Papers (in English) by Helena Bodin
Parallax, 2022
The productive challenges of the linguistic and cultural unknown provide a framework for this exp... more The productive challenges of the linguistic and cultural unknown provide a framework for this exploration of texts created or published between 1906 and 1915 on Constantinople by Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Joseph Conrad, Wyndham Lewis, and Vasily Kamensky, which engage with the multifarious expressions and stimuli of the imperial capital. The heterogeneity of narrative and cognitive strategies with which they convey their experiences connotes Constantinople as a contested object of desire of several national and supranational forces between East and West that defies the single, monolingual community, be it imagined or real. The multilingual and multiscriptal print culture of Constantinople, as well as the modernist writers’ literary and artistic imagination and their various translation and transcription practices, delineate what Bodin defines as heterolingualism, namely, linguistic – or literary – situations where communication in one language directed to other languages and produced in otherscripts forms the expected precondition.
Literature and the Making of the World: Cosmopolitan Texts, Vernacular Practices, eds Stefan Helgesson, Helena Bodin & Annika Mörte Alling (London: Bloomsbury Academic), 2022
Bodin explores a case of literary world-making which transgresses the languages of national liter... more Bodin explores a case of literary world-making which transgresses the languages of national literatures. She examines four novels by Theotokas in Greek, Yessayan in Armenian, Edib Adıvar in Turkish and Zdanevich in Russian. They are all set in Constantinople between 1908 and 1922, a period which meant a protracted political crisis for the then still multilingual, multi-ethnic and multireligious city. By positing Constantinople’s narrated site before the fall of the Ottoman Empire as a Bakhtinian chronotope of threshold, Bodin studies how time and space are fused with language and agency in the selected novels. Irrespective of the author’s ethnicity or the novel’s language, the analyses demonstrate that the novels deploy displaced narration, and that they recollect or reclaim a lost world. Thereby, the act of writing itself is challenged, questioned or interrupted. Together, these novels make a linguistically multifaceted contribution to world literature and crafts Constantinople as a literary world.
"Weeping at the Grave Creates the Song: Alleluia": The Nachleben of Russian Orthodox Funeral Hymns in Modern Culture
Why We Sing: Music, Word, and Liturgy in Early Christianity: Essays in honour of Anders Ekenberg's 75th birthday, eds Carl Johan Berglund, Barbara Crostini and James A. Kelhoffer (Leiden: Brill), 2023
This chapter explores the reception within modern culture of Russian Orthodox Christian funeral r... more This chapter explores the reception within modern culture of Russian Orthodox Christian funeral ritual and its hymnography, grounded in early Byzantine traditions. The selected examples of modern literary and musical works span from the 1940s to the 1990s. They are produced in Russian (Anna Akhmatova; Boris Pasternak), Swedish and Finland Swedish (Vera Alexandrova; Hagar Olsson), Church Slavonic (Krzysztof Penderecki), and English (John Tavener). Through their references to Orthodox funeral hymns and practices, a religious and cultural heritage that was severely threatened and almost destroyed by the atheistic communist state of the Soviet Union was remebered and activated anew. Due to their transfer into a secular semiosphere, the funerary texts gained new meanings and functions according to the norms and values which set the standards for modern culture.
"Dwelling Place and Palace": The Theotokos as a "Living City" in Byzantine Hymns, Icons and Liturgical Practice
Spatialities of Byzantine Culture from the Human Body to the Universe, eds Myrto Veikou and Ingela Nilsson (Leiden: Brill), 2022
In Byzantine hymnography, the Theotokos is represented not only as a Virgin and Mother. She is of... more In Byzantine hymnography, the Theotokos is represented not only as a Virgin and Mother. She is often imagined as a city, a Byzantine cityscape—possibly Constantinople—modelled on Jerusalem, the heavenly city. This chapter aims to present and discuss some examples from Byzantine hymnography and Orthodox liturgical practice, where the Theotokos is represented in spatial verbal images as a city with its architectural structures, or is praised as a “living city”, that is, enspirited or ensouled (Gr. empsychos). Its exploration is inspired by intermedial studies, where verbal and visual arts are understood as necessarily interacting and inseparably intertwined, and reflects recent research in which sacred space in Byzantium is regarded as participative. It is demonstrated that the Theotokos is represented as a city in Byzantine hymnography, while in liturgical practice she is at the same time praised by the city itself within the city. The praising of the Theotokos as a “living city” carries not only theological meanings but also activates Constantinople and other historical Mediterranean towns as enspirited in the minds and cultural memory of Orthodox Christians.
