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
19 May 2015
The Basque Language
Basque, or Euskera, as the Basques call it, is a pre-Indo-European language now spoken in four provinces of northern Spain and three in France, on either side of the Western Pyrenees. It once extended over a much wider area, but how much wider is a matter of conjecture, as indeed is the prehistory of the language and people. In spite of perceived similarities and lexical coincidences between Basque and an extraordinary number of languages, living and dead, from across the world, only surviving fragments of Aquitanian, a language once spoken in South-Western Gaul, have been shown to have meaningful coincidences with Basque. Aquitanian can thus reasonably be regarded as an ancestor or close relative. Today Basque is an isolate, and the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in Western Europe.
Basque is a difficult language for speakers of other Western European languages. For example, the relationship of subject and object is quite different from what we are familiar with in English, or Spanish, and from what we may recall from Latin with its nominative (subject) and accusative (object) cases. Wikipedia tells us that:
Basque is an ergative-absolutive language. The subject of an intransitive verb is in the absolutive case (which is unmarked), and the same case is used for the direct object of a transitive verb. The subject of the transitive verb is marked differently, with the ergative case (shown by the suffix -k).
Here are two contrasted, basic examples: ‘nire anaia etorri da’ (‘my brother has come’); ‘nire aitak emakumea ikusi du’ (‘my father saw the woman’).
The Basque verb is especially complex. Wikipedia again:
The auxiliary verb accompanies most main verbs, agrees not only with the subject, but with any direct object and the indirect object present. Among European languages, this polypersonal agreement is only found in Basque, some languages of the Caucasus, and Hungarian (all non-Indo-European).
So in Basque we have the sentence ‘nire aitak Mireni liburu eman zion’ (‘my father gave the book to Miren’) where the auxiliary (zion) recapitulates the relationship between ergative, direct and indirect objects. The first Basque grammar, Manuel de Larramendi’s El impossible vencido, (Salamanca, 1729) G.16752. The title means ‘The Impossible Overcome’
The present-day Basque Country, or Euskal Herria, straddles France and Spain and within Spain it is divided between the Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco and the Comunidad Foral de Navarra. The three French provinces (Labourd, Basse Navarre and Soule), together with Béarn, make up the department of the Pyrénées Atlantiques. The Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco comprises the three provinces of Alava, Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia. In Spain the language is spoken most widely in Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and the northern parts of Navarra. The number of Basque speakers in France is declining and the majority of speakers are elderly. However, usage among young people has increased according to figures from 2011.
The Basque Country (highlighted). Source: UCLA Language Materials Project
The Basque Country is also divided linguistically: according to Louis-Lucien Bonaparte’s dialect map (London, 1869; Maps 18649.(4.)), the language can be classified into eight dialects. The situation in the late 20th century has been described by Koldo Zuazo as consisting of five dialects.
Since the late 1960s concerted efforts have been made to create a standardized form of Basque, known as batua (= unified; < bat = one).
In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the use of Basque was forbidden in education and public life as part of General Franco’s quest to impose national unity. At its most harsh, his regime forbade even the speaking of Basque in public. By the late 1960s the situation had eased somewhat and private schools, ikastolak, which had been functioning in secret, were now tolerated. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 gave Basque co-official status in the Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco and in some areas of Navarra. The introduction of the teaching of Basque in state schools by the autonomous Basque Government has saved the language from what would almost certainly have been total extinction. Basque imaginative literature has re-emerged and the works of prominent writers such as Bernardo Atxaga and Kirmen Uribe have been widely translated.
The most recent survey of the state of the language (V Encuesta Sociolingúística, 2011) has permitted broadly positive conclusions. Nearly 60% of people in the Comunidad Autónoma del P.V. now have some knowledge of Basque, an increase of 14.5% over the past 30 years. The percentage of fairly competent speakers now stands at 36.4% of the population, a roughly similar increase. Strangely, one worrying aspect of the survey is that the use of Basque in the home has dropped very slightly. However, the broad conclusion of the survey is that the future of Basque – in Spain – lies with the Basques themselves.
Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic Studies
Further reading
Roger Collins, The Basques, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1990). YC.1990.a.10183 and 90/20865
Alan R. King, The Basque Language: a Practical Introduction (Reno, 1994). YA.1999.b.3105
R.L. Trask, A History of the Basque Language (London, 1997). YC.1997.b.547 and 97/06294
11 May 2015
Yasmina Khadra: A Writer of the World
In another guest post for this year’s European Literature Night, Gallic Books translator Emily Boyce introduces the French-based Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra
Yasmina Khadra, who will appear at European Literature Night at the British Library on Wednesday 13 May, is a novelist who has often been drawn to tackle controversial and current topics such as global conflict and extremism in his fiction.
Yasmina Khadra (photo © E. Robert-Espalieu from Gallic Books website)
Khadra began writing under his wife's name to avoid censorship while serving in the Algerian army, and revealed his identity after moving to France in 2001. Informed by his experience as a Muslim of North African origin living in the West, he is a leading voice on many of the defining issues of our time. He recently appeared on Al Jazeera to discuss his thoughts on literature and freedom of speech in light of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, while his contribution to BBC Radio 4’s Letters from Europe series warned of the growing threat of racism and intolerance in the continent.
