05 February 2016
Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch?
On 5 February 1916 at the Holländische Meierei restaurant on Spiegelgasse 1, Zürich, the Cabaret Voltaire was launched. The Cabaret was the brainchild of Hugo Ball (1886-1927) in collaboration with a small group of artists and writers disillusioned with conventional politics and an equally conventional aesthetic response. 100 years since the inauguration of the Cabaret Voltaire, it is worth sparing a thought for this radical intervention that resonates still today. Dada m’dada, dada m’dada dada mhm, dada dera dada.
Hugo Ball in 1916, reproduced in Hugo Ball, Gesammelte Gedichte (Zürich, 1963). X.907/140.
Immediately unsuccessful and threatened with closure, the Cabaret Voltaire housed performances of progressively more outrageous, absurd and irrational pieces of poetry (of the “sound” and “parallel” varieties most famously), song, drama and manifesto. Their provoking output piqued the curiosity as well as the anger of the Zürich public.
Hugo Ball performing at the Cabaret Voltaire, image from Wikimedia Commons
Irrationality was precisely the point, as Richard Huelsenbeck explains in his interview with Basil Richardson entitled ‘Inventing Dada’. Huelsenbeck, a German expressionist writer who helped establish the Cabaret in 1916, gives an account of the invention of Dada out of the foundations of the Cabaret Voltaire. He describes the humble beginnings borne out of life experience and not any concerted artistic movement as such. Ball and his companion Emmy Hennings worked factory jobs before deciding they must do something. This “something”, Huelsenbeck continues, was uncertain and undefined, or undefinable– what were they fighting for or against? He and the others soon realised that it was precisely this uncertainty that could define the motivations of their activity – irrationality was its essence.
Richard Huelsenbeck’s history of Dada, En avant dada (Hanover, [1920]). Cup.403.z.47.
Out of this sense of novelty and unconventionality came Ball’s sound poems, first performed in June at the Cabaret Voltaire. One famous example is ‘Gadji beri bimba’ (1916), a recording of which, among other sound poems, is to be found on the audio collection Dada for Now. The first verse reads:
gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori
gadjama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassassa laulitalomini
gadji beri bin blassa glassala laula lonni cadorsu sassala bim
gadjama tuffm i zimzalla binban gligla wowolimai bin beri ban
o katalominai rhinozerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo
gadjama rhinozerossola hopsamen
bluku terullala blaulala loooo
Ball tried to free himself from everyday language and invent new sound patterns, ultimately attempting to display a new level of artistic invention and creativity. (The Talking Heads song ‘I Zimbra’ from the album Fear of Music sets ‘Gadji beri bimba’ to music, giving it an African-inspired beat.) One month later, on 14 July 1916, at a Dada Soirée, Ball presented the first Dada manifesto, explaining his impulse to break from all rational notions of “the word”:
Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.
Ball soon separated himself from the ambitions of the Dadaists and, consequently, the group’s second driving force, Tristan Tzara, declared a “Dada Movement”, exactly the kind of fixity and purpose Ball and Huelsenbeck wanted to avoid. However, the last word should go to the founder of the Cabaret Voltaire, the Hugo Ball of 100 years ago,
gaga di bumbalo bumbalo gadjamen
gaga di bling blong
gaga blung
Hugo Ball ca 1916, drawn by fellow-dadaist Marcel Janco. Reproduced in Gesammelte Gedichte.
Pardaad Chamsaz, Collaborative Doctoral Student, British Library / University of Bristol
References
Breaking the rules: the printed face of the European avant garde, 1900-1937, ed. By Stephen Bury (London, 2007) YC.2008.b.251
Richard Huelsenbeck, Inventing Dada (interview with Basil Richardson) (1959), 1CD0268503
Dada for Now: A Collection of Futurist and Dada Sound Works (1985), 1LP0007598
Talking Heads, Fear of Music (1979), 1CD0000326
Hugo Ball, Gesammelte Gedichte. Mit Photos und Faksimiles, herausgegeben von Annemarie Schütt-Hennings (Zürich, 1970) X.900/11006.
The Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich today (Photo from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)
29 January 2016
Playwright, peacemaker, polymath: Romain Rolland (1866-1944)
When Romain Rolland was born on 29 January 1866 into a prosperous middle-class family in Clamecy, Nièvre, there was little to indicate that he would grow up to be a dramatist, critic and pacifist who would one day win the Nobel Prize. His ancestors included solidly well-to-do farmers, and he would describe himself as an offshoot of an ‘antique species’ deeply rooted in la France profonde.
From the first, his attempts to follow the predictable path towards a respectable calling as a schoolmaster were beset by problems; entering the Ecole normale supérieure at the age of 20, he rejected his course in philosophy to study history and, after two years in Rome, gained his doctorate in 1895 with a thesis entitled Les Origines du théâtre lyrique moderne. Histoire de l'opéra en Europe avant Lully et Scarlatti (British Library Hirsch 1877).
Romain Rolland during his time at the Ecole normale supérieure. Reproduced in Stefan Zweig, Romain Rolland (Frankfurt, 1921) 011851.aaa.38
This was to be the beginning of a distinguished career as a music critic and historian which had been launched by his encounter in Rome with Malwida von Meysenbug, governess to Alexander Herzen’s daughters and friend of Liszt, Wagner and Nietszche. After teaching at several Paris lycées while publishing studies of musicians past and present (Les musiciens d'autrefois and Musiciens d'Aujourd'hui ) he became the director of the newly-founded Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sociales and was appointed in 1903 to the first chair of the history of music at the Sorbonne.
