11 November 2015
Mechanics not Magic
From the flint axe to the electric washine machine, human beings have generally tried to lighten the physical load in their lives and increase comfort and pleasure. In 18th-century Europe, new technologies burgeoned for ever more purposes. From Jethro Tull’s seed drill to increasingly sophisticated mechanical clocks, new inventions were both discussed in learned journals and sold at various metropolitan and provincial fairs throughout France and England. That science and technology were servants of a wider humanity was an idea that Revolutionary France extensively explored and implemented. The imposition of the kilometre and kilogram brought order, uniformity and mutual understanding and, indeed, the guillotine itself replaced protracted, labour-intensive methods of execution with an instantaneous and humane one.
This idea also explored in the literature of the Revolution and a curious example of it is the novella Le miroir des événemens actuels, ou La belle au plus offrant, histoire à deux visages by François-Félix Nogaret (1740-1831). The British Library has recently acquired a copy of this extremely rare work. Combining shades of the Gothic, Romantic and erotic, it is science fiction aspiring to be science fact. It evolves into a political tract advocating an alliance between applied science and rational thought in order to enhance human well-being and happiness.
Title-page of François-Félix Nogaret, Le miroir des événemens actuels, ou La belle au plus offrant, histoire à deux visages (Paris, 1790) British Library C.188.b.98
The story develops through the person of Aglaonice – a young, intelligent woman – who offers to marry the man who will create the most ingenious machine to win her heart. Six suitors then come forward. The first two discredit themselves by the scientific incompetence and pointlessness of their inventions. The third and fourth suitors reveal themselves as fraudsters intent only on swindling the gullible. The fifth suitor is named Frankestein, as comely in person as he is in character. He offers a self-locomoting statue which plays a range of music of exquisite beauty. Understandably, Aglaonice desires him but accepts his advice to see the sixth suitor before making her decision. This final suitor’s machine is also an automaton which manufactures jewels. Since his invention combines superior technological ingenuity with financial stability and wealth generation, Aglaonice chooses him as her husband. Her sister marries Frankestein.
The mechanism to make these automata function is not described but Aglaonice’s examination of each invention is strictly rational and scientific. If it fails against its scientific claims, she rejects it. Her criteria are also ethical, requiring the betterment and greater happiness of human beings and not just simple scientific achievement without social purpose. Therefore, only that which brings wealth and beauty into the world wins Aglaonice’s heart. Frankestein’s ethics match Aglaonice’s. By not pressing his initial advantage but wanting the sixth suitor’s invention to be seen, he ensures the greatest good of the greatest number. He thus exemplifies the “new man” advocated by so much Revolutionary rhetoric - devoted to the general welfare rather than to private benefit and reflecting the social optimism which was so strong in the first phase of the Revolution.
In the text, both the fictional and factual interweave rather awkwardly but are humorous and serious by turns with occasionally the texture of journalism. The French reading public of 1790 would have immediately understood the social and political events and technological developments to which the many puns, leitmotifs and wordplays refer. The author also supports his purpose with frequent digressions into science and natural history. The story ends with an unsurprising attack on the obscurantism and authoritarianism of the Catholic Church and a demand for its exclusion from all social and political power.
Since 1818 and the first publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, there is also the teasing question of the relationship, if any, between her novel and Nogaret’s novella. Certainly, the name of Frankestein echoes in Frankenstein and unnamed beings are artificially created in both cases. Otherwise, these two works mirror each other only in their points of opposition.
The creatures made by Frankestein and the sixth suitor serve what La Mettrie believed to be the purpose of human nature which is the search for and creation of hedonism and delight in life. These automata are made to bring exclusively these things to human beings. They cannot do otherwise. The medical scientist Dr Victor Frankenstein, however, assembles and reanimates a human corpse just because he can. The scientific achievement is justification enough for his actions. The being that he creates inherits the fullness of human nature. It demands love but is physically unlovable and Dr Frankenstein denies it any possibility of love. In return and of its own free will, it chooses to destroy the loving relationships of others.
Frontispiece from Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (London, 1831). 1153.a.9.
There have been suggestions that Shelley’s Frankenstein may be a story describing how the French revolutionaries lost control of the Revolution which became a deadly behemoth and that Nogaret’s novella was a possible source for her story. Without firmer evidence, these must remain suggestions.
Des McTernan, Former Curator, French Collections
30 October 2015
The ‘Esbatement moral des animaux’ : a 16th century French adaptation of Aesopian fables and their illustration
The current Animal Tales exhibition includes a copy of the Esbatement moral, Des animaux (British Library C.125.d.23), an anonymous French verse adaptation of Aesop’s fables in sonnet form. It was published in Antwerp in 1578 by the engraver Philippe Galle (1537-1612). Little can be inferred about the identity of the anonymous author, who claims to be ‘tout nouveau en la langue Françoise’, apart from the dedication to Charles de Croÿ and his connections with Philippe Galle himself and Pierre Heyns, writer of the verse preface, and part of the community of Antwerp humanists. Heyns’s preface refers to ‘des Heroiques vers / En Sonets bien troussez... / A Londres entonnez et finiz en Anvers’, pointing to a cultural relation between Flanders and England, which is also relevant to the illustrator, Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder.
Esbatement moral des animaux (Antwerp, 1578); image from a copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, RES P-YE-550, available online via Gallica
This work shows the interest in Aesopian fables within Flemish humanistic circles in the Renaissance. It expresses the desire to combine classical wisdom with the Christian message, using text and images to support this didactic purpose.
The title of the collection, ‘Esbatement moral’, or ‘moral entertainment’, covers the double ambition of the fables, docere et placere, to instruct and to please. Staging animals to represent human behaviours, foibles and virtues, is part of the appeal of these short didactic tales. The preface immediately plays on this double register, as man is characterised first by religion and second by the Aristotelian category of animal rationabile, as opposed to that of bestia. Interestingly, no reference is made to Aesop, either in the title or in the introduction: at the bottom of the frontispiece, a quotation from Psalm 148 exhorts animals to praise the Lord. The purpose of the book is clearly the didactic dissemination of a Christian moral.
The frontispiece shows animals on a theatrical stage in front of a curtain while men and women are attending the performance. Although the animals are represented in a naturalistic manner, the cushion used as seat by the lion, king of the animals and the fool’s outfit worn by the monkey contribute to their anthropomorphism. Animals are privileged actors on the stage of the theatrum mundi: a century later, Jean de La Fontaine presents his collection of fables as ‘Une ample comédie à cent actes divers, / Et dont la scène est l’univers’ (Fables, V, 1, 1668).
Around the central illustration, medallions containing portraits of individual animals are interspersed with Latin inscriptions allowing the reader to identify the protagonists of specific biblical or classical stories (Eve and the serpent, Balaam’s ass, the speaking dog of Tarquin the Proud...). This sets up a biblical and classical cultural horizon for this collection of fables, even if the core language of the collection is not Latin but French.
