نبذة مختصرة : Teesid: Artikkel käsitleb Teise maailmasõja ajal Rootsi ümber asunud, kontsertpianistina märkimisväärset rahvusvahelist kuulsust saavutanud ja ka kirjanikuna tuntud Käbi Laretei teost „Peotäis mulda, lapike maad“ (1976, e k 1989), keskendudes kirjutamise rollile loomehalvatuse ületamisel, mis tabas Lareteid pärast vanemate surma. Uurimus toob esile, et klaveri ja muusika tihe seotus lapsepõlve, vanemate ning kaotatud kodumaaga, mida end pigem kosmopoliidina määratlev Laretei enne ei tajunud, viis hetkeni, mil „muusika vaikis“ – loomingulise halvatuse vallandumiseni. Kirjutamisest sai Laretei jaoks terapeutilise mälutöö vahend, mis lõi talle juurdepääsu minevikule, võimaldas mõista loomingulise halvatuse põhjuseid ja seda ületada. This article explores the therapeutic and identity-reconstructive function of autobiographical writing in Käbi Laretei’s memoir Peotäis mulda, lapike maad (A Handful of Soil, a Patch of Land). It examines how Laretei – an internationally acclaimed Estonian Swedish concert pianist and prolific autobiographical writer whose works chronicle her musical career, family life, and later return visits to Estonia – employed literary expression to process unresolved grief, confront artistic paralysis, and reconstruct a fragmented sense of self in the aftermath of her parents’ deaths. Born in 1922, Laretei was the daughter of the Estonian diplomat Heinrich Laretei; she spent most of her adult life in exile in Sweden after fleeing Estonia during World War II. While she maintained a cosmopolitan identity throughout her musical career, it was only later in life – particularly in the wake of her father’s death in 1973 – that the complex entanglements of music, homeland, and familial memory began to surface with renewed emotional intensity. The article contends that her creative paralysis, an experience she described as the moment when „music fell silent“, was rooted in unresolved grief and a fragmented sense of identity, both shaped by the dislocations of exile and the psychological demands of her artistic vocation. Factors such as linguistic displacement, cultural estrangement, and the burden of high-level performance shaped both her public persona and private self-understanding. Laretei’s decision to write in Swedish, the language of her exile, reflected not only the realities of her publishing context, most notably, her collaboration with the Bonnier publishing house, but also the ambivalent position of the diasporic subject suspended between assimilation and cultural continuity. Her language choice thus mirrors the broader tensions of identity negotiation in exile. The article situates Laretei’s memoir within the broader genre of music memoirs, arguing that although autobiographical texts by classical musicians remain underexamined compared to those of popular musicians, they merit equal scholarly attention. Laretei’s narrative is profoundly informed by musical sensibility, not only in terms of content, but also form. Her prose is marked by tonal variation, temporal shifts, and improvisational fluidity, evoking the experiential logic of musical performance. Memory, in her writing, is often triggered by or organised around musical motifs, with past experiences recalled in terms of sound, repetition and rhythm. Through close textual analysis, the article demonstrates how Peotäis mulda, lapike maad operates as a form of autobiographical witnessing and affective processing. The memoir, written in a rhythmically fragmented style, allows Laretei to articulate grief, trace the origins of her emotional paralysis, and re-establish continuity with her past. Writing becomes a parallel form of expression to music, one that enables her to engage with affective material that she could no longer access or communicate through practice and performance during her creative paralysis. In this sense, the act of writing substitutes for the musical voice that had temporarily fallen silent. The rupture Laretei experienced after her father’s death serves as the memoir’s emotional and structural core. Deprived of her familial anchor and burdened by cumulative grief, she experienced a deep crisis of identity and artistic purpose. In response, she withdrew to Hammamet, Morocco, where she began writing what would become Peotäis mulda, lapike maad. The authors interpret this act as a deliberate retreat into introspection and self-healing. The writing process enabled Laretei to reconstruct meaning from loss by weaving together memories of her childhood, her formative musical education, and symbolic encounters with the landscapes of her homeland. Significantly, the memoir also engages with the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Laretei reflects on her son’s psychosomatic illness and interprets it as a bodily manifestation of the psychic wounds inherited from her own unresolved traumas of exile and loss. This recognition allows her to begin re-integrating a previously fragmented self and to acknowledge the broader legacy of displacement on familial and artistic life. The memoir culminates in a moment of emotional release, where Laretei describes a return to breath and an emergent desire to play music once more. This symbolic ‘return’ marks the end of her paralysis and the reactivation of creative potential. Through writing, she not only reclaims her personal narrative but also bears witness on behalf of her deceased parents and a lost homeland, inscribing her private grief within a larger framework of cultural memory. In conclusion, the article positions Peotäis mulda, lapike maad as a powerful example of autobiographical writing as a practice of survival, mourning, and self-reconstruction. It contributes to the fields of life-writing and music memoir studies by foregrounding the specific challenges faced by a female classical musician navigating exile, trauma, and creative renewal. By turning to the written word, Laretei finds a new modality through which to overcome silence and reassert agency, both as an artist and as a daughter of a disrupted cultural lineage.
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