Hatching eggs

The Orwell Prize is publishing a special blog containing the 1939-1942 diaries of George Orwell. The blog is updated each day, with entries on subjects that include Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war.

What impression of Orwell will emerge? From his domestic diaries (which start on 9th August), it may be a largely unknown Orwell, whose great curiosity is focused on plants, animals, woodwork, and – above all – how many eggs his chickens have laid. From his political diaries (from 7th September), it may be the Orwell whose political observations and critical thinking have enthralled and inspired generations since his death in 1950. Whether writing about the Spanish Civil War or sloe gin, geraniums or Germany, Orwell’s perceptive eye and rebellion against the ‘gramophone mind’ he so despised are obvious.

Masters of the Baltic

The Open Library is, among other things, a useful repository of older books which have been scanned in their entirety, and can be read online free of charge. The books are mostly in English, but there are over one million of them, and they include almost everything, from long out-of-print editions of the classics through works of history and philosophy to travel studies and political memoirs. I came across this enormous library via a recent post at the German-language Estland blog, which contains links to a number of fascinating books about the early development of the Baltic States. New Masters of the Baltic by Arthur Brown Ruhl (Dutton, 1921) take a detailed look at the situation of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in the period immediately following their independence, while The main issues confronting the minorities of Latvia and Eesti (1922) is a consideration of precisely that subject.

The Unknown Soldier

At Nordic Voices in Translation, I'm serializing some excerpts from my new translation of Tuntematon sotilas (The Unknown Soldier), Väinö Linna’s classic novel about the Finnish Continuation War of 1941-1944. The third excerpt is here, and you can access the earlier excerpts at the foot of the page. I'll be publishing more of these over the next week or two.

Nordic Voices in Translation

Nordic Voices in Translation is a new blog devoted to the English translation of the literatures of the Nordic countries - Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. It is also hoped to include Estonian writing in the published material and discussion.

Words and meanings

This blog has a lot of lively and informed news and commentary about literary translation - especially from the Nordic languages.

Books from Finland on the Web

Books from Finland, the English-language literary magazine which has been published quarterly since 1977, is now available in a new Web format. The style of the magazine's contents continues to be the same as before, with translated extracts from recent Finnish and Finland-Swedish fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as plenty of book reviews, illustrations and short bibliographical summaries. Soila Lehtonen writes:

BfF, a weblication:

http://www.booksfromfinland.fi

Spread the word, please!

Soila Lehtonen
Editor-in-Chief
Books from Finland, the online journal
of writing from and about Finland:
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi

P.O. Box 250, FI-00171 Helsinki
booksfromfinland@finlit.fi
+358 (0)20 131 345

Religions

"If people would remember that all religions are no more than representations of life, they would find them, as they are, the best representations, licking Shakespeare."

- R.L. Stevenson

Neighbourhood watch

By taking a swipe at Estonia on Finnish television on September 4 in the context of Europe's reaction to the Georgia conflict, Finland's president Tarja Halonen may have sparked the beginnings of what could become a long-awaited public debate in Finland about her country's role in the Cold War, and its relations with its next-door neighbours. In her YLE "A-Studio" television interview President Halonen said that Estonians were suffering from "post-Soviet stress", and gave an overview of current Finnish foreign policy, expressing relief that "there are countries in the EU that are not in a post-traumatic situation." That prompted a puzzled reaction from Estonia's President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who remarked that “Estonia has never criticised, and will not criticise the foreign policy decisions of another EU country. It will also not evaluate the psychological state of mind of other EU countries.”

On Saturday, Finland's main daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat published a leading article headed "The long shadow of hypersensitivity in relations between neighbours", which discussed the very different ways in which Finland and Estonia relate to Russia, but argued that there was no sense in either state criticizing the other's approach - each had a right to its own way of dealing with the large and often threatening eastern neighbour. The article began with a reference to Finland's ex-president Mauno Koivisto, who during the early 1980s tried to introduce a new policy for dealing with the Soviet Union, one that would replace and build on the policy of the Kekkonen era. Unfortunately, the policy was so compliant with the wishes of the Kremlin that, as a commenter on the HS site has pointed out, had Koivisto's line been followed by the rest of Europe, Estonia and the other Baltic states would now be part of Russia.  