Dedication of the Esbatement moral des animaux, f. A2.
The Esbatement is dedicated to Charles III de Croÿ, prince de Chimay (1560-1612), a keen collector of books and artworks. The author highlights his religious and educational purpose: in his dedication, the expected association of fables with oral tales and classical fiction, gives way to references to the Gospel and the Holy Writ, mentioning ‘figures’, ‘similitudes’ and ‘paraboles’ as means to access the truth, ‘vive verite’.
The Aesopian sonnets are introduced by Pierre Heyns (1537-1598), who wrote and translated several didactic and pedagogical works. His preface is directed to the ‘Spectateur et Lecteur’, highlighting the essential combination of the visual and textual aspects of the book.
Verse preface by Pierre Heyns, from Esbatement moral des animaux, f. A2v
The author also considers the images as essential: his dedication mentions ‘plusieurs nouvelles figures... et divers passages de l’Escriture Sainte, accommodés aux figures et sonets...’. For the author, the biblical quotations seem as important as the fable itself.
Edewaerd de Dene, De warachtighe fabulen der dieren (Bruges, 1567). Image from the Bibliothèque nationale de France copy , RES-YI-19, via Gallica
The artist, Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, had illustrated a collection of Aesopian fables, De warachtighe fabulen der dieren (‘True animal fables’), translated into Dutch by Edewaerd de Dene (British Library 640.l.22 is a collection of engravings from this edition). The Dutch edition has a different frontispiece (above) and is introduced by the engraver and printer Hubert Goltz.
A preface to De warachtighe fabulen… by Lucas d’Heere, a Flemish painter, poet and writer was used as model for Pierre Heyns’s foreword to the French edition. The 1578 Esbatement des animaux also reused 107 etchings from this edition, with 18 additional illustrations, also by Gheeraerts.
Dutch version of ‘The Lion and the Mouse’, from De warachtighe fabulen der dieren, ff. 202-203.
In the Flemish copy (above), the illustration of ‘The Lion and the Mouse’ features on the left page, preceded by a motto and followed by two Bible quotations: one from Proverbs 27, and the other from Ecclesiastes 3 (the choice of quotations in the French version is different). The Dutch fable is also versified, but in alexandrines, and is longer. The moral is set distinctively from the narration by the use of an indented paragraph and of italics, and it is preceded by a pointing hand, a manicula.
French version of ‘The Lion and the Mouse’, from Esbatement moral des animaux, ff. 11v-12.
In ‘Du Lion et le Rat’, the verse fable, placed on the left page, faces an etching on the right page, framed by a devise on top (‘Chascun peut faire recompense’) and a Bible quotation at the bottom (Ecclus. 12:1,2). In the illustration of ‘the Lion and the Mouse’, the lion is depicted with a lot of movement and vivacity, at the forefront of the image: he is trying to untangle himself from the net wrapped around him. He stands on his back legs, tail up, head contorted and expressing anguish, with an open jaw which reveals his tongue and teeth, and an aggrieved look. His confusion contrasts with the calm of the mouse in the bottom left of the image, who starts biting into the thread.
The sonnets follow the rhyme scheme set up by the French poet Clément Marot (1496-1544): two quatrains of alexandrines in enclosed rhymes (abba) followed by a couplet (cc) and a last quatrain of enclosed rhymes (deed). However, visually and syntactically, the poem appears as a sequence of two quatrains and two tercets, in the tradition of the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. The last tercet is an ideal location for the moral of the fable, which echoes the two sentential statements on the facing page.
This collection of Aesopian fables in French can appeal to different kinds of audience: readers will enjoy this poetical rewriting of the fables in the short sonnet form, but the author first puts the emphasis on the moral and Christian instruction they provide, along with the lively illustrations which will appeal to both younger and older readers.
Irène Fabry-Tehranchi, Curator, Romance Collections
References / further reading:
Edward Hodnett, Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder of Bruges, London, and Antwerp (Utrecht, 1971) X.421/5858.
Hollstein’s Dutch & Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts (1450 - 1700) (Rotterdam; Amsterdam, 1949-2001) L.R.419.bb.2
Manfred Stefan Sellink, Philips Galle (1537-1612) : engraver and print publisher in Haarlem and Antwerp (Rotterdam, 2000) YA.1999.b.4195
26 October 2015
The Tale of Mélusine
The ongoing exhibition in the British Library’s front hall, Animal Tales brought to mind one tale which holds particular resonance on the theme of allegory, which is so expertly dealt with in the exhibition. This tale, however, is beyond the remit of the exhibition because it deals with mythological creatures.
The tale in question is the tale of Mélusine. It stands as a clear signpost in the transition which marks the intersection between myth and historicity. At the turn of the 14th century to the 15th century two versions of the legend of Mélusine appeared the first by Jean d’Arras (1393-1394), with another penned by Coudrette sometime in the opening years of the 15th century. This tale is about one of the most compelling female characters in medieval French fiction. It most likely draws on earlier myths dating back to Gallo-Roman and Celtic prototypes. Even the name ‘Fair Melusina’ may derive from the same ancient Gaulish root for the fair beings such as mermaids, water sprites, and forest nymphs.
The intriguing story tells or the beautiful Mélusine, the result of the marriage of the King of Scotland and his fairy wife. In her youth Mélusine entombed her father in a mountain leaving her mother heartbroken. The deed displeased her mother and as punishment Mélusine was condemned to transform into a serpent from the waist down every Saturday.
Mélusine, from a 19th-century edition of the version by Jean d’Arras (Paris, 1859) British Library 12430.m.2. [vol. 7]
Archetypally for late medieval narrative, while out hunting in the forests (typically sites for magical encounters in fairy stories) of the Ardennes, Raymond, Lord of Forez in Poitou, a poor but noble gentleman, meets Mélusine. She was sitting beside a fountain in “glimmering white dresses, with long waving golden hair, and faces of inexpressible beauty”. In discovering Mélusine by a watersource, this indicates a connection between her and the supernatural world. Raymond, so taken by her beauty and her amiable manners, falls totally in love with her. Mélusine agrees to marry Raymond, but on the condition he vows not to attempt to see her on Saturday when she will go into seclusion.
Mélusine bathing in secret, woodcut from Dis ouentürlich buch bewiset wie von einer frauwen genantt Melusina ... ([Strassburg, ca 1477]) C.8.i.5.
Over the following years under Mélusine’s direction the region of Poitou, situated in the westerly central France around modern day Poitiers, blossomed; forests were cleared, the land developed for agriculture and the planting of crops. She oversaw the building of cities and castles including her own seat, the Château de Lusignan. Here we see the connection between Mélusine, with her fae heritage, and the growing prosperity and fertility of the region of Poitou is indicative and the foundations of our modern construct of the benevolent fairy godmother.
