Sitting between Ebba Witt-Brattström and Stefan Helgesson during dinner was not quite what I would have planned for Valentine's Day, but so it goes. The former, a professor of literature from Södertorn, was in Uppsala to talk about Dekadensens kön, a book about the Swedish poet Ola Larsson and the Baltic-German playwright Laura Marholm.

As a married couple, Ola's work spread into German-speaking countries through his wife's translations while Laura herself laid the groundwork for the model of the "new woman" which would later characterize both Swedish feminism (Ellen Key) as well as literary production (Edith Södergran: "Jag följer ingen lag. Jag är lag i mig själv.") Witt-Brattström concentrated on the gender aspects of fin-de-siècle Europe: her claims is that unlike most other periods in history, when women were modeled on men, during Decadence men became a kind of subordinate creature to women, with the intricate, horrifying and supernatural face of Medusa that adorns the cover of Witt-Brattström's book providing an overpowering, and decidedly feminine, model.

Helgesson's book, Efter västerlandet, I found useful when writing my Master's Thesis, so it was a treat to get to sit next to him at the following dinner and chat face-to-face. He's one of the few people who have published seriously on Alejandro Wenger as far as I know.