By bringing a new format in novel reading, the long Night of literature saw different authors reading excerpts from their popular works. The audience, however, kept moving from one author to another. By Riya Sharma
As an avid reader, a person can enjoy novels ranging from different genres and from works of authors around the globe. Some might relate to the poetry of Wordsworth or some may be more inspired by the works of Samuel Beckett. It all depends on the geographical, cultural, relativity and mere interest in a topic that a person is drawn closer to the writings of a particular writer.
But, what how would you feel if your favourite author stands in front of you and read excerpts from their most popular works. This is what happened at an collaborative event organised by nine nine European organisations and cultural centers based in India. In a bid to bring a new dimension in presenting literature to audience in a novel format, this years’ edition of long Night of literatures was organised at the Cervantes Institute.
The evening started with an opening session with Indian author Raj Kamal Jha, who read an excerpt from his book, She Will Build Him A City. The excerpt that he read out underlined the innocent and doting relationship between a mother and her child. “I wrote this book during my stay in Berlin. The whole idea of living away from home, fascinated me and it also worked well. I have insomnia since the time when I was six. So, for me, home is a happy and and peaceful space where I can sleep in comfortably. I believe in the popular saying, “House is a building and home is a feeling,” and this is what I have tried to show in the novel,” said Jha.
The format encouraged audiences to listen to several authors through the course of the evening where each author addressed an audience of about 12-15 people for 20 minutes. The audience were divided into smaller groups, given a coloured band and were asked to stick to their group. So, the format worked in a way where the audience were moving from one author to another, while the authors kept repeating their performance.
In the initial 10 minutes, an author read an excerpt of their choice (from either their book or collection of poems) and explained the text and also the context. The last 10 minutes, were actually dedicated to an interaction with the writers.
Our first session was with Andrea Biancheti, an Italian by descent and who now lives in Switzerland. He read out his poems describing the difficult times of the Second World War. During his session, we noticed that the imagery of insects and cigarettes were central to his poems. The writer agreed and said, “Insects are an recurring imagery in my poems but I don’t do it intentionally. The composite nature of humans being soft from the external (referring to the skin) and insects being hard (referring to their exoskeleton) is one of the reasons for use of this imagery.”
He added that his grandmother taught him the stories of the Second World War and he always imagined the crisis while writing.
As the bell rung, we left for another session with Danko Rebrenovic from Germany. His parents are Yugoslvian journalists and before the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia, he came to Germany to escape army conscription. He read out an excerpt from his work, Herzlich Willkommencic which showcased his journey through two different worlds
Gabor lanczkor from Hungary is a poet, novelist and a playwright, and he was our next stop. As he read out his chosen extract we realised that the author crossed the boundaries of genres and art forms with the same ease as he crossed the borders of Hungary, Italy, England and India. He read out parts of his poetic cycle-the house of Goya and his poetic cycle from seven cornered book on Amrita Shergill.
We sat in on london Poet laureate, 22 year old Aisling Fahey’s recital after that. Hers was a touching rendition of poems which touched upon theme of her relationship with England and Israel. Through her verse she tried to explain how important it is to understand history. “I am trying to inspire people to learn poetry and passing my love for poetry. It feels lovely to become an inspiration for someone,” she said.
Others who performed at this night, full of inspiration and knowledge, were Josef Haslinger from Austria, Katarzyna Bonda from Poland, Asha Miro from Spain and Constantin Simon from France.
As the night came to an end, we could not spot a group that was tired. Instead, by the end of the sessions we saw people moving in groups together, to have kindled a new friendship in the course of time. As the event aimed to raise awareness of rich linguistic diversity of Europe, we saw the audience going back home not with the handful of knowledge but memories of performances which will will remain with them until the next edition of night of literature.