During this time of plenty she bore Raymond ten sons. Some became Kings while others became tyrants. Some were marked with strange signs and deformities because of their mixed heritage. Here the elements of myth and folklore are blended with epic to align the supernatural founder of the dynasty of Lusignan with the aspirations of late feudal society. By weaving the mythology of the supernatural from the folklore tradition into the lineage the myths and the powers therein can be ascribed to a family name, adding glamour and legitimacy.
Title-page of Mélusine (Paris, 1530) C.97.bb.30.
With such ambivalence about Mélusine’s background and her activities on a Saturday tensions arose, possibly suspicsions of infidelity were planted in Raymond’s mind. Ultimately he was overcome with curiosity. Spying through the keyhole at Mélusine’s bizarre metamorphosis, Raymond was astonished to see her lower part of body take on serpentine qualities. His transgression was only apparent to her when later he called her a “serpent”. This results in Mélusine transforming in to the shape of a winged dragon and flying off. The mythology of a fairy bride whose body is not to be looked on and who. when the husband transgresses, immediately vanishes is common enough in folklore across a number of cultures.
Mélusine takes flight, from Dis ouentürlich buch …
It was said that Mélusine would return periodically to keep watch over her sons, flying around the castle crying mournfully. In parts of Europe to speak of the whining of Mélusine,“often refers to the sound the wind makes swirling around the chimney breast”.
In terms of common depictions of Mélusine, the siren on the Starbucks logo has been likened and contrasted with a Mélusine. This link via a coffee shop franchise brings us back to Animal Tales, where a copy of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is on display. The character of Starbuck in Moby Dick, of course, lent his name to the coffee shops.
Jeremy Jenkins, Curator Emerging Media, Contemporary British Collections
References/further reading:
Jean D’Arras, Melusine (London 1895) 3642.97500 Vol.68.
Women, Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopaedia, Editor Margeret Schaus (London 2006) HLR 305.409
Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopaedia, Vol.II, Editors: Katharina M. Wilson & Nadia Margolis (London, 2004) HLR 305.409
Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology Vol.I (London, 1900) HLR 293.13
Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology & Legend, Editor Maria Leach (New York, 1972) HLR 398.03
S. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (London, 1892) 12431.bb.17.
Ann Rippin, “Space, place and the colonies: re‐reading the Starbucks’ story”, Critical perspectives on international business, Vol. 3 Iss: 2 2007, pp.136-149. E-Resources.
25 October 2015
History Written by the Victors, Poetry by the Losers? Charles d’Orléans, the Prisoner-Poet of Agincourt
25th October 2015 marks the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, one of the most celebrated British military victories. The struggle between the armies of Henry V of England and Charles VI of France, in which, according to the French eye-witness Jean de Wavrin’s statement, ‘the French were six times more numerous than the English’, immediately captured the imagination of chroniclers in both prose and verse, and was commemorated in the famous Agincourt Hymn Deo gratias, Anglia which was sung as Henry, bare-headed and on foot, made his triumphal entry into London, as well as in the ballad The Bataille of Agincourt, attributed to John Lydgate. Most famously of all, it inspired Shakespeare’s Henry V, familiar not only through countless stage performances but through two notable films in which Laurence Olivier (1944) and Kenneth Branagh (1989) portrayed the young warrior king. The play’s message of chivalry and the English fighting spirit which won out against tremendous odds lent itself to the climate of Britain in the closing years of the Second World War but also to a more generous and impartial perspective in the later version with its emphasis on the sufferings of war.
The saying of Walter Benjamin that ‘history is written by the victors’ might therefore seem to apply to poetry and drama too, but is far from the truth in this case. Not only were there notable accounts of the battle from the French side, including those by Enguerrand de Monstrelet (c. 1400-1453) of which the British Library holds a first printed edition from around the beginning of the 16th century illustrated with numerous wood engravings.
The English fleet sets out to France, from Le premier volume de enguerran de monstrellet … (Paris, between 1499 and 1503) British Library C.22.d.6. (f.203 v)
One of the outstanding poets of his age, who actually appears in Shakespeare’s play, was also one of the hostages of war and spent 21 years in captivity in England. Charles d’Orléans (24 November 1394–5 January 1465) succeeded to the dukedom of Orléans at the age of 13 after the murder of his father Louis I on the orders of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. His mother Valentina, the daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, did not long survive this loss, and in the early years of his reign Bernard VIII, Count of Armagnac, the father of his second wife Bonne (Bona) was a strong influence, which led to his followers being known as Armagnacs. When the battle lines were drawn up on St. Crispin’s Day 1415 the newly-knighted Duke was placed in the front line, but although he survived the conflict he, together with the Duke of Bourbon, Marshal Boucicaut and the Counts of Richemont, Eu and Vendôme, was among the 1,500-1,600 noble prisoners captured by the English. Their impressive but cumbersome armour made it difficult to move quickly in hand-to-hand combat, and Charles was discovered alive but immobilized under a pile of corpses (the Earl of Suffolk was less fortunate, and suffocated in similar circumstances).
Armoured knights in battle, from Le premier volume de enguerran de monstrellet … (f. 211 v.)
The prisoners were transported to England in the hope that their kinsmen would ransom them, but in Charles’s case this would not happen until 1440. A cynic might conclude that his countrymen were in no hurry to have him back, but in fact Henry had placed a specific embargo on his release, fearing that as the natural head of the Armagnac faction he would represent a source of danger. Finally, having received an undertaking that Charles would not seek vengeance for his father’s assassination, Philip the Good, the current Duke of Burgundy, arranged for his release.
Charles d’Orleans in captivity at the Tower of London, from a manuscript collection of his poetry, BL Royal MS 16 F II, f. 73
Charles had not been idle during his captivity. He was kept on the move from one fortress to another, including the Tower of London; in an uncanny reprise he spent part of his imprisonment in Pontefract Castle like Richard II, whose child widow Isabella of Valois had been Charles’s first wife. By the time he was returned to France, the English chronicler Holinshed observed that he spoke better English than French, which equipped him to write over 500 poems in both languages. The British Library holds an illuminated manuscript of these (Royal MS 16 F II), and also a volume of those in English at C.101.a.38, ‘first printed from the manuscript [i.e. Harley MS 682] of the library in the British Museum’ in 1827 by George Watson Taylor, which contains a autograph letter by the editor presenting it to the Museum.
George Watson Taylor’s letter presenting his book to the British Museum Library, from Poems, written in English, by Charles, Duke of Orleans, during his captivity in England, after the battle of Azincourt. With an introductory notice by G. W. Taylor. (London, 1827) C.101.a.38]
The poems in both languages bemoan the pains of captivity and of courtly love in the ballade and rondeau forms. They attracted several musical settings, including a group of three by Claude Debussy and another by Edward Elgar. The Duke’s colourful life also inspired a historical novel by the Dutch author Hella S. Haasse, Het Woud der verwachting (1949).
