Of all the world’s authors, very few have been honoured by having their names used as the basis of adjectives occurring in almost every language. Among these is Franz Kafka. 2014 marks not only the ninetieth anniversary of his premature death from tuberculosis of the larynx, but also the centenary of the composition of one of his most famous works, Der Prozess (‘The Trial’; Berlin, 1925: BL shelfmark 12553.r.2.), which, together with Die Verwandlung (‘Metamorphosis’; Leipzig, 1915, 011421.m.24.), established his reputation as a creator of bizarre worlds in which the uncanny and incongruous gradually infiltrate humdrum surroundings to devastating effect.

Both Gregor Samsa, the object of the metamorphosis which leaves him trapped in the form of a human-sized insect, and Josef K, whose ‘trial’ is the subject of Der Prozess, belong to Kafka’s own world, the everyday milieu of an insurance clerk in German-speaking Prague. The creeping unease which pervades both novels after the initial disturbing discovery (in Herr K’s case, that he ‘must have been slandered’, as he is arrested one morning without being aware of having done anything wrong) builds up to a tragic conclusion. Unlike the characters in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, whose transformation into birds, animals, trees or stars occurs as a direct reward or act of retribution for a definite action, Gregor simply wakes to find that he has undergone a mystifying change which embarrasses and disgusts his family, with no explanation or right of appeal.

Plaque commemorating the birthplace of Franz Kafka in Prague (photo by Godot13 from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0))

A similar situation confronts Josef K, but is compounded when he attempts to seek justice. The twisted succession of appeals and counter-appeals, cat-and-mouse games of capture and release, and mysterious encounters leads to a climax as horrifying as it is inevitable. The sheer banality of the surroundings in which it is played out – drab apartments, shabby offices, and anonymous streets – heightens the unsettling atmosphere of the novel and lends itself to a reading which suggests a prophecy of the show trials, trumped-up accusations and sudden disappearances which became all too common in Kafka’s home city and elsewhere in Eastern Europe within a few years of his death.

Kafka, in his diaries, described four great European writers as his ‘blood brothers’ – Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Grillparzer and Heinrich von Kleist. By 1913, the year before he began to write Der Prozess, he had read Kleist’s novella Michael Kohlhaas at least four times. The story of an ordinary horse-dealer whose apparently minor dispute with a local nobleman ends in his execution after endless legal complexities and eruptions of violence, it bears obvious parallels with Kafka’s novel. However, while Kleist’s narrative has been criticized for the clumsy addition of a sensational sub-plot involving a mysterious gypsy soothsayer, Kafka’s is all the more chilling because the element which Sigmund Freud termed das Unheimliche (The Uncanny) in his essay of 1919 operates with no need of such paraphernalia.

The first English translation of Der Prozess was published in 1937 by Willa and Edwin Muir (12554.r.22). The novel has inspired a number of adaptations for stage and screen, including versions by André Gide, Harold Pinter and Steven Berkoff, as well as operas by Gottfried von Einem and by the Danish composer Poul Ruders, who created an orchestral work entitled Kafkapriccio (2007-08;  i.33.x.(2.)) paraphrasing episodes from his Kafka’s Trial. Inexorable and implacable, the powers which seal Josef K’s fate are universal precisely because they are faceless, and their irruption into the day-to-day existence of a petty functionary represents a grim forerunner of magical realism.

 Susan Halstead, Curator Czech & Slovak

 

The Balkan Day Seminar at the British Library on 13 June will celebrate among others the life and literary accomplishments of Marko Marulić (Marcus Marulus Spalatensis, 1450-1524)  who was the central figure of a humanist circle from Split and the most highly-praised Croatian personality of his time. Marulić has remained an inspiration to many generations in Croatia up to the present day, an author of considerable international influence and standing.

Marulić wrote mainly treatises on Christian morality drawing on the scriptures, and as a lay person of wide interests he found inspiration for his work in ancient scholarship and in humanist literature. Marulić’s significant and long-lasting legacy consists of Latin and Croatian epic poetry.

 Title page of De institutione bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum  (Basle, 1513) 1412.f.30. (1.).

De institutione bene vivendi per exempla sanctorum (‘Instructions on How to Lead a Virtuous Life Based on the Examples of the Saints’), is a collection of moral tales and anecdotes from the Old and New Testaments. The first edition was printed in Venice in 1507. During the 16th and 17th centuries it was printed in 15 known editions, giving proof of the popularity of this book. The above is a title page of the printer Adam Petri’s exquisite 1513 edition.

Title page of Evangelistarium (Cologne, 1529) 843.k.13.

Euangelistarium (Evangelistary) is a seven-book treatise on Christian ethics, considered as Marulić’s main theological work and printed in 15 known 16th century editions. The copy pictured above, printed by Eucharius Cervicornus in Cologne in 1529, belonged to Henry VIII and contains his manuscript notes; it came to the British (Museum) Library as part of the Old Royal Library.

Henry VIII’s annotations in his copy of the Evangelistary (843.k.13.), with marginal notes and a drawing of a pointing hand to highlight the printed text, which reveals the king’s interest in theology.

Title page of Marulić’s De humilitate et gloria Christi (Venice, 1519) 4805.b.28. 

De humilitate et gloria Christi (‘Christ’s Humility and Glory’) is Marulić’s third major work on moral theology, printed with the aim of providing useful examples for a virtuous life. The copy pictured above  was printed in Venice by Bernardino Vitali in 1519.

