19 June 2015
Lisbon, 20 June 1647: assassination of king of Portugal foiled by miracle
John, Duke of Bragança, came to the throne of Portugal in 1640, putting an end to sixty years of Spanish rule under Philips II through IV, the ‘dominação filipina’. Alongside his political life, he was also a composer and musicologist.
Luso-Hispanic relations remained tense for a good while, and when an attempt was made on the King’s life in 1647, Father Francisco Brandão had no doubt who the culprits were: Castile.
The opportunity was the King’s attendance at the Corpus Christi procession at Lisbon cathedral on 20 June 1647. The culprit, Domingos Leite Pereira, “unworthy of having been born in the noble and loyal town of Guimarães”, set out for the capital armed with a musket (“espingarda”) with twelve bullets and two phials of poison to make the shots even more deadly. He set himself up in a good position to fire, and had two horses ready for his escape. But at the sight of the pious monarch, he was overcome with “a happy stupor”, threw down his weapon and escaped.
The potential murder weapon, from Cesar Fiosconi and Jordam Guserio, Espingarda perfeyta e regras para a sua operaçam (Lisbon, 1718). British Library 1420.c.3.
Brandão’s account has been digitised by the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal.
The British Library has just acquired another pamphlet on the assassination attempt, a self-styled Mercurius gratulatorius (celebratory newsheet):
Lucas Velloso, Pro Ioanne IV rege serenissimo Portucalensium: quem proditor auro corruptus occidendum suscepit in communi pompa celebritatis Eucharisticae … (Lisbon, 1647). RB.23.a.36385.
Velloso is not narrative but elegiac: though he gives the detail that the traitor was corrupted by gold (“proditor auro corruptus”) he does not name him or give the date of his attempted crime. He describes the criminal as being not happily stupefied but terrified, either by the majesty of God apparent in the king, or by the king’s majesty itself. Brandão in contrast describes in great detail the route of the Corpus procession through the streets of Lisbon. If challenged, Velloso would doubtless have quoted Aristotle: “poetry is more philosophical and more elevated than history, since poetry states more universal things whereas history states particular things” (Poetics IX).
This is a rather modern concept of the miraculous: a sudden change of heart is a more subtle miracle than the speaking babies and reattached limbs of medieval tradition.
Stop press: while working on this post I discovered that the BL has another pamphlet on this topic:
Antonio de Sousa de Macedo. Panegyrico sobre o milagroso sucesso, con que Deos livrou a el Rey nosso senhor da sacrilega treiçaõ dos Castelhanos ([Lisbon?, 1647]) 1444.g.4.(3.)
Previously wrongly dated to 1642 in our catalogue, it has now been corrected to 1647.
Macedo is light on facts but knows his Scripture: he ranks the miracle of the king’s deliverance with the sacrifice of Isaac, David’s victory over Goliath and the conversion of Saul to St Paul.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections
01 June 2015
Basque Books in the British Library
The first book in the Basque language was printed in Bordeaux as late as 1545. It is a collection of poems by the vicar of St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, Bernat Etxepare, entitled Linguae Vasconum Primitiae (‘First fruits of the Basque language’). Only one copy survives, in the Bibliothèque national in Paris. Subsequent printing in Basque, both in France and Spain, was not extensive. So how it is that so many books in Basque are now in the British Library’s collections?
In fact books in a wide variety of languages, including Basque, were in the foundation collection of Sir Hans Sloane, who owned copies of three editions of Jean Etcheberri de Çiboure’s Noelac eta berce canta esperitual berriac (‘Carols and new spiritual songs’; Bordeaux, 1645; Bayonne, 1699; Bayonne: [1700?]; British Library 1064.a.30.(30), (2), (1) respectively). He also possessed the third edition of Etcheberri’s Eliçara erabiltceco liburua (‘A book to carry to Church’).
Jean Etcheberri, Eliçara erabiltceco liburua (Pau, 1666) C.53.gg.20.
It is doubtful that Sloane knew Basque, but books in foreign languages, including minority languages, were intrinsic to his collecting policy as language was seen as fundamental to the description of peoples. He also owned two key works about the Basque Country and the language: Andrés de Poza, De la antigua lengua, poblaciones, y comarcas de las Españas (Bilbao, 1587; 627.d.32) and Baltasar de Echave, Discursos de la antigüedad de la lengua cantabra vascongada (Mexico, 1607; C.33.i.6). Both emphasized Basque’s perceived status as the first language of the Iberian Peninsula.
The King’s Library contains a copy of what is arguably the most iconic book in the Basque language, Joannes Leiçarraga’s New Testament, printed in 1571. For the Basques this text is their Tyndale and King James versions combined.
The opening of St Matthew’s Gospel from Joannes Leiçarraga’s Basque New Testament Iesus Christ Gure Iaunaren Testamentu Berria (La Rochelle in 1571) 217.d.2
In the second half of the 19th century, purchase became the main means of acquiring foreign books. Thanks to Antonio Panizzi, Keeper of Printed Books from 1837 until 1856, the British Museum Library secured sufficient funds to acquire contemporary works of foreign scholarship systematically. These included books about Basque, as about other foreign languages.
The increase in acquisition budgets also allowed the Museum to bid ambitiously at book sales. One of the most important for minority language material was the 1873 Paris sale of the Bibliothèque patoise of French bibliophile Jean Henri Burgaud des Marets (1806-1873), which included more than 300 works relating to Basque. Of these the Museum purchased 130, mostly religious works, but also periodicals, books of music, travel writing, and scholarly works on the Basque language and region. Most were printed in the 19th century, but a number were from the 18th, e.g. Basque versions of The Imitation of Christ (Bordeaux, 1720; IX.Basq.7.) and St Francis de Sales, Introduction à la vie dévote (Toulouse, 1749; 886.d.2.)
