European studies blog

Exploring Europe at the British Library

388 posts categorized "Literature"

30 January 2025

European Collections: From Antiquity to 1800 – Uncovering Rare Books at the British Library Doctoral Open Days

What do a censored Spanish classic, a mathematics textbook from Tsarist Russia, and the first national education textbook from Poland have in common? They are all part of the British Library’s European Collections, spanning from antiquity to 1800. These fascinating books do more than preserve history – they provide valuable insights into the intellectual, political, and cultural dynamics of their era, offering opportunities for research and discovery.

As part of the Doctoral Open Day on 31 January, we are showcasing a selection of remarkable books. Each tells a unique story – of censorship, of scientific progress, of the development of national identity. Here, we explore some of the fascinating books you may encounter during the Doctoral Open Day.

Poland: Enlightening the Nation

In 1773, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth established the Commission of National Education (Komisja Edukacji Narodowej, KEN), the first state-run educational authority in the world. Its goal was to create a modern, secular education system that was accessible to all social classes, moving away from the traditional church-dominated schooling.

Pages with an introduction to ‘Botanika’ and a folding plate with botanical drawings

Krzysztof Kluk 1739-1796, Paweł Czenpiński, 1755-1793, Botanika dla szkół narodowych, etc. (Dzieło, ... podług Prospektu ... Pawła Czenpinskiego, ... przez ... Krzysztofa Kluka ... napisane; od Towarzystwa do Xiąg Elementarnych roztrząśnione, etc.)., w Warszawie 1785 (Warszawa, 1785) 988.d.29.

A prime example of KEN’s publishing efforts is Botanika dla szkół narodowych (‘Botany for National Schools,’ 1785) by Krzysztof Kluk and Paweł Czenpiński. This textbook was designed to teach practical botany, bringing Enlightenment ideas into the classroom. The book was one of many created by KEN’s Society for Elementary Books, which commissioned mathematics, science, and literature textbooks to standardize education across Poland.

Russia: The First Mathematics Textbook

The first Russian textbook on mathematics by Leonty Magnitsky, Arifmetika (‘Arithmetics’), was written in the early Slavonic language and published in 1703. Its first edition of 2,400 copies was extraordinarily large for that time and served as the primary mathematics text for instruction in Russia until the mid-18th century. The book was in effect an encyclopaedia of the natural sciences of its day. It emphasized the practical applications of mathematics, demonstrating how it could be used in various real-life situations, from laying a brick wall to calculating loan interest. The origins of the manual lie in Peter the Great's establishment of the School of Navigation in Moscow, and the subsequent appointment of Magnitsky at the school's helm.

Pages from ‘Arifmetika’ with an illustration of a brick wall and two cube-shaped objects on one page and mathematical formulas on the other

Leonty Filippovich Magnitsky, Arifmetika (Moskva, 1703) 8531.f.16

Hungary: The First Gold-Painted Book

This is the second work published about Hungarian history, although published outside the country. It tells the story of the Magyars from the earliest times to the 1480s and is illustrated with lavish hand-coloured woodcuts, that have retained their brilliance through the centuries. This Augsburg edition, printed on vellum, is the very first printed book in history known for using gold paint.

Cover of ‘Chronica Hungarorum’ with elaborate gold decorations

Johannes Thuróczy, Chronica Hungarorum (Augsburg, 1488) IB.6663

Romania: A Scholar-Prince’s Masterpiece

Among our most treasured Romanian books is Divanul sau gâlceava înţeleptului cu lumea (‘The Wise Man’s Parley with the World’, 1698), written by Dimitrie Cantemir, a scholar, philosopher, and Prince of Moldavia.

Printed in both Romanian Cyrillic and Greek, this was the first secular book published in Romanian. It discusses morality, philosophy, and the human condition, presenting a dialogue between reason and worldly desires.

The copy comes from the collection of Frederick North, Fifth Earl of Guilford, a noted philhellene and collector of early printed Romanian books. The front cover is in its original binding, made of red goatskin over pasteboard. It features a panel design showcasing the coat of arms of Dimitrie Cantemir, with corner tools incorporating floral motifs and bird designs.

Pages from ‘Divanul sau gâlceava înţeleptului cu lumea’ with an illustration of two figures in religious attire standing under ornate arches

Dimitrie Cantemir, Divanul sau gâlceava înţeleptului cu lumea (Iaşi, 1698) C.118.g.2.

Italy: The Beauty of St Mark’s Basilica

A magnificent and exhaustive work documenting the Basilica of St Mark in Venice, undertaken with the support of John Ruskin, following disputed restoration work to the Basilica's south facade in 1865-75. One of 16 volumes, this volume contains 69 hand-coloured engraved plates that painstakingly represent every detail of the floor of the Basilica. Ferdinando Ongania was a publisher and editor who worked with John Ruskin on a project to document the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice. Ongania also ran an antiquarian bookshop in St. Mark's Square and supplied Ruskin with books.

Page from ‘Dettagli del pavimento ed ornamenti in mosaico della Basilica di San Marco in Venezia’ with an illustration of colorful tiles arranged in a complex geometric pattern

Ferdinando Ongania, La Basilica di San Marco in Venezia. Dettagli del pavimento ed ornamenti in mosaico della Basilica di San Marco in Venezia (Venezia, 1881)  Tab.1282.a./ Tab.1283.a.3.

Spain: Censorship and Forbidden Texts

Censorship was an everyday reality in Habsburg Spain, where the Inquisition closely monitored books. Even seemingly harmless works like Don Quixote were subject to scrutiny.

Our copy of the 1650 edition El Parnasso Español, y Musas Castellanas de D. Francisco de Quevedo Villegas was censored according to the Index of 1707, with passages inked out due to their “disrespectful references to the clergy”. Interestingly, Spanish censors had strict rules against religious criticism but showed little concern for nudity or crude humour.

Lost Books: Replacing What Was Destroyed

During World War II, a German bombing raid on the British Museum (where the British Library was then housed) destroyed many books. One of these was Zeeusche spectator over de boedel en het testament van capitein Willem Credo (‘The Zeeland Spectator on the Estate and Will of Captain Willem Credo’, 1734).

After the war, the British Library painstakingly reconstructed lists of lost books, marking them with a ‘D’ for ‘Destroyed’. Now, decades later, we have finally been able to replace this book and restore it to our collections, removing it from the list of war losses.

Title page of ‘Zeeusche spectator’

Gerard Bacot, Zeeusche spectator over de boedel en het testament van capitein Willem Credo onder toezigt van Gerard Bacot Predikant te Koudekerk en syn vrou Paulina Credo nevens een Journaal of DAg-Lyst van een bedroefde reis naa het vermakelyk Alphen (Amsterdam, 1734)

Why These Collections Matter

These books are not only historical artifacts – they are invaluable resources for research. By preserving both original texts and modern scholarship, the British Library provides a gateway to exploring the past. Whether you’re investigating the development of education, scientific advancements, or literary censorship, our European Collections offer a wealth of material to uncover.

If you’d like to explore these fascinating books and more, visit the British Library and discover Europe’s intellectual heritage, from antiquity to 1800! And if you are a new doctoral student whose research interest is more contemporary, why not join us for our session on Global Languages, Cultures and Societies on 14 February.

22 January 2025

Silenced memories: the Holocaust Narrative in the Soviet Union

Monument to children murdered in Babi Yar with bronze figures of a girl with outstretched arms and two seated figure

Monument to children murdered in Babi Yar, Ukraine (image from Wikipedia)

Field of Burial with a triangular memorial stone bearing inscriptons in three languages

‘Field of Burial’ where the ashes of murdered and cremated prisoners were scattered, Maly Trostenets, Belarus (image from Wikipedia)

In 1961, a young Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko visited the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv. He was taken there by a fellow writer Anatolii Kuznetsov. A native of Kyiv, Kuznetsov experienced Nazi occupation as a child and knew about the tragedy in Babi Yar firsthand. Both authors were shocked to see that there was no sign in memory of 33,771 Jews who had been murdered by the Nazis just in two days in September 1941. Possibly over 100,000 more people, among them prisoners of war, Soviet partisans, Ukrainian nationalists and Roma people, were killed there in the following months. However, the Soviet authorities were reluctant to collect and disclose records of those crimes. On the same day, Yevtushenko wrote a poem:

No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.

Cover of  Yevgeny Yevtushenko's collected poems in English with a photograph of the author sitting at his typewriter

Cover of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, The collected poems 1952-1990  (Edinburgh, 1991) YC.1991.b.6558

The poem was published in the influential Moscow newspaper Literaturnaia gazeta (‘The Literary Newspaper’) but was severely criticised by the authorities and Communist Party officials for presenting Jews as the main victims of the fascist Germany.

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Stalin designed his own antisemitic campaigns such as the prosecution of members of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee and the Night of the Murdered Poets, the campaign against ‘rootless cosmopolitans’and the so-called ‘doctors’ plot’. Although the campaigns stopped with the death of Stalin, antisemitism in the Soviet Union was strong, and the official party line was not to accept the Holocaust as a concept. Instead, all victims of genocide and atrocities were put together under the ideologically loaded term ‘peaceful Soviet civilians’.

