrary to the claims of Roland Barthes and his followers, J. Talvet affirms that the great authors of world literature are not dead at all. On the contrary, besides being responsible for thick layers of intertextuality penetrating any culture, they have a direct say in the very procreation of critical metatextuality.

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