ABSTRACT

Mirjam Hinrikus’s starting point is the term “theoretical European,” which Friedebert Tuglas uses to criticize modern Estonian literature that depends on the representations of decadent, metropolitan European culture, and thus has little to do with Estonian experience of modernity. Yet Tuglas sees this young, immature Estonian culture as in itself theoretical and upstart. These concepts are shown to reflect not only Hippolyte Taine’s triple impact theory but also other discourses on nationalism, decay, etc. The chapter explores how Tuglas’s decadent novel Felix Ormusson functions as a kind of solution to the problem of “theoretical Europeanness” mixing a representation of immature “upstart” Nordic culture with constructions of metropolitan over-mature European decadence.