Khadra confronted the rise of the Taliban in 2002’s Les hirondelles de Kaboul (The Swallows of Kabul, to be discussed in this month’s BBC World Book Club), and explored the motivations of suicide bombers in his Tel Aviv-set L’Attentat (The Attack). This book was adapted into a 2012 film which will be screened at the Institut Français on Tuesday 12 May, followed by a Q and A session with the author.
Khadra's latest novel, L’équation africaine, published in English as The African Equation by Gallic Books in February this year, takes the problem of East African piracy as its starting point, and goes on to portray one man’s ordeal as a hostage and his life-altering encounter with a fellow captive who holds a very different view of the continent and its people.
In all his fiction, Khadra brings empathy to characters in desperate situations. As The Literary Review put it, ‘Khadra is a passionately moral writer but he rarely sits in judgment.’
To mark his forthcoming appearance at European Literature Night, Khadra has written a moving piece in reaction to the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, published on the Culturethèque blog of the Institut français UK.
Emily Boyce, Gallic Books
Selected works by Yasmina Khadra in the British Library (for full holdings see our catalogue)
Les anges meurent de nos blessures: roman (Paris, 2013) YF.2014.a.12993
L’équation africaine: roman (Paris, 2011) YF.2013.a.25944; English translation by Howard Curtis, The African Equation (London, 2015) awaiting shelfmark.
Ce que le jour doit à la nuit : roman (Paris, 2008) YF.2009.a.3841; English translation by Frank Wynne, What the Day owes the Night (London, 2010) Nov.2011/207.
Les sirènes de Bagdad: roman (Paris, 2006) YF.2007.a.1939; English translation by John Cullen, The Sirens of Baghdad (London, 2007) Nov.2007/2364.
L’Attentat: roman (Paris, 2005) YF.2006.a.7205; English translation by John Cullen, The Attack (London, 2006) Nov.2006/2043.
Les hirondelles de Kaboul: roman (Paris, 2002) YA.2003.a.14765; English translation by John Cullen, The Swallows of Kabul (London, 2004)
A quoi rêvent les loups: roman (Paris, 1999) YA.2003.a.6391; Engish translation by Linda Black, Wolf Dreams (New Haven, Conn., 2003) Nov.2007/33.
29 April 2015
No literature please, we’re British?
While we look forward to celebrating literature in translation at this year’s European Literature Night events, this post considers how we are not always as open to translations in the UK and wonders if attitudes have changed over the centuries...
When Yasmina Reza’s play Art came to the London stage, the posters gave prominence to the three actors (largely well-known comedians) who starred in it on a rotating basis, but far less prominence was given to the of the author, and there was no mention of the fact that the play was translated from the French.
The New Horizons series of books, published by Thames & Hudson in the UK, are translations from the French Découvertes Gallimard. However, the foreign author’s name doesn’t appear on the cover or spine, and isn’t revealed until the title page.
This authorial disguising of course has a long history, but I wonder if the motivation has changed.
When in 1589 the English publisher of Boccaccio’s Fiamettta gave him the name ‘John Boccace’ I don’t think he was hiding anything, any more than Gower was pulling the wool over his readers’ eyes when he cited ‘Dan Aristotle’ (CA, III, 86) or the Old Spanish Book of Alexander when it similarly called the Stagirite ‘Don Aristatiles’ (stanza 33): these were authors of European stature, as much at home in England as in their countries of birth.
Giovanni Boccaccio, Amorous Fiammetta, translated by Bartholemew Young (London, 1587). British Library C.57.b.46. (Having anglicised Boccaccio’s name, in a curious reversal the translator italianises his own to ‘B. Giovano’)
As a student I was struck by Spanish translations of the works of ‘Carlos Dickens’. So far as I can judge from the Spanish union catalogue, around the 1950s he started to appear under his own name.
Little Dorrit translated as La Niña Dorrit by ‘Carlos Dickens’ (Barcelona, 1885). 12613.dd.7.
I wonder: do the first two examples above speak of internationalism or nationalism? Do we think English is the world language because it’s perfect, or just because it’s practical?
Mind you, my name doesn’t have a Spanish translation, but I’ve never been asked to go undercover by my saint’s day, and I could have chosen from: Augustine, bishop, confessor, Doctor of the Church; Clarus, confessor; Hermes, martyr; Julian, martyr; Pelagius, martyr; Secundus and Alexander (and Abundus), martyrs.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance collections
22 April 2015
The feckless fabulist who took on the Sun King: Jean de La Fontaine
For generations of governesses throughout Europe, seeking to impart to their pupils not only a knowledge of the French language but a sense of right and wrong, the fables of Jean de La Fontaine must have appeared as a godsend. Brief and entertaining, with their depiction of human foibles wittily embodied in a cast of animals and birds, they neatly pointed out the consequences of vanity, idleness and extravagance and the rewards of honesty, kindness and hard work. Had they known a little more, however, about the author, his life and some his other works, the good ladies might have thought twice about selecting him as a moral exemplar for their young charges.
Title vignette with portrait of La Fontaine from The Fables of La Fontaine translated into English verse by Walter Thornbury (London, 1873). 12305.m.1.
Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) was born in Château-Thierry on the western border of the province of Champagne, a small town surrounded by the woods and fields which provide the setting for many of his fables in a landscape traversed by the River Marne. His father and grandfather had both held a minor government post involving the supervision of waterways and forests, and after a brief flirtation with the Church the young Jean also assumed this office. His attitude to his duties was somewhat lackadaisical; although he held his position until the 1670s, he was castigated, years after his appointment, for his ignorance of basic forestry terms. While trees provided the matter for many of his fables, he had small interest in them for practical purposes.
His pliability in his choice of career extended to his marriage, in which he once more followed his father’s directives. The bride whom he took in 1647, Marie Héricart, came of a wealthy and well-connected family, and the difference in age (she was 14 years old) was not uncommon at that time. However, the marriage, which produced a single child, Charles, was not entirely successful; as his literary career developed La Fontaine spent most of his time in Paris, returning so infrequently that when he expressed a warm liking for a young man whom he met at a social gathering, he was startled to learn that this was his son. Though there was never a direct break between the couple, in 1658 Marie petitioned successfully for a séparation des biens which allowed her control of her own fortune, perhaps at the instigation of her relatives, who were concerned about La Fontaine’s improvident nature, allegations of gambling, and failure to draw a regular salary. Throughout his life, indeed, he frequently had recourse to the generosity of friends, rather more successfully than the cicada in his fable La cigale et la fourmi, who, appealing to the ant for help after spending the summer singing rather than gathering stores for the harsh times ahead, is rebuffed with the terse brush-off Eh bien! Dansez maintenant.
An early edition of the fables (Amsterdam, 1687) 12304.cc.23.
The lasting popularity of the Fables could not have been gauged from their initial reception. The publishers were initially reluctant to accept verses full of archaic vocabulary in irregular metres far removed from Louis XIV’s favourite alexandrines and later dismissed by Lamartine as ‘vers boîteux disloqués’. For La Fontaine, however, his use of old French words was not mere pedantry but the natural consequence of his love of a much earlier tradition of beast fables represented by the old French Le Roman de Renart in which animals (notably the fox hero) behave in all-too-human ways. The frequently bawdy quality of these stories appealed to La Fontaine as much as the Italian sources which he adapted for his Contes (1665), which he defended against the criticism of king and court by claiming that they could not represent a moral danger because of their gaiety. He had, however, enjoyed a classical education, and when in 1660 Nevelet’s edition of Aesop appeared, this stimulated him in a new direction.
Although not intended for children (whom La Fontaine is said to have disliked), the first volume was dedicated to the six-year-old Dauphin and won the author an invitation to court, where he was wined and dined by Louis XIV and presented with a well-filled purse which, with characteristic carelessness, he left in the cab which took him home.
The animal fable provided a useful means of expressing the poet’s views on human folly in a period which had seen the two Frondes causing devastation in France, causing him to reflect on the cruelties inflicted in the name of religion and the pursuit of power. A lion is brought low by a mosquito who in turn falls victim to a cunning spider; the death of a rabbit in the claws of an eagle leads to a train of calamities involving Jupiter himself; a mighty oak’s inflexibility literally proves his downfall while the humble reed survives by bowing to the wind. The universal quality of these fables soon won them many translators and illustrators, including Gustave Doré (1866-68; British Library 1870.a.3). They inspired numerous adaptations and imitations, including the much-loved Russian fables of Ivan Krylov (1769-1844), Ukrainian fables by Leonid Hlibov (1827-1893) and those by Antonín Jaroslav Puchmayer (1769-1820), one of the notable works of the Czech National Revival.
The Lion and the Gnat, illustration by Gustave Doré, from 12305.m.1.
The British Library holds translations of the Fables into many languages including Catalan, Esperanto, Hindi, Afrikaans and Welsh. Readers may also see an autograph manuscript of Le loup et le renard (Egerton MS 3780: 1690-1691) bearing La Fontaine’s signature, and another manuscript of five poems in the Stefan Zweig collection (Zweig MS 165: 1660). Recalling Louis XIV’s distaste for La Fontaine’s writings (not least for his criticism of the king’s love of la gloire and all things warlike), we may speculate on the pleasure that the poet who portrayed the least of his country-folk so sympathetically would have derived from seeing his writings among the treasures of a library freely available to all.
Susan Halstead, Content Specialist Research Engagement
17 April 2015
Sonia Delaunay and Tristan Tzara
The Sonia Delaunay exhibition which opened this week at Tate Modern shows her prodigious output over some seven decades. Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) worked in a variety of media – paintings, drawings, prints, fashion and fabric designs, posters, mosaics, bookbindings, and book illustrations. She is best known as the creator, with Blaise Cendrars, of one of the greatest livres d’artiste, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, for which she provided pochoir illustrations to Cendrars’ poem.
This famous book, published in 1913, has tended, however, to overshadow similar collaborations with other poets, especially the two books she produced with Tristan Tzara, the founder of Dadaism.
Tzara moved to Paris from Zurich in 1919 and it was apparently one of his manifestos that made Sonia and Robert Delaunay, who had lived in Spain and then Portugal since 1914, aware of the renewed artistic vitality of Paris after the end of the war and determined their return to France. Tzara first met the Delaunays soon after their return to Paris in 1921. Their apartment at 19 Boulevard Malesherbes quickly became a fashionable gathering point for the literary and artistic avant garde, its walls covered with multi-coloured poems and other works of art by Philippe Soupault, Vladimir Mayakovsky, André Breton, Louis Aragon, Jean Cocteau, and René Crevel. As well as embroidering waistcoats for her friends, Sonia also decorated the interior of Au Sans Pareil, the Dadaist and Surrealist bookshop.
