More and more, the city is expanding on its historic role as an incubator of books. Award winners and anonymous scribblers, locals and expatriates, everyone in Berlin has a book in him and everyone with a book in him seems to have roosted in Berlin. ... The teeming masses of authors are supported by a superstructure of foundations and grants and ubiquitous antiquariat (used-book stores) seemingly on every corner, not to mention the noble cultural villas, like the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin and the American Academy in Berlin, both on the same lovely lake — the Wannsee — near where the poet Heinrich von Kleist killed himself in 1811 after first shooting the incurably ill Henriette Vogel.Nicholas Kulish writes about the literary health of Berlin in The New York Times. One can't help but be envious. Foundations ... grants ... used bookshops ... cultural villas ... *sigh*
6 comments:
... and suicides.
Heh!
Dear Sharon,
Hmm...
Maybe that's what we need to create that selfsame atmosphere for the literary arts in KL.
As in Berlin we need character...
Maybe we also need a lake, its accompanying lakeside academy/writer's commune and our very own lakeside tragedy..
our very own Heinrich von Kleist.
Well... I can think of worse things to sacrifice one's life for...
Whither the lake, the gun, and absent lover, anyone?
From upon the broken shoes,
Hazlan.
i'll shoot you if that will help?
Rimbun Dahan has a residency programme that local writers can apply for.
Details here. I can confirm it has a lake.
Dear All,
Sharon: Methinks that any shooting should be by mine own hands. Ha ha ha.
Amir: Nice place, I mayst apply for a stay. It would be nice to disappear into the width and breadth of solitude for a spell. Thanks for the connection.
TRIVIA: There is another villa along the Wannsea that is famous for a piece of writing. Not literary though, more legislative. But one that have spawned myriads of adapted works, tales and stories. A piece of writing powerful enough the bend a country towards the near annihilation of another race. Shows how mighty the pen could be I suppose, and how petty men could become.
From upon the broken shores,
Hazlan
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