The Light Between the Sudeten Rivers: even in 2019 AD their ghosts are heard

Every language is a universe, and each universe allows us to understand what it is to be human in a different, larger and richer way. Like a basket woven out of many pieces of grass, many languages make our societies stronger and better

       An interesting sounding panel at Columbia University in New York tomorrow at 16:00, on: Bringing the Literatures of East Central Europe to English-speaking Readers. 
       I'd go, if I were in the neighborhood ..... 

 Very good post on what we have learned from Snowden.

       Günter Kunert (1929-2019) 

       German -- first East, then West -- author Günter Kunert has passed away; see, for example, the (German) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung piece 
       He wrote an extraordinary lot -- and a lot that was very good. Among his recent publications is the novel Die zweite Frau, which he wrote 45 years ago but could not publish in the GDR; see also the Wallstein Verlag publicity page. 
 I dreamed of a life in which I could make a living reading and writing, and do so independently: a life where I was in charge. I did a number of difficult things in order to make this come to pass. But tonight, years later, as I reap the fruits of same, my life is reminding me of something from my childhood.

Time at Tatranka

Stories about my two aunties who moved to Western Europe Germany and France 

Oskar Schindler, a Czech-Sudeten German businessman from Svitavy who was like a tall tower at 193cm
and who died in October 1974 a year before my 22 years old siter Aga passed away ...



 It may be a fact that
if you’re dying of thirst
in the desert
you do not call for whisky
and all you want is water
which may drown you
in full irony.

To be able to write is not to say anything, but to put small things together, which do, in the end, I’m sure, say something!
Say Something ... .

How much truth to tell is a perennial issue in authorship, whether the book is fiction or not History meant East Europe, and Geography, and West Europe ... Once again I have proven that I would make a hopeless prize judge: none of the intriguing Iron Curtain memories that I nominated has been chosen. Yet shadows of my aunties fall of the blogging pages it many distant readers

There is no other way than to approach things as politely as possible, peeling off one layer this year, and one layer the next.  For how many years flew by since the escapes of Ota's Pecharcikova  and Zofka Imrichova tribes... 

In exile during WWII and In 1948 their lives fell apart. Months and Years were spent grinding through the dark forests of depression - emerging out of the darkness onto sunlit western world was not easy for men let alone women. Life in exile like grief is an ocean, fathomless and wide, and on the surface its most impelling forces arrive in waves

Moravian born and bred Freud, and generations of psychologists, psychiatrists, grief counsellors, and all the lesser mineworkers at the coalface of human sorrow, would say I had not completed my grief work.  I had not moved through Kübler-Ross’s five stages of loss.  As influential as was Freud’s half-baked paper, it was the book On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross that would lodge in the modern imagination, like a fishbone in the throat, where it has remained for nearly fifty years; the definitive explanation for what’s going on with your feels.  In the very first lines of Freud’s Trauer und Melancholie’, he admits that ‘the empirical material upon which this study is founded is insufficient for our needs’.  No such admission ever tempered the appeal of Kübler-Ross’s neatly presented five-slices-of-sad-pizza

Every person alive today is descended from a tribe that has at some stage in its history been both victor and vanquished.  So how far back do we take it?  One generation?  Two, three? Why not all the way back to the triumph of our species over other species of humans, whom some historians believe we may have systematically killed off?  Perhaps the Genesis story in the Bible is in fact a parable about this genocide.  We, Homo sapiens, took the ribs and bones of other human species we massacred to remake ourselves as the only humansEvery person alive today is descended from a tribe that has at some stage in its history been both victor and vanquished.  So how far back do we take it?  One generation?  Two, three? Why not all the way back to the triumph of our species over other species of humans, whom some historians believe we may have systematically killed off?  Perhaps the Genesis story in the Bible is in fact a parable about this genocide.  We, Homo sapiens, took the ribs and bones of other human species we massacred to remake ourselves as the only humans
Every person alive today is descended from a tribe that has at some stage in its history been both victor and vanquished.  So how far back do we take it?  One generation?  Two, three? Why not all the way back to the triumph of our species over other species of humans, whom some historians believe we may have systematically killed off?  Perhaps the Genesis story in the Bible is in fact a parable about this genocide.  We, Homo sapiens, took the ribs and bones of other human species we massacred to remake ourselves as the only humans


#6Degrees

Annabel Smith and Emma Chapman began the 6 Degrees of Separation meme in 2014 

The meme was inspired by Hungarian writer and poet Frigyes Karinthy. In his 1929 short story, Chains, Karinthy coined the phrase ‘six degrees of separation’.  The phrase was popularised by a 1990 play written by John Guare, which was later made into a film starring Stockard Channing. Since then, the idea that everyone in the world is separated from everyone else by just six links has been explored in many ways, from ‘six degress of Kevin Bacon‘ to the science of connections. And now it’s a meme for readers.