However, in the time of the Khrushchev Thaw artists were hopeful that their voices would be heard in the new political climate. In 1962, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No 13 for bass soloist, bass chorus, and large orchestra with lyrics by Yevtushenko. Although the symphony does not have an official title, it is known as ‘Babi Yar’. Anatolii Kuznetsov tried to publish his autobiographical book also under the title of Babi Yar. The book was seriously cut by censors but was eventually published in 1967. After defecting to the West, Kuznetsov managed to publish the book in full in 1970.

Cover of 'Babi Yar' with an abstract design in orange and black

Anatolii Kuznetsov, Babii Iar: roman-dokument (Frankfurt am Main, 1970) X.900/6037

However, neither Yevtushenko, nor Kuznetsov were the first to write about Babi Yar. Probably the first poem (lost and rediscovered only in 1991) about the murder in Babi Yar was written by a Jewish-Ukrainian poet Liudmila Titova in 1941:

The order was supported by the threat of execution,
They obeyed but were shot.
Not a single candle was lit that night,
Those who could, left and hid in the basement.
The stars and the Sun hid in the clouds
From our world that is too cruel.

Black and White Photograph of Liudmila Titova

Liudmila Titova (image from Wikipedia)

In 1943, another Ukrainian poet and at that time a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Commissars) of the Ukrainian SSR, Mykola Bazhan,wrote his response:

The grave wind blew from those ravines —
The smoke of mortal fires, the smoking of burning bodies.
Kyiv watched, angry Kyiv,
As Babi Yar was thrown into flames.
There can be no atonement for this flame.
There is no measure of revenge for this burning.
Cursed be the one who dares to forget.
Cursed be the one who tells us: “forgive me...”

Only in 1991 was a Ukrainian Jewish poet, Yurii Kaplan, able to compile a small anthology – Ekho Bab’ego IAra (‘The Echo of Babi Yar’) where he managed to include other pieces of contemporary poetry.

Newspaper article about Babi Yar with photographs and poemsPage from Literatura ta Zhittia, N 2, zhovten’, 2007.

Cover of 'Ekho Bab'ego Iara : poeticheskaia antologiia' with illustration of the Babi Yar ravine
Cover of Ekho Bab'ego Iara : poeticheskaia antologiia (Kyiv, 1991) YA.1996.a.9243

In 1946, Ilya Ehrenburg, a prominent Soviet writer, published a poem under the title of ‘Babi Yar’ about the genocide of his people:

My child! My blush! 
My countless relatives! 
I hear how you call me  
from every hole.

Together with another Jewish Soviet writer Leonid Grossman, Ehrenburg compiled and tried to publish a volume of eyewitness accounts documenting the atrocities during the Holocaust on the Soviet territories occupied by the Nazis.

During the war, frontline soldiers sent Ilya Ehrenburg a huge number of documents found in the territories liberated from the occupiers and told in their letters what they had seen or heard. Ehrenburg decided to collect the diaries, suicide letters, and testimonies related to the Nazis’ extermination of Jews and to publish the ‘Black Book’. A couple of extracts from the book were published in a magazine in 1944. However, after the end of the war, the publication was delayed several times. In November 1948, when the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was closed, the set of the ‘Black Book’ was scattered, the galleys (printer’s proof) and the manuscript were taken away. Ehrenburg’s daughter later gave the manuscript and other documents to the Yad Vashem archives and the book was published in Russian in 1980. However, that was not the full text. The first full Russian edition appeared only in 1991.

Image 5 - Black Book

The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry : [prepared by] Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman, translated and edited by David Patterson ; with a foreword by Irving Louis Horowitz and an introduction by Helen Segall. (London, 2002) YC.2002.b.953

The book documents atrocities that were committed on all occupied Soviets territories, such sites as Fort IX in Kovno (Kaunas), the Rumbula and Bikernieki Forests in Riga and Maly Trostenets near Minsk and Zmiyovskaya Balka near Rostov-on-Don.

Analysing the policy of ‘forgetting the specificity of Jewish suffering’, Izabella Tabarovsky of the Kennan Institute, points out that “by 2006, Yad Vashem, the world’s leading Holocaust Museum and research institution, found it had barely 10-15% of the names of the 1.5 million Jews who had died in Ukraine (in contrast to 90% of European Jews whose names were known)”.

At the Holocaust Memorial Day Fragments of the Past: Holocaust Legacies and Commemoration, Professor Jeremy Hicks will give a talk on ‘ Representations of the Holocaust in Soviet Cinema’, which will examine further the creation of silences and gaps in memories of Holocaust.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator, East European Collections

References/Further reading:

Maxim D. Shrayer (2010). ‘Poets Bearing Witness to the Shoah’ in Studies in Slavic Languages and Literature (ICCEES Congress Stockholm 2010 Papers and Contributions), edited by Stefano Garzonio. PECOB: Portal on Central Eastern and Balkan Europe. University of Bologna. Pp. 59-119.

Ekho Bab’ego IAra: poeticheskaia antologiia, [sostavlenie i vstupitelʹnaia statʹiia IU.G. Kaplana]. (Kyiv, 1991). YA.1996.a.9243

A. Anatoli (Kuznetsov), Babi Yar: a Document in the Form of a Novel, translated by David Floyd. (London, 1970) W67/8178

Izabella Tabarovsky. Don’t Learn from Russians about the Holocaust. Published: February 2, 2017 

20 January 2025

Through the Eyes of Terezín’s Ghetto Children

The Holocaust stands as one of the most tragic chapters in human history. Yet, through the voices of children who lived through its horrors, we are offered a glimpse into the quiet courage that endured even in the darkest of times.

The diaries of youth, written in ghettos and concentration camps, are personal testaments to the strength of the human spirit. The young writers found ways to express their creativity, and hope, leaving behind a legacy that preserves their voices.

The stories entrusted to paper carried immense emotional weight for the survivors or their families. Many of these diaries remained unpublished for decades, with some only reaching readers in the 21st century. The British Library holds examples of these works, including memoirs and writings of young people from the Terezín ghetto in German-occupied Czechoslovakia.

Black and white drawing of people of all ages huddled into a cramped and candlelit room

In the Living Quarters - a drawing by Bedrich Fritta of the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto, source: Wikipedia, public domain

Terezín, the ‘Model’ Ghetto

Terezín, called by the Germans Theresienstadt, a Nazi ‘camp-ghetto’ in operation from 1941 to 1945, was portrayed by the occupier’s propaganda as a ‘spa town’ for elderly Jews. In reality, it served as a transit hub for deportations to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.

It was a chilling symbol of Nazi deception, serving as a stage for efforts to obscure the true nature of their genocidal actions, including a 1944 Red Cross visit carefully orchestrated to portray the ghetto as humane.

The truth, however, lay in its devastating death toll and its role as a waypoint on the road to extermination.

Despite these dire circumstances, Terezín became a centre of remarkable cultural activity. In the face of oppression, artists, musicians and writers produced works of art, music and literature, while children found ways to express hope and imagination through secret schooling, painting and poetry.

The boy who loved Jules Verne

Petr Ginz, born in Prague in 1928, was a talented young writer, artist and editor. By the time he was a teenager, he had written multiple short stories and novels inspired by his favourite author, Jules Verne. His adventure novel Návštěva z Pravěku (‘A Visit from Prehistory’) where engineer Gérard Guiness and his son Petr confront the mysterious creature Ka-du, reflects his belief in courage and ingenuity. Illustrated by Ginz himself, it is the only surviving novel out of several that he wrote.

Colour painting of a top-hatted man standing in front of a sailing ship

Illustration from Petr Ginz, Návštěva z Pravěku: roman, (Prague, 2007) YF.2008.a.22831

In Terezín, Ginz became the editor of Vedem, a clandestine magazine created by boys in the ghetto. Writing under the pen name ‘Akademie’, he contributed essays, stories and illustrations. The Diary of Petr Ginz 1928-1944, written between 1941 and 1942, provides an account of life under Nazi oppression. It was later published by his sister Chava Pressburger ensuring his voice would not be forgotten.

Cover of The Diary of Petr Ginz with a photograph of Petr superimposed on a page from the diary.

Cover of The Diary of Petr Ginz 1928-1944

Ginz was a prolific illustrator. His linocut, Moon Landscape, created around 1942, depicts an imagined view of Earth from the Moon, reflecting his fascination with exploration and the cosmos. In a tribute, Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon carried a copy of this drawing aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, symbolically fulfilling Ginz’s dream of reaching the stars. Tragically, both Ginz and Ramon lost their lives prematurely – Ginz perished in Auschwitz at 16, and Ramon died when Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry – but their stories highlight the importance of preserving history and art.

Black and white drawing of a mountain range on the moon, with the Earth in the background
Petr Ginz, Moon Landscape, source: Wikipedia, public domain

The writings and art of Terezín’s children

In 1995, the Jewish Museum in Prague published the anthology Je mojí vlastí hradba ghett? (‘Is the Wall of Ghettos My Homeland?) which features writings and artwork created by children in Terezín. The collection includes texts from Vedem and other works, offering insight into the emotional and psychological worlds of young people living in extreme conditions.

