Scandinavian Writers Research Articles

National socialist cultural diplomacy and Scandinavian popular culture: debating the German-Nordic Writers’ House in the 1930s

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the responses of the Finnish and Scandinavian writers’ associations to a National Socialist cultural diplomatic initiative, namely the German-Nordic Writers’ House. Doing so, it engages the interplay between popular culture and foreign politics, as Nordic writers negotiated how to respond to the Third Reich’s quest for European cultural hegemony. Using the Writers’ House as a case study, the article discusses the nebulous nature of cultural diplomacy and reflects on how responses to the Writers’ House, especially in Finland, elucidate the limits of National Socialist cultural diplomacy in its engagement with the conflict-ridden Nordic cultural fields in the 1930s.

The books of V. Biržiška library at the library of the Kaunas A. Sniečkus politechnic institute

Vaclovas Biržiška (1884-1956) is a famous Lithuanian bibliographer and researcher of the press. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collection of books from Biržiška's personal library is given in the article. There are 1,480 publications in this collection. 1,072 books are intended for personal purposes. There are books on bibliography, history, pedagogy, and natural science. The collection also includes fiction by Lithuanian, Russian, Western European, American, and Scandinavian writers. The collection is divided into four parts according to language: Lithuanian (495 copies), Russian (520 copies), Polish (304 copies), and other foreign languages (161 copies). The books are marked by Biržiška's personal ex-libris, designed by P. Galaunė and V. Kosciuška.

Harlequinade Grotesque in the Works of Isak Dinesen (Based on the Novellas «The Poet» and «Carnival»)

The article is devoted to the study of the harlequinade grotesque in the novellas by the Danish writer Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) «The Poet» and «Carnival». The study proves relevant due to the following factors: 1) the current revival in foreign literary criticism of interest in the aesthetics of commedia dell’arte, as well as the role it played in the art of the 20th century; 2) growing interest in Dinesen’s work in Russian literary criticism. This article is the first to highlight both the presence of the harlequinade grotesque in Dinesen’s work and its originality. The authors of the article show how Dinesen’s passion for Italian popular comedy and harlequinade, typical of Scandinavian literature of her era, grew into a special worldview and writing style that synthesized the tragic and the comic. The article aims at revealing the features of the harlequinade grotesque in Dinesen’s work. The leading method in the study is the method of intertextual analysis: the characters and plots of the short stories are analyzed for their similarity with classical images (Harlequin, Pantaloon, Columbine, etc.) and collisions of the harlequinade (the flight of lovers from oppressive old men). The article reveals the features of the representation of the harlequinade plot and the functions of the harlequinade grotesque that evolve from them. The results presented in the article allow us to say that the harlequinade grotesque in Dinesen’s work was realized at the character and plot level, being the mouthpiece of the writer’s worldview, transmitting her aesthetic principles and moral principles. Also, the presence of the harlequinade grotesque in Dinesen’s prose suggests the presence of a similar technique in the work of other Scandinavian writers and confirms the status of this type of grotesque as a pan-European one.

Image of the Russian Tsar Peter in the works by Strindberg and other Scandinavian fin de siècle writers

The article deals with the image and the characterization of Russia’s tsar Peter the Great in a number of texts by some prominent Scandinavian writers from the turn of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The main focus is though on a short story “The Great” (English transl. “The Great Czar”) from the collection “Historical Miniatures” (1905) by August Strindberg. Surprisingly enough this text proofs to be an example of a highly apologetic narration of the famous Russian ruler and his doings. In the analysis suggested the reception of Peter is set against the background of Strindberg’s complicated relation to Peter’s foe Carl XII of Sweden, as well as to the Swedish writer’s self-perception within the contemporary literary circles. Moreover, “The Great” proves to be a manifestation of a providential view of history proclaimed by the author. In contrast to Strindberg his fellow nationals Selma Lagerlöf and Verner von Heidenstam suggest a much less complimentary interpretation of both tsar Peter and the time of his rule. On the other hand, the Danish Georg Brandes and Norway’s Knut Hamsun express quite acclamatory, though in the case of Hamsun vaguely based, views of Peter I. This lets us to conclude that the depiction of the monarch by the authors mentioned tells us more about themselves than about the tsar in question.

