This year marks the centenary of the establishment of Czechoslovakia as an independent state. Today we also commemorate the 60th anniversary of the death of one of the new country’s most notable poets, Vítězslav Nezval. He belonged to the generation which found its voice as Czechoslovakia itself was finding its place on the international stage in culture as well as politics.

Portrait of Nezval by Josef Šíma from Menší růžová zahrada (Prague, 1926) YA.1997.a.5557

Many of the young poets of the First Republic were members of the left-wing avant-garde, in general strongly influenced by modern French poetry. They had made their acquaintance with it through Karel Čapek’s outstanding anthology of translations Francouzská poezie nové doby (Prague, 1920; Cup.410.f.663 ), and it would leave a lasting imprint on Nezval’s own development; in particular he was strongly influenced by Guillaume Apollinaire.

It was in this decade that the Poetist movement evolved as modernity’s recreational counterpart to Constructivism. Its leading figures included the writer on art and architecture Karel Teige (1900-51), who summed up its nature as ‘easy-going, mischievous, fantastic, playful, non-heroic, and erotic’, a spirit which Nezval gleefully evoked in polythematic poems such as Podivuhodný kouzelník (‘The Marvellous Magician’, 1922) and Akrobat (‘Acrobat’, 1927).

 The dancer Milca Mayerová posing as one of the letters of the alphabet, and the cover of Nezval’s Abeceda (Prague, 1926) Cup.409.b.5.

Nezval, as the son of a musical and art-loving schoolmaster from Moravia, had displayed a talent for music early in life and was far more at home in artistic circles than at Charles University, where he studied philosophy but never graduated. His companions in Prague’s cafés and studios included not only Teige but also Jindřich Štyrský, Jaroslav Seifert and Toyen (Marie Cerminová), and in 1922 they bonded together to found the avant-garde group Devětsil (literally ‘nine forces’, the Czech name of the butterbur plant, but with an implicit reference to the nine founding members of the group). They frequently collaborated on artistic and typographical projects; Nezval’s poem Židovský hřbitov (‘The Jewish Cemetery’), for example, featured six original lithographs by Štyrský and typographic design by Teige.

Above: Lithograph by Jindřich Štyrský from Židovský hřbitov (Prague, 1928) Cup.410.g.577. Below: the author’s signature from the flyleaf.

It was natural that Nezval’s interests should lead him to visit France, where he made contact with many of the most significant figures in the Surrealist movement, including André Breton and Paul Éluard. As a result of this a specifically Czechoslovak Surrealist group was established in 1934; Nezval had already translated Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto in 1930, and he went on to edit the group’s journal Surrealismus. His collections from this period, such as Praha s prsty deště (‘Prague with Fingers of Rain’; Prague, 1936; Cup.408.zz.27) reflect this influence, while a later collection, Absolutní hrobař (‘Gravedigger of the Absolute’; Prague, 1937; X.989/38352), was strongly influenced by the paintings of Salvador Dali and might be said to be his most Surrealist work.

 Cover of Surrealismus (Prague, 1936) RF.1999.b.2.

Initially the young Poetists had been eager for more extreme political action than that advocated by President Masaryk and his followers, and had identified with the international Marxist and proletarian movements. Nezval subsequently rejected André Breton’s doctrine, and returned to a less experimental poetic style which was linked to his staunch support for Communism. Unlike his contemporary Jaroslav Seifert, for example, who left the party in 1929 and went on to become one of the signatories of Charter 77 , Nezval remained loyal to it and from 1945 to 1950 even headed the propagandistic film department at Czechoslovakia’s Ministry of Information. He also composed an effusive poem in praise of Stalin, which makes uncomfortable reading when one considers the worst excesