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

Asking an old time Cz-er if Czernowitz was backwater is not a fair question.
  The answer would be unanimous.
    Because of local pride.
    And local pride was a Cz attribute as Tocz or Latkes.
   But Cz was not in the center of civilized Europe .
     A whistle stop on the Lemberg-Yassy rail line.
   Most Cz famous came to glory in other places.
    Belonging to the Romanian monarchy did not help too much.
    To most of Western Europeans the Carpathian mountains came
     to relevance only by the imagination of Bram Stoker's " Dracula".
Hardy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Taylor" <mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu>
To: "iosif vaisman" <iosif.vaisman_at_gmail.com>
Cc: "HARDY BREIER" <HARDY3_at_bezeqint.net>; "czernowitz-L"
<Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 5:52 PM
Subject: 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
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Received on 2011-11-29 12:29:13