The Gunnar Ekelöf Room and the Poet’s Widow as Archivist and Author
Transforming Author Museums: From Sites of Pilgrimage to Cultural Hubs, eds Ulrike Spring, Johan Schimanski and Thea Aarbakke (New York: Berghahn Books), 2022
The Gunnar Ekelöf Room is a reconstructed memorial museum of the late home of the Swedish moderni... more The Gunnar Ekelöf Room is a reconstructed memorial museum of the late home of the Swedish modernist poet at the Sigtuna Foundation not far from Stockholm. While Gunnar Ekelöf’s original manuscripts are archived at Uppsala University Library, their copies are accessible in the duplicate so-called Home Archive, set up by his widow Ingrid Ekelöf and housed in the Gunnar Ekelöf Room, as is also the extensive correspondence between her and the literary critic Brita Wigforss. Guided by cultural memory studies and archival studies which regard archives and writers’ houses as texts and media, this chapter explores how the Home Archive through this correspondence recounts its own origin, thereby offering new aspects of the metonymic principles that generally guide archival work.
The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism, eds Steven G. Kellman & Natasha Lvovich (London: Routledge), 2022
This chapter surveys the diverse landscape of literary translingualism in the Nordic region. A br... more This chapter surveys the diverse landscape of literary translingualism in the Nordic region. A brief overview of contemporary language situations in the Nordic countries is followed by an examination of translingual aspects of the work of Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Edith Södergran, Karen Blixen, and Kjartan Fløgstad. The subsequent sections discuss trends in Nordic literary translingualism from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, focusing in particular on postcolonial contexts, minority literatures, and migration. The chapter concludes with a consideration of how works by Tomas Tranströmer, Caroline Bergvall, and Cia Rinne invite translingual readings.
JOLCEL (Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures), 2021
Setting out from the short dialogue in which the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Si- nope, upon bei... more Setting out from the short dialogue in which the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Si- nope, upon being asked “Where are you from?,” replied “I am a citizen of the world” (a cosmopolitan), the purpose of this article is to explore cosmopolitanism in Byzan- tine tradition, which surpasses the actual empire in both space and time and includes even later Orthodox Christian practices. This is done by considering its significance for literary world-making within the framework of languages used in Byzantine tradi- tion, most importantly Greek. Textual examples from the first centuries AD, of im- portance for later discussions in Byzantium, present Adam, Moses and Christian be- lievers as citizens of the world (cosmopolitans). In subsequent examples from the twelfth century, Orthodox Christian monks are instead called citizens of heaven (ouranopolitans), and the Constantinopolitan writer John Tzetzes records the many languages of the capital of the empire, which often has been described as a cosmopol- itan city. Furthermore, examples of hymnography, homilies, and icons from the Or- thodox Christian celebration of Pentecost are examined. The Pentecostal miracle of- fers a multilingual event which unites and enlightens kosmos in contrast to the confusion of tongues in Babel. As a whole, the article is inspired by discussions of cosmopolitanism as a travelling concept and as a controversial concept that encom- passes both unity and plurality. It is proposed that cosmopolitanism in Byzantine tra- dition borders between homogenising (monolingual) and heterogenising (multilin- gual) modes.