However, at the same time he was developing a career as a dramatist. Like Wagner, he believed passionately in the power of theatre as a unifying social force rather than a mere pretext for pretentious display, and advocated a ‘people’s theatre’ going back to the dramatic tradition of the ancient Greeks. In his plays he portrayed the great events and personages of French history, from Madame de Montespan and Louis XIV (1904) to the French revolution in Le Triomphe de la raison, Georges Danton and Le Quatorze juillet, convinced that a people which was truly happy and free would need festivities rather than theatres, and would ‘always see in itself the finest spectacle’, as he wrote in Le Théâtre du peuple. His ideas were enthusiastically adopted outside France, notably by Erwin Piscator and the Freie Volksbühne in Germany.
The transcending of national and cultural boundaries through art was a central theme of Rolland’s writings and of his whole life. Although his retiring nature did not make him a natural teacher, leading him to resign from the Sorbonne in 1912, he spread his pacifist internationalist beliefs through his writings, and, unable to tolerate the chauvinistic patriotism reigning in France during the First World War, he moved to Switzerland, where he published his anti-war essay Au-dessus de la mêlée (‘Above the battle’) published in the year in which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His principles enabled him to overcome his natural diffidence and to engage with Mahatma Gandhi (on whom he published a study in 1923), Sigmund Freud and Stefan Zweig. The latter described their friendship extensively in his autobiography Die Welt von gestern, while Freud acknowledged the importance of Rolland’s influence in his Civilization and its Discontents (1929). He was also a close friend of Hermann Hesse, who dedicated his novel Siddhartha (1922) to him in tribute to their discussions of Eastern philosophy.
Rolland in 1919, portrait by Frans Masereel, reproduced in P.J. Jouve, Romain Rolland vivant (Paris, 1920) 011853.t.64.
Rolland’s great sequence of 10 novels Jean-Christophe (1904-1912) similarly explores the power of art to bridge cultural differences through the career of his hero, a gifted young German musician who settles in France and acts as the author’s mouthpiece for his ideas on the profound significance of music as a force for human understanding.
Opening of the preface from Rolland's manuscript of the last volume of Jean-Christophe Zweig MS 184, f.2r
In view of his achievements as a pacifist, including his work as a founding member in 1932 of the World Committee Against War and Fascism, it may seem startling that when, on a visit to Moscow three years later as the guest of Maxim Gorky, he met Joseph Stalin, he declared him to be the greatest man of his time. Although disillusionment set in as he became better informed about Stalin’s treatment of those who opposed him, he continued, with tact and fortitude, to represent the interests of French artists in his dealings with the U.S.S.R. and to campaign for the release of the writer Victor Serge and the Soviet politician Nikolai Bukharin, who was nevertheless executed in 1938.
Dedication from the manuscript of the last volume of Jean-Christophe, ‘To the free souls - of all nations - who suffer, who struggle, and who will triumph’
Rolland returned in 1937 to make his home in Vézelay, where he remained in complete isolation throughout the German occupation, working tirelessly on his memoirs, his life of Beethoven, and a study of the Catholic poet Charles Péguy, which he completed not long before his death on 30 December 1944. His message of pacifism and the power of art to speak above narrow political and national interests continues to make him an author of lasting significance in an age which sorely needs to hear it.
Susan Halstead, Content Specialist (Humanities & Social Sciences), Research Engagement.
Works by Rolland referred to in the text:
Les musiciens d'autrefois (Paris, 1908) W19/0525
Musiciens d'Aujourd'hui: Berlioz - Wagner - Saint-Saëns - Vincent D'Indy- Claude Debussy - Hugo Wolf - Richard Strauss - Le Renouveau de la Musique Francais depuis 1870 (Paris, 1908) W8/7005
Le Triomphe de la Raison (Paris, 1899) 11736.f.54.
Danton (Paris, 1901) 11740.d.35.
Le 14 juillet (Paris, 1902) 12208.pp.1/13.
Le Théâtre du peuple (Paris, 1903) 12208.pp.1/44.
Au-dessus de la mêlée (Paris, 1915) W18/5841
Mahatma Gandhi (Zürich, 1923) YA.1992.a.10990
Jean-Christophe (1904-1912) 12550.t.14.
27 January 2016
Crossing European Borders with Diego Marani’s ‘The Interpreter’
As in previous years, the British Library will host 2016’s European Literature Night on 11 May. As a taster, we look at a newly-translated work by an author who featured in 2014’s event.
Diego Marani’s The Interpreter (original Italian L’interprete, Milan, 2004y YF.2004.a.24136) begins in Geneva at the United Nations where an interpreter has developed a strange malady and starts speaking gibberish while claiming he has discovered the primordial language of mankind. Before he can be sacked he disappears, then his boss develops the same illness and goes to a sanatorium in Munich for a language cure. While at the sanatorium he decides his only chance of being cured is to find the missing interpreter and find out about the mysterious illness which has taken over his life. There now begins a journey through Europe which takes him as far as the Crimea. This is no travelogue but an exploration of cultural diversity, language, identity and crime.
It is a very entertaining novel with a lot of humour but also dark and frightening. It shows how easily all the certainties of life can disappear and how an individual can be left defenceless to the buffetings of external forces beyond his control. The narrator in the novel loses everything but the power of the human spirit keeps him alive and he fights back. For him life is an obstacle race where the obstacles can change from day to day, and where you must adapt to survive.
As with Marani’s earlier novels, New Finnish Grammar and The Last of the Vostyachs, the importance of language and identity are at the heart of the novel:
Languages are like toothbrushes: the only one you should put in your mouth is your own. It's a question of hygiene... it's dangerous to let yourself be contaminated by the germs of another tongue.
It is your language and your culture which give you your identity and make you what you are. When times get tough it is a bulwark against chaos and adversity. Your language and culture help you belong in society and connect you to both the past and the future. Whatever journeys we undertake, we take with us our language and culture and we do not lose them however much our life changes. We can learn new languages and immerse ourselves in new cultures, but we still retain the language and culture which surrounded us in our formative years and in which we were educated. This is why exile is so painful for most adults. Indeed, people who have left their homes for work in foreign countries remain truer to the traditions that they grew up with than people who remain behind in a changing society. For the exile, a country can’t change as it exists only in his mind, frozen in aspic, and it is to this country of the mind that he wants to return. Indeed, as many returning immigrants discover, the country they left behind no longer exists and they can’t readjust to the country which has taken its place.
The themes of the novel are carefully embedded in a thriller plot and do not interfere with a cracking yarn rich in event and the unexpected. Diego Marani shows that he is at home with the detective story, so it is not a surprise that he has gone on to write detective fiction with God’s Dog. The issues raised in The Interpreter are answered, but what the narrator has learnt does not seem worth the price that he has paid and will continue to pay.
Books by Diego Marani from the British Library's collections
Eric Lane, Dedalus Books
21 January 2016
Imagining Don Quixote
‘Imagining Don Quixote’, a free exhibition focusing on how Cervantes’ novel has been illustrated over time, opened in the British Library’s Treasures Gallery on 19 January and runs until 22 May. It explores how different approaches to illustrating the work have reflected changing interpretations both of Don Quixote, the novel, and of its eponymous protagonist. The most significant shift has been in the perception of Don Quixote as figure of burlesque fun to noble idealist brought low. This blog post looks at the depiction of Don Quixote himself.
Miguel de Cervantes’ El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha, published in two parts (1605, 1615), tells how Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, his squire, set out to win fame by righting wrongs and succouring the weak and distressed. Cervantes gives succinct descriptions of Don Quixote: ‘approximately fifty years old; his complexion was weathered, his flesh scrawny, his face gaunt’ (DQ I, 1); later Don Diego de Miranda was ‘amazed by the length of his horse, his height, his thin, sallow face… a form and appearance not seen for many long years’ (DQ II, 16). Even so depictions of Don Quixote have varied over time and differences reflect changing views of the novel. In the 17th century it was appreciated for its burlesque, often physical humour, and character was subordinate to narrative. Illustrators do portray Don Quixote as tall and elderly, Sancho as shorter and more stout, but the contrast is not an exaggerated one, as in this anonymous English illustration:
Frontispiece of Miguel de Cervantes, The History of the Most Renown’d Don Quixote (London, 1687) Cerv.336
In the 18th century the editors of the first scholarly edition (1738) saw the novel as a satire directed against fantastical literature which caused readers to confuse fiction with history. They restricted the physical humour in the illustrations and sought to elevate the character of Don Quixote. Here he courteously greets two women as noble ladies, although Cervantes’ text indicates that they are prostitutes (DQ I, 2).
Miguel de Cervantes, Vida y hechos del ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (London, 1738) 86.l.2-5
John Vanderbank’s illustration adds a nobility of gesture to Quixote’s height, as prescribed by Cervantes.
One artist was crucial in establishing a sympathetic image of Don Quixote: Gustave Doré (1832-1883). The illustrations of his monumental edition (Paris, 1863) have been reproduced in many later editions. Doré’s Quixote is elongated and thin indeed but his bearing is altogether more heroic, especially in outdoor scenes. This portrayal – looking upwards, lance pointing skyward - accords with the growing Romantic tendency to see Don Quixote as an idealist brought low by harsh reality and the mockery of others (DQ I, 3).
Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote…. (London, 1876-1878) 12491.m.2
Until around the middle of the 19th century not only book illustration, but also prints, drawings and paintings had depicted specific episodes of the novel. However, Doré’s contemporary Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) focused almost exclusively on the two protagonists. The skeletal figure of the tall, thin knight on a painfully bony horse is instantly recognizable and has become part of our collective imagery. Here, Sancho Panza is represented only by the smaller, rotund figure in the background.
Honoré Daumier, Don Quixote (1868). Neue Pinakothek, Munich.
Mention Don Quixote and Sancho today to most people and the image of a tall, thin man, accompanied by a short, fat man will come to mind. And that is without having read Cervantes’s novel. The image they are recalling, however vaguely, is most probably Picasso’s pen-and-ink drawing of 1955.
Picasso ‘Don Quixote’ (1955) (image from Wikimedia Commons)
Don Quixote is long of face and body; his horse, Rocinante, more haggard still; by contrast, rotund Sancho Panza sits comfortably on his donkey. Picasso’s drawing continues the restricted representation begun by Daumier in the previous century. Picasso also includes the windmills that appear in the best-known episode, when Quixote mistakes them for giants. The sun makes the drawing more emblematic of Spain.
