Karen Karbiener (New York University)
Live Oak, with Moss: Walt Whitman’s Secret Same-Sex Love Poems

Auditorium, Veröld – House of Vigdís, 29 October at 12-13pm
The lecture is free and open to all.

As he was turning 40, the American poet Walt Whitman wrote twelve poems in a small handmade book he entitled Live Oak, with Moss. The poems were intensely private reflections on his attraction and affection for other men– Whitman’s most adventurous explorations of the theme of same-sex love, composed decades before the word “homosexual” came into use. This revolutionary, extraordinarily beautiful and passionate cluster of poems was never published by Whitman and has remained unknown to the general public until the publication of Live Oak, with Moss (Abrams, 2019; paperback 2021), an experimental new edition of the poems by Whitman scholar Karen Karbiener and New York Times bestselling and Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Brian Selznick.  In this presentation, Dr. Karbiener will reconstruct the story of the poetic cluster’s creation and destruction and introduce Selznick’s provocative visual narrative.

Bio: Karen Karbiener is an internationally recognized Whitman scholar and teaches at New York University. Winner of the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and a Fulbright recipient, she has published widely on Whitman, including an edition of Leaves of Grass, two audiobooks on Whitman’s life and influence, a book introducing Whitman’s poetry to children, and a collaboration with illustrator Brian Selznick on a new edition of Whitman’s “Live Oak, with Moss” poems. Dr. Karbiener is the president and founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative, a 501c3 nonprofit organization serving as an organizing center for cultural activism and poetry-related events.

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Lem in the Cinema
Film screenings in honor of science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem (1921-2006)

04-25.11.2021
Veröld – House of Vigdís

04.11.2021        Opening night
17:30
Przekładaniec (Roly Poly) (1968) by Andrzeja Wajda (35 min). Language: Polish with subtitles in English
Followed by a panel with Associate Professor Björn Þór Vilhjálmsson (HÍ), Professor Jón Ólafsson (HÍ) and Director Krzysztof Śmierzchała. Light refreshments

09.11.2021
18:00
The Congress (2013) by Ari Folman (123 min). Language: English

18.11.2021
18:00
Solaris (1972) by Andriej Tarkowsky (165 min). Language: English

22.11.2021
18:00
His Master’s Voice (2018) by György Pálfi (108 min). Language: English

25.11.2021
18:00
Ikaria XB1 (1961) by Jindřich Polák (81 min). Language: English

The event is organized by:
The Vigdís International Centre
Language Centre of the University of Iceland
Embassy of the Republic of Poland

Petr Jandáček, PhD student in Tibetan Studies at the Institute of Asian Studies, Charles University, Prague, gives the talk The Tale of the Chinese Bride: Remarks on War, Wedding, and Worship in Sino-Tibetan Relations and Intercultural (Miss)understandings and (Re)interpretations in Veröld – House of Vigdís, 2nd floor, on 18 November at 4:30 pm.

Abstract:
In my talk, I would like to focus on the wedding of a Tibetan emperor Tri Songtsen, better known under the epithet Songtsen Gampo (†650 AD) and Tang princess Wencheng Kongjo in 641-642 AD. This event was a resolution of negotiations led by a Tibetan minister Gar Tongtsen Yulzung (†667-668 AD) after a Tibetan military campaign towards the Tang empire and its vassals in the late 630s. All three actors (princess, emperor, and minister) became Tibetan cultural heroes, characters in folktales, and Buddhist “saints” as well. This alliance marriage, which could have been based on a cultural difference in interpretation of the status of the bride giver and the bride receiver, became the model for Tibetan wedding per se, a metaphor for political and cultural relations and a legitimizing narrative (both in Tibet and China). Today, the story is still alive and well in folklore, folklorism, religion, policy, propaganda, and even a soap opera. I believe that its analysis might enrich a perception of Chinese dominance over Tibet and Tibetan response, which is interpreted on the later metaphor of the priest and patron.

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