Kristi Viiding’s article in Sirp about Käsu Hans at the crossroads of literary traditions

The project’s research professor Kristi Viiding has written an article Käsu Hans at the crossroads of literary traditions published in Sirp on 9 August 2024. It focuses on the role played by the Puhja curate Käsu Hans in the literary history of our multilingual region.

The article stems from this year’s summer production of the Theatre Vanemuine. Namely, the dramatization Kuninga käsk (The King’s Command) which is based on Mart Kivastik’s novella Käsu Hansu ajalootund (Käsu Hans’ history lesson). In current Estonian literary history, the contextualization of Käsu Hans’ letters and his poem, known as the first Estonian poem written by an Estonian has been narrow. In other words, it has been limited to the texts in Estonian which were potentially available to Hans. Therefore, his poem Oh, ma vaene Tartu liin (Ah Me! Poor Tartu Town!) has been seen as the starting point of the Estonian-language occasional poetry.

Considering the multilingualism of the 16th and 17th century Estonian and Livonian societies and literary self-expression, plus the lament songs’ belonging in the discourse of Russian threat, Hans’ poem can rather be posited into an end point or a breaking point of a literary tradition. Viiding’s article argues that the more systematically we learn the Latin and German poems about the Russian threat before Hans’ time, the more precisely we will understand the genesis of and inspirations for his lament song.

The article can be found here.