Tzara soon became a close friend of the couple and in 1923 Robert painted his portrait in which he is wearing a scarf designed by Sonia A monocled Tzara also features in one of Robert Delaunay’s best-known paintings, Le Manège aux cochons, painted in 1922.
Robert Delaunay, Portrait of Tristan Tzara (1923). Madrid, Museo nacional centro de arte Reina Sofia (image from Wikimedia Commons)
The collaboration between Sonia Delaunay and Tzara took various forms. It included robes poèmes, dresses with texts from Tzara’s poems woven into their fabric, all made in 1922, and Sonia’s bookbinding for Tzara’s De nos oiseaux in 1923. Sonia had by then become well known for her textile designs, the main focus of her work over the next 15 years, and it was in that year that Tzara asked her to design the costumes for his play Le Cœur à gaz, a three-act absurdist provocation described by its author as “la plus grande escroquerie en trois actes” (“the biggest swindle in three acts”).
The play had already had a single, disastrous performance during a soirée dada in 1921 with a cast that included Louis Aragon, Benjamin Péret, Philippe Soupault, and Tzara himself. It gained lasting notoriety, however, by the circumstances of this 1923 revival, when it was included in Le Cœur à barbe (“The Bearded Heart”), another soirée dada organised by Tzara and Iliadz. The evening marked the culmination of the ongoing conflict between Tzara and Breton and finally split the Dadaists and led to the foundation of Surrealism by Breton and his followers. It also included first performances of new compositions by Georges Auric, Darius Milhaud, Erik Satie, and Igor Stravinsky, as well as films by Charles Sheeler and Hans Richter. The two groups came to blows during the performance of the play. Several people were injured and the actors, encased in Sonia’s heavy cardboard costumes, found themselves unable to move. A photograph showing René Crevel (Oeil) and Jacqueline Chaumont (Bouche) has survived, and their costumes can be compared to Sonia’s original designs.
Sonia Delaunay, Costume designs for Le Cœur à barbe, 1923: Left, Bouche; right, Oeil (British Library C.108 aaa.14.). A copy of the photograph can be seen here.
The text of the play had been first published in Der Sturm on 5 March 1922 but did not appear together with Sonia’s costume designs until 1977, when they were published in association with the exhibition La Rencontre: Sonia Delaunay, Tristan Tzara at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris by the art critic and publisher Jacques Damase, a close friend of Sonia who promoted her work in the last 16 years of her life. The volume includes ten lithographs, seven of which are full-page, colour reproductions of the gouaches of the 1923 costume designs; the others comprise an additional title-page and two decorations in the text. 125 copies were printed, all signed by the artist. An additional set of the full-page lithographs, individually signed by the artist, was issued with each of the first 25 copies.
Additional title page of Tristan Tzara Le Cœur à barbe (Paris, 1977) C.108.aaa.14
The friendship between Sonia Delaunay and Tzara lasted until Tzara’s death in 1963, although they grew apart in the 1930s, when Tzara joined the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and Sonia was for several years busy with the mural paintings commission for the 1937 International Exhibition. They were next brought together, with other ‘undesirables’, in Toulouse in 1944, three years after the death of Robert Delaunay. After the war Tzara once again became an habitué of Sonia’s studio, now at Rue Saint-Simon on the Left Bank.
Like Sonia, Tzara had a strong interest in illustrated books and worked with numerous artists – including Matisse, Kandinsky, Léger, Mirò, Arp, Giacometti, Villon, Klee and Ernst – on illustrated editions of his poems. There were two collaborations with Sonia: for Le Fruit permis (1956), her first book since La Prose du Transsibérien, Sonia contributed four pochoir compositions, and for Juste présent (1961), a collection of 11 poems written between 1947 and 1950, she made eight full-page colour etchings and an additional colour etching for the slipcase, printed in the right sense on the front and upside down on the back cover.
Above: Two of Sonia Delaunay’s etchings for Juste présent ([Paris], 1961). C.108.aaa.11; Below: etching for slipcase cover of Juste présent
140 copies of Juste présent were printed, all signed by the poet and the artist. The British Library’s copy is no. 124. In both publications Sonia’s colours are strong and pure, with a predominance of vermilion, indigo and black. The compositions, with their interplay between flat colour and black, hatched areas, are typical of her post-1945 output (for example, her various Rythme-couleur paintings).
Jacques Damase, who did so much to promote Sonia Delaunay’s art, did not live to see her final consecration: he was tragically killed in an accident in July 2014, just three months before the opening in Paris of this major exhibition of her work, now at Tate Modern. Perhaps the exhibition should be dedicated to his memory?
