Frankfurter Book Fair 2019 The Dream in Us: Norway (Satis Shroff)

THE DREAM IN US: NORWAY  (Satis Shroff)

‘The Dream in Us‘ was the motto chosen by Norway, the Guest of Honour, at the Frankfurter Book Fair 2019. The motto comes from a poem penned by the Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge (1908-1994) which bears the title ‘That is the Dream.’

DET ER DEN DRAUMEN

Det er den draumen me ber pa

at noko verdunderleg skal skje,

at det ma skje –

at tidi skal opna seg

at hjarte skal opna seg

at dorer skal opna seg

at berget skal opna seg

at kjeldor skal springa –

at draumen skal opna seg,

at me ei morgonstund skal glida inn

pa ein vag me ikkje har visst um

* * *

THAT IS THE DREAM

that is the Dream

that is the dream we carry,

that something wonderful occurs,

has to happen –

that the time opens

that the heart opens

that the door opens

that the mountain opens

that sources spring open

that we float in a morning hour

in a bay that we didn’t know.

Übersetzung/translation: Satis Shroff, Germany

Norway brought exhibitions, readings, theatre, film and music to Frankfurt’s cultural institutions. All these happenings were scattered throughout the sprawling city in different institutes: Schirn Kunsthalle, the German architecture museum, the Film Museum, the Photography Forum, Artists’ House Mousonturm, Schauspielhaus Frankfurt, the Central Library and the House on the Dome.

The Norwegian authors were in many locations throughout the city. The Museum of Applied was turned into a ‘House of Norway.’ Besides exhibits, there were also Norwegian culinary delicacies and the queues were understandably long everywhere.

You were confronted with Cosplay participants everywhere, dressed in fantasy costumes in the halls 3.0 and 4.0 where every comic, manga anime and cosplay fan could find the dealer stands.

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 POLIT-LYRIK FROM NORWAY (Satis Shroff)

‘I’m an old poet, 75, and have become an uncompromising poet, ‘ says Knut Odegard.

‘Even though I talk about the Nowegian geography, the west-Norwegian landscape, the villages, fjords, mountains and am  so near these -- the lives of the small farmers.

I get on well with the youngest ones and there’s no sharp generation gap. Knut Odegard writes reviews I the Christian newspaper ‘Vartland’ also lyrics and sees some characters in it. He finds many poems about the lonely poets. He hopes that politics is also in poetry. He has devoted a poem to the Minister of Justice Sylvi Listhaug and it deals with a refugee family on the way to Europe.

Another writer Cecilie Loveid, born in 1951, wrote pieces for theatre, then works of prosa, children’s books and poetry collections. In the ‘New Norwegian   Poetry’ she is represented with other authors. Siri Hustvedt has translated the Baader-Meinhof Suite, which is from Cecilie Loveids’s last book ‘Vandreutstillinger ‘ (Wandering Exhibitions, 2017) for which she received the Norwegian Brage Prize. She said about lyric that one needs a special approach. It’s not enough to be receptive. One must have a sensor for the effect of the poem on the reader---a secret sense. The society has always needed poets. Lyric exists in different niveaus, and there are readers for each of these niveaus.

Today the publishers seek themes, fields that haven’t been dealt with in poesie, such as motherhood and so. Cecilie Loveid has written a famous poem about the mass-murderer Anders Behring Breeivnik.

Neils-Olivind Haageusen, born 1971, has written a great deal of poetry collections, some novels and a lot of political poems, published on Facebook. Haageusen is a publisher in Flamme Forlag, a leading place for young poetry in Norwa, with poets like Linda Klakken and Atle Haland. There were poems about questions of las and class-consciousness and a few Nature poems. Erlend Skjetne is one suh poet.

Olav H. Hauge has shown us that Nature can work politically. Olav H. Hauge is also the one who wrote ‘Den draumen vi ber pa.’ (The Dream in Us). 