So, to the meme. On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

How the meme works

Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge.

A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the ones next to them in the chain.

How to Join the Meme

Each person’s chain will look completely different.  It doesn’t matter what the connection is or where it takes you – just take us on the journey with you. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the first book either: you can always find ways to link it based on your expectations/ideas about it.

Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the Linky section (or comments) of each month’s post. If you don’t have a blog, you can share your chain in the comments section. You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees

Here’s a list of past #6Degrees chains:

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Luminaries by Eleanor CattonThe Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Gone Girl by Gillian FlynnAll the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
1984 by George Orwell
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy FowlerThe Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healy
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony DoerrOlive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
My Brilliant Friend by Elena FerranteA Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick SüskindRomeo & Juliet by William ShakespeareMidnight’s Children by Salman RushdieYear of Wonders by Geraldine BrooksFlowers in the Attic by V.C. AndrewsExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran FoerNever Let Me Go by Kazuo IshiguroRevolutionary Road by Richard YatesThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg LarssonFates and Furies by Lauren GroffFever Pitch by Nick HornbyRoom by Emma DonoghueThe Slap by Christos TsiolkasShopgirl by Steve MartinPicnic at Hanging Rock by Joan LindsayPride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura EsquivelLess Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
It by Stephen King
No.1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
The Arsonist by Chloe Hooper
How to be Both by Ali Smith
The Dry by Jane Harper
Murmur by Will Eaves
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook

Missing Cold River ;-) 

Next month (September 7, 2019), we’ll begin with A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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Made in Sweden, 25 Ideas that Created a Country

In this fascinating book, in just 150 pages, Swedish author Elisabeth Åsbrink makes us re-think the assumptions that we tend to have, about Sweden.  This is the blurb:

What are the real Swedish Values? Who is the real Swedish Model?

In recent times, we have come to favour all things Scandi — their food, furnishings, fiction, fashion, and general way of life. We seem to regard the Swedes and their Scandinavian neighbours as altogether more sophisticated, admirable, and evolved than us. We have all aspired to be Swedish, to live in their perfectly designed society from the future. But what if we have invested all our faith in a fantasy? What if Sweden has in fact never been as moderate, egalitarian, dignified, or tolerant as it would like to (have us) think? The recent rise to political prominence of an openly neo-Nazi party has begun to crack the illusion, and here now is Swede Elisabeth Åsbrink, who loves her country ‘but not blindly’, presenting twenty-five of her nation’s key words and icons afresh, in order to give the world a clearer-eyed understanding of this fascinating country.

Each chapter consists of 5-6 pages that interrogate an idea.  It begins by reminding us that Sweden as a nation state is a comparatively new idea, and its history is vague.  And in reminding the reader about this, we are reminded of something else that we ought not to forget. Noting the scanty historical sources that mention peoples who might, or might not be Swedes, Åsbrink writes:

Spurred by a general longing for logic in the random events we call history-leading-up-to-the-present, historians and nationalists use Tacitus and the others as if they were suppliers of indubitable facts, when it would be more accurate to describe them as isolated sources of light in a compact historical darkness.  (p.2)

Indeed.  (We’re just as guilty here in Australia, where until comparatively recently, we’ve acted as if our history began in 1770.  We didn’t even acknowledge European landfalls, much less our Indigenous history).

The second chapter is about Beowulf, the English epic poem about a hero who comes from afar to rescue the Danes from a savage monster.  Because it’s set in Scandinavia, with a hero who might have come from present-day Sweden, it’s regarded as a national epic there too.  But the fact is, nobody actually knows where the Geats lived.  Maybe Götaland in Sweden, maybe not.  (The Danes, says Åsbrink, use Beowulf to entice people to visit Viking museums.)

