17 January 2014
A Hundred Items of Joy
Dr Marjorie Boulton, born in 1924, is well known to students of literature for her textbooks on literary studies: The Anatomy of Poetry (1953, BL shelfmark 11869.d.38), The Anatomy of Prose (1954, 11867.n.12), The Anatomy of Drama (1960, 11866.g.37), The Anatomy of Language (1968, 012212.bb.1/103), The Anatomy of the Novel (1975, X.980/31289) and The Anatomy of Literary Studies (1980, 80/18342) – all published in London by Routledge & Kegan Paul. She is the author of 16 books in English.
Marjorie Boulton in 1997 (Picture by Inga Johannson from Wikimedia Commons)
Yet Marjorie Boulton started out as a poet. Her first book was a collection of poems, Preliminaries (London, 1949; W28/9314, copy signed by the author). In the same year she discovered Esperanto and soon became one of the most accomplished poets in that language. She produced many books in Esperanto to the great delight of Esperanto speakers from Albania to Zimbabwe. It is no exaggeration to say that she is one the most loved and widely-read figures in the Esperanto movement. She is also very much praised by all cat-lovers for of her humorous poems and stories about these animals, such as Dekdu piedetoj (‘Twelve Little Paws’, [Stoke-on-Trent], 1964; YF.2008.a.36769).
The British Library holds 19 of her books in Esperanto: poetry, dramas, translations, lectures, textbooks, biographies. Amongst the poetry collections we find her first book Kontralte (‘In Contralto’, Tenerife, 1955; YF.2008.a.18897), Cent ĝojkantoj (‘A Hundred Songs of Joy’, Burslem,1957; 12900.c.8), Eroj kaj Aliaj Poemoj (‘Fragments and Other Poems’, Tenerife,1959; YF.2008.a.19522), Rimleteroj (‘Letters in Rhyme’, with William Auld, Manchester, 1976; YF.2010.a.22936) and others. Marjorie Boulton also penned the biography of the creator of Esperanto: Zamenhof: Creator of Esperanto (London, 1960; 10667.m.13).
With understandable trepidation we received a gift to the Esperanto Collections of more than 100 titles from Marjorie Boulton’s private library at the beginning of 2014. The donated books could be divided into three main categories: textbooks and dictionaries; poetry and fiction (original and translations); books for children. Some really rare items from the pioneer period of Esperanto movement will be added to our extensive collection, among them William Sol Benson’s Universala Esperantistigilo in 10 lessons (‘Universal method for making you an Esperantist’, Newark, 1925-1927, picture below by Rimma Lough) and Esperanta radikaro (‘Roots of Esperanto’, Paris, 1896) by the pioneer French Esperantist Théophile Cart, as well as Esperanta Ŝlosilo (‘Key to Esperanto’) in Persian (Tabriz, 1930).
Marjorie Boulton collected dictionaries of Esperanto in various languages. Very valuable are terminological dictionaries, which show the persistence of generations of Esperantists in their desire to develop the language in all spheres of human activity. We received various terminological dictionaries; some of them are parts of the annual publication Jarlibro de la Internacia Esperanto-Ligo (‘Yearbook of the International Esperanto League’): Aeronautika terminaro (‘Aeronautical terminology’) for 1941; Filatela terminaro (Philatelic) for 1945; Kudra kaj trika terminaro (Sewing and knitting) for 1947. Even Armea terminaro (‘Army terminology’, Rickmansworth, 1940) and Militista vortareto (‘Military dictionary’, Paris, 1955) found their way into Marjorie Boulton’s library.
Connoisseurs of original poetry and fiction in Esperanto will be delighted by the addition to our collections of the poetry collection Dekdu poetoj (‘Twelve poets’, Budapest, 1934) and by the availability in the very near future of original poetry in Esperanto written in many countries, such as, for example, the poetry collection Spektro (‘Spectrum’, Tirano, 1992) by an Albanian Esperanto poet, Enkela Xhamaj, or a short story by V. Zavyalov, published in Saratov (Russia) in 1915.