Cover of 'Cover of Je mojí vlastí hradba ghett?' with an abstract design of red and white squares on a black background

Cover of Je mojí vlastí hradba ghett? Básně, próza a kresby terezínských dětí, edited by Marie Rút Křížková, Kurt Jiří Kotouč and Zdeněk Ornest (Prague, 1995) YA.2000.b.2154

The testimony of Hana Bořkovcová

Hana Bořkovcová, a renowned Czech author, also left behind a powerful diary, Píšu a sešit mi leží na kolenou: deníky 1940 - 1946 (‘I Write, and the Notebook Lies on My Lap: Diaries 1940–1946’ (Prague, 2011) YF.2012.a.13806.

Published posthumously in 2011, her writings chronicle her family’s experiences, from their life in Prague’s Jewish community to their deportation to Terezín when she was 16 years old, Auschwitz, and a labour camp in Kurzbach. Her diary concludes with her post-war life, including the birth of her son.

Bořkovcová’s account is striking for its sensitivity and strength. Her observations about life in the Jewish school and among young Zionists offer a rich cultural and social context, making her diary a valuable resource for readers and historians alike.

Documenting the unimaginable

In 2012, Michal Kraus published his diary, originally written in Czech, which was later translated into English and published in 2016 under the title Drawing the Holocaust. His entries are marked by stark realism and are accompanied by detailed drawings. Kraus’s meticulous documentation provides an unflinching account of the brutality of the Holocaust and its impact on those who survived. The diary also reflects Kraus’s struggle to return to a ‘normal’ life after the war.

Cover of 'Drawing the Holocaust' with a child's drawing of prisoners lined up for a roll call

Michal Kraus, Drawing the Holocaust: A Teenager’s Memory of Terezin, Birkenau, and Mauthausen (Cincinnati, 2016) YKL.2016.a.8040

A story saved in the walls

Helga Weissová’s diary is another remarkable testament. Starting at age nine, she documented her life during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Like Petr Ginz, Helga was sent to Terezín before being deported to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Her diary is accompanied by her drawings, which vividly depict her experiences. Before her deportation, Weissová entrusted her diary to her uncle, who hid it within the walls of Terezín. After the war, she recovered and expanded it to include her harrowing memories from the camps. Published decades later, her work offers a powerful narrative.

Cover of 'Cover of Helga’s Diary' with a photograph of Helga Weiss superimposed on a facsimile of a notebook cover

Cover of Helga’s Diary: a Young Girl’s Account of Life in a Concentration Camp (London, 2013) YC.2013.a.16374

The importance of remembrance

As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 2025, it is imperative to reflect on the significance of these personal narratives. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp, where over a million people perished. Just like Petr Ginz, many of those who lost their lives in Auschwitz were first imprisoned in Terezín before being transported to their deaths. The diaries of these individuals are not merely archival records; they are powerful reminders of the human capacity for resilience and creativity in the face of adversity. Their writings challenge us to remember the past and to educate future generations about the dangers of hatred and intolerance. By reading and sharing these stories, we preserve their voices and the lessons they left behind for a better, more compassionate world.

Olga Topol, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections

02 January 2025

New Year, Old Years: a Look Back

Usually around the start of a new year we look back over our previous year’s blogging before turning our faces to the future. This time we’re actually looking back over 2023 as well as 2024 because BL blogging activity was suspended for a while following the cyber-attack on the Library in October 2023, so we couldn’t do a review of that year at the time. And to break up the prose, we include some wintery scenes from the BL’ s Flickr stream.

Photograph of tethered reindeer with wooden huts in the background

Reindeer from Sophus Tromholt, Under Nordlysets Straaler. Skildringer fra Lappernes Land (Copenhagen, 1885) 10280.eee.13.

Both years saw our usual excitement over the annual European Writers’ Festival held in May. In 2023 we featured an interview with Greek Cypriot writer Anthony Anaxagorou,  winner of the 2024 RSL Ondaatje Prize, while in 2024 we published a series of posts, beginning with this one, profiling some of the authors featured in the festival. As usual, literature featured in many other posts. We celebrated the award of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature to Norway’s Jon Fosse and mourned the death in 2024 of Albanian author Ismail Kadare. We were proud to learn that our Curator of Italian, Valentina Mirabella, was one of the judges of the 2024 Premio Strega, a major Italian literary prize, and she wrote about her experience for us.

A theme that ran through both years was the work of the Endangered Archives Project to preserve cultural heritage from Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Our coverage included posts on the indigenous peoples of Siberia, minority communities in Bulgaria, an important Serbian family archive, and material relating to the Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, who was also the subject of a small display in our Treasures Gallery

Colour illustration of a group of men pulling a sledge across a polar landscape with a sunrise in the background

Polar scene from Die zweite Deutsche Nordpolarfahrt in den Jahren 1869 und 1870, unter Führung des Kapitän Karl Koldewey, edited by Alexander Georg Mosle und Georg Albrecht (Leipzig, 1873-4) 10460.ff.11.

Events in the library are a regular source of inspiration for our blog posts. In 2023 we highlighted events commemorating two colleagues who died in recent years: a symposium on Italian Futurism was dedicated to the memory of Chris Michaelides, former curator of Italian and Modern Greek, who did much to build our collection of Futurist books. The Graham Nattrass Lecture, in memory of the former Head of Germanic Collections is an annual event, and in 2023 marked the 80th anniversary of the arrest and execution of members of the German resistance group ‘Die Weisse Rose’. A conference on European political refugees in Britain generated posts on the same topic, including one on how the then British Museum Library became ‘a lifeline of books’ for Polish refugees from Soviet and Nazi occupation. On a lighter note, we celebrated the BL’s annual Food Season in May 2024 with a post introducing a selection of cookbooks from around the continent.

In summer 2024 we went a bit sports mad with both the European Football Championships and the Summer Olympics taking place. We highlighted the world-beating football tactics of the Hungarian ‘Golden Team’ in the early 1950s and the ‘Miracle of Bern’ that saw them unexpectedly beaten by West Germany in 1954’s World Cup, as well as exploring why the Dutch fans show symptoms of ‘orange fever’ at international matches. Our Olympic posts included explorations of the political side of the supposedly apolitical games in Czechoslovakia and the two German states during the Cold War, and a look at the Baltic States’ love for (and proud record in) basketball.

Black and white engraving of a figure on a dog-sled with the northern lights in the background

The northern lights, from Emmanuel Liais, L’Espace céleste et la nature tropicale, description physique de l’univers (Paris, 1866) 10003.d.10.

But not all our blog posts are driven by events and unifying themes. As ever, we continued to write about items from our vast and varied collections, from Georgian manuscripts to contemporary Queer writing in Poland, via a Russian Braille edition of The Hobbit, French caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War, and pamphlets from the Cypriot independence campaign.  We also explored stories of the Slovenian Enlightenment and the first Professor of Spanish in Britain, and discovered the hidden but crucial role played by women in underground publishing under the Polish Communist regime.

As we head into 2025 we would like to wish all our readers and contributors a very happy new year. We look forward to bringing you another year of stories and discoveries from the Library’s European Collections.

Susan Reed and Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, European Studies Blog Editors

Black and white engraving of people skating on a frozen pond, with a windmill in the background

Ice-skating, from A.J. van der Aa, Ons Vaderland en zijne Bewoners (Amsterdam,1855-57) 10270.f.5

24 December 2024

Devil in the details: Nikolai Gogol's ‘Christmas Eve’

With Christmas fast approaching, I thought I would share one of my favourite seasonal reads, Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom (‘Christmas Eve’, also known as ‘The Night Before Christmas’, 1832) by Nikolai Gogol'. This whimsical and uproarious folk tale comes from a collection of eight short stories written in Russian and collected in two volumes, Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan’ki (‘Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka’, 1831-1832), which catapulted the author to fame almost overnight. If you like the sound of a winter story featuring flying dumplings and a witch hiding her suitors in rubble sacks, then read on, you are in for a treat. This delightfully eccentric and cliché-free narrative is certain to put you in a festive mood.

Cover of ‘Vechory na khutori bilia Dykanʹky’, with an image of a smiling man with a handful of cherries

Cover of Vechory na khutori bilia Dykanʹky by Nikolai Gogol' (Kyiv, 2008) YF.2009.b.2030

Opening pages of Nikolai Gogol's ‘Christmas Eve’ with an illustration showing a Cossack holding two large sacks, surrounded by a crowd of villagers and Christmas carollers. In the sky, the Devil is holding a crescent shaped moon and a witch is riding a broomstick

Opening pages of Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom by Nikolai Gogol' (Kyiv, 2008) YF.2009.b.2030

However, you may wonder how the author of Mertvye Dushi (‘Dead Souls’, 1842) came to write such a lighthearted and, dare I say it, frivolous piece. To answer that question, we need to travel back to December 1828 when a young aspiring writer hailing from the small Cossack town of Sorochyntsi arrives in the metropolitan St. Petersburg to seek his fortune. Unable to secure a decent paying job in the civil service, Nikolai soon becomes disillusioned with life in the capital and the workings of the Russian bureaucracy. The disappointment with St. Petersburg coincides with his newfound appreciation of the homeland he left behind and the craze for all things “Little Russian” sweeping the capital’s literary scene at the time. Gogol' is quick to capitalize on this trend and eager to bring the beauty of Ukraine to the Russian reading public. Yet for all the enthusiasm with which the liberal circles received Gogol’s work, the nation reflected in Vechera was not Russia but Ukraine. Far from smoothing over this difference, the author deliberately accentuated it.

