European studies blog: Language

28 April 2014

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and Serbian National Poetry: a Bicentenary

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787-1864), was a Serbian philologist and a reformer of the Serbian literary language.

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (picture from Wikimedia Commons)

This year marks the bicentenary of the publication of Karadžić’s Мала простонароднЬа славено-сербска пєснарица (‘Simple little Serbian-Slavonic song book’, Vienna, 1814; 1461.e.17.) and of a Писменица сербскога іезика (‘Serbian grammar book’) . 2014 is also marks the 150th anniversary of his death in Vienna in 1864. The forthcoming Balkan Day seminar at the British Library on 13 June 2014 will highlight the cultural achievements and the legacy of this great reformer.

Two hundred years ago Karadžić began a revolutionary reform which gave the Serbian nation a standardised literary language, a complete 30-character Serbian Cyrillic alphabet and revised orthography which included the six new characters of the Serbian alphabet (Ђ, Ј, Љ, Њ, Ћ and Џ). Another of Karadžić’s lasting achievements was his life-long collection and publication of traditional Serbian national literature, especially Serbian national poetry. Over the course of 50 years Karadžić published several editions of selected Serbian national poetry, the first three volumes in Leipzig in 1823-24 (of which the library has volumes one and two; 1064.h.26-27.), and a definitive five-volume edition published in Vienna in 1841-65 (11585.f.11.; volume five was published posthumously by Karadžić’s widow). The Serbian state acquired Karadžić’s large archive, and has continued to publish his papers to the present day.

Before Karadžić’s reforms, Serbian literature was written in Church Slavonic from the Middle Ages, then in the mid-18th century in Russo-Slavonic, and later in Slavonic-Serbian (slavenoserpski, a mix of the national spoken language and Russo-Slavonic). Although supported by the Church and the State, these languages were not easily understandable by the ordinary Serbian people who communicated in their own national language. It was this everyday spoken language that produced the traditional national literature that formed the basis for Karadžić’s reforms. Karadžić thus created a new literature and a new literary language breaking all ties with the establishment which remained furious and hostile in Karadžić’s lifetime to the new alphabet, orthography and language. The last remaining restrictions on Karadžić’s alphabet and orthography were lifted only after his death.

Karadžić was not only an ideologist and supporter of the language reform but an active contributor to the creation of the new literary language. In 1818 Karadžić produced a Serbian dictionary, a central text of the contemporary Serbian language.

Karadžić’s Serbian dictionary, Српски рјечник (Vienna, 1818) 12976.r.6.

This Serbian dictionary was the first book printed in the new alphabet according to the new orthography. Here Karadžić executed to perfection the main principle of a phonetic orthography, Adelung’s dictum ‘write as you speak’: Karadžić introduced 30 letters representing 30 sounds in the Serbian literary language, and in the dictionary he published over 26,000 words as he remembered them. This was a trilingual Serbian-German-Latin dictionary produced in collaboration with Bartholomäus (Jernej in Slovene) Kopitar who was Karadžić’s teacher and the mind behind his literary and linguistic reforms, and it was Kopitar who encouraged Karadžić to collect and preserve Serbian traditional national poetry, tales and proverbs. Kopitar, who was an assistant keeper in the Imperial Library in Vienna, introduced Karadžić’s work to Jacob Grimm and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who introduced and promoted Serbian national poetry in Europe.

The entries in the Serbian dictionary represented all the genres of the national oral tradition, and some entries had an encyclopaedic, ethnographic or historiographical format and character.

The opening above shows the entry for marriage (женидба in Serbian) and describes in great detail the marriage ceremony and customs in Serbia.

Another important cornerstone in the development of the Serbian literary language and literature was Karadžić’s translation of the New Testament in 1847. The British Library holds an 1868 edition of the Bible in Djura Daničić’s translation of the Old Testament and Karadžić’s translation of the New Testament into Serbian (3061.e.4.).

Programme of the Karadžić Centenary Festival. 1851.c.10.(68)

This centenary placard printed in French and Serbian on the occasion of Karadžić’s jubilee, celebrations in Belgrade in 1888, was presented to the British Museum Library on 13 October 1888. The British Library holds a significant collection of over 250 titles by Karadžić from 1814 to 1864 in the first and subsequent editions, in the original and in translation, and in reprints and facsimile editions. The collection has been developed over the period of 173 years from the first acquisition (the Serbian dictionary in 1841) to Serbian fairy tales, acquired in 2013. There are also works about Karadžić in all major languages, together with books in Serbian and other South Slavonic languages. The library is acquiring the full set of Karadžić’s collected works in 32 volumes (Belgrade, 1965- , X.0989/612; four volumes are still to be published), which includes a bibliography by Karadžić scholar Golub Dobrašinović. Karadžić’s 1867 book Живот и обичаји народа српскога (‘Life and customs of the Serbian people’) is freely available in digital format from the British Library (the printed copy is at shelfmark 010127.c.28.).

To mark the bicentenary of the birth of Karadžić, the British Library held an exhibition Vuk Stefanović Karadžić 1787-1864, from 26 June to 27 September 1987.

Milan Grba, Lead Curator South-Eastern European Collections

References:

Digitised texts:

Copies of Karadžić’s works cited above are available in digital format in The Matica Srpska Digital Library:
Simple little Serbian-Slavonic song book
A Serbian grammar book
Serbian dictionary
Serbian New Testament

Biography and criticism:

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Wuk's Stephanowitsch kleine serbische Grammatik verdeutscht und mit einer Vorrede von J. Grimm. Nebst Bemerkungen über die neueste Auffassung länger Heldenlieder ... von J. S. Vater. Leipzig (Berlin, 1824) 628.g.23.

Ljubomir Stojanović, Život i rad Vuka Stefanovića Karadžića. Belgrade : Makarije, 1924. X.902/107.

Duncan Wilson, The life and times of Vuk Stefanović Karadzić, 1787-1864. Literacy, literature, and national independence in Serbia. (Oxford, 1970) X.989/6017.