THE WOMEN FROM ALAPSUR IN GÖRAN TUNSTRÖM’S TRAVEL MEMOIR: THE DYNAMICS OF A REVERSED ALTERITY TECHNIQUE

Part of a larger project interrogating the strategies of different 20th century Scandinavian writers of reaching themselves by exploring anthropologic and geographic alterity during their travels, my article looks into the way that Göran Tunström’s Indian explorations, evoked in his travelogue “India – a winter journey”2, function as a catalyst of his personal destiny, reverberating in a singular form of artistic assumption. His inspiring explorations, at the same time geographical and interior, can even invite a phenomenological approach to alterity awareness, in which the portrait of the women from Alapsur plays an interesting role in reversing the functions of exotism and otherness.

BORDERS OF THE EXOTIC IN SVEN HEDIN’S MY LIFE AS AN EXPLORER THE TRAVEL MEMOIR OF AN AVANT-GARDE SCANDINAVIAN SELF-DISPLACED

However repudiated or obsolete the category of exotism has come to be when dealing with travel literature, the psychological borders of the exotic, the voice of the unknown or “the call” of the exotic remains a topic deserving attention and inviting research. Since travel literature supposes different forms of re-reading, which in its turn involves different levels of self-awareness, and much of the interest travel memoirs generate relies on mapping the mindset of the travelling writer, my article targets the awareness about this “call” of the exotic sedimented in Sven Hedin’s famous travel memoir My Life as an Explorer. It is a book intended to play the part of the bridge between 19th and 20 century travel literature in a larger project whose focus lies on questions related to self-awareness and motivation with 20th century Scandinavian writers of travel literature, in an attempt to identify the presence of a “self-displacement” dimension in their approach to travelling and to using the encounter of alterity for constructing cultural landscape in their memoirs.

Encountering the 'ghetto'

In the history of Western perceptions of Jews and the ‘Jewish problem’, the First World War marks a period of change which was, among other things, influenced by the course of the war on the Eastern Front. The German occupation of large parts of Russian Poland in 1915 brought the difficult conditions of Eastern European Jewry closer to public attention in the West, not only in Central Europe, but also in neutral states. For the Scandinavian writers who travelled to occupied Poland in 1916 and 1917, the direct encounter with East European Jewry was a new and often disturbing experience. Their travelogues represent an illuminating and, so far, unused source for Scandinavian perceptions of Jews in Eastern Europe, focusing on the ‘ghetto’ as the physical embodiment of Eastern Jewish life. Analysing these accounts, the present article discusses the different depictions of Warsaw’s Jews thematically and identifies three interwoven perspectives of the ‘ghetto’: as a site of extreme poverty; as a foreign (‘oriental’) element in Europe; and as an archetype of Jewish life in general.

Новый тип героя в скандинавском романе начала ХХ в. (на материале творчества К. Гамсуна и А. Стриндберга)

The purpose of the study is to identify a new type of a hero in novels by two Scandinavian writers associated with the modernist movement: “Hunger” by K. Hamsun and “Days of Loneliness” by A. Strindberg. The article clarifies correlation between a protagonist’s image and the narrative technique “stream of consciousness”. The research is novel in that it analyses in great detail the nature of the main characters created by the two Scandinavian authors, whose creative work is transition to modernism. As a result, basing on the comparative-typological, hermeneutical method, the researcher has identified a new type of a hero of the Scandinavian modernist novel (an intellectual who is aware of their detachment from the world), as well as techniques of a new type of narrative (“stream of consciousness”).

