Last week the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction was awarded to The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio: poet, seducer and preacher of war by Lucy Hughes-Hallett (London, 2013; YC.2013.a.15393).

The winning work, published on the 150th anniversary of D’Annunzio’s birth, was described by Martin Rees, the chair of the judges, as “A biography of an extraordinary man, a repellent man (the judges said), playwright, poet, novelist, war hero, womaniser, nationalist politician, and the man who in many ways invented Fascism. Everything that Mussolini learnt about parades and black-shirts and the extent to which politics is a branch of theatre he got from Gabriele D’Annunzio whose career peaked in 1919 when he led a hundred Italian army deserters into the Croatian town Fiume and tried to seize it for Italy.”  

The ensuing flurry in the press predictably highlighted the scandalous and sensationalist elements in D’Annunzio. There was, however, general agreement that though he may have been repellent, profligate and promiscuous, D’Annunzio was never dull and he is, consequently, a splendid subject for a biography.

D'Annunzio (ca. 1896) and his distinctive signature. From G. di Propezio, Gabriele d'Annunzio (Rome, 1896). 11876.pp.3

This is, in fact, the second biography of the poet to have been published in Great Britain in the last 15 years. John Woodhouse’s Gabriele D’Annunzio: Defiant Archangel (Oxford, 1998; YC.1999.a.3656), adopted a largely chronological narrative approach, from D’Annunzio’s early life in the Abruzzi, his first steps as a society journalist in Rome, his years in France, his activities during the First World War , the invasion and annexation of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) in 1919 when he was associated with the elite Arditi storm troops of the Italian Army, to the final years in the Vittoriale, the hillside estate on Lake Garda where the writer lived from 1922 until his death in 1938, which is now his house-museum and mausoleum.

The Vittoriale (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Woodhouse’s work was the first fully documented biography of D’Annunzio, making use of thousands of newly-catalogued documents (especially those conserved in the Vittoriale) and it attempted to provide an objective and balanced appraisal of the man.  

Hughes-Hallett, on the other hand, eschews chronology, adopting a thematic rather than a chronological structure, and a kaleidoscopic narrative technique more common in fiction-writing than in biography. In her own words: “I have raced through decades and slowed right down, on occasion, to record in great detail a week, a night, a conversation. To borrow terms from music … I have alternated legato narrative with staccato glimpses of the man and fragments of his thought” (p. 16).  Unlike the detailed notes and excellent bibliography in Woodhouse, the present work has only a select bibliography and does not include precise page references.

Like Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the indefatigable promoter of Futurism, D’Annunzio was theatrical, preposterous, charismatic, a great self-publicist and propagandist, a skilful manipulator of the media to ensure reaching a mass audience.  Both men also shared a passion for motor cars and aeroplanes: one of D’Annunzio’s, most impressive wartime exploits was “the flight over Vienna”, a 700-mile round trip he undertook on 9 August 1918 to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna.

The image of both men has also been tainted by their early association with Fascism, though their relations with Mussolini were often ambiguous. It should also be remembered that, although D’Annunzio had a strong influence on Mussolini’s ideology, he never became directly involved in fascist government politics.

Unlike Marinetti, however, D’Annunzio was a notorious womaniser, who often incorporated details of his love affairs into his works, completely disregarding the feelings of the women involved.  His mistresses included the great actress Eleonora Duse, the ballerina Ida Rubinstein, and  the eccentric heiress Luisa Casati. 

Small wonder, therefore, that D’Annunzio’s writings have been overshadowed and compromised, especially outside Italy, by his flamboyant and sensationalist elements in his life. Additionally, his literary reputation suffered by early translations of his works into English that often appeared in bowdlerized versions. A typical example is that of D’Annunzio’s first novel Il Piacere, (Milan, 1889; 12471.h.20). This masterly evocation of Rome and Roman high society in the 1880s, much influenced by Huysman’s A rebours, has only been available in English as The Child of Pleasure (London, 1898; 12471.k.25), a heavily sanitized version which also omitted many of the original aesthetic reflections that play such an important role in the original. The forthcoming new translation of the novel will hopefully give a fairer idea of the original, one of the great novels of the Decadent movement. It is also hoped that the interest aroused by award of the Johnson Prize to the new biography will prompt further translations of D’Annunzio. 

