Slovak Novels in English #26 and #27: Sunshine Country and Three Comrades

May 12, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

With Gaudeamus I reached the astounding milestone of having unearthed twenty-five Slovak novels in English, with only slight fudging on the definition of the term. But since then, things have gotten… complicated. Let me tell you why.

The first problem is a simple one of access. Time will remedy that in a couple of cases; two Slovak novels in English are due to be published in the summer, assuming the pandemic doesn’t put the plans on hold.

I could read a portion of a novel that has been only partially translated, Tatarka’s The Demon of Conformism, but I have to admit I’m just not excited about reading a mere excerpt when my self-imposed mandate is for complete novels or, in a pinch, novellas.

Finally, in a couple of cases, the print book is so exceedingly rare that I just can’t find a copy to lay my hands on. So please, if you happen to have Seller of Talismans by Jozef Cíger-Hronský or Dead Soldiers Don’t Sing by Rudolf Jašík lying around the house, be a pal and mail it to me, OK?

So I figured the well was going to run dry pretty soon.

But then, a funny thing happened…

Slovak Novels in English #25: Gaudeamus

April 28, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Unlike a number of other recent Slovak novels in English, this one I actually liked. Only I’m not quite sure that it’s a novel.

There may not be a word for it. “Experiment” would make it sound more impenetrable than it actually is, and duller—but by the end I couldn’t put it down. It boasts in turn a panoply of genres without ever making a decisive play for one over another. Part literary rumination, part crime fiction; a dose of sci fi here, a dash of fantasy there, a substrate of surrealism throughout; and a degeneration into wishful thinking that may, in fact, mask autobiography…

Your Best Omelette Now!

April 23, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

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The pandemic has prompted the adoption of all sorts of unusual behaviors, such as 1) abandonment of all pretense of screen time limitations, 2) worshiping via Zoom, 3) grown-up podcasters building blanket forts in their closets to mimic the sound studio, 4) shifting from print books to ebooks no matter one’s previous Luddite habits, 5) wearing face masks and homemade ones at that, and finally 6) cooking.

Or at least from what I gather, a lot more people are doing a lot more cooking. This can turn into a whole new species of maladaptive competition—have you fully taken advantage of this precious and irreplaceable time to start your first batch of sourdough, ferment your kombucha, and construct architectonic pastries!?—and it can equally well turn into dreary repetition of the same ol’ same ol’.

Well, to those of you suffering in culinary confinement, I release you from the burden of achieving Great Things in Solitude or acquiring a New and More Wholesome Perspective on Life, the Universe, and Everything, and offer you instead something much better: a fantastic omelette you can make in three and a half minutes…

Absent Fathers, Missing Bodies, and Supreme Evil in Harry Potter

April 14, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

It’s not hard to see the ways in which Harry’s actions mirror the christological themes of self-giving love and atonement of both the propitiatory and expiatory varieties. And it’s no surprise that in fictional improvisations on the gospel story, the Christ figure is easiest to illumine of the triune persons. The Father is usually barely there (think of the only alluded-to “Emperor over the Sea” in Narnia) and the Spirit is entirely ignored (I don’t know of any fictional analogue at all).

But J. K. Rowling does manage to have a substantial image of the Father in her great tale and, what’s more, accurately captures the Father-Son drama. This Father here is, of course, Dumbledore. His own past failures don’t detract from this role; if anything, they are crucial to the emotional drama. The red thread of the final installment of the series is whether or not Harry will trust Dumbledore to the end…

Lutheran Saints #12: Albrecht Dürer

March 31, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

It would have been gift enough to the world if Albrecht Dürer had only been an artist.

The third of eighteen children, he was apprenticed first to his goldsmith father and later to the most highly regarded painter in his hometown of Nuremberg. From both Albrecht learned a variety of skills, artistic and technical: silver point, engraving, pen, brush, gouache and watercolor, woodcuts. As a young man he toured throughout Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, learning ever more in his field. After a return home for an arranged marriage to a woman named Agnes Frey—not a happy union—he set off again to see the great centers of the Renaissance in Italy: Venice, Padua, Mantua, and Cremona. The journey south made such an impact on young Albrecht that his return is credited with the birth of the Renaissance in northern Europe. When opportunity arose he returned to Italy and stayed from 1505 to 1507.

Once settled back again home in Nuremberg, Albrecht became extraordinarily productive and by the time of his death had produced “more than six dozen paintings, more than a hundred engravings, about two hundred and fifty woodcuts, more than a thousand drawings, and three printed books on geometry, fortification and the theory of human proportions.” His good friend Pirckheimer composed a epitaph befitting the high regard in which the artist was held: Quicquid Alberti Dureri mortale fuit sub hoc conditur tumulo, “Whatever was mortal of Albrecht Dürer is covered by this tomb”…

Serendipity and Synchronicity in a Pop-Up Book

March 17, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

This is simply too weird and wonderful not to share.

Somewhere around 1998 I discovered what seemed to me to be the true cosmic reason for the internet: namely, online used book stores that would allow me to summon home all the long-lost treasures of childhood. It is the closest I’ve ever come in my life to a runaway spending spree.

