«Нет полного счастья без полной независимости»

When I was in Russia this summer, my friend Rodya [who is now dating one of my former students of Swedish] filmed an interview with me. He later transcribed my answers during this recorded session and turned them into an article for the October number of the magazine «Наша молодежь» [“Our Youth”], the first page of which is this with the title «В Россию, с любовью» [“Into Russia, with Love”]. I don’t think I have to vocalize how much I dislike the screen shot he chose – it goes without saying by now that I’m generally displeased with the pictures of me that other people like to publish.

This is the second page of the same article.

Though most of my answers during this interview are rather generic and leave little room for the reader to be surprised – after all, Rodya asked me the kind of questions I’ve received and answered about a hundred times during the six years I lived in Russia – I thought I’d relate the information about myself which I was able to provide in written form and which I think is kind of interesting:

Увлечения: красивая обувь, добрые мужчины и путешествия по местам великих писателей [Interests: beautiful shoes, kind men, and journeys to the places of famous writers].

Качества, которые ценит в других людях: ответственность, доброта и умение радоваться даже тому, чему не следует [Qualities which [she] appreciates in other people: responsibility, kindness, and the ability to be happy even about the things one shouldn’t be happy about].

Жизненное кредо: «Нет полного счастья без полной независимости» [Life credo: “There is no complete happiness without complete independence”].

I wrote these answers at some point during this summer while I was reading Chernyshevsky’s novel «Что делать?» [“What is to be Done?”], and thus my ‘life credo’ stated above is taken straight out of this fictional work. I’m not sure anyone else will get it. But it doesn’t matter. Sometimes all that matters is that you got something about yourself that meant something – even though this will be lost to most readers of this interview. I like the fact that Rodya was pleased enough with the interview to use my answers for an article about me, even though I didn’t really get to say anything of significance in it. I enjoy reading interviews with myself because they never fail to teach me something new about myself – just like this one. I guess I’m not a very private person after all…

Supposedly my next article in Göterborgs-Posten will be published already on Sunday, the 11^th of December 2011. We’ll see about that won’t we, comrades?