Vera Bojić, Jacob Grimm und Vuk Karadžić: ein Vergleich ihrer Sprachauffassungen und ihre Zusammenarbeit auf dem Gebiet der serbischen Grammatik. (Munich, 1977. 11879.aa.2/106

Sprache, Literatur, Folklore bei Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. Beiträge zu einem internationalen Symposium, Göttingen, 8.-13. Februar 1987. Herausgegeben von Reinhard Lauer. (Wiesbaden, 1988) X.0950/210(13).

Vuk Karadžić im europäischen Kontext. Beiträge des internationalen wissenschaftlichen Symposiums der Vuk Karadžić-Jacob Grimm-Gesellschaft am 19. und 20. November 1987, Frankfurt am Main. Herausgegeben von Wilfried Potthoff. (Heidelberg, 1990) YA.1994.a.5100.

Translations:

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Volkslieder der Serben. Metrisch übersetzt und historisch eingeleitet von Talvj (Halle, 1825) 1570/5587 ; (2nd ed. Halle,1835. 1064.h.29.)

Народне Српске Пјесме = Servian Popular Poetry, translated by John Bowring. (London, 1827) 2286.a.1.

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Chants populaires des Serviens ... traduits ... par Mme. E. Voïart. (Paris, 1834) 11585.e.19.

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Volksmärchen der Serben. ... Ins Deutsche übersetzt .... Mit einer Vorrede von Jacob Grimm. Nebst einem Anhange von mehr als tausend serbischen Sprichwörtern. (Berlin, 1854) 12431.c.20.

Serbian Folk Songs, Fairy Tales, and Proverbs. (London , [1917]) 12430.e.34.

Songs of the Serbian people. From the collections of Vuk Karadžić. Translated and edited by Milne Holton and Vasa D. Mihailovich. (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1997) YK.1999.a.1659.

Serbian fairy tales ... selected, translated and introduced by Jelena Ćurčić ... (London, 2013) YK.2014.a.7619.

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:00 AM in Language , Literature , Serbia , Translation | Permalink | Comments( 0)

09 April 2014

Who or what were ‘the Vikings’?

Interest in ‘the Vikings’ seems boundless, and the current Vikings exhibition at the British Museum makes the subject particularly topical. Googling ‘Viking’ produces forty-seven million hits – though most of them may be for computer games or brand names – and a search on our catalogue under vernacular forms of the term produces over 250 titles in Scandinavian languages and thousands more in English, with dozens of the latter published this year already in the BL catalogue. Beyond that narrow focus, however, the holdings of the British Library are very rich in printed materials, from the 16th century to date, relating to pre-Christian Scandinavia.

A recent article in the Evening Standard by the great medievalist David Dumville aimed to counter the ‘revisionist’ and ‘politically correct’ views that have “covered up the crimes of a bloody era” during the past half-century. He admitted that “Vikings are in general not coterminous with Scandinavians” yet capitalised the word as if it were an ethnic label – as misleading as using ‘Cowboy’ or ‘Cossack’ to describe the entire cultures of the USA or Russia, from their art forms and technology to their political systems and modes of warfare. The ancient Scandinavians’ name for themselves was ‘Northmen’ and for their language and culture ‘Norse’ (norrœn).

Of the two Old Norse nouns víkingr (m.) and víking (f.), the first meant ‘pirate or sea-rover’ (OED), the second an overseas plundering expedition. Their etymology is contested but related to the noun vík, ‘bay’, or the verb víkja, ‘to turn away’ etc., referring either to people from a bay area – such as the Vik region around the Oslofjord (though its inhabitants were called víkverjar, not víkingar) – or to those who ‘set out’ on raiding voyages. But such ‘vikings’ formed only a fraction of the Norse peoples. Overseas trading voyages had been undertaken long before then, for instance by the peaceful ‘farbönder’ of Gotland, while the fact that travel by boat was so much faster than overland was the basic reason why so many Norse groups lived near and moved around on water. Will scholars ever agree to stop using the over-worked term ‘viking’?

Carelian raiders. Illustration from Olaus Magnus, Historia de gentibus Septentrionalibus, bk 11, ch. 7 (Rome, 1555) 152.e.9.

The causes of the increase in overseas raiding around 800 were both external and internal. The main external one was the expansion of the Carolingian empire, its threatening proximity provoking aggressive reactions. The major internal factor was technological, the rapid development of open-sea sailing ships at that time. (The best surviving examples are the beautiful Gokstad and Oseberg vessels – displayed in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.) Another was the breakdown of a centuries-old social system in increasingly violent power struggles among the elites that eventually reduced the number of kingdoms in Scandinavia from dozens to the three still existing ones.

Oseberg ship, built around 820, buried 834, now in the Viking Ship Museum, Oslo (Picture by Daderot from Wikimedia Commons)

An aggressive warrior ethos – already vividly described in the Old English Beowulf poem, preserved in the British Library – saw raiding and pillaging as a perfectly honourable pursuit, enriching the participants. Change came only with the adoption of continental Christianity and feudalism, which no longer permitted unprovoked attacks on co-religionists. When the neighbouring Slavic, Finno-Ugrian and Baltic peoples likewise converted, the now christianised Norse elites – after a short period of ‘crusading’ around the Baltic – simply ran out of legitimate targets.

Peter Hogg, former Head of Scandinavian Collections

English proverbs that don’t exist

How English is an English proverb?

Paremiologists generally agree that the same proverbs occur in many languages. It’s often assumed that popular proverbs, like folktales, in Max Müller’s phrase, migrate. And migration is assumed to be by word of mouth. All of which is probably true.

But some popular proverbs were written down in the manuscript period (see Morawski for French examples), sometimes with Latin translations:

Qui bien boit dieu voit.

Si bona quis bibat, is – conspector fit deitatis

Qui bona potat, ei – prompta visio dei (Morawski, p. 46)

Some proverb books were printed in the incunable period. But the watershed was the appearance of Erasmus’s Adagia, which he issued in ever more expanded editions between 1500 and 1536.

