Doctoral dissertation: The literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries reveal resistance to social norms and constraints
Kristjan Haljak, who defended his doctoral thesis at the Tallinn University’s School of Humanities, argued that both the Estonian writer Jaan Oks and the French writer Comte de Lautréamont share a revolutionary and rebellious approach to creativity, as well as a struggle for the radical freedom of both body and soul.
“And here are the dark temples brimming with sweetness from the shared impulse of all living things, where thick layers of sanctity sink before and after, where oceans of secrets – from bird to man, from the fish’s eggs to the slow-moving camel – throb, tighten and tremble.” – Jaan Oks
Jaan Oks (1884–1918) was an Estonian poet, prose writer and literary critic, whose works cannot be found in the compulsory literature lists in schools, but who still led a revolution in Estonian literature with his avant-garde works such as Nimetu elajas (‘Nameless Beast’), Tume inimeselaps (‘A Dark Child of Man’) and Emased (‘Females’), in much the same way as the forerunner of surrealism, Comte de Lautréamont (1846–1870), did in French literature.
In his doctoral thesis, Kristjan Haljak, a PhD candidate at Tallinn University's School of Humanities, studied the works of these two groundbreaking writers and found that both Oks and Lautréamont shared a rebellious spirit when it came to social norms and restrictions – a deeply personal struggle for the radical freedom of both body and soul. The poetic revolution that Haljak uncovered in the works of Oks and Lautréamont through psychoanalytical methods is not merely ‘literary’ in nature. It is an insight into sexuality, gender, identity and the most personal inner experiences, challenging both societal and individual norms and taboos.
Haljak argues that the monograph should not be viewed only as a historical account, but rather as a legitimate contemporary study of the boundaries of the subject. He is also confident that the thesis is important from a literary perspective, as no comparative analysis of this kind has been written before on Oks and Lautréamont. In doing so, he presents Jaan Oks's work and poetry in a new light, in which the modernism and avant-garde of early 20th century Estonia takes on a more powerful transgressive brilliance.
Kristjan Haljak, a doctoral student at the School of Humanities of Tallinn University, defended his doctoral thesis “Jaan Oks and Lautréamont: Transgressive-Dark Literature and the Revolution of the Language of Poetry” on 22 January. The doctoral thesis supervisor was Tallinn University Professor Daniele Monticelli. The opponents were Tiina Ann Kirss, an extraordinary senior researcher at the Estonian Literary Museum, and Epp Annus, a senior researcher at Tallinn University.