Separation of the image of Don Quixote from the novel’s narrative has also enabled its use in many other contexts: propaganda, advertising, postcards, playing cards, ceramics, porcelain figurines… All of which serve to keep the picture of the tall, thin knight and his rotund squire in our collective mind.
Geoff West, former Head of Hispanic Collections
References/further reading
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, translated by Edith Grossman (London, 2004). Nov.2005/1526
La imagen del ‘Quijote’ en el mundo (Barcelona, 2004). LF.31.b.1670
Patrick Lenaghan, Imágenes del Quijote: modelos de representación en las ediciones de los siglos XVII a XIX (Madrid, 2003). LF.31.a.88
Rachel Schmidt, Critical Images: the Canonization of Don Quixote through Illustrated Editions of the Eighteenth Century (Montreal & Kingston, 1999 2708.h.767
19 January 2016
Tolstoy’s Anglophone Admirers: British, Irish and American visitors to Yasnaia Poliana
“The Englishman or American who wishes to know what the man [Tolstoy] was like in the environment - how he saw himself and was seen by those who shared it, cannot do better than read the long and detailed biography of the great Russian which was prepared by Paul Birukoff from material furnished by Tolstoy himself and often written by him.” (New York Times 25 February 1912).
Portrait of Tolstoy, 1880s. British Library Add. MS 52772 f.120
Of course, some Englishmen and Americans were prepared to travel a long way to be able to see Tolstoy and speak to him. This should not be surprising at all, if we remember that from the mid-1890s Tolstoy’s articles were frequently published in major British newspapers. The majority of his essays, both in Russian and English, first appeared in England as a result of the publishing activities of Tolstoy’s friend and supporter Vladimir Chertkov.
One of Tolstoy’s English visitors was Sir Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1862-1940), Secretary and Librarian of the London Library. He translated Tolstoy and had the reputation of being a liberal Russophile. Wright visited Tolstoy four or five times from 1890. On 13 September 1908 Tolstoy’s wife Sofia Andreevna noted in her diary that he was among the guests on one of those busy days of Tolstoy’s 80th jubilee. Wright presented Tolstoy with a letter signed by more than 700 English admirers. Apart from books on the London Library, catalogues, and translations from Russian, Wright wrote an essay ‘Books for Russian prisoners of war in Germany’ (T. W. Koch, Books in camp, trench, and hospital) and an introduction to C. E. Vulliamy’s selection of Russian state papers and other documents relating to the years 1915-1918, published in English as The Red Archives (London, 1929; 09455.ff.55.).
The American author Ernest Howard Crosby (1856–1907) was also very much influenced by Tolstoy and visited him in Yasnaia Poliana in 1894. He became the most devoted among Tolstoy’s nearly 70 American correspondents and did much to to promote Tolstoy’s ideas in America. In 1903, Crosby published a book Tolstoy and his Message (012203.e.7/1.) and a year later Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster.
E.H. Crosby, Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster (London , 1904). B.6.b.31
Crosby recommended to Tolstoy certain friends who also wanted to see the great man. One of them was Robert Hunter (1884-1942), an American sociologist, public figure and and socialist, who left a detailed account of a visit to Tolstoy on 12 July 1903 (Add. MS 52772 ff. 95-108). Hunter wrote what Tolstoy said about the dilemma that was preoccupying him at that time. Tolstoy felt that he should have disposed of his property and renounced all wealth and luxuries, but could not do so because of his wife and family. In the last decades of his life Tolstoy was painfully aware of the fact that his teaching was not in keeping with his family’s lifestyle. The thought that his inability to give away his material goods compromised his principles and beliefs brought him a lot of suffering and finally became the cause of his flight from home in 1910.
Robert Hunter (image from Wikimedia Commons)
Hunter’s description of his visit to Yasnaia Poliana is kept among the papers of Sydney Carlyle Cockrell (1867-1962), later Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. He visited Tolstoy in the company of “two American friends” (one of them was Hunter) and also left notes on this visit (Add. MS 5277, ff. 80-87v.). As an art historian, he was particularly interested in Tolstoy’s essay ‘What is art?’ (‘Chto takoe iskusstvo?’) and wanted to know Tolstoy’s opinion on William Morris and the John Ruskin who, in Cockrell’s view, had already said many of the things that Tolstoy stated in his essay. Cockrell’s file also contains photographic postcards of Tolstoy (Add. MS 5277, ff. 109-121).
The first Irishman to visit Tolstoy was the journalist and politician Michael Davitt (1846-1906). He came to interview Tolstoy in June 1904, but also appealed for his support of Ireland against England. Davitt visited Tolstoy again in February 1905, this time accompanied by another journalist and translator, Stephen MacKenna (1872-1934), who interviewed Tolstoy about ‘Bloody Sunday’. MacKenna’s account of this visit was published in The Irish Statesman of 1 October 1927. In his book Iasnopolianskie zapiski: 1904-1910 gody (ZF.9.a.5897) Tolstoy’s doctor Dushan Makovitskii noted that Tolstoy had called the Irishmen “lovely (slavnyi), vigorous and merry people”. In the entry of 19 November (2 Dec) 1907 Makovitskii wrote: “At 5.30 p.m. Mr Leslie arrived, a 22-year-old aristocrat and Irish nationalist. Wants to see a ‘simple life’. LN spoke to him in his study about important issues (ser’eznye voprosy)”.