Textual Practice, 2020
With a focus on the crafting of Constantinople as a literary world, this article considers how th... more With a focus on the crafting of Constantinople as a literary world, this article considers how the city’s particularly rich and composite soundscape, linguascape and scriptworld around 1900 contributes to a vernacular poetics. Such a poetics, I suggest, could be described in terms of a heterolingual and multivernacular foregrounding of linguistic difference and asymmetry. Issues relating to the materiality of language and linguistic diversity, including the role of scripts, are explored in a selection of ten Western European travelogues and narratives set in Constantinople during the last period of the Ottoman era (1876–1922) and written in Italian (De Amicis), French (Loti), Danish (Jerichau-Baumann), Norwegian (Skram), and Swedish (Lindberg-Dovlette and Beyel). Proceeding from the soundscape via the linguascape to the scriptworld of the city, it is demonstrated how these ‘-scapes’ and worlds are established, rendered, thematised, transcribed, and inscribed as heterolingual, multivernacular and multiscriptal in Constantinople as a literary world. Different textual and paratextual strategies are identified and analysed with regard to their auditory, visual and material features. However, as a part of monoscriptal Western European literature using Roman script, this literary world becomes cosmopolitanised. In this case the vernacular poetics did not embrace the many scripts of Constantinople.
"So let me remain a stranger": Multilingualism and Biscriptalism in the Works of Finland-Swedish Writer Tito Colliander
The Aesthetics and Politics of Linguistic Borders: Multilingualism in Northern European Literature, eds Heidi Grönstrand, Markus Huss, Ralf Kauranen, New York: Routledge, 2020, s. 242–262, 2020
This chapter examines the intriguing multimodal genre of "biscriptalism". It ties also into the r... more This chapter examines the intriguing multimodal genre of "biscriptalism". It ties also into the role of the reader in the construction of literary multilingualism. The Finland-Swedish, polyglot writer Tito Colliander's memoirs show how Colliander embodied the three roles of author, translator and stranger in the Orthodox Christian diaspora, in both Finland and Estonia, ever since his decision to become a Russian-Orthodox Christian. The use of spoken Russian and Cyrillic script is analysed in order to discuss what these devices meant for Colliander's poetics and identity, also taking into account religion as an important parameter of diversity in the study of literary multilingualism and translingual life writing. It is demonstrated that the experience of translating, mediating and going in-between is crucial to Colliander's life and work: multilingualism and biscriptalism play decisive roles in his diaspora Orthodox Christian identity, but the reader is also invited to continue this task of the translator and to experience the in-betweenness of Colliander's stranger.
World Literatures: Exploring the Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Exchange, eds Stefan Helgesson, Annika Mörte Alling, Yvonne Lindqvist, and Helena Wulff , 2018
This chapter deals similarly with the construction of a specific and secluded world – the harems ... more This chapter deals similarly with the construction of a specific and secluded world – the harems of Constantinople – by an external gaze, in this instance the Swedish writer Elsa Lindberg-Dovlette. Focusing on the textual mechanics of narration, it is demonstrated how the characters’ varying access to direct speech and focalisation, as well as the narrative world’s degree of connectedness to other worlds can effectively be used to gauge the mode and substance of world-making in specific works of literature. In the case of Lindberg- Dovlette, who was married to a Persian diplomat, the harem becomes narrativised as an exclusively female space, clearly bounded but nonetheless transcultural. The paradox is that the women who belong to a harem are confined to it, separated from the outer world by walls and gates, yet women from the outside could always access the harem. Added to that, the harem as a cultural space in Lindberg-Dovlette’s fictions is distinctly hybrid, combining Parisian fashion, European languages and Ottoman traditions. The governesses accessing the harem function in this way as cultural brokers.
Journal of World Literature, 2018
Heterographics (" other lettering ") refers to the use of two scripts in one text or a translatio... more Heterographics (" other lettering ") refers to the use of two scripts in one text or a translation of a text from one script to another. How might the occasional use of hetero-graphics in literary texts highlight issues of cultural diversity? Drawing on intermedial theory and studies of literary multilingualism, literary translation, and pluriliteracies, this article examines various functions of heterographics in selected contemporary literary texts. Examples of embedded Greek, Chinese, Cyrillic, and Arabic script are analysed in works published in Swedish, French, and English between 2004 and 2015, selected because they thematise cultural diversity and linguistic boundaries. The conclusion is that heterographic devices emphasise the heteromediality of literary texts, thereby heightening readers' awareness of the visual-spatial features of literary texts, as well as of the materiality of scripts. Heterographics influence readers' experiences of cultural affinity or alterity, that is, of inclusion or exclusion, depending on their access to practices of pluriliteracies.
