A language is not a country

[Eric]

One recent BlogSpy posting mentions the fact that Austrian literature, though written in German, is not the same as that of Germany itself.

This phenomenon is mutatis mutandis widespread throughout Europe. Switzerland has literature written in German, French and Italian - three languages that are also spoken in Germany & Austria, France & Belgium and Italy, respectively. And even German literature, written in East and in West Germany between about 1945 and 1991, could be discussed as two separate literatures.

The Brits also have the bad habit of borrowing Irish, Australian, New Zealand, etc., authors and blurring the distinction between English literature from England and English literature, meaning that written in English and not from the USA or maybe Canada.

The Finland-Swedes always have to suffer the ignorance of most readers from Sweden as to what the difference is between literature written in Finnish and that written in Swedish by Finnish citizens.

And the Flemings, though writing in Dutch, have a rather weak publishing tradition, meaning that most talented Flemish authors end up being published next door in the Netherlands. Then the Dutch craftily include major Flemish authors as part of Dutch literature. Another sleight of hand.

Literature is written in Hungarian in Romania.

Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are more or less the same language, but with different national histories. Ditto Urdu and Hindi.

Literature is also written in French in Canada, and in Portuguese in Brazil. But the literatures are discrete.

So, as I said in the title of this thread, a language is not a country.

 

[Heteronym]

I always found it amusing that Brazilian writer Machado de Assis was considered a classic of Portuguese literature. Some writers are so good, everyone wants to own them: England and the USA both want Henry James and T.S. Eliot for themselves. So at the University I studied them in English and American literature classes.

I think some people just confuse literatures of a particular language with their countries. German-language literature includes Germany, Austria, Switzerland; for lazy people who don't bother looking up biographical details, calling it all German literatue is just easier.

 

[Eric]

Yes, Heteronym, this whole area of language and country fascinates me. When I was young, I na?vely thought that "one language, one country". I remember travelling through Belgium with my parents as a teenager and having but the vaguest idea about the languages of Belgium.

Even Boris Johnson knows more than I did then. If you glance at page 263 of his novel "Seventy-Two Virgins" (available in most London bookshops; he is, after all, Mayor), you will find, in this comic novel, a brief mention of even the German-speaking minority of Belgium, about which most Brits are totally unaware.

Since my teens, I've discovered the Finland-Swedes, the Swiss situation, the Gaeltacht, the status of the residue of Russian-speakers in the Baltic countries, the fact that they used to speak German in Romania, the fact that Transylvania (much sniggered at because of vampires) was for the most a Hungarian-speaking region, the fact that Galician is almost Portuguese, that they speak German in parts of northern Italy, that there are Turkish-speakers in Bulgaria, that there are two written Norwegian languages, that even tiny countries have their own languages: Luxembourg, Andorra (Catalan), that France and Poland have language minorities, that a Slav language is spoken around Bautzen in eastern Germany, that Breton exists, ditto Frisian, that such a thing as Low German also exists, that Danish is spoken in parts of Germany and vice-versa, that there is a largish Polish-speaking minority living in Lithuania, etc., etc., etc.

Many of these language minorities are simply not big enough to support a literature of their own, but it draws your attention to the fact that even Europe, not the largest area on a map of the world, has an incredibly complex language situation.

 

[Heteronym]

Europe has such a schizophrenic language situation because it was one of the most turbulent places on Earth for centuries. It has had invasions, wars, migrations, the collapse of empires, the unification of territories, the disappearence of nations, forced assimilations of countries into others.

More interestingly is the literature of former colonies; enough Portuguese are still alive to remember a time when Angola and Mozambique were colonies. For some Mia Couto and Pepetela still belong in Portuguese literature, even if they made a career criticising the former empire. Such irony is delightful.

 

[nnyhav]

Heteronym, it may amuse you to know that our Latin American Literature forum at the NYTimes bookchat, for lack of Brazilians, annexed Saramago (miriring can confirm). But we felt justified in doing so by The Stone Raft

 

[Heteronym]

Oh, I don't think Saramago would feel too upset. He hasn't been on good terms with Portugal since 1993. Besides, rather annexing him than including Paulo Coelho and J? Soares

 

[Eric]

Heteronym says:

/Europe/ has had invasions, wars, migrations, the collapse of empires, the unification of territories, the disappearance of nations, forced assimilations of countries into others.

