Aspasia

This is the second issue of Aspasia. The inaugural volume, focussing on Central, Eastern and Southeastern European feminisms, was published in 2007. As editors, we are proud of the breath and richness of the essays and Forum contributions in that first issue. We hope this volume lives up to the standard of excellence set by the premier volume.

This contribution examines the ways in which Sentimentalist ideas about natural equality, which circulated in Russia during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, were reflected in the work of a little-known woman author, Mariia Bolotnikova (dates of birth and death unknown). By exploring the democratic potential inherent in Sentimentalist discourse, this article suggests that the Sentimentalists' unconditional valuation of all human beings was applied not only to the problem of serfdom, but also to women's social inequality. This tendency manifested itself in the works of renowned male writers such as Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826), and in those of little-known female authors, such as Mariia Bolotnikova. A provincial woman poet with seemingly few contacts to established literary society, Bolotnikova used Sentimentalism's fascination with nature and femininity to legitimise her activity as an author and to emphasise the woman question. Her criticism of the sexual discrimination that shaped the culture in which she lived was an early, if admittedly small, step towards the creation of awareness of the social inequality of the sexes in Russia.

The article explores to what extent, as well as how and when nationalism, feminism and their intersections facilitated women's entry into the literary field in Slovenia. In particular, this article presents the work of Slovene women writers from about 1850 to 1918 and demonstrates the importance of the journal Slovenka (The Slovene woman, 1897-1902), in which many women writers found their voices and that allowed a relatively brief but fruitful encounter between nationalism and feminism. The main change in the development of Slovene women's literature in the period discussed is the shift from topics connected with the strengthening of national consciousness, which emerged after 1848, to a portrayal of women's subordination and emancipation, which took place at the fin de siècle and the beginning of the twentieth century. The work of women writers introduced independent female characters to Slovene literature. These characters no longer saw their mission solely as sacrificing themselves for the nation.

Through an analysis of articles and novels written by four Armenian women, which appeared in the periodical press from 1880 to 1915, this text evaluates the ways in which the trajectories of the intellectual and cultural movement known as the Zartonk (Awakening) in Armenian history facilitated women writers' emergence into the public sphere and their creation of the language and formulation of a discourse of women's rights in the Armenian socio-political context. The article provides biographical information on four women writers and examines the secular cultural institutions—such as the salon, the periodical press, the school, and the philanthropic organisation—which emerged in Constantinople and were conducive to women's participation in the public sphere. The article then problematises Armenian women writers' formulation of a specific political discourse of women's rights in the socio-political context of the Armenian millet in the Ottoman state and suggests that Armenian women writers produced a type of feminism that may have been typical of nations without independence in the context of state-sanctioned violence.

In this article I analyse four novels by four Romanian women writers in order to bring into focus their perspectives on interwar gender roles, urbanisation and modernisation. First, I discuss the concept of 'feminine literature', largely used by (predominantly male) Romanian literary critics to describe literary works by women, as a description of normative femininity rather than an aesthetic category. Second, I argue that through their literary works, Romanian women writers effectively criticised interwar gender roles, more precisely the divide between public masculinity and private femininity, the constraints of women's sexual agency, and the heterosexual romance. Last, I analyse four novels published (mainly) during the interwar period by the Romanian women writers Hortensia Papadat Bengescu (1876-1955), Henriette Yvonne Stahl (1900-1984), Ioana Postelnicu (1910-2004) and Anişoara Odeanu (1912-1972), focussing on the female characters' presence and visibility in the urban public space and on the dynamics of the gaze that polices their behaviour.

This article considers the Club of Bulgarian Women Writers as a case study on the interrupted feminisation of twentieth-century Bulgarian belles-lettres and culture. It argues that the modernisation project of Bulgarian intellectuals in the interwar years led to an environment propitious for the emergence of a cohort of women literati who furthered women's emancipation, and generated an original and popular textual tradition. The Club, which existed between 1930 and 1949, was emblematic of the wide acceptance of women intellectuals in patriarchal monarchical Bulgaria, and their subsequent marginalisation in the post-war socialist republic. Having declared gender equality fulfilled, the communist regime considered literary interest in womanhood or the individual hostile to its social and political agenda. Interwar women intellectuals, whose very worldview demanded an unrestrained confluence of personal, female and intellectual identities, lost their social importance. Likewise, the Club and its members were excised from cultural and public memory until the 1990s.

