Tag Archives: Iran

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A Life Spent Searching – the Travels and Writing of Annemarie Schwarzenbach

It’s mainly the reason why every October I write about all the books I’ve read in the last year, that some remain in my thoughts. Isabel Cole’s translation of Annamarie Schwarzenbach’s All Roads are Open is one of these, as well as having the kind of attention to typography, layout, and design that … well, makes me less likely to spill a late-night snack in bed over.

Which is to say, it’s already near the top of everything I’ve read in the last six months. I also read Ella Maillart’s The Cruel Way and Vita Sackville-West’s Twelve Days in Persia as a result, and Annamarie makes them both read like spoilt upper-class nobs whose only talent is the distinct whiff of colonial racism – I kept thinking if I was traveling with them I’d be obliged to leave them stranded and be off with their car and money because that’s all they’re good for. Perhaps being hooked on heroin gave Annamarie an empathy absent in these others; it did wonders for William Burroughs also. At very least, her translation into english adds a great deal to 20th century Central Asia writing.

25 April, 2012
20:00
Dialogue Books
Schönleinstraße 31
Berlin, Germany

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Journalist, novelist, antifascist, archaeologist, world traveler, the Swiss writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) became a European cult figure following her rediscovery in the 1990s. At long last, her works are also appearing in English via Seagull Books.

To celebrate, join Dialogue Books as we host Alexis Schwarzenbach, the writer’s grandnephew and the leading expert on her life and work. He and Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s translators Lucy Renner Jones and Isabel Fargo Cole will also read from a selection of her works suggesting the breadth of her concerns and creativity. Lyric Novella is the tale of a young “man’s” love for a nightclub singer in decadent Weimar-era Berlin, while Death in Persia is a more open exploration of lesbian love and existential anguish against the background of 1930’s Teheran, and All the Roads Are Open is an account of Schwarzenbach’s epic journey in a Ford from Switzerland to Afghanistan on the eve of World War II.

ABOUT

Annemarie Schwarzenbach, born in 1908 to one of Switzerland’s most prominent families, published her first novel at the age of 23. Her friends Klaus and Erika Mann introduced her to artistic circles, and she scandalized her conservative family by living an openly lesbian lifestyle and supporting leftwing political causes. From 1933 to 1941 she took numerous trips in Europe, the USSR, the United States, the Near East and Africa as a photojournalist covering social and political issues, while also publishing novels and short fiction. After the outbreak of World War II she sought ways to take political action, helping the Manns’ anti-Fascist efforts, but increasingly succumbed to depression and drug addiction.

Annemarie Schwarzenbach died in 1942 in Switzerland following a bicycle accident.

Annamarie Schwarzenbach Annamarie Schwarzenbach
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Reading: Vita Sackville-West — Twelve Days in Persia

I don’t have much in particular to say about Twelve Days in Persia: Across the Mountains with the Bakhtiari Tribe, nor about Vita Sackville-West. This was one of the books recommended to me by Lucy, who is translating Annamarie Schwarzenbach, during talking about Iran and Central Asia.

Lately my interest has moved slightly from Afghanistan, though naturally still swirling around Central Asia (in addition to all things China and Canton), and I’ve had a curiosity to wonder what I’m missing about Iran. I have read through the region many times, as I’ve traversed the Silk Route, or in various other works of the region, yet never given it the specific attention I’ve devoted to, say, Afghanistan. Though I’m loathe to take on another country and all its history in the same way as I have that land-locked place, Iran is somewhere I’d like to travel to.

So, Vita then. I was never especially fond of her writing, and have her engraved in my memory as one of those early-20th century feminist writers I was supposed to love, yet found a bit pathetic and earnest. It has been a long time though since I was obliged to read those writers, so perhaps I’ll find something I can’t resist and go on a Vita trip.

Vita Sackville-West – Twelve Days in Persia Vita Sackville-West – Twelve Days in Persia
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Reading: Ella Maillart — The Cruel Way

The first of my new pile of books, though i haven’t finished the last lot yet (some shall dwell in my reading stump for quite some time, I suspect, and one likely shall be read in the furthest-from orthodox manner possible; no starting at the start and finishing at the over end.

This one, Ella K. Maillart’s The Cruel Way, came to me from a conversation with Lucy who has been translating some of Annamarie Schwarzenbach, whom I met on the Pförtner bus with Isabel, translator of All the Roads are Open, currently near the top of my list for best non-fiction of the year. They both fielded me that afternoon with the names of several authors who reside at the intersection of a number of sets I have been distracted by for some time: women authors, writing on Afghanistan and Central Asia, in the (broad) subjects of anthropology and history.

I promptly forgot the names, though knew I’d get around to remembering soon enough, and thankfully Lucy scribbled them down for me. To Saint George’s!

When Annamarie travelled to Afghanistan overland by car in the second half of 1939, she did so with the companionship of another writer, Ella Maillart. For both of them, the journey resulted in a book, though until this year, Annamarie hadn’t been translated to english. Ella, on the other hand, was in english since 1947, with one peculiarity: there is no mention of Annamarie Schwarzenbach.

Ella travels with Christina. The one photo of her is from a distance, head down over the campsite, so as to be unrecognizable. Despite this (at the insistence of Annamarie’s mother), there is little or no disguising of whom she travelled with, though this does make for a somewhat sombre reading, knowing full well who Christina is, and that her identity is erased by her own mother in a perverse desire for familial respectability.

It is a rare pleasure to read two highly accomplished writers documenting the same journey; to see the same experiences through the eyes of each. Annamarie writes with such a sparse, poetic, lyrical style as to be a novelist, and very few fiction authors I have read can seduce in telling a story more than she. Ella is somewhat the opposite; a travel writer who is romantic almost becoming saccharine. Nonetheless not to say she is a poor writer, and being a couple of chapters in (arriving at Sophia), she recalls for me the best of the writers of who ventured into Central Asia in a manner unimaginable now.

Elle K. Maillart — The Cruel Way Ella K. Maillart — The Cruel Way
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Burka Bondage

The past couple of months Dasniya has been rehearsing with Helena Waldmann, in a piece she helped with last year in Shibari instruction. She left for India and Sri Lanka with them yesterday, for a three-week tour. Originally the tour was to go to Iran and Afghanistan, but political issues made that impossible. For those of you in the region, here are the dates:

‘BURKABONDAGE’ VON HELENA WALDMANN

mit Vania Rovisco, Dasniya Sommer, Acci Baba und Mohammad Reza Mortazavi

Infos unter: www.burkabondage.de

Indientournee Dezember 2010
06.12. – Chennai
10.12. – Colombo
12.12. – Bangalore
16.12. – Mumbai
19.12. – Delhi

— Burka Bondage

burka bondage burka bondage

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iranian typography now

Japan design magazine PingMag has a long feature yesterday, Iranian Typography Now. It is one of the most sublime features I’ve had the pleasure of reading.

So what is it about Persian calligraphy and the writing system that makes it so desirable to work with?

The secret lies in the script and its mechanics. This script, that is written in Persian or Farsi, is known as the Arabic Script. It should be noted that the technical term Arabic Script refers to the script used in Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, other Arab countries, and more Indian regions where the Pashtu language is spoken. Moreover it used to be the official writing system in Turkey before its westernization by Ata Turk. Therefore its use for writing in over a dozen different dialects and languages has prompted a natural cultural adoption of specific styles and characteristics.

— pingmag – iranian typography now

calligraphy painting by Mohammed Ehsaei calligraphy painting by Mohammed Ehsaei

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