More interesting is the literature of former colonies; enough Portuguese are still alive to remember a time when Angola and Mozambique were colonies.

Erm, well, yes, interesting or not, 1991 marked the end of one of the biggest pieces of European colonialism - that of Russia. As well as all the republics of the Soviet Union, most of which were there involuntarily, there were also a number of not insignificant European countries, such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the eastern part of Germany that were under Russian domination. Finland played a wily game, trying to appease Russia while maintaining good contacts with the West. Enough Poles, Czechs, Estonians, Georgians, Bulgarians, Kazakhs, Lithuanians, Hungarians, etc., etc., are still alive to remember what it was like in the Soviet bloc before 1991, when all these peoples were involuntary citizens of Russian colonies.

Despite the likes of Fukuyama, history hasn't ended yet. The fact that Asia and Africa were colonised by Europeans doesn't diminish the importance of the fact that Russia, maybe regarded as a liberator of Mo?ambique and Angola by some, took over half of Europe after World War II and mismanaged it. Nowadays, it's the Chinese, also not known for their democratic tendencies (Tibet), who are buying up chunks of Africa to exploit the raw materials in the good old neo-colonial way. Salazar, Brezhnev, Pinochet, Honecker, Mao, Franco, what's the difference between fascist dictators, sometimes colonially inclined, and Communist ones, ditto?

 

[nnyhav]

Slicing and dicing country and language, NYer BookBench blog links UNESCO’s Index Translationum, "which, since 1932, has kept track of books published outside of their original languages. [...] we’ll let the [author] Top Fifty list speak for itself:

"Hard on the heels of Disney is Agatha Christie at No. 2, followed by Jules Verne and Lenin (high above Marx and Engels). Shakespeare just barely ekes out the industrious Barbara Cartland, who has more than seven hundred novels to her name; Stephen King outranks his bloody-minded precursors Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm [...] Finally, Dostoevsky beats Tolstoy, settling, perhaps, the literary equivalent of the old Stone vs. Beatles battle."

 

[Clarissa]

Barbara Cartland in the Top Ten! The mind boggles. Frightening but, to be fair, I cannot really judge as I have never read anything by her. Still...

 

[Flower]

Great thread!

I think that culture goes with the language. For instance in Canada, some speak Canadian and some French. I would think that these two different speaking people feel different?

I certainly feel different from the people in Denmark who live close to the boarder of Germany and who speaks differently, with some German words and dialects in their Danish.

 

[Clarissa]

German, Austrian and Swiss writers writing in German have a cultural divide almost as big as those two nations separted by a common language, the UK and the USA. I agree wholeheartedly that the cultural background is important - Arthur Schnitzler could never be anything but Austrian, Heinrich B?ll or G?nther Grass nothing but German and Robert Walser could only have been Swiss. All writing in German but worlds apart.

 

[Omo]

German, Austrian and Swiss writers writing in German have a cultural divide almost as big as those two nations separted by a common language, the UK and the USA. I agree wholeheartedly that the cultural background is important - Arthur Schnitzler could never be anything but Austrian, Heinrich B?ll or G?nther Grass nothing but German and Robert Walser could only have been Swiss. All writing in German but worlds apart.

I don't know whether I can agree here. I think Prussian Grass and Rhinelandic B?ll are culturally as far away from each other as from the other writers you mention.

 

[hdw]

I don't know whether I can agree here. I think Prussian Grass and Rhinelandic B?ll are culturally as far away from each other as from the other writers you mention.

I'm not so sure. Both came from a Catholic background, and I think Grass's mother came from the Slavic Kashubian minority, so he isn't your average Prussian.

Harry

 

[Daniel del Real]

This is always a good topic and the question is how you tag a writer? from where he was born and has his roots and family or by the language or country that adopts him?

Here are a few cases, if you know more please add it to the list

Joseph Conrad: Polish writting in English
Vladimir Nabokov: Russian writing his best works in English
Samuel Beckett: Irish writing mainly in French
Milan Kundera: Czhech writing mainly in French
Eugene Ionesco and Emile Cioran: Romanian writing in French
Ilija Trojanow: Bulgarian writing in German
Alberto Manguel: Argentinian writing in English
Franz Kafka: Czech writing in German
VS Naipaul: Trinitarian with Indian roots writing in English
Gao Xingjian: Chinese writing in French

 

[promtbr]

This is always a good topic and the question is how you tag a writer? from where he was born and has his roots and family or by the language or country that adopts him?

