My old professor,
Vivi Edström, has passed away.
She was 95, and she
had lived a long and happy life. Yet it definitely feels that an
important part of my life has gone with her.
Vivi was the first
Chair of children's literature in Scandinavia, which was a big thing
back in early '80s. And she was at the Comparative Literature
department in Stockholm, not Education, not Library and Information,
not Childhood Studies, and not even Sociology of Literature in
Uppsala where the first PhDs in children's literature were awarded.
For Vivi, children's literature was literature, fullstop.
I remember coming to
her office for the first time. I had been in Sweden for three weeks,
but I had an oral recommendation from the Director of the Swedish
Children's Books Institute whom I had meet the previous year in
Moscow. I wanted to study children's literature because it hadn't
been possible in Russia. I had read Vivi's book Form in Children's
Books: A Study in the Art of Narration – I am not sure
how I got hold of it in Russia. There I was, scared to death, as I
always am with new people and in new situations. Although I had
studied Swedish for thirteen years, I had never been to Sweden
before, and I hadn't had many opportunities to speak it. Many years
later Vivi mentioned that her first impression of me was “scared
girl with big eyes”.
I enrolled in two
courses, Children's literature and Young Adult Literature and wrote a
final undergraduate dissertation on the topic that eventually became
my PhD. Vivi gave me special privileges to attend her graduate
seminar where I met my future fellow students. She was generous and
supportive. I was accepted into the doctoral programme next term, and
after a while Vivi managed to get me a four-year studentship, which
was unusual at that time. She was like that, always finding way to
promote her students and sharing her favours fairly among us. She got
us various awards for our theses. She would pass on to us tasks that
she didn't want or had no time to do: leading book circles and
teaching professional development courses, writing reviews and even
more prestigious stuff; for instance, I contributed, on her
recommendation, a chapter on children's literature for a History
of Swedish Literature with University of Nebraska Press. She also
edited several volumes in Swedish, on picturebooks and on children's
poetry, and we all contributed to these.
Vivi and I didn't
always agree, and she could be quite harsh. Several times after
supervisions I came home in tears and told my husband that I would
never again set my foot in the department. Vivi strongly opposed my
wish to write my thesis in English; my argument was that all my
primary and most of my secondary sources were English. It was
habitual then, and perhaps still is, in Comparative Literature
departments in Sweden to study one particular writer, preferably
dead, and even “XX's early writing”, so my Proppian structuralist
approach felt alien. I learned later that the night before my defence
she called several colleagues asking whether they thought I would
pass.
A typical glimpse of
our conversations:
Vivi: I think you
should let chapters 2 and 3 change places.
Me: But I have just
changed them as you told me last time.
Vivi: Good, now we
see that it didn't work.
One term I was
Vivi's TA for the dissertation seminar on children's literature, and
at the first session I introduced myself and said that the professor
would join us any minute. Only she didn't, and I had to spend two
hours talking to students without preparation or any qualifications
apart having done the course myself. Next term, I was entrusted with
teaching this course on my own. I had to use Vivi's syllabus, and one
session I found particularly challenging. When I told Vivi, she said:
“Next time, let them work in groups”.
Toward the end of my
PhD as I was considering my future career, Vivi said: “Don't bother
about publishing articles, they don't count. Write books”.
(Ironically, these days I have to tell my students the opposite).
Vivi was President
of the Selma Lagerlöf Society, Lagerlöf her other passion and
academic interest apart from children's literature. She invited me to
join the board of the Society and pushed me toward Lagerlöf
research, which became decisive for me subsequent career. You
couldn't get a permanent position in Comparative Literature with
children's literature research only, you needed to show that you
could do ”real” literature as well. Lagerlöf became my real
literature area, and I wrote a book for the Society's series and
several other things. Vivi and I spent many nice hours together as I
was driving us from Stockholm to Värmland, Lagerlöf's home province
where Society's annual meetings were held. I used to drive Vivi home
from the University after seminars or guest lectures – it was in
the opposite direction from my place, but not too much out of my way.
I thought it was quite natural since I had a car and she didn't, but
she mentioned this as one of my special virtues at my defence
banquet.
We co-edited a
volume on Lagerlöf, and I contributed a chapter. Vivi didn't like my
interpretation of earthly and heavenly love.
Vivi: You are wrong.
Me: There is no
right or wrong in literary analysis; this is the way I see it.
Vivi: You cannot
make this claim.
Me: You are not my
supervisor any more, you cannot tell me what I can or cannot claim.
Vivi: You are wrong.
This is Vivi in her
essence.
After retirement she
withdrew from public academic life. She published more books,
including one on Jane Austen, but otherwise she took up painting and
had small exhibitions and enjoyed life. Every now and then she
invited me for tea.
When I got the chair
in Cambridge, Staffan called her to brag on my behalf. Well, she
said, that's what Masha had always wanted, hadn't she?
In her study Form
in Children's Book, Vivi was the first in Sweden and probably
among the very first in the world to claim that formal features of
children's literature were just as important, or even more important
than content, what she referred to ”children's literature here and
there, representations of this and that”. She wrote about the
significance of narrative perspective and temporality long before
these concepts became commonplace in international children's
literature scholarship. She was a pathfinder and a flagship. Swedish
children's literature research would not have flourished as it has
without Vivi. We all owe her. And I certainly would not have been
where I am if I hadn't had the privilege of being her disciple.