Once liberated, Charles returned to France, was joyfully welcomed by the people of Orleans, and embarked on a third marriage to Marie of Cleves which produced three children, including the future King Louis XII. His Italian ancestry led him to press a claim to Asti, but without any real conviction, and he lived out the rest of his life as a Knight of the Golden Fleece and, fittingly, as a generous patron of the arts. His library had been saved by Yolande of Aragon and was awaiting him on his return, and, like another creation of the dramatist who had put him on stage, Shakespeare’s Prospero, he might well have remarked, ‘… my library was Dukedom large enough’.
Susan Halstead, Content Specialist (Humanities and Social Sciences), Research Engagement.
References
Pierre de Fénin, Mémoire de Pierre de Fénin, escuyer et panetier de Charles VI., roy de France, contenant l'histoire de ce prince depuis l'an 1407 jusques à l'an 1422. Recueillis par G. de Tieulaine … (Paris, 1825) 909.e.9.
Jean-Juvenal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI., Roy de France, et des choses memorables advenuës durant 42 années de son Règne depuis 1380 jusques à 1422 … (Paris, 1836)
Hella S. Haasse, Het Woud der verwachting. Het leven van Charles van Orléan. (Amsterdam, 1959) 10865.d.17; English translation In a dark wood wandering (London, 1990) Nov.1990/506.
14 September 2015
Champfleury and his Cats
Champfleury, pseudonym of Jules Husson Fleury (1821-89), is little read nowadays, though his name is familiar to students of French 19th-century culture because of the variety of his interests and activities, both literary and artistic. A prominent member of bohemian circles in Paris in the 1840s, a novelist and short story writer, he also championed the painter Gustave Courbet and realism in art and literature, and played a key role in the ‘rediscovery’ of the Le Nain brothers, 17th-century painters of ‘reality’ who, like Champfleury himself, were born in Laon in Picardy. He had a lifelong interest in ‘popular’ arts and wrote on a wide variety of subjects including pantomime, caricature, popular imagery, Japanese prints and ceramics. For the last 17 years of his life he was the curator of the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres.
Champfleury’s most popular work was his book on cats, published in 1869. Les Chats, histoire, moeurs, observations, anecdotes was advertised by a poster with a lithograph by Manet, Le rendez-vous des chats (‘The cats’ rendezvous’), showing two cats on a rooftop engaged in a mating game. The black cat was no doubt a reminder of the cat that featured prominently in Manet’s Olympia, the painting that had caused a scandal when first displayed in 1865. Manet’s lithograph was also used on the poster for the second edition of Champfleury’s work a few months later and an engraving of it appears in the book itself.
Poster with a lithograph by Manet, advertising Champfleury’s Les Chats (Image from Wikimedia Commons)
The popularity of the book was such that it was reprinted twice in quick succession and two deluxe editions followed in 1870 with several additional texts and illustrations including, in the fifth edition, an etching by Manet, Le Chat et les fleurs (‘Cat and Flowers’), showing a cat on a balcony near a ceramic jardinière, an image influenced by Japanese prints and also a reference to Champfleury’s interest in ceramics. [Fig.3]
Edouard Manet, Le Chat et les fleurs. Etching in Les Chats (5th edition, 1870)
The book’s 23 short chapters (34 in the de luxe editions) and numerous appendices look at cats in ancient civilizations, popular traditions, heraldry, art and literature. There are also chapters on friends, enemies and painters of cats. It is profusely illustrated with full-page illustrations, decorated letters and vignettes, and several chapters have delightful tailpieces, several of them copied from a sheet of studies of cats by Hiroshige (which Champfleury erroneously attributes to Hokusai).
Ando Hiroshige , Sheet of cat studies from Ryusai gafu. ca 1836
The frontispiece of the original 1868 edition is a drawing by the Swiss artist Gottfried Mind (1768-1814), ‘the Raphael of cats’, a nickname given to him (according to Champfleury) by Mme Vigée Lebrun. Mind painted an infinite variety of cats and he would sit for hours drawing with a cat sitting on his lap and two or three kittens perched on his shoulders; a general massacre of cats in 1809 in his native Berne was the greatest tragedy of his life. Another Mind drawing in the text (below right) has the elegance and grace of a Matisse line drawing.
Images of cats by Gottfried Mind, frontispiece and p. 142 of the 1869 edition of Les Chats
Champfleury’s erudite interests are much in evidence in the book in the inclusion, for example, of two devices of the Sessa family of printers, active in Venice in the 16th century, showing a cat.
Sessa’s printers device, Les Chats (1869) p. 152
There are also examples of cats in heraldry, in legends and, above all, in popular prints. They include a 17th-century French woodcut showing a concert of cats in a fairground, their trainer surrounded by cats reading from scores headed ‘miaou’ and a Russian lubok colour print showing ‘The Mice Burying the Cat’, a typical example of the world turned upside down.
‘La Musique des Chats’ [above] and ‘The mice burying the cat’ [below], from Les Chats (1870)
An impressive full-page Japanese print (below) showing a composite head of a cat is another example of the author’s interest in Japanese art.
The numerous portraits of writers and artists who were cat-lovers include Montaigne, Chateaubriand, Hoffmann and Baudelaire, but pride of place is given to Victor Hugo and his cat Chanoine.
A vignette of Chanoine in the first edition became the frontispiece of the de luxe editions (above) with a note in Hugo’s hand quoting Joseph Méry’s dictum “God made the cat to give man the pleasure of stroking a tiger.”
While a drawing of a cat by Delacroix (above) almost looks like a self portrait, cat’s ears are sprouting on Champfleury’s own head in the final illustration in the book, a humorous portrait of the author in his study, poring over a book about cats and observed by a cat perched on a bookcase behind him.
Chris Michaelides, Curator Romance Studies
References:
Champfleury Les Chats. Histoire-mœurs-observations-anecdotes. Troisième édition. (Paris, 1869). 7207.aa.23;
Quatrième édition. (Paris, 1870). 7208.aa.10.
1869 edition available online from the Bibliothèque nationale de France via Gallica
Luce Abélès, Champfleury: l'art pour le peuple. (Paris, 1990). ZV.9.a.67(39)
A cat-eared Champfleury in his study, portrait by Edmond Morin from Les Chats (1869), p. 287.
05 August 2015
Daguerrean Excursions
On 19 August 1839, the astronomer François Arago demonstrated to the French Academy the startling new photographic process invented by Louis Daguerre, by which an object was imprinted on a metal plate without human intervention, through the action of light alone. Within just a few weeks, budding daguerreotypists had learned the technique and set off to try their luck in far-flung destinations across Europe, Africa and the Near East.
This was no easy task: the travellers had to transport nearly 300 pounds of equipment, dangerous chemicals and inconvenient supplies; with no precedents to guide them in climates very different from that of Paris they had to experiment with lighting, aspect, exposure times, chemical combinations and conditions for developing the pictures; they often had nothing to show for their efforts but a blank plate. Where they succeeded, however, they produced the first photographic images ever made of these regions, having enormous historical and aesthetic importance, and inaugurated a practice which would forever alter the experience of travel.