Chris Michaelides, Curator Romance collections
References
Tristan Tzara, Juste présent [Poèmes]. Eaux-fortes de Sonia Delaunay. ([Paris], 1961). C.108.aaa.11
Tristan Tzara, Le cœur à gaz; costumes de Sonia Delaunay. ([Paris], 1977). C.108 aaa.14
La Rencontre: Sonia Delaunay, Tristan Tzara. Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, avril-juin 1977 / [commissaire: Danielle Molinari]. (Paris, [1977]). YV.1987.a.344
Annabelle Melzer, Dada and Surrealist Performance. (Baltimore & London, 1994) YC.1994.a.3134 & 98/01171
Sonia & Robert Delaunay [the catalogue of the Delaunay donation to the Bibliothèque nationalede France]. (Paris, 1977). j/X.415/2418.
Sonia Delaunay, Nous irons jusqu’au soleil. (Paris, 1977). X.429/7809
Sherry A. Buckberrough, Susan Krane, Sonia Delaunay: a retrospective. (Buffalo, NY, 1980) f80/8227.
Sonia Delaunay [the catalogue of the exhibition at Tate Modern]. London, 2015.
Chris Michaelides, ‘Robert and Sonia Delaunay’, review of the exhibition at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, The Burlington Magazine, February 2015. P.P.1931.pcs.
Cécile Godefroy, Sonia Delaunay : sa mode, ses tableaux, ses tissus (Paris, 2014) YF.2015.a.8284.
06 March 2015
Some flights of Poe’s Raven – Mallarmé and Manet, Doré, and Rossetti
Thanks to the championing of his work by Charles Baudelaire and later by Stéphane Mallarmé who, respectively, translated his prose works and poems, the reputation of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) in France has always been high, and his influence on the Symbolist generation of writers, artists and composers enormous. Though Baudelaire largely avoided translating Poe’s poetry, he did translate, in 1853, ‘The Raven’ which thus has the distinction of having been translated by two of the greatest poets of the 19th century. Mallarmé’s translation, Le Corbeau, was, moreover, published in a de luxe edition in 1875 with illustrations by Édouard Manet, a volume which is generally considered to be one of the first and greatest examples of the modern French livre d’artiste.
Mallarmé first met Manet in 1873 and the two men soon became close friends. Manet’s portrait of Mallarmé in his study, now in the Musée d’Orsay, was painted in 1876, the year L'Après-midi d'un faune, their second book collaboration, appeared.
The publisher of Le Corbeau was Richard Lesclide (1825-1892) who had also published another book illustrated by Manet – Charles Cros’s Le Fleuve (1874). The commercial failure of the two books meant the abandonment of another Poe project, a similarly translated and illustrated publication of ‘The City in the Sea’.
Le Corbeau, a bilingual, illustrated, large folio edition, was published in a limited edition of 240 copies (the British Library copy (shelfmark C.70.i.1) is no. 53) signed by Manet and Mallarmé. Manet’s illustrations were transfer lithographs (i.e. brushed with transfer ink on sheets of paper then transferred to zinc plates for printing); they were printed on laid paper (as in our copy) or on China paper. There were four full-page illustrations inserted between the double pages of Poe’s English text and, on opposite pages, Mallarmé’s translation, and also a head of a raven in profile (below left), also used for the poster advertising the publication, and a flying raven for the ex-libris (below right).
When the book was published Mallarmé was still an obscure poet but Manet was already an established, albeit controversial, artist. Accordingly, the title page gives greater prominence to Manet (whose name is in larger characters and printed in red, like Poe’s) than Mallarmé. Perhaps as a friendly gesture Manet, gave the narrator/poet Mallarmé’s features.
Title-page of Edgar Allan Poe Le Corbeau = The Raven
In Poe’s narrative poem, first published 30 years earlier, the poet, tormented by the death of his beloved Lenore, is visited by a raven, a bird of ill omen, but also the poet’s alter ego. It perches on a bust of Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom, and its repeated answer to the poet’s questions about his dead love is a relentless ‘Nevermore’ reminding him of his irrevocable loss. Manet’s four full-page illustrations show the poet in his study (a claustrophobic, Nabi-like interior) [plate 1], opening the window shutters to let in the raven (revealing, in the process, a Parisian cityscape) [plate 2], staring up from his ‘cushioned seat’ to the raven [plate 3]. In the last illustration [plate 4] the poet has disappeared or, perhaps, been assimilated into the shadow of the raven which can be seen on the floor, from which his soul ‘shall be lifted-nevermore’.
Plate 1 of Le Corbeau, “Once upon a Midnight Dreary (Sous la lampe)”
Plate 2 of Le Corbeau, “Open here I flung the shutter (A la fenêtre)”.
Plate 3 of Le Corbeau, “Perched upon a bust of Pallas (Sur le buste)”.
Plate 4 of Le Corbeau, “That shadow that lies floating on the floor (La chaise)”
The modernity and originality of Manet’s interpretation is best appreciated when compared to the steel engravings after Gustave Doré, his exact contemporary, in his last work, published in 1883. Doré’s engravings hark back to the work of earlier illustrators of the Romantic generation as well as to his own earlier works, emphasizing the supernatural atmosphere of the poem, showing, for example, the ‘Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor’, which Manet omits, or the body of the poet in the shadow of the raven.
