Marta Sillaotsa mitmepositsiooniline elu XX sajandi alguskümnendeil

The perspective of multipositionality as a means of taking a holistic approach to a person’s multiple lives, i.e. to their different professional fields of activity, has been used to a great effect in translation (including translator) studies. This article explores the feasibility of adapting this concept to the Estonian literary context by looking at the case of Marta Sillaots (1887–1969), known to the wider public mostly as a translator and critic. Less known is her work as a teacher, journalist, and an author of not just children’s stories, but of adult prose, too. It was primarily the archival sources which demonstrated that Sillaots’ literary and non-literary activities at the start of her career, in the first decades of the 20th century, took several interrelated forms with transferred interests and shifting authority from one field of activity to another. An exploration of Sillaots’ multiple lives unveils a young woman’s professional literary aspirations in their complex, intertwined nature, and reveals her means of survival within the restrictions, conventions and limitations of the largely patriarchal early 20th century Estonian literary landscape.