Bright, colourful books for children come from China. These were all published by Ĉina Esperanto-Eldonejo (Chinese Esperanto-Publishers) in the 1980s (picture below). In addition you will be able to read the famous adventures of Tintin in Esperanto: La Aventuroj de Tinĉjo. La Nigra insulo (Esperantix, 1987).
The donation (a tiny part of the Dr Boulton’s large private library) provides a small glimpse into her life as a fervent collector of books. It would be appropriate to finish my blog about this valuable acquisition by quoting fragments of Marjorie Boulton’s own poem Riĉeco (‘Richness,’ translated by D. B. Gregor) in which she marvels at the variety of human experiences and richness of every human being:
To understand another life, we’d need
To live again at least a second span,
And even then our knowledge but deludes.
If only we could know, could know indeed!
Our puny knowledge does not more than scan
The richness of mankind’s vicissitudes.
A hundred thanks for a hundred delightful items!
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies
13 December 2013
From the Parnassus of the Peoples
As the year 2013 numbers its last days in the calendar, I would like to say a few words about a very special anniversary not widely known. Yet it should be commemorated and cherished as a great manifestation of human spirit and hope, and especially remembered on 15 December – the birthday of L.L. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto, also celebrated worldwide as Esperanto Book Day.The book to be celebrated today was published 100 years ago by the great idealist, polyglot and prolific translator Antoni Grabowski (1857-1921, portrait (right) from Wikimedia Commons). Antoni Grabowski was a chemical engineer and the author of the first Polish chemical dictionary Słownik chemiczny (1906). He is known as “the father of Esperanto poetry”, although his main contribution to the development of literary language in Esperanto was his work as a translator. Modern writers, such as the prolific Icelandic Esperanto poet Baldur Ragnarsson, trace their fascination with Esperanto poetry to Antoni Grabowski.
I wonder how often you would find poems by Thomas Moore, Richard Wagner, Paul Verlaine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aleksandr Pushkin, Taras Shevchenko, Adam Mickiewicz, Sandor Petofi – to name just a few – under one cover ? Not often, I guess. Antoni Grabowski, prominent Polish pioneer of Esperanto, achieved precisely this: he united them all in a book called El Parnaso de Popoloj (‘From the Parnassus of the Peoples’). He himself translated 116 poems, from 30 languages, into a language itself only 26 years old. The modest-looking book was published in Warsaw in 1913 (BL shelfmarks: 1913 edition:F5/3998; facsimile reprint from 1983 YF.2008.a.112020)
Memorial plaque to Antoni Grabowski in Wroclaw (from Wikimedia Commons)
Do people still write poetry in Esperanto? Yes, they do. As soon as the new language was created and the first manual published in 1887 it started to inspire poetical souls in many nations. And it never ceased to inspire. Another interesting phenomenon is now observed worldwide: poetry originally written in Esperanto is more and more translated into other, “proper” languages. I came back in October from Kolomea not only with love and admiration for this small Galician town full of history and culture, but with a lovely book entitled Verda Antologio. Part 1. Poezio ('Green Anthology, part 1. Poetry'; YF.2013.a.22723), published in Ukraine in 2013. For the first time this anthology presents to readers 33 Esperanto poets (including Antoni Grabowski, of course) from the 19th-21st centuries in Ukrainian translations.
How to celebrate Esperanto Book Day? Here are just a few suggestions: by reading some poetry in Esperanto (the first collection of Esperanto poetry, edited by Antoni Grabowski, La liro de la Esperantistoj [The Esperantists’ Lyre] (1893), has been digitised by the Austrian National Library or by listening to the original poem by Antoni Grabowski on YouTube.
During the terrible years of World War One in Warsaw Antoni Grabowski, ill and separated from his family, survived by translating the Polish epic poem by Adam Mickiewicz Pan Tadeusz (1834).
Illustration by Andriolli from an edition of Sinjoro Tadeo (Warsaw, 1955) 11588.r.17.