* * * 

SASA STANISIC: GERMAN BOOK PRIZE 2019 (Satis Shroff)  

There is no doubt that Sasa Stanisic has a vast, vivid imagination and he releases them from the fetters of chronology, realism and ambiguity. He uses humour as he relates the narratives of historical misrepresentation with a mingling of his own stories. Stanisic was awarded the German Book Prize 2019 on the 14^th of October 2019 with 25,000 euros. His latest book bears the title ‘Herkunft’ (Origins) and is about a present, that constantly re-tells itself anew, whereby his ‘Self-portrait with Ancestors’ metamorphoses into a novel about a Europe of life journeys.

The other runners-up were: Raphaela Edelbauer (Das flüssige Land), Miku Sophie Kühmel (Kintsugi), Tonio Schachinger (Nich wie ihr), Norbert Scheuer (Winterbienen)  and Jackie Thomae (Bruder) –who all received 2,500 euros.

In his thank you speech Stanisic, as was expected, criticized the Nobel Prize recipient Peter Handke (Austria) who lied about the facts of the Bosnian-Herzegovina War. Stanisic thanked the jury and his publishers, and especially his ‘Lektorin’ Katja Saemann.

‘Origins’ begins with his grandpa and grandma dancing  and he accidently steps on her toe so badly that their grandson was almost not born. That same summer the boy almost drowned..That summer Angela Merkel left the border open (with her renowned ‘Wir schaffen das’ proclamation. The young protagonist fled across many borders to Germany. His encounters with a raftsman, a brakeman, and a Bosnian cop who liked to be bribed. There was an elementary teacher for three pupils. Nationalism reared its head. A Yugovlavian. A Tito. An Eichendorf. A Sasa Stanisic.

The 41 year old author Sasa Stanisic tells in his novel about Grandma who gradually loses her memory, about the flight of the family during the Bosnian War to Germany. He deals with the question of ‘Identity.’ The authors shows great fantasy and refuses the chronology, the realism and the formal facts. In the end,  Stanisic invites the reader to a game: he or she should decide how the story is propelled forward.

It might be mentioned that the German novel of the year is selected through a multi-staged process. The jury compiles a long list of 20 titles, from which the jurors then select six titles for the short list. For more info please visit www.germanbookprize.de.

Olga Tokarczuk (2018) and Peter Handke (2019) drew a lot of jubilation for their Nobel Prizes in Literature in their home countries Poland and Austria (as well as in Germany). In Breslau, the people who read Tokarczuk’s books were given free bus-and-train rides. Peter Handke, however, received a divided echo. He received bitter critic because of his pro-Sebian stance during the Yugoslavian War from countries like Albania, Bosnia and Kosovo who’d suffered immensely at the hands of the Serbs. Sefik Dzaferovic, member of the Bosnian state presidium, called the decision from Oslo ‘scandalous and shameful.’

The German writer Sasa Stanisic, born in Bosnia, who received the German Book Prize 2019, twittered: ‘A courageous decision to give ‘a provocative, angry, nature lover, and one who makes genocide harmless---the Nobel Prize. Peter Handke is known to be a fan of Slobodan Milosevic. Asked about the Polish writer who won the Nobel Prize for 2018, Handke said to the Austrian Kronen Zeitung: ‘ Unfortunately, I do not know the works of Tokarczuk at all. It’s almost a shame that I read so little what’s written these days.’

Nevertheless, Handke is ever present in the Feuilletons and literary establishment of his generation. A literary title published by Herder Verlag (Freiburg) runs thus: ‘Verwandeln allein durch Erzählen.’ Transformation through Tales. It’s about Peter Handke in the field of tension between Theology and Literature. 

Saša Stanišić wurde 1978 in Višegrad (Jugoslawien) geboren und lebt seit 1992 in Deutschland. Sein Debütroman »Wie der Soldat das Grammofon repariert« wurde in 31 Sprachen übersetzt. Mit »Vor dem Fest« gelang Stanišić erneut ein großer Wurf; der Roman war ein SPIEGEL-Bestseller und ist mit dem renommierten Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse ausgezeichnet worden. Für den Erzählungsband »Fallensteller« erhielt er den Rheingau Literatur Preis sowie den Schubart-Literaturpreis. Saša Stanišić lebt und arbeitet in Hamburg.

"Ein hochtalentierter, leidenschaftlicher Erzähler."--Jörg Magenau, taz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJegzFqo76A