Stage director Anne Türnpu and philosopher Hasso Krull - both of you have been related with the traditional in Estonian culture, and both of you are experts in the field of using and processing tradition. But when did you first meet with traditional culture?

Anne Türnpu: Being interested in traditional culture probably means looking at in from the position of a bystander, not being within? While doing it, one should bear in mind the special character of traditional culture and examine it from a distance. I started to look at traditional culture more consciously only in the secondary school, thanks to a folk group "Hellero", and since that time, everything moved on along its logical path.

Hasso Krull: Actually, we could say that we both look at it from outside - I did not grow up inside a living tradition, already my grandparents were living in town. I have approached Estonian tradition in the same way as, for example, Australian or American tradition. Estonian tradition still has one advantage over the others - namely, it is in a language that I understand. But even in this so-called natural language, one cannot understand everything, especially songs.

AT: It is easier, when you sing these songs yourself, then you can follow its thoughts and ideas...

HK: That's true. But the words do not contain the melody, although it can result from the words. And singing becomes good only then, when you can sing the songs several times and together with the others. The whole traditional culture is like that, it cannot be acquired straight away, it moves in its own pace. It reminds me of acquiring one's mother tongue.

AT: I have to say that in this respect, I am not an entirely a clean slate - my maternal grandfather lived on the island of Hiiumaa and I spent my childhood summers there. I believe that many Estonians of my generation have had the same experience - they spent their summers somewhere in the country with their grandparents. Already then, I had some fleeting contacts with traditional culture, but it was so self-evident then that I did not even notice it consciously. The real and knowledgeable contacts began when I started singing with a folk group "Hellero".

While for Hasso, Estonian traditional culture is on the same line with traditional cultures of other peoples, what is your opinion?

AT: In principle, I agree with Hasso that there is no essential difference between traditional cultures of different countries. If we want to find something special, we can find it in the language - traditional culture is a phenomenon inside a language and it operates inside a language. I have not mastered any other language to such extent that I could sense such accord in them. For example, I have sung other peoples' songs, but it is mentally different process - I have not felt that I could direct it or improvise within it. If a singer of Estonian folk songs forgets some lines, she can improvise to fill the gaps. In case of other traditional cultures, you can only play with the melody, not with the words, since you do not actually know, what you are playing with.
For me, Estonian traditional culture has been like an orphan. The notion originating from the time of awakening, (National Awakening started in Estonia in about the mid-19th century - the Editor's note), considering our own culture as something out-ofdate and un-European, which had to be overcome, has been alive for a very long time and it is such a pity that for the majority of Estonians, traditional culture is still something one has to disdain and feel superior to. Only now we can see some signs of the disappearance of such attitude.

HK: A kind of shift in mentality can indeed be seen. Its origin is not very clear, but it seems to be related with the levelling of media culture. The information that is mediated into the Estonian public space on the global level has become so uniform that identifying with it is almost like identifying with nothing and as such, it has become meaningless. But actually, the media culture of a modern society is also a culture of remembering that contains historical and mythological reference.

AT: And here the circle closes. Modern society favours the search for one's roots in the media - one makes artificial roots for oneself and looks for help from those who still exist within the tradition.

HK: In a natural way, such movement progresses through written culture, principally, in the same way as the tradition of Antiquity was restored in Europe through the culture of writing. The position of Estonia, when compared to that of the Europe of that time, is much better, as the temporal gap is still very short and relations with traditional culture have not yet been entirely broken. And differing from Western Europe, we are dealing with a culture that is in a language that we can understand. The revival of the Antiquity, started in Italy, had to use the Latin and Greek languages, which were quite little known outside the clerical circles.

AT: For me, it is much more important that people should bear traditions in their mind for a long time, than their spreading through written words. I believe that the real home of the tradition is just in peoples' minds, not written on paper. Putting things down always means a kind of canonisation, which could hide the danger that the tradition could become linear.

HK: The tradition really is many-layered and many-branched, thus it is difficult to foretell its becoming linear. The present cultural situation is very labile and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to foretell its future...

AT: There still exists a difference in the type of thinking - whether people are a part of a written culture or a culture without writing. The older Estonian tradition was born in a culture without writing and therefore, it carries an entirely different world of thought.

HK: There were no publications, that is true, but the notion of writing itself is very old.

AT: I would rather call this a pattern.

HK: In the Estonian language, the word "writing" carries many meanings. But even this indicates that the way of permanent recording an idea or a thought was not alien to our ancestors and that it was, rather, the other side of the tradition.

AT: For me, there is still a huge difference and now I can even see the appearance of a third type of thinking, where writing is losing its function and is gradually becoming an image.

HK: A new literacy is, indeed, emerging today and we could expect that within one generation, the culture of writing will become elitist - in a sense, it has already happened.

Could the rules and regularities of the oral tradition be as easily fitted over modern society, where writing is expected to be the first prerequisite for finding one's way around?

AT: Yes, I have thought about it myself, wondering whether is sensible or even possible to bring the writing of that time into the modern cultural situation?

HK: Certain traditions exist in town culture as well, although they are based on a different environment. For example, children mostly talk about things they have seen over TV. This is a different way of narrating, but this is an oral culture, which is, in its turn, based on images. It is still based on language, although the role of the text has diminished.
It is possible that now it is easier to see the cosmological and magical, since the media has instilled them into us through a massive flow of magical culture. Rationalist mentality has been lost by now and the modern computer culture is magical in its way - the first contact with computers is usually through games, which are often full of magical symbols and characters.

AT: It is not accidental that the makers of the first computer games came from the hippie generation.

HK: It seems to me that against such background, a development is possible that calls some people back to the written tradition. While culture is right now carried by the interest in the magical, it is certain to find resonance in some people and evoke further interest. People could start feeling that there is much more in this world than the superficial and the palpable and that behind such things there could exist some protecting and guiding forces. Only a short step further could evoke interest in cosmology or the story of genesis.

AT: Now you already arrived at the experience...

HK: Well, to me, this circle seems to be quite convincing and it can at least partially explain the new interest in traditional culture. In brief, this interest stems from the wish to govern this force. But if we go farther back in time, we can see that in Estonia, the interest in traditional culture was born from the interest in traditional cultures of other peoples, since the international media was full of the traditions of different peoples. I believe that it was rather an unconscious urge, a vague craving for knowledge. Only later it becomes clear, why it was necessary and very often, only later people realise that there is no need to look to some far-away place. We do possess everything here, in an understandable shape and language as well.

AT: Do you mean that people need some kind of an understandable metaphor to comprehend so large combinations, or to perceive and sense them at all?

HK: That's it, and it would be best if this metaphor could be transformed or developed when necessary, so that from a certain moment on it could live a life of its own.

AT: So that if I am talking about, let' say, a rabbit, the story of genesis that the rabbit knows differs from that of some plant or stone?

HK: You said yourself some moments ago that traditional culture is fragmentary and branched. The tradition is more or less about one thing and you do not have to choose your entrance point. You can enter it at any point - it is not the story of the genesis of one species of animals nor a special hermetic narrative. It is a part of a system and vice versa, the rabbit's story of genesis helps us to understand other stories of genesis.

AT: This is absolutely true. Fragmentariness is one of the most important aspects of traditional culture.

HK: This is where I would argue that the written culture has not weakened fragmentariness, but even made it stronger and created narrativity.

On the one hand, theatre is independent of writing - it does not rule it out, but pushes it away. On the other hand, it contains metaphor, which is considered as an essential feature of theatre. These characteristics seem to make it a suitable vehicle for traditional culture. But still - if we take fragmentariness as a characteristic feature of traditional culture, the theatre seems to be striving to be all-embracing...

AT: What kind of theatre are we talking about? When I show fragments to the spectators, they will combine them into a unity in their heads. Sometimes I have a feeling that it is not necessary to build up the whole world among the four walls, but it is enough if the spectators build it in their heads. In this case, theatre seems to be the most suitable medium, since due to the metaphor, it is possible to move in different worlds simultaneously. And the spectator might even not consider the causal relations as the most important. Much more thrilling would be to create some image in their own heads.

HK: Yes, the spectacle should first be understood. Some kind of a wave of understanding has to come and if fragments cannot be put together to create an image, the spectacle is over. For example, I believe that the atmosphere of a ritual, created in theatre, is very important - without it, theatre would be rather poor and other media would surpass it. But the atmosphere of a ritual is present in theatre: people come onstage and start doing something, but this is not real. This resembles a different level of the universe, which performs a certain magical instillation and some kind of an old mechanism is started, which makes people serious - there is always something slightly weird in theatre.
I have always been slightly afraid of theatre, but this fear has given it power and made it attractive. In all kinds of rituals, both in theatre and in traditions, one feels like a small child: I cannot participate, I am sitting here and watching. This is, actually, only very slightly weird, but the feeling is still there.

AT: This weirdness is a related weirdness - the spectator gives feedback to the actors onstage and together they create a result. The relations between the actor and the spectator are equally mutual.

HK: I agree with that. At the same time, in cosmic rituals everything is known beforehand; they are quite safe, and the prescribed rules are followed, which gives us a certain feeling of certainty.

AT: Lennart Meri has made a film about shamans, where he showed Nganassans participating in some kind of a ritual. People listened to the ritual, some fed their children, some went to relieve themselves - everything was very natural and without pathos. In theatre, rituals are probably shown in much sharper lines than in real life. But the ritual Bear Wake of the Siberian native peoples contains sketches, where relations between people and the gods are enacted, which are naturally theatrical.

If we speak about the advantages of theatre, we can recall that Anne has stressed that she is not an author but a participant in a group work. Can we find here some characteristic features of traditional culture, which is an extremely collective phenomenon?

AT: In group work we can see things that are not shown, some certain backgrounds. This is truly traditional. There is an image with, lets say, a red tower in the middle of the stage. We can watch the tower or the things behind it, its surrounding environment or other things. As a director, I hear different voices, shadows, images and thus combine a world. This is possible just in group work.

The question of authorship is probably wider. It is said that Veljo Tormis is, when modifying traditional culture, constantly asking himself who the author really is.

AT: I do not ask such kind of a question. If a folk singer steps in front of the audience and sings, everybody knows her name.

Yes, the folk singer belonged to the tradition, but Tormis does not.

HK: Similarly, you can stage Sophocles's plays without being an ancient Greek. The director is the author of a production. In culture, anonymous mechanisms are always much more powerful.
But the question about Tormis stems from a situation characteristic to Estonia. The revival of the Antiquity was absolutely artificial - the Antique times were dead and there were no contacts with them. We have had no such interruptions. Transition to the town culture and the culture of writing at the beginning of the 20th century was unexpected, but the time interval from tradition was and still is almost negligible. Rather, we can say that the Estonians stepped from one room into another and did not close the door between them, they can still go back to the first room. If the Estonian folk songs had been written down a thousand years ago, before the Germans invaded the land, modifying them would be very authentic. Just the shortness of the time interval could inspire the questions about the authorship, but this question is misleading and not relevant. But the emergence of such a question is important, indicating that the tradition has not been extinguished - it is very much alive and makes us ask more and more new questions.

Questions by Eero Epner.

Hasso Krull (1964), writer, philosopher, essayist.

Anne Türnpu (1966), stage director and actor.