On 13 October, the Czech weekly “Respekt” released details of former police records appearing to prove that in 1950 Milan Kundera denounced a man suspected of spying. Since then, more details of the case have come to light that cast doubt upon Kundera’s involvement. Whatever the outcome, writes Samuel Abrahám, the manner in which the allegations have been made represents a failure of journalistic decency.
In 1997 the circle of right-wing intellectuals from the “Slovenian Spring”, for the most part associated with Nova Revija, signed an appeal called “The hour of European truth for Slovenia”, and considerably later, an initiative called “Something must be done”.
In a text first published in Varlik magazine in 1962, the great Turkish novelist, poet and politician Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901-1962) addresses what he saw as the demise of the Istanbul of his day. Despite its immediate social critical concerns, the text reflects the author’s existential pre-occupation with time and the unconscious.
In a text first published in Varlik in 1954, the Turkish writer Selahattin Batu sees westernization as both a destructive and progressive force. Striking is how such ambivalence continues in today’s discourse.
“You must create such an interesting national literature that the French will finally begin to feel they are missing something due to their lack of knowledge.” In an article published in 1966, the Turkish poet, journalist and critic Attila Ilhan argued that Turkish literature was far from having gained real recognition abroad. Is the situation different today?
“The eastern European ’68ers formed the backbone of the democratic opposition and dissidents, whereas we, the somewhat older ’56ers, only joined in with certain reservations, because we had a closer acquaintance with defeat.” The Hungarian writer György Konrád takes an ironic look at the ’68ers from the perspective of a participant in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Nationalist mobilization was responsible for the escalation of the crisis over the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn in April 2007, writes Tonis Saarts. The EU accession process over, Estonia’s dominantly rightwing party politics has found a new rallying cry: the threat of Russia.
In a speech delivered on the twentieth anniversary the Lithuanian national reform movement Sajudis, Romualdas Ozolas, one of its founding members, reviews the intellectual situation in Lithuania today. He argues that an ideologized empiricism, all too redolent of Marxism, has made a comeback. Instead, the European tradition of abstract thought as mastered by Kant must show the way in thinking about the State.
The playwright and essayist László Végel writes despairingly on Serbian politics as a member of the Hungarian minority in Vojvodina, northern Serbia. Despite vigorous campaigning in Vojvodina by Viktor Orbán (leader of Hungary’s centre-right Fidesz party), ethnic Hungarians in Serbia have been abandoning the minority parties and voting for the more liberal, Belgrade-based parties in Serbia. At the same time, they unconditionally support the Right in Hungary itself.
That the questions surrounding woman, women, gender, or even sexual difference is found at the heart of Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive work shows that they constitute an obstacle. Starting from the fact that the tradition in part structured and built itself on an exclusion of women and of the feminine, and deconstructing this history, he opens a space favourable to the coming of the other. By appealing to the voice of the other, he engages the perchance of a reorientation of discourse, history, and the tradition.
Contact and friendship with the publishers of European cultural journals has helped Samuel Abrahám, founding editor of “Kritika&Kontext”, realize his goal of publishing a liberal journal in post-socialist Slovakia.
Writer and journalist George Blecher’s first European meeting of Cultural journals was in Berlin in 1989. He has been coming back ever since – despite his being neither an editor nor a European.
Olivier Corpet was present at the European meetings of cultural journals from the very start. Writing in 1986, the founding editor of “La Revue des Revues” reported on a movement that was steadily gaining momentum.
For Walter Famler, editor of the Viennese journal “Wespennest”, the European Meetings of Cultural Journals have been an inducement to carry on in the journals business – and an opportunity to pursue a variety of less official interests.
Eurozine has expanded the scope for bringing together intellectuals from eastern and western Europe – a concern as relevant today as it was directly after 1989, writes Transit managing editor Klaus Nellen.
Johan Öberg, former editor of Swedish journal “Ord&Bild” and organizer of the Gothenburg meeting in 1992, recalls the network’s successes and failures – and retells a strange story about a legless Finn.