Constructing a Mythical Future City for a Symbiotic Nation from the European “Periphery”. Fr. R. Kreutzwald’s epic Kalevipoeg
Constructing a Mythical Future City for a Symbiotic Nation from the European “Periphery”. Fr. R. Kreutzwald’s epic Kalevipoeg

Summary/Abstract: In a recent article, “Belated Nations: Grand Apocrypha as a Challenge to the Mythic Establishment”, Lauri Pilter has pointedly argued that ancient mythical epics have often served as tools for power centres, as an end to their political ambitions. Such a tendency in their nature has made them at the same time simplify the human being as a complex individuality. To counterpoise such mythic narratives, which indeed have been included by a number of postmodern scholars in the complex of “extinguishing grand narratives” of the past (the most recent being the ideological “grand narratives” of fascism and communism), Pilter proposes the term of “grand apocrypha”. He speaks of the examples of Hermann Broch’s and William Faulkner’s narratives, which are mythical, yet have no political or social ambitions. He also mentions the European “belated nations” (including the “peripheral” Baltic nations), as a fertile ground for “apocryphal thinking”: “the Easterners” may have held intact values that are generally lost in the more “advanced” countries”. (Pilter 2008: 73–85)

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