"I Sank through the Centuries": Late Antiquity Inscribed in Göran Tunström's Novel The Thief
Reading Late Antiquity, eds Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed & Mats Malm, 2018
A unique treasure has been kept in Uppsala University Library in Sweden since the 17th century: t... more A unique treasure has been kept in Uppsala University Library in Sweden since the 17th century: the Gothic Codex Argenteus. The aim of this chapter is to examine Göran Tunström's novel Tjuven (1986; The Thief) about a fictive theft of the codex, and its use of Late Antique writing techniques and texts, both real and fictive, from the perspective of cultural memory studies with a particular interest in media studies, guided by Astrid Erll's Memory in Culture (2011), based on semiotic models. The different functions of the codex, the novel and the library, respectively, are discussed as memory media. This is done in order to inquire into the identity of the thief and to demonstrate the importance of media for the plot. Late Antique writing techniques and intertexts, together with the role of the historian Procopius of Caesarea (early 6th century) in the novel are explored. The motif of writing on skin in The Thief, particularly the writing of history on female skin, is examined. By focusing on how Late Antiquity is inscribed in Tunström’s novel, it is demonstrated how the obsession with writing is vital for all these aspects of the mediation of cultural memory.
'Rejoice, spring': the Theotokos as fountain in the liturgical practice of Byzantine hymnography
Fountains and Water Culture in Byzantium, eds Brooke Shilling & Paul Stephenson , 2016
In Byzantine hymnography, the Theotokos – the God-bearing Virgin, Mother of God and Unwedded Brid... more In Byzantine hymnography, the Theotokos – the God-bearing Virgin, Mother of God and Unwedded Bride of the Orthodox Church – is represented as a fountain, spring, well or source, as an ‘endless source of the living Water’. These verbal images are closely associated with the visual imagery of icons of various kinds and with structures such as the baptisterium.
The biblical sources for this watery imagery are found in the Old as well as the New Testament. From there come the river and streams (Psalms 46:4), the ‘fountain sealed’ and the well (Song of Songs 4:12, 15), the living water (John 4:10–11), and the water of life in the new, heavenly city of Jerusalem (Revelation 22:1, 17). A special kind of imagery, which should rather be understood as imprints, is the typological imagery, where narratives from the Old Testament offer prefigurations to be fulfilled and interpreted within the frame of the New Testament in the light of the resurrection of Christ. Especially with regard to springs and fountains, important prefigurations are the rock that Moses struck (Exodus 17:6) and the dew on the fleece of Gideon (Judges 6:37). But as will be demonstrated below, the Theotokos is also interpreted as a prefiguration of the baptismal font, or as a new pool of Siloam.
Usually, these typological images signify the Virgin's womb and aim to articulate and praise her role when Christ was conceived, that is her role in the incarnation of God. The water they incorporate is often interpreted as a symbol of purification or health. However, when these originally biblical verbal images are applied in hymnography, their reference might sometimes be to Christ and sometimes the Theotokos, depending on context. Careful readings and analyses are necessary to single out the significance of the spring in a certain hymn. Similar kinds of imagery with regard to the spring are known all over the medieval Christian world. It is present in Hildegard of Bingen's hymns from the twelfth century, for example with reference to Christ in an antiphon for the Virgin, as well as in the revelations of St Bridget from the fourteenth century, in a dialogue between the Mother of God and Christ, where Christ says to his mother: ‘You are like a free-flowing spring from which mercy flows to the wretched.’
