My original idea was to write a series of posts about writing and theater in Belarus the week following the rigged elections to show the obstacles facing free expression in Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime. Although I felt that the political dimension of Belarusian writing is often overemphasized at the expense of literary qualities, it still seemed […]
Masters of the Borderland exhibit ties two 20th Century literary giants to Central Europe’s Jewish past and its role in their work. Writers are faced with an array of choices – of subject, style, even what name to publish under – but we tend not to think of their language as a matter of choice. […]
Central European literary life A recurring obstacle to writing about Central European literature is the fact that it apparently doesn’t exist. As recently as this year, when Penguin UK brought out its series of Central European Classics, British novelist Adam Thirlwell began his overview of the collection by writing “I can put it like this. […]
Adam and Eve by Michael Stein It began as the obscure idea of a German philosopher, that our bodies are nothing more than the physical manifestation of our wills, and that our fingers can find their way on a keyboard, tie knots and make obscene gestures because those are things we probably wanted to be […]
Persephone is making her yearly ascent, trudging up the tunnel which leads from the underworld to the surface of the earth. A pinpoint of light guides her way, a distant star which gradually becomes a sun, before finally enveloping her in the blinding haze of daylight. As always, her mother is there waiting, although without […]
Potemkin had built his legendary villages to be viewed from a distance as the Empress passed by in her carriage. They were meant to be merely glanced at, for effect, like a neon sign or a fashion model, and were created accordingly. But what if the Empress decides to leave the designated path, what if […]
A Fairy Tale (part 2) by Michael Stein read part one The storyteller, meanwhile, is already far, far away, racing through time and leaving the past behind him, as the cliche wisely tells us to do. “Good riddance,” he says to himself smugly, if in fact it is well and truly gone. For his trained […]
A Fairy Tale (part 1) by Michael Stein Is it possible to have lived in a time so far back, so ancient, that fairy tales would be science fiction and Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella too futuristic to be believed ? Imagine the situation: a storyteller goes among the nomadic peoples for whom we almost never […]
In one version of the story of Samson, although still shorn of his locks and God-given strength, he is able to elude his Philistine captors. Delilah’s perfidy proves only half successful, leaving our hero with a dilemma that the original version neatly does away with. Unable to fight, let alone subdue lions with his bare […]
literalab 