Writings

Nobel and No-bel

sophushelle

Danish. In this brief piece, I argue that the last three winners of the Nobel prize in literature (Louise Glück, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Annie Ernaux) have a striking resemblance to the three authors who have consistently topped the bookmakers’ lists (respectively, Anne Carson, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Michel Houellebecq). Since it’s widely understood that the prize cannot go to overly similar figures, might the Swedish Academy be deliberately nixing the Nobel hopes of the most popular candidates?

“Samme slags, bare mindre populært” (“Same type, just less popular”), Weekendavisen (14 October 2022)

Between two myths

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Drawing on my previous study of the surprisingly complex history of the concept “Mesopotamia” and its political import for modern Iraq, I argue that we must steer between two myths when discussing the ancient history of Iraq: the myth that Iraq is a somehow “artificial” nation that is bound to disintegrate, and the myth that it is a perennial unity, persisting across centuries. The real legacy of ancient Mesopotamia is that of a hybrid, multilingual, constantly shifting cultural entity.

“Between Two Rivers, Between Two Myths,” New Lines Magazine (14 October 2022). Link.

Apricot & countenance

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Danish. I wrote the first and the last entry for the literary encyclopedia ORD. The first entry discusses the rich cultural connotations of the apricot and the fascinating history of its name: the word apricot began in Latin and was then loaned through Greek, Arabic, and Old French, in a clockwise journey around the Mediterranean. The last entry turns to the final word in Danish dictionaries, the soon-to-be-obsolete expression åsyn, a beautiful and Biblically resonant term for “face.” I discuss the strange appeal of this word, which designates both how we appear to others and how they appear to us.

“Abrikos” (“Apricot”) and “Åsyn” (“Countenance”), in ORD: Encyklopædi (2022, Copenhagen: Politikens Forlag), pp. 9–10 and 324–25. Link.

The abandoned sanatorium

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Danish. When I was seventeen years old, I snuck into an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium on the outskirts of Berlin. Returning to Heilstätte Grabowsee ten years later, I found it completely transformed: not only was access to its crumbling halls now free, but it had become the home of a unique, life-changing art festival. To me, Grabowsee is a symbol of time breeding difference out of sameness: the once identical hospital rooms have been transformed in each their own way, first by the elements, then by the artists.

“Gensyn med Grabowsee” (“Grabowsee revisited”), Weekendavisen (2 September 2022). Link.

Labyrinths and lexicons

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Danish. In my eighth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I discuss Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon, a legendary Danish encyclopedia that has passed through my family for generations. During World War I, the encyclopedia was printed with a blank page under the heading “Europe”; readers were sent a map of the continent when its borders were settled at the end of the war. I use this story to reflect on the coming of climate change: will all maps now become fluid again as the seas begin to rise?

“Konversationsleksikon” (“The Conversational Encyclopedia”), Weekendavisen (2 September 2022). Link.

Authorship as story

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The chapter, written for my PhD thesis, argues that “authorship” means two things at once: textual production and its presentation (that is, the actual activity of authors and its depiction). I argue that this presentation has an inherently narrative form, and that for ancient cultures, it is more methodologically sound to study such narratives than the reality of authorship. Further, authorship’s double nature imbues it with an odd temporality: authorship-as-presentation claims to be identical with authorship-as-production but is in fact born belatedly, in the wake of a text’s circulation.

“Narratives of Authorship and Cuneiform Literature,” in Authorship and the Hebrew Bible, edited by Sonja Ammann, Katharina Pyschny, and Julia Rhyder (2022, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), pp. 17–35. Link.

The samurai’s shadow

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Danish. I review the samurai-museum that recently opened in downtown Berlin, an inter- and hyper-active installation dedicated to presenting the technical and aesthetic refinement of the samurai tradition. But what the museum does not address, on its many enthusiastically buzzing displays, is the problematic history of the samurai figure in postwar Japan.

“Besvær med sværd” (“The trouble with swords”), Weekendavisen (12 August 2022). Link.

Crushing on Satan

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Danish. Reflecting on my childhood crush on Lord Asriel from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, I discuss what a crush is in general: a kind of infatuation that is not, cannot be, or should not be reciprocated (e.g. because its object is a fictional character), and so acquires a strange intensity and violence. Asriel is Pullman’s reimagining of the character of Satan from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and to a prepubescent bisexual reader like myself, he was the perfect amalgamation of the youthful rebel and the authoritative father. He came to represent for me a fiery, ruthless form of desire, which shaped my relation to desire as such.

“Lucifers lækkerhed” (“Satan’s sex appeal”), Weekendavisen (15 July 2022). Link.

A theory of the dogear

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Danish. In my seventh entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I discuss the surprisingly vitriolic debate about dogears and annotations. As a messy reader myself, I tend to leave my books tattered and bescribbled, and I argued that the fierce resistance I encounter is rooted in the double status of books: they are treated as both auratic objets d’art and as an interchangeable reproductions. Further, I argue that all writing and reading is, in fact, shaped by constant, small-scale violence.

“Æselører” (“Dogears”), Weekendavisen (3 June 2022). Link.

The shock of the old

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Danish. Translation revels in difference. Translating the same literary work into the same language over and over again is the only way to recreate that work’s compact complexity, but it also benefits translation itself. Translation, as an art form, works in the medium of choices, so the availability of multiple choices reveals its range and richness. A corollary of this argument is that pre-modern works—which are free from copyright restrictions—are crucial to the art translation, since they can serve as a space of experimentation and expansion.

“Fortidens frihed” (“The freedom of the past”), Babelfisken (June 2022). Link.