Idamaine mustlane Euroopa lavadel: Konrad Mägi elulooromaan postkolonialismi liistudel

In this paper, I have implemented a critical discourse analysis in order to re-read a biofictional novel based on Konrad Mägi's life from the postcolonial research perspective. Two interrelated pairs of research questions were posed. In the first, the imagery of both the protagonist Konrad Mägi and the first-person narrator (presumably Eero Epner, the author of the novel) are examined against the theoretical descriptions of a colonial subject. In the second, the chronotope of the novel is analysed and compared to the spatial sentiment prevalent in 'peripheral receptive cultures', which tend to depict themselves in the cognitive light emanating from a distant superior culture, or what is perceived as such.This paper adopts a postcolonial research perspective in an effort to analyse a brand new biography of Konrad Mägi, indisputably the most acclaimed Estonian modernist artist of the interwar period. The author of the book, Eero Epner, is an art historian by education and theatre dramaturge by vocation, who in his earlier writings walked the line between art history and belles lettres. In his new ponderous book, he has done it again and on quite a monumental scale. The publication in question is rather straightforward in its textual composition. Belletrist fiction and solid historical evidence blend, as do the historical era of Konrad Mägi and the first-person narrator in the book, apparently living in the twenty-first century. The artist's life is thereby illuminated alternately both from a retrospective distance and as if through the eyes of the protagonist himself. Likewise, first-person historical meditations intermingle with recurrent excerpts from the protagonist's private correspondence, yet both vantage points in this fickle vista are framed for the reader with unmistakably belletrist literary insignias. It is history converted to invention, evidence to clues. The book, a biofictional novel, if I may call it that, tells the story of a man who 'suffered for us once upon a time' and whose artistic legacy is still providing us 'here on the brink of the civilised world' with the holy sacrament of European culture.