Here are a few cases, if you know more please add it to the list

Joseph Conrad: Polish writting in English
Vladimir Nabokov: Russian writing his best works in English
Samuel Beckett: Irish writing mainly in French
Milan Kundera: Czhech writing mainly in French
Eugene Ionesco and Emile Cioran: Romanian writing in French
Ilija Trojanow: Bulgarian writing in German
Alberto Manguel: Argentinian writing in English
Franz Kafka: Czech writing in German
VS Naipaul: Trinitarian with Indian roots writing in English
Gao Xingjian: Chinese writing in French

I would add (off the top of my head)
Elias Canneti: Bulgarian writing in German
Andrei Makine: Russian writing in French
Aleksandar Hemon; Croat writing in English

It becomes pretty subjective. I have my librarary shelves tagged and separated by country. I re-organized recently and pulled Makine, Nabakov, Hemon, Canetti and Troyanov and others and gave them their own "Emigre" section. But of course, where does one draw the line?


___

 

[Daniel del Real]

Elias Canneti: Bulgarian writing in German

And finally known as a brittish citizen.

It becomes pretty subjective. I have my librarary shelves tagged and separated by country. I re-organized recently and pulled Makine, Nabakov, Hemon, Canetti and Troyanov and others and gave them their own "Emigre" section. But of course, where does one draw the line?

That is a really good idea. My shelves are also separated by country so I should follow your steps.

 

[Clarissa]

I have to quibble with Kundera writing his best work in French. In fact, I disagree. In my humble opinion, his Czech novels were better than those he wrote later. Even if I did read them in French in translation. Question of language or the fact that he had aged?
Kafka - Czech writing in German - Czech, yes, but also a pure product of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Quite a few Russian-born writing in French. Troyat, Elsa Triolet, Irene Nemirovsky, Nathalie Sarraute, probably more - the result of the Revolution, presumably, that had sent them into exile.
Why does a writer decide to write in a foreign language?
When I look at the different lists, there seems to be a common denominator. Not all, I don't think, but most were/are writing in the language of the country of their exile/adoption.
Odd that James Joyce, whose interest in languages was so great, never wrote in a foreign language, despite living in France, Italy, German Switzerland etc. Though some could say that Finnegan's Wake is Chinese/double Dutch to them (and to me)

 

[Mirabell]

I calling it all German literatue is just easier.

ah it's not so easy
in germany/swiss/austria literature that is written in German is generally called "German Literature". Germanistik, i.e. German Literature studies refers to all literature written in German, and the Deutscher Buchpreis, the German Book Prize, is awarded to any writer writing in German.

I do not know about other countries, but in these countries here, the ambiguity of the word German, which is both a nationality and a language, has little to do with ignorance.

 

[Mirabell]

I would add (off the top of my head)
Elias Canneti: Bulgarian writing in German

he was born in bulgaria, but left when he was six. I deny that it makes him Bulgarian. Six years. Most of his life was spent in Switzerland and Austria, part of it in London. his first language wasn't bulgarian either.

 

[saliotthomas]

A language is not without roots ether,be they use or not.
All this is really a question of personality and the author history.
Andrei Makine write in French but his novel are also full of reference to the cinema,au temps du fleuve amour,with Belmondo movies in Siberia,Requiem for the East when one of his main charactere look like Lino Ventura.Not arty French stuff,the real thing.Paradoxaly he is deeply Russian(Siberian) too.
Amin Maalouf French is Perfect and beautifull,but he is more of a meditaraneen(something i feel myself),more than Europeen.His references are not as centered on a country.
Ben Jeloun live betwin france and Morocco,write in French about Morocco,but (Imo) is a pure French product.Using the local color of his indentity.
Driss Chraibi exiled from Morocco most of his live,a bit on the booze side,is much more Moroccain in his style.Even if he live in England,France and Canada.
Rohinton Mistry write in English(the language of the colon he Eric)and lives in Canada,and is damn good when he writes about India,maybe one of the best.

Generality in general are very general.Individual thanks god are not.(Not always anyway)