This article considers the autobiography of the famous Polish actress Irena Solska (1875-1958) as a response to the masculinisation of creativity in twentieth-century theatre, which was a result of the affirmation of the director-centred model. In her autobiography, Solska constructs the image of her creativity with the help of characteristics traditionally marked as 'feminine'. Taking into consideration the theatrical context of the 1930s to the 1950s, the period in which she wrote her text, I regard such a construction as subversive. Solska refused to conform to the new aesthetic norms of the period, which insisted on the dissociation of women's creativity from their embodiment and sexuality. She expressed nostalgia for the full creative status women artists enjoyed under the actor-centred paradigm, but which was lost as a result of the introduction of the director-centred model. Solska questioned the pejorative connotation of the actor-centred theatre as 'feminised' and, by purely literary means, reaffirmed such characteristics as embodiment, impulsiveness and disruptiveness.

This article re-reads from a feminist perspective and with the interpretative strategies of feminist criticism, two pieces of late-twentieth-century Hungarian literature, Sándor Weöres's Psyché and Péter Esterházy's Tizenhét hattyúk (Seventeen swans). Both books were written by men and both introduce a fictitious woman figure as the author, presenting the text as hers. Both authors also present this material in an archaised language. A multilayered analysis that tackles the implications of the gender shift between the real and the fictitious authors, the genre of the works, their peculiar language use as well as the historical dimensions of conjuring up women authors, leads me to conclude that Psyché and Tizenhét hayúk may qualify as feminist textual practice. They open up the literary historical canon for women authors and, by actualising l'écriture féminine, let the female protagonists express themselves outside the bounds of phallologocentric signification.

The main theme of this volume of Aspasia and of its Forum, ‘Women Writers and Intellectuals’, seems to be at the same time quite traditional and also very timely. It is traditional in the sense that debates over the role of intellectuals have taken place since the early nineteenth century and, in the region that Aspasia focusses on, have been of particular importance throughout the twentieth century; it is very timely because these debates continue to take place and be relevant. This volume of Aspasia contributes to this ongoing debate from the perspective of gender.

I found myself in Norway quite recently. I was invited by the Norwegian Association of Literary Critics. Norwegian critics are so lively that a stranger can get the feeling that there are more critics than writers. At the end of May and beginning of June 2007, my Norwegian colleagues were extremely excited because they were establishing a Norwegian literary canon: ten literary works were to become representative of Norwegian national literature. The voting results, at least when it came to male-female participation (it seems that among the canonical authors there were two women), were not surprising. Similar voting within any national literature would bring similar results.

Our virtual seminar is dedicated to women intellectuals of East Europe; the topic involves isolating and shaping women’s most important roles in the present historical and political situation. In order to be more specific and perhaps more efficient, I am going to speak mainly about the reality I know best, that is, about the state of women intellectuals in Bulgaria, their problems in creating literature and the likelihood of ‘women’s writing’ in the country during the last seventeen years.

Since Aspasia’s home is in Budapest, I will begin by evoking my love affair with that city. But ‘love affair’ is not exactly the right phrase, for my affective ties to Budapest are more of the familial than the erotic variety: born and raised there until the age of ten, I am a daughter of the captivating lady on the Danube. Budapest, in my imagining, is female, perhaps because it is so closely associated with my mother; not for nothing did I subtitle my book Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook.

Being a writer with a female name in Bulgaria means that, before tackling any gender issue in your book, you have a specific problem of your own—society is not quite pre- pared to consider you as an important and undeniable voice in literature, that is, as a writer. This happens no ma er how many male imitators a woman has. It hasn’t got much to do with the reading audience either—a well-selling female author does not flow as smoothly into the cliché of the national mentor as her male colleagues do.

Before identifying the roles of women writers and intellectuals in the current political climate in Eastern Europe, and particularly in Romania, let me first qualify the climate itself, as I see it.1 Over a decade a er the collapse of communism, the political situation in Romania is still very much a transitional one, defined by competing cultural and moral codes, widespread societal mistrust (intensified by the recent scandals surrounding collaboration with the political police, the Securitate) and anxiety about the future. In this context, women intellectuals in Romania have o en found themselves in difficult positions, accused by their more established male colleagues of trying to introduce new intellectual concepts and values on the cultural market for the sole purpose of drawing attention to themselves, opportunistically and in a facile manner.

Today the world defines itself more by differences rather than sameness. This individualistic approach gives worth to specific characteristics of various societies and to the sharing of cultural sources through translations and intercultural activities. As women writers and intellectuals possess a ‘minority language’ and gender identity, they can be a suitable channel for expressing this changing viewpoint. Thus, they have a special role to play in the recent historical and political situation.