The Adagia were very much focused on the classical tradition. Though an athlete of Latinity – he never published anything in the vernacular – Erasmus did sparingly admit Dutch proverbs (suitably rendered into Latin) into the Adagia, as parallels for Greek and Roman examples. His role in proverb studies, as in many other fields, was crucial. In Catholic countries like Spain his influence was far-reaching but his name was mud. The Humanist Pedro Vallés in the prologue of his Libro de refranes (Zaragoza, 1549; British Library C.63.b.25) pays homage to Erasmus:

Entre los latinos ordeno refranes y muy doctamente Erasmo … Con los Adagios de Erasmo, por cuya obra alcanço fama perpetua.

[Among the Latins, Erasmus ordered proverbs, and most learnedly … With the Adages of Erasmus, for which work he won everlasting fame]

In the copy which was used for a 1917 facsimile edition (12304.h.36.), the emphasised words are struck through. The British Library copy of the original has not fallen into the hands of the censor, and there they can be read clearly.

Around the 1540s collections began to appear which juxtaposed not vernacular with Latin but vernacular with vernacular. For some minority languages this was their first appearance in print: students of Galician are indebted to Hernán Núñez, professor of Greek at Salamanca, who in his Refranes o proverbios en romance (published posthumously in 1555) paralleled Castilian proverbs with Galician.

So, what of the authenticity of English proverbs?

The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (ODEP) from 1935 onwards includes a good number of English proverbs that were never said by any Englishman. These are garnered from bilingual and multilingual collections, or vocabularies and phrasebooks in which the English is merely a translation from French, Spanish or Italian. The Introduction claims: ‘many proverbs of foreign origin were quickly absorbed into English life and these have a rightful place in an English dictionary’. (For dictionaries, phrasebooks etc. a useful source is Alston.)

One example among many of an interloper is ‘Honour and profit lie not in one sack’. ODEP (p. 382) cites:

1599. John Minsheu, A Spanish Grammar, 84: Honour and profit are not contained together in one sacke.

1640. George Herbert, Outlandish [=foreign] Proverbs, 232.

1659. James Howell, Paroimiographia. Proverbs … in … English, … Italian, French and Spanish … British, 17 (bag)

1706. Captain John Stevens, A New Spanish and English Dictionary, s.v. Honra (as 1659)

Cited only in bilingual or multilingual sources, this is the Spanish ‘Honra y provecho no caben en un saco’.

Examples from A Spanish Grammar, first collected ... by R. Percivale ... now augmented ... by J. Minsheu ... Hereunto ... are annexed Speeches, Phrases, and Proverbes ... (London, 1599). British Library 434.c.15.(2, 3.)

So, proverbs do probably migrate, but a lot of English proverbs in the reference books are foreigners in disguise. Remember: All that glitters is not gold – No es oro todo lo que reluce.

Barry Taylor, Curator Hispanic Studies

References

R. C. Alston, A Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800 (Leeds, etc., 1965-). Vol. 12 Romance languages, vol. 13 Germanic, vol. 14 Slavonic. X.985/532.

Max Müller, ‘The Migration of Tales’, The Contemporary Review, 14 (1 April 1870). P.P.5939.b.

Józef Morawski, Proverbes français antérieurs au XVe siècle (Paris, 1925). 012201.cc.1/47.

The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, ed. William George Smith (1935; 12305.l.29.); revised Sir Paul Harvey (1948; X.981/2103.); revised F. P. Wilson (1970; X.981/1907.).

Posted by Susan Reed at 12:24 PM in Language , Spain | Permalink | Comments( 0)

Tags: Proverbs

25 March 2014

Mistral blows in: Provence’s own Nobel laureate

It may seem perverse to celebrate the centenary of a poet’s death, but for those who would prefer to mark a more joyful event in the life of Frédéric Mistral, Provence’s greatest poet, 2014 offers two: 110 years since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904 and on 21st May, the 160th anniversary of the establishment in 1854 of the literary and cultural association Félibrige.

Portrait of Frédéric Mistral from Moun espelido: Memòri e raconte = Mes origins: Memoirs et récits (Paris, 1906) 10659.pp.7.

Frédéric Mistral was born on 8 September 1830 at Maillane in the département of Bouches-du-Rhône into an old landowning family deeply rooted in the soil of Provence. A reluctant pupil, his frequent truancies caused his exasperated parents to pack him off to boarding school, but neither this nor his legal studies at Aix-en-Provence weakened his profound love of his native region, or of the Occitan language. With the encouragement of his teacher Joseph Roumanille, he joined five other poets, Teodor Aubanel, Ansèume Matiéu, Jan Brunet, Anfos Tavan and Paul Giera, to found an organization devoted to the promotion of the ancient Occitan language at a time when the growth of railways and modern communications threatened its very existence as standard French was imposed throughout the country.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of Félibrige was its publication of Lou Tresor dóu Félibrige (1878–1886), which remains the most comprehensive and exact dictionary of the Occitan language, and one of the most reliable for the precision of its definitions. The British Library holds the first edition of Mistral’s two-volume work (12952.h.7), an Occitan-French dictionary covering all the dialects of oc, including mistralienne.

Mistral, however, was no dry pedant. Although he was notable for spending years on the writing and revision of his poems, the finished works possess a vivid freshness and sense of place which rapidly brought them to the eyes of a wider European public. His most famous poem Mirèio (Mireille), published in 1859 after eight years of effort and dedicated to Alphonse de Lamartine, achieved immense popularity; it was made into an opera by Charles Gounod (1863), and in 1867 ‘an English version, the original crowned by the French Academy’ by C. H. Grant was published by Joseph Roumanille at Avignon (11498.c.46). The story of the young heroine’s thwarted love for Vincent, a poor basket-maker, whom her parents force her to reject in favour of a wealthy suitor, takes place amid the picturesque landscape of the Camargue, with colourful evocations of its landscape, people and customs, reaching a climax when Mireille makes a pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer to implore their assistance and, having set out without a hat, dies of sunstroke in Victor’s arms under the eyes of her remorseful parents. Its emotional directness and wealth of exotic detail gave this moving tale an appeal which quickly caused it to be translated into many other languages, including Esperanto.

