"On lihtsalt niisugune nälg". Kirjanduslikest üheksakümnendatest ja Kajar Pruulist
„Just Such a Hunger”. The Literary Nineties and Kajar Pruul

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the 1990s as a conceptual notion in interpreting the processes of recent Estonian literature. The literary nineties can be viewed as a project that was built up by a certain group of critics and literary researchers. This group certainly included Kajar Pruul who was an influential critic and still is an editor of the Vikerkaar journal that acted as a major point of attraction for new currents in the literature of the 1990s. Therefore the activity of K. Pruul in creat ing the conceptual field and important attitudes of the 1990s is closely followed, starting from his book reviews published in the 1980s and ending with the anthology of new Estonian poetry, with a detailed afterword, compiled by Pruul in 2000. As of the present moment, the 1990s seem to have been focused on problems of canon and tradition – we can see a constant and ambivalent desire or „hunger” for either building or destructing the canon, so strong as to become the foundation for the self-perception of the literary nineties in Estonia. It is argued that this „canon-hunger” was definitely rooted in the Estonian literary situation of the 1980s, when the main critics of the 1990s first became active, and that the self-perception of the new century differs from that of the 1990s mainly by lack of such focus on the Estonian literary canon.

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