As a child in Romania, I would choose a word and repeat it over and over until it lost its meaning. The syllables would superimpose one another and sound like a foreign language, not invented yet or long ago abandoned, something mysterious and antique, rough and absurd. Instead of opening up and shining acoustically, the sounds choked like marine animals tossed in a boiling cauldron. The word would then become tangible, heavy, like a clay rock thrown in the ocean. I would then await its dissolution, would watch for its disappearance while continuing to repeat it, compulsively, unable to control the joy of my offence. What are words? I asked myself. Where do they come from and where do they go?

I am a woman and I am a writer; therefore, I am a woman writer. I do not disavow this, and I am sure that the basic given of femininity affects, in ways that are both accessible to me and unconscious, much of what I write. However, as I look back on my writing about issues of difference and Otherness—and as has sometimes been pointed out to me—I realise that the problematic of gender is, if not entirely absent from it, then rarely explicitly foregrounded or emphasised. I would like to reflect briefly on why this is so.

I was born a boy. The midwife saw how disappointed my mother was so she ran off and fetched her another child, a girl. That, too, was me. Mother was pleased; the two of them remained best friends until the day of my Pioneer pledge, when I insisted I wore pants. I was so handsome that day that my mother couldn’t help agreeing to marry me when I am of age.

Miglena Nikolchina, Rodena ot glavata. Fabuli i siuzheti v zhenskata literaturna istoria (Born from the head: Plots and narratives in women’s literary history), Sofia: SEMA RSh, 2002, 188 pp., 5.99 BGN (pb), ISBN 954-8021-14-5

Miglena Nikolchina, Matricide in Language. Writing Theory in Kristeva and Woolf, New York: Other Press, 2004, 150 pp. $24.00 (pb), ISBN 1-59051-080-1

Marlen Bidwell-Steiner and Karin S. Wozonig, eds., A Canon of Our Own? Kanonkritik und Kanonbildung in den Gender Studies (A canon of our own? Canon criticism and canon building in gender studies)

Marina Blagojevic, ed., Mapiranje mizoginije u Srbiji: Diskurs I prakse (Mapping the misogyny in Serbia: Discourses and practises), vols. 1 and 2

Graz ̇yna Borkowska, Alienated Women: A Study on Polish Women’s Fiction, 1845–1918

Choi Chatterjee, Celebrating Women: Gender, Festival Culture, and Bolshevik Ideology, 1910–1939

Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova and Anna Loutfi, eds., A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms. Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries

Biljana Dojčinović-Nešić GendeRings: Gendered Readings in Serbian Women’s Writing

Constant a Ghit ulescu, În s ̧alvari s ̧i cu is ̧lic. Biserica ̆, sexualitate, ca ̆sa ̆torie s ̧i divort în T ara Româneasca ̆ a secolului al XVIII-lea (Wearing shalvars and ishlik. Church, sexuality, marriage and divorce in eighteenth-century Wallachia) Reviewed

Valentina Gla ̆jar and Domnica Ra ̆dulescu, eds., Vampirettes,Wretches and Amazons. Western Representations of East European Women

Hana Hašková, Alena Krˇížková, and Marcela Linková, eds., Mnohohlasem: vyjednávání ženských prostoru ̊ po roce 1989 (Polyphony: Negotiating women’s spaces after 1989)

Celia Hawkesworth, Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia

Katherine R. Jolluck, Exile and Identity. Polish Women in the Soviet Union during World War II

Milena Kirova, Bibleyskata zhena. Mehanizmi na konstruirane, politiki na izobrazjavane v Staria zavet (Biblical femininity. Mechanisms of construction, policies of representation in the Old Testament)

Stefania Mihailescu, Emanciparea femeii romane. Studiu si antologie de Texte. Vol. II (1919–1948) (The emancipation of the Romanian woman. Study and anthology of texts.Vol. 2 [1919–1948])

Mihaela Miroiu, Nepret uitele femei (Priceless women)

Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina, Writing the Siege of Leningrad. Women’s Diaries, Memoirs and Documentary Prose

Maria Todorova, Balkan Family Structure and the European Pattern. Demographic Developments in Ottoman Bulgaria 258

Nancy Wingfield and Maria Bucur, eds., Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe

Elizabeth A.Wood, Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia

Dr Suzan van Dijk from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands is currently pre- paring a large European research project on the writings of European women authors before 1900, and in particular the links and influences between them as they are to be found on a European scale, including those between the Western and the Eastern parts of the continent.

From the very beginning of her historical studies, Professor Anna Żarnowska was affiliated with Warsaw University, where she started her academic career at the Institute of History at the end of the 1950s. She belonged to the youngest post- war generation of Polish historians dealing with a relatively new and very dynamic trend in Polish post-war historical research: social history.