Monthly Archives: September 2018

Fatherland

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Counterfactual history, i.e. the question “what would have happened if …” the events would not have taken the well-known historical, but another conceivable path, has become in recent years – at least according to my impression – an increasingly popular narrative vehicle in literary fiction. The Nazi era in particular seems to be a prolific territory for this genre, just think of works as diverse as Philip Roth’s “Conspiracy against America”, Timur Vermes’ “Look Who’s Back” or Robert Harris’ “Fatherland”, the work I am reviewing here.

Harris, until then known as a journalist and non-fiction author, reported in detail for the press in the Anglo-Saxon countries about the “Hitler diaries”, which the German magazine “Stern” had “discovered” in the 80s. (These diaries proved of course to be a hoax, and it is difficult to understand how anyone could in all seriousness believe in the authenticity of these amateurishly made up “diaries”.) In the course of his preoccupation with this period, Harris wondered how Europe would have looked like if the Nazis would have achieved their war goals. The result was his first novel “Fatherland”, published in 1992.

Berlin, 1964: The Nazis have won WWII and have created a Europe dominated by the Greater German Reich. The borders of the Reich extend to the Urals, behind which the remains of the Soviet Union, with which there are still border skirmishes, has withdrawn. While 11 million Jews have been “resettled” and then disappeared without a trace (nobody dares to ask questions about this topic), and the Slavic population has been decimated and turned into slave laborers, millions of Germans have taken over the conquered territories in the framework of a huge resettlement program. In these newly conquered territories however, dissatisfaction is rising and partisan raids have reached an increasingly dangerous level. The European Union, a creation of Nazi Germany and of course dominated by it, has its headquarters in Berlin; its members are independent only by name but de facto satellite states of Nazi Germany; a separate peace was concluded with Great Britain and the USA; the only remaining free country on the European continent is Switzerland. Berlin, which has been fundamentally redesigned by Speer according to Hitler’s megalomanic plans, is preparing for the celebrations of the dictator’s 75th birthday (Harris follows in his novel until about 1942 the actual biographies of the Nazi elite and then switches on his “counterfactual mode”.). While some notable Nazi officials such as Goering or Himmler are already dead in the novel, others such as Goebbels – who still requires attractive actresses to come to him for an “audition” – or Heydrich, Hitler’s potential successor, who controls the Gestapo and SD apparatus, are still in office. 

This is the backdrop in front of which the plot unfolds, and in the beginning the reader seems to be in a classic detective novel. The corpse of an old man is pulled from a lake near Berlin. Both the identity of the man and the cause of death are initially unknown and it looks first like a routine case for the responsible investigator of the criminal police, detective Xavier March.

However, the peculiarities accumulate in the framework of the investigation, and the experienced March smells soon that there is something fishy about this case (I want to avoid spoilers and will therefore not convey too much of the plot). Having established the identity of the dead – it is a Nazi of the first hour – and March, thanks to the conspiratorial assistance of an old friend who now works in the gigantic party archives, discovers a startling parallel with the recent deaths of other prominent Nazis. The traces of all these deaths lead back to the year 1942, to a villa on the Wannsee, where the organization of the so-called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was discussed. Could it be that Heydrich wants to cover up all traces and kill all surviving participants of this conference? And why is March suddenly crossing paths on more than one occasion with Odilo Globocnik, the sadistic and brutal bloodhound of Heydrich? Why is an important eyewitness suddenly dead? Is it all somehow connected with the planned meeting between Hitler and US President Joseph Kennedy (the anti-Semite and father of John F. Kennedy)? After all, since the announcement of a planned pact between Nazi Germany and the United States, the popularity of the US president in the polls has increased so much that his re-election seems certain. (The US Ambassador in Berlin, Charles Lindbergh, also a Nazi sympathizer, certainly is the right man in the right place in Harris’ novel.) Of course, the sudden emergence of documents that prove the full extent of the Holocaust, would be in such a sensitive situation diplomatically more than inconvenient.

The case is withdrawn from March, who is supposed to not uncover the truth; and he becomes a target of the State Police himself; nevertheless, March keeps on investigating in secret and discovers what is at the bottom of all these cases; the situation becomes increasingly dangerous for March, but he has no choice…

The plot is not all that matters in Fatherland. The protagonist of the book who is formally belonging to the SS, but who in the past has been plagued by doubts about the official party line and politics, is increasingly removing himself from the regime he has served for many years. The description of this process is almost as exciting and convincing as the thriller plot itself.

Fatherland is an absolute page turner; after I started reading, I could not put the book down until I had finished it. I do not want to say that this is a literary masterpiece, but it’s a very entertaining and exciting read and for some readers also the documents about the Wannsee conference in the novel may be something new.

The book has some weaknesses: first of all, the absolutely impossible name of the main character and the very clichéd female protagonist and love-interest of March, an American journalist (here Harris seems to have been already too much preoccupied regarding the later movie) are not convincing.