The translation Sinjoro Tadeo was first published in Warsaw in 1918 ( YF.2004.a.24909). “It profoundly influenced the style and vocabulary of later poets, and it is for this reason that Grabowski, although primarily a translator, is important for the study of early original Esperanto literature, both poetry and prose,” writes Geoffrey Sutton. On Esperanto Book Day the first stanza of Sinjoro Tadeo addressed by Mickiewicz to his homeland Litwa (translated into English as Litva or more often Lithuania, to describe the historical region in Eastern Europe) resounds in my mind:
Litvo! Patrujo mia! simila al sano;
Vian grandan valoron ekkonas litvano
Vin perdinte. Belecon vian mi admiras,
Vidas ĝin kaj priskribas, ĉar hejmen sopiras.
Litva! My country, like art thou to health,
For how to prize thee he alone can tell
Who has lost thee. I behold thy beauty now
In full adornment, and I sign of it
Because I long for thee.
(English translation by Maude Ashurst Biggs. From Master Thaddeus, or The Last foray in Lithuania (London, 1885) 11585.cc.18)
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies
Further reading:
Banet-Fornalowa, Zofia. Antoni Grabowski: eminenta Esperanto-aganto (Warsaw, 2001) YF.2006.a.29512
Sutton, Geoffrey. Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto 1887-2007. (New York, 2008). YC.2008.a.12495
11 October 2013
To Kolomea with love
I dare say that many of us can talk with enthusiasm about the “dream cities” of our childhood and present a long list of names. Something in the name itself, or even the way it was pronounced for the first time we heard it, catches our imagination and makes us dream about visiting them. The usual “list of suspects” includes Paris, London, Rome, Vienna, Barcelona...
Well, they all were on my own list. Yet there was another town, much closer to my native Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine. It was even in the same region of Western Ukraine, known also as Eastern Galicia. It could be that the humorous aphoristic songs, called “kolomyiky”, which my dear father Vasyl liked to sing on many joyful occasions, are “guilty” of my particular attraction to this town.
Type “kolomyiky” in our electronic catalogue Explore the British Library and you will find some interesting material. These cheerful Ukrainian folk songs (only two lines, with fourteen syllables each), as well as the folk dance with the same name, have rightfully merited their own Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH). Polish-Armenian painter Teodor Axentowicz painted his vivid Kolomeyka in 1895 (picture from Wikimedia Commons).
Yes, my other dream city bears the name of Kolomea, Kolomyia in Ukrainian. The English–language Wikipedia presents a yet incomplete list of famous people (Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian) who were born there or spent a good part of their life there. The town itself has its rightful place on the European literary map too with the Austrian writer’s Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s (picture right from Wikimedia Commons) erotic novel Don Juan von Kolomea (Don Juan of Kolomea), published in German in 1866. English-language readers are familiar with his Venus in Furs but the story of the Ukrainian Don Juan from Galicia has only recently became available (as an e-Book only) in an English translation by Richard Hacken as “Don Juan from Colomea”.
Jewish, Ukrainian and Polish publishers have flourished in Kolomea for many centuries. The famous publisher Yakiv Orenshtain (1875-1944), a native of Kolomea, established in 1903 the “Halyts’ka Nakladnia”, which published books in many languages and also specialised in postcards, capturing the beauty of the town and scenes from colourful multi-ethnic Galician life (see one of Orenshtain's postcards below). Our Ukrainian Collection recently acquired some lovely books about old postcards from Kolomea (YF.2006.b.2068 and YF. 2006.b.2080)
My long-standing dream of visiting Kolomea (after Paris, London, Vienna, Barcelona etc.) is finally going to become a reality. I am going there to a conference to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first journal of Ukrainian Esperantists, called Ukraina Stelo (The Star of Ukraine). It was published in 1913-1914 and revived after the horrors of the First World War in 1922 in what was then the Polish Republic. The Austrian National Library has digitised this rare publication and now it is available to all. Yes, Kolomea was also an important centre of teaching and publishing in Esperanto. The memorial plaque to the editor of Ukraina Stelo, Orest Kuzma (1892-1968), another famous citizen of Kolomea, will be solemnly unveiled.