Latin was used in the Croatian lands until the mid-19th century, when the vernacular gradually replaced it in administration and as a literary language. Šime Jurić’s Latin bibliography, Iugoslaviae scriptores Latini recentioris aetatis: Pars 1, Opera scriptorum Latinorum natione Croatarum usque ad annum MDCCCXLVIII typis edita (Zagreb, 1968-71, ZF.9.b.735), lists over 4500  Croatian Latin works and works about Croatia to 1848. Croatiae auctores Latini, a digital collection of Croatian Latinists and Latin texts about Croatia, provides information on about 180 authors and Latin texts from a 10th-century epitaph to Ton Smerdel’s collection of poems Pontes lucentes (Zagreb, 1962, 11566.a.10.) and Ivan Golub’s Latin poems published in 1984. Over 50 Croatian Latin writers of all periods are represented in the British Library collection in the original and in subsequent editions and reprints.

‘Carmen de doctrina Domini nostri Iesu Christi pendentis in cruce’ (‘A Dialogue between a Christian and Christ hanging on the Cross’) is a poem originally printed in the first edition of Marulić’s De institutione (Venice, 1507) and reprinted afterwards in all the Latin editions as an appendix. It was translated into English by Philip Howard (St Philip Howard), 13th earl of Arundel (1557-95)  and serves as an introduction to his translation of An Epistle in the person of Christ to the faithfull soule by Johannes Justus Lansperger, which was secretly printed in England some time before 1595; the British Library’s copy (1019.c.35.) is pictured below. 

In the late 15th and early 16th century poetry evolved in Croatian  in addition to Latin. Marulić is the author of the first printed secular work in Croatian, an epic, Judita, based on the Book of Judith, ‘u versih hrvacki složena’ (‘in Croatian verses’), printed in Venice in 1521. Judita is written in the Ikavian variant of the Čakavian dialect (čakavsko-ikavski). Marulić wrote this epic for people who couldn’t understand Latin: ‘Tuj historiju čtući, ulize mi u pamet da ju stumačim našim jazikom, neka ju budu razumiti i oni ki nisu naučni knjige latinske aliti djačke.’  

A digital version of Judita (Venice 1522, 2nd edition) is available from the Croatian National and University Library digital heritage.

Vita Divi Hieronymi (Life of St Jerome) is an autograph work by Marulić dating from 1507. This is the title leaf of a codex on fine vellum which comprises 42 folios held in the British Library (Add. MS 18.029).

For further information about Marulić, his bibliography and digital versions of his works, visit The Marulianum Marko Marulić Institute in Split, Croatia. For the British Library’s holdings see our Marulić catalogue.

Milan Grba, Lead Curator Southeast European Studies

References:

Marko Marulić, Judita. S drvorezima i inicijalima iz drugog izdanja, 1522. Predgovor napisao M. Kombol. Tekst Judite i tumač Marcela Kušara revidirao V. Štefanić. (Zagreb, 1950) 11588.g.10.

Branko Franolić, Works of Croatian Latinists recorded in the British Library General Catalogue. 2nd, enlarged ed. (Zagreb, New York, 1998). 2719.e.3669.

A. Clarke, ‘Henry VIII and Marko Marulić’s Evangelistarium’ Colloquia Maruliana 20 (2011), pp. 167-175.  ZF.9.a.2999

M. Grba, ‘Marko Marulic and the British Library’ Colloquia Maruliana 20 (2011), pp. 197-226. ZF.9.a.2999

A visit to the current BL exhibition Comics Unmasked put me in mind of an ancestor of the graphic novel from Spain: Eusebio Planas’ Historia de una mujer.

Lithographed title page of Eusebio Planas Historia de una mujer: album de cincuenta cromos (Barcelona, [188?]) RB.37.c.45

The narrative is carried in 50 chromolithographs, with only the briefest of captions (usually a piece of dialogue).

Eusebio Planas (1833-1897) trained as a lithographer in Paris and his works have a whiff of gay Paree about them. He illustrated novels (such as the Spanish translation of La Dame aux Camélias) and journals and also did commercial work such as party invitations. Historia de una mujer seems to be his invention alone.

It is claimed that in its original form this ‘Story of a Woman’ was issued from 1880 on as a series of 102 cards included in packets of cigarettes made by the Mexican firm ‘El Buen Tono’. Publication in book form, in a much larger format (the plates measure 27 x 20 cm) followed later that year. The plates are signed and dated 1878 to 1880.

Clara on the stage

The tale follows Clara’s progress from dressmaker to vaudeville actress to the mistress of a series of men who take her to the watering places of Europe: Santander, El Salinero (in the Canary Islands), Vienna, Baden, St Petersburg...  

Clara entertains some admirers

In plate 45 she discovers a grey hair and plate 50, set in a convent hospital, is entitled ‘What a difference between yesterday and today!’ 
‘What a difference...’: Clara in the Convent

Obviously aimed at the gentleman, it’s all in the best possible taste. However, an internet search (not advisable) reveals that much of Planas’s output was explicitly pornographic: indeed, his studio was raided by the police and his stock confiscated.

It’s a terribly modern story: Clara visits the Paris Exhibition, possibly that of 1878 (‘What is most exhibited at the Exposition are the women, amigo mío’, [30]), where she travels on a magnetic boat (28).

Clara goes bathing - in an unusually modest costume

Needless to say, Clara appears in a variety of skimpy costumes, all à la mode. As her lovers are international, so too are her dresses: I’m reminded of the poem ‘Divagación’ by Rubén Darío (1867-1916), Nicaragua’s naughtiest symboliste, with its stanzas ‘¿Te gusta amar en griego? […] ¿O un amor alemán? […]  ‘Amame en chino […]’  (Do you like to love in Greek?  Or a German love? Love me in Chinese …); ’nough said.

Just the stuff to enjoy with a cigar.

Barry Taylor, Curator Hispanic Studies

References:

Pilar Vélez, Eusebi Planas (1883-1897): il•lustrador de la Barcelona vuitcentista (Barcelona, 1999)  YA.2000.a.15749