Sir John Randolph Leslie (1885-1971), who wrote under the pseudonym of Shane Leslie, left accounts of his meeting with Tolstoy in his notes of conversations with him and in a letter to his mother Leonie dated 4 December 1907 (both in the National Library of Ireland). It was also later reflected in his fictional and autobiographical books The Cantab, and Long Shadows.
Shane Leslie. The Cantab (London, 1926). X14/7513
In both books Leslie gives fictionalised versions of his conversation with Tolstoy and sometimes he is slightly ironic. His protagonist “became a confirmed vegetarian and promised to learn to plough”. In real life, the meeting had little influence on either of them: Leslie converted to Catholicism in 1908, never abandoned either nationalism or ‘worldly riches’, and embraced pacifism only after his brother’s death in the First World War.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections
References/further reading:
The diaries of Sofia Tolstaya, translated by Cathy Porter. (London, 1985) 85/24964
Leo Tolstoy: his life and work: autobiographical memoirs, letters, and biographical material, compiled by Paul Birukoff and revised by Leo Tolstoi. (London, 1906) 010795.ee.70.
L.N. Tolstoĭ i SShA : perepiska , sostavlenie, podgotovka tekstov, kommentarii, N. Velikanova, R. Vittaker.( Moscow, 2004) 2005.a.18966
14 January 2016
West African Literature and Thought in French
Some of the most important contemporary writing in French has emerged from West Africa. As part of the programme of events accompanying the current British Library exhibition West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song, the Library is holding a seminar on West African Literature and Thought in French on Friday 22 January from 10.30-1700 in the Conference Centre.
This event will bring together authors (including leading writer from the Côte d’Ivoire, Véronique Tadjo), publishers, translators and other specialists to explore topics including the history of the Francophone West African book as well as the complex processes of translation between oral and literary cultures and across various other linguistic, historical and political contexts.
The programme for the seminar is:
10.30-11.00 Registration. Tea/ Coffee
11.00-11.10 Welcome: Janet Zmroczek (Head of European and Americas Collections, British Library)
11.10-12.00 Opening Panel: West Africa at the British Library
- Marion Wallace (British Library), Overview of the British Library’s current major exhibition ‘West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song’
- Jody Butterworth (British Library), Introduction to the Endangered Archives Programmes based in Francophone West Africa
12.00-12.50 Panel: Introducing West African literature and culture (Chair: Patrick Corcoran)
- David Murphy (University of Stirling), Négritude and the rest? A brief history of West African Literature in French
- Chérif Keita (Carleton College), The Sunjata Fasa (The Epic of Sundiata) as the Matrix of Mande Personhood
12.50-13.45 Lunch. A sandwich lunch will be provided.
13.45- 14.45 Round table: Translation and reception (Chair: Charlotte Baker)
With Kathryn Batchelor (University of Nottingham), Georgina Collins (University of Glasgow), Michael Syrotinski, (University of Glasgow), Wangui Wa Goro (SIDENSI)
14.45- 15. 45 Round table: Publishing translated fiction in the UK (Chair: Ruth Bush)
With Becky Nana Ayebia Clarke (Ayebia Clarke Publishing), Suzanne Diop (Présence Africaine Editions), Samantha Schnee (Words without Borders), Audrey Small (University of Sheffield)
15.45-16.00 Tea/Coffee
16.00-17.00 Véronique Tadjo : a reading and a conversation with Nicki Hitchcott (University of Nottingham)
A selection of Veronique Tadjo’s books from the British Library’s collections
The seminar has been organised by Teresa Vernon (British Library) and Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool/AHRC) in partnership with the AHRC ‘Translating Cultures’ theme and The Society for French Studies, with the support of the Institut Français. A book stall provided by the Africa Book Centre will be available on the day.
You can book by following the link to our ‘What’s On’ page or by contacting the British Library Box Office ( +44 (0)1937 546546; [email protected]). Prices are £25 (concessions £15-18, see ‘What’s On’ for full details).
The seminar will be followed in the evening by a performance at 19.00 by acclaimed Malian band Trio Da Kali, who will be performing from their own repertoire, before accompanying Chérif Keita’s recitation of the Epic of Sundiata. Please note that separate tickets are required for this event and for visits to the Exhibition itself (open 09.30-18.00) on the day.
Trio Da Kali (photograph: Youri Lenquette)
11 January 2016
East is East
European attitudes to the East have ranged from maurophobia and sinophobia to maurophilia and sinophilia, as we know from Edward Said’s superstellar work Orientalism and Robert Irwin’s lesser-known reply.
But where is the East? What we used to call the Near East is now called the Middle East. (The Far East seems to have stayed more or less where it was.) The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, founded 30 years ago, is dedicated to “Improving the Quality of U.S. Middle East Policy”.
It is generally accepted that the literature of short fiction such as fables and novelle owes as much to eastern sources as classical. The Spanish are naturally proud of Petrus Alfonsi (Chaucer calls him Piers Alfonce, which makes him sound like a British public schoolboy), born Moses Sefardi in Aragon and converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1106. His Disciplina clericalis is a Latin translation “partly from the sayings of the philosophers and their counsels, partly from Arabic sayings and counsels and fables and verses, partly from bird and animal similitudes”. He is one reason why the Spaniards see themselves as the link between Christianity and Islam, in Menéndez Pidal’s memorable phrase.
The opening of the Disciplina clericalis from a late 13th/early 14th cent. English manuscript. (British Library Royal 10 B XII)
Other texts such as the Tales of Bidpai (alias Pilpay, etc.) travelled westward from Sanskrit to Arabic to Spanish and Latin.
Map showing the westward journey of Calila e Dimna from Gonzalo Menéndez Pidal, Atlas Histórico Español. (Barcelona, 1941) Maps 17.b.48.
The Spanish version, Calila e Dimna, c. 1250, is broadly contemporary with the Latin Directorium vitae humanae of John of Capua. Said John of Capua in his prologue writes:
This is the book of the parables of the ancient sages of the nations of the world. And it is called the Book of Kelila and Dimna; and previously it was translated into the language of the Indians then into the language of the Persians, and then the Arabs translated it into their language; and lastly it was put into the Hebrew language; and now our intention is to turn it into the Latin language.
Woodcut illustration from Directorium vitae humanae ([Strasbourg, ca. 1489]) G.7812.
In another wisdom tale, the clever servant girl Doncella Teodor (Maiden Theodora), in order to save her master’s life, is cross-examined by a committee of scholars on what the Middle Ages called “natural questions”:
Question: What was the first ship that went on the sea?
Answer: Noah’s Ark.
Q: Who is the man of most perfect goodness?
A: He who masters his wrath and and defeats his will.
Q: What is the cause which puts in debt the man who owes nothing?
A: He who uncovers his secret to another man or woman.
Q: Who was it who lived in this world in two bellies?
A: The prophet Jonah, who was in his mother’s womb and in the whale’s belly three days and three nights.
The Dialogue of Doncella Teodor was translated from Arabic (where she is Tawaddud) into Spanish and indeed into Mayan.
The advance of wisdom from east to west continues in the 18th century: as if Tawaddud were not eastern enough, Schiller makes her into a Chinese girl, by the name of Turandot.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections
References:
Margaret Parker, The story of a story across cultures : the case of the Doncella Teodor (Woodbridge, 1996) YC.1996.b.7242
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London, 1979) X.800/27520
Robert Irwin, For lust of knowing: the orientalists and their enemies (London, 2006) YC.2007.a.6196
Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, España, eslabón centre la Cristiandad y el Islam (Madrid, 1956)
F13/1626
31 December 2015
‘On the hay in horses’ stable’: a Kalevala nativity
As 2015 comes to an end, the year in which the 150th anniversary of the birth of Jean Sibelius was celebrated with concerts of his music throughout the world, it is also appropriate to recall that it also marked the 180th anniversary of the publication of the first printed version of the Finnish national epic which inspired so many of his works – the Kalevala.
The first printed edition of the Kalevala (Helsinki, 1835) British Library Ac.9080 [no. 2]
The edition was composed of material gathered by Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), a physician whose work as district doctor of Kajaani in Eastern Finland took him deep into the countryside, as the 4,000 people for whom he was responsible lived in scattered communities. He arrived in the area at a time when it had been ravaged by disease and crop failure, causing his predecessor to resign in despair. However, Lönnrot was ahead of his time in many ways, recognizing the importance of preventive measures such as hygiene and vaccination and also the value of traditional remedies, many of which he employed himself rather than dismissing them as primitive nonsense, and thus won the trust of his patients.
Portrait and facsimile signature of Elias Lönnrot, frontispiece from O.A. Kallio, Elias Lönnrot (Helsinki, 1902) 10760.aa.12
Along with these folk remedies Lönnrot, a passionate advocate of the Finnish language against the enforcement of Swedish and Russian by successive governments, began to collect fragments of ancient lays taken down from local singers. These told of the feud between the people of Kaleva and those of Pohjola, the quest for the Sampo, a powerful talisman, and the exploits of the legendary heroes Lemminkäinen, Kullervo and Väinämöinen, a smith, musician and adventurer who devised the Finnish national instrument, the kantele. Like the Homeric epics, the Kalevala also includes many fascinating details of crafts, warfare and household management, as well as enshrining the values by which the people of Kaleva lived.
Not only Sibelius, in his Kullervo symphony and cycle of Lemminkäinen legends including The Swan of Tuonela, was inspired by the Kalevala. Composers, poets, painters and sculptors in Finland and abroad seized upon the magic and mystery of its verses to explore its many layers of symbolism and potential for expression in a wide variety of media. It has also been translated into many languages since its first appearance. In Finland 28 February is celebrated annually as ‘Kalevala Day’ to commemorate the publication of Lönnrot’s first version of the epic in 1835.
One of the less familiar episodes, though, is especially suited to the Christmas season. In the 50th and final Runo (canto), the narrator tells of Marjatta, a cherished and protected young girl so pure that she will not drive in a sleigh pulled by mares who have been running with a stallion, or drink milk from cows who have been kept with a bull. Sent to the upland pastures to guard the flocks, she eats a magical lingonberry and shortly afterwards finds that she is expecting a child. Her parents cast her out, and she seeks refuge in vain with neighbours who drive her away with harsh words. In a stable deep in the forest she gives birth to a son, warmed by the breath of the horses:
And a sinless child was given,
On the hay in horses’ stable,
On the hay in horses’ manger.
Then she wrapped the little infant
And in swaddling-clothes she wrapped him,
On her knees she took the infant,
And she wrapped her garments round him.
The opening of Marjatta’s story, vignette and design by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, from Kalevala (Porvoo, 1949) o11586.ppp.1.
