news - Baltic Sea Library - Results from #12

: Published: 01 April 2020

New texts included in the Baltic Sea Library after 10 years:

We did not have any celebration – just passed our 10-years anniversary without saying...

Now, in times of corona crisis, no visits to the shores of the German Baltic Sea coastline are possible anymore. This is an exceptional time in many ways and we are trying to keep alive and going and to stay healthy!

Maybe this is also a time for expanded usage of digital platforms, so do use us and have a look what news our team has made available for you in this low budget project.

During last year we have had to make big efforts to update our homepage which has not proven to be an easy task. We now want to welcome Joest Feenders as our new webmaster who has helped us to improve the Baltic Sea Library! And want to thank Berislav Zuparic for the years he has striven together with us.

By the way, we want to improve our offerings of audio takes! We are now applying for support in order to install readings of Tomas Tranströmer's Baltics (Östersjöar) in all our languages, hoping for the best to be able to record all the translators' voices during this year.

And already now we have – alongside with reading by Kerry Shawn Keys (of Sigitas Geda' poem), Vladas Braziunas, Klaus Rifbjerg, thanks to lyrikline.org - included Erika Drungytė's, our Lithuanian editor's rendering of Kristijonas Donelaitis' Metai (The Seasons):

https://www.balticsealibrary.info/authors/lithuanian/items.html?cid=81:lithuanian&id=150:metai

After the succesful update of our homepage we can now offer new texts or excerpts from books for your reading, as usual free of charge:

Jens Baggesen, Labyrinten, eller Reise gjennem Tydskland, Schweitz og Frankerig (danish / german)

Alexander Bestuzhev, Poedzka na Revel (russian / german)

Hans Henny Jahnn, Kleine Reise durch Kopenhagen (german / danish)

Edith Södergran, Förhoppning / Hoffnung (swedish / german)

Ulla-Lena Lundberg, Kökar (swedish / german)

Daniel Odija, Kronika umarłych / Die Totenchronik (polish / german)

Anders Fjellner, Päiven Pārne᾿ / Der Sonnensohn (sami / german)

Anta Pirak, Jåhttee saamee viessoom / En nomad och hans liv (lule saami, german, swedish)

Anta Pirak, Impaa ja su par'neeh / Impa och hans söner, eller hur man tvingade lapparna att forsla silvermalm (lule saami / german / swedish)

Janis Poruks, Kauja pie Knipskas / Die Schlacht an der Knipska (latvian / german)

Hella Wuolijoki, Sõja laul / Estonian War Song (estonian / german)

and the poems and one story by Johannes Bobrowski new translated by Aare Pilv to Estonian:
https://www.balticsealibrary.info/authors/estonian/item/692-pilv-aare.html
with the most welcome support from the International Johannes-Bobrowski-Society! (http://www.johannes-bobrowski-gesellschaft.de)

Among the essays you can find, on the history of Danish-Swedish wars:

Sven Ekdahl: Das Stockholmer Blutbad 1520

on Herder's conception of translation:

Andreas F. Kelletat: Von (kleinen) Nationen und dem Übersetzen als "nation building"

on a lost Finnish, now Russian island:

Barbara Lönnqvist: Lost in the Baltic - the island of Hogland

and about one of our main Sami authors an older text from 1938 by Torkel Tomasson in Swedish:

Anders Fjellner en efter samiska förhållanden märklig poetisk begåvning

Now that the Baltic Sea Library has been existing for more than 10 years, our biggest wish for the future is to build up a translations' fund in order to be able to finance translations of texts chosen for the Baltic Sea Library to al the other languages.
If you want to support us, please notify "Translations' fund" and address to our account:
Forum Mare Balticum e.V.
IBAN DE33 8306 5408 0004 0072 98

And also please send us your proposals on which texts that should be translated to which languages (now that we have 14 of them). You can of course tell us as well what you find is missing in order to shape a literary identity of the Baltic sea region!

Best regards
from chief editor
Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke

PS.
My own German edition of Die Ostsee has been sold in more than 5,000 copies last year, only some 250 copies still left: https://www.book2look.com/book/9783869711751

Photo: Bengt Ljunggren, Gotland, May 1960

: Published: 16 October 2018

Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke: Die Ostsee. A process

Dear colleagues and friends, ladies and gentlemen,

The Baltic Sea has been late in finding its place in European consciousness. Today we are approaching the Baltic Sea in a peaceful time, with largely open borders. The voices we have just heard come from another project, At the water’s edge, which collects and shares memories from the Baltic Sea region during the Cold War. The Cold War period saw a number of projects designed to promote knowledge of the Baltic Sea region’s different literatures.Trajekt, a series of books and annuals which existed from 1980-1986, was designed to contribute to Finnish, Finland Swedish, Lappish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian literature and cultivated a very specific North-Eastern European network ...

PLEASE READ THE FULL SPEECH HERE:

https://www.balticsealibrary.info/images/downloads/2018-Welcome-speech-die_Ostsee-A-process.pdf

: Published: 24 May 2018

Reading the Baltic / Die Ostsee lesen
13. - 16. September 2018
International Literature Conference and Reading Festival for the Baltic Region

On the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the Hanseatic city of Rostock and in a time of new tensions, the Baltic sea region is being reintroduced as a common cultural space: in readings, an international conference, an anthology and a multilingual online library, the open access Virtual Baltic Sea Library, will produce, present and discuss an intercultural Baltic literary canon.

: Published: 14 August 2017

Reading the Baltic - grant-aided by Kulturstiftung des Bundes - provides a novel perspective on a sea shared by many neighbours and on a common but longtime peripheral cultural area : pieces of literature from many places around the Baltic Sea will join up in a kaleidoscope of notions and experiences that will bring differences to the fore , but yet might produce new unity as well.

News April 2020

Read the welcome speech at the Reading the Baltic Conference & Festival 2018

Reading the Baltic Conference & Festival 2018

Reading the Baltic

New essays and texts

On 26th August the Baltic Sea Library will be presented in the translators' workshop at Poetenfest Erlangen