Globalization and Italian Children's Publishing

Globalization and Italian Children's Publishing Manuela Salvi (bio) In 2012, only one fourth of the books produced by Mondadori, the largest Italian publishing house, were written by Italian authors. And of all the books in translation, only 3% were from non-English-speaking countries. This meant that, in a typical Italian bookshop, it was easier to find a book translated from English than to find a book by an Italian author. As Amselle highlights, through globalization, American culture has become a sort of agent of universalization, in which our specificities can be reformulated but not necessarily lost. However, I have noticed over the years that the best compliment an Italian children's author can receive today is something like: "Oh, your book is so good, it doesn't even sound as if it's written by an Italian author; it could be English or American!" The writers' reaction to this kind of comment is often hopefulness, because they are generally aware of inhabiting a world within a world, and that consequently their culture depends on a "core" that often ignores its "peripheries." When analyzing the historical development of Italian culture in the last century, it is not hard to find several intersections with American culture. A few examples are the CPI (the Committee of Public Information), which in 1918 flooded Italy with millions of dispatches, postcards, and flags in order to promote the political "friendship" between the two countries; the Marshall Plan; Hollywood; and twenty years of Berlusconi's government, during which Italian television was radically transformed in accord with the American model. Generations of children grew up with American words and values, which were seen as necessary to having a life full of adventures, power, and wealth; they got used to assimilating narratives in which the hero was hardly ever Italian. Even the Italian language has changed under the influence of American globalized culture. In Italy, words from English are slowly being assimilated into everyday speech and then officially become part of the Italian vocabulary. In the last edition of Tullio De Mauro's Italian dictionary, 5,370 out of 316,800 words are English. It doesn't [End Page 53] seem like an impressive number, since it represents only 1.7% of the Italian language, but it is important to note that all these English terms—from computer to stalker, target, meeting, T-shirt, and so on—are among the most commonly used words in everyday life. Furthermore, the official dictionary does not include words commonly used in spoken language and slang that are a fusion between the original English word and an Italian suffix (for example: chat combined with the Italian verb suffix –are makes chattare, meaning to chat online). Many published books by Italian authors now look like American or British editions, since their covers display the title in English. Some examples are The Frozen Boy by Guido Sgardoli, the series Candy Circle by Domenico Baccalario, and Tales from the Darkroom by Alessandro Gatti and Manuela Salvi. This trend seems to demonstrate that some Italian authors are part of that cultural reception highlighted by Rydell and Kroes, in which people not only consume what they like, but also elaborate and reuse this material to reshape narratives that are perceived to be universal. Ultimately, a peripheral group that has been culturally invaded within a globalized system can only express itself through the categories of the group that represents the core. On the other hand, American culture has always been the symbol of modernity, hope, enterprise, and possibility. Such values as going beyond people's differences and dismissing elitism in order to affirm an egalitarian society, in which each individual can find his or her place, are widely accepted as being universal. Moreover, in the global market, being translated and published in other countries has become a sign of success, especially being translated and published in English-speaking countries. As Emily Apter notes, everyone wants a special place in the publishing market. For example, postcolonial authors, minority authors, and Scandinavian writers have gained international visibility. So, it is only natural for several Italian authors to try to write for a global audience, building translatability into their texts...

Book Review: Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime Fiction: Works and Authors of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden Since 1967

Thanks to the Kurt Wallander novels of Henning Mankell, the Lisbeth Salander novels of Stieg Larsson, and their motion picture and television adaptations, crime fiction by Finnish and Scandinavian writers has soared in popularity with American readers over the past few years. In her Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime Fiction, Mitzi M. Brunsdale sets out to survey the growing field while offering a historical analysis of its development and importance. She argues that the region’s crime fiction “largely deals with the serious societal problems resulting from originally well-intentioned Nordic welfare state policies now proving problematic,” and believes that it “has enormous relevance to today’s dangerous world” (1).

From Periphery to Center: (Post-Feminist) Female Detectives in Contemporary Scandinavian Crime Fiction

