The Project: Idea, Aims and Realisation
In autumn 2000, the “West-Eastern Divan” project initiated new forms of literary encounters aimed at improving the mutual awareness of German and Middle Eastern literature. The core concept envisages German authors travelling to Arab countries, Turkey or Iran, to meet fellow-writers there and then those writers being invited back to Germany to return the visit. This kind of exchange visit gives the writers a chance to get to know each other in their own environment, take trips together through the country, give joint readings, and write about each other’s literature and each other’s world each in their own language.
Each encounter between two authors results in two longer essays. After a number of such encounters, the authors’ essays are then published as a book; German writers portraying cities, authors and cultural locations in the Middle East and, vice versa, well-known Iranian, Turkish or Arab authors writing about German literature – a genuine West-Eastern Divan.
The first authors to take part in this project were Lebanese poet Abbas Beydoun and German writer Michael Kleeberg. For six weeks in the winter of 2002, Abbas Beydoun lived in Berlin as the guest of the Wissenschaftskolleg. Then, in January 2003, Michael Kleeberg visited Beirut, where Abbas Beydoun provided insights into the cultural scene there and they took part in joint readings. Both of these encounters led to publications: Michael Kleeberg’s diary of his Lebanese visit appeared as “Das Tier, das weint” (“The Animal that Cries”) and Abbas Beydoun published a volume of poetry entitled “Eine Saison in Berlin” (“A Season in Berlin”).
Until autumn 2007, ten further author encounters have taken place: Egyptian author Miral al-Tahawi and German-Croatian writer Marica Bodrozic; Beirut novelist Raschid al-Daif and Joachim Helfer from Berlin; Moroccan poet Abdallah Zrika and Ulrike Draesner; Edwar al-Charrat from Cairo and Martin Mosebach from Frankfurt; Turkish novelist Elif Shafak and Ulrich Peltzer from Berlin; Iranian author Schahriar Mandanipur and playwright Albert Ostermaier; poet Qassim Haddad from Bahrain and German-Bulgarian author Ilija Trojanow; Egyptian novelist Gamal al-Ghitani and Ingo Schulze from Berlin; Iranien author Amir Hassan Cheheltan and Guy Helminger from Cologne. Palestinian writer Adania Shibli met in Germany Judith Kuckart and in Ramallah the German author Moritz Rinke. These encounters similarly proved to be an impulse for various articles and radio reports about their discoveries; the visits have generated not only friendships but also publications.
Journalists, literary scholars and institutions are also involved in the project, ensuring the authors benefit a range of impulses in their professional and scholarly dialogue with other culture’s literature. The Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin is inviting them to use their research facilities, join working groups or give joint seminars with literary scholars or other cultural scientists as part the “Cultural Mobility in Middle East” project.
The authors give a series of readings held in a variety of different locations depending on the nature of the encounter, although venues often include the House of World Cultures in Berlin, the Berliner Festspiele, the German Academic Exchange Service, diverse literary houses across Germany, and other institutions involved in the dissemination of culture and literature here, and the Goethe Institutes in each of the guest authors’ home countries.
The results of these trips are presented in a range of media: the concluding essays are published by the editor C.H. Beck, radio broadcaster WDR 3 accompanies the project with authors’ reports, translations of the authors’ works are made available to a number of German and Middle Eastern journals, especially Diwan, the journal for Arabian and German poetry, and Fikrun wa Fann, published (in Arabic) by the Goethe Institute; the guest authors are also presented in Germany in the Kritisches Lexikon zur fremdsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur.
Project Sponsors, Curators and Co-opereations
The project is sponsored by the Berliner Festspiele and – until 2005 - by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Modernity and Islam Working Group); from autumn 2005, the latter’s place has be taken by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), although the Wissenschaftskolleg continued to support the project as cooperation partner. Indeed, the participating authors could not enjoy the range of activities they do without the project’s other cooperation partners: the Goethe Institute in the Middle East region, the Forum Goethe-Institute, the House of World Cultures, the Radio WDR 3 Kulturwelle, the Kritisches Lexikon zur fremdsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur, the journal for Arabian and German poetry “Diwan”, and the C. H. Beck publishing house. The project is coordinated by Thomas Hartmann and Alia Rayyan.
A board has been set up with the task of choosing the authors to participate in the project. The board’s members for the encounters from 2005 on are: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Author and Reviewer / Kritisches Lexikon zur fremdsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur), Sven Arnold (House of World Cultures), Björn Blaschke (WDR), Navid Kermani (Journalist), Christine von dem Knesebeck (Forum Goethe-Institut), Friederike Pannewick (University of Oslo), Joachim Sartorius (Berliner Festspiele), Stefan Weidner (Fikrun wa Fann) and Thomas Lier (Goethe Institute).
The first two encounters were funded by the German Federal Foreign Office; the further encounters have been made possible by grants provided by the Federal Cultural Foundation.
Contact
West-östlicher Diwan
Attn.: Thomas Hartmann
c/o Berliner Festspiele – Intendanz
Schaperstr. 24
10719 Berlin
tho-ha[at]t-online.de