There is undoubtedly more to the joyous and seemingly carefree tone of Vechera than first meets the eye. The Ukrainian-Russian glossaries appended to each volume clearly underline Ukrainian linguistic separateness and cultural uniqueness, creating a boundary between the Ukrainian and imperial cultures. The narrator, Rudy Pan'ko, regularly engages in intense self-descriptions, offering equivalents for what his Russian audience may find unfamiliar. This is evident in Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom when he attempts to explain the tradition of house-to-house caroling: Among us it is the custom to sing under the window on Christmas Eve carols that are called kolyadki. The mistress or master or whoever is left in the house always drops into the singer’s bag some sausage or bread or a copper or whatever he has plenty of (...) They often sing about the birth of Christ, and at the end wish good health to the master, the mistress, the children and all the household’, or when he elucidates on the meaning of the word German: By German’, we mean any foreigner, be it a French, Austro-Hungarian, or Swedish subject - no matter, we will still call them Germans’.’’ (English translations by Constance Garnett, ‘Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka’ (London, 1926), 12266.g.2. and Anna Summers, ‘The night before Christmas’, (New York, 2014), YKL.2016.a.6326; emphasis mine). Pan'ko clearly wants his Russian readers to be mindful of the divisions between the two worlds.

Two-column glossary with Ukrainian words and their Russian equivalents
Glossary listing popular Ukrainian terms and their Russian equivalents

The great success of Gogol's work also owed much to its Romantic handling of folklore and the perfect balance of the familiar and exotic in depicting Ukraine. As a number of scholars have pointed out, Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom contains many staples of the traditional Ukrainian nativity play, vertep. It opens with the devil swimming through the starry sky and burning his hands on the moon he had just stolen. As the story is set on the night before Christmas, the evil spirit is allowed to roam freely around the Ukrainian village of Dykanka and torment its denizens before he must return to hell on Christmas Day. He unleashes a blizzard hoping to thwart the village blacksmith's advances on the beautiful Oksana as he resents him for producing a painting depicting the devil's defeat. However, Vakula is determined to win the village belle over, even if it means battling Satan himself. Amid carol singing, holiday gluttony (think kutia, varenyky, palianytsia, varenukha) and drunken revelry, he manages to trick the devil into flying him to St. Petersburg, where he hopes to get a pair of empress’s heels for Oksana, who has promised to marry him on this condition. Without giving too much away, Vakula finally makes it to St. Petersburg and is immediately overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of the city. He seeks refuge in the company of Zaporozhian Cossacks, who reluctantly take him along for their audience with the empress...

Too busy to read this Christmas? Gogol’s Ukrainian folk tales have been adapted into numerous films and operas. The most renowned adaptations of Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom include the eponymous 1961 film directed by Alexsander Rou and the 1913 silent movie by Władysław Starewicz. The 1951 Russian animated feature film directed by Valentina and Zinaida Brumberg is also available in the public domain.

Film poster with a couple looking into each other's eyes, their faces lit with a yellow glow

Official poster for the 1961 Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom film by Alexander Rou (Image from Wikipedia)

Gogol's Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom celebrates Ukraine and its rich heritage. It is fun and edifying but also mischievously subversive. Will the pious Cossack Vakula manage to win the affection of the most beautiful girl in town? Or will the devil reign supreme on this holy night? A perfect tale for the holiday season, this wonderfully bizarre work will leave you with a sense of warmth and quiet wonder long after the last page is turned. Z Rizdvom! Merry Christmas!

Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, Interim Curator of Slavonic and East European Collections

References:

Edyta M. Bojanowska, Nikolai Gogol : between Ukrainian and Russian nationalism (Cambridge, 2007) YC.2007.a.11089

Christopher Putney, Russian devils and diabolic conditionality in Nikolai Gogol's Evenings on a farm near Dikanka (New York, 1999) 5761.407700

23 September 2024

Wage Peace Not War. Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi on Violence, Nonresistance, and Love

The year was 1908. The shock waves of the 1905 Revolution still reverberated throughout the Russian Empire when two letters from an Indian revolutionary Taraknath Das reached Leo Tolstoy at home in Iasnaia Poliana. Das wrote to the ailing Tolstoy, then a world-renowned author, pacifist and anarchist, asking for his support for India’s liberation from British colonial rule. Das’s appeal prompted the 80-year-old Russian writer to pen a lengthy response expressing his sympathy with the oppressed and advocating for nonviolence as the only justifiable form of resistance. It was not the answer Das had hoped for, but when the letter was published, it immediately struck a chord with a young Indian lawyer grappling with racial and social injustices in Johannesburg, Mohandas Gandhi. He was so impressed by Tolstoy’s logic that he sought his permission to translate the letter into Gujarati and to republish it in South Africa. Although the two never met, they continued to exchange letters and ideas until Tolstoy's death in 1910. Their shared philosophy of peace, tolerance, and nonresistance to evil inspired such prominent political leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama. The letter to Das, mailed from Iasnaia Poliana on December 14, 1908, was about to influence the course of history on the Indian subcontinent.

(Right) cover of Osvobozhdenie narodov: Pisʹmo Indusu with a photograph of Tolstoy; (Left) black-and-white photograph of Gandhi

Cover of Osvobozhdenie narodov: Pisʹmo Indusu by Leo Tolstoy (Iasnaia Poliana, 190?) RB.23.a.32254 and a photograph of
Mahatma Gandhi (Image from Wikipedia)

In the appendices of his book Indian Home Rule, Gandhi listed twenty books that impacted him as a political and spiritual leader. Tellingly, the first six works are all by Tolstoy, and the 5000-word missive published by Das as A Letter to a Hindu (AKA A Letter to a Hindoo; Pis’mo Indusu, 1908) is among them. In it, Tolstoy argues that only by overcoming the urge to retaliate and abiding by the principle of love and compassion for the enemy could the Indian people shake off the colonial yoke. He admonishes: “Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.” According to the author, only peaceful resistance epitomised by civil disobedience could break the cycle of violence perpetuating injustice and feeding hatred. He marvels at how a commercial company was able to enslave “two hundred millions of clever, capable, freedom-loving people” and concludes that the numbers speak for themselves: “it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves.”

Tolstoy’s definition of violence is broad, encompassing inequitable distribution of authority, power and wealth, as well as violation of one’s conscience. He divides the letter into short chapters, each of which opens with a range of ethical sources, including the Bible, quotations from the Vedas, and passages from Krishna.

Opening pages of Tolstoy’s Pis’mo Indusu 
Opening pages of Tolstoy’s Pis’mo Indusu 

He warns against false ideologies, both religious and pseudo-scientific, that promote the use of violence and the necessity of war, distorting the sheer truth that it is “natural for men to help and to love one another, but not to torture and kill one another”. At the core of Tolstoy’s Christianity is the Sermon on the Mount, which he sees as a complete justification for nonresistance to evil. His literal reading of Jesus’s commandment to ‘turn the other cheek’ led to his questioning social, political and religious assumptions, including the authority of the state, the credibility of the Church, and the justifications of both for waging violence. Tolstoy admits that overthrowing oppressive regimes is not an easy task. Nonviolence, unlike physical force, requires great courage and readiness to expose oneself to political violence and unjust treatment.

Another book that profoundly affected Gandhi’s thought formation was Tolstoy’s Christian anarchist philosophical treatise, ‘The Kingdom of God is Within You’ (Tsarstvo Bozhie Vnutri Vas, 1894). Banned in Russia for its espousal of Jesus’s nonviolent resistance teachings as true gospel, it inspired Gandhi to set up a community devoted to love, work, and simple living, known as Tolstoy Farm. He reflected on the impact the book had on him in his 1928 speech commemorating Tolstoy’s death: “At that time, I was skeptical about many things… I was a votary of violence. I had faith in it and none in nonviolence. After I read this book, lack of faith in nonviolence vanished.”

Title page of Tsarstvo Bozhie Vnutri Vas

Title page of Tsarstvo Bozhie Vnutri Vas (London, 1898) 3926.bb.50.

In ‘The Kingdom of God is Within You’, Tolstoy objects to the idea of Russian religious nationality as the rationale for political repressions inside Russia and imperialist oppression internationally. He points the finger at the corrupt union of religion and autocratic political power that coerces men to join the army and take part in unjust wars. Tolstoy is especially critical of conscription, which he sees as an extreme abuse of power and a form of slavery. He also opposes any form of modern patriotism but is not blind to the differences between oppressor and oppressed: “A Russian should rejoice if Poland, the Baltic Provinces, Finland, Armenia, should be separated, freed from Russia (...) The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.” Tolstoy asserts that the eponymous Kingdom of God could only be found inside the self and outside the state-run church with its stupefying rituals and ceremonies.

Tolstoy’s essay ‘The First Step’ (also known as ‘The Morals of Diet’; Pervaia stupen’, 1892) helped to shape Gandhi’s views on ahimsa, an ancient ethical principle of not causing harm to other living beings. It was instrumental in convincing Gandhi to maintain his vegetarian diet. The essay was published as a preface to a book by Howard Williams, The Ethics of Diet, which Tolstoy translated into Russian. It is likely the 19th century’s most important statement on the subject. 