Whose Byzantinism – ours or theirs? On the issue of Byzantinism from a cultural semiotic perspective
The reception of Byzantium in European culture since 1500, eds Przemysław Marciniak and Dion C. Smythe, 2016
From a cultural semiotic perspective, inspired by Yuri Lotman and Itamar Even-Zohar, it is demons... more From a cultural semiotic perspective, inspired by Yuri Lotman and Itamar Even-Zohar, it is demonstrated in this article that the notion of Byzantinism is used in both the Western semiosphere, relating to Paris as its cultural centre, and the Byzantine semiosphere, relating to Constantinople. Since Byzantinism functions in different ways and carries different meanings and values in these semiospheres, it has often been used to separate the semiospheres from each other. In this sense, the notion of Byzantinism marks the cultural border between ‘us’ and ‘them’, from the point of view of the Western as well as the Byzantine semiosphere. An all too simple and superficial understanding of this phenomenon has been challenged however by various writers and intellectuals, who represent different languages and cultures, and who operate within either the Western or the Byzantine semiosphere, yet who all say ‘our Byzantinism’.
Byzantinism might strengthen the sense of belonging to a Byzantine community, or articulate the desire to do so, as in the case of Konstantin Leontiev’s Russian article on ‘Byzantinism and Slavdom’. In the French avant-garde context of La Revue blanche, the notion of Byzantinism, might be brought from the periphery of the Western cultural system into fin-de-siècle Paris, right into the heart of the Western semiosphere. Cavafy’s poem ‘Στην Eκκλησία’ (In the Church) represents a case of interference between the Western and the Byzantine cultural systems. Rather than adherence to any culturally central norms it articulates a state of cultural change.
Byzantinism conceived as ‘ours’ is not a culturally centralised notion carrying positive value only within the Byzantine semiosphere. This complex and enigmatic notion can be characterised by its tendency to cause interference and transfers in the peripheries of both the Western and Byzantine cultural systems. The notion of Byzantinism has proved to be able to both separate and unite East and West, i.e. the Byzantine and the Western semiospheres. From within either, Byzantinism can be shown to be not only theirs, but also ours.
Borders and the Changing Boundaries of Knowledge, eds Inga Brandell, Marie Carlson and Önver A. Çetrez, Nov 2015
The article explores how Byzantium was represented by Mount Athos, the Orthodox Christian monasti... more The article explores how Byzantium was represented by Mount Athos, the Orthodox Christian monastic republic, in Swedophone travelogues from the 1950s and 60s, and from which bases of knowledge and values this was done. The issue is addressed from a cultural semiotic perspective, based on Yuri Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere in combination with Itamar Even-Zohar’s method of studying cultural and dynamic polysystems.
Mount Athos is a cultural and religious centre of great importance to all of “the Byzantine commonwealth”, i.e. a centre within the Byzantine semiosphere. The travellers crossed or faced political, cultural, linguistic and religious borders, yet some of them failed to notice the epistemological border between the semiospheres. Decisive to how Byzantium was represented by Mount Athos was whether the monastic republic was judged and evaluated according to the norms of the Byzantine or the Western cultural system – that is, whether Mount Athos was regarded as central within the Byzantine semiosphere, or as peripheral within the Western semiosphere.
Sophie Elkan’s Ambiguous Dream of the Orient. On Cultural Identity and the National Literary Canon
The aim is to consider the formation of a Nordic literary canon from a cultural semiotic perspect... more The aim is to consider the formation of a Nordic literary canon from a cultural semiotic perspective as presented by Yuri M. Lotman and others, by means of a discussion of a Swedish and Western identity and self-understanding as mirrored and enacted in several works by the Swedish writer Sophie Elkan (1853–1921) set in Sweden, Egypt, Lebanon, and Constantinople. The works examined are the novel Drömmen om Österlandet [The Dream of the Orient], and two short stories, “Herr Schwartz” [“Mr. Schwarz”] and “Ställ ut armeniern!” [“Sling out the Armenian!”], all published in 1901. I propose an understanding of the literary canon as a kind of cultural, collective memory. Elkan’s narratives, set in Oriental milieus, are demonstrated to create their own semiotic spaces, where the semiospheres of traditional Western and Eastern cultures overlap in surprisingly new constellations. Her stories question otherwise not explicitly articulated cultural norms and enquire into presupposed normative Swedish or Western cultural identities. According to the argument of cultural semiotics, it is essential to all national literatures, their canons and the cultural identities they foster that challenging stories like these, stories which stage cultural clashes, cultural misunderstandings and cultural differences, are narrated, discussed and interpreted.
Wanted Byzantium. The Desire for a Lost Empire, eds Ingela Nilsson & Paul Stephenson
’Paradise in a cave’ – the garden of the Theotokos in Byzantine hymnography
Byzantine Gardens and Beyond. Eds. Helena Bodin & Ragnar Hedlund, p. 128–47., 2013
Paradox is my gospel. On the existential significance of Byzantine holy men, icons and apophaticism in the work of Lars Gyllensten
Byzanzrezeption in Europa. Spurensuche über das Mittelalter und die Renaissance bis in die Gegenwart. Hrsg. Foteini Kolovou, p. 243–258.
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Papers (in English) by Helena Bodin
The biblical sources for this watery imagery are found in the Old as well as the New Testament. From there come the river and streams (Psalms 46:4), the ‘fountain sealed’ and the well (Song of Songs 4:12, 15), the living water (John 4:10–11), and the water of life in the new, heavenly city of Jerusalem (Revelation 22:1, 17). A special kind of imagery, which should rather be understood as imprints, is the typological imagery, where narratives from the Old Testament offer prefigurations to be fulfilled and interpreted within the frame of the New Testament in the light of the resurrection of Christ. Especially with regard to springs and fountains, important prefigurations are the rock that Moses struck (Exodus 17:6) and the dew on the fleece of Gideon (Judges 6:37). But as will be demonstrated below, the Theotokos is also interpreted as a prefiguration of the baptismal font, or as a new pool of Siloam.
Usually, these typological images signify the Virgin's womb and aim to articulate and praise her role when Christ was conceived, that is her role in the incarnation of God. The water they incorporate is often interpreted as a symbol of purification or health. However, when these originally biblical verbal images are applied in hymnography, their reference might sometimes be to Christ and sometimes the Theotokos, depending on context. Careful readings and analyses are necessary to single out the significance of the spring in a certain hymn. Similar kinds of imagery with regard to the spring are known all over the medieval Christian world. It is present in Hildegard of Bingen's hymns from the twelfth century, for example with reference to Christ in an antiphon for the Virgin, as well as in the revelations of St Bridget from the fourteenth century, in a dialogue between the Mother of God and Christ, where Christ says to his mother: ‘You are like a free-flowing spring from which mercy flows to the wretched.’
Byzantinism might strengthen the sense of belonging to a Byzantine community, or articulate the desire to do so, as in the case of Konstantin Leontiev’s Russian article on ‘Byzantinism and Slavdom’. In the French avant-garde context of La Revue blanche, the notion of Byzantinism, might be brought from the periphery of the Western cultural system into fin-de-siècle Paris, right into the heart of the Western semiosphere. Cavafy’s poem ‘Στην Eκκλησία’ (In the Church) represents a case of interference between the Western and the Byzantine cultural systems. Rather than adherence to any culturally central norms it articulates a state of cultural change.
Byzantinism conceived as ‘ours’ is not a culturally centralised notion carrying positive value only within the Byzantine semiosphere. This complex and enigmatic notion can be characterised by its tendency to cause interference and transfers in the peripheries of both the Western and Byzantine cultural systems. The notion of Byzantinism has proved to be able to both separate and unite East and West, i.e. the Byzantine and the Western semiospheres. From within either, Byzantinism can be shown to be not only theirs, but also ours.
Mount Athos is a cultural and religious centre of great importance to all of “the Byzantine commonwealth”, i.e. a centre within the Byzantine semiosphere. The travellers crossed or faced political, cultural, linguistic and religious borders, yet some of them failed to notice the epistemological border between the semiospheres. Decisive to how Byzantium was represented by Mount Athos was whether the monastic republic was judged and evaluated according to the norms of the Byzantine or the Western cultural system – that is, whether Mount Athos was regarded as central within the Byzantine semiosphere, or as peripheral within the Western semiosphere.