The Museum received important donations material from two scholars of Basque during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first was Napoleon I’s nephew, Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte, who spent much of his life in London. He commissioned translations of the Song of Songs and of St Matthew’s Gospel into several minority languages and dialects, most notably Basque. These were used to compare dialects and as a result Bonaparte produced his dialect map of the seven Basque Provinces (Carte des sept provinces basques, 1863; Maps 18649(4)). Bonaparte’s basic divisions have largely stood the test of time.
The second donor of Basque books to the Museum was the irascible and obsessive Oxford Bascophile Edward Spencer Dodgson (1857-1922). A pupil of Resurrección María de Azkue, the first director of Euskaltzaindia, the Basque language academy, Dodgson devoted most of his life to studying Basque language and bibliography. This latter interest extended to collecting Basque books, most of which he donated to the British Museum. These fall into two broad categories. The first were cheap, popular, small-format books in Basque. Their subject-matter goes beyond the usual works of popular piety to include translations of episodes from Dante’s Inferno and Cervantes’ Don Quijote, a popular tale, and various dramatic works. The second group consists of Dodgson’s own publications: works about Basque, notably the verb, and his editions of earlier works (e.g. those of Rafael Mikoleta and Agustín Kardebaraz). Basque language courses, readers and conversation manuals can also be conveniently included in this group.
A conspicuous feature of Dodgson’s donations are his manuscript annotations. These indicate how, when and where he obtained a particular book, what he paid for it or who gave it to him. Other notes are corrections, including intemperate comments on the authors’ linguistic incompetence. Inside a copy of Tomás Epalza’s El euskara ó el baskuenze en 120 lecciones he wrote: ‘The author of this collection of bad Basque and silly Castilian is Thomas Epalza of Bilbao’. He corrected the text in many places. In a second copy he wrote: ‘This book is of very little value. Its lightest mistakes are misprints. These are very numerous indeed.’
Dodgson’s note in one of his copies of Epalza’s El euskara ó el baskuenze en 120 lecciones (Bilbao, 1896) 12978.c.38.(1)
The British Library’s early Basque holdings were thus built up in part fortuitously and in part strategically. That collection strategy has been maintained, with some variation. Today, the Library focusses on works about the language, editions of classic texts in Basque and a selection of contemporary literature (including in Spanish translation).
Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic Studies
20 April 2015
Educating Italians in 19th-century London
The recently acquired journal Il Pellegrino: giornale istruttivo, morale e piacevole ad uso della Scuola Italiana Gratuita di Greville Street, Hatton Garden, represents a remarkable and unique addition to the British Library’s Italian collections. Launched on 4 June 1842 with a clear pedagogical intent, the journal was an initiative of the Italian exile Giuseppe Mazzini. It became the official publication of the Free Italian School set up by Mazzini in the previous year in the heart of London’s Little Italy.
The first issue of Il Pellegrino, London, 4 June 1842. British Library RB.23.b.7515.
Mazzini first arrived in London on 12 January 1837. To the Italian patriot, England offered the opportunity to leave behind a life spent in hiding and on the run, whilst still remaining actively involved in revolutionary and conspiratorial activities. Although he died in Pisa, Mazzini spent most of his adult life in London, moving from one cheap boarding house to another. In England he acquired several eminent admirers who appreciated his moral principles and unfaltering dedication to the cause of Italian unity. Dickens, George Meredith and Swinburne openly declared their esteem. Mazzini became a personal acquaintance of the Carlyles and was welcomed as a honoured guest by John Stuart Mill.
Giuseppe Mazzini, portrait from vol. XVI of Scritti editi ed inediti di Giuseppe Mazzini (Imola, 1913). 012226.d.1.
Mazzini first mentioned his idea of setting up a school for the many illiterate Italian immigrants in London in a letter to his mother, dated 3 September 1841. The school would be free and open to “workers, young organ-grinders, those selling plaster figurines, etc.” The daily classes would be held in the evening to encourage attendance. Subjects taught included Italian grammar, history, geography, arithmetic, geometry, mechanics and, at the students’ request, English, with general lectures on moral principles or Italian history every Sunday. Students would be provided with all necessary materials, including paper and ink.
Mazzini at first remained prudently in the shadows to avoid any possible association between the School and the revolutionary political organisation of which he was the leader. The teachers were unpaid volunteers. Among them were such prominent figures as Antonio Gallega, Carlo Pepoli, Gabriele Rossetti, and Joseph and George Toynbee. The famous American writer and journalist Margaret Fuller addressed the students on more than one occasion. Mazzini himself did a share of teaching, primarily history and geography, which he considered vital in cementing and reinforcing the students’ feeling of being Italian.
Mazzini teaching at the Free Italian School, image from Jessie White Mario, Della vita di Giuseppe Mazzini. (Milan, 1886) 10630.i.5.
The popularity and success of the school surpassed all expectations. 51 students enrolled on the first evening, rising to 65 on the second. Mazzini was struck by this enthusiasm; he acknowledged that for “[these] poor souls [who] work or carry street-organs about all day … it cost a lot to devote two hours to studying”, adding that “if they come of their own will, this shows their typically good Italian character”. The number of students increased to 230 in the following year, including a few female pupils. Following the example of the Free Italian School, similar institutes were established by Italian exiles in Boston, New York and Montevideo.
