Like several of her female peers, Marie Under (1883 - 1980) has been denied the international acclaim she deserves. The earliest text on Marie Under in swedish told of her greatness, but in classical fallic maner reduced her poetic production by marking it with pathological symtoms. Though latter texts by author Enel Melberg have put a feminist perspective on Unders work, the theoretical complexity of her poetic images and language, and its polemic relation to contemporary literary currents, has yet to be recognised. This study will seek to portrait Marie Under and her poetry in this new light.

The study moves from an installation of Marie Under in the modern discourse she so far has been estranged from, to an analysis of her earlier works (in the 1910’s and 1920’s). Lou Andreas-Salomés theory, characteristic of the period, will found Under’s debut in the discourse of Eros and the production of female subjectivity. Through the theory of Luce Irigaray I will try to see how this force towards a female subjectivity is inverted, to call into question the souvereignity of the (male) subject. That is, to see in the face of modernism not only the rise of female subjectivity but its relativization and multifaced constitution. Irigaray’s poststructuralistic theorizations leads to the postmodern philosophy/communication theory of Jean Baudrillard. With his hyperreal notion of imploded distances between subject and object, decomposition of causality and meaning I take on a search for a voice that surpasses the subject, a voice of simulacra in Marie Under’s poetry from early 20’s.

A significant portion of the study is engaged in Marie Under’s relationship to her mother tongue. Under wrote poetry in early years but not until her late teens in the language of her own country, estonian - mostly due to the russian occupation. From 1918, when independence was declared, estonian culture blossomed, and the estonian language was renewed. Marie Under’s poetry had a great deal in this linguistic regeneration, and I will sum up this poetic/linguistic practice in the chiasm: to seek language through poetry and the poetry in this language. This dialectic approach to Under’s poetry is an essential part of this study.