Illustration by Eugène Burnand from Mistral’s Mireille: poème provençal (Paris, 1891) 11498.k.15.

For many English readers their first encounter with Mistral may have come through reading Alphonse Daudet’s Lettres de mon moulin (1869), in which the chapter ‘Le poète Mistral’ describes a visit to his old friend on the occasion of the local fête. Against a background of the celebrations, with the traditional bull-running, music and sports culminating in the dancing of the farandole by night under the lanterns to the strains of fife and drum, Daudet describes Mistral reading from the exercise book which contained the manuscript of Calendal, the picaresque poem which he had just completed after seven years’ labour. The account ends with the tribute of one great author to another as a poet and as the man who had saved a rich and ancient language from decay. Daudet likens Mistral to a peasant’s son who discovers one of the great houses of Provence in disrepair, and, like Christ in the Temple, drives the grazing donkey and pecking hens out of the cour d’honneur and sets about restoring the glass and panelling, re-gilding the throne, ‘and put on its feet the vast palace of former times, where popes and empresses lodged.

‘That restored palace is the Provençal language.

‘That peasant’s son is Mistral.’

In 1904 Mistral shared the Nobel Prize for Literature with the Spanish playwright José Echegaray. Fittingly, as he had received it in recognition of his efforts to revive and restore the Provençal language, Mistral used his portion to set up the Museon Arlaten (Musée d’Arles), which remains the most considerable collection of Provençal folk art, including costumes, farming tools and musical instruments, pottery, textiles and furniture reminiscent of the world of his poetry.

Living in an unpretentious style, refusing to use the prize which he received for Mireille from the Académie Française to decorate his simple plastered bedroom as his mother suggested, Mistral died on 25th March 1914 in Maillane where he was born. Although he had no children by his marriage to Marie-Louise Rivière, he gave his native Provence some of its best-loved literary characters, and a priceless legacy in the renewal of its historic language.

Susan Halstead, Curator Czech and Slovak Studies

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:00 AM in France , Language , Literature | Permalink | Comments( 0)

07 March 2014

Testament for "beloved Ukraine"

The most translated work by the Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko whose bicentenary we celebrate on 9 March is his short poem ‘Zapovit’ (‘Testament’). It is sometimes wrongly assumed that Shevchenko wrote it shortly before his death on 10 March (new style) 1861. Yet it was created on December 25 1845, when the 31-year old poet and painter lay seriously ill with pneumonia during his second journey to Ukraine. Shevchenko stayed in the city of Pereyaslav with his doctor friend Andriy Kozachkovsky, who treated him. Two years later, already a private soldier in the fortress of Orsk, Shevchenko dedicated a poem ‘A.O.Kozachkovskomu’ (To A.O.Kozachkovsky).

Kozachkovsky’s House in Pereyaslav (photo from website of the National Historical-Ethnographical Reserve Pereyaslav)

While fighting the illness Shevchenko (his self-portrait from 1845 below) was composing his ‘last will and testament’:

When I am dead, then bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper's plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.

(Translated by John Weir)

‘Zapovit’ is so well known in Ukraine that it enjoys a status second only to Ukraine’s national anthem, ‘Ukraine is not yet dead’. It quickly spread amongst Ukrainians but was published for the first time only in 1859 in Leipzig as part of the small publication Novye stikhotvorieniia Pushkina i Shavchenki (New poems by Pushkin and Shevchenko; 12265.bb.5(2))

The poem attracted the attention of many composers: there are more than 60 musical interpretations of ‘Zapovit’. The prominent Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko composed ‘Testament’ as his first choral work, and it was performed in 1868. The most famous, however, is the version by a teacher from Poltava, Hordiy Hladky. Here is the famous Ukrainian basso cantante Borys Gmyria singing ‘Zapovit’ with the capella ‘Dumka’ in the 1960s film about Taras Shevchenko.

The British Library holds some books with translations of ‘Zapovit’ into many languages. The most ambitious of these projects, entitled Zapovit movamy narodiv svitu (‘Testament’ in languages of the world, Kyiv, 1989; YF.2007.a.31866), contains translations of the poem into 150 languages, including Esperanto. The previous edition, Zapovit movamy narodiv svitu (Kyiv, 1964; X.907/682) had translations into 55 languages.

A few smaller projects were realised in Soviet times. Two miniature editions (picture above by Rimma Lough) with notes were published by the publishing house Muzychna Ukraina (Musical Ukraine): ‘Zapovit’ T. Shevchenka movamy narodiv SRSR (‘Testament’ by T. Shevchenko in the languages of the USSR, Kyiv, 1984; Cup.550.g.355) and ‘Zapovit’ T. Shevchenka hermano-romansʹkymy movamy (‘Testament’ by T. Shevchenko in Romano-Germanic languages; Kyiv, 1983; Cup.550.g.353)

New translations of ‘Testament’ are included in two full editions of Kobzar in English in 2013 (YF.2014.b.264 and YK.2014.a.17425). More translations in English may be found here.

How about ‘Testament’ itself? Shevchenko was first buried in St Petersburg. However, fulfilling the poet’s wish to be buried in ‘my beloved Ukraine’, friends arranged to transfer his remains to his native land (by train to Moscow and then by horse-drawn wagon). Shevchenko’s remains were buried on 8 May on Chernecha Hora (Monk’s Hill, now known as Taras Hill) by the Dnieper River near Kaniv. A tall mound was erected over his grave, now a memorial, part of the Shevchenko National Preserve.

How about the second part of ‘Testament’? Ask contemporary Ukrainians yourselves.

Olga Kerziouk, Curator Ukrainian Studies

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:00 AM in Language , Literature , Music , Ukraine | Permalink | Comments( 0)

28 February 2014

A Day to Celebrate Finnish Culture

Mastered by desire impulsive,
By a mighty inward urging,
I am ready now for singing,
Ready to begin the chanting
Of our nation's ancient folk-song
Handed down from by-gone ages.

So starts one of the earliest English translations of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, which tells the stories of mythical heroes and heroines. The Kalevala is based on poetry in the oral tradition and is an arrangement of material collected by Elias Lönnrot and his assistants during their travels in Finland and Karelia in the first half of the 19th century. Lönnrot was a doctor, researcher and writer, with a particular interest in the Finnish language.

