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Aarhus literature festival wants internationals to be part of its story

Literary events in Denmark shouldn’t be limited to those who can read Danish, say organisers of an upcoming large-scale international literature festival in Aarhus.

Published: 31 May 2018 17:21 CEST
Aarhus literature festival wants internationals to be part of its story
2009 Nobel Laureate Herta Müller is to headline a major new international literature event in Aarhus. Photo: Steffen Roth/LiteratureXchange

Aarhus will be bursting with both Danish and international literature during LiteratureXchange, which runs from June 14th-24th at various cultural locations in the city, including ARoS art museum, Godsbanen and the ultramodern Dokk1 library in the redeveloping harbour area.

The festival, arranged by Aarhus Municipality Libraries, Literature Centre Aarhus and adult education institute Folkeuniversitet Aarhus, is the culmination of several years’ work by organisers to bring an international literature event to Denmark’s second city.

German-Romanian novelist Herta Müller, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, is the headline name on a programme including 150 different events over eleven days.

“Aarhus has never had a big international festival and that is a mistake in a city with such a rich literary environment. So that’s something we’re glad to be able to correct,” Jette Sunesen, head of Literature Centre Aarhus, said via a press release.

“There will be something for everyone, whether you are interested in magical realism, Nordic crime, the future of Europe, World War II, trekking in the wild, the literary potential of the city, psychology or epic poetry,” the organisers write in a joint press release to promote the event.

With dozens of readings and discussion with authors in a wide range of languages, the festival is making a big deal of its international programme, with authors from Europe as well as the Middle East, Asia, Africa, North and South America all appearing.

READ ALSO: Nobel Foundation says literature prize may be delayed again

“Out of more than 150 events, 29 are in English. So around about a fifth. Moreover, we have two events in German and two in Russian,” Noa Kjærsgaard Hansen, Folkeuniversitet’s programme manager for the event, told The Local.

During her appearance, Müller will read in German, with running translation to Danish.

One of the aims of the festival is to bring the city together through the international context, Kjærsgaard Hansen said.

“LiteratureXchange has a worldwide perspective that we aim to achieve by inviting a range of international authors and focusing on contemporary, global themes. At the same time, it is very much a local festival which makes use of and involves a lot of different organisations and venues in Aarhus,” he said.

Literature has an important role to play – in Aarhus and elsewhere – in connecting people from different backgrounds and cultures, according to Kjærsgaard Hansen.

“Literature can present a perspective on the world that we don’t get from the news. With the international aspect, we make sure that the horizon is broader than just Aarhus. And hopefully it brings us closer to each other – no matter how cliché that sounds,” the event organiser said.

The outward-looking attitude which was embodied by Aarhus’ run as European Capital of Culture in 2017, and is now a key element of the new festival, will help “drag Aarhus’ image away from the provincial landmark that has characterised it for so many years,” according to Kjærsgaard Hansen, who added:

“Well, we don’t want to lose all of that provinciality. But this constant generation of new ideas and forms – like the festival – helps the city to be in balance.”

In addition to mother-tongue events in English and other languages taking place this year, a limited number of spots on the programme feature Danish literature translated into English.

“That's something we’d like to have more focus on next year – translation of Danish literature,” Kjærsgaard Hansen said.

A programme listing for LiteratureXchange's events in English can be found here.

READ ALSO: Murakami wins Danish literature prize

HISTORY

‘Lost’ manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

A book by one of France's most celebrated and controversial literary figures arrives in bookstores this week, 78 years after the manuscript disappeared

Published: 4 May 2022 11:42 CEST
'Lost' manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

It is a rare thing when the story of a book’s publication is even more mysterious than the plot of the novel itself.

But that might be said of Guerre (War) by one of France’s most celebrated and controversial literary figures, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, which arrives in bookstores on Thursday, some 78 years after its manuscript disappeared.

Celine’s reputation has somehow survived the fact that he was one of France’s most eager collaborators with the Nazis.

Already a superstar thanks to his debut novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Celine became one of the most ardent anti-Semitic propagandists even before France’s occupation.

In June 1944, with the Allies advancing on Paris, the writer abandoned a pile of his manuscripts in his Montmartre apartment.

Celine feared rough treatment from authorities in liberated France, having spent the war carousing with the Gestapo, and giving up Jews and foreigners to the Nazi regime and publishing racist pamphlets about Jewish world conspiracies.

For decades, no one knew what happened to his papers, and he accused resistance fighters of burning them. But at some point in the 2000s, they ended up with retired journalist Jean-Pierre Thibaudat, who passed them – completely out of the blue – to Celine’s heirs last summer.

‘A miracle’
Despite the author’s history, reviews of the 150-page novel, published by Gallimard, have been unanimous in their praise.

“The end of a mystery, the discovery of a great text,” writes Le Point; a “miracle,” says Le Monde; “breathtaking,” gushes Journal du Dimanche.

Gallimard has yet to say whether the novel will be translated.

Like much of Celine’s work, Guerre is deeply autobiographical, recounting his experiences during World War I.

It opens with 20-year-old Brigadier Ferdinand finding himself miraculously alive after waking up on a Belgian battlefield, follows his treatment and hasty departure for England – all based on Celine’s real experiences.

His time across the Channel is the subject of another newly discovered novel, Londres (London), to be published this autumn.

If French reviewers seem reluctant to focus on Celine’s rampant World War II anti-Semitism, it is partly because his early writings (Guerre is thought to date from 1934) show little sign of it.

Journey to the End of the Night was a hit among progressives for its anti-war message, as well as a raw, slang-filled style that stuck two fingers up at bourgeois sensibilities.

Celine’s attitude to the Jews only revealed itself in 1937 with the publication of a pamphlet, Trifles for a Massacre, which set him on a new path of racial hatred and conspiracy-mongering.

He never back-tracked. After the war, he launched a campaign of Holocaust-denial and sought to muddy the waters around his own war-time exploits – allowing him to worm his way back into France without repercussions.

‘Divine surprise’
Many in the French literary scene seem keen to separate early and late Celine.

“These manuscripts come at the right time – they are a divine surprise – for Celine to become a writer again: the one who matters, from 1932 to 1936,” literary historian Philippe Roussin told AFP.

Other critics say the early Celine was just hiding his true feelings.

They highlight a quote that may explain the gap between his progressive novels and reactionary feelings: “Knowing what the reader wants, following fashions like a shopgirl, is the job of any writer who is very financially constrained,” Celine wrote to a friend.

Despite his descent into Nazism, he was one of the great chroniclers of the trauma of World War I and the malaise of the inter-war years.

An exhibition about the discovery of the manuscripts opens on Thursday at the Gallimard Gallery and includes the original, hand-written sheets of Guerre.

They end with a line that is typical of Celine: “I caught the war in my head. It is locked in my head.”

In the final years before his death in 1961, Celine endlessly bemoaned the loss of his manuscripts.

The exhibition has a quote from him on the wall: “They burned them, almost three manuscripts, the pest-purging vigilantes!”

This was one occasion – not the only one – where he was proved wrong.

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