Cover of Pervaia stupen’ with a photograph of Tolstoy
Cover of Tolstoy’s Pervaia stupen’ (Moscow, 1906) YA.2001.a.3749

The principle of nonviolence and refusal to participate in coercion is at the core of Tolstoyan vegetarianism. He views slaughtering and eating animals as “simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling—killing; and is called forth only by greediness and the desire for tasty food.” While the pamphlet advocates for animal rights, it also takes on a religious tone, underscoring the need for self-abnegation, fasting, and renouncing worldliness. One can and should control bodily desires by exercising moderation, restraint and hard work, and refraining from eating animal flesh is the first step towards a moral life. Tolstoy concludes the piece with a bold statement that the killing and eating of animals compromise the ability of men to feel pity and compassion for fellow human beings.

Photograph of Tolstoy sitting at a small outdoor table and eating a meal
Tolstoy enjoying a vegetarian meal (Image from Wikipedia)

Tolstoy’s philosophical and polemical works have often been deemed rigid and doctrinaire, becoming a neglected footnote to the widely acclaimed War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Nevertheless, their message is disturbingly relevant today as the world faces a swelling tide of imperial violence with Russia's brutal war against Ukraine. The question once posed by George Orwell: “Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing?” remains open. Orwell had no illusions - in a country without a free press and the right of assembly, where “opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again”, practising civil disobedience is a perilous exercise incapable of bringing a mass movement into being. While Russia is waiting for its Mahatma, dissenting voices and peaceful anti-war protests inside the country command the utmost respect and give hope for change. Gandhi prescribes patience: “You need not be afraid that the method of nonviolence is a slow long-drawn-out process. It is the swiftest the world has seen, for it is the surest.”

Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, Interim Curator of Slavonic and East European Collections

References/further reading:

Charlotte Alston, Tolstoy and his disciples : the history of a radical international movement (London, 2014) YC.2014.a.11549

Imraan Coovadia, Revolution and non-violence in Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Mandela (Oxford, 2020) YC.2022.a.1259

Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy letters (Long Beach, California, 1987) 

Ramin Jahanbegloo, Introduction to nonviolence (Basingstoke, 2014) SPIS303.61

Ilacai and Rajesh, V. Maniyan, The Russian Revolution and India (London, 2020) ELD.DS.554272

Tony Milligan, Civil disobedience: protest, justification, and the law (New York, 2013) m13/.13487

Keith Gessen, George Packer, George Orwell, All art is propaganda: critical essays (Boston, 2009) ELD.DS.678441

David A. J. Richards, Disarming manhood: roots of ethical resistance (Athens, OH, 2005) YK.2007.a.20263

Patricia M. Shields, Jane Addams: progressive pioneer of peace, philosophy, sociology, social work and public administration (Cham, 2017) ELD.DS.351903

Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu (from Project Gutenberg)

Bryan S. Turner, War and peace: essays on religion, violence, and space (London, 2013) ELD.DS.83774

17 September 2024

Werther at 250 - an 18th-Century Bestseller

On Thursday 26 September the novelist, biographer and columnist A.N. Wilson will be discussing his new book The Life of Goethe with Emeritus Professor Paul Hamilton at an event in the British Library’s Pigott Theatre. Full event and booking details can be found here. Meanwhile, to get you in a Goethe mood, we take a look at the book that first brought him international fame.

September 1774 saw the appearance of the 25-year-old Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s first novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther). Goethe had already become famous in Germany with his play Götz von Berlichingen, published the previous year, but the novel was to make his name throughout Europe.

Title page of 'Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers' with a vignette of a desk with books, papers, quills and a candle

Title-page of the first edition of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Leipzig, 1774) C.58.bb.12

The novel is mainly narrated in letters from the eponymous Werther to his friend Wilhelm. It tells the story of Werther’s doomed love for Lotte, a woman who seems to reciprocate his feelings but is betrothed to another man, Albert, as was her mother’s dying wish. When he realises that he can neither suppress his love for Lotte nor prevent her marriage, Werther leaves town to take up a post at court, but returns after a few unhappy months. Lotte and Albert are now married but Werther continues to visit Lotte, becoming ever more tormented by his feelings for her. After an emotional encounter where Werther embraces and kisses Lotte, she sends him away. Having already decided that only his, Lotte’s or Albert’s death can resolve the situation between them, Werther decides to kill himself. An afterword by the supposed editor of the letters tells of Werther’s suicide and its aftermath.

Engraving of Werther sitting at a desk by a window, holding a quill pen and a sheet of paper

Werther at his writing-desk, engraving by J. Buckland Wright from a Halcyon Press edition of  Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Maastricht, 1931) C.115.s.26.

The novel was a huge success. It combined the time-honoured genre of the tragic love story with the contemporary cult of ‘sensibility’, featuring a protagonist who is guided entirely by his emotions. There were also titillating hints that the story was based on true events: Goethe had indeed drawn on his own brief infatuation with Charlotte Buff, who was engaged to his friend Johann Christian Kestner, and on the suicide of a colleague, Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, who was hopelessly in love with a married woman. A pamphlet published in 1775 identified the ‘real’ locations and characters, albeit only by initials in the case of the characters. Nonetheless, the book’s fame brought some unwanted attention to these ‘originals’. Jerusalem’s grave even became a place of pilgrimage for Werther fans.

Two pages from 'Berichtigung der Geschichte des jungen Werthers' identifying places and characters from Goethe's novel

Pages from H. von Breidenbach, Berichtigung der Geschichte des jungen Werthers (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1775; 12547.a.20.)  identifiyng the setting of the novel as a village near Wetzlar and the surname of Lotte’s father as beginning with B rather than S. (Image from a copy in the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg)

A French translation of Werther appeared in 1775 and translations into other European languages, including English (initially via the French version) in 1779, soon followed. As well as German, French and English, the British Library holds editions in Afrikaans, Danish, Esperanto, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. 

Title-pages of early French, English and Italian translations of Die Leiden des jungen Werther 

Title-pages of early French, English and Italian translations of Die Leiden des jungen Werther 

The novel also spawned a wave of imitations, critiques, parodies, continuations and dramatizations, and was represented in other media. Illustrations of scenes from the story decorated crockery and playing cards, and a handbill from 1785 in the British Library’s collections (1850.c.10.(151.)) announces that “At Mrs. Salmon’s Royal Historical Wax-work ... Is to be seen the ... Group of the Death of Werter, attended by Charlotte and her Family.” Fashionable young men adopted Werther’s outfit of a blue tailcoat with a yellow waistcoat and breeches, although stories of a wave of copycat suicides while so dressed are almost certainly exaggerated. Werther’s name could even be used to sell unrelated works: a German translation of Isaac D’Israeli’s Mejnoun and Leila, a retelling of an Arabic story, was entitled Der arabische Werther (‘The Arabian Werther’).

Title page of 'The Confidential Letters of Albert' with some lines of Ossian quoted beneath the title

Title-page of Confidential Letters of Albert; from his first attachment to Charlotte to her death (London, 1790) RB.23.a.18744. The work has been variously attributed to John Armstrong and Mary Eden

A popular form of ‘Wertheriad’ presented letters from other characters, such as William James’s The Letters of Charlotte during her Connexion with Werter (early English editions generally dropped the h of Werther) or The Confidential Letters of Albert. August Cornelius Stockmann’s Die Leiden der jungen Wertherinn (‘The Sorrows of the young female Werther’), although its title suggests a version with the gender roles reversed, similarly retells the story from Lotte’s perspective although not in epistolary form. However, the French novelist Pierre Perrin’s Werthérie (translated into English as The Female Werter) was the story of a woman tragically obsessed with a married man.

Title-page of 'Wertherie' with a frontispiece of a woman lowering a basket from a window to a kneeling figure below

Title-page and frontispiece of Pierre Perrin, Werthérie (Paris, 1791) 1074.h.32. (Image from a copy in the Bayerische Staatsibliothek)

Another common theme in both poetry and art was Lotte mourning at Werther’s grave. The original story leaves her own fate uncertain, saying that her grief and shock at Werther’s death made her family fear for her life, and some continuations do indeed have her dying also, but the idea of her rallying at least enough to visit the grave was clearly irresistible.

Title-page of 'Lotte bey Werther's Grab' with a vignette of a clump of trees with a tower and fallen masonry

Title page of Carl Ernst von Reizenstein, Lotte bey Werthers Grab (‘Wahlheim’, 1775) 11521.aa.14. (Image from a copy in the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg)

Illustrators were also fond of depicting the famous scene where Werther first sees Lotte as she butters and cuts slices of bread for her younger siblings. This was also popular with the parodists, and bookends William Thackeray’s famous satirical verses about the story. 

Engraving of Lotte handing out slices of bread and butter to her siblings as Werther walks in through the door

Werther meets Lotte as she cuts slices of buttered bread for her younger siblings. Engraving by Daniel Chodowiecki. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Despite (or perhaps because of) its popularity, many commentators criticised the work, and in particular Werther’s extreme emotions and his suicide. A popular riposte to Goethe’s work was Friedrich Nicolai’s Freuden des jungen Werthers (‘Joys of Young Werther’). Here Albert renounces Lotte, who marries Werther. Things do not at first go smoothly, and the remarkably tolerant Albert has to act as marriage counsellor, but Werther gradually becomes practical and responsible. The story ends with him and his family happily cultivating their garden in good Voltairean fashion.