I began to visit Finland - exclusively on business connected with literary translation - during the early part of Koivisto's presidency, and I can still remember the atmosphere that prevailed in the country at the time. While a relative freedom in social, economic and cultural life was noticeable everywhere, so that if one wanted to, one could imagine oneself to be much further West in Europe, in matters that had anything to do with the Soviet Union, a grim, sarcastic silence and unwillingness to discuss Soviet-related issues were the order of the day. While there was certainly more freedom than there was across the water, in Soviet-occupied Estonia, it was impossible to ignore the constraints that existed in Finnish society where Moscow was concerned. Perhaps because most of my activity in Finland was related to literature and translation, I avoided some of the more intense disagreements that could have arisen between my points of view and those of my hosts. My background in Russian studies, and the time I'd spent in Moscow as a post-graduate research student, tended to interfere now and then, however. I can still remember one or two incidents. For example,at that time, Koivisto's Soviet Union policy included the long-established practice of returning Soviet defectors to the USSR. On a day when an anti-US and anti-Israel demonstration was being held in Helsinki, I happened to have conversation with a Finland-Swedish poet who much later on became a minister in the government of Paavo Lipponen. Incautiously, I mentioned the subject of Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, and asked if Finland would also return them to Russia if they appeared in Finland. This provoked an outburst of violent anger from my interlocutor, and I decided not to raise any more such questions with him or with anyone else I met, as I was in Finland on an official invitation.

Many years later, I read about some of what had really transpired among Finland's media and opinion-forming circles during the 1960s, 70s and early 80s in Esko Salminen's Vaikeneva valtiomahti (The Silent  Estate?)  and felt that most of my suspicions were confirmed. Finlandization and "self-censorship" really were a important part of Finland's cultural and political identity in those decades after the Second World War. Now the Finnish politician Erkki Aho has reviewed a recent book by the historian and political analyst Juha Seppinen, entitled Neuvostotiedostelu Suomessa 1917-1991 (Soviet Intelligence in Finland 1917-1991) which deals with the subject of Finland's relations with Russia and the Soviet Union throughout most of the 20th century (I reached the link through Marko Mihkelson's blog).  The book also lists details of the meetings and contacts many Finnish politicians and public figures had with members of the Soviet security and intelligence services. 

Perhaps at least part of the root of the problem in Finland can be traced back to the Finnish Civil War of 1918, when the forces of the Social Democrats (referred to as the "Reds"), who were supported by the Bolsheviks in Russia, fought with the troops of the Conservatives (known as the "Whites"), supported by Imperial Germany. The degree to which this conflict permeated virtually all areas of Finnish life cannot be exaggerated. It even affected the most recondite literary circles: the Dadaist poet Gunnar Björling became involved on the White side, and hid a White telegraphist in his basement room in Red-occupied Helsinki throughout the entire four months of the war.

At all events, it seems ill-befitting for a Finnish president to criticize neighbouring Estonia in the terms that were used by Tarja Halonen. After all, Estonia was occupied because of its outspoken resistance to Soviet power, while Finland managed to escape such a fate (though it had around a tenth of its territory annexed) only by sacrificing moral and intellectual integrity.Perhaps the wisest course for politicians in both Finland and Estonia is to recognize that the present situation in both countries is in many respects the result of the past - a past which though it can't be undone, can none the less be recognized and discussed between them. And for the discussion to proceed calmly and productively the slinging of abuse, however "psychological" and mediated, won't contribute to the process. There also needs to be a wider recognition in the rest of Europe that the problems of the Baltic States and of north-eastern Europe as a whole are not local, regional matters, but rather the consequence of the deep and tragic divisions which shook the whole continent of Europe during the twentieth century, and for which Europe as a whole bears a degree of responsibility. Here, in the ongoing crisis caused by Russia's recent violation of the territorial borders of a sovereign state, NATO and the European Union have a major role to play in making such a debate possible. And perhaps by joining NATO and assuming the rights and duties that go with that, Finland can demonstrate conclusively, once and for all, that it really is a part of the alliance of Western nations.

Brodsky on Evil

"Evil, especially political evil, is always a bad stylist."

"Evil takes root when one man starts to think that he is better than another."

“The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even - if you will - eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.”

"Life, the way it really is, is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse."

"Auden's lines: 'Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return' should be tattooed on every baby’s chest."

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)

Postindustrial

Copenhagen-based poet and painter Grzegorz Wroblewski has posted a selection of his latest pictures at Saatchi Online.

Poetry Now

The texts of the three lectures which constitute the parts of the ongoing StAnza (St Andrews Poetry Festival) debate on the situation of poetry and the poet in contemporary Britain can be read on the StAnza website which, I recently discovered, has a new URL. The fairly lengthy but intriguing and memorable contributions are by publishers Neil Astley and Michael Schmidt, and poet and critic George Szirtes.