Shortly afterwards the baby mysteriously vanishes and Marjatta goes in search of him, asking the stars, moon and sun for guidance until she finds him in the marshes and carries him off to be baptized. The old man asked to do so demurs, asking Väinämöinen for his judgment. When the latter calls for the destruction of the child, the infant speaks out and denounces him, and Väinämöinen, realizing that his power is at an end, sings for the last time before stepping into his copper boat and sailing away, leaving his kantele as a final gift to ‘Suomi’s children’.
Drawing together the threads of Christian and pagan tradition like Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, the closing lines of the Kalevala sum up its enduring significance for the Finnish people and for poets throughout the world:
Here the path lies newly opened,
Widely open for the singers,
And for greater ballad singers,
For the young, who now are growing,
For the rising generation.
Susan Halstead, Content Specialist (Humanities and Social Sciences), Research Engagement.
The last lines of the Kalevala, with vignette by Akseli Gallen-Kallela of a child playing the kantele, from o11586.ppp.1.
21 December 2015
World proverbs in speech, text and image
All the world over, wise people say “Nobody knows his own defects” and “What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over”.
You may find this an inspiring indication of the oneness of mankind, or alternatively depressing proof of the lack of originality of the human mind.
The current BL exhibition “West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song” includes some small figures which are thought to refer to popular proverbs.
As described in the exhibition catalogue, “The gold-weight [above, from the collections of the British Museum] depicting two crocodiles with one stomach embodies the Asante proverb Funtufunefu, denkyemfunefu, won efuru bom, nso woredidi a na woreko, meaning that even though they have one stomach, they fight over food when eating.” (p. 123).
It’s from Ghana, and dated somewhere in the 18th to 20th centuries.
I’m reminded of European misericords, carvings under the seats in the choir stalls of medieval churches. These often show motifs which can be matched to popular tales or sayings. The examples below from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam show a man banging his head against a brick wall and another falling between two stools. (These two images also occur in Bruegel).
European popular proverbs are written down, in the context of Latin literature, as early as the 13th century. The most common contexts are sermons and grammar books.
Arabic proverbs (more properly learned than popular) made their entrance in the West in 13th-century Spain, and were printed in erudite bilingual Arabic-Latin collections from the early 17th century on.
African proverbs, at least in those parts which were occupied by Britain and France, were not printed until the 19th century (see Moll’s bibliography).
The BL recently acquired a book which I think is typical of the first printing of African proverbs:
Elementos grammaticaes da lingua Nbundu offerecidos a S.M.F.O. Senhor D. Luis I por Dr. Saturnino de Sousa e Oliveira e Manuel Alves de Castro Francina (Loanda, 1864) YF.2015.a.25009
The context is a grammar of the Nbundu (Kimbundu) language, spoken in Angola. Early printed grammars of French (etc.) for English (etc.) speakers regularly included an anthology of proverbs. And so it is in this book of 1864.
Here the Nbundu original is given followed by the literal Portuguese translation, and then the Portuguese equivalent.
Elementos Grammaticaes proverbs
The monkey doesn’t look at his tail
Often the ant dominates the elephant
What the eyes see, causes envy
The rat is an expert in his hole
One who makes water often cannot lie down in a wet place
The witchdoctor starts with his own house and ends up outside
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies
References/further reading:
Walter S. Gibson, Figures of speech : picturing proverbs in renaissance Netherlands (London, 2010) YC.2010.a.7023
Otto E. Moll, Sprichwörterbibliographie (Frankfurt am Main, [1958]) Humanities 1 Reading Room HLR 398.9
Barry Taylor, ‘Los Libros de proverbios bilingües: disposición e intención’, in Corpus, genres, théories et méthodes: construction d’une base de données, ed. Marie-Christine Bornes-Varol and Marie-Sol Ortola (Nancy, 2010), pp. 119-29. YF.2012.a.22372
Barry Taylor, ‘Éditions bilingues de textes espagnols’, K výzkumu zámeckých, měšťanských a cirkevnich knihoven, ‘Jazyk a řeč knihy’, Opera romanica, 11 (2009), 385-94. ZF.9.a.4837
West Africa : word, symbol, song / general editors, Gus Casely-Hayford, Janet Topp Fargion and Marion Wallace. 2015.
15 December 2015
The Man who Hoped: Celebrating Esperanto Book Day
Type the name “L.L. Zamenhof” into the British Library’s online catalogue and dozens of results will appear: books, articles, journals and scores. As time passes and the centenary of Zamenhof’s death (14 April 1917) approaches, more and items will be added to our collections, as the fascinating personality of the creator of Esperanto and his language keeps attracting the attention of more scholars worldwide.
Portrait of L.L. Zamenhof (from The Life of Zamenhof by Edmond Privat, London, 1931). 010795.a.77
The most recent academic study in the catalogue is Esperanto and its Rivals (Philadelphia, 2015; m15/.11262). Its author, Roberto Garvía, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, starts with the story of George Orwell’s not-so-happy stay in Paris with his aunt Nellie Limouzin and her partner, radical Esperantist Eugene Adam, known as Eugeno Lanti. The second, and longest part of the book is dedicated to Esperanto and the third to its very diverse users worldwide. Part I is dedicated to Volapük and Part IV to “Ido and its Satellites”.