However, the book is really exciting and you can tell that the author has done his homework regarding the Nazi era and its ideology. The strongest part of the book for me is when Harris describes the leaden, nightmarish atmosphere in Berlin in 1964; the mistrust and fear in which people live in this totalitarian society; the instrumentalization of even the closest family ties (exemplified by the betrayal of March by his own son); the suppression of truth and historical facts and the self-censorship of thoughts. There is nothing great about the victorious Greater German Reich, beyond the dimensions of a deeply inhuman architecture, which aims at intimidation, the demonstration of absolute power, and the reduction of the masses to a mere ornament.

All in all, and despite the weaknesses mentioned, a worthwhile and entertaining book that encourages the reader to learn more about the Nazi era and totalitarian dictatorships in general. 

Robert Harris: Fatherland, Arrow Books 2017

© Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki, 2014-8. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

New Social Poetry: an interview with Vladimir Sabourin

“New Social Poetry” is a Bulgarian literary movement, created in 2016 in Sofia. The first publication of this group, the “Manifesto of the New Social Poetry” has caused a lot of controversial discussions due to the outspoken rhetoric of the text against the so-called “peaceful transition” in Bulgaria, a period after the official end of communism that can be characterized, among others, by a continuity of old elites and their representatives in the cultural sphere.

In an essay collection “Towards a New Social Poetry” by the group’s founder, Vladimir Sabourin, the author offers his analysis of the situation of Bulgarian poetry and the conditions in which it is created today; recent developments related to the prestigious “Literary Journal” (Literaturen Vestnik) were for him obviously the trigger to create this new poetic movement. In the short time since its foundation, the group has held many public readings all over Bulgaria, started a successful journal “New Social Poetry“, and has already a number of book publications in Bulgarian and in translation, of which beside the “Manifesto” and the essay book also an almanach (“New Social Poetry – the Anthology“) are available in English. Reason enough for me (TH) to conduct an interview with the group’s founder, Vladimir Sabourin (VS).

 

TH: Vladimir, you once said that you are not a Bulgarian poet, but a poet who writes in Bulgarian. What did you mean by that and why is this distinction important to you?

VS: I come from a mixed marriage, my mother is Bulgarian, my father Cuban of French origin. I grew up as non-accepted, as stranger, “nichtdazugehörig” as the Germans say, both on the part of the Bulgarians and on the part of the Cubans. Writing, poetry is a homeland that nobody can challenge. I write in a minor language, but I do not share the self-contemptuous image the Bulgarians have of themselves and their language. In the major literary languages, it is perfectly natural to write in a language to which you ethnically don’t belong. I consider the language in which I write a major literary language.

TH: My personal impression as a reader (and occasional translator) of Bulgarian poetry is that many – even well-known – Bulgarian poets write “naive” poetry. I do not mean that in a denigrating sense, but rather as an expression of the fact that it is often not clear to me if these poets are familiar with the spectrum and variety, the history and formal language of modern poetry. Compared to that, your poems left a very different impression on me. Looking at your poetic development, what were the main influences for you? In what tradition do you see yourself as a poet?

VS: Your impression corresponds to a reality, already commented by the first major Bulgarian modernist poet Pencho Slaveykov at the beginning of the last century. It is extremely important to understand however that this is today a reality nurtured by state institutions for both internal and external use. If you like, this can be described as a state-sponsored reality that aims at building a pseudo-identity, just like for exports such as yoghurt. The great modern poets are a problem for this country, they are either just murdered (Geo Milev, Nikola Vaptsarov) or hushed up. Does anyone outside of a small circle in Bulgaria – not to mention outside the country – know Zlatomir Zlatanov or Ani Ilkov? The image of Bulgarian poetry continues to be built on the “naive”, “natural”, even when it is just a marketing trick, adapted to foreign expectation. This expectation is disparaging, and the fitting to it is a testimony of a deep inferiority complex. – In the Bulgarian poetry my teachers are Ani Ilkov and Zlatomir Zlatanov, in the foreign-language poetry in the first place Bertolt Brecht.

TH: Your recent collection of poems “Trotsky’s Remains“, which has been compiling your poetic work since the early 1990s, has been self-published. Why?

VS: My first poetic book was self-published, 25 years later I am again in the position of having to release a collection of my poems myself. From an existential point of view, this is a stoic amor fati. Sociologically, it is a textbook example for the omerta, in which the “naivety” of Bulgarian literature flourishes in a publishing landscape, which is dependent on the initial accumulation of capital with – to say the least – dubious origin. The large publishers are an integral part of the state-capitalist oligarchic model, the small ones are dependent on state subsidies that nurture the ideology of “naivety”. At the end of the day, my conscience as author is clear and none of my books has been published within this framework. For this autonomy, without which there is no modern poetry, I have to thank my parents Jesús Sabourín and Margarita Drenska and my friend and literary brother-in-arms Ventsislav Arnaoudov.

TH: You are not only a poet, but also a congenial translator of poetry. Which poets have you translated and what does translation mean to you?