But for the foresight of an enterprising Parisian optician and maker of scientific instruments named Noël-Paymal Lerebours, there would be little evidence of this pioneering photographic activity: the daguerreotype process does not allow the plate to be reproduced and few originals survive. Lerebours gathered together over a hundred of these daguerreotypes, had them traced and then engraved: the resulting Excursions daguerriennes: Vues et monuments les plus remarquables du globe (Paris, 1841-42; British Library 1899.ccc.18) was the first book to be illustrated from photographs. The images represented sites throughout Europe, from Russia and Sweden to Spain (fig. 1) and Greece; around the Mediterranean from Algiers to Beirut (fig. 5); and further afield to the Americas (fig. 2).
Above:Fig. 1. Edmond Jomard, The Alhambra (1840); Below: Fig. 2. Hugh Lee Pattinson, Horseshoe Falls, Niagara (1840), both from Excursions daguerriennes
Each image was accompanied by a text signed, in most cases, by a professional critic or man of letters. The photographers, on the other hand, are not indicated and most are therefore unknown.
There are two notable exceptions. Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, a Swiss-born Canadian seigneur who was in Paris en route to the Near East when Daguerre’s invention was announced, and Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet, a student of the French painter Horace Vernet whom he was preparing to accompany to Egypt and the Levant, both grasped the potential of the new process and quickly availed themselves of it. Joly left for Greece on 21 September 1839 and became the first person ever to photograph Athens; over the following eight months he took daguerreotypes of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Cyprus, Rhodes, Istanbul, and Malta. Goupil-Fesquet left for Egypt with Vernet in October, taking a slightly different route through the Levant and back to France by way of Izmir and Rome. Both photographers kept journals of their travels and drew upon them for the texts that they wrote to accompany their images in Excursions daguerriennes. Joly contributed the chapters on the Parthenon, the Propylaeia, the temple at Philae, the Temple of the Sun at Baalbek and the Muslim cemetery at Damascus. Goupil-Fesquet produced those on Pompey’s Pillar, the harem of Mehmet Ali in Alexandria, Luxor, the Great Pyramid, Jerusalem, Beirut, Acre and Nazareth.
Photography offered unprecedented benefits over other means of recording travel. As a process in which the object or site imprinted itself upon the plate, it was considered to have a realism, immediacy and authenticity unavailable in other media. Not that anyone was naïve about this: for example, the Introduction to the Excursions states openly that human figures were added to the engraving to “enliven” the picture. And Joly and Goupil-Fesquet both emphasise the limitations of the new medium: its restricted frame, its inability to reproduce colour, its dependence on variable conditions of light and atmosphere, the ways a view could change in the long exposure times necessary. On the other hand, photography could provide a useful corrective to previous travel albums, in which the views were “always modifed by the taste and imagination of the artist”.
Both Joly and Goupil-Fesquet called the daguerreotype to witness in this assault on the myths and clichés of the picturesque tradition. The ultra-rational Joly is especially sarcastic, mocking the lyrical fantasising of his Romantic predecessors such as the poet Alphonse de Lamartine, author of a famous Voyage en Orient (1835), and stating the more prosaic truth. His images, striking as they are, take an unsentimental approach: his view of the Parthenon from the northwest, for example (fig. 3), shows the crumbling building surrounded by rubble, with a modern hut in the foreground, the mosque which stood in its centre until 1842, and the marks on the columns made by cannonballs during the Greek War of Independence.
Fig. 3. Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, The Parthenon (1839), from Excursions daguerriennes
Goupil-Fesquet was more polite but no less keen to avoid the stale conventions of travel literature. Of his image of Luxor, he states: “The reader will look in vain […] for some propylaeum, sphinx, obelisk or other gigantic fragment which is indispensable to every Egyptian site. However, it is Luxor, nothing can be truer […].” Instead of these tropes, “well known to everyone,” the image depicts an ordinary scene of boats on the Nile being repaired or prepared for sailing, modern houses in the centre, and a minaret on the right (fig. 4).
Fig. 4. Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet, Luxor (1839), from Excursions daguerriennes
His impressive view of Beirut (fig. 5), looking over the rooftops toward Mount Lebanon with the Palace Mosque in the centre, retains the laundry hanging on the lines and between the crenellations on the walls, while modern villas in the light, airy countryside of the background contrast with the dense, strongly shadowed jumble of buildings in the old city, cut off at the bottom, in the front.
Fig. 5. Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet, Beirut (1840), from Excursions daguerriennes
Travel photography would soon establish its own clichés and stereotypes. But in this initial stage, it offered a new approach to travel literature, one which exposed the old falsehoods while also making clear the contingency of the picture, plunging the reader into the immediacy and unpredictability of the experience itself. With its 111 images from the earliest period of photography, the Excursions daguerriennes is an especially significant example from the British Library’s outstanding collections of both foreign-language and photographically illustrated books.
Michèle Hannoosh, Professor of French, University of Michigan
References:
Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet, Voyage en Orient fait avec M. Horace Vernet en 1839 et 1840 (Paris, 1843). 1425.k.6
Pierre-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, Voyage en Orient: Journal d’un voyageur curieux du monde et d’un pionnier de la daguerréotypie, ed. Jacques Desautels, Georges Aubin and Renée Blanchet (Quebec, 2010). YF.2014.a.664
Le Daguerréotype français. Un objet photographique, ed. Quentin Bajac and Dominique Planchon de Font-Réaulx (Paris, 2003). LF.31.a.4688
24 July 2015
What European Studies owe to J. M. Cohen (1903-1989)
We’re always hearing how the UK publishes a shamefully small number of translations compared with other nations: 3 per cent?
This is probably true of new bestsellers, but is it true of long-sellers? In my formative years, and possibly yours, the sole locus of European literature on the high street was the Penguin Classics, much more visible than the World’s Classics or Everyman. There’s a good history of the collection in the 1987 festschrift for Betty Radice. Founded in 1946, its first authors included Homer, Voltaire and Maupassant. The introductions were non-academic – Aubrey De Sélincourt’s prologue to Herodotus is four pages – and the translations middle-brow (W.C. Atkinson translating Camões: “Venus is now Cytherea, now Erycina, now Dione, now the Cyprian goddess, now the Paphian. It is in short a mark of erudition [...]. For such learning the modern term is pedantry, and it becomes a service to the reader of today [...] to call things by their names and ask of each divinity that he or she be content with one.”) The translators were rarely university lecturers (unlike today): in fact they seemed to me mostly to be schoolteachers.
The series was edited by people with names whose pronunciation a London teenager could only guess at: Betty Radice I now assume is pronounced like Giles Radice MP; but what of E. V. Rieu: ‘REE-oo’ or ‘ ree-YERR’?