The Øresund or Öresund Bridge (Wikipedia*).

Apparently the Danes and the Swedes do not Get On.  Later in the book she uses the word ‘hate’ to describe the relationship, and there were major conniptions over a bridge linking the two countries.  They can’t even agree on the spelling of its name.  Now that it’s been built (commercial imperatives usually win) it looks as if they had a tiff during construction and both sides went home in a huff, but in fact it drops down into a tunnel from that artificial island so that shipping can get through.  The bridge was supposed to end passport control but Sweden reneged on this to prevent refugees coming in from Denmark.

Perhaps because I’ve never been to any of the Scandinavian countries, I’d never really investigated their history so the murkier aspects of their society came as a horrid surprise.  Ikea and ABBA and their sophisticated welfare systems all seemed so bland and benign.  (Well, benign, that is, until you actually try and assemble something from Ikea.)  But Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Ikea, had a very dubious personal history:

… there are also two ways into the Ikea story.  One is uplifting and inspirational: a young man from a modest background, but with more than the usual dose of business acumen, builds an empire.  Although the hero of the story makes an occasional mistake, that is precisely what made him human and such a treasured symbol of Swedishness.

The other way leads from Mr Kaprad’s childhood and adolescence in a Hitler-loving family, Germans who had immigrated from the Sudetenland, in Czechoslovakia, where both his paternal grandmother and his father were Nazis; his long-lasting commitment to the Swedish fascist movement; and his membership, during the Second World War, of Sweden’s Nazi party, Swedish Socialist Unity.  Both stories are equally true.  (p.90)

Equally dubious is their posturing about neutrality during WW2.  In fact they facilitated the movement of Nazi troops and supplies almost from the beginning.

Swedish politics, in fact, has been distinctly dubious for quite a while, and the rise of the Far Right there ought not to have come as a surprise.  They were the first nation in the world with racial research financed by the state.  It was called the State Institute for Racial Biology, and in 1921 a Social Democrat MP spoke in its favour like this:

We are fortunate enough to be of a race that is still quite pristine, a breed that is a bearer of very high and very good qualities.  It is peculiar that while we are indeed committed to construct pedigrees for our dogs and horse, we are not as eager to assure the preservation of our own Swedish folk stock. (p.67)

The statistics on the number of people who were sterilised are shocking.  I know what you’re thinking: many countries, Australia included, in the early 20th century had high-profile supporters of eugenics.  But read on — it wasn’t just back then.  It continuedafter WW2, long after eugenics had been discredited everywhere else:

Between 1928 and 1976, approximately 63,000 Swedish citizens were subjected to sterilisation.  During the same period, 58,000 Finnish citizens were sterilised.  The same goes fro 41,000 Norwegians and 11,000 Danes.

How come the Nordic countries became world leaders in sterilisation with Sweden top of the class? (p.69)

Åsbrink suggests that there are three reasons:

• the idea of an ‘unspoiled race’ with ‘very high and good qualities’ whose superior strains should be kept pure;
• all the European countries with mass sterilisation programs were Protestant.  Catholic countries opposed it, as they also oppose contraception and abortion: humans should not interfere with God’s creation; and
• the generous welfare system is based on the idea that everyone contributes through diligence, work, and a subsequent high tax.  Sterilisation programs ensure that those who don’t contribute don’t continue to be a problem.

In fact, the year before child support was introduced, [1948] over two thousand people were sterilised; six people a day — a new Swedish record. That is seriously creepy, IMO….

In an era when Scandinavian concepts of ‘hygge’ and ‘lagom‘ promote Sweden as a modern, pleasant country, with good taste in design, music, and crime fiction:

… actually, Sweden isn’t ‘lagom’ at all.  On the contrary, the Swedish way of living and its basic values are extreme compared to the rest of the world. (p.ix)

It seems it’s a case of: Social reformers, be careful what you wish for…

Image credit: The Øresund or Öresund Bridge (Wikipedia), by Nick-D – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45290883

Author and translator: Elisabeth Åsbrink
Title: Made in Sweden, 25 Ideas that Made a Country (Orden som formade Sverige)
Publisher: Scribe Publications, 2019
ISBN: 9781925849097
Review copy courtesy of Scribe Publications

Available from Fishpond Made in Sweden: 25 ideas that created a country and direct from Scribe(also available as an eBook)