Putting focus on the Baltic Sea and its literature
From: http://newswave.eu
Not too far from my own home in Berlin lives Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke, writer, translator and head of the literature project “Baltic Sea Library”*. We meet on a grey, rainy afternoon in his appartment, have coffee at the kitchen window and talk about Liedtke’s relation to the Baltic Sea and the ambition that drives his engagement for literature from the region.
Tobias Koch: Dear Mr. Liedtke – before we start I would like to kindly ask you to present yourself in a few own words to our readers.
Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke: I was born in the Baltic Sea Region, in Schleswig-Holstein in a small village close to the Danish border. After studying German, Scandinavian, English and American philology in Kiel, Uppsala and Berlin I started working as a translator from Swedish to German in 1975. In the late 70′s I went to live in Turku for five years and became part of the editorial team of the literary annual “Trajekt” and was in charge of the Finland-Swedish part. My international Baltic Sea Region activities started in that period and I got the chance to start spearheading projects. In 1992 there was the legendary cruise of writers „Baltic Waves“. 400 writers from all over the region came together and travelled for two weeks all around the Baltic from Saint Petersburg to Sweden and back. I joined the cruise and one year later the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in Visby, Sweden was founded. From 1997 onwards I participated in the annual meetings of the Baltic Writers’ Council in Visby, which I became head of in 2005. As I met many writers from all over the region, we all realized that there was little that we knew about the literature of our respective origins. We began to focus on the Baltic Sea and from the end of the 90’s onwards the idea of a Baltic Sea Library began to take shape.
TK: Nevertheless it took about ten years to establish the library?
KJL: Yes, that was mostly a matter of finding the right people and editors. I wanted to have a great team of younger and older men and women. Also finding editors from all over the region was difficult.
TK: How would you describe the work of the Baltic Sea Library?
KJL: Right now we are 15 people with different professional backgrounds, that are the editorial team. Unfortunately we meet too rarely. Last time all the editors met in 2011 – so our work is not as continous as I imagine it to be. Initially we all chose three most important texts, that were to be published on the platform. There are many ideas, wishes and potential for what texts we want to publish. For instance among our 300 texts, there is no text written by Swedish August Strindberg. That is something we need to tackle.
TK: What are the difficulties in your work?
KJL: Publishing translations is always a question about purchasing the respective rights. Not all texts are easily available or affordable. We try our best getting the texts we want and still respect the criteria of selecting texts that deal with other people, countries of the region or with the Baltic itself. We also try to select texts that are forming an echo to other publications or events. When I worked as an editor at “Trajekt” I learned for instance, that there are poems from Estonia functioning as responses to Bertolt Brecht’s escape to Denmark, Sweden and Finland. They seem to be really interesting and we would like to include these in the library!
At this point we start losing ourselves in talking about Brecht and his refuge in Svendborg and Helsinki, Mati Unt’s processing of Brecht’s life in Finland in “Brecht ilmub öösel” and the misconceptions of Brecht’s life as a refugee. We somehow get on track again …
TK: It’s great to see that you can publish and work on new texts, when you meet on an irregular basis. How do you do that?
KJL: Well, some of us do have the chance to meet once in a while when attending translation workshops. I would like to see a Danish-German translation workshop in 2014, where we could also bring the editors together again. The last workshop we had was in 2012 in Rybachi in the Russian part of the Curonian Spit. The participants came from Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, Berlin, Riga, Moscow and we had a busy and promising time there. These kind of events connect writers, translators and help us advancing the Library.
TK: What about the impact and the range of the Baltic Sea Library? Do many people know about the project and also use it for their purposes?
KJL: Yes, they do! I recently received the statistics of 2013 and there were 30000 site requests from all over the world, with 15000 that stayed longer on the website. That actually means that there are four times as many visitors as in 2012. Of course that kind of a platform needs to grow, but we’re proud of what we have achieved so far. We do get feedback from all over the world now and are even offered texts for publication. That is great progress!
TK: Would you say that there are core-topics in literature from the Baltic Sea Region?
KJL: I think that literature always, probably even because of experiences of war and conflicts, has the task of identifying, processing and eventually overcoming loss. I’m thinking of expressive and forceful texts, like for instance Polish descriptions of post-war Gdansk after the Germans had left.
Also, the antagonism in the Baltic Sea Region is so striking. There are so many manifold texts. It starts with the raids of vikings in Curonia in Egils saga and then there are the biographies of people like Tomas Tranströmer, who wrote the poem “Östersjöar”. There he portrays his grandfather who worked as a pilot for ships in the Stockholm archipelago. This poem is central to the Baltic Sea Library’s work and has been translated to all other languages.
