Monday 28 November, 2005

Die Tageszeitung, 28.11.2005

Gabriele Goettle has visited Barbara Duden (book), who does research into how bodies and sicknesses were treated in times past. Duden tells, for example, how she came across "Observationes clinicae", etiologies written by the physician Johannes Pelargus Storch in the middle of the 18th century. "At the beginning I couldn't make head or tail of the reports. Women's experiences of their bodies seemed entirely beyond the pale of research. Everything they complained of was totally foreign to me, what they meant by bloods and fruit, open feet and deadness, flow and stagnancy. The women complained to the doctor of heart commotion, a rip in the heart, a chill in the womb, an obdurate stomach."


Die Welt, 28.11.2005

The author Georg M. Oswald rants against the latest trends in literature, embodied by such authors as Michel Houellebecq and Bret Easton Ellis: "What's new is that authors who are considered to write serious literature tune their novels in such a way that they look better than the flossy best sellers. For a long time, an engagement with science fiction or transcendentalism was frowned upon in serious literature, but since pop has been accepted as a literary theme, it has become tres chic to take up these forms which – and this is the problem – by no means guarantee good results." As therapy, Oswald recommends the authors Martin Mosebach and Bernd Cailloux.


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 28.11.2005

Barbara Lehmann travelled to Kiev and Kharkov in Ukraine with the director Andrey Zholdak to find out why existential rage ignites in Ukraine but not in the West. "Planet Earth is a plague that cannot be steered, a black chaos," says Zholdak in the train to Kharkov. 'Many artists in the world are sounding alarm. I would like to do a performance about all people. But my antennae, the signals that I am receiving, don't allow for that.' From the train window, one could see leached out fields, dilapidated factories and decaying houses. It was as if an angry god with a poisonous plough had driven over the rich black soil."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 28.11.2005

Peter Iden highly recommends an exhibition in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt "whose attractiveness is unparalleled in the current offering of German museums." The exhibition deals with the reciprocal influence of the art scenes in antique Egypt, Greece and Rome. "An especially graceful example of the adaptation of Egyptian styles is a spoon that was found in Etruria, shaped like the slender body of a swimmer who appears to be drifting in a bowl of water with flat outstretched arms. In the earlier Egyptian version, the swimming woman seems relatively stiff; a thousand years later, she is refashioned by the Etruscan hand-workers in such a way that one feels one can see how perfect her kick is."


Saturday 26 November, 2005

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 26.11.2005

A good read! Saturday's literature and arts supplement sheds light on the relationship between Turkey and Europe from different perspectives.

Nilufer Göle, sociologist at the EHESS in Paris, describes how arguments for and against Turkey's entry in the EU have changed. "In Turkey, 'Europeanness' is by no means taken for granted as a historical legacy. There, it has been adopted voluntarily – as a political project, as a democratic framework that would allow a new definition of commonality and difference. For the European countries there doesn't seem to be a difference between the European identity and the European project. The EU is, in a way, the latest expression of the European identity, including the Christian faith. With such premisses, Turkey's candidature is seen as a threat that aggravates concerns about how to preserve European identity and borders. But the increasing fixation on European identity stands in the way of a 'common dream'. And so the richness of the European heritage turns against itself – and against the universality attributed to European ideas and values."

Seyla Benhabib, professor of political science at Yale University, sees Turkey as a country that "is gradually becoming aware of its own multiculturalism", while the Europeans are suddenly reflecting on a "Core Europe". "But we live in an epoch where all categories of identity are essentially instable. The Turkish nation cannot afford to deny its multicultural and multi-religious origins, just as the European Union cannot draw its borders solely with an eye to religion and culture."

Turkish-German author Feridun Zaimoglu tells his own story of immigration, in which a certain Petra plays an important role: "Petra came from the middle class, her father was a very tall, artistically inclined man with metal-rimmed glasses. Petra saw in me a sort of lower-class visionary. She wanted to know what my life was like, and I too had a whole lot of questions for her. We made a deal: she would give me a hitch-up into her world, and in exchange I would tell her stories about the immigrant barbarians. 'What is it,' she asked, 'that characterises you and your kind?' I didn't have to think for long. 'Martial arts and a true soul,' I said, 'pathos and discipline, kitsch and romanticism, and of course a touch of German circumspection.' 'We're not in the army here,' she said, 'you've got to scrutinise yourself, that's the only way you'll make it.' But what did she mean by that?"


Frankfurter Rundschau, 26.11.2005

Jörn Klare reports that there is more to Syria than the bad press it got recently over the UN Mehlis Report, for example in Damascus. "Behind the cheap hotels with the prostitutes from the former Soviet Union are the suqs of the old city. The suqs are a labyrinth of narrow, twisting alleyways lined with crooked buildings, Internet cafés and carpet dealers, water pipes and cheap Chinese textiles. The trademark counterfeiters favour Puma, as if Nike and Adidas didn't exist. The last hakawati, or story teller, reads stories each night in a café. He wants 40 dollars for an interview, a fifth of the average Syrian monthly wage. Women dressed entirely in black cross paths with perfectly made up teenies in very tight jeans and t-shirts."