Title page of 'Die Freuden des jungen Werthers' with an engraving of a young couple embracing while two older men look on

Title page of Friedrich Nicolai, Freuden des jungen Werthers: Leiden und Freuden Werthers des Mannes (Berlin, 1775) 12547.aaa.8. (Image from a copy in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)

The economist Johann August Schlettwein wrote two pamphlets criticising Goethe’s work, one of which is couched as a letter from Werther, now suffering the torments of damnation, appealing to others not to follow his example. Ernst August Anton von Göchhausen, in his Das Werther-Fieber (‘The Werther Fever’) shows a family divided over the story – daughter Sibylle is dangerously obsessed, but the rest of the family consider Werther a fool (which I must admit was my own assessment reading the novel as an undergraduate!).

Title-page of 'Das Werther-Fieber' with a frontipiece engraving of two men, one seated at a desk. and a vignette of a young woman seated on a sofa

Title-page of Ernst August Anton von Göchhausen, Das Werther-Fieber, eine unvollendetes Familienstück (Nieder-Teutschland [i.e Leipzig], 1776) 12547.b.5. (Image from a copy in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)

Goethe would later distance himself from Werther as he left behind the wild enthusiasm of his youthful ‘Sturm und Drang’ works and embraced a more measured classicism. A revised version published in 1787 gave the editor more of a voice and made Albert more sympathetic, somewhat counterbalancing Werther’s emotionalism. But even after it had passed the peak of its popularity, Werther continued to be much read, and it inspired literary responses into the 20th century. Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar (1939) is a fictional retelling of the real-life encounter between Charlotte Kestner (née Buff) and Goethe 42 years after the publication of Werther, while Ulrich Plenzdorf’s Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (The New Sorrows of Young W.) maps Goethe’s novel onto the story of a disaffected young man in 1960s East Germany. And in the 21st century the story has been reinvented as a graphic novel in a contemporary setting, Werther Reloaded.

Cover of 'Werther reloaded' with a colur illustration showing the head and shoulders of a man wearing a striped short and a green jacket with yellow stars

Cover of Franziska Walther, Werther reloaded: nach dem Roman ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werther’ von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Mannheim, 2016) YF.2016.b.2045  

250 years after its first appearance, Werther may no longer have the powerful appeal that it had at the time,  but the novel still stands as a literary classic and a offers glimpse into a particular mindset that briefly held sway over romantically inclined readers in the late 18th century.

References/Further reading 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Les souffrances du jeune Werther, translated by Karl Siegmund von Seckendorff (Erlangen, 1886) 244.e.10.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Werter: a German Story, translated by Richard Graves (London, 1779) 12555.a.34.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werther, opera di sentimento, translated by Gaetano Grassi (Poschiavo, 1782) 012553.e.35.

Isaac Disraeli, Der Arabische Werther, oder Mejnun und Leila, eine romantische Erzählung für Liebende (Leipzig, 1804) 12618.a.45. 

William James, The letters of Charlotte, during her connexion with Werter (Dublin, 1786) 1489.g.7.

August Cornelius Stockmann, Die Leiden der jungen Wertherinn (Eisenach, 1775) 12547.b.6.

“Diesem viehischen Trieb ergeben”: J. A. Schlettweins Kritik an Goethes Werther: Briefe an eine Freundinn über die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1775), Des jungen Werthers Zuruf aus der Ewigkeit an die noch lebende Menschen auf der Erde (1775), herausgegeben von Volker Hoenerbach. (Hamburg 2009) YF.2012.a.7890

Johann August Schlettwein, Werther in die Hölle (Frankfurt am Main, 1775) 8630.b.2.(5.) (A reissue of his Briefe an eine Freundinn über die Leiden des jungen Werthers with new introductory material)

Thomas Mann, Lotte in Weimar (Stockholm, 1939) YA.1989.a.3081 

Ulrich Plenzdorf, Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (Frankfurt am Main, 1973)  X.908/27279.

Robyn L. Schiffman, ‘A Concert of Werthers’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 43, no. 2 (2010), pp. 207-222  P.901/754

Karol Sauerland, ‘Wertherfieber’, European History Online Website

 

A selection of other early responses, adaptations and imitations from the BL collections:

Heinrich Leopold Wagner, Prometheus Deukalion und seine Recensenten (Hamburg, 1775) 11746.c.35. (A satire on reviewers of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers)

Heinrich Gottfried von Bretschneider, Eine entsetzliche Mordgeschichte von dem jungen Werther ([s.l.], 1776) 12547.aaa.9. (A free adaptation of the original)

Man denkt verschieden bey Werthers Leiden. Ein Schauspiel in drey Aufzügen (s.l., 1779) 11745.c.1.

Edward Taylor, Werter to Charlotte: a Poem (Lonndon, 1784) 11632.d.49.(1.)

Jean-Marie-Jérôme Fleuriot, Le Nouveau Werther, imité de lAllemand (Neuchâtel, 1786) 12547.c.8.

Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins, The Victim of Fancy (London, 2009) YC.2010.a.15559 (Originally published 1786; French translation, La Victime de limagination, ou lenthousiaste de Werther (Paris, 1795?) Ch.790/127.)

Eglantine Wallace, A Letter to a Friend, with a poem called the Ghost of Werter (London, 1787) 11632.h.16. 

George Wright, The unfortunate lovers, abridged from the Sorrows of Werter ... (London, 1788) RB.23.a.8495

Sarah Farrell, Charlotte, or, A sequel to the sorrows of Werther ... and other poems (Bath, 1792) 11642.h.17.

Amelia Pickering, The Sorrows of Werter: a Poem (London, 1788) 1346.m.11.

Joseph Antoine de Gourbillon, Stellino, ou le Nouveau Werther (Paris, 1791)

Werter and Charlotte. A German story containing many wonderful and pathetic incidents (London, 1800?) 12611.ee.32.(4.) (A loose adaptation of the original)

Carl Phillip Bonafont, Der neue Werther, oder Gefühl und Liebe (Nuremberg, 1804) 12547.cc.11.

James Bell, Letters from Wetzlar, written in 1817, developing the authentic particulars on which the “Sorrows of Werter” are founded (London, 1821) 11851.c.7. 

Georges Duval, Le Retour de Werther, ou les derniers épanchemens de la sensibilité, comédie en un acte, mêlée de vaudevilles (Paris, 1821) 11738.e.16.(10.) 

 

Four four-line stanzas of an anonymous and undated poem beginning ‘Cold in this tomb the dust of Werter lies’

An anonymous and undated poem beginning ‘Cold in this tomb the dust of Werter lies’ C.116.g.22.(2.)

05 September 2024

Underground Publishing in Poland under Communist Regime: Through Female Eyes

The Gdańsk Agreement of 1980, established between the workers of the Lenin shipyard and the Polish People’s Republic’s undemocratically elected government, saw the beginning of the ‘Solidarity’ trade union’s fight against the Communist Regime. In the following seven years, around 4830 books and 2027 journals, many of which are in the British Library’s Solidarity Collection, were published underground in a so-called ‘second circulation’. As far as the records go, only 175 of these works were authored by a mere 97 female writers.

Superficial research into female involvement in Polish anti-government publishing could end here. Women in print? Official numbers leave no doubt: they were few and far between. To broaden the scope of this quest to uncover unheard female voices in the Solidarity Collection, avenues other than scholarly browsing of the Library’s basements had to be incorporated. And so, on a brisk December morning, one of them led all the way out of the bustle of central London into the quiet of Hampshire countryside.

“At that time my involvement in the anti-communist opposition was very important for me, probably more important than my medical studies”, recalls Anna Młynik-Shawcross, a retired psychiatrist based in Britain since 1985 – the year when she arrived here as a political refugee. Anna reflects on the times after the strikes in the shipyard ended and she graduated from the medical school. “However, I decided to follow medicine instead of getting involved as the unions’ activist”, she confirms. But how does this story begin? The interview with her is meant to deepen the present understanding of diverse roles women played in the 1970s-1980s Polish underground publishing.

Colour photograph of Anna Młynik-Shawcross

Anna Młynik-Shawcross in her home (photo by Olga Topol).

Anna, born in 1955 in Gdańsk, first became involved with the democratic anti-communist movement at the beginning of her Medical School years, in the winter of 1976. When the communist government pushed for changes in the Polish constitution of the time, Anna, alongside a small group of Gdańsk students, joined the movement which started with signing the protest letters against those changes. In the summer of the same year the famous strikes began in Radom and Lublin and spread all over the country, while lots of people lost their employment. At that time the famous ‘Committee for Social Self-Defence’ (KOR) was set up. “I was able to get the list of names of the workers who were sacked [so that they could be helped by KOR]”, recalls Anna. In the years 1977-1978, she was part of the ‘Movement for the Defence of Human and Civic Rights’ (ROPCiO). She was a founder member of the Student Solidarity Committee set up in Gdańsk in November 1977 and was involved in organising student discussion groups and helping those persecuted by the Communist regime.

Around the same time, one of the first printing machines intended for the independent underground printing of works by authors censored by the regime was shipped from abroad with the help of Jaraczewski family, Józef Piłsudski’s descendants. Anna remembers the times she spent printing leaflets and the establishment of an underground periodical Bratniak published by the ‘Movement of Young Poland’, a Free Trade Union periodical called Robotnik Wybrzeża, as well as the first independent publishing house involved in distributing books across the country, Nowa.