The School in London, however, had many opponents and detractors too. Antonio Panizzi expressed his disapproval and grave concern. Thomas Carlyle cautioned his wife not to get involved with what he called “a nest of young conspirators”. Many saw the School and the courses it provided as an excuse to teach children the ‘four Rs’: reading,’riting,’rithmetic, and revolution. Even stronger opposition came, as Mazzini had foreseen, from the students’ employers, the Piedmontese authorities in London and the Catholic Church. In Mazzini’s mind, however, the School never had a political agenda. Its primary purpose was to educate and ameliorate the conditions of Italian immigrants in London.
Edited and published by Luigi Bucalossi at 5 Greville Street, Hatton Garden, Il Pellegrino (‘The Pilgrim’) was printed by H. Court of 14 Brooke Street, in Holborn, and appeared every Saturday. The price was set at ‘three half pennies’, but the journal was distributed free of charge to pupils attending the school. Each issue consisted of four pages, printed in double columns; the pagination was continuous from issue to issue. The journal survived for just over a year, with the last issue, no. 52, published on 17 June 1843.
Issue 24 of Il Pellegrino (10 November 1842)
The content of Il Pellegrino – the title refers both to the journey of learning and to the exiled condition of many Italian émigrés – is inspired by pedagogical motives. Various subjects are covered, including scientific ones, but the emphasis is on Italian history and literature. The paucity of details relating to the journal’s administration makes it difficult to establish how many copies were printed of each issue and how widely they were distributed. It is, however, probable that just enough copies were printed to cover the number of students in the school. This would explain the extreme rarity of the British Library’s copy, so far the only one known to have survived.
Il Pellegrino and the other journals that Mazzini published in London, the Italian School, and the Union of Italian Working Men (which he set up in 1840), were all part of a single moral, educational and philanthropic project. Though not a systematic thinker, Mazzini, was a brilliant and acute interpreter of his times and of the political passions which eventually led to a unified Italy, although as a monarchy rather than the republic he had fought for. He saw education for the lower classes as an inalienable right and a way – perhaps the only way – to achieve emancipation and acquire full consciousness of belonging to a spiritual community, transcending geographical borders – a Nation.
The discovery of this apparently unique run of Il Pellegrino casts additional light on Mazzini’s ideas about schooling and education for the ‘prezioso elemento’ (‘precious element’), as he described the Italian working classes, who were to be the cornerstone of a future nation. Now available for consultation at the British Library, it should prove of singular importance to scholars and historians and to anyone interested in Victorian newspapers and foreign-language or foreign-edited journalism in London.
Andrea Del Cornò, The London Library
Further reading
Andrea Del Cornò, ‘Un ritrovato giornale mazziniano: “Il Pellegrino”’, in Le fusa del gatto: libri, librai e molto altro (Torrita di Siena, 2013)
Franco Della Peruta, Il giornalismo italiano del Risorgimento (Milan, 2011) YF.2011.a.12906
Michele Finelli, Il prezioso elemento: Giuseppe Mazzini e gli emigrati italiani nell’esperienza della Scuola italiana di Londra (Verrucchio, 1999) YA.2000.a.10829
Denis Mack Smith , Mazzini (New Haven, 1994) YC.1994.b.4150
Lucio Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth-century Britain: Realities and Images (Leicester, 1988) YC.1988.b.8035
Margaret Campbell Walker Wicks, The Italian Exiles in London, 1816-1848 (Manchester, 1937) Ac.2671/35.
The blue plaque commemorating Mazzini at 183 Gower Street, London
25 March 2015
Collection of hopes and despair: 30 years ago Mikhail Gorbachev started Perestroika
In the late 1980s the famous Revolution Square in Moscow turned into a huge market. But it was a ‘press market’ - only alternative publications were sold there in abundance, usually by elderly ladies. Most of them were quite politicised themselves and were selling only publications of a certain political standing, but some had a variety of publications on display representing a wide ideological spectrum. Our colleagues at the State Historical Public Library in Moscow started collecting documents relating to various political and public movements in 1989. They often went to Revolution Square themselves to buy materials, attended various meetings, and asked friends and relatives to bring ephemera to the Historical Library. Chris Thomas, at that time Head of the British Library’s Slavonic and East European collections, managed to secure an agreement with the Historical Library that they would also help us to create a similar collection. Through this source and via her wide network of friends in Russia who started sending materials to London, Chris managed to accumulate invaluable unique primary source materials on the era of Perestoika which started in spring 30 years ago.
Two examples of Samizdat publications
Now we can say that our collection of Russian ‘Underground periodicals’ or ‘Samizdat’, which should probably be called ‘Collection of alternative periodicals and ephemera’, comprises over 2,500 titles produced in the Soviet Union during Perestroika and in the early 1990s. Apart from published, print and typewritten items, it also contains original photographs:
Although Perestroika officially finished with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian political life in the early 1990s was lively, vibrant and chaotic. This is perfectly reflected in the collections of ephemera relating to the coup of August 1991, the two referendums (1991 and 1993) and the Duma and presidential and local election campaigns of the early 1990s.
In autumn 2012 Laura Todd, a postgraduate student at the University of Nottingham, worked in the British Library for two months on the collections of Russian ephemera from the late 1980s and the 1990s. She documented this project in her blog. How proud we are to say that the collection has been now sorted, catalogued, properly preserved and housed (shelfmarks: HS.74/2113-HS.74/2117 and HS.74/2124) and is available for researchers. We would like once again to thank Laura and our colleagues in Collection Care for completing this project. Now the collections look like this:
Although securely preserved in plastic sleeves and hidden in the vast climate-controlled basements of the British Library, these papers are waiting for their researchers to tell many stories of hope and despair from the first years of Russia’s post-communist era.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead East European Curator (Russian)
11 March 2015
Notes from an Old Profession
Attempts to regulate the sex trade are almost as old as the trade itself. Most cultures and societies, while openly deploring prostitution, have nonetheless tolerated it and, increasingly, tried to bring it under some form of governmental control. A recent British Library acquisition sheds light on one such attempt in 19th-century Hamburg:
Regulativ für die Bordell-Wirthe und eingezeichneten Mädchen in der Vorstadt St. Pauli ([Hamburg], 1853) RB.23.a.36389.
Like many port cities, Hamburg had a long history of prostitution and the city authorities had been issuing regulations for brothels and their employees since at least the 15th century. By the mid-19th century a set of regulations dating from 1834 were in force, but in 1847 some additional rules were issued by Dr A. Meier, ‘Patron’ of the suburb of St Pauli, then as now home to Hamburg’s main red light district. Our recently-acquired copy of these rules was printed in 1853, and each ‘girl’ (as they are always referred to here) in a brothel was to be given a copy. A label on the front wrapper shows that ours belonged to one Johanna Maria Friederica Wendland who worked “bei Brackert” (presumably the name of the brothel-keeper).
The wrapper of our copy of the Regulativ with the names of Johanna Wendland and “Brackert”
The 22 short paragraphs set out various rights and responsibilities. Brothel-keepers must provide a heated communal room in the winter (§13) and “simple, good food” (§15; specifically there must be no stinting on the morning coffee!). The women must be allowed free time to go out at least once a week (§17) although they must not wear “conspicuous” clothing that draws attention to their profession on these outings. Importantly, paragraph 18 states that “No girl may be forced to sleep with a man who is not acceptable to her.”
Many of the regulations are concerned with finances. Brothel-keepers may not advance more than 150 marks in credit to the women (§1). They can take up to half of a woman’s earnings (§2), but if she earns more than 50 marks in a week she need only hand over 25 (§3). Brothel-keepers cannot lay claim to gifts given to the women by clients (§9), and must not accept or demand gifts from the women (§10). The women must pay a monthly fee for such luxuries as a sofa (§8) or individual heating (§14) in their own rooms. A central kitty is to be maintained to help with extra expenses, such as clothing and travel costs for women who leave the brothel to return home, marry or take up another job (§19-20).
The seven pages of regulations are followed by 16 blank account-book pages. Paragraph 5 requires each woman’s copy to be filled in regularly by the brothel-keeper with a note of each month’s expenses. Paragraph 6 adds that a doctor must also sign each month’s page to certify that the woman is in good health.
An anonymous study of prostitution in Hamburg, first published in 1858 and reissued in a much enlarged edition in 1860, sheds light on some of the reasons behind these regulations. The author states that brothel-keepers regularly advance huge amounts of credit for clothing and other expenses (including gifts for themselves) to the women in their establishments, thus keeping the women effectively trapped in debt and unable to leave the brothel. Over a decade after the first publication of Dr Maier’s regulations, this commentator is clearly cynical about their effectiveness. He also doubts that many doctors have time for the regular health checks required.
However, a doctor did authorize our copy. Either Johanna Wendland herself or Brackert filled in two pages of accounts for September and October 1855, noting purchases including collars, a pair of boots and a velvet dress. The doctor signed it with the brief note “gesehen” on 6 October and 2 November.
The first page of Johanna Wendland's accounts and medical certification for September/October 1855
After this the entries cease and we can only speculate what happened. Did Johanna leave the brothel, and if so was it for another brothel, for the streets, or for a different employment or even marriage? Did she fall victim to disease, or to a violent client? Or did she or Brackert simply fall out of the habit of keeping the records while the authorities failed to enforce their well-meaning regulations, proving the cynic right? Whatever the case, Johanna’s brief accounts leave a slight but intriguing trace of a real woman working in the 19th-century sex trade.
References/further reading:
Die Hamburger Prostitution, oder die Gehemnisse des Dammthorwalles und der Schwiegerstrasse (Altona, 1858) 08282.f.20. (Zweite, vielfach ergänzte und durch Zusätze vermehrte Auflage (Altona, 1860) 12553.c.39.)
Jürgen Kahmann / Hubert Lanzerath, Weibliche Prostitution in Hamburg (Hamburg, 1981) X.529/61878
Ariane Barth, Die Reeperbahn: der Kampf um Hamburgs sündige Meile (Hamburg, 1999) YA.2001.a.41623
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies
19 December 2014
Punishment as a Crime?
The British Library has recently acquired a collection of articles called Punishment as a Crime? Perspectives on Prison Experience in Russian Culture. In this guest post the volume co-editor, Andrei Rogatchevski , introduces the book and its topic, in both the Russian and a wider context.
Cover of Punishment as a Crime?
The volume consists of seven articles by scholars from Italy, Sweden, the UK and the USA, and is devoted to the subject that has primarily been familiar in the West through Stalin’s Gulag. Back then, as a bitter joke had it, Russians could be divided into three categories: those who were imprisoned, those who are imprisoned and those who will be imprisoned. However, Russian prison experience had not begun and would not end with the Gulag. None other than the current Russian Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov admitted publicly in September 2011 that the modern “Russian prison system has retained some features of Stalin’s Gulag and even the pre-revolutionary katorga” (see http://echo.msk.ru/news/813876-echo.html). The number of those in Russian jails, however, is not always in reverse proportion to how liberal the ruling regime is. A former adviser to President Putin, Andrei Illarionov, points out that in 1989-91 there had been 699,000-723,000 convicts in the USSR, yet in the mid-1990s, in what became the Russian Federation (i.e. much smaller territory), their number exceeded one million (http://aillarionov.livejournal.com/339267.html). According to the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), as of 1 December 2014, there were 671,700 prisoners in Russian colonies and jails, 54,700 of them women (for information on a relatively recent documentary film about women’s experiences at a post-Communist Russian prison, see http://www.kinokultura.com/2013/39r-missgulag.shtml).
Today’s situation is at variance with a popular pre-revolutionary Russian belief that “the punishment of criminals is not the business of man, but of God” (Fyfe). In the opinion of a Russian prison official, interviewed by a journalist, “our state and our nation have created only one efficient industry: putting people behind bars. It’s the only thing that works at present” (Svinarenko 190). To quote Allison Gill, director of the Human Rights Watch office in Russia, Russian prisons “are widely acknowledged to be troubled institutions with poor conditions, torture and ill treatment” (see here). It is not yet clear whether the ongoing Russian penal reform will lead to any improvement in a foreseeable future.
Some would say that harsh conditions are necessary for prisons to serve as a deterrent, and criminals only get what they deserve anyway. Others would insist that such conditions only harden the criminals, instead of reforming them. Punishment as a Crime? examines the complex phenomenon of Russian prison culture from various angles, mostly on the basis of the evidence provided by the well known individuals with a first-hand knowledge of Russian penal institutions, from Fedor Dostoevsky and Vlas Doroshevich, via Andrei Siniavsky and Sergei Dovlatov, to Eduard Limonov and Igor Sutyagin (who has supplied the book’s opening participant-observer piece). Prison humour, film and popular songs, as well as theories of human motivation and philosophical musings by Arendt, Foucault, Cioran, Kierkegaard, Agamben and others, also have a role to play as material and/or methodology for analysis. An exercise in comparative penology is in evidence too, juxtaposing Russia and the UK in the 2000s (and finding quite a few things in common).
Needless to say, many penal systems across the globe face the same problems, such as overcrowded prisons and high reoffending rate (see, for example, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23958223 and http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/crime-statistics/recidivism.html, showing some 2012-13 data for the UK and Sweden respectively). Moreover, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous 1962 book describing a typical day of a Gulag convict in the early 1950s), has been perceived, by some at least, as “a day in anybody’s life. The majority of the human race are trapped in a monotonous daily routine which differs from that of a concentration camp only in the degree of its unpleasantness and hopelessness” (Hayward). Furthermore, John Hillcoat’s 1988 Australian film Ghosts of the Civil Dead provides an ”existential vision of prison [in an unnamed country] as a metaphor for the human condition” in general (Johnston).
According to the proponents of such a view, prison (defined by Joseph Brodsky as “a shortage of space made up for by a surplus of time”, see http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/09/17/specials/brodsky-prison.html) does not do anything to human beings that the society at large could not do, when coercing them into submission. In prison the coercion process is merely accelerated and takes a highly concentrated form, not unlike radiation overdoses speeding the ageing process. Can incarceration serve as an answer to the challenges presented by crime? Many observers seriously doubt it. In the opinion of one, “Deprivation of freedom is a symbolic murder, a symbolic annihilation. Part of a person’s life is taken away. It’s like a temporary partial reversible murder, which doesn’t solve the problem” (Svinarenko 242). Using the example of a notorious Sao Paolo prison, demolished in 2002, Hector Babenco’s 2003 Brazilian film Carandiru seems to suggest that dispensing with prisons altogether is the only reasonable way forward.
However, it is highly unlikely that Russia (or any other country, for that matter) will be prison-free any time soon. Meanwhile, as the question mark in the volume’s title implies, readers are invited to form their own opinion about the pros and cons of the balance between the punitive and the reformative particularities of the Russian penal system from the 1840s onwards, in comparison with elsewhere.
Andrei Rogatchevski, University of Tromsø
References/Further Reading
Punishment as a crime? Perspectives on prison experience in Russian culture, edited by Julie Hansen and Andrei Rogachevskii (Uppsala, 2014). Uppsala Studies on Eastern Europe; vol. 5. ZA.9.a.1917.
Hamilton Fyfe, “Russia: The Genius and Simplicity of Its Peoples”, Peoples of All Nations: Their Life Today and the Story of Their Past, ed. by J. A. Hammerton ( London, 1922), W50/0816. Vol. VI: 4309 .
Max Hayward, “Epilogue,” in Soviet Literature in the Sixties, ed. by Max Hayward and Edward L. Crowley (London, 1965) X.909/8120. P. 206.
Ian Johnston, Bad Seed: The Biography of Nick Cave ( London, 1996) YK.1996.a.20413. P. 223
Svinarenko, Igor’. Russkie sidiat: Po zonam Rodiny. (Moscow, 2002) YA.2003.a.34306.
21 November 2014
The Death of a Countess and the Draw of Local History
Some time ago, in my blog post about the Austro-Italian Front of the First World War, I mentioned the accidental death of Lucy Christalnigg, which occurred in the tense months before war broke out, and rather presaged it.
Shortly after my post was published, I was contacted by the author of a new book about Lucy, who then kindly donated a copy to the Library (The Last Summer: the story of Lucy Christalnigg and the end of a world, by Nello Cristianini, now at YK.2014.a.19718).
Dr Cristianini gave us the English version, since we’re the British national library, but it is also available in Italian, German and Slovene, reflecting the complicated history of the borderland area in which Lucy’s story took place. My colleagues tell me that mine is the first European Studies blog entry which has led to a donation, and, to me, this illustrates the symbiotic relationship between the Library and authors. The BL is eligible to receive a copy of all books published annually in the UK and Ireland, and uses many acquisition processes for tracing and claiming these books. Overseas publications come to staff attention through publisher catalogues, approval plans and other means, but there are always books which slip through the net, whether they be UK or overseas publications. These are often items from small publishers, whose output is not listed as systematically as that of the big ones. We are still reliant on authors to contact us and let us know about these books. Even in this day and age, the computer cannot completely replace interpersonal contact, in-depth collection knowledge, or the ability to acquire it.
I had assumed, finding her story in newspapers on the centenary of her death, that Lucy Christalnigg’s story was quite well-known. In fact, although known along the Italian-Slovenian border where she died, it had never been fully researched until Dr. Cristianini, who was born in Gorizia himself, went to search the archives of three countries for this piece of his local history. Lucy’s story is a snapshot of her time and place. As an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat, she represented a class which did not survive the War, yet she was also a thoroughly modern woman, a racing driver who won many prizes and had apparently taken her own car at great speed around the hairpin bends of pitch-black mountain passes the night she died. Ironically, it was on the straight valley road where she was shot that she probably least expected to die.
Lucy Christalnigg at the wheel of her car. (Photo courtesy of Dr Nello Cristianini)
Lucy’s husband, Oskar Christalnigg von und zu Gillenstein, was a scion of a Carinthian family who were apparently of Slovene blood. Count Christalnigg was active in the Slovenian publishing society, the Slovenska Matica, and encouraged education in the Slovene language. His close political contacts included Ivan Hribar, the Liberal mayor of Ljubljana and a renowned pan-Slav. Count Christalnigg is likely to have been of a less radical inclination than Hribar, like the many other Austro-Hungarian aristocrats who sponsored “national revivals” in their local areas, expecting these to reinforce the empire. However, the awakening of local patriotism had unintended consequences, and after 1918 the old, trans-national Habsburg aristocracy found itself living in a variety of brand new states, some of which suspected their loyalty. The best-known case is that of the Bohemian nobility, which had to learn to be Czech, with mixed results (a substantial number later aligned with the Sudeten German cause and then became Nazis), but others faced similar dilemmas.
Oskar Christalnigg’s family seat lay in a part of north-east Carinthia that in 1919 was substantially Slovene-speaking. As the empire split apart and reformed as new states, it was claimed by both German Austria and Yugoslavia, to which the majority of Slovene lands had already been assigned (though the western-most lands were occupied by Italy as a consequence of the War). The resulting plebiscite left his main home just inside Austria, but his properties to the south were now in Yugoslavia and Italy, and Yugoslavia quickly embarked on land reforms which aimed to break up the old Austro-Hungarian landed estates, with compensation to landowners as long as they were not members of the Habsburg dynasty. Oskar Christalnigg quietly retired to his Austrian castle with his second wife, no doubt relieved that the Austrian Republic had stripped him of only his title.
Schloss Erverstein, Oskar Christalnigg’s Austrian Castle (picture by Johann Jaritz from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)
Local history books seem to me to be rooted in the same enthusiasm for particular places that motivated “national revivals” and their patrons. It is this enthusiasm and sense of place which brings the past to life through hunting down information on obscure or forgotten tales, and gives it a human face.
Janet Ashton, WEL Cataloguing Team Manager
22 September 2014
Dark blue world, little blue book: English for Czech servicemen
Cinema-goers may remember Jan Svěrák’s 2001 film Dark Blue World (Tmavomodrý svět), following the exploits of two Czech pilots, Franta and Karel, who escape to England to fight alongside the RAF in the Second World War. Lacking aircraft on which to practise manoeuvres, they are sent out on bicycles fitted with ‘wings’ to fly in formation until a sudden crash lays them low in a tangled heap of buckled wheels and broken balsa. Further humiliation awaits them in the classroom where, under the stern eye of Anna Massey, they are drilled in the niceties of English grammar and syntax and resort to such schoolboy tricks as passing notes and saucy pictures under the desks. What kind of materials, we may wonder, would have been available to real-life Czechoslovak servicemen undertaking a forced march through the English language?
A recent donation of books from the collections of the late Czech composer Bedřich Bělohlávek provides a partial answer in the form of a little blue book entitled Vojáci, učte se anglicky! (‘Soldiers, learn English!’). Published by the Czechoslovak war office in London, it bears no date, but the Library of Congress record suggests that it was published in 1941. The limp cover (see picture below) is adorned with a drawing of a smiling soldier leaning jauntily on his rifle with a tent in the background, belying the terse statement on page 31: ‘This site is too damp’.
The booklet aims to provide the basics of conversational English with, not surprisingly, a strong emphasis on military vocabulary, equipping the eager student with everything he needs to carry out his duties from basic drill to responding to enemy bombardment. Gas-masks, wire-cutters, sea-planes – nothing is forgotten. There is even a section for the cavalry, with useful terms such as ‘to shoe a horse’, and ‘a good horseman’ (conjuring up a random picture of the Good Horseman Švejk, ambling in search of his regiment on a borrowed nag). It has a briskly optimistic turn of phrase, as in ‘Our barracks have fine washing places’.
Despite the rigours of camp life, however, the anonymous author recognizes the need for rest and relaxation, and it is in the section ‘At a Restaurant’ that things become lively. ‘I should like fish and chips,’ our hero decides, determined to embrace British cuisine at its finest. Indeed, the bill of fare seems positively lavish for wartime; where, we may ask, did the proprietor come by ‘Frankfurt sausage, pork, mutton…vanilla, strawberry, chocolate ice’? ‘In England, spirits are expensive,’ he sighs, concluding modestly ‘I would rather have a glass of water’. He is advised that ‘the best means of transport in London is the taxi’, and not surprisingly, things soon reach a serious pitch: ‘I cannot pay this bill,’ he prevaricates. ‘I am short of money’, and is reduced to appealing to his friend, ‘I have spent all my money. Can you lend me 10 shillings?’, ending with the sober adage ‘Time is money’.