An excerpt from Michael Schmidt's lecture gives something of the quality of the discussion and the often interesting international perspectives it opens up. Here he is, arguing the need for "a diverse and vigorous culture of reception", a concept which could indeed be the key to much that is puzzling and unfocused about the present day poetry scene in the UK:

W.H. Auden understood what the pressures on a writer can be when that culture of reception becomes unitary and coercive, and how it is necessary if one is to grow to make tracks. In 1939 he emigrated to the United States, leaving his admirers and their over-insistent politics behind. What marks the Auden who obtained his freedom is a refusal to conform, to come down from his brilliant linguistic and cultural perch, to trim. What is a highbrow? he asks in an early piece. ‘Someone who is not passive to his experience but who tries to organise, explain and alter it, someone in fact, who tries to influence his history: a man struggling for life in the water is for the time being a highbrow. The decisive factor is a conflict between the person and his environment…’ That conflict occurs in art; it also occurs in criticism.

‘Poetry is not concerned,’ Auden says, ‘with telling people what to do, but with extending our knowledge of good and evil, perhaps making the necessity for action more urgent and its nature more clear, but only leading us to the point where it is possible for us to make a rational and moral choice.’ Poetry is still instrumental; and that word rational is there, virtually synonymous with moral.

Statistics

"Obviously, in those parts of the world which have not yet come under the totalitarian yoke, this peculiar logic has not had all its implications worked out. The statistical method is, as it were, dumped down well outside the gates of the palace of art, but for how long? It is permissible, at least, to ask whether in this realm, as in many others, the totalitarian countries, with their brutal way of freezing out the nonconforming artist, have not merely confined themselves to drawing the proper conclusions from premises that are, in fact, accepted by everybody for whom statistics provide a sufficient criterion for the administration of human affairs."

Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, Vol. I (1950)

The Last Anarchists

The Norwegian literary magazine Vinduet is celebrating its 60th birthday. The anniversary issue contains a number of items of interest, including a profile of the Swedish Academy's director Horace Engdahl, who is interviewed by Christian Kjelstrup. The Swedish Academy is, of course, best known for its annual awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Kjelstrup has some searching questions for the director, who is also the Nobel Committee's permanent secretary. At one point in a slightly defensive explanation of the Committee's work, Engdahl claims of himself and the committe members that "we are the last anarchists" - presumably in order to suggest an independence of thought and selection that is removed from current trends and fashions in literary taste.

Kjelstrup is not afraid to point out, however, that one major author who failed to receive the Nobel award was turned down on the grounds of his "anarchism". He was Lev Tolstoy.

Creative Fidelity

"On the threshold of the catacombs which may soon swallow us up, it should be remembered that it is basically the same power of creative fidelity concentrated in more favourable times in architecture, music and poetry, which tomorrow will strengthen the fierce resolution of those who reject the consummation by themselves or others of man's denial of man, or to formulate this in a more profound way, the denial of the more than human by the less than human."

Gabriel Marcel (1940)

A Question of PC

Doris Lessing, writing in 1992, in a back-to-the-future involuntary riposte to Harold Bloom, who questioned her recent award of the Nobel Prize for Literature (this excerpt via the New York Times):

The phrase “political correctness” was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it.

There is obviously something very attractive about telling other people what to do: I am putting it in this nursery way rather than in more intellectual language because I see it as nursery behavior. Art — the arts generally — are always unpredictable, maverick, and tend to be, at their best, uncomfortable. Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralizing, but, at worst, persecution. It troubles me that political correctness does not seem to know what its exemplars and predecessors are; it troubles me more that it may know and does not care.

Read the whole thing.

(Hat tip: Leopoldo)

Chechnya bibliography

Prague Watchdog has published a bibliography (which I compiled from several already existing sources, adding some new ones) of English-language publications on the subject of Chechnya.

The Flesh

The idealist is bound in the end to substitute himself for the Mind and then we have an individual to deal with. Let us confront him with the (as he thinks) shocking spectacle of a Christian astronomer. How can an astronomer believe in the Incarnation or go to Mass? The idealist's only hope is to put up a distinction. As an astronomer, this monster (or rather this amphibian) is a man of the twentieth century and the idealist can greet him as a contemporary. As a man who believes in the Incarnation, however, and goes to Mass, he is behaving like a mediaeval or a child; and this is a pity. When we ask the philosopher to justify his extraordinary dichotomy, he may call upon Reason and Mind till he is black in the face, but he will not convince us; especially when we see that he does not scruple to use psychological and even sociological arguments to account for these survivals in the astronomer, while he absolutely forbids us turn such arguments or analyses upon himself. He is a man of 1930 from top to toe. And yet he is still invoking an eternal Mind, but a Mind which has none the less been born; who Its next incarnation will be, Heaven only knows. Frankly, I find all this extremely incoherent. If a Marxist, for example, were to tackle the idealist and tell him plainly that his Mind was a purely bourgeois product begotten of economic leisure, the idealist would have to take refuge in the realm of completely bloodless abstractions. I think myself that idealism of this kind cannot help being cornered, with concrete religious philosophy hemming it in on one side, and historical materialism on the other. For it is in fact impotent when confronted with history any real history, even if it is just the history of a single life. It has no feeling for tragedy, and (what is worse) no feeling for flesh and blood either. Personally, I think that people who substitute the Cartesian concept of matter for the richly confused idea of the flesh which is embedded in all Christian philosophy are doing anything but progressing in their metaphysics. There is an almost untouched task here, and pure metaphysicians would do well to focus all their attention upon it, or so I think: the task of describing the evolution and progressive confusion of the notions of flesh and fleshly existence in the history of philosophical thought.