Cover of an underground pamphlet with a image of a blue clock with a star in the centre of its face

An example of an underground publication, Kazimierz Brandys, Miesiące, (Warszawa 1980) Sol. 241w.

“I was in contact with them and was involved into distribution of books across Poland. They had to be well protected, so we had to have a network of people. We would distribute them through friends, all just through networks”, recalls Anna. Distribution of printed material posed challenges, with private flats acting as places of conspiracy. In the following years, Anna contributed to nothing less than the establishment of a new publishing house, Klin. Together with a small group of friends they set the ambitious goal of about 3,500 published books to be published, and worked tirelessly towards it. Still today she recalls, not without excitement, getting a ‘Western’ paper trimmer, as well as gaining the support of a bookbinder.

“It started with my money that I earned working as a student abroad”, Anna recalls, “We needed a lot of paper, but you couldn’t simply go into a shop and buy tons of paper. So we were going to different shops and buying small amounts.” The printing was primitive, primarily in the offset technique. “We got the paint and were spending hours and hours copying books”, adds Anna, a 2009 recipient of an Order of Polonia Restituta. Now, let us look again at the initial number mentioned above: 97 female writers? What about the women behind the scenes?

Anna expands on female involvement in the opposition movement, including the free press. Although often reluctant about such contribution because of concern for the welfare of their children, especially at that challenging time, many women were involved. She and Magda Modzelewska were involved in Gdańsk’s Student Solidarity Commitee. Joanna Duda-Gwiazda and Alinka Pieńkowska belonged to the Wolne Związki Zawodowe trade unions, which published journal Robotnik Wybrzeża. Finally, Bożena Rybicka, Małgorzata Rybicka, and Magda Modzelewska supported the journal Bratniak: “Małgorzata Rybicka was writing articles in Bratniak, while Magda Modzelewska was involved into editing and publishing”, recalls Anna.

Back cover of an underground publication with a line drawing of a flower and a dedication in Polish to female colleagues working in the independent publishing movement

Back cover of Marguerite Duras Kochanek (Siedlce, 1987) Sol.235j. featuring a dedication to female colleagues working in the independent publishing movement.

Any involvement in the opposition’s fight for democracy and freedom of speech involved high risk and intimidation. Secret police employed numerous tactics, including arrests, house searches, sending anonymous letters with false information and all kind of threats. “One day my parents received an anonymous letter informing them that I was under the influence of drug addicts and that [my parents] should put pressure on me to disengage from the opposition. My parents were threatened that they would lose their employment. Also, for me, getting a job was hard, especially locally”, she recollects.

Friendships developed during her involvement with underground publishing, which were based on enormous levels of trust to support the clandestine activities. She reflects upon the fact that most of the people involved in the opposition groups belonged to the intelligentsia: “After Wałęsa joined the movement it was a bit easier to reach the working-class people. But they were being persecuted”.

The fascinating conversation goes on for hours. Initial conclusions drawn from limited research done so far into women in Poland’s ‘second circulation’ go down the drain.  And with that emerges a richer picture: that of publishing houses which, although dominated by men, could not have accomplished their mission fully without female efforts around printing and distribution of illegal pro-democratic materials. And so, a brisk December morning spent in a quiet Hampshire town can alone paint a fascinating picture of women working alongside men to help true information reach larger numbers of Poles during the Cold War. Imagine what could more such encounters, and digging deeper into the potential of oral history, bring to surface. 

Agata Piotrowska, Doctoral Fellow 2024, Slavonic and East European collections

Further reading:

Wojciech Chojnacki, Marek Jastrzębski, Bibliografia Publikacji Podziemnych w Polsce. Tom Drugi, 01 I 1986 – 31 XII 1987, (Warszawa: 1993). YA.1994.a.5556

Ann M. Frenkel, Paweł Sowiński, Gwido Zlatkes, Duplicator underground: the independent publishing industry in Communist Poland 1976-89, (Bloomington, Indiana: 2016). YD.2017.a.460

Józefa Kamińska (real names: Władysław Chojnacki, Wojciech Chojnacki), Bibliografia Publikacji Podziemnych w Polsce, 13 XII 1981 – VI 1986, (Paris: 1988). 2725.e.184

Shana Penn, Solidarity’s secret: the women who defeated Communism in Poland (Ann Arbor, Michigan: 2005). YC.2007.a.10368

24 August 2024

A short selection of new Ukrainian books to mark the Independence Day

On this day, Ukraine celebrates the 33rd anniversary of its independence. On August 24, 1991, the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine was adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. Following international recognition and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became de facto a sovereign state in December of that year.

Today, on the 914th day of the full-scale Russian invasion, Ukraine is still bravely defending its independence and existence. Against all odds, publishing in the country is getting stronger. Only in 2023, 270 new publishers appeared on the Ukrainian book market, and book production increased by 73% in 2023 compared to 2022. According to the Ukrainian Book Chamber, as many as 6,951 monographs and brochures were published in the first half of 2024. In this blog, I would like to mark Ukrainian Independence Day by featuring a small selection of books that we received in the latest consignment from our vendor in Ukraine.

One of the most striking titles we have acquired is a posthumous edition of Viktoriia Amelina’s poetry Svidchennia (‘Testimony’) (Lviv: "Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva", 2024). In April 2023, Viktoriia visited the British Library and took part in a panel discussion on the role of writers during times of war. Some readers of this blog might remember her passionate and emotional presentation. Viktoriia Amelina died on July 1, 2023, as a result of injuries received in a Russian missile attack on Kramatorsk. You can watch a recording of the event in her memory organised by the Ukrainian Institute in London and the British Library here.

Cover of ‘Svidchennia’ with an image of a bloodstained woman reaching towards the sky

Cover of Svidchennia by Viktoriia Amelina

In her short interview with the Ukrainian online media Chytomo.com, the head editor of the publishing house Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva Sofiia Cheliak commented on their decision to choose illustrations to complement Viktoriia’s poetry: “we wanted [the illustrations to convey] sacredness, for me it was the only possible option for the illustration, so that it sounded in unison with the poetry. Looking at the layout, we realized how much it was the right decision <...> This book is what my broken heart looks like."

One of the poems in this book is titled A word in the dictionary (Future), and it reads:

Future – is what we ask
each other about in silence:
Do you see it?
Can you see it?
Here she asks and explains:
because I don’t see it, I don’t.
She squints.
Recently – she says, –
I’ve started seeing a little bit of
“tomorrow”, and beyond that – nothing.
And all the way to the end of her darkness we are walking through the sunny
Obolon: two women
and a dog.
(Translation: Katya Rogatchevskaia)

In 2021, Viktoriia organised the first literary festival in the small town of New York in the Donetsk region. She suggested the theme “De-occupation of the Future” for the following one, but it appears to be even more relevant for the post-war times. Apparently, today the town is under Russian occupation. We strongly believe that the festival will soon return to Ukrainian New York, where people will rebuild their future and remember Viktoriia's life and legacy.

Another book that stood out to me is Pisnia vidkrytoho shliakhu (‘Song of the Open Road’) by Artem Chekh (Chernivtsi, 2024). At the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, the author, who took part in the war in Donbas in 2015-16, joined the Ukrainian army. The new book was presented at the International Literary Festival Meridian Czernowitz held in Chernivtsi.

Cover of ‘Pisnia vidkrytoho shliakhu’ with a silhouette of a horse and rider on an orange background

Cover of Pisnia vidkrytoho shliakhu by Artem Chekh

As literary critics tell us in their reviews, the book is about a war, but not about the current war, as readers might expect. The action takes place in the 19th century, and the main character is a former serf from the Russian Empire who is trying to escape from his master. His adventures take him through Europe, Great Britain and eventually to America, where he finds himself just before the start of the Civil War. Critics agree that the symbolic meaning of the novel is a long, difficult, bloody, but open road to freedom and identity.

Among research publications, I would like to single out a new fundamental chronological overview of Ukrainian visual arts by two prominent Ukrainian art historians, Paola Utevs’ka and Dmytro Horbachov, Budynok iz levamy: Narysy istorii ukrains'koho vizual'noho mystetstva XI–XX stolit' (‘The House with Lions: Essays on the History of Ukrainian Visual Arts, 11th -20th centuries’) (Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo "Dukh i Litera", 2024).

Cover of ‘Budynok iz levamy’ with three images of the facade of a building on a blue background

Cover of Budynok iz levamy: Narysy istorii ukrains'koho vizual'noho mystetstva XI–XX stolit' by Paola Utevs’ka and Dmytro Horbachov

The monograph focuses on the formation of the main artistic movements and techniques and touches on all visual arts, from architecture to book illustrations and graphic design. It is also important that the authors analyse primarily artworks located in Ukraine, among them works by Taras Shevchenko, Petro Levchenko, Mykola Pymonenko, Oleksandra Ekster, Oleksandr Bohomazov, Anatol Petrytskyi, Oleksandr Arkhipenko, and Kazimir Malevich. This book is especially timely now as the world is making the acquaintance of Ukrainian art from a new perspective, for example, through the current exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts ‘In the Eye of the Storm’.

In this blog, I have highlighted just three titles out of over 300 received in the last five months. The books are being processed, and we are working hard to make them available to our readers as soon as possible.