INTRODUCTION I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs. Regan. was worth a stare. was trouble. was stretched out on a modernistic chaise-longue with her slippers off, so I stared at her legs the sheerest silk stockings. They seemed to be arranged to stare at. They were visible to the knee and one of them well beyond. The knees were dimpled, not bony and sharp. The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim and with enough melodic line for a tone poem.... Her hair was black and wiry and parted the middle and she had the hot black eyes of the portrait the hall. had a good mouth and a good chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full. --Chandler (1939, 17) This is the way Raymond Chandler's star detective, Philip Marlowe, introduces the reader--and his own eyes--to Mrs. Regan, one of the females circling around his investigation The Big Sleep from 1939. Like the other women, she is not making it any easier for him to find the culprit the rather confusing environment of corruption, mob-methods, gambling, drinking, easy women, and easy money. And yet she has come to represent the epitome of the female role the hard-boiled crime story for which Chandler set the standard. The book was turned into a movie 1945-1946 (directed by Howard Hawks) and, as Kevin Hagopian comments on the Images website: Shot during wartime, the film turns the draft-induced 'man shortage' into a satyr's fantasy; sloe-eyed heiresses, hash-slingers with come-hither looks, and horny lady cab drivers brazenly proposition Marlowe, who regrettably stiff-arms most of them the name of business (Hagopian 2004). Two clear exceptions seen the movie to the hands-off, all-work-and-no-play attitude of Philip Marlowe from the book are the romantic relationship with Vivian Regan and the afternoon tryst with a bookstore clerk. Primarily, Lauren Bacall, the role of Mrs. Regan, illustrates the quintessence of the female temptress turned victim of seduction. At the time, critic James Agee wrote the following a review Time: She has a javelin-like vitality, a born dancer's eloquence movement, a fierce female shrewdness, and a special sweet-sourness. With these faculties, plus a stone-crushing self-confidence and a trombone voice, she manages to get across the toughest girl a piously regenerate Hollywood has dreamed of a long, long while (quoted Thompson and Bordwell 2014). Lauren Bacall may have been tough, but her physicality as a sex kitten with sharp and potentially dangerous claws is the focal point her relationship with Marlowe. On a website created by Jorgen Grandt, it is possible to see the covers of the Danish translations of Raymond Chandler's novels. Six of the eight cover pages depict women whose primary attributes are exotic sensuality and seductive glances (Grandt 2001). As established by Bo Tao Michaelis, the influence of Chandler reaches far and wide (Michaelis 2013), and the portraits chosen to represent his female characters confirm the above-quoted rather juicy and sensuous perception of women crime stories that, obviously, were very popular Scandinavia. However, simultaneously with Chandler, across the Atlantic, Scandinavian writers, such as Else Faber, Karen Blixen, and Kjerstin Goransson-Ljungman, created female detectives of a very different substance, far from the legendary portrayal quoted above (Hejlsted 2008, 235). Their primary weapons were not their bodies but their brains. This also holds true for the contemporary female detectives discussed this article, yet their female bodies still generate gender-defined positions both public and private spheres. These, turn, create inequalities that then constitute the root problems of these women as representations of the attempt to undo gender. In a post- or neo-feminist framework, the detectives arguably use their feminine bodies in a way that involves both active and passive forms of recognition and motivation (Genz 2006, 339). …

Johannes V. Jensen Made in Germany

It is a fact that many Scandinavian writers from around 1900 until the 1920s – names such as Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg at the top of the list come to mind – revelled in popularity in the German-speaking countries and here were able to ‘survive’ as canonised authors. The public interest in literature from Scandinavia was enormous, let alone the fact that being a Scandinavian writer was often enough to provoke the interest of the readers. The aim of this article is to show the strategies in marketing Johannes V. Jensen in Germany and the resulting dynamics of these strategies here compared with Denmark, where special branding did not take place and where the author’s profile was profoundly different from the one in Germany. This article also includes a look at the reception of Jensen in Germany, which, however, is not limited to ‘common’ readers, but includes a wide range of recognised German-speaking authors who have acknowledged Jensen’s literary merits.

Marketing Ibsen: A Study of the First Italian Reception, 1883–1891

Ibsen is one of the first Scandinavian writers who made a full profession out of his writing, as well as managing to secure a great degree of autonomy (Fulsas, 2005, pp. 25–29; 2009, pp. 25–27). Ho...

