“I was born with a need of storytelling: an evening with critically acclaimed Danish writer Peter Høeg in the Presidential Library

On September 5, 2017, in the Presidential Library an evening with the critically acclaimed Danish writer Peter Høeg, the author of the world’s bestseller “Smilla's Feeling for Snow” or “Smilla's Sense of Snow.” Known for his taste for solitude, he for the first time ever decided to come to Russia to meet with his readers. Representatives of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Denmark in Russia, the Danish Institute of Culture in St. Petersburg, teachers of the St. Petersburg State University, staff employees of the “Symposium” publishing house participated in the event. Guests and library staff employees from the Moscow Oblast, Krasnoyarsk, Kostroma, Astrakhan, Petrozavodsk and Pskov joined the meeting via video-conferencing mode.

“Such a pleasure that Peter Høeg decided to come to Russia for the first time, — said Thomas Winkler, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of Denmark to Russia. In this case we can really say that this is another important milestone in the Danish-Russian cultural ties.”

Pavel Fyodorov, chief research associate of the Presidential Library, relying on the library's electronic fund, reminded the participants of creative meeting whose name was at the very beginning of the Russian-Danish literary relations: “The works of an author of the world-famous fairy tales Hans Christian Andersen were translated in our country so often that it even created an image of Russia as the second “literary” homeland of this Danish writer. Meanwhile, the name of the one who first introduced Andersen to the Russian auditory of readers is not known so well. This year marks the 205th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding Russian philologist Yakov Karlovich Grot, owing to whom the first publication of Andersen's works in Russian made possible in 1845. We hope that today’s meeting will become another page in the annals of Russian-Danish cultural relations.”

“It seems to me that I already was born with such a demand to tell the stories, — Peter Høeg answered a question of the readers, who asked why he has chosen the writer's path out of the many professions he tried at the end. — Before I learned to write, I was drawing the sequences of pictures with telling that way the stories to my younger brother. And despite the fact that I had an experience with different ocupations, regardless of what I was doing, I was always trying to tell the stories.”

No less interest in the audience aroused the answer to the question about who are they — the prototypes of Høeg’s heroes, are these particular or generalized characters. According to the writer, each of us initially carries inside both male and female features, and owing to their harmonious development, a person becomes an integral personality. “I think I have enough women's edges in me. And art lets to express these hidden sides of personality, — the writer told. — So I'm myself a part of the Smile's character.”

Information: Peter Høeg was born in Copenhagen on May 17, 1957, in 1984 he graduated from the University of Copenhagen with the Literature major. Before becoming a writer, he tried a lot of occupations: he taught dramatic art, worked as a classical ballet dancer, was a sailor, traveled a lot. Høeg’s worldwide fame was brought with the novel “Smilla's Feeling for Snow,” which the readers, apart for its extraordinary characters, phenomenal attention to detail, unique style and sound grasp of contemporary life, also appreciated for its precise reproduction of human passions in all their diversity. By now, the books by Peter Høeg are already published in millions of copies in more than 30 countries around the world.