Argimütoloogia kui Mati Undi poeetika lähtekoht
The so-called everyday mythology as a source of Mati Unt’s realist poetics

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to reinterpret the style and rhetoric of Mati Unt’s proseworks from the point of view of critique of various so-called everyday myths (“everyday mythology” also being the term title of Unt’s late essay-collections). The critical praise in Unt’s reception has revolved mostly around his unique ability to depict the most modern cultural trends, catchphrases and phenomena of his time. This talent of Unt has been explained by the author’s deep interest in myths and Jungian psychoanalysis. I propose, however, that the key author to understand the specific equilibrium of realism and estrangement so characteristic of Unt’s works, is Roland Barthes and his early book “Mythologies” (1957). Barthes’ contemporary French consumer-society was saturated with mythical tropes, which he proceeded to deconstruct using the critical methods of semiotics. Barthes saw the stereotypes of his contemporary television and commercial world as sedating and affirming the status quo. Cultural clichés of various kinds were also crucial raw material for Unt’s novels and short stories. He incorporated these materials into his works rather organically, thus achieving realistic effects, but often also overemphasised these tropes, coming close to estranging the reader. I attempt to show, through close-reading of two Unt’s short novellas from his middle period – “And if we are not dead, we shall be living on” (1973) and “Talking” (1984) – how Unt constructed a realistic story-world, using various modern stereotypes, and later rewrote these stories. The article ends with a discussion of how my analysis may contribute to the debate about Unt’s ambivalent place between modernism and postmodernism in Estonian literature.

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