Littera Baltica, 6-8 June 2008 :: Turku Finland
(2008 05 27 14:21)
Arranged on regular basis every second year in Turku the Littera Baltica conference aims to build a network of writers and translators in the Baltic Sea Region, in order to promote the translation and distribution of literature in the participating countries.
The 2008 edition's theme is INSIDE / OUTSIDE?
The writer is positioned outside the community he or she describes, by force or choice. At a distance, you get a clearer perception of what's going on, and the writer may be regarded as someone standing outside the lighted window looking in, driven by the desire to penetrate into the hidden and private. At the same time, the writer lives within his or her characters, and is thus in the deepest sense positioned inside.
We are outside the others' experience, and moreover, we are also outside our own experience, in the sense that for the main part, we move inside an imaginary universe. ”Reality is formed only at the present moment, by means of language” (Marcel Proust), and the aim of literature might be to create a place into which we are drawn in order to be subjected to the essential; where it really is a matter of us, not of them.
Find more about the project here.