Memory, however, is slow, and so are used book sellers. It was some years till I remembered a beloved pop-up book of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”—but when I’d look online for it, either it wasn’t there at all, or there were multiple options and none with a photo of the cover to help me disambiguate. And then I’d forget again for a few years, before I’d look and run into the same conundrum.

But last month, as I was selecting my book purchases to bring home from a trip to see my parents in the U.S., this one came to mind again, and, sing praise to the heavens, there was a cover photo—which I recognized immediately. Yes, this was my long-lost book, and the seller assured that the pop-ups were intact (which is no minor consideration). So I ordered it and had a very happy reunion when I arrived Stateside…

Vegetables at the Speed of Light

March 4, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Not too long ago I wrote about Vegetables Every Day, which I named the best vegetable cookbook ever written. This post is about the second-best: Power Vegetables.

It could not be more different from the first in tone, coverage, or layout. To start with the latter, the book is full-color and filled with photographs that proudly reclaim the goofy palette and styling tricks of the 1970s. (Never underestimate the force of nostalgia.) You can see the plasma globes on the cover nestled amidst artichokes and eggplants. A picture on the inside features a guy in a pretend superhero outfit; another has a plastic dinosaur attaching a Caesar salad…

Lutheran Saints #11: Elisabeth Fedde

February 18, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

On Christmas Day 1850 Elisabeth Fedde was born on the south coast of Norway, and on Christmas Day 1873 she was reborn a deaconess at the Lovisenberg motherhouse under the leadership of Mother Katinka Guldberg, who herself had been trained at Theodor Fliedner’s motherhouse in Kaiserswerth, Germany.

Although Elisabeth was an orphaned servant girl without prospects, her destiny as a deaconess was by no means inevitable. The first time a wellwisher suggested she join the ranks of these proto-nurses, her disdainful response was, “What is that? Do you mean those women we see on the streets wearing the peculiar dress? No, thank you, I shall not join them.” And in any event, she had a sweetheart, Ole Slettebø. But despite her initial resistance, there was something about the strangely dressed women devoted to the sick and suffering that drew her.

They also brought out the best in her. Elisabeth proved herself to be extremely adept at medical care and knowledge at a time when nursing did not exist as a distinct profession and assistants to doctors, women especially, were not expected to know anything about health and hygiene. She was additionally gifted with a blessed persistence. Putting the needs of her patients first, Elisabeth would do whatever was necessary—even to the point of setting fire to lice-infested mattresses so that the hospital had no choice but to replace them—to get the sick what they needed…

The Bitter Price of Making the World a Better Place

February 4, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Rosemary Kavan, Love and Freedom: My Unexpected Life in Prague (New York: Hill and Wang, 1988), 278 pp. Originally published as Freedom at a Price: An Englishwoman’s Life in Czechoslovakia (London: Verso, 1985).

In reading Janko Jesenský’s The Democrats, I found myself as intrigued as anything by the book’s translator, Jean Rosemary Edwards, also known as Rosemary Kavan (or, in Czech, Rosemary Kavanová). I’d found out a little about her—she married Czech Communist Pavel Kavan, lived in Czechoslovakia during the communist rise to power, enjoyed a short stay with him working at the embassy in London, and then returned to Prague only for Pavel to be arrested—like countless other true-believer communists—by his own party and country on trumped-up charges of treason. Pavel was released sooner than his sentenced twenty-five years, but his health was destroyed and he died in the late 1950s. Rosemary stuck it out in Prague until her older son Jan Kavan’s liberal activism in the Prague Spring, and her support of it, threatened her own liberty and life. She escaped Czechoslovakia in the early 1970s and stayed away until her death of cancer in 1981.

This memoir of her life, finished shortly before her death and published by her aforementioned son, fills in much of those details, not least of all the extremely difficult marriage she had with Pavel. Confusing their chemistry with love (hardly an original mistake) and his ideological passion for the whole human race with the ability to love well and attentively a single person, she stuck by her man, his short temper, inconsiderateness, neglect, and occasional violence notwithstanding. The communist commitment to ending the exploitation of man by man rarely noticed the problem of the exploitation of woman by man…

Singin' the Woes

January 21, 2020 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

It started out innocently enough. Well, sort of.

Years and years ago I was staying at a certain Lutheran camp that shall remain nameless and found myself “lonely for the Bible,” as the thought formulated itself in my mind. A reflection, I suppose, of the reception the Bible got in the preaching at said camp.

My remedy was to start sketching out what would become the Exodus Matins, which was followed in due course by the II Corinthians Vespers. The former is probably the more usable of the two (and was even sung once at the Luther Seminary chapel), though I still like the latter quite a bit. I just don’t expect many people will get into a hymn entitled “The Aroma of Christ,” however scriptural it may be (II Corinthians 2:15).

These in turn led to the idea for a “Matthew Mass,” which for various reasons I never finished. But I did compose a hymn text based on the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, set to a Tanzanian Easter tune I especially love…