Beyond that the 8 percent of world wide trade that pass through the Baltic from China, Russia to Hamburg are also significant. There are only few texts about trade, surely you can name Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks” as one of them, that deals with the golden time of trade. And it is even related to another text. Norwegian writer Tor Eystein Øverås travelled around the Baltic Sea for eight months and wrote a book about it. There he poses the hypothesis that Thomas Mann was greatly impressed by another family story, namely Alexander Lange Kielland’s novel “Garman & Worse” (1880). Our library does not only publish texts, but also reveals connections and influences.
Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke jumps off his chair and disappears for a short time in his impressive, personal library, talking on and trying to find his personal copy of “Garman & Worse”, a novel which I had never heard of before. He comes back and hands the beautifully designed copy of the German issue to me. I enthusiastically browse through it and tell myself to get a copy.
TK: What are the future plans of the Baltic Sea Library?
KJL: I want to have a thousand texts on the platform. And I would like to see that we can select texts for translation and let people apply for translating them. That would enable us to support rare translations from for example Finnish to Latvian. The language diversity in the region is fascinating. It actually allows us to stress the similarites of the languages as well as their diversity and uniqueness. That is so exciting about translations – you translate, but put it maybe a little differently and that unleashes new impacts.
TK: How do you see the Baltic Sea in the public awareness?
KJL: I’d like to see the Baltic Sea gain more attention again. It’s more than the “leisure sea” which it unfortunately is to many in Germany. In GDR times the Baltic was the “sea of freedom” and people dreamed of the Swedish skerries. I wonder if utopian images are needed in order to get interested in your neighbors again?
TK: What other plans do you have in your drawer for the Baltic Sea?
KJL: As I’m convinced that the Baltic Sea has a lot more potential, I want to publish a Baltic Sea anthology in two years time. It shall also feature younger and more recent writers’ contributions. I would like to see it published in several languages, like Swedish and Russian in addition to German.
TK: Thank you, Mr. Liedtke and good luck with the library and your other projects!
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*The project Baltic Sea Library has since 2010 selected, translated and published literature from the Baltic Sea Region on its website www.balticsealibrary.com in 13 languages.
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P.S.: The Baltic Sea Library is currently looking for translators for the text ”Tellikaatne” by Jüri Tuulik to any Baltic Sea language. If you’re interested just contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
New texts during 2013:
New texts:
Anna Akhmatova, С новым годом! С новым горем! (1940): English
Anna Akhmatova, С новым годом! С новым горем! (1940): German
Anna Akhmatova, Приморский парк Победы: English
Anna Akhmatova, Приморский сонет: English
Anna Akhmatova, Запад клеветал и сам же верил...: English
H. C. Andersen, Den lille havfrue (1838): German
Ernst Moritz Arndt, Resa genom Sverige år 1804 (1807-8): Swedish
Steen Steensen Blicher, Brudstykker af en Landsbydegns Dagbog (1824): Danish
Johannes Bobrowski, Aleksis Kivi (1960): Russian
Johannes Bobrowski, Kaunas 1941 (1958): Russian
Johannes Bobrowski, Lettische Lieder (1960): Russian
Joseph Brodsky, Открытка из города К (1994): German, Swedish (abr.)
Kristijonas Donelaitis, Metai (1818): German
Knut Hamsun, I Æventyrland (1903): German (+ English to come)
Dag Solstad, Ellevte roman, bok atten (1992): Norwegian + Danish, English, Estonian, German, Lithuanian, Polish, Swedish
Dmitri Likhachev, Детство с Куоккалой и Достоевским (1996): Russian + English, German
Carl von Linné, Gotländska resa förrättad år 1741 (1745): Swedish, German
Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (1555): Swedish
Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (1901): Danish, Swedish (abr.)
Jānis Poruks, Kauja pie Knipskas (1897): Latvian
Hermann Sudermann, Die Reise nach Tilsit (1918): Swedish, Lithuanian (to come)
New essays:
Oleg Glushkin, МОЕ МОРЕ. Повествование в лирических миниатюрах
Eneken Laanes, Sofi Oksanen’s “Purge” in Estonia
Jakob Norberg, The truncated road movie. Thomas Brasch and the Berlin Wall
Lorenz von Numers, Concerning the Baltic
Translators’ Workshop in Rybachi
From 17 to 23 October 2012 five Russian-speaking, five German-speaking and one English translator, hailing variously from Augsburg, Bellinzona, Berlin, Fürstenfeld near Graz, Maxhütte, Moscow and Riga, met in Rybachi on the Curonian Spit in the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Federation, where they discussed the texts they had translated from Russian and German literature for the Baltic Sea Library. The best final versions are if possible to be published on the Baltic Sea Library website. The programme included trips to the famous dunes at Morskoye and to Kaliningrad itself.
