Heteroglossia

I have just come home from Norway. Yes, again. And yes, another PhD examination. I will not repeat the whole procedure, but there was a trial lecture and the defence itself, and there was an elegant examiners' dinner, an elegant lunch with the candidate and supervisors, and an elegant doctoral dinner with family and friends.

A slightly new aspect this time was the mixture of languages. The thesis was written in English, and the defence was in English. Neither the candidate, the supervisors nor the examiners are native English speakers. That's not unusual in the Nordic countries. The unusual was that both examiners are native Russian speakers. Who spoke Russian non-stop, much to everybody's amazement. But why would they be amazed? Didn't they look us up when they invited us to examine? Didn't they know that we were both nomadic subjects with a heavy luggage of languages? Perhaps our current affiliations were more important than our eclectic academic past.

On the other hand, my fellow examiner was perplexed that I could talk to Norwegians. "So you speak Norwegian?" "No, I speak Swedish". "Do they speak Swedish?" "No, they speak Norwegian". How very confusing. At the doctoral dinner it turned out that the candidate's sister spoke Hebrew, so suddenly she and my fellow examiner had a secret language. And I could help showing off and saying "Good morning" in Lithuanian when we met over breakfast. I could certainly have managed some Yiddish (bad German can always pass as Yiddish), but that would have been too much.

I cannot be sure, but I believe this Babel babble made me particularly tired.

Our names are who we are

For some reason, two articles on a similar topic were circulated on Facebook today: this and this. It is a very interesting subject with many dimenions, far from all covered in the articles. I surely recognise the situation described by Jill Filipovic:

"My last name is "Filipovic." People can't spell it or pronounce it, which is a liability when your job includes writing articles under your difficult-to-spell last name, and occasionally doing television or radio hits where the host cannot figure out what to all you. It's weird, and it's "ethnic," and it makes me way too easily Google-able. But Jill Filipovic is my name and my identity".

My first name is simple and international. You wouldn't expect anyone to have problems. Still, people insist on spelling it “Marija” or “Mariya”, I presume because they believe it must be exotic, and pronouncing it “meRAya”, for reasons that escape me. It doesn't help when I tell people to call me Masha, because they pronounce it MASH, MUSH or MARSH, and spell it Mascha or Marsha, unless they are Swedish and spell it Masja. That is, if they understand at all how Masha can be a derivative of Maria, which in my humble opinion is more understandable than how Polly can be a derivative of Maria. Yet, Masha is who I am, while Maria is my professional avatar, alien and uncomfortable. I am afraid it is too late to start calling myself Masha on book covers.

When it comes to my last name, since it was originally written in Cyrillic it was up to me to decide how I wanted to spell it in Latin, and I chose to spell it in the most logical way for my country of residence, Sweden. If my first country had been English-speaking, I would have spelled it Nikolayeva, Nicolayeva or Nicholayeva; in German, it would be Nikolajewa, in French, Nikolaeva or, if my ancestors had emigrated in early twentieth century, Nikolaeff. And some people, who want to show off their profound knowledge of Russian, spell it Nikolajevna. Which is a correct Russian patronymic, but not mine.

Well, I have chosen to spell my last name the Swedish way, but even in Sweden they pronounce it in all possible ways. Some may be confused by Polish, and put the stress on the penultima, but I have seldom heard my name pronounced correctly even by people who are supposed to know Russian. Again, I think they just assume it must be pronounced different from the simplest way. In the English-speaking countries, people of course pronounce the “j” as in John, in French, as in Jean, in Spanish, as in Juan, and Germans don't even try. Filipovic is child's play in comparison. The funniest episodes are when somebody asks me how to pronounce my last name, and a good friend or colleague, whom I have never bothered to correct, answers, pronouncing it wrong. I have given up. But see, how much easier life would have been if I had taken my husband's last name. Everybody would know how to pronounce it, even though they would always spell it wrong.