Soon, however, he is back in funds and applying for three days’ leave, spurred on by the chapter ‘Amusements’ – and what a fun-filled time it is. ‘In the evening we will go for a walk in the park,’ he suggests. ‘We could go to the cinema, to the theatre […] The band plays well. I was at a concert yesterday. I am going to a party tonight.’ Soon, however, he ventures onto dangerous ground: ‘I don’t like cricket, I don’t understand it and it is too slow for me. It is a typically English game.’ Instead, he has another suggestion to make: ‘I think that we could play a football match with you.’ ‘We have some professional footballers here,’ he boasts. ‘They can provide a pretty good team.’ Away they go, but things soon turn nasty: ‘You play too roughly,’ he protests as the centre-forward of Sparta Prague hits the ground, rolling and wailing. The referee may be short of red and yellow cards, but he has all the vocabulary he could wish, and there is no stopping him: ‘Charge!’ he yells as the two sides surge back and forth. ‘Free-kick! Throw-in! Penalty!’ All ends amicably, though, and our hero beams, ‘Let’s sing!’ promising his hosts, ‘We shall sing you some Czech folk-songs…We shall sing during the march.’ They may well need to keep their spirits up, for the weather seems to be extreme: ‘I am cold. I am wet through. It is freezing. The river is frozen’ – there is obviously no pleasing some people, for on the same page he is heard complaining ‘The sun is shining. It is too hot.’ Better not to ask, perhaps, how the evening ends, for we find him explaining, in the section ‘Washing, mending’, ‘A button came off my trousers and the edges below have got torn.’ He confesses, ‘Also my boots are beginning to wear down at the heels’ (it was a long trudge back to camp in the black-out).
Furnished with sections on grammar, weights and measures, abbreviations and some charming illustrations, the little book ends with a polite letter of thanks from one Jiří Novák for help received ‘when we first landed on English soil’, and even two jokes, ‘In the Protectorate’ and ‘The Royal Air Force’, painstakingly written out in phonetic spelling to enable Czechoslovak servicemen to entertain their British comrades in flawless Received Pronunciation – no estuary English for Jiří and his chums.
Just 65 pages long, the booklet leaves a moving impression of a genuine desire to communicate on both sides, not merely at a basic level but with courtesy and gratitude – to the soldiers and airmen for risking their lives to join the British war effort, and to their hosts for easing their transition in a country suffering scarcity and anxiety under the threat of invasion. One hopes that some of those who used it lived to retain happy memories of their time in Britain, and even of ‘Hampstead, London’s Central European quarter’.
Susan Halstead, Curator Czech and Slovak
22 August 2014
Postcards and Photographs from the Eastern Front
The current exhibition in the British Library Folio Gallery “Enduring War: Grief, Grit and Humour” starts with a multimedia display of postcards written by soldiers on the Western Front to their loved ones. A group of British actors read their messages while visitors look at the screen. It is a very touching experience.
Postcards played an extremely important role for soldiers on the Western and Eastern Fronts during the war. Less well known are postcards of the time from the Eastern Front, since narratives about the Second World War overtook historical research during Soviet times and later. However, in recent years Eastern European publishers have started to pay attention to the collections of postcards kept in private archives of enthusiastic collectors. Amongst the most recent acquisitions in our Ukrainian collections is the album Svitova viina y poshtovykh lystivkakh z kolektsii Ivan Snihura (‘World War in Postcards from the Collection of Ivan Snihur’; Chernivtsi, 2014; YF.2014.a.20099).
Postcards were extremely popular in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the territory of modern Ukraine (part of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires), postcard publishers in Lviv (known also as Lemberg and Lwów), Czernivtsi (known also as Czernowitz), Uzhhorod (known also as Ungwar) and smaller places such as Kolomiya were very productive. Visitors to modern Ukraine will notice proud displays of old postcards in many lovely decorated coffee houses, especially in Lviv.
Our Ukrainian and Polish collections hold a dozen colourful albums of old postcards from these vivid cosmopolitan places, for example Nasz ukochany Lwów na dawnej karcie pocztowej 1896-1939 (‘Our beloved Lwów in old postcards 1896-1939’; 2000; YA.2001.b.2435); Lwów na dawnej pocztowce (‘Lwów in old postcards’; Kraków, 2006; YF.2008.b.1023), Posztówki lwowskie i kresowe "Książnicy-Atlas" (‘Postcards from Lwów and Kresy by Książnica-Atlas’; Katowice, 2006, YF.2008.a.41284); Zolota doba kolomyiskoi lystivky (‘The Golden Age of Postcards from Kolomea’; Kolomyia, 2010; YF.2012.a.10282); Lviv u starykh lystivkakh (‘Lviv in old postcards’; Kyiv, 2011; LF.31.a.3729).
During the First World War Ukrainians, being members of a stateless nation, fought in several armies: in the army of the Austro-Hungarian empire, in the Russian army, and in the Canadian army. This photograph of Filip Konoval, a Ukrainian who served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force from 1915 to 1919 and was awarded the Victoria Cross, is now digitised in the project “Europeana 1914-1918” (image from the Imperial War Museum).