Cover of August Ahlqvist’s biography Elias Lönnrot: elämä-kerrallisia piirteitä (Helsinki, 1884) 10602.d.28(4)).

There are two main editions. The first, published in 1835, was called Kalevala taikka vanhoja Karjalan runoja Suomen kansan muinosista ajoista (‘Kalevala or old Karelian poems about the ancient times of the Finnish people’) and is known as the ‘Old’ Kalevala. In 1849 a new edition was published with the extra material that Lönnrot had gathered in the intervening years. It is this second edition, the ‘New’ Kalevala, containing 50 poems and almost 23,000 lines, that is the one most commonly read and referred to when Finns talk of the Kalevala today.

Title page of the 1835 edition of Kalevala. Ac.9080 [no. 2]

Both editions were published by Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura (The Finnish Literature Society) which was founded in 1831. Lönnrot was its first secretary, and his notebooks and manuscripts can still be seen there. Its website today states that ‘SKS's primary functions are the research and promotion of Finnish oral tradition, the Finnish language and literature’ and in this its aims have remained the same for almost 200 years. It had a central role as a cultural institute at a time of national awakening, after Finland broke away from Sweden in 1809. The Kalevala was a powerful symbol of this developing national identity, and many new works in the fine arts were inspired by it, perhaps most famously the paintings of Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

Lemminkäinen's Mother by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Image from Wikimedia Commons

In the British Library, holdings of Kalevala-related material, both primary texts and secondary literature, are extensive. Searching our catalogue for the term ‘Kalevala’ brings up some 370 entries, revealing a wealth of treasures. Aside from the 19th-century originals (which appeared in the Proceedings of the Finnish Literature Society, a series we still collect today), there are also later editions and adaptations. There are translations into many languages, which are an indication of how the work has captured the imagination of readers from all over the world. Secondary material includes the yearbooks of Kalevalaseura (The Kalevala Society)and a wide range of other research publications.

Cover of Kalevalavihko (Helsinki, 1909) 11852.v.20

Those researching Lönnrot himself will also find much of interest, including a presentation copy (to his friend J.F. Granlund) of Mehiläinen (‘The Bee’), the first Finnish-language periodical, which he founded, and a copy of Suomalais-Ruotsalainen Sanakirja (‘A Finnish-Swedish Dictionary’) which he edited in his later years.

Inscription by Lönnrot on the title page of Mehiläinen. (Oulu, 1836-37, 1839-40) C.121.b.19

Today, February 28th, is Kalevala Day in Finland and flags will be raised to commemorate the publication of the first edition. A wreath will be placed at Emil Wikström’s statue of Elias Lönnrot in Helsinki. It is an occasion for celebrating not just the Kalevala itself but Finnish culture as a whole.

Barbara Hawes, Curator Scandinavian Studies

References:

The Kalevala, the epic poem of Finland, Translated by J. M. Crawford. (New York, 1888.) 11557.d.8.

Kalewala taikka Wanhoja Karjahan Runoja Suomen kansan muinosista ajoista. (Helsinki, 1835, 1849.) Ac.9080 [nos. 2, 14]

Suomalais-Ruotsalainen Sanakirja. Finskt-Svenskt Lexikon (Helsinki, 1874-86.) Ac.9080 [no.50]

Posted by Susan Reed at 10:00 AM in Finland , Language , Literature | Permalink | Comments( 0)

12 February 2014

The First ‘Kobzar’

*This blog post was updated following the discovery that the British Library holds a 1914 facsimile of the first edition of Shevchenko’s 'Kobzar' and not the original as previously thought. We are grateful to Luiza Ilnytska (Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine) for her help in correctly identifying the facsimile.

On February 12 (old style) 1840 the Russian censor in St Petersburg, Petr Korsakov (1790-1844) gave permission to publish a small book of poetry by an unknown Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko.

Censor’s approval to publish, from the facsimile of the first edition of Taras Shevchenko, Kobzar (L’viv, 1914) C.121.a.20.

On February 25 (old style) the poet celebrated his 26th birthday. Of the 26 years of his life he had lived 24 as a serf, being the property of rich Russian landowner Pavel Engelhardt, and only two as a free man. His liberation from serfdom came in 1838 due to the efforts of Russian and Ukrainian intellectuals in the imperial capital who spotted the young Shevchenko’s talent as a painter and decided to buy him out of serfdom by selling in a lottery a portrait of the Russian Romantic poet Vasily Zhukovsky by the renowned classicist painter Karl Bryulov (portrait below from Wikimedia Commons). The portrait was sold for 2,500 roubles.

The small-format book, which duly appeared in 1840, although with censored passages, was entitled Kobzar. The title refers to blind Ukrainian musicians, often former Cossacks, who travelled throughout Ukraine singing epic poems and playing a stringed instrument called the kobza. Shevchenko himself had often listened to kobza players in his childhood as they sang epic poems about the legendary past of Ukraine, about Cossacks who defended their homeland from its enemies, and about the heroic figures of the peasant rebels.

The first Kobzar consisted of only eight works, yet this small book changed the history of Ukrainian literature forever. Although the British Library does not hold a first edition (of which only around 1,000 were printed in St Petersburg in 1840), it holds a rare facsimile of the original, which was given to the Library by the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain for safekeeping in 1951. The Library’s copy bears the personal library stamp of the book’s former owner, Adam Stankievič (1892-1949), a Belarusian Roman Catholic priest, historian, politician and publisher.

Published in L’viv in 1914 to mark the centenary of Shevchenko’s birth, the facsimile was produced by the Shevchenko Scientific Society in a print run of 3,000 copies. In early September, just a few months after the book was published, Eastern Galicia (of which L’viv – known in German as Lemberg – was the principal city) fell under the occupation of the Imperial Russian Army. Tsarist officials pursued a policy of Russification and the Shevchenko Scientific Society was banned and its buildings and printing presses were confiscated.