One of my school-leaving prizes was J. M. Cohen’s translation of Don Quixote (in print 1950-1999, my well-read copy shown above). The biographical (as opposed to bibliographical) information on the half-title was meager: ‘J. M. Cohen was born in 1903 and has been writing and translating since 1946.’ As I read more Romance literature, again and again these works were translated by Cohen: Rousseau (in print 1953-), Rabelais (1955-1987), Montaigne (1958-1993), Teresa of Avila, The Penguin Book of Spanish Verse, Bernal Diaz’s Conquest of New Spain, Columbus, Rojas.
These were reprinted again and again.
Whenever I was faced with the question from the man in the street, “Oh, is there any Spanish literature?”, my rock and refuge were the Penguin Classics, and Cohen the prophet.
But of Cohen’s translations, only Rousseau, St Teresa and Columbus, I believe are in print any more. It’s a maxim of the translation industry that each generation needs its own Cervantes et al. This may or not be true (it isn’t true, but I want to appear broad-minded) but that’s no reason to consign earlier translators of the callibre of Cohen to a damnatio memoriae: M.A. Screech never refers to Cohen in his Rabelais or Montaigne.
A project is now underway to catalogue Cohen’s papers, which are in Queens’ College Cambridge. But his true legacy is in the minds of people like you and me.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections
Penguin classics editions translated by J.M. Cohen:
Miguel de Cervantes, The Adventures of Don Quixote (1950) W.P.513/10a.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions (1953) W.P.513/33.
François Rabelais, The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1955) W.P.513/47.
St Teresa of Ávila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila (1957) W.P.513/73.
Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1958) W.P.513/83.
Blaise Pascal, The Pensées (1961) W.P.513/110.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain (1963) W.P.513/123.
Fernando de Rojas, The Spanish Bawd. La Celestina (1964) W.P.513/142.
Benito Pérez Galdós, Miau (1966) W.P.513/181.
Agustín de Zárate, Discovery and Conquest of Peru (1968) X.708/3888.
The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1969) X.808/6013.
References:
‘J. M. Cohen, Gifted translator of foreign prose classics’ (Obituary), The Times (London), 22 July 1989
‘Obituary of JM Cohen: An opener of closed books’, Guardian, 20 July 1989
The Translator’s Art : Essays in Honour of Betty Radice, edited by William Radice and Barbara Reynolds (Harmondsworth, 1987). YC.1988.a.329
Vladimir Alexander Smith-Mesa, ‘Making Our America Visible. J. M. Cohen (1903-1989): El Transculturador’, Aclaiir Newsletter, 23 (2014), 14-17. P.525/398; a version of the article as a blog post can be read here
14 July 2015
Pleasure and Death in Revolutionary Paris
The Palais-Royal, which still survives today in Paris, just north of the Louvre, was built between 1637 and 1641, and remodelled between 1781 and 1784, when it belonged to the Orléans family and operated as a garden surrounded by an arcade of shops and restaurants. It became notorious as a resort of prostitutes, and five editions of an eight-page guide to ladies of pleasure can be found in the French Revolutionary tracts (shelfmark F.441.(1).)
The Tarif des filles du Palais-Royal was published in 1790, for the benefit of the many strangers drawn to the capital by their love of liberty and desire to participate in patriotic festivals. Many such visitors are being scandalously over-charged by the ‘Commerçantes de Cythère’ so these ladies, some of whom actually resided in the Palais-Royal, are listed, with their charges, which vary considerably, from six to two hundred livres, or more. Sophie and her sister are willing to entertain you for the night, with supper, for two hundred livres in the rue basse du Rempart. Duchausour and her sister lodge with a tapestry-maker in the rue de Fers, and charge one hundred and eighty livres. Stainville, nicknamed the Maréchale, has a brothel of six girls in the rue neuve des bons enfans (rather ironic as they are not good children, unless at their profession). Issue three mentions the trades followed by some of the ladies, such as sellers of dress or jewellery, actress or singer.
Issue four advises readers of either sex that they can consult La Dame le Large, midwife, at her office near the Opéra over their health, for a subscription of three louis a year. All ‘damaged’ persons can be ‘made new’. This issue also adds some descriptions of the ladies, such as ‘black, crinkly hair’, ‘soft and inactive’ and ‘warning that she sleeps all night’. Other ladies are described as ‘very pretty’, having ‘a beautiful throat’, or having ‘seductive features but too large a mouth’. One is ‘very clean and has a bidet’. Another is no longer in business since her last child. Georgette is a little ‘mignarde’ (mannered), but loosens up after she has drunk a bowl of punch. Issue five details some of the refreshments provided, such as cakes, vanilla ices or beer. Others offer gambling or card games such as biribi and bouliotte. Mademoiselle Grand-Jean offers a ‘chansonnette’, a light-hearted or satirical song. A lady called Saint-Fard is ‘polissonne’ (‘teasing’ or ‘licentious’) if well paid.
A stark contrast is provided by tract F.437.(9), an eight-page attack on saints and aristocrats by L. Boussemart, known as ‘Moustache’. On the first page ‘La guillotine permanente’ [above] is an engraving of the guillotine in action, which a footnote informs us is the guillotine at the Carousel (next to the Louvre) drawn from life, an illustration which can be purchased separately as a print.
Boussemart admits he was a former monk, and launches a virulent attack on saints Laurence and Bartholomew for being aristocrats. Now, he says, we have saints Rousseau, Voltaire and Francklin [sic – ie Benjamin Franklin] who have revealed the people’s rights. As it is too late to guillotine Laurence and Bartholomew, they should be erased from history. He ends with words for a bloodthirsty song calling for a quick trial for traitors leading straight to the guillotine, so that their heads should pay for the cost of the machine. The last verse calls La Fayette to the guillotine so that this ‘monsieur blondinet’ should also pay the price of his treachery. The Marquis de La Fayette, hero of the struggle for American independence, was a moderate revolutionary, and his support for the king and a constitutional monarchy resulted in his denunciation as a traitor by the time this pamphlet was written, probably in 1793.
Morna Daniels, Former Curator French Collections
10 July 2015
Basque and Georgian – are they related?
Basque, the only non-Indo European language in Western Europe, is an isolate, a language unrelated to any other living or dead. Nonetheless attempts have been made to demonstrate a relationship with a variety of languages including ancient Iberian, Pictish, Etruscan, and Berber. The most consistently proposed kinship has been with the Kartvelian family of Caucasian languages, in particular with Georgian.