Gustave Doré “Till I scarcely more than muttered ‘Other friends have flown before’”
Gustave Doré “ And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted – nevermore” - the poet’s body in the raven’s shadow
Doré’s illustrations, though published eight years after Manet’s, are closer to those of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s four unpublished drawings (which were produced nearly 40 years earlier and are among his earliest works). Rossetti also shows the poet surrounded by angels and spirits, and his drawings range in style from a Faust-like unbridled Gothic composition to more ethereal depictions of angels that look forward to Pre-Raphaelitism.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Raven: Angel Footfalls” (above, ca. 1846; below, ca. 1848)
In 1881 Rossetti wrote to Jane Morris that he had been given a copy of ‘…a huge folio of lithographed sketches from the Raven, by a French idiot called Manet, who certainly must be the greatest and most conceited ass who ever lived. A copy should be bought for every hypochondriacal ward in lunatic asylums. To view it without a guffaw is impossible’. Was this extreme reaction due to Rossetti’s general dislike of the ‘new French School’ (Impressionism) or to professional jealousy?
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek
References:
Paris à l'Eau-Forte. Redacteur en chef: R. Lesclide. Directeur des Eaux-Fortes: F. Regamey. vol. 1-3. (Paris, 1873-74). P.P.1932.g.
Edgar Allan Poe, Le Corbeau. The Raven. Poëme ... Traduction française de S. Mallarmé avec illustrations par E. Manet Paris, 1875. (C.70.i.1.)
Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven. Illustrated by G. Doré, with a comment upon the poem by E. C. Stedman. (London, 1883) 1870.b.5.
Patrick F.Quinn, The French face of Edgar Poe. (Carbondale, 1957). 11874.ppp.15.
Baudelaire and Poe: an exhibition in conjunction with the inauguration of The Center for Baudelaire Studies, Furman Hall, Vanderbilt University, April Nineth to Thirtieth, 1969. ([Nashville], 1969). W17/7609.
Alastair I. Grieve, “Rossetti’s illustrations to Poe”, Apollo Magazine 97 (1973), p.142 -45. P.P.1931.uf.
Frances Carey and Antony Griffiths, From Manet to Toulouse-Lautrec: French lithographs, 1860-1900: catalogue of an exhibition at the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. (London, 1978). X.421/10785.
Manet, 1832-1883 [catalogue of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]. (New York, 1983). YA.1995.b.6128
Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Breon Mitchell, “Tales of a Raven. The Origins and Fate of Le Corbeau by Mallarmé and Manet”, Print Quarterly, VI, no 3, Sept. 1989, p.258-307. P.423/617
Le Corbeau / Edgar Poe ; traduction de Stéphane Mallarmé ; illustré par Edouard Manet ; dossier réalisé par Michaël Pakenham. (Paris,1994) YF.2013.a.5982
James H. Rubin, Manet’s silence and the poetics of bouquets. (London, 1994). YC.1994.b.5598.
Mallarmé, 1842-1898: un destin d’écriture [Published on the occasion of the centenary exhibition "Stéphane Mallarmé, 1842-1898" at the Musée d'Orsay]. (Paris, 1998) LB.31. b.17750.
Lois Davis Vines (ed.) Poe abroad: influence, reputation, affinities. (Iowa City, 1999). 99/40530.
27 February 2015
Florio’s Montaigne – and Shakespeare’s?
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born on 28th February 1533, and by the time of his death 59 years later had enriched French literature with a new genre – the essay. Brought up by his father to speak Latin as his first language, he rapidly lost his mastery of it when at the age of six he was despatched to the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux so that, by the time that he left, he claimed that he knew less than when he arrived. However, throughout his life he retained a love and reverence for classical authors including Cicero, Plutarch and Seneca, which shaped not only his philosophy but his chosen form of literary expression, and ultimately made him one of the most beloved and accessible authors to readers outside his native land.
The title-page of the first edition of Montaigne’s Essais (Paris, 1580) British Library G.2344.
Witty and aphoristic, the collection of essays, first published in 1580, comprises three books divided into one hundred and seven chapters on topics ranging from coaches, cruelty and cannibalism to thumbs and smells. Their discursive nature reveals many details about their author and his milieu, drawn from his experiences as a Gascon landowner and official who rose to become mayor of Bordeaux, his travels through Italy, Germany and Switzerland, the turbulent years of the Wars of Religion, and his family life, in which we catch glimpses of his masterful mother, his wife Françoise, and his only surviving child Léonor – a household of women from which, at times, he would retreat to the peace and solitude of his tower, fitted with curving shelves to accommodate his library, to enjoy the company of his cat – another female – who has achieved immortality through his observations of her at play.
Marginal picture of a man with a cat, drawn by Pieter van Veen in his copy of Montaigne’s Essais (Paris, 1602) British Library C.28.g.7.
The Essais rapidly achieved wide popularity, and not only in France. They ran into five editions in eight years, and in 1603 an English translation appeared, the work of John Florio. Florio, born in 1533 as the son of an Italian father and an English mother, had left England as a small child when the accession of Mary Tudor to the throne had sent his family into exile, and as they wandered around Europe he acquired a knowledge of languages which equipped him to earn his living on returning to England as a teacher of French and Italian and the author of an English-Italian dictionary (London, 1578; 627.d.36).