Photograph of Corporal Filip Konoval (© IWM)
Most of the postcards sent by Ukrainian soldiers are to be found in Western Ukraine and relate to the Ukrainian unit in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sichovi Striltsi (Ukrainian Sich Riflemen). The British Library holds a lovely book about the Sich Riflemen in postcards, Ukrainski Sichovi Striltsi – lytsari ridnoho kraiu (Kolomya, 2007; YF.2007.b.3418).
Many postcards were sent home from the Eastern Front by German and Austrian soldiers. Often they depicted Ukrainian landscapes or villagers in their colourful costumes. Soldiers loved to take photographs with local people, especially with beautifully-dressed Ukrainian girls and children. Some of these photographs held in various European libraries have been digitised in “Europeana 1914-1918” (left: Ukrainian Girls dancing; below right, Ukrainian girls from the Kalush region, photographs from the Austrian National Library)
More than 160 painters, amongst them some Polish and Ukrainian artists, were involved in creating propaganda postcards in Germany and Austria. Their postcards depicted the same subjects as those created by Western artists and displayed in the exhibition: soldiers fraternizing, crimes committed by enemy forces, the invincibility of their own forces, acts of heroism, etc. Ukrainian painter and graphic artist Olena Kulchytska (1877-1967) painted the sufferings of the civilian population and refugees. Her works were reproduced as postcards by the Ukrainian Women's Committee to Aid Wounded Soldiers in Vienna. We hope that one day the postcards published by this Committee will be collected and published.
As the war raged these small works of art were sent back and forth to families, friends and loved ones, bringing joy and sorrow. The picture of World War One would be incomplete without these testimonies of “grief, grit and humour”. As Ukraine prepares to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of its independence on Sunday 24 August amid new turmoil, memories of both World Wars are vivid there as never before.
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Ukrainian Studies
20 August 2014
The Drama of Marinetti by Mikhail Karasik
The British Library has recently acquired the rare Russian artist’s book Drama Marinetti v odinnadt︠s︡ati kartinakh (‘The Drama of Marinetti in eleven pictures’) by Mikhail Karasik (St. Petersburg, 2008; shelfmark HS.74/2177).
Russian title page as a post card (Sheet 0). Reproduced with kind permission of Mikhail Karasik.
The book is one of a limited edition of 15 signed copies and consists of 12 sheets in the form of large postcards. On one side of each appears a lithographic illustration made with reworked old photographs. On the reverse side appears the offset text of the drama composed from contemporary newspaper and literary sources. The text inside the book is printed in Russian; an English version is designed as a newspaper – The Drama of Marinetti, special issue – and inserted into the book. For a full description see Mikhail Karasik: catalogue raisonné 1987-2010 (Nijmegen, 2010), p.157.
Marinetti is met (Sheet 4)
Bearing the sub-title “The Story of How the Leader of World Futurism Flopped in Russia”, it graphically evaluates Marinetti’s legendary visit to Russia in 1914. Highlighting the differences between Italian Futurism which as Karasik suggests “promoted urbanism, the cult of technology and machines, the destruction of tradition and old culture”, and Russian Futurism which “focused on folk culture, and the Russian icon”, it will complement the British Library’s outstanding collection of Italian and Russian Futurist books.
At the Barber's (Sheet 3)
One particularly interesting feature of the book’s graphics is the way in which works of Russian Futurists are referenced in the collaged lithographs. For example sheet no 3 At the Barber’s clearly refers to Larionov’s painting The Officer’s Barber (1910) with the heads of the officer and barber being replaced by those of Marinetti and Larionov; and later in sheet no 5 Marinetti and Venus, Marinetti appears in his car with a figure of Venus familiar from Larionov’s painting of Venus from 1910.
Marinetti and Venus (Sheet 5)
There are several heated debates in the Drama of Marinetti about the nature of Futurist poetry. The Italian approach embodied in Marinetti’s idea of “Words in Freedom” is contrasted with the Russian idea of Zaum’ (transrational or trans-sense language). Whereas Marinetti in scene 7 sees them as essentially the same, Benedikt Livshits sees the Italian approach as maximizing chaos “so as to minimize the intermediary role played by reason” and tries to explain the experiments of Russian Futurists, in particular Khlebnikov.
The Studio of Kulbin (Sheet 8)
Marinetti finally, in an aside in the same scene, concludes that “Russian Futurism has little in common with Western Futurism” though he does admit that “when it comes to Futurist music then Russia has to be recognized as taking the lead”. He continues: “In 1910 Kulbin was the first to proclaim the principle of free ‘music of noises’ and now we Italians are merely following in his footsteps”. In recognition of this remark sheet no. 9 Soundnoises (see picture below) is based on a photograph of the Italian Futurist composer Russolo and some of his sound and noise machines or Intonarumori out of which emerge the heads of Kulbin, Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh and Marinetti. Kulbin’s theories on Free music, Colour music (synaesthesia) etc are set out in Studio of the Impressionists [Studiya Impressionistov, 1910], the cover of which is used as a backround for the superimposed heads of Russian Futurists in sheet no. 8 The Studio of Kulbin (see picture above). For a description of Kulbin’s theories on music see my article on Studiya Impressionistov in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Vol. III, Part II, pp.1260-4. (Oxford, 2013; YC.2013.b.1128)
Soundnoises (Sheet 9)
Karasik’s book will be an invaluable addition to an already large number of his works held by the British Library. A list of works written and illustrated by him as well as works of others published by him are included in Hellyer, Peter, A catalogue of Russian Avant-Garde Books 1912-1934 and 1969-2003 (London, 2006; YC.2006.b.2068 ). More recent items can be found on the webpage for Russian Avant-Garde Artists’ Books 1969-2010 in the British Library.
Peter Hellyer, Curator Russian Studies
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