VS: When I can’t write poetry, I translate poetry. I see translations as an integral part of my own poetry, as Ezra Pound does. And with my translations I am facing the same kind of omerta as with my own poetry, but my personal blog is some sort of “collected translations-in-progress”, including Bertolt Brecht, Fernando Pessoa, Heiner Müller, Jorge Manrique, Nicanor Parra, Rainer Maria Rilke, Roberto Bolaño, Sarah Kirsch, Sylvia Plath, Vicente Huidobro, Virgilio Piñera, Archilochus, Velimir Chlebnikov, Joseph Brodsky, Hugo Ball, Ezra Pound…

Manifesto

TH: Some time ago you wrote a “Manifesto of the New Social Poetry” and a collection of essays “Towards a New Social Poetry: Aesthetico-political Theses”; almost at the same time, a literary group “New Social Poetry” has established itself and there is now also a literary magazine of the same name. What is the “Manifesto” about and what motivated you to write it?

VS: In the summer of 2016 something like “privatization”, in fact another theft of communal property with legal means happened, concerning the most important literary periodical after 1989 – the “Literary Journal” (Literaturen Vestnik). The current editorial team of the newspaper discarded its creators (who in the 1990’s had invited them as editors), ending a long-standing process of corporate academic and literary adhesion, destroying the radical political nature of the “Literary Journal”. As an author, I grew up in the “Literary Journal” during its radical-political phase. Its “privatization” by a corporation of university departments was the drop that made the glass overflow for me. What happened with the “Literary Journal” was another example of the misappropriation of communal property, which characterized the entire “peaceful transition” from socialism to capitalism in Bulgaria. The ongoing deterioration of “Literary Journal” is evident recently in the case of Julia Kristeva – after her unmasking as a former agent of the Bulgarian State Security*, the newspaper should have asked her to withdraw from the Editorial Board of the journal. But they did not. The “Manifesto” turns against this adhesion of unscrupulous academic power and literature.

New Social Poetry

TH: There were – as probably with every new group of poets – a few “faction fights” and splits or resignations within the “New Social Poetry” group. In the meantime, however, the group, according to my impression, is developing a lively activity, which is not limited to just the mentioned magazine. I am thinking of the readings and the book publications. Maybe you can say a few words about that?

VS: The central issue of the “Manifesto” is the revival of literary life after nearly two decades of literary “peaceful transition.” Since the autumn of 2016, when we founded the group “New Social Poetry,” there was a dynamic in the literary field that we had forgotten since the end of the period of political radicality of the 1990s. What’s happening inside our group is part of this dynamics. I like your analogy with the factional divisions and struggles typical of radical political movements. “New Social Poetry” is an avant-garde group that wants to bring back political radicalism to literary life, it is logical to apply this principle within the group as well. Not despite, but rather thanks to the “factional struggles”, we managed to make our first national tour with readings in Varna, Burgas, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora and Sofia in less than a year. At the same time, we issued two anthologies in English and French – at the self-publishing platform CreateSpace – New Social Poetry: The Anthology (translation by Christopher Buxton) and Nouvelle poésie sociale: L’Anthologie (translation by Krasimir Kavaldjiev).

TH: Who are your most important “comrades-in-arms” in the “New Social Poetry“? Are there any interesting young talents beside the established names?

VS: Unlike the predominant economic individualism in the Bulgarian literary circles, which is a reflection of the social misery of personal survival in the poorest country in the EU, we believe in the effectiveness of solidarity. There is no authentic avant-garde without joint action. The word “comrades-in-arms” is accurate – we are in war with the status quo of the “peaceful transition”. I’m mockingly referred to as a Latin American guerrillero, ok, that’s what I am. I am happy to work with Ventsislav Arnaoudov, Kiril Vassilev, Vania Valkova, Christina Vassileva, Alexander Nikolov, Nikolay Fenerski, Ivan Marinov. More recently, the young poet and editor of the magazine A. Nikolov, barely reaching the age of majority, published his debut poetic book “fairness.” Take a look also at his peer, Michaela Angelova, who debuted in our magazine, and whose poem “Time is a Man” is published in the anthologies.

TH: What are the plans for the near future? Your own and those of the group “New Social Poetry“?

VS: We are currently working on the Spanish translation of our anthology, I think in the summer I’m going to have her translated into German. My plan is to blow up the “peaceful transition” with the “New Social Poetry”.

TH: One last question: Which Bulgarian book with poetry would you like to see translated in English?

VS: Kiril Vassilev’s Provinces (Small Stations Press 2015)

TH: Vladimir, thank you for this interview.

 

All three titles (New Social Poetry – the Anthology, Towards a New Social Poetry, and Manifesto for a New Social Poetry are translated in English by Christopher Buxton and were published at CreateSpace in 2018)

*Julia Kristeva denies these allegations; according to her, the whole dossier with several hundred pages, which was published online by the Dossier Commission that deals with the State Security files, is a fabrication with the aim to tarnish her reputation.

Introduction, questions and translation of the interview from the German/Bulgarian original by Thomas Hübner.

This interview was first published at the blog of Global Literature in Libraries Initiative, June 13, 2018 for #BulgarianLiteratureMonth.

© Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki, 2014-8. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.