The origin of Basque has been bound up with theories about the origin of the Basque people themselves. Greek and Roman historians referred to the region corresponding to modern Georgia as eastern Iberia, as distinct from western Iberia, i.e. Spain and Portugal. The Greek geographer Strabo referred both to the Iberians of the Caucasus and to the ‘western Iberians’ (Geographica, bk. XI, ch. II, 19). Appian of Alexandria later wrote ‘some people think that the Iberians of Asia were the ancestors of the Iberians of Europe; others think that the former emigrated from the latter’ (Historia Romana, bk. XII, ch. XV, 101). However, he continued ‘still others think that they merely have the same name, as their customs and languages are not similar’. The Georgian language was also known, confusingly, as Iberian.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Basque historians adopted the prevalent Spanish legend according to which after the Flood, Tubal, a son of Japheth, was the first settler in the Peninsula, but they added that he settled first in Cantabria, i.e. the Basque region. Esteban de Garibay (born 1525) found evidence for this claim in similarities between place names in northern Spain and in Armenia, e.g. Mount Ararat (in modern Turkey) = Aralar, the mountain range in Gipuzkoa and Navarra. He also links the Basque Mount Gorbeia to an Armenian peak ‘Gordeya’. He considered Basque the first language of the whole Peninsula and, presumably, the language of Tubal. Other writers followed Garibay, notably Andrés de Poza and Baltasar de Echave. Garibay’s identification of similarities between toponyms, however fantastical, can be seen as a forerunner of the Basque-Caucasian hypothesis.
Esteban de Garibay, Los XL libros del Compendio historial… de todos los reynos de España (Antwerp, 1571) British Library C.75.e.4.
In the early 20th century philologists developed more scientific arguments for a link between Basque and Caucasian languages. Typological similarities certainly exist between Basque and Georgian. For example both are ergative languages. Put at its simplest, this means that the subject of a transitive verb appears in the ergative case (or ‘agentive’), while the object is in the absolutive case and is unmarked. Thus, in Basque we have ‘gure aitak etxe berria erosi du’ (‘our father has bought a new house’) contrasted with ‘gure aita Donostian bizi da’ (‘our father lives in Donostia’). In Georgian, ‘father’ in the first sentence would be rendered by ‘mamam’ and by ‘mama’ in the second. However, the ergative construction would not be employed in subject-direct object-verb constructions in all tenses and aspects. In Basque the ergative is more regularly employed.
Another notable similarlity is that the verb morphology of both languages is pluripersonal, i.e. the form of the verb may encode not just the subject of the sentence, but any direct or indirect objects present. In Basque this is illustrated in the examples:
Nere semeak kotxe berri bat erosi du = My son has bought a new car
Nere semeak bi kotxe erosi ditu = My son has bought two cars.
The infix it in the auxiliary verb in the second example agrees with the plural object bi kotxe. However, the verb morphology of Georgian is extremely complex and functions very differently from Basque.
Typological parallels are all very well, but ergativity and pluripersonal agglutinative verbal morphology are not exclusive to Basque and Georgian, and doubt concerning possible kinship between them arises when lexical coincidences are cited. According to Basque philologists today, the majority of those seeking similarities have cast their nets very wide, claiming cognate fish when most should have been thrown back. Cognates with Basque have been sought among several Caucasian languages, although a genetic relationship between the Northern and Kartvelian groups remains unproven. Furthermore, in many cases proto-Basque forms have not been matched with proto-Georgian forms; many coincidences are thus anachronistic. The philologist R.L. Trask also stressed that the Basque, in its hypothetical early form, had a vastly impoverished consonantal system in contrast to the wealth of consonants of the Northern Caucasian groups in particular. Today, Georgian has 28 consonants, Basque 21.
The 36 letters of the Georgian alphabet according to Alphabetum ibericum, sive georgianum… (Rome, 1629); 621.c.33.(1.)
The case for a relationship between Basque and other languages intensified in the early 20th century with the philologists Hugo Schuchardt, C.C. Uhlenbeck and Alfredo Trombetti. Much of the debate was conducted in scientific periodicals, particularly the Revue Internationale des Etudes Basques (P.P.4331.aeb.). We might add here the Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr who developed the so-called Japhetic theory linking Kartvelian with Semitic languages and subsequently the theory that all languages had a common origin. He also found parallels between Kartvelian languages and Basque.
Marr (third from right) with a group of Basques, reproduced in Nikolai Marr, Basksko-kavkazskie leksicheskie paralleli (Tbilisi , 1987) YA.1991.a.23022
The case for possible Basque-Caucasian cognates continued to be advanced in the second half of the last century by linguists such as René Lafon and Antonio Tovar. However, later scholars, notably Luis (Koldo) Michelena and Trask, firmly rejected the Caucasian link. This has not stemmed the tide of speculation, which in fact has widened to include Basque in a macro-language family (Dené-Caucasian) and even beyond in the hypothetical single language of the so-called proto-world. This notion seems to bring us back to Nikolai Marr. These last speculations find approval also among those still hoping to prove a common ethnic origin for the Basques and the Iberians of the Caucasus. Given that the Basque language remains alone in a class of one, it is wisest to conclude that the case for a link remains unproven.
Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic studies and Anna Chelidze, SEE Cataloguer Russian/Georgian
References
Itzia Laka, A Brief Grammar of Euskara ([Vitoria-Gasteiz], 1996); available at http://www.ehu.eus/es/web/eins/basque-grammar
Juan Madariaga Orbea, Anthology of Apologists and Detractors of the Basque Language (Reno, 2006). YC.2007.a.857.
R.L. Trask, The History of Basque (London, 1997). YC.1997.b.547
José Ramón Zubiaur Bilbao, Las ideas lingüísticas vascas en el s. XVI. Zaldibia, Garibay, Poza (Donostia, 1989). YA. 1993.a.5626.
La Prensa Iberica interview with Davit Turashvili: http://www.laprensaiberica.org/?p=414
08 June 2015
The Passion of Christ considered as an uphill bicycle race… and what should women wear?
Jésus démarra à toute allure.
En ce temps-là, l’usage était, selon le bon rédacteur sportif saint Mathieu, de flageller au départ les sprinters cyclistes, comme font nos cochers à leurs hippomoteurs … Donc, Jésus, très en forme, démarra, mais l’accident de pneu arriva tout de suite. Un semis d’épines cribla tout le pourtour de sa roue avant.
[Jesus got away to a good start.
In those days, according to the excellent sports commentator St Mathew, it was customary to flagellate the sprinters at the start the way a coachman whips his horses … Jesus, then, got off in good form, but he had a flat right away. A bed of thorns punctured the whole circumference of his front tyre.]
The playful pataphysician Alfred Jarry published ‘La Passion considérée comme course de côte’ (‘The Passion of Christ considered as an uphill bicycle race’) in April 1903 in the satirical Le Canard Sauvage, three months after the inaugural Tour de France was advertised in the newspaper L’Auto, as ‘la plus grande épreuve cycliste du monde entier’ (the biggest cycling challenge in the whole world). Extreme competitive cycling, still relatively new at this point, becomes an ordeal of epic proportions – tantamount to the suffering of Christ, or at least to something never before experienced by man. Late 19th- and early 20th-century French literature absorbs the new image of the bicycle into its pages, as the Realism of Zola and others attempts to present the preoccupations of contemporary society in parallel, and the alternative literature of Jarry sees symbolic potential in the new machine.