It was at the behest of his patroness, the Countess of Bedford, that he set about translating the Essais, assisted by a multitude of collaborators who, through the Countess’s offices, tracked down quotations and publicized his work, earning fulsome dedications by doing so. His lively and spirited version contains colourful turns of phrase which sometimes expand the original, as when, in Book 1, chapter xviii, ‘des Loups-garous, des Lutins et des chimeres’ emerge as ‘Larves, Hobgoblins, Robbin-good-fellowes, and other such Bug-bears and Chimeraes’ – a catalogue which, as Sarah Bakewell points out in her How to Live: a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (Bath, 2011; LT.2011.x.3266) is ‘a piece of pure Midsummer Night’s Dream’.
Shakespeare did in fact know Florio, and Bakewell speculates that he may have been one of the first readers of the Essaies, possibly even in manuscript form. Scholars have taken pains to detect echoes of Montaigne in Hamlet, which was written before the published translation appeared, and frequently cite a passage from his last play, The Tempest, which, as Gonzalo evokes a vision of civilization in a perfect state of nature, is strikingly close to Montaigne’s account of the Tupinambá, an indigenous people from South America whom he encountered when a group of them visited Rouen.
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn or wine, or oil;
No occupation, all men idle, all.
Montaigne remarks of the Tupinambá that they have ‘no kind of traffike, no knowledge of Letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politike superioritie; no use of service, of riches or of povertie; no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no occupation but idle; no respect of kindred, but common, no apparel but natural, no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn or mettle’.
Such passages were eagerly seized upon in the controversy in the 18th and 19th centuries about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, and in 1901 Francis P. Gervais published his Shakespeare not Bacon: some arguments from Shakespeare’s copy of Florio’s Montaigne in the British Museum (London, 1901; 11765.i.18.). However, Edward Maunde Thompson countered with Two pretended autographs of Shakespeare (London, 1917; 11763.i.37), which argued that not only the signature ‘William Shakespere’ in an edition of the Essaies in the British Museum Library (but also that in a volume of Ovid in the Bodleian Library) was false, subjecting both to rigorous calligraphic analysis.
Alleged signature of William Shakespeare on the flyleaf of The Essayes, or Morall, Politike, and Millitarie Discourses of Lo: Michaell de Montaigne ... Now done into English by ... John Florio. (London, 1603) C.21.e.17
Whatever the truth of the matter may be, we can make an educated guess at Montaigne’s response. An even-handed and balanced man who needed all his reserves of philosophy and Stoicism to confront the horrors of a century which saw the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and decades of conflict springing from religious extremism, he would no doubt have advocated a similar perspective on the resurgence of similar dangers in the 21st. And to those who argued about the authenticity or otherwise of these notorious signatures, he would certainly have recommended the phrase from the Greek philosopher Pyrrho which became his motto, engraved on his medallion: ‘Epekhō – I suspend judgement’.
Susan Halstead Curator Czech & Slovak
09 January 2015
European rivals in South Asia
As is fairly well known, the British Library has inherited the surviving archives of the British East India Company, and this vast resource provides researchers with a rich and unique mine of information about all aspects of Britain’s relations with South Asia in the early modern period through to 1858. What is almost certainly less well known is that the archive includes one series bringing together documentation from and about the other European powers that were the Company’s rivals in the 17th and 18th centuries.
View of the former French colony of Chandernagore (modern-day Chandannagar). Watercolour by Stanley Leighton, 1868. British Library WD 269
The ‘I’ series includes more than 200 volumes, arranged in three sub-series, of memoranda and correspondence between Europe and Asia. The first 17 of these (ref. I/1/1-17) are concerned with the Company’s relations with the French in India between 1664 and 1820, and I/2/1-32 is similar, dealing with the Dutch in India and Southeast Asia from 1596 to 1824. The subjects broached within are alas only hinted at by the frequent use in the relevant handlist of that tantalising word ‘Miscellaneous’, although there are four volumes identified as being about ‘Disputes with the French, 1773-1786’ (ref. I/1/7-10), and as a testament to the difficulties in mid-eighteenth century Anglo-Dutch relations there are no fewer than seven volumes of ‘Disputes with the Dutch’ from 1750 to 1764 (ref. I/2/14-20).
View of Batavia (modern-day Jakarta), the capital of the Dutch East Indies. Aquatint by JohnWells, 1800. P494
These are dwarfed, however, by the size of the third sub-series, which consists in all of 165 volumes. Its existence is due entirely to Frederick Charles Danvers (1833-1906). A man of wide-ranging interests, Danvers joined the East India Company as a writer in 1853, and five years later transferred to the India Office after the Company’s abolition. After spells in the Revenue, Statistics & Commerce and Public Works Departments, he was appointed Registrar and Superintendent of the India Office Records in 1884, a post he held until 1898. In what must rank as a major feat of international archival co-operation, between 1891 and 1895 he oversaw the transcription of volumes of documents from repositories in Lisbon, Evora and The Hague; besides this, he enhanced their long-term value to scholars and researchers by supervising the translation of 35 of these volumes into English. The Dutch records cover the whole of the 17th century, whereas those from Portugal date from as early as 1475 and extend into the early 19th century. The series thus contains a range of primary sources on many aspects of the European engagement with South and Southeast Asia both before and during the colonial era.