Chinese Perceptions of the Scandinavian Social Policy Model

This paper highlights the stereotypical images characteristic of Chinese social research on the Scandinavian model. How do Chinese commentators explain the development of the Scandinavian social policy model and how do they assess it? Is it deemed morally sound and sustainable? Reasons for the contrasts of interpretation between Chinese and Scandinavian authors are categorized along two dimensions. There are “missing elements”, typically the notions of social solidarity and social citizenship, which tend to be ignored by Chinese writers though underscored by Scandinavian writers. There are also “added elements”, generated from Chinese contexts, which affect Chinese interpretations of the Scandinavian model. The study argues that since each welfare regime type is possessed of its own normative codes, supported by its own particular social order, it is necessary to decode such elements—especially cultural notions of welfare—to appreciate the points of view being expressed.

Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages ed. by James Muldoon

278BOOK REVIEWS Queen Esther) who were well known and celebrated by medieval hagiographers (see for example, The Martyrdom, of Pionius, Polycarp, Marian and fames, and The Life ofSt. Eustachius etc.). It would have helped this reader, if, in Dr. Coon's discussions of hagiographie reconstructions of biblical texts—for example, in the correspondences with King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in the Life ofPelagia the Harlot—she explained in more detail precisely what she means by "reconstruction." Is a reconstructed passage obvious by virtue of a verbal parallel, direct quotation, echo, allusion, a non-verbal typology, etc.? Further, while these reconstructions might have been apparent to a learned contemporary, would they have been recognized by less learned contemporary listeners, and if so how did the texts' authors manage that? I would recommend this volume to those interested in the study of female sacred biography. It is a solid study of broad and heterogeneous textual traditions; it proposes interesting readings of female vitae, and illustrates the richness of these documents. Thomas J. Heffernan University ofTennessee, Knoxville Medieval Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages. Edited by James MuIdoon . (Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 1997. Pp. vü, 208. $49.95.) The subject of this important anthology is conversion to Latin Christianity from alien cults, mainly between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries. The one exception to the rule is an essay by Father Leonard R Hindsley, O.P, about conversio monástica, the spiritual progress of the Dominican nun,Margaret Ebner, through obedience to the discipline of her order. The nine collaborators have provided independent variations on the theme of conversion, each with its ownfoci of place and time. Two Qohn Howe, on the creation of a sacred topography of shrines, churches, and other sacredly taboo spaces as Europe assimilated Christianity; and Jonathan Elukin, on the suspicion of hidden or impending apostasy which haunted Jewish converts) span the entire period and gather materials from all over the map. The rest are studies on discreet events or texts, predominantly from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The extraordinary wealth of learning mustered into the volume unfolds to display articles on papal evangelistic missions to the Far East, the criss-crossing of religious borders in the Crusader states of the Levant,dilatory flirtations with which pagan Lithuania long tantalized the Teutonic Knights,literary recreations by Scandinavian writers of conversions which occurred centuries earlier, and the agonized, spiritual eroticism of a bed-ridden nun in an obscure corner of Germany. BOOK REVIEWS279 The three articles—all by women—grouped together under the heading, "Women in Conversion History," concern different subjects (from Merovingian Gaul to England and France in the waning Middle Ages). They have in common the proposition, imported from literary criticism, that, until recent times, articulating historical narrative was a privilege of dominant male elites. This valuable accent on historical narrative as an assertion of power allows a reflection on the admittedly limited homogeneity of Fragestellungen in the contributions to this volume. The facts that three out of the four female collaborators took up the theme that narrative expressed the class values of die narrator (including gendered ones),and that none of the seven male contributors adopted this perspective, open the way to other observations: that (with one exception) all the contributors received tiieir professional training in the United States, that (with one exception) all of tiiose professionally trained in the United States were educated in die northeastern corridor (where most still live), and uiat (with two exceptions) all have appointments in university posts. Unfortunately, I am unable to establish a generational profile of the collaborators. However, the limited homogeneity of Fragestellungen in the splendidly varied articles displays one common preoccupation of academic historians in North America during recent years, of which the importation from literary criticism,particularly from feminist criticism,is one sign. At least before the Reformation, Christian tiieologians agreed that conversion was a miracle wrapped up in the mystery of baptism. The seven historians and two linguists who collaborated to make this anthology run to political experience , rather than to miracle or mystery. Politics is the universal common denominator : in the rearrangement of habitat, with shrines, churches, and other sacred...

