08 Mar

Posted at 11:45h in Other

The contemporary art exhibition  “Translating Worlds,” focusing on issues of translation and travelling stories, was curated by Milan Vukašinović and Nilüfer Şaşmazer, as a part of the Retracing Connections programme. The exhibition took place at Depo, Istanbul between November 2023 and January 2024. It featured existing and new works from fifteen international artists, including paintings, drawings, embroideries, sculptures, video and audio installations, and a lecture performance. The exhibition was conceived not only as communication outlet for the programme’s research results, but as an additional research activity that aimed to amend the inability of contemporary Translation Studies to account for all the meanings and practices of translation in the Middle Ages.

This webinar presents the academic and creative process behind this exhibition, the final artistic products, as well as the intellectual contributions it provided to the overall research project. It asks the questions of compatibility between translation studies, Byzantine and peri-Byzantine texts, historical processes, tavelling stories, trans-linguistic storyworlds and the medium of contemporary art. In this multifaceted intersection, contemporary art became the venue for untranslatability, negotiating between the personal, the poetic and the political. As it encountered the composite Byzantine worlds, it elucidated transhistorical instances of co-creation and communal existence. At the same time, by reintroducing medieval texts into the physical space, the artists gave them new material, visual and auditive forms. Thus, this collaboration probed the possibility of new secular rituals for the premodern artistic production, previously severed from its original ritual contexts through the intellectual practices of postmedieval, Western academia.     

The webinar by Milan Vukašinović (Uppsala University)
is organized by the Center for Medieval Arts & Rituals (University of Cyprus)
on April 4, 2024, at 16.30 (EET).
For more information and registration contact Andria Andreou.  

08 Mar

Posted at 11:35h in Other

Retracing Connections and the Swedish Institute at Athens are presenting an online research dialogue between
Myrto Veikou (Patras) and Markéta Kulhánková (Prague),
moderated by Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala) on the topic of

From narrative to lived spaces: Digenis Akrites in recent researche
Digenis Akrites holds a special place in both Byzantine and modern Greek literature. Previously often seen as a kind of national epic, it is now most often read as a heroic and romantic poem set in the Eastern borderlands of Byzantium. Surviving in different versions, the time and place of the poem’s composition are difficult to determine, but there is a general agreement on a twelfth-century Constantinopolitan context for the writing down of
an orally transmitted story. Recently, Digenis has been re-read in various ways related to space. John Kee drew on narrative theory and geography in his article in Byzantinoslavica (2022) and Myrto Veikou is currently applying a landscape perspective to Digenis in a comparison with the Arab Epic of the Holy Warrior (Dhat al-Himma). At the same time, Markéta Kulhánková, who translated Digenis into Czeck together with Ondřej Cikán (2018), is now finishing her work on a narratological commentary in which narrative space has come to play a significant role. What is the difference between narrative space and the physical landscape in which the story of Digenis is placed? How are the two related? Why do we care about the narrative space of Digenis? How can a storyworld be understood as a lived space? And why does space even matter? These are questions that will be addressed in a discussion between Myrto Veikou and Markéta Kulhánková, moderated by Ingela Nilsson.

The Dialogue takes place online via Zoom on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at 18.00 (Athens).

Register here. 

05 Feb

Posted at 17:51h in Narrative Cosmonauts

In the Greco-Roman narrative tradition, the ancient Greek novels play a crucial role: as pioneers in romantic storytelling, as models for successive narratives in Greek (including much hagiography), and as inspiration for writers like Shakespeare and Madeleine de Scudéry. Later this spring, one of the most playful and adventurous novels – Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius – will appear in a new Swedish translation by Ingela Nilsson.

Lovers of fiction have something to look forward to!

31 Jan

Posted at 13:40h in Calls

The research project A Viking in the Sun: Harald Hardrada, the Mediterranean, and the Nordic World, between the late Viking Age and the Eve of the Crusades (University of Edinburgh) welcomes proposals for the project’s second symposium.

This symposium Women and Power explores how powerful women shaped Harald’s formative travels, from Ingegerd of Sweden in Kievan Rus’ to Empress Zoe of Byzantium and Rasad in Fatimid Egypt. Yet this symposium will also be an opportunity to develop a wide-raging discussion and comparison on the broad theme of women and power across the varied cultures with which Harald interacted.

Please submit proposals by 3 March 2024 to gianluca.raccagni@ed.ac.uk.

22 Dec

Posted at 13:53h in Narrative Cosmonauts

Two weeks ago, the RC team member Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen (SDU) presented his new book “Nattens Sange” (“Songs of the Night”, published by Atlanten) at two events in Denmark. The book is the first monograph on the Byzantine poet Romanos the Melodist (485-560 CE) in Danish, containing an introduction to the life and work of the poet, translations of four hymns and a commentary on each hymn.

 

The book has been beautifully accompanied by artwork of the Danish artist, Peter Brandes (b. 1944). Furthermore, the bishop of the Danish diocese of Ribe, Elof Westergaard, has written a foreword to the book.

 

The first event, which took place on Tuesday 5 December at the Aarhus cathedral, was an interview by pastor Henrik Lund with Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen and Peter Brandes. The interview was accompanied by a performance of medieval melodies to two of the hymns translated in the book, as well as the oldest known melody to Romanos’s famous Christmas hymn “Today the Virgin gives birth to the one who is above all being”. The hymns were performed by Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen, assisted by two singers, Mads Djernes and Christian Oluf Verdoner. The melodies have not been sung in this manner since the thirteenth century. The melodies were kindly transcribed from the manuscript St Petersburg 674 (c. 1270) by Christian Troelsgård (University of Copenhagen) and Ioannis Arvanitis (Athens). 

Romanos_forside
Nattens Sange 2

The second event was hosted by the diocese of Ribe on Wednesday, 6th of December. At this event, Elof Westergaard, Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen and Peter Brandes presented the book and spoke about the relevance of Romanos the Melodist today. Westergaard and Brandes both pointed to the influence Romanos has had on Swedish poets such as Hjalmar Gullberg and Gunnar Ekelöf as well as on the 1979 Noble literature prize laurate, the Greek author Odysseas Elytis. Romanos has accompanied both Brandes and Westergaard for many decades as a continuing source of inspiration. Brandes, who has done artwork for several translations of ancient poets such as Homer, Vergil, Ovid and Sappho, as well as modern poetry, ranks Romanos as one of the best poets in literary history.

Since its publication on 15th of September 2023, “Nattens Sange” is close to being out of stock, as it was printed in a limited edition of 300 copies.

 

Text and images: Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen

1) The cover of the book “Nattens Sange”
2) Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen (m) and Peter Brandes (r) discuss Romanos with pastor Henrik Lund (l) at the Catherdral of Aarhus on December 5, 2023.
3) The team behind the book, from l to r: bishop Elof Westergaard, publisher Fedja Wierød Borčak, Uffe Holmsgaard Eriksen and artist Peter Brandes.