And for those wondering about the title of Hughes-Hallet’s biography, it is a reference to Romain Rolland’s  description of D’Annunzio as a pike – a predatory fish lurking, afloat and still, waiting for ideas on which to pounce, swallow them, and express them better himself, making them his own: a testimony to the wide variety of D’Annunzio’s enormous output.

Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek Studies

References:

Annamaria Andreoli (ed.)  D’Annunzio: l’uomo, l’eroe, il poeta (Rome, 2001) LB.31.b.24190.

D’Annunzio, Gabriele, Notturno. Translated and annotated by Stephen Sartarelli. (New Haven, 2011) YC.2012.a.19881

The cover of D'Annunzio's first published work, Canto Novo (Rome, 1882). 1568/7016

7 November 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of birth of French writer, philosopher, playwright and activist Albert Camus (1913-1960). It is impossible to speculate how his career in any of these fields might have developed had he not died prematurely in a car accident on 4 January 1960 when a Facel Vega driven by his publisher and friend Michel Gallimard crashed near Sens, killing them both.

Camus (left) and Michel Gallimard

Born in Algiers into a poor family, Camus was brought up by his mother after the death of his father in the Battle of the Marne (1914), and during his years as a student was forced to limit his studies and his activities as a goalkeeper for the university football team Racing Universitaire d'Alger when he developed tuberculosis. Throughout his life his ties to his native Algeria remained strong, and he wrote evocatively of the heat and brilliance of the climate, never more tellingly than in his most famous novel L’étranger (The Outsider; 1942) of which the British Library possesses a first edition (W17/9256 DSC), where the relentless glare of the sun is a direct factor in the narrator Meursault’s attack on an Arab which ultimately sends him to the guillotine.

In another novel, La Peste (The Plague; 1947: first edition at 012551.m.30. and W26/4658 DSC), Camus once again sets the action in North Africa as the backdrop for the ethical choices and changes which confront the inhabitants of a small town when a mysterious rat-borne plague suddenly erupts.  The rats have been interpreted by critics as symbols on a variety of levels, including carriers of moral and political corruption as well as an allusion to the compromises for which France was blamed during the German occupation.

Camus’s own political beliefs brought him into numerous conflicts, from his membership of the French resistance cell ‘Combat’ and editorship of its paper to the outspoken criticism of Communism which led to his expulsion from the party in 1937 and his breach with his fellow-Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre  in 1951. His vigorous advocacy of human rights encompassed pronouncements on the bombing of Hiroshima, the Hungarian uprising of 1956, and the Algerian war in 1954, and opposition to totalitarianism and the death penalty, which he joined forces with Arthur Koestler  to criticize.

In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature ‘for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times’. This is nowhere more evident than in his dramas, which place the moral dilemmas of human existence and the workings of the absurd in a variety of contexts which, from ancient Rome in Caligula (1938) to pre-revolutionary Russia (Les Justes, 1949), frame timeless questions about human guilt and responsibility and make them accessible to all. It is surely no coincidence that Camus and Sartre’s first meeting in 1943 was at a rehearsal of the latter’s play Les Mouches  (The Flies), where Orestes and his fellow-citizens grapple with a symbolic plague no less virulent than that in Camus’s work.

By locating the action of these plays in distant times and places, Camus enables his audiences to enter into it without the limited identification with specific contemporary issues which would have resulted from a modern setting, and stimulates discussion of questions which remain of vital importance a century after the author’s birth. And yet, despite their enduring dramatic power and the serious quality of their content, we may recall Camus’s response when asked by his friend Charles Poncet whether he preferred the theatre to football: he is said to have replied, ‘Football, without hesitation’.

Susan Halstead, Curator Czech & Slovak Studies

Cultural history and history of education is a relatively new research trend, so it was not obvious to the previous generations of librarians and curators that future scholars would want to examine textbooks. This type of material is difficult to collect and preserve. Although produced in large quantities and numerous editions, textbooks, like newspapers and ephemera, are not meant to survive. Older foreign textbooks and practical guides for teaching and learning represent an especially precious category of items. What was meant to be cheaply-produced learning material now becomes invaluable for the simple reason that very few copies survive. One of the most treasured works in our collections is Ivan Fedorov's  Azbuka (C.104.dd.11(1)), printed in Lviv in 1574, the first printed and dated East Slavonic primer. This is an extremely rare item - there is only one other recorded copy in the world, at Harvard University Library.

