Anthologist: Nestoras Poulakos
Translation: Angeliki Dimouli
Preface: Jérôme Netgen
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Tom Weber, Anna Leader, Luc Van den Bossche, Tom Nisse, Nathalie Ronvaux, Caroline Simon, Laurent Fels, Samuel Hamen
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Luxembourg is a new and multilingual country whose essential characteristic is interculturality. The same is also true of its literature. As mediator between France and Germany, its neighboring – and culturally hostile – countries, Luxembourg, in the first half of the past century, fought hard for its individuality and autonomy and embraced the concept of “intercropping”. Its own literature was often regarded as imitative, because it was interlaced with French or German models. It wasn’t until the ‘80’s that an independent Luxembourgish literature came to prominence as an act of liberation.
Naturally, many writers – and not just from the past generation – simultaneously employ more than one language in their literature, with emphasis on the use of English. For example, someone who writes theatrical plays in the idiom of Luxembourg may also write poetry principally in German and incorporate fragments in French, English, or even immigrant languages like Portuguese and Italian. Intellectual multilingualism remains a key aspect of Luxembourgian writing. Luxembourg itself is a linguistic hodgepodge, not larger than a tablecloth – there are 600,000 residents living in an area not more than one third of the island of Crete. Generally speaking, novels, theatrical plays, reviews and poetry are, to a lesser extent, written in French or German. As noted above, younger writers appear to use English as a way to express their own cosmopolitan self-image.
The most famous names in the French-speaking segment of Luxembourg’s contemporary literature include the great dame of poetry Anise Klotz (1928), who won both the Prix Apollinaire and the Prix Goncourt de la poésie, and the poet, translator and novelist Jean Portante (1950), winner of the Prix Mallarmé 2003.
The most prominent Luxembourgian German-speaking poets from the past generation are Jean Krier (1949 – 2013) and the brothers Nico and Guy Helminger (1963); the opus of the latter two is of a different nature, comprising novels, theatrical plays and short stories.
In the field of English poetry, on the other hand, we have the nomad poet Pierre Joris (1946) who, together with the American literary figure Jerome Rothenberg, compiled an innovative two-volume anthology in the context of Weltpoesie, titled Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry.
The eight poets from the younger generation featured in this book are diverse in terms of selection of subject, expression and maturity. Despite the fact that they are all about the same age, their differences between them are quite remarkable.
There is, for example, poetry that contains irony in the context of a shattered perception and interpretation of the world, as in the case of Anna Leader, or the experience of poetry in a youthful romantic song, as in Tom Weber, who attempts to simultaneously embrace German, English and French.
Tom Nisse, poet, translator of many German authors and master craftsman, lives in Belgium and displays a unique and independent style and practice of poetry. The same is true of Caroline Simon, another young poet who also resides in Belgium. Her writing demonstrates a rapid yet collaborative interchange between the outside and the inner world, the social level and individual perspective, which results in manifesting a very potent dynamic.
Luc Van den Bossche uses intertextual references and a mixed language. Other than poetry, Nathalie Ronveaux also composes prose and theatrical plays. The academic, scholar and essayist Laurent Fels prefers to keep language at a minimalist level. Last but not least, this anthology also features Samuel Hamen, who is a well-known critic and prose writer who writes in German and Luxembourgish.
Jérôme Netgen