I changed my name in my first marriage for the reasons mentioned in Jill Filipovic's article: social pressure, submissiveness, practicalities. My fiance, who had been married before and whose first wife had not changed her name, told me that his mother had said: “I hope this one takes your name”. I wanted to show that this one meant the marriage to last. Both names are painfully common in Russia, so it wasn't a big deal, like changing Brown for Smith. As you see, changing names doesn't guarantee a lasting marriage. I started to be published under my married name, and I have my university diploma in my married name, which means that each time I applied for a job I had to provide a copy of my divorce certificate. I hadn't received a huge professional reputation under my married name, but some of my early academic publications and translations are under my married name.

Staffan did not want me to take his name when we were married, claiming that intellectual, liberated Swedish women tended to keep their own names. I had to believe him, and I later discovered that some Swedish women did and some didn't. There are certain advantages to have the same last name as your children, for one thing.

After three decades, Staffan now admits that he was wrong. My life in Sweden would have been easier if I had a Swedish last name. Sweden only has a very recent tradition of immigrants, and a foreign name – unless it is English, French or German – is suspicious. When we lived in California, nobody cared about my exotic name: everybidy had exotic names, everybody had come from somewhere else. When they asked where I came from and I said Sweden, there were no raised eyebrows.

But in Sweden I was and will always be an alien as long as I have an exotic name. I can speak Swedish impeccably, I can be a professor of Swedish literature, I can publish books in Swedish, but my name will always be against me. When I wrote picturebooks together with a fabulous Russian-born illustrator, the publisher made me use a pseudonym because they didn't want two Russian names on the cover. It would look as if the books were translated. It suddenly strikes me now that they didn't ask my male illustrator to use a pseudonym. Do you see a parallel with married women?

My oldest son's wife wanted to take his name, but he dissuaded her. She wanted their children to have his name, and he said, over my dead body. Not because he is a liberated Swedish man, but because it is hugely impractical to have an exotic name in Sweden, a lesson he learned at a price, just as I did.

Here in the UK and particularly in Cambridge exotic names are legio. Even the University Vice-Chancellor has an exotic name, and I hope nobody asks him where he comes from. When people here ask me where I come from and I say Sweden, they comment: “But isn't your name Russian/Polish/Bulgarian/Hungarian (yes, Hungarian!)”. I reply, yes it is, but I still come from Sweden. If they insist, I tell them one of my family histories, and then they relate to other colleagues that I am Greek, Finnish, German or Jewish, depending on which version they were exposed to. 

In fact, my family history is so complicated that I genuinely don't know, and there is nobody alive whom I can ask. The only thing I know for sure is that I am not Russian. 

If, as Jill Filipovic rightly states, our last names are an indispensable part of our identities, then my name should be Tietz. It is not my father's name, but it is the family name with which I feel strongest affinity. I am afraid it's too late to change it now.

Old Hags' Day

Tomorrow is the International Women's Day, another holiday I do not celebrate. Women's Day once a year, and the rest are men's days?

Many years ago I was asked to speak at the International Women's Day manifestation in Stockholm, to tell my poor oppressed sisters about the liberated women of the Soviet Union. I could not make the date, so I didn't have to explain to my oppressed sister how wrong she was in her perceptions. Women in the Soviet Union had to work full-time to make ends meet AND do all the house work on top of it, because men would never do a thing in the house, but once a year they were expected to give their wives a bunch of flowers and a bottle of perfume. After that, they had an extra occasion to get drunk because it was a holiday. The day after, they took an extra holiday to treat the hangover.

In school, Women's Day was about female teachers. At home, it was about mothers and grandmothers, a variant of Mother's Day. In my family, we did not celebrate it. We made the most of it being a holiday and went skiing.

At my workplace in Moscow, the union – which was just another administrative structure, nothing like a real union – had funds to give every female employee a present. After a couple of years of paper doilies and plastic pins, we asked for cash. The male union reps took a sigh of relief.

If there was anything political in Women's Day it was about oppressed women in the capitalist world who needed our solidarity. We didn't care about oppressed women in the capitalist world because we had enough of our own problems. When feminist movement started in Russia after the fall of communism, the highest point on the agenda was every woman's right to stay at home and take care of her family. 