Problems of schizo-affective disorders.

The inclusion of schizo-affective type under schizophrenia in ICD-9 (9th revision of the international classification of diseases) and under psychotic disorders not elsewhere classified in DSM-3 (3rd edition of diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders), the absence of this term in the French classification, and its parallelism among Scandinavian writers with cycloid psychosis - all the above data reflect the present perplexity of schizo-affective disorders. Recent studies showed the presence of depressive symptoms in a large number of acute and chronic schizophrenias as an integral part of the schizophrenic process. The difficulty of differential diagnosis between mania and schizophrenia has added to our present dilemma. A review and discussion of the present status of the term 'schizo-affective disorders' are presented. A plea is made to abandon the dichotomy of functional psychosis with delineating 'psychosis of unknown etiology' into three or four categories (as this is no more functional).

African–Scandinavian Writers' Conference

This, the broadest and most thoroughgoing confrontation to date of African and Scandinavian writers, took place at the inter-Scandinavian cultural centre near Stockholm. More than 20 African writers, including representatives from North Africa, Ethiopia, ‘Black Africa’, and South Africa (refugees) took part in the conference, among them some outstanding personalities: Albert Memmi, Wole Soyinka, Tchicaya U'Thamsi, George AwoonorWilliams, James Ngugi, and Ezekiel Mphahlele, to mention only a few. A similar number of writers from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway took part; tours and social arrangements made it possible for the African writers to meet a further selection of Scandinavian writers and artists and to become acquainted with local scenery and institutions. The initiative for the conference was taken by the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, the Swedish Institute for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and the Swedish Council for Overseas Information.

Changes of the sella turcica in chromophobic adenomas and eosinophilic adenomas.

The increase in therapeutic modalities for the various lesions in the intrasellar and suprasellar areas necessitates an accurate differential diagnosis. This should be advanced as far as possible by the plain skull film examination. Our study is directed toward the evaluation of the osseous changes in and about the sella turcica in chromophobic adenomas and eosinophilic adenomas. Our primary aim is to compare the classical description of the roentgen changes in each of these pituitary tumors in surgically and pathologically verified material. Previous Studies Since Oppenheim (22) in 1899 first reported roentgenographically demonstrable changes in a pituitary tumor, the literature dealing with the radiologic diagnosis of these adenomas has become extensive. There seems to be agreement that the osseous changes caused by intrasellar tumors in most instances can be distinguished from those of suprasellar lesions (2–4, 6, 8, 11, 14–19, 29, 30). With respect to the differentiation between the various types of pituitary tumors, however, different opinions are held. In general, American and British authors (12, 24, 29) do not emphasize this aspect, which has been dealt with by Austrian, German, French, and Scandinavian writers (3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 15, 19, 23, 26, 30). Many features considered characteristic of each type of adenoma were described previously by the Vienna school, and gradually a classical description has evolved which can be summarized as follows. The sella of the eosinophilic adenoma is typically balloon-shaped, indicating that the sellar entrance is either minimally widened or not at all. The angle between the planum sphenoidale and the anterior wall of the sella is acute, and the dorsum sellae is not tilted backward. In addition, the dorsum sellae is not significantly eroded. These findings are in contrast to the roentgen changes in the chromophobic adenomas, in which a cup-shaped or “open” sella is considered typical. Also, the angle between the planum and the anterior sellar wall is obtuse, and the sellar entrance is widened, primarily because of the backward tilt of the dorsum. The dorsum sellae is described as eroded, and the asymmetrical enlargement of the sella as usually present in the chromophobic adenomas. Also, it is thought that in the chromophobic adenoma the sella is usually much larger than in the eosinophilic. In later years, Lindgren (14, 15) and Mayer (19), among others, maintained that this description generally holds true, but others (17, 31) do not entirely concur. On the basis of material consisting of 4 eosinophilic and 34 chromophobic adenomas, Mahmoud (17) concluded that his findings did “not confirm the statement of Lindgren of a greater incidence of the balloon sella in esoinophilic rather than chromophobic adenomas.” In fact, many opinions seem to be based on limited material, especially with respect to eosinophilic adenomas.