Another book by Esther H. Schor, Bridge of words: Esperanto and the dream of a universal language (New York, 2015) will join the collection soon. The classic work by Umberto Eco La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea (Rome, 1993; YF.2005.a.22144), which dedicates some pages to Esperanto, is also available to readers in English translation by James Fentress as The search for the perfect language (Oxford, 1995; YC.1996.b.4086) and, of course, in Esperanto too, translated by Daniele Mistretta: La serĉado de la perfekta lingvo: en la Eŭropa kulturo (Pisa, 1994; YA.2001.a.15737).
Many people worldwide have found and keep finding their “perfect language”. For them it is Esperanto. They use it often or even on a daily basis, as Zamenhof intended: for international communication. Some Esperantists share their experiences with wider public in blogs and books. The fervent Irish Esperantist, educationalist and environmentalist, Maire Mullarney published Esperanto for hope in 1989; it was republished in 1999 as Everyone’s own language (YK.2002.a.6844), followed by another book, Maire Mullarney argues about language (Galway, 2004). Some authors are seeking a special mission for Esperanto in the modern world. The German Esperantist Ulrich Matthias published a book Esperanto - das neue Latein der Kirche [Esperanto: the new Latin for the Church] (Messkirch, 1999; Esperanto version, Esperanto: la nova latino de la eklezio, Antwerp, 2001. YF.2009.a.26086).
And, of course, we have quite a few biographies of Zamenhof himself. Some of them were translated into English, such as The Life of Zamenhof by Edmont Privat translated by Ralph Eliott. Others were written in English first, e.g. Zamenhof, Creator of Esperanto by Marjorie Boulton. (London,1960; 10667.m.13). No lack of “secrets revealed” either! La kâsita vivo de Zamenhof [The Hidden life of Zamenhof] (Tokyo, 1978; YF.2007.a.19318) by N.Z. Maimon looks as the ideology of Homaranismo developed by Zamenhof.
Original works and translations by Zamenhof are part of our collections, as well as La Unua Libro and his correspondence (Leteroj de L.L.Zamenhof, Paris, 1948; ZF.9.a.6229). More than 900 photos related to Zamenhof, his works and his family, are collected in the Granda Galerio Zamenhofa published by Adolf Holzhaus (1892–1982) at his own expense (Helsinki, 1973; YA.2001.b.4401).
Selection of biographies of L.L.Zamenhof from our collections (Photo by Olga Kerziouk)
Our Esperanto Collections are also rich in material about the whole Zamenhof family. Two of Zamenhof’s younger brothers became ardent Esperantists themselves and tried their hand at poetry and translations. Leono Zamenhof (1875-1934) translated Aleksander Świętochowski’s drama Aspazja into Esperanto as Aspazio (Paris, 1908; also available as an e-book in Project Gutenberg, where more than 50 books in Esperanto are digitised). Feliks Zamenhof, known as Fez, wrote poetry in Esperanto and translated too. A collection of his works Verkoj de Fez: plena Verkaro de Dro Felikso Zamenhof, edited by Edvardo Wiesenfeld,was published in Budapest in 1935. Recently the Polish researcher Marian Kostecki collected and published the poetical works of both brothers in one book, Esperanta verkaro de fratoj Zamenhof (Czeladź, 2006?; YF.2008.a.25231).
Photograph of Felix Zamenhof from Verkoj de Fez. Budapest, 1931. YF.2014.a.2787
L.L. Zamenhof and his wife Klara had three children, Adam, Sofia and Lidia, all of whom perished in the Holocaust. The best known is Lidia, who was a keen teacher of Esperanto and traveller. Lidia became a dedicated follower of the Bahai Faith after meeting the American journalist Martha Root. The tragic life of Lidia Zamenhof, who died in Treblinka, is the subject of the American writer Wendy Heller’s book Lidia: the life of Lidia Zamenhof, daughter of Esperanto (Oxford, c1985; X.950/44270)
Photo of Lidia Zamenhof (From Wikimedia Commons)
Recently Zamenhof himself became the hero of a novel by the American writer Joseph Skibell, A Curable Romantic (London, 2010; Nov.2013/1041) – together with Sigmund Freud! Esther Shor published an interesting review in The New Republic.
December 15, the birthday of L.L. Zamenhof, is also known as Esperanto Book Day. Keen reader Maire Mullarney wrote in her book Everyone’s own language: “Welcomed at first, later detested by dictators, undermined by the jealous, Esperanto grew steadily, and now is in excellent health”. Use the opportunity to visit the British Library and to find more about Lingvo Internacia and its creator.
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto studies
References/Further reading
Zofia Banet-Fornalowa, La familio Zamenhof.(La Chaux-de-Fonds, 2000). YF.2008.a.17135
Aleksander Korĵenkov, “Homarano”: la vivo, verkoj kaj ideoj de d-ro L.L. Zamenhof. La 2a eldono, korektita kaj ampleksigita. (Kaliningrad, 2011). YF.2011.a.23688
Zbigniew Romaniuk and Tomasz Wiśniewski. Ĉio komenciĝis ce la Verda : pri Ludoviko Zamenhof, lia familio kaj la komenco de Esperanto = Zaczęło sie na Zielonej. (Łódż, 2009).YF.2010.a.417
Henk Thien. La vivo de D.ro L.L. Zamenhof en bildoj. (s.l., 1970) YA.2001.b.4400
Halina dokumento pri la studentaj jaroj de L.L.Zamenhof. (Osaka, 1977). YF.2008.a.17335
La lastaj Tagoj de d-ro L.L.Zamenhof kaj la Funebra Ceremonio. (Kolonjo-Horrem, 1921). YF.2008.a.12302
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