Folks have all come home from market
But my poem has not come back
It was seen drunk
Pacing heavy-heartedly
With a golden mouth harp in hand
Under eaves of a house
Near a crossroads at dusk
Sheep have come down from the hillside
But my poem has not come back
The lead ram caught sight of it
As the sun edged downward
It was watching the bleeding hills
It was past the point of weeping
Grieving to itself
The neighbors are all asleep
But my poem has not come home
I sit at a gate to watch for it
How could I forget that night?!
(Jidi Majia 2014: 9)
Conclusions
To summarize the above: literary creation as the object of CL, WL and ELC has nearly always achieved its highest perfection by forming a strong moral nucleus in discussing the relations of the traditional “self” with the traditional “other”. More than often it has taking the side of the weaker – the neglected, the humiliated, the suppressed, the suffering. There is little reason to suppose that the moral criteria of outstanding literary creation would have changed in our time (or would change in the future).
The primary task of all scholars of the mentioned three fields, as far as I can see it, would be to explicate the moral nucleus of literary processes and works. At the same time, only by fully including in its discussion the “infra-other” (or aesthetics), CL and ELC can hope to explain satisfactorily why this or that work has been able to make its philosophic message audible far beyond the limited lifetime and the country of origin of their creators, or in other words, why some works have deserved (and should deserve) to enter in the canon of WL and others have failed to do it. The best prepared for this arduous task are quite surely CL scholars, if ever they manage to maintain on the horizon of their studies the “other” in the radical sense, instead of reducing it to a mere fragment of the traditional “self”. There is no reason why CL scholars should not include in their area of research ELC. By doing it they can only corroborate the position of CL in the world’s academia, responding at the same time to one of the major challenges of humanities in our contemporary world.
References
Jidi Majia. 2006. Time. Trans. By Yang Zongze. Yunnan: Yunnan People’s Publishing House.
Jidi Majia. 2014. Shade of Our Mountain Range. Selected Poems. Trans. By Denis Mair. Cape Town: Uhuru Design Studio.
Jidi Majia. 2016. 时 间. Aeg. Trans. By Jüri Talvet, revised by Taimi Paves. Tallinn: Ars Orientalis.
Liiv, Juhan. 2013. Snow Drifts, I Sing. Selected Poems. Ed. By Jüri Talvet, trans. By Jüri Talvet and H. L. Hix. Toronto: Guernica.
Talvet, J. 2015. Culture in the European East-Baltic Periphery: Embarrassed Coexistence of Fashion, Officialism and Resistance. The Estonian Case of K. J. Peterson. – Interlitteraria. 20/1. The Changing Baltics. Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 7-22.
Undusk, J. 2012. Eesti Pindaros. K. J. Petersoni oodide vaimuloolisest taustast. – Keel jaKirjandus, 1, 11-29; 2, 103-122.