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If I knew more Turkish than a few dozen words and how to form the infinitive and the inessive, I might be able to say something sensible about how people in Turkey see the negotiations about EU accession negotiations.

If I were one of those newspaper columnists who compare increases in National Insurance to Stalin's liquidization of the kulaks, I could compare the national--Catholic flavour of the Austrian administration to the national--Catholic aspirations of the war crime suspects who are holding up Croatia's accession negotiations.

As things stand, I'll have to make do with wondering about the BBC asserting that memories of the Ottoman siege of Vienna are an important factor in this. Does this mean that I have memories of the Jacobite rebellions, or do I have to be Ursula Plassnik's age?

posted at: 21:02 | path: /OE | permanent link to this entry

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When I see "Roth" I think of Joseph not Philip (or Gerhard). Is this wrong?

posted at: 10:18 | path: /OE | permanent link to this entry

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Have you read Korrektur by Thomas Bernhard, or the English translation by the late Sophie Wilkins, Correction? If you haven't, come back when you have.

...

The ventriloquial narrator of the book, Roithamer,'s text is introduced in the German by ", so Roithamer", which you might translate into English by ", says Roithamer" or ", wrote Roithamer" or ", according to Roithamer", none of which preserves the rhythm of the original. The Bernhard sound is at least as important as the Bernhard content. So Sophie Wilkins renders ", so Roithamer" ", so Roithamer".

"so" is not "so". "Roithamer" is "Roithamer". I wonder how odd this looks to people who don't know German.

posted at: 11:49 | path: /OE | permanent link to this entry

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Nobel-prize-winning Bulgarian chemist Elias Canetti, and not only he, has suggested that Kafka's writing draws on his failed romantic relationship with a woman. For all the time he was Home Secretary, it never occurred to me that David Blunkett's bold experiments with the Kafkaesque might have had a similar psychological motivation. What about the asymmetric rules on extradition to the United States on suspicion of terrrr?

posted at: 20:16 | path: /OE | permanent link to this entry

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I don't know what the English for this is, but I do know that the gannet, Sula bassana, fouls its nest. One of the most spectacular sights in the Firth of Forth is the gannet colony on the Bass Rock painting the island white every nesting season. Let us imitate this fine bird.

When I was small, I thought gannets were as common as herring gulls or blackbirds everywhere.

posted at: 14:41 | path: /OE | permanent link to this entry

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In OE1's Kulturjournal today, there was an interview in which Dorothee Frank says, of Nobel Prize for Literature winners and their influences on the literary life of their countries (translation mine),

Elfriede Jelinek is the first author originating from Austria. Before her there was only Canetti and he wasn't born in Austria.

I shall dwell on the point at this sad time for the black--brown coalition running Austria. What's relevant is not where Elias Canetti was born, it is the circles he moved in, and where he worked, which was Britain. Austria after 1938, in what the FPÖ, whose official logo is sky blue despite their muddier-coloured politics, probably imagine was its hour of need, was far from congenial for a Sephardic Jewish intellectual.

Your challenge for next week is to find an English translation of a book by Canetti, who is probably only known in the country where he spent most of his life for having had an affair with Iris Murdoch, in a UK bookshop.

An article on the FPÖ website says "One should not forget that Jelinek has been dragging Austria['s name] in the dirt for years", in contrast, we have to assume, to Jörg Haider or Kurt Waldheim. It goes on to mention eminent literary figures who never won the Nobel, two of whom were Robert Musil and Franz Kafka. It's a shame for the FPÖ's line of reasoning that death, which disqualifies you from winning the Nobel, took both of them before their most important works were published. Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß, which did appear in Musil's lifetime, is a study of the violence inherent in Austrian society, specifically that in military academies, and is naturally far closer to Jelinek's output than anything we've seen from the Freedomites.

posted at: 22:25 | path: /OE | permanent link to this entry

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You might despair at the yellow press in the UK constantly digging up the conflict with a long-departed jackbooted junta in Argentina over twenty years ago, or the yet older wars against Germany, which have been dragged for no obvious reason into this article about Kiruna/Giron (Sámi for ptarmigan, as is kiiruna in Finnish), but there are people in Austria who still care about the Ottomans reaching the gates of Vienna three. Hundred. And. Twenty-one. Years. Ago. Not even the most ardent Jacobite goes back quite that far.

But is the opposition of Republican France to Turkey's accession to the EU merely the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the mirror? Where else in Europe, apart from a few Catholic Länder in Germany, has banned the hijab?

posted at: 22:05 | path: /OE | permanent link to this entry