Fortunately, Staffan never tried to honour me on Women's Day. I would have been deeply offended.

My wonderful great-aunt used to say, when greeted on Women's Day: “I am not a woman, I am a librarian”. Rather than Women's Day, I'd celebrate a Hug-a-Librarian Day. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

Rebirth

I know I have said this before, but it cannot be said too often. The miracle is repeated every year. The first day of gardening, mostly inspection, but some tidying, some weeding, some trimming. I say: "Hello, mate" to a bluebell that has come in the same spot as last year. I say: "And where did you come from? Welcome!" to a couple of snowdrops I have not seen before. I say: "Come on!" to daffodils that will bloom any day. I state that the new roses have survived the frosty nights. I see that the day lilies I replanted in the autumn are coming out. I see that the d-d deer have not eaten all tulips. The lilacs and the blackcurrants have large buds. The clematis has first tiny shoots. The bamboo is now higher than myself. My battle with ivy and brambles will go on.

Everything is as it should be. 

Timeline

As usual, I am inspired by my daughter's blog. Young as she is, she cannot think more than five years back and three years into the future. I can take a quick glance fifty years back and state that I was finishing primary school and discovering that everybody in the world was in love and if I didn't fall in love soon life wouldn't be worth living.

However, I'll keep to Julia's pattern.

Five years ago I had just applied for a Chair in Cambridge and was apprehensive at the thought of approaching interviews. I had just been diagnosed with something that explained my life neatly to me and wondered whether it would have made any difference if I had known it all along.

Three years ago... goodness, I have no idea. It was my second year in Cambridge, I was still seriously lacking in confidence and kept silent in meeting. The students who were doing their masters are now finishing their PhDs. About this time I went to Finland and Sweden for guest lectures, a conference and a doctoral defence. I also did a keynote talk at a conference in Norway. I was working on a book that I am still working on.

A year ago I was full of energy, having won some battles at work. I was busy with PhD admissions. I was preparing a talk for a conference in Germany. I was also looking forward to my 60th birthday.

Yesterday I was as frustrated as an academic can be.

Tomorrow I will work on my book in the morning and then dig in the garden, weather permitting.

Next year this time I hope that the book will be published. I may have started on a new project, but have no idea what it could be. There will be a new bunch of masters and hopefully a few new PhD students. Kory will have settled in Sweden and hopefully have a job. Our oldest grandchild will be almost eighteen.

In five years I will be finishing my work at Cambridge and planning my retirement. I will not be taking on any new PhD students. I will hopefully have a bunch of younger colleagues who will take over research and teaching of children's literature in Cambridge. My present PhD students will be internationally recognised scholars. The book I am writing at the moment will be the standard work in the area. We will have some more grandchildren and a couple of great-grandchildren. The little olive tree in front of my window will be large.

Conversely, beginning from tomorrow onward, I may be dead. (In fact, I may be dead within the next hour, but that's far too optimistic).

Virtually Russian

A couple of years ago I carelessly promised to go to Moscow for a guest lecture. It's a bad habit I must get rid of: when people invite me to come and do a guest lecture, I feel flattered and say: I'll be delighted, instead of: Sorry, I truly cannot. Apart from painful travel, I have a complicated relationship to my birthplace, but at some point going to Moscow to do a guest lecture and then see all Rabbit's friends and relations felt attractive. It got less and less attractive as the date approached, and since I was then - as always - desperately cancelling all previously arranged travel I took a deep breath and emailed my Russian colleague to give my apology. By that time, another colleague in Germany had suggested that I do a virtual lecture if I couldn't come in person, and I suggested to my Russian colleague that I do a virtual lecture for them, secretly hoping that it would turn out impossible. However, she was delighted, and the date went on approaching. Actually, it was brought forward by two months, so suddenly last week I realised that I was going to give a virtual lecture in my mothertongue which I hadn't spoken academically for decades. (I used to go to Russia and lecture a lot, but not for a long while now. I always liked it. It took me to exotic places such as Murmansk).

