On the programme: Culture

Quote of the week

“Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs”
Thomas Wolfe

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I came back to Sweden a month ago. This time I used another way of travelling from Innsbruck. The night train to Hamburg, and the train from Hamburg to Malmö via Copenhagen. It was quite a pleasant trip. Of course, it is difficult to sleep properly on the train, at least for me. The constant moving, twists and turns are very frequent, but not much you can do about it. I had a couple of hours wait in Hamburg, and managed to fit in an early lunch.

Back home I have been very busy. Lots of things to do when you have been away for three months. The more pleasurable things are cultural events, and I have been able to visit quite a few.

2 x Tennessee Williams

It is seldom you can see Williams’ plays here in Sweden. This autumn there were two of them: A Streetcar Named Desire and The Two Character Play. The first is one of his most famous, immortalised on the screen by Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando. They are so vivid in my memory that it is difficult to see another version. However, the Swedish cast did a very good job. We were sitting on the second row and almost felt like we were there on the stage with the actors. It is a dramatic play, and you could say, still valid today in its depiction of relationships.

I was not familiar with The Two Character Play. It is Williams last one and he had great affection for it and said: "My most beautiful play since Streetcar, the very heart of my life." According to Wikipedia the play was not positively received. No wonder, I would say, because it is a tricky play. “Confinement due to mental illness, repression leading to social isolation and the tyranny and claustrophobia that come from impinging on one another’s psychological and physical space are all present in The Two-Character Play.” I must admit I did not really either understand the play or like it. It was performed in English and the actors were great. The characters are not easy to perform.

The Day of the Book

This is an annual event here in Malmö. Authors are invited to talk about their books. It varies between interviews and a reading/talking about the book by the author. It is an interesting event for a book lover. This year our former prime minister Stefan Löwén was there, as was one of the most famous architects in Sweden, Gert Wingårdh. Lina Wolff, a favourite author of mine was reading from her new book; promenader i natten (walks in the night/my transl.). I have read two of her earlier books, The Polyglot Lovers and Köttets tid (The Time of the Flesh/my translation.) Her writing style is magic realism, I would say. I bought her latest book.

Andrea Bocelli concert

The cinemas have a program with operas, ballets, theatre and concerts making it possible to see events from the big scenes. I really enjoy this possibility. I have only seen one earlier concert, with André Rieu, so was exciting to see this one with Andrea Bocelli, celebrating his 30 years as an artist. He had invited guests from all over the world to visit him in his home, and perform in, what I understood, is his own arena, beautifully situated in the Tuscan landscape.

The concert was mixed with performances and footage from his house with his guests, talking, interviewing and celebrating Bocelli’s fantastic career. He seems to be such a wonderful person, still with both his feet on the ground after all his success. Two of his children were also performing. What a talented family. It was the best concert I have seen. So many beautiful songs he performed together with his guests. Just to highlight a few. Starting with O sole mio, and, towards the end Nessun Dorma from Turandot. These are the times when I get tears in my eyes. He sang Who Wants to Live Forever together with fantastic Brian May, a song from The Highlander film with Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery. The concert ended with the very suitable song Time To Say Goodbye, or Con te partirò. Tears again.

Uppåkra archeological site

I am a member of Uppåkra association, friends of the archeological site. They invited their members for a talk on the surrounding area of Uppåkra main site. It was held by one of the archeologists who has worked on the site for many years. The area is half an hour from where I live and used to be an important village during almost 1000 years, up until the end of the viking area. It has a fascinating history and only about 2% of the area is dug out. Of course, today there are fields, farms and buildings on the site which complicate things. We were informed about the inhabitants, how they lived, what they did and how the surrounding villages were connected to the main settlement. It seems the main settlement did not impose any power and the villages lived in peace in an independent way.

Time changes and we with them. The settlement slowly declined, maybe due to the growing importance of the city of Lund, maybe due to a new taxation system (yes, they were introduced around this time), or another reason we don’t know about. The other peculiarity of Uppåkra is that there are no written sources of what it was called in those days. It seems to have been a very important area, surviving for more years than many other important settlements, but nowhere is there a name that can be connected to the place. Another one of history’s mysteries.