The 1914 facsimile is so similar in format, paper and print to the 1840 original that a number of museums and private collectors, including the British Library, have mistakenly considered it to be the first edition. As noted by the Shevchenko expert Maria Korniychuk in her 2010 article, the key differences can be found in the saturation and sharpness of the print (sharper and more saturated in the original), the paper (higher quality and trimmed in the original and lower grade with uneven, poorly trimmed edges in the facsimile), font (slightly elongated in the original), and typographic marks (the facsimile is missing a number of typographic marks including the figure ‘3’ on p. 53, an asterisk on p. 55 and the figure ‘4’ on p. 77).

A digitized version of the original 1840 edition (made from the copy from the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine) is available from the World Digital Library.

Engraving of a kobzar by Vasil Shternberg, a close friend of Shevchenko in the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. Frontispiece of Kobzar (L’viv, 1914) C.121.a.20.

Like all Romantic poets of the first half of the 19th century, especially those from stateless nations, the Ukrainian poet turned his attention to the glorious past and painful loss of freedom. Two ballads about the Zaporozhian Cossacks called ‘Ivan Pidkova’ and ‘Tarasova nich’ (The Night of Taras) tell the stories of brave Cossack endeavours. A shorter poem, ‘Perebendya’ tells the story of an itinerant kobzar. Sad thoughts about the fate of the subjugated Ukrainian people pervade the poem ‘Dumy moi, dumy moi...’ (‘O my thoughts, my heartfelt thoughts’) which opens the book. Another poem, Do Osnovianenka (‘To Osnovyanenko’), is dedicated to the Ukrainian writer Hryhory Kvitka-Osnovyanenko, and laments the destruction of the semi-autonomous Cossack state of Zaporozhian Sich by the Russian empress Catherine II in 1775 and the enslavement which followed.

Like that of other prominent Slavonic Romantic poets, as well as poets of the Celtic nations, the poetry of Shevchenko is deeply rooted in folklore and oral history passed from generation to generation. Ukrainian folklore, especially its historical epic poetry called dumy, is extremely rich and was fervently collected by 19th-century folklorists. In turn, many of Shevchenko’s poems became part of Ukrainian folklore and were known by heart by numberless Ukrainian peasants in the 19th century and beyond.

A deep empathy with the fate of peasant women characterizes Shevchenko’s poetry and ranks among the most powerful descriptions of their fate in world literature. The first Kobzar has two long ballads about their fate: tragic love for a young Cossack who never came back from battle in Topolia (‘Poplar-tree’), and the story of a suicide in Kateryna. One shorter poem – a young orphan girl’s lament about her fate – is called Dumka (‘Ballad’) and starts with a question, ‘Nashcho meni chorni brovy?’ (‘What good are my dark brows to me’). Black brows and brown (hazel) eyes were traditionally attributes of beauty in Ukrainian folklore, but even they can’t improve the fate of the poor orphan girl: ‘There is no one who will ask me / Why my eyes are weeping. / There is no one who can tell me / What my heart is seeking’ (translation by Vera Rich).

The tragic fate of the beautiful peasant girl Kateryna, seduced by a Russian officer, then abandoned with a child and thrown out by her own parents who are ashamed of her, is known in all corners of Ukraine. Generations of Ukrainian women shed tears over her fate, repeating after Shevchenko: ‘Kateryna, my poor darling / Woe has struck you, surely! / Where, with your orphan, in this world / Is there a place for you?’ (translation by Vera Rich). Shevchenko wrote ‘Kateryna’ in 1838 and dedicated it to Vasily Zhukovsky, ‘In memory of 22 April 1838’ (the date Shevchenko received his certificate of freedom from serfdom). Being a painter as well as a poet, Shevchenko also painted Kateryna in 1842 (painting below from Wikimedia Commons)

During his short life Shevchenko published two fuller editions of Kobzar: one in 1844 and another in 1860 (11585.d.43.). The latter edition has been digitised as part of the British Library Google Books digitisation project. This book achieved a very special place in the cultural heritage of the Ukrainian people, and Shevchenko himself is known as ‘Kobzar’.

Two English-language translations of fuller versions of Kobzar were published in 2013 to mark the 200th anniversary of Shevchenko’s birth in 2014: one by Glagoslav Publishers, translated by Peter Fedynsky, and another by Mystetstvo (Art) publishers in Kyiv, translated by Vera Rich (YF.2014.b.264). It is to be hoped that these translations will catch the eyes of reviewers and readers in the English-speaking world. The history of Romanticism in Europe is incomplete without Shevchenko’s poetry.

Olga Kerziouk, Curator Ukrainian Studies

References

Luiza Ilnytska, ‘Pershe vydannia “Kobzaria” T. H. Shevchenka 1840 r. u bibliotekakh, muzeiakh i pryvatnykh kolektsiiakh…’, Zapysky L'vivs'koi natsional'noi naukovoi biblioteky Ukrainy imeni V. Stefanyka, 2014, vyp. 6, pp. 3-43.

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:00 AM in Language , Literature , Publishing and printing , Ukraine , Visual arts | Permalink | Comments( 0)

05 February 2014

A King's grammar fit for a Prince? Immigration concerns and an early Georgian marketing ploy

When George I came to the British throne, some of his new subjects worried that many other Hanoverians would follow in his wake to live at the British taxpayer’s expense. Greedy courtiers seeking money and influence seem to have been more feared than poorer migrants, although the mishandled crisis of the ‘Poor Palatine’ refugees in 1709 had raised concerns about mass immigration of unskilled workers.

The German translator and language teacher Johann König/John King was not a Hanoverian (or Palatine) newcomer; little is known of his life, but writing in 1715 he claimed to have lived and worked in Britain for some 30 years. He recognised even before 1714 that Germans were increasingly visiting and settling in Britain and in 1706 he published the first edition of his Englischer Wegweiser, a grammar, phrase-book and guide for Germans wishing to learn English. In its preface he describes Germans as “not the least considerable” of the “vast concourse of Foreigners that resort to this Flourishing Kingdom”.

König's original grammar: Ein volkommener Englischer Wegweiser fur Hoch-Teutsche … = A Compleat English Guide for High-Germans … (London, 1706). Shelfmark 1490.l.11.

König presumably saw this influx as a positive thing, not least for his business as teacher and translator. So it’s not surprising that he also saw the potential of the Hanoverian succession to bring more Germans to Britain as a good business opportunity. In 1715 he published a longer and more detailed version of the Wegweiser, this time under the title A Royal Compleat Grammar = Eine Königliche vollkommene Grammatica, obviously hoping to appeal to new Hanoverian immigrants by flaunting a royal connection. He seems to have aimed the work at those seeking professional, court or government careers: it includes such features as a long list of court officers (including obscure posts like the Clerk of the Poultry, or Schreiber übers Geflügel) and sample letters to be addressed to royal or noble patrons, neither present in the original Wegweiser.

König, Johann, A royal compleat grammar, English and High-German, das ist, Eine königliche vollkommene Grammatica in englisch- und hochteutscher Sprach … (London, 1715) 236.d.15.

Apparently lacking official royal patronage himself, König seeks to justify the title of his new book with a fulsome dedication to George I in which he describes, “my Endeavours of Enabling Your Majesty’s Subjects, mutually to converse with, and communicate their thoughts to, one another”. He also expresses the hope that his book “may be of Use to His Highness the Duke of Cornwall.” This could be taken as a rather insulting assessment of the future George II’s proficiency in English, but at least König was tactful enough not to mention that the grammar could also have been of use to the new king himself; spoken English was never George I’s strong point.

The Royal Compleat Grammar was never reissued in the same form, but its more detailed approach to grammar was reflected in the eight editions of the Englischer Wegweiser, much augmented by other hands, which were published between 1740 and 1795. Unlike the 1706 Wegweiser and the Royal Compleat Grammar, both published in London, all but one of these later editions bore a Leipzig imprint.

Whether because the expected flood of jobseeking Hanoverians never came, or whether because there was a better market for such a textbook in Germany later in the century than in newly Hanoverian Britain, it seems that König’s royal marketing ploy did not translate into a bestseller in George I’s new kingdom.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies

Posted by Susan Reed at 10:00 AM in Anglo-German , Georgians-revealed , Germany , History , Language , Publishing and printing | Permalink | Comments( 0)

17 January 2014

A Hundred Items of Joy

Dr Marjorie Boulton, born in 1924, is well known to students of literature for her textbooks on literary studies: The Anatomy of Poetry (1953, BL shelfmark 11869.d.38), The Anatomy of Prose (1954, 11867.n.12), The Anatomy of Drama (1960, 11866.g.37), The Anatomy of Language (1968, 012212.bb.1/103), The Anatomy of the Novel (1975, X.980/31289) and The Anatomy of Literary Studies (1980, 80/18342) – all published in London by Routledge & Kegan Paul. She is the author of 16 books in English.

Marjorie Boulton in 1997 (Picture by Inga Johannson from Wikimedia Commons)

Yet Marjorie Boulton started out as a poet. Her first book was a collection of poems, Preliminaries (London, 1949; W28/9314, copy signed by the author). In the same year she discovered Esperanto and soon became one of the most accomplished poets in that language. She produced many books in Esperanto to the great delight of Esperanto speakers from Albania to Zimbabwe. It is no exaggeration to say that she is one the most loved and widely-read figures in the Esperanto movement. She is also very much praised by all cat-lovers for of her humorous poems and stories about these animals, such as Dekdu piedetoj (‘Twelve Little Paws’, [Stoke-on-Trent], 1964; YF.2008.a.36769).

The British Library holds 19 of her books in Esperanto: poetry, dramas, translations, lectures, textbooks, biographies. Amongst the poetry collections we find her first book Kontralte (‘In Contralto’, Tenerife, 1955; YF.2008.a.18897), Cent ĝojkantoj (‘A Hundred Songs of Joy’, Burslem,1957; 12900.c.8), Eroj kaj Aliaj Poemoj (‘Fragments and Other Poems’, Tenerife,1959; YF.2008.a.19522), Rimleteroj (‘Letters in Rhyme’, with William Auld, Manchester, 1976; YF.2010.a.22936) and others. Marjorie Boulton also penned the biography of the creator of Esperanto: Zamenhof: Creator of Esperanto (London, 1960; 10667.m.13).

With understandable trepidation we received a gift to the Esperanto Collections of more than 100 titles from Marjorie Boulton’s private library at the beginning of 2014. The donated books could be divided into three main categories: textbooks and dictionaries; poetry and fiction (original and translations); books for children. Some really rare items from the pioneer period of Esperanto movement will be added to our extensive collection, among them William Sol Benson’s Universala Esperantistigilo in 10 lessons (‘Universal method for making you an Esperantist’, Newark, 1925-1927, picture below by Rimma Lough) and Esperanta radikaro (‘Roots of Esperanto’, Paris, 1896) by the pioneer French Esperantist Théophile Cart, as well as Esperanta Ŝlosilo (‘Key to Esperanto’) in Persian (Tabriz, 1930).

Marjorie Boulton collected dictionaries of Esperanto in various languages. Very valuable are terminological dictionaries, which show the persistence of generations of Esperantists in their desire to develop the language in all spheres of human activity. We received various terminological dictionaries; some of them are parts of the annual publication Jarlibro de la Internacia Esperanto-Ligo (‘Yearbook of the International Esperanto League’): Aeronautika terminaro (‘Aeronautical terminology’) for 1941; Filatela terminaro (Philatelic) for 1945; Kudra kaj trika terminaro (Sewing and knitting) for 1947. Even Armea terminaro (‘Army terminology’, Rickmansworth, 1940) and Militista vortareto (‘Military dictionary’, Paris, 1955) found their way into Marjorie Boulton’s library.

Connoisseurs of original poetry and fiction in Esperanto will be delighted by the addition to our collections of the poetry collection Dekdu poetoj (‘Twelve poets’, Budapest, 1934) and by the availability in the very near future of original poetry in Esperanto written in many countries, such as, for example, the poetry collection Spektro (‘Spectrum’, Tirano, 1992) by an Albanian Esperanto poet, Enkela Xhamaj, or a short story by V. Zavyalov, published in Saratov (Russia) in 1915.

