The forbidden national flag (or some words on Betti Alver)

I have been enjoying Juhani Salokannel's excellent Letters part of Jaan Kross' Life and Letters. The author himself took care of the life in his exceedingly interesting, crafty and quite odd memoirs, which led Salokannel to concentrate on literary analysis with very fortunate results. He does breach also some broader subjects and makes very fascinating comparisons between Estonia and Finland and their literary traditions.

Of course one massive difference is the cultural wasteland created by the Soviet system: so many people fled, were deported, died, and those that survived were not able to write, or publish. After Stalin things admittedly became easier, even as pure an artist as Kross could write, but with a careful balancing act in what at heart remained a terror system. This reality is very hard for us to comprehend having comfortably lived in an unoccupied Nordic welfare state. We have no real idea of that national tragedy, of how comprehensive the disaster was.

Betti Alver stood out in Salokannel's text - I had heard her name, but had not known her substantial influence on Kross, or even her distinctive poetic approach. She wasn't a nationalist writer, but she surely was a national writer, one that would have been undoubtedly quite productive and much celebrated (and later rebelled against) in a Finnish type post-war Estonia. That never happened: Heiti Talvik died (in effect was murdered) in Siberia, Betti Alver was silent for five decades. That's quite a difference indeed, something that is not easily communicated accross national experiences - but Salokannel does impressive work in this regard.

Oakeshott and Burke - and Keynes

I believe Keynes would have approved much of post-war Oakeshott. This is based on the fact that he approved much of Burke. I wonder why they don't make conservatives like them any more? Modern conservatism is actually pretty much radical early Victorian moralistic liberalism. That is if it's anything any longer but a mindless reflection of irrational powerstructures based on stupendous concentrations of capital.

Keynes of course was a progressive and thoroughly rational. But he was so thoroughly rational that he saw much wisdom in Burke (and would have seen in post-war Oakeshott). Practice and experience really are crucial, so are local contexts and conditions which have to be taken into account whenever we attempt reforms. Where he differed from these conservative thinkers is that his focus was on pragmatic reform and progress. It is the pragmatism that leads to respect of experience and practice and local contexts.

Burke and Oakeshott formulated great truths about collective human behaviour. They lived in times that made them especially wary of progressive, rationalist thought, and went partially overboard. Burke's idealization of the painted, decadent dolls of high French aristocracy and Oakeshott's overly positive view of private enterprises are examples of that partial blindness. Keynes, as ever, exhibits very little blindness in his political thought and action. He is my ideal statesman and thinker, unifying realism and idealism, reacting rationally and respectfully to local contexts while aiming to improve them.