Re: [Cz-L] GQ magazine: "Chernovtsy was a kind of notorious backwater"

Czernowitz in 1910 or 1930 was definitely not a backwater. A backwater
is a place in which none or few of the newest cultural developments
occur
or are noticed.
Had Czernowitz been a backwater, Huberman would not have given
a performance in it. The math Dept. at the university would not have
included highly acclaimed mathematicians. Joe Lewis would not have
visited.
The first congress about the Yiddish language would not have been
held in it.
World renown poets, sculptors and scientists would not have lived or
been born
and received their early education in it. I mean: Paul Celan,
Eminescu, Chargaff,
Porumbescu, Reder, Rizzori, etc.

Mimi

On Nov 28, 2011, at 11:40 AM, iosif vaisman wrote:

> Hardy,
>
> Sorry if I made impression that the word "tragically" should be taken
> too literally. As I said, Mila Kunis clearly was speaking in jest, and
> it was a journalist, who did not quite get it.
>
> On a more serious note, "backwaterness" is hardly correlated with the
> ability to speak German or recite Schiller at the age of 5 (and I
> hope you realize, that 5-year-olds in Chernovtsy of the 1980s did
> recite various good poets, including Schiller, if they or their
> parents were so inclined). While many things had obviously changed in
> Chernovtsy during the last century, the level of "backwaterness" in
> the 1980s was very much the same as in the 1930s or 1910s.
>
> best,
> Iosif
>

-snip-
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Received on 2011-11-29 09:07:39