I insisted on a technical test in advance because there are thousands of things that can go wrong. I had a test for my German lecture, and it worked fine, and then it didn't at the actual lecture. At least, not at once.

The test went fine, but I did it from home, while I wanted to do the lecture from the office where I was sure that my end worked as it should. I asked to have a final test half an hour before the lecture. When I opened my Skype this morning the Russian contact was not there, and I didn't quite remember their Skype name. I tried this and that, which didn't work, and then I hoped they would send a contact request, and they didn't, and I emailed them, and I tried some more Skype names, and finally one was correct. Perfect. Close encounters of fourth grade. Well, I said, see you in fifteen minutes. My Russian colleague wriggled and said, could we possibly start five minutes past so that the audience got in. I had no problems with that and looked through my notes. They called five past to ask whether we could make it ten past since there were more people coming in. Finally a quarter past we started, and I forgot my notes and made some jokes (which is weird in a virtual classroom since I couldn't see the audience's reaction). Halfway through, the connection broke. My contact went offline, and there wasn't much I could do about it. I got an emal saying: Sorry, we are fixing it, which I had already figured out. Then it worked again, and I had to ask them what the last thing they had heard me say was. I had a big alarm clock in front of me, but because of the delayed start and the interruption I allowed myself to go over a bit. Then there were questions and comments, all very clever and helpful, and I had forgotten that I had spoken a language I wasn't comfortable with. I enjoyed it. I want to do it again.

Questions about reading

It has been a while since I responded to my daughter's blog. (Time to have another blog marathon, Julia!). She pinched the questions from somebody else's blog, so I pinch it further.

1.  Audiobook or printed book?
Printed book. I have almost never listened to an audiobook because I cannot stand somebody else's voice reading for me (except for my husband - he is an excellent reader).

2. Pocket or hardback?
Pocket! I hate hardback books, they are so heavy to read in bed. Unless I have no choice, I always wait until a book is available in pocket. There is also a cultural reason: in my youth, Western pocket books had high status. 

3. Fiction or nonfiction?
I assume that the question is about leisure reading. I read tons of nonfiction for work, but for leisure I mostly read fiction. That said, I have recently read popular science about plants, teenagers, cancer cells, English mentality and other exciting subjects.

4. Harry Potter or Twilight?
That was a silly question.

5. Fantasy or reality?
What is reality?

6. Kindle, iPad or something else? 
Mostly Kindle, but if I travel and carry my paddy for work I read on it as well, not to have too many devices to think about.

7. Borrow or buy?
Buy. If I really want to read a book I probably want to own it. Again, we are not talking work, for I borrow work-related books from my library, although I buy books for work if I know I will use them again and again. I also borrow books from friends.

8. Bookstore or online?
I like to browse bookstores because then you find books you didn't know you wanted. I like conference bookstores. But if I want a particular book I will order it online.And if it is available as ebook I can start reading it at once.

9. Single book or trilogy?
I prefer single books. I like to see a plot rounded up within a single book. Sequels are rarely as good as the first book. In some of the most popular multivolume fiction right now I have only read the first and have no desire to read more. I have read all seven Harry Potter books, because I had to for work, but they just kept getting worse.

10. Long book or short book?
I like long and slow novels, but sometimes a short book can be brilliant because of being short. I hate unjustifiably long books

11. Romance or action?
Neither.

12. Cuddle in bed or bask in the sun?
I used to read a lot on the beach. Nowadays I don't go to beaches so often, and when I do, I watch the waves. Cuddle in bed is best for reading.

13. Hot chocolate or latte?
To accompany reading?? In bed? Never.

14. Read reviews or make up your own mind?
This is an interesting one. If I see a book review that even remotedly interests me, the first thing I do is look who wrote it. Some reviewers I know will praise books that I will hate and the other way round. Some reviewers' opinion I value. I am always grateful for colleagues' and students' advice. But I would never like a book, or say I like a book, merely because everyone is saying it's great, and I would be prepared to defend a book nobody likes if I do.

I can think of some other good questions about reading, but it will have to be some other time.