Hope to send to my colleagues in European Studies a modern multilingual postcard from Kolomea - with lots of love.
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Ukrainian and Esperanto Studies
16 August 2013
German propaganda in Esperanto
Memories take me back to the USSR: in 1973, while reading a biography of famous Esperantist Vasili Eroshenko by the Ukrainian writer Nadia Andrianova, I admired the vivid description of his journey to England in 1912. A newly-wed couple, Margaret and Paul Blaise, waited for this courageous blind traveller from Moscow at the Charing Cross station. As Eroshenko wrote later, the ten days that he stayed with this international (Welsh-Belgian) family were “the happiest days” in England. Years later, after exploring the streets of London that Eroshenko walked in 1912, I found books and pamphlets by Margaret Lawrence Blaise (1878 -1935) in the British Library, as well as her photograph in one of them.
The kind hostess of Eroshenko was not just the charming wife of Paul Blaise, secretary of the Belgian Chamber of Commerce in London, whom she met via their mutual interest in Esperanto. At the time of her marriage to him in 1910 she herself was an established teacher of Esperanto and already had a popular book The Esperanto Manual: A complete guide to Esperanto in the form of twenty-five lectures specially adapted to the requirements of pupils in evening classes (London, 1908) [012902.ee.53] under her belt (published under her maiden name of Jones). Various editions of this manual are a part of our collections.
Margaret Lawrence Blaise in 1913
She was also a passionate propagandist for the new language, created only a few decades previously. No wonder that when the First World War started Margaret Blaise continued to plead for its use in international communications. In the spirit of the time (with many books and pamphlets titled “Why I am…” or “Why not…”) she produced a pamphlet entitled A World Language: Why not Esperanto? The British Library holds the seventh edition of this pamphlet, reprinted in June 1916 (01902.l.33.).The sharp eyes of Margaret Blaise noticed the use of Esperanto by Germans in a way which was previously unthinkable for idealists: for state propaganda. The British Library’s current exhibition “Propaganda: Power and Persuasion” looks at many aspects of the use of language for the aims of propaganda. It pays attention to the use of established state languages in wartime. But what about auxiliary or so-called “invented languages”? In one chapter of the pamphlet called “German Propaganda”, Margaret Blaise summarises the use of Esperanto by the German authorities. She mentions an official German publication, La vero pri la Milito (The Truth about the War), which presents ideas “from the German point of view”. “They issued a pamphlet with the above title, sending out thousands and thousands of copies”, she notes. The British Library holds one of the surviving copies (08027.dd.12) as well as other German publications from this period.
It seems that Germany was the only country to use Esperanto for propaganda purposes during the First World War.
In later decades it was used in other countries. The “Little Red Book” by Mao Zedong (exhibited in “Propaganda Power and Persuasion”) exists in an Esperanto version too (P.2011.a.378). The most richly illustrated Esperanto journal, El Popola Ĉinio (ZF.9.a.6337), published in paper form from 1950-2000 by the Chinese Esperanto-League, dedicated a whole issue to the death of “La Granda Gvidanto kaj Instruisto Prezidanto Maŭ Zedong” in 1976 (pictured below).
Languages are created by people and for people. It seems that not a single one of them can escape the temptations of state propaganda.
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies.
Further reading:
Eco, Umberto. The search for the perfect language. (Oxford, 1995). 95/25870
Lins, Ulrich. La danĝera lingvo: studo pri la persekutoj kontraǔ Esperanto. (Moskvo, 1990). YF.2007.a.27179
26 July 2013
La Unua Libro
126 years ago, on 26 July 1887, a modest little book was published in Warsaw. The book appeared under the pseudonym “Dr Esperanto” and was entitled (in Russian) “International Language. Introduction and Complete Textbook for Russians”. The title-page explained: “In order that a language may be worldwide, it is not enough to call it so”, adding the price of 15 kopecks and the imprint “Warsaw: Printing House of Ch.Kelter, Nowolipie street no.11 1887”.