Alfred Jarry cycling. (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)
Jarry’s last novel Le Sûrmale (The Supermale; 1902), thematises the bicycle once more, using it to transport a narrative exploration of man’s virility, power and death. André Marcueil, the protagonist, undertakes the impossible 10,000 mile cycle from Paris to Irkutsk, powered by perpetual-motion-food, a substance which allows constant muscular regeneration during activity – and which allows Marcueil the energy for a record-breaking sexual performance on the way (89 ‘conquests’, for those who might be interested). Jarry’s perpetual mover is an ‘coupling of man and machine’, to use Paul Fournel’s description of five-time Tour-winner Jacques Anquetil in his 2012 book Anquetil tout seul. As Freud might have it, the man(-machine) has become a kind of ‘prosthetic God’ – returning us, then, to the demiurgic realm of cycling where we began.
Indeed, cycling, according to French thinkers, can elevate man to the point of transcendence. Roland Barthes, in ‘Le Tour de France comme épopée’ (‘The Tour de France as Epic’, from Mythologies), suggests that, ‘The Tour too, at several points, brushes against the inhuman world: on the Ventoux, we have already left the earth, there we are next to unknown stars’. Cycling is self-discovery for the anthropologist, Marc Augé:
The first stroke of the pedal is the acquisition of a new autonomy, the great escape, palpable freedom, the movement of the point of the toe, when the machine responds to the body’s desire and almost pre-empts it. In a few seconds, the marked horizon frees itself, the landscape moves. I am elsewhere. I am an other, and yet I am myself like never before; I am what I discover. (Eloge de la Bicyclette)
But perhaps all this continental abstraction detracts from a more concrete freedom afforded by the bicycle, one which might temper the Supermale’s authority over it. In Emile Zola’s Paris (1897-8), Marie is confounded by some women upholding dress codes while cycling:
Can you understand that? Women, who have the unique opportunity to put themselves at ease, to fly like a bird, legs finally freed from their prison, and who refuse! If they believe to be more beautiful with a shortened schoolgirl’s skirt, they are wrong! And as for modesty, it seems to me that one ought to be more comfortable showing one’s calves than one’s shoulders […] There are only culottes, the skirt is abominable!
Women have the opportunity to wear short trousers – a freedom that the introduction of the bicycle demands! 1898 also saw the publication of Miss F. J. Erskine’s Lady Cycling (reissued by British Library publications in 2014) which joins Zola’s Marie in carving a space for women cyclists… ‘in moderation’. For Miss Erskine, ‘on no point… has a hotter controversy raged’. On fashion, however, the author cannot concede to the comforts of Marie in Paris. ‘Cycling dress was not the fine art it is now,’ writes Erskine, ‘for park riding we must have an artistically cut skirt, artfully arranged to hang in even portions each side of the saddle’.
Perhaps we need to travel once again to find the answer to the eternal question, succinctly phrased as ‘Rock oder Hose?’ (‘Skirt or Trousers?’), in Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort, published by Dr Paul von Salvisberg in 1897. Which is it to be? ‘Both, and, in fact, each have their appropriate time’. A practical compromise.
Cycling gear for ladies (and gents), advertisement from Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort (Munich, 1897), British Library YA.1989.b.4724
Whether physically free from the dress and the corset, or free from terrestrial conventionality in a ride amongst the stars, cycling is freedom. That freedom is gained through joining the self (and machine) with nature, as one moves through it. As Dr Ludwig Ganghofer, in Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort, enthusiastically writes of a cycling tour:
On the leaves and grass, the dew sparkles; you hear a hundred birds, as if it were a single song; fresh air breathes all around you, and you drink it deeply in thirsty sips.
The poetical Dr Ganghofer, from Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort
As summer approaches, we too need to reunite ourselves with nature, ride amongst the stars… This may prove difficult in the city, and we should end here with a word of warning from Miss Erskine:
In the vicinity of large manufacturing towns the rowdy element may at times annoy ladies riding alone, though I have, myself, always met with the greatest kindness and courtesy; still, this may have been by exceptional good fortune, and I have no wish to boast of it.
Pardaad Chamsaz, Collaborative Doctoral Student
References
Alfred Jarry, The Supermale: A modern novel, trans. Barbara Wright, (London, 1968; X.908/14696)
Alfred Jarry, La passion considérée comme course de côte, available via Wikisource; English translation available at: http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/misc/passion.html
Paul Fournel, Anquetil tout seul, (Paris, 2012) ; YF.2014.a.22730
Marc Augé, Eloge de la bicyclette, (Paris, 2008) ; YF.2009.a.37308
Emile Zola, Paris, (Paris, 1898) ; B.26.a.12
Miss F. J. Erskine, Lady Cycling, (London, 1898) BL 07905.ee.7; (2014 reissue: YKL.2014.a.3213)
Dr. Paul von Salvisberg, Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort, (Munich, 1897) YA.1989.b.4724
European studies blog recent posts
- Empire and French Caricature from 1870-1871 (Part 2)
- Religious Metaphors in French Caricature from 1870-71 (Part 1)
- Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages 2024
- European prose in transformation (Part 2) The European Writers’ Festival returns to the British Library
- The Petit Prince and animals
- Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
- La Nuit des Idées
- PhD placement opportunity: Enhancing access to manuscripts and archives in the French language
- An A to Z of the European Studies Blog 2022
- Annie Ernaux’s time in London
Archives
Tags
- Acquisitions
- Africa
- Albania
- Alexander exhibition
- Americas
- Andorra
- Anglo-German
- Animal Tales
- Animals
- Austria
- Banned books
- Banned books week
- Basque
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Bosnia and Hercegovina
- British Library Treasures
- Bulgaria
- Captain Cook
- Central Asia
- Classics
- Comics-unmasked
- Contemporary Britain
- Croatia
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Decolonising
- Denmark
- Digital scholarship
- Digitisation
- East Asia
- Elizabeth and Mary exhibition
- Endangered languages
- eResources
- Esperanto
- Estonia
- European Literature Night
- Exhibitions
- Fashion
- Film
- Finland
- France
- Georgia
- Georgians-revealed
- Germanic
- Germany
- Gothic
- Greece
- Harry Potter
- History
- Humanities
- Hungary
- Iceland
- International
- Italy
- Language
- Latvia
- Law
- LGBTQ+
- Literature
- Lithuania
- Macedonia
- Manuscripts
- Maps
- Medieval history
- Middle East
- Modern history
- Moldova
- Montenegro
- Music
- Netherlands
- Newsroom
- Norway
- Philatelic
- Poland
- Politics
- Popular culture
- Portugal
- Printed books
- Propaganda
- Publishing and printing
- Rare books
- Research collaboration
- Romance languages
- Romania
- Russia
- Russian Revolution
- Science
- Serbia
- Shakespeare
- Slavonic
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Social sciences
- Sound and vision
- South Asia
- South East Asia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Theatre
- Translation
- Ukraine
- Unfinished Business
- Visual arts
- West Africa
- Women's histories
- World War One
- Writing