Buchpräsentation: Theodor Lepner: Der Preusche Littau (1690)
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, Liebe Freunde,
wir möchten Sie sehr gerne zur Buchpräsentation Theodor Lepner: Der Preusche Littau (1690) am 21. November, um 19 Uhr in die Litauische Botschaft, Charitestr. 9, 10117 Berlin - Mitte, einladen.Am Abend wird unter Anwesenheit der Herausgeberin und Übersetzerin Frau Vilija Gerulaitienė die zweisprachige Edition nach der Handschrift der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin vorgestellt.
Es ist eine Veranstaltung der Botschaft der Republik Litauen in Kooperation mit dem Deutschen Kulturforum östliches Europa und dem Litauischen Institut für Geschichte.
Unterstützt durch litauischen Käse „Džiugas“ und „Vilniaus degtinė“.
Das Buch des evangelischen Pfarrers Theodor Lepner (um 1633–1691) aus Budwethen bei Ragnit (Ostpreußen) gehört zu den ersten Schriften über die Kultur und Sprache der Litauer überhaupt. Der strenge Geistliche beschrieb in recht kritischer Weise die Lebensweise der litauischen Bauern Ostpreußens, auch um der preußischen Obrigkeit die Notwendigkeit des moralischen Einflusses der Gesetzgebung und der evangelischen Kirche darzulegen.
Die gedruckte Danziger Ausgabe aus dem Jahre 1744 galt schon vor 150 Jahren als bibliophile Rarität. In den 1970er Jahren wurde in Berlin in der Staatsbibliothek eine Handschrift dieses Werkes aus dem Jahr 1690 entdeckt, die nun als Quelle für die erste litauisch-deutsche Buchausgabe diente, die 2011 in Vilnius erschien. Das Buch der Herausgeberin und Übersetzerin Vilija Gerulaitienė ist ein herausragendes Zeugnis der litauisch-deutschen Kulturbeziehungen in Ostpreußen.
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Mieli draugai, Gerbiamos ponios ir ponai,
Lapkričio 21 d., 19 val., LR ambasadoje, Charitestr. 9, 10117 Berlin- Mitte, vyks knygos
Teodoras Lepneris: Prūsų lietuvis (1690)
Theodor Lepner: Der Preusche Littau (1690)
pristatymas ir susitikimas su jos sudarytoja bei vertėja Vilija Gerulaitiene.
Teodoro Lepnerio „Prūsų lietuvis“ 2011 metais Lietuvos istorijos instituto išleista leidinys, kuris sudarytas pagal Valstybinės Berlyno bibliotekos rankraštį ir išleistas dviem kalbomis.
Knygos pristatymas rengiamas LR ambasados Vokietijoje, bendradarbiaujant su Vokietijos kultūros forumu rytinei Europai ir Lietuvos istorijos institutu.
Renginio rėmėjai: Sūris Džiugas, Vilniaus degtinė.
Pressemitteilung / Press Release
Deutsch-Russische/Russisch-Deutsche Übersetzerwerkstatt -
German-Russian/ Russian-German Translators Workshop
baltic worlds about baltic sea library
The Baltic Sea Library is a web-based literary project run by a group of editors from all the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, plus Iceland. The website resembles an anthology and contains poetry, novel excerpts, and other genres in all the literatures of the region. The texts reach across time from antiquity — Tacitus’s Germania and Pomponius Mela’s De Chorographia — to today's contemporary Estonian prose. The unifying aspect is something the editors call “Balticness”, and each text is accompanied by an explanation of its connection to the Baltic Sea. Balticness brings the material together and allows the works and the places to be reflected in a context broader than the national literary canon. Conversely, Balticness also acts as a filter; the selection is deliberately narrow. Translation is central to the project. The visitor will find Tomas Tranströmer’s poem cycle “Baltics” translated into the Nordic and Baltic languages and into English. The ambition is for all the original texts to be presented alongside professional translations to the other languages of the region, and to English in order to make the texts more widely available.Read more on balticworlds.com
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