Fedorov's Azbuka 

A Slavonic Grammar by Meletii Smotritsky was first printed in 1618-1619 and reprinted several times in the 17th century. Smotritsky made an attempt to codify the contemporary Church Slavonic language as used in the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian lands. The book had a significant impact on the development of these languages. In 1648 the grammar was reworked to reflect the norms of the language as used in Moscow at that time. We have two copies of the 1648 edition ( 71.d.16 and C.125.d.14).

The latter copy comes from the collection  of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753)  and bears notes in Latin, which suggests that the book was used for learning purposes. Interestingly, all notes are made on the page where the  principles of Russian syntax are explained, which probably suggests that the learner was quite advanced. Before belonging to a foreign owner, this copy was in possession of a priest – one Andrei  Petrovich Peresvetov.

Sloane's copy of Smotritsky's grammar (C.125.d.14) showing the Latin notes

The first Russian textbook on mathematics by Leonty Magnitsky was published in 1703, also in the Church Slavonic language (8531.f.16). It is both an encyclopedia of mathematics which explains its rationale and provides numerous tables, measures and rules, and a textbook with lots of practical 'problems', such as how many bricks are needed to build a wall of certain measurements (see the illustration below), or what one’s debt would be if one wanted a loan at a certain percentage.  The book was published in 2,400 copies and used in schools till the 1750s.

There are more examples of learning and teaching materials from the 19th century in such subjects as languages, history, the Orthodox religion, rhetoric, poetry, literature and law. One of the more curious titles is the book by Ivan Zander Nachatki russkogo iazyka dlia nemetskogo iunoshestva [The foundations of the Russia language for German youths], published in Riga in 1869 [shelfmark 12976.h.18.], which included Russian proverbs with parallel translations. It is very likely that the book was acquired by pure chance, but maybe some British Museum readers used German as a language of instruction while learning Russian, as there were no similar books in English.

Slavonic studies fully emerged in Britain in the 20th century (on the history of learning and studying Russian, see James Muckle. The Russian language in Britain: a historical survey of learners and teachers (Ilkestone, 2008;  YK.2009.a.30298 and m09/.13908 ) and, of course, learning material in English started to be produced in Britain.  In the British Library, we have a nice pocket-size booklet called Russkii Uchenik= The Russian Pupil (Manchester, 1919; 12975.a.34). Its author claims that the size is part of his method: “For one thing, you get tired of handling your text-book too often, you find you cannot always carry it about to look at it at odd moments. What is the remedy then? A little, well-printed booklet that you could carry about in your pocket like a letter where words and grammar are arranged in a manner which does not tax your brains in the least but nevertheless enables you to assimilate knowledge in an exceedingly interesting, novel, and attractive manner”. Sounds like an advert of a learning app, doesn’t it?  

Early lessons from Russkii Uchenik= The Russian Pupil

The British Library also holds some Soviet schoolbooks, which might be an interesting resource for historians of the Soviet system of education. And, of course, one can find plenty of curiosities, such as Uchebnik avtoliubitelia [A textbook for the amateur  driver and car owner] (Moscow, 1952;  08774.b.3), Uchebnik dlia mladshego veterinarnogo fel’dshera [A textbook for the junior veterinary  practitioner] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950) and various learning materials for propagandists of atheism, ship’s carpenters, textbooks on logic for secondary schools, and various other subjects. In the atmosphere of Cold War it is not surprising that the British Museum acquired such books as Uchebnik voennoi gigieny [A textbook on military hygiene] (Moscow, 1962;  7327.e.45) or Uchebnik angliiskogo iazyka dlia vysshikh voenno-uchebnykh zavedenii [English for Military Highschools] (Moscow, 1957;  W.P.12521)

At the beginning of perestroika the decision was taken to collect samples of textbooks that would represent the changes in the system of education and in  society, so it is not unexpected that one of examples of school literature of the 21st century is Bukvarʹ shkolʹnika : Putevoditelʹ nachala poznaniia veshchei bozhestvennykh i chelovecheskikh [The Pupil’s primer: the guidebook for learning about things divine and human] (Moscow, 2004;  YF.2006.b.558).

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead East European Curator (Russian)