Shelves with piles of Ukrainian books labelled 'For processing'

Ukrainian books awaiting processing by our cataloguing team

Meanwhile, I would like to draw your attention to a recent publication by Vernon Press. In June 2024, they released a volume edited by Lada Kolomiyets and titled Living the Independence Dream: Ukraine and Ukrainians in Contemporary Socio-Political Context. We will make sure to add this important contribution to our collections.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

09 August 2024

The Marriage of Sport and Art: Poland at the Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions (1912-1948)

Unlikely as it sounds, until the middle of the 20th century, amateur writers, painters, musicians, sculptors and architects battled for the coveted Olympic gold. The art competitions, consisting of five cultural disciplines and nicknamed the ‘Pentathlon of the Muses’, were the pet project of the French aristocrat and founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin. Baron de Coubertin saw the athletic pursuit in classical terms and sought to restore the Olympics to their former glory by reuniting “a long-divorced couple - muscle and mind”. His idea, drawing on ancient Games, came to fruition at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, where none other than de Coubertin took top honours in the literature event for his poem ‘Ode au Sport’ (‘Ode to Sport’). In the ensuing years, the popularity and prestige of the competitions gradually declined and by the 1952 Olympics, the practice of awarding medals for sport-inspired art was finally abandoned. Today, the winning Olympic artworks have been largely forgotten, and the artists relegated to the shadows. In this blog, I would like to revisit the creative output of Polish laureates of the Olympic art competitions, particularly writers, who have etched their names in the annals of the bygone tournaments.

The rebirth of independent Poland in 1918 triggered a surge of interest in physical activity among the Poles, evidenced by over 200 sports periodicals published until the beginning of the Second World War. At long last, Poland made its first appearance at the Olympic Games in 1924. The expectations were high as Olympic success was widely seen as a measure of national prowess and progress. Between 1924 and 1948, Polish artists bagged three gold, two silver and three bronze medals, finishing seventh (out of 23 entries) in the medal table. Zbigniew Turski was awarded gold in the music category for his Symfonia Olimpijska (‘Olympic Symphony’, 1948). In painting competitions, Janina Konarska won a silver medal for her woodcut Narciarze (‘Skiers’, 1932), while Stanisław Ostoja-Chrostowski and Władysław Skoczylas earned bronze for Dyplom Yacht Klubu (‘Yachting Club Certificate’, 1936) and Łucznik (‘Archer’, part of the winning series Plakaty (‘Posters’, 1928), respectively. In sculpture, Józef Klukowski received the highest prize for Wieńczenie Zawodnika (‘Sport Sculpture’, 1932) and four years later a silver medal for the relief Piłkarze (‘Football’, 1936). Finally, in the field of literature, Kazimierz Wierzyński was decorated with gold for his slim volume of poetry Laur Olimpijski (‘The Olympic Laurel’, 1928), and Jan Parandowski clinched the bronze for the novel Dysk Olimpijski (‘The Olympic Discus’, 1936).

Photograph of Janina Konarska and her colour woodcut showing several skiers on a snow-covered hill with trees casting shadows

Janina Konarska and her woodcut work ‘Skiers’ (Image from V&A. Photograph of the artist from Wikipedia)

Photograph of Władysław Skoczylas and his woodcut of a crouching archer with a quiver of arrows at his feet

Władysław Skoczylas and his woodcut ‘Archer’, from Tadeusz Cieślewski, Władysław Skoczylas. Inicjator i twórca współczesnego drzeworytu w Polsce (Warszawa, 1934) 7863.ppp.46. (Photograph of the artist from Wikimedia Commons)

Black and white photograph of a sculpture showing a sportsman being crowned with a wreath, and black and white photograph of the artist Józef Klukowski standing next to his work

Józef Klukowski and his work ‘Sport Sculpture’ (Images from Culture.pl)

Since his sterling performance at the 1928 Olympics, the athletic and well-versed in sports matters author of Laur Olimpijski has been dubbed ‘the best poet among sportsmen and the best sportsman amongst poets’.

Cover of 'Laur Olympiiski' with the title in a decorative border, and black and white photograph of Kazimierz Wierzyński
Kazimierz Wierzyński and his volume of poetry Laur Olimpijski (Warsaw, [1930]) X950/3682. (English translation: Selected Poems, (New York, 1959) 11437.l.22. (Photograph of the author from Wikimedia Commons)

Born in 1894 in Drohobych, Wierzyński studied in Cracow, Vienna and Lviv before settling down in Warsaw and taking up the prestigious post of editor-in-chief of Przegląd Sportowy (Warsaw, 1946-1958) MFM.MF1210P). His Olympic cycle, published in 1927 and translated into seven languages by 1930, is among the few noteworthy literary pieces ever presented at the Olympic art competitions. It comprises 15 individual poems, each portraying athletes in action and applauding sport for its aspirations to transcend human frailties. In paying homage to hurdles and runners, Wierzyński honours the Greek ideal of the athlete, as in the beautiful poem Nurmi:

My pace, a dancer’s thread -
my steps beat like a heart;
clock-tower of breath, I hover
in air, tall and apart.

Pages from 'Laur Olimpijski' with stylised vignettes of the sports described in the poems

Poems ‘Defilada Poetów’ (‘Parade of the Athletes’) and ‘Skok o Tyczce’ (‘The Pole Vault’) from: Laur Olimpijski (Warszawa, [1930]) X950/3682.

The poet glorifies the virtues of ancient Greece but at the same time creates a new mythology aided by the pantheon of heroes belonging to the era of the modern Olympics, among them the glorious goalkeeper Ricardo Zamora, the winged pole-vaulter Charles Hoff, and the omnipotent sprinters Charlie Paddock and Arthur Porritt. A keynote theme of the collection is man’s potential for heroism and his ability to transfigure life and achieve divinity through athletic excellence.

Wierzyński’s peer, Jan Parandowski, was born in 1895 in Lviv. He was educated at a classical gymnasium and received a solid foundation in Greek and Latin cultures. The First World War interrupted his studies in the philosophy department at Lviv University, and he received his degree in classical philology and archaeology only in 1923. Already in 1924, over a decade before the launch of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Parandowski’s interest in antiquity resulted in the publication of ‘Mythology’ (Mitologia. Wierzenia i podania Greków i Rzymian (Warsaw, 1962) 04422.f.19.), a canonical read for all subsequent generations of Poles, at least up to the turn of the twenty-first century.

Dysk Olimpijski (‘The Olympic Discus’, 1933), the writer’s only novel translated into English, is another brilliant example of Parandowski’s lifelong passion for classical antiquity. The author saw sport as an activity of utmost importance for the ancient Greeks, reaffirmed by the fact that many poets and philosophers, including Plato and Euripides, were keen athletes. The novel takes us back in time to Hellas and the 76th Olympiad when the Greeks engaged in joyous celebrations of their victory over the Persians.

Cover of 'Dysk Olimpijski' with an image of a laurel branch, and black and white photograoh of Jan Parandowski smoking a pipe

Jan Parandowski and his Dysk Olimpijski (Jerozolima, 1944) YF.2013.a.12040. (English translation: The Olympic Discus: a Story of Ancient Greece, (New York, 1964) 76/18461 (Photograph of the author from Wikimedia Commons)

The reader of Dysk Olimpijski becomes a spectator, the past and traditions of the Olympic Games unfolding before his eyes. Parandowski indulges in detailed descriptions and provides thorough depictions of the stadium, the sports equipment, and athletic contests. He picks one instance in Greek history, but by putting it in a historical context, he places it against a broader canvas of Greek life. His narrative is taut, but with the greatest economy of means, he manages to conjure up images reminiscent of intricate paintings on ancient Grecian vases.

By the early 1950s the art competitions had run their course, and de Coubertin’s union of flesh and spirit did not stand the test of time. The ‘Pentathlon of the Muses’ saw thousands of dubious entries, saccharine poems, ugly statues and failed paintings, the vast majority of which have slipped into oblivion. Nevertheless, the tournaments also attracted the talent of the likes of Wierzyński, Parandowski and Skoczylas, whose works remain, and for good reason, well-established in the Polish national consciousness.

Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, Interim Curator of Slavonic and East European Collections

References/further reading:

Ireneusz Bittner, Adam Bryk, O sporcie i kulturze fizycznej, poezji i medycynie czyli o etosie ciała ludzkiego (Lodz, 2003) YF.2007.a.4610

Introduction by George Harjan. In: Parandowski Jan, The Olympic Discus: a Story of Ancient Greece (New York, 1964) 76/18461

Tadeusz Cieślewski, Władysław Skoczylas, inicjator i twórca w spółczesnego drzeworytu w Polsce (Warsaw, 1934) 7863.ppp.46

Barry Keane, Skamander: the Poets and their Poetry 1918-1929 (Warsaw, 2004) YD.2005.a.3982

Bernhard Kramer, Richard Stanton, ‘The Olympic Laurel of Kazimierz Wierzyński’, in Journal of Olympic History, vol. 23, no 2 (2015), pp. 50-56. 

Richard Stanton, The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions: The Story of the Olympic Art Competitions of the 20th Century (Victoria, 2000) m02/36119

Nicolaos Yalouris (ed.), The eternal Olympics: Art and History of Sport (US, 1979) f81/0940

Architects’ games. What do you want, a medal?, Architectural Review, 11 July 2024

Why did the Olympics ditch their amateur-athlete requirement?, The Economist, 20 July 2021

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