Map of the City of Goa in Portuguese India, from Denis L. Cottineau de Kloguen, An historical sketch of Goa, the metropolis of the Portuguese settlements in India ...( Madras, 1831.) 1434.e.2
All these volumes are located at St. Pancras, and can be delivered to the third floor Asian & African Studies Reading Room for consultation within seventy minutes of ordering.
Hedley Sutton, Asian & African Studies Reference Team Leader
References:
F.C. Danvers Report to the Secretary of State for India in Council on the Portuguese records relating to the East Indies contained in the Archivo da Torre do Tombo, and the public libraries in Lisbon and Evora (1892), OIR354.54
F.C. Danvers, Report on the records relating to the East in the state archives in The Hague (1945), OIB325.349.
17 December 2014
A dish fit for the gods: 150 years of Offenbach’s ‘La belle Hélène’
When in the 1690s the Académie Française was rocked by the so-called Querelle des anciens et des modernes between two factions headed by Nicolas Boileau and Charles Perrault respectively, history might have regarded it as a short-lived conflict unlikely to have much lasting influence on the development of French culture. However, in a society with a long tradition of respect for classical learning and its place within the educational system, it was never completely extinguished, and continued to flare up in the most unlikely places – such as the Paris comic opera stage.
By 1858, when the restriction limiting the number of performers in such productions to three was finally lifted, Jacques Offenbach (1819-1860) had already achieved considerable success in the small theatre which he had leased at his own expense, the Salle Choiseul, to accommodate his troupe, the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, when unable to make a breakthrough at the Opéra-Comique. His tastes, though, ran towards the lavish, and once free of the previous limitations he set about engaging a cast of 20 principals and making plans to stage his latest work, Orphée aux Enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld).
An early photograph of Offenbach, from ‘Argus’ Jacques Offenbach (Paris, 1872). 10602.e.4.
It success exceeded all his dreams, but not, perhaps, for the reasons which he had anticipated. Most unlike Monteverdi’s Orfeo or Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, it presents the hero not as a noble tragic figure descending to the realm of Hades to rescue his beloved wife but as a lackadaisical violin teacher whose wife is driven distracted by his trills and arpeggios, so that her abduction by the sinister king of the underworld, disguised as a shepherd, comes as a relief to both. Indeed, it was so far removed from the marmoreal world of classical antiquity that it provoked a furious outcry in the pages of the Journal des débats and Le Figaro. No voice was louder than that of the critic Jules Janin, who accused Offenbach of making a mockery of the austere values of Roman mythology so revered by the great figures of the Revolution. Behind this, though, lay a more contemporary target for satire – no less than the figure of the Emperor Napoleon III and his court in the guise of Jupiter (familiarly tagged as ‘Jupin’, i.e. Joops) and his entourage. The notoriety, as much as the sparkling music and witty libretto by Hector Crémieux, did wonders for the box-office takings, and in April 1860 the emperor himself ordered a command performance – and presumably was not disappointed, as that year he made a personal grant of French citizenship to the Cologne-born Offenbach, followed in 1861 by the Légion d’honneur.
Inspired by this success, Offenbach proceeded to tackle another classical subject, the story of Helen of Troy, in La belle Hélène. The librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy showed no more respect for their theme than their predecessor Crémieux, and fell foul of the censor for their portrayal of the Grand Augur, Calchas, which was viewed as an attack on the clergy. Pompous and hypocritical, Calchas cheats outrageously while gambling, and was at one point intended to fall into the water until the censor insisted that this was taking irreverence too far. Nor do Agamemnon, Menelaus and the other heroes fare any better; they appear as a gang of ridiculous blockheads who are easily trounced by the debonair ‘shepherd’ Paris (‘l’homme à la pomme’) in a series of word-games designed to sharpen the dull wits of the Greeks.
The chorus which accompanies Orestes’ entrance, from Jacques Offenbach, La belle Hélène, autograph score, 1864. Zweig MS 72
Most startlingly of all, perhaps, Orestes makes his entrance as a precocious playboy, flanked by two good-time girls, Parthénis and Léoena, dancing in to the refrain ‘Tsing-la-la! Tsing-la-la! Oyé Kephalé, Kephalé oh-la-la!’ and intent on emptying his father’s coffers in the pursuit of pleasure. The role is sung by a soprano, and its creator, the all-too-aptly-named Léa Silly, proved a major headache to Offenbach. In a situation reminiscent of Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario), a skit involving a hapless director and his two warring prima donnas which Offenbach had staged some years earlier, she antagonized the diva Hortense Schneider, a long-term star of the company who was cast as Helen, by upstaging and mimicking her, dancing a cancan behind her back as she sang a major aria, and so enraging Schneider that she threatened to quit not only the production but Paris altogether.
Hortense Schneider as Helen in La belle Hélène, from Louis Schneider, Offenbach (Paris, 1923) 7896.t.20.
Yet despite these trials the first night went ahead on 17th December 1864 at the Théâtre des Variétés, delighting critics and public so much that it launched a run of 700 performances. Among its admirers was the famous chef Auguste Escoffier, who created a special dish in its honour – Poire Belle Hélène, a luscious confection of poached pears and vanilla ice-cream topped with chocolate sauce and crystallized violets. Like the opera itself, it is a treat for the connoisseur – and certainly fit for an Emperor.
Susan Halstead, Curator Czech and Slovak
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