At bottom, this idealism is a purely professorial doctrine, and falls directly under Schopenhauer's partially unjust criticism of the academic philosophers of his day. (It was partially unjust, because there is a real feeling for concreteness and human drama in such writers as Schelling and Hegel.)

In point of fact, philosophical idealism would very likely have had no appreciable effect upon the development of human thought, had it not found a redoubtable ally in all forms of applied science. I believe that the spirit of applied science is really in itself the most serious obstacle, for many perfectly candid minds, to the acceptance of the notion of religious life, or rather religious truth.

(from: Gabriel Marcel: Some Remarks on the Irreligion of Today, 1930)

Marxism

To my mind, the most serious objection that can be raised to such a doctrine as Marxism is this: that it can maintain itself only in the struggle for its own supremacy; as soon as it is supreme, it destroys itself and makes way for nothing better than coarse hedonism. That is why many of the young people whom you see among you today, professing to be Communists, would, I am sure, go over to the Opposition at once if Communism were to win the day.

Gabriel Marcel, 1930

Music

Consider non-representative musical expression. It is a sphere where the thing stated cannot be distinguished from the manner of stating it. In this sense and in this sense only, music has, strictly speaking, no meaning, but perhaps just because it is meaning. Explore this.

The fact is that we introduce a relation into the heart of the music, a relation between the content expressed (?) and the expression, which is of the same type as that which joins the expression to the execution. But this is an illegitimate transference. From this point of view the idea of objective music takes on a meaning, but it is a negative meaning.

But is the term 'expression* really one that can still be used with regard to music? Could there really still be expression when we can no longer speak of content expressed a content distinct from the expression itself? I think the notion of essence, anyhow so difficult to define, might be introduced here. There is an essence of Schubert, of the later Beethoven, of the later Fauré, etc. The expression would then be the opening-up of the essence to itself. I believe this is the idea to be explored. Combine the idea of essence with the idea of universe. The essence regarded as the highest point of a certain universe. It is almost impossible here to make abstraction from the metaphor of 'the summit', and this is the metaphor whose roots could usefully be laid bare. The idea of'the summit* could perhaps be replaced by that of 'the centre. In both cases there is a periphery, or to put it more accurately, precincts (zones of encroachment).

Gabriel Marcel, A Metaphysical Diary (1928-1933), tr. Katharine Farrer (1949)

Executioner's Sacrament

The Ostrobothnian publishing firm Skrivor has released Gösta Ågren’s latest collection of essays. It’s hard to give the savour of the title – von Bödelns nattvard - in English. Doubling as the name of the final essay in the volume it sets the general tone. ‘von Bödeln’ – a childhood misreading or mishearing of the name of the Swedish General von Döbeln – suggests the presence of a nightmarish executioner-figure who comes to represent all the evil of the world. Not that the subjects of the essays are particularly morbid in themselves – they range from discussions of the Old Testament and the Greek tragedies to an exploration of aspects of the life of William Shakespeare, an analysis of the genesis and history of Nordic runes, a tour of the Spanish Inquisition, and a study of Aztec religion. While there is a general preoccupation with world history, the book never loses its Finnish and Finland-Swedish cultural focus, the voice of one Finland-Swedish author in particular – Hans Ruin – providing almost what amounts to a running commentary on the rest of the meditative ‘action’. Ruin, who lived in Germany during the 1930s and witnessed the rise of Nazism, is cast in the role of the author’s alter ego. In quotation he presents apprehensions about the future of the world and humanity similar to those that are current among many observers today. Ågren sees the greatest danger now, as then, in what he perceives as a collective desire for certainty and order amidst apparent chaos. Yet while the essays tend towards the rejection of Plan as solution, they are nonetheless arranged within a cosmological framework that can only be called religious. This apparent contradiction gives the book a circular feel, not unlike the effect of Ågren’s poetry, with its contiguity of the autobiographical and the universal, its consciousness of ritual, and its awareness of the cycles of individual life and human history as being essentially interrelated.