"The First Book" in Russian (image from Wikimedia Commons)
This “harmless eccentricity”, as the author’s father called it, succeeded in changing the lives of millions of people all over the world and still continues to do so. Esperanto speakers of the world lovingly talk about “La Unua Libro” [“The First Book”], and 26 July is recognised as Esperanto Day.
The creator of Esperanto – 27-year old Ludovic Zamenhof – published his book first in Russian as it was much easier to receive permission from the severe Tsarist censors for Russian books. His father, Marcus Zamenhof, persuaded his friend A. Lagodovsky, then censor for Russian books in Warsaw, to give permission. Versions in other languages – French, German and Polish – followed the same year. The British Library holds two first editions of “The First Book”: Langue Internationale: Préface et manuel complet por Francoj [12902.aa.45] and Internationale Sprache. Vorrede und vollständiges Lehrbuch por Germanoj [12902.aa.46], both also published in Warsaw in 1887.
The first manual for English speakers was published a year later, again in Warsaw: Dr. Esperanto's International Tongue: Preface and complete method, edited for Englishmen by J St. [12902.aa.55.(1)]. In the words of Zamenhof’s British biographer Dr Marjorie Boulton, the editorial work of J.St. was not a total success: “one of his early converts, Julius Steinhaus, though himself qualified and produced a disastrously bad translation.” This poor translation was suppressed by Zamenhof himself and is now a great rarity. Fortunately, an extremely gifted Irishman, Richard H. Geoghegan, “who at the age of twenty-two had just finished a four-year course in philology at Oxford and received a university prize in Chinese” (Boulton), adapted further manuals for English speakers and became one of the most fervent pioneers of Esperanto.
Portrait of Zamenhof (image from Wikimedia Commons)
Zamenhof, of course, was not the first man to offer a new language of international communication to the world. Volapük, created only seven years before by Roman Catholic priest Johann Martin Shleyer, was still in fashion. But the genius of Zamenhof was already evident in “The First Book”. It included the“promise form” (“Promeso”) for purchasers: “I, the undersigned, promise to learn the international language proposed by D. Zamenhof, if it appears that ten million people have publicly given the same promise” and eight reply coupons which could be cut out and mailed to the author. It also presented translations into the new language and original poems by Zamenhof himself. In the words of Geoffrey Sutton, “Zamenhof understood the vital importance of the role of literature from the outset, undertaking the lonely task of testing the language with translated and original writing even before anyone outside his family could share his thought in it”.
How did the new “international language” sound? Here are some examples from “The First Book”: Translation: “Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo, sankta estu Via nomo, venu reĝeco Via, estu volo Via, kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankau sur la tero” (opening of the Lord’s Prayer);
Original poetry from year 1887 “Oh, My Heart”: “Ho, mia kor’, ne batu maltrankvile, / El mia brusto nun ne saltu for! / Jam teni min ne povas mi facile / Ho, mia kor’!”
Esperanto speakers from the USA, China, Brazil, Israel, Poland, Lithuania, Slovenia and Ukraine, meeting together, can recite this poem of Zamenhof’s by heart. I witnessed this myself in the London Esperanto Club.
One of the biggest linguistic experiments in the history of humankind is still going on. Happy birthday, Esperanto! Feliĉan naskiĝtagon!
Olga Kerziouk, Curator of Esperanto Studies
Further reading:
Boulton, Marjorie. Zamenhof: creator of Esperanto. (London, 1960) [W63/5649]
Star in a Night Sky. An Anthology of Esperanto Literature. Edited by Paul Gubbins. (London, 2012).
Concise encyclopedia of the original literature of Esperanto, 1887-2007. Edited by Geoffrey Sutton. (New York, 2008). [YC.2008.a.12495]
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