Bright, colourful books for children come from China. These were all published by Ĉina Esperanto-Eldonejo (Chinese Esperanto-Publishers) in the 1980s (picture below). In addition you will be able to read the famous adventures of Tintin in Esperanto: La Aventuroj de Tinĉjo. La Nigra insulo (Esperantix, 1987).

The donation (a tiny part of the Dr Boulton’s large private library) provides a small glimpse into her life as a fervent collector of books. It would be appropriate to finish my blog about this valuable acquisition by quoting fragments of Marjorie Boulton’s own poem Riĉeco (‘Richness,’ translated by D. B. Gregor) in which she marvels at the variety of human experiences and richness of every human being:

To understand another life, we’d need
To live again at least a second span,
And even then our knowledge but deludes.
If only we could know, could know indeed!
Our puny knowledge does not more than scan
The richness of mankind’s vicissitudes.

A hundred thanks for a hundred delightful items!

Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:00 AM in Acquisitions , Esperanto , Language , Literature | Permalink | Comments( 1)

13 December 2013

From the Parnassus of the Peoples

As the year 2013 numbers its last days in the calendar, I would like to say a few words about a very special anniversary not widely known. Yet it should be commemorated and cherished as a great manifestation of human spirit and hope, and especially remembered on 15 December – the birthday of L.L. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto, also celebrated worldwide as Esperanto Book Day.

The book to be celebrated today was published 100 years ago by the great idealist, polyglot and prolific translator Antoni Grabowski (1857-1921, portrait (right) from Wikimedia Commons). Antoni Grabowski was a chemical engineer and the author of the first Polish chemical dictionary Słownik chemiczny (1906). He is known as “the father of Esperanto poetry”, although his main contribution to the development of literary language in Esperanto was his work as a translator. Modern writers, such as the prolific Icelandic Esperanto poet Baldur Ragnarsson, trace their fascination with Esperanto poetry to Antoni Grabowski.

I wonder how often you would find poems by Thomas Moore, Richard Wagner, Paul Verlaine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aleksandr Pushkin, Taras Shevchenko, Adam Mickiewicz, Sandor Petofi – to name just a few – under one cover ? Not often, I guess. Antoni Grabowski, prominent Polish pioneer of Esperanto, achieved precisely this: he united them all in a book called El Parnaso de Popoloj (‘From the Parnassus of the Peoples’). He himself translated 116 poems, from 30 languages, into a language itself only 26 years old. The modest-looking book was published in Warsaw in 1913 (BL shelfmarks: 1913 edition:F5/3998; facsimile reprint from 1983 YF.2008.a.112020)

Memorial plaque to Antoni Grabowski in Wroclaw (from Wikimedia Commons)

Do people still write poetry in Esperanto? Yes, they do. As soon as the new language was created and the first manual published in 1887 it started to inspire poetical souls in many nations. And it never ceased to inspire. Another interesting phenomenon is now observed worldwide: poetry originally written in Esperanto is more and more translated into other, “proper” languages. I came back in October from Kolomea not only with love and admiration for this small Galician town full of history and culture, but with a lovely book entitled Verda Antologio. Part 1. Poezio ('Green Anthology, part 1. Poetry'; YF.2013.a.22723), published in Ukraine in 2013. For the first time this anthology presents to readers 33 Esperanto poets (including Antoni Grabowski, of course) from the 19th-21st centuries in Ukrainian translations.

How to celebrate Esperanto Book Day? Here are just a few suggestions: by reading some poetry in Esperanto (the first collection of Esperanto poetry, edited by Antoni Grabowski, La liro de la Esperantistoj [The Esperantists’ Lyre] (1893), has been digitised by the Austrian National Library or by listening to the original poem by Antoni Grabowski on YouTube.

During the terrible years of World War One in Warsaw Antoni Grabowski, ill and separated from his family, survived by translating the Polish epic poem by Adam Mickiewicz Pan Tadeusz (1834).

Illustration by Andriolli from an edition of Sinjoro Tadeo (Warsaw, 1955) 11588.r.17.

The translation Sinjoro Tadeo was first published in Warsaw in 1918 ( YF.2004.a.24909). “It profoundly influenced the style and vocabulary of later poets, and it is for this reason that Grabowski, although primarily a translator, is important for the study of early original Esperanto literature, both poetry and prose,” writes Geoffrey Sutton. On Esperanto Book Day the first stanza of Sinjoro Tadeo addressed by Mickiewicz to his homeland Litwa (translated into English as Litva or more often Lithuania, to describe the historical region in Eastern Europe) resounds in my mind:

Litvo! Patrujo mia! simila al sano;
Vian grandan valoron ekkonas litvano
Vin perdinte. Belecon vian mi admiras,
Vidas ĝin kaj priskribas, ĉar hejmen sopiras.

Litva! My country, like art thou to health,
For how to prize thee he alone can tell
Who has lost thee. I behold thy beauty now
In full adornment, and I sign of it
Because I long for thee.

(English translation by Maude Ashurst Biggs. From Master Thaddeus, or The Last foray in Lithuania (London, 1885) 11585.cc.18)

Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies

Further reading:

Banet-Fornalowa, Zofia. Antoni Grabowski: eminenta Esperanto-aganto (Warsaw, 2001) YF.2006.a.29512

Sutton, Geoffrey. Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto 1887-2007. (New York, 2008). YC.2008.a.12495

Posted by Olga Kerziouk at 10:00 AM in Esperanto , History , Language , Literature , Poland , Publishing and printing , Ukraine | Permalink | Comments( 0)

European studies blog

106 posts categorized "Language"

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English proverbs that don’t exist

Mistral blows in: Provence’s own Nobel laureate

Testament for "beloved Ukraine"

A Day to Celebrate Finnish Culture

The First ‘Kobzar’

A King's grammar fit for a Prince? Immigration concerns and an early Georgian marketing ploy

A Hundred Items of Joy

From the Parnassus of the Peoples

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