Бажанов, А. Стихи и поэмы о саамском крае = Verses & poems on the Saami land / Аскольд Бажанов ; English translation by Naomi Caffee ; with an essay by Johanna Domokos. - Berlin : Nordeuropa-Institut der Humboldt-Universitat, 2009.

185 The past is not a foreign country: Liminality in Askold Bazhanov’s poetry ---- Johanna Domokos Introduction It is not only the literature of big nations that can be varied and elaborate, but the literature of small people, too. After a long, homogenizing era dominated by powerful nation states and glob alizing forces, the age of local and regional diversity is gaining more and more attention. This very positive process w ill hopefully earn deserved recognition for such poets as the Skolt Saami Askold Bazhanov, the Udmurt Vjacheslav Ar-Sergi, the Khanti Yeremey Aypin, the Forest Nenets Yuriy Vela, and many others, as it has already done with the Hungarian Imre Kertesz, the Hindi-British V. S. Naipaul, or the Kiowa Native American N. Scott Momaday. Rigoberta Menchu Turn characterized the ascendance of local lit eratures by »small« people in the following way: »The world is on the verge of a >New Time< where harmony and a re-connection with Nature w ill win over the violent death and destruction of our world«. In order to constantly define our positive, aware human identi ties, we need to study the diversity o f communities and individuals through their artifacts. In contemplating the events that influence our perceptions and reactions to reality, we become aware of who we are, and we come to understand the immediate and long-term consequences o f our actions and thoughts. Ethnic literatures, along with other ethnic art, offer a deep and clear insight into the »black boxes« - to use Geza Szocs’s term - o f humankind. In this respect the Saami people have several writers who are worth heeding. The approximately 50.000 to 100.000 Saami living throughout four dif ferent states - in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia - contribute to a multilingual and even multicultural Saami world. This world exists virtually in the hearts and minds of the people, and concretely in their hills, mountains, and stories.