German Linguistic and Cultural Studies 18 From the Margins to the Centre Irish Perspectives on Swiss Culture and Literature von Sabine Egger, Patrick Studer 1. Auflage From the Margins to the Centre Egger / Studer schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei beck-shop.de DIE FACHBUCHHANDLUNG Peter Lang Bern 2007 Verlag C.H. Beck im Internet: www.beck.de ISBN 978 3 03910 716 2 Inhaltsverzeichnis: From the Margins to the Centre Egger / Studer
Preface When a small German studies workshop entitled Swiss Presence in Ireland was held in Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, in spring 2004, nobody thought that the papers read at that meeting would eventually be published in a book. But the meeting left a clear message participants as well as organisers felt that Switzerland should be addressed as a topic in academic terms and that a research agenda should be drawn up that would focus on relevant issues of Swiss culture as it was perceived and taught in Ireland. This is how the project From the margins to the centre: Irish perspectives on Swiss culture and literature was born. A project outline was drafted and submitted to Mary Immaculate College and Presence Switzerland, asking for support, which was generously granted and is gratefully acknowledged here. 1 The project outline met with a favourable response in Ireland. Colleagues from Dublin, Maynooth, Cork and Limerick submitted paper proposals and began working on their projects. As the book was gradually taking shape, more colleagues and writers from Ireland, Germany and Switzerland expressed their interest in taking part. The present book is the result of our efforts to collect and present the various strands of research and literary reflections in book form. Its purpose is not so much to develop a theory of Swiss studies as to introduce the reader to the diverse perceptions of Swiss culture in an Irish academic context. The different parts of this collection of essays reflect different perspectives relating to the broad theme of the book. This includes an introduction to Swiss Irish connections and images in part I, contributions about cross-cultural perceptions and experiences in literature, media and correspondence in part II, inside views on Swiss cultural discourse in part III and reflections on Swiss literary discourse in part 1 The editors wish to extend their thanks to the Centre for Irish-German Studies, University of Limerick, for their contribution towards the cost of publication.
10 Patrick Studer and Sabine Egger IV. The contributors to this book have made use of a range of methodologies to approach these issues. In parts I, II and III the contributions are primarily centred on cultural studies and discourse analysis, while in part IV cultural studies are combined with methodologies from literary studies. The papers in this volume highlight quite unexpected parallels and links between Ireland and Switzerland. From the margins to the centre refers firstly to the perspective most contributions have in common: they take Ireland, which tends to be perceived geographically and culturally as a place apart, located on the western margin of Europe, as their vantage point to discuss a country at the centre of the European continent. But what emerges from this collection of papers is that Switzerland shares with Ireland the advantages and disadvantages of being a small country in a European context. Both have been challenged to find and secure their place in Europe; both countries have lived in the shade of larger neighbouring countries for centuries while sharing their languages with them; both countries have been criticized and praised for the peculiarities of their people. Thus the common ground between Switzerland and Ireland reaches beyond political and historical links. It is also reflected in Swiss and Irish cultural perceptions and collective attitudes. The parallel experience of the two countries appears as a theme throughout the book. Various contributions draw attention to cultural similarities between Switzerland and Ireland by explicit comparison or by focusing on aspects of Swiss culture and literature that are normally associated with Ireland rather than with Switzerland, such as the experience of exile and belonging to a minority group ethnically, linguistically or spiritually and the effort to maintain a precarious balance between cultural independence and participation in a larger culture. These parallels may not be surprising if one looks at the historical evolution of the cultural images of both countries. From the Middle Ages to modern times not only Ireland but also Switzerland was seen as an unverfestigte Randzone in Europe. 2 Until the 2 Guy P. Marchal, Die Ursprünge der Unabhängigkeit (401 1394), in Beatrix Mesmer (ed.), Geschichte der Schweiz und der Schweizer, vol. 1 (Basle, Frankfurt/M.: Helbing & Lichtenhahn), 105 210; p.140.
Preface 11 eighteenth century the Swiss and the Irish held the reputation of being wild people close to nature, living on the fringes of civilisation and refusing any authoritarian rule from outside. 3 Holfter/Studer s article on Swiss Irish relations is an attempt to mark out the broad terrain of intercultural connections between Switzerland and Ireland in an introductory overview. Egger s contribution, which is based on image studies, analyses Germany s literary discourse on Switzerland and Ireland to show how both countries appear as places of refuge from history in West German poetry of the 1950s. The contributions in part II deal with perceptions of Switzerland and Ireland as a result of culture contact. The interview with Peter Stamm and Gabrielle Alioth s reflections on Schreibinseln emphasize the subjective experience of Swiss and Irish culture by Swiss literary authors visiting or living in Ireland. The discussions by Dreike and Schewe of Swiss literature in an Irish classroom setting address the resources and difficulties involved in teaching literature to English-speaking students. While Dreike s close textual analysis of a passage from Max Frisch s Montauk brings to light the microlinguistic factors involved in cultural encoding, Schewe discusses the use of intertextual references in Thomas Hürlimann s Das Lied der Heimat. A similar discourse analytic approach is taken by Schiller/Williams in their cross-cultural analysis of Swiss and Irish chocolatier websites. Schiller/Williams show that invisible cultural factors must be addressed in multi-lingual website translation. In his edition of Blayney Townley Balfour s letters, Fischer highlights the historical dimension of Swiss-Irish encounters as he follows the footsteps of an Irish traveller in 18th century Switzerland. Part III focuses on Switzerland as a multi-lingual and multiethnic country. Ricci-Lempen and Laudenberg take a closer look at Swiss minority literatures from two different angles. Ricci-Lempen, a French-speaking writer and committee member of the Swiss Writers Union, addresses the marginalisation of writers from non-germanspeaking Switzerland, while Laudenberg looks at the literary journeys of immigrant writers dealing with their cultural experience in their 3 Cf. Markus Kutter, Die Schweizer und die Deutschen (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1997), p.109.
12 Patrick Studer and Sabine Egger work. O Regan/Studer concentrate on the power of the media in the construction of images of foreign nationals in Switzerland. The essays in part IV look at the diverse ways contemporary Swiss writers deal with the cultural space of Switzerland. Carmel Finnan shows how Aglaja Veteranyi, the daughter of Romanian circus artists who fled from Ceau escu s regime to settle in Switzerland, attempts in her texts to construct imaginatively a sense of self and place. The poetic construction of Heimat is also at the centre of Tebbutt s article on Mariella Mehr. Mehr, who belongs to the Yenish traveller community, has written numerous prose works, plays and volumes of poetry but has, until now, received hardly any attention in secondary literature. Barkhoff s appreciation of Franz Hohler, by contrast, emphasizes the destabilizing effect of contemporary literary work on Swiss cultural perceptions. This perspective is shared by Heffernan who analyses Diggelmann s confrontation of Switzerland with its Nazi past in the novel Die Hinterlassenschaft. Finally Stuhlmann offers a transnational reading of the poetry of Raphael Urweider in which local colouring combines with universal motifs beyond national or cultural boundaries. The present collection of essays pays homage not only to Switzerland as our source of inspiration but above all to the friends and colleagues who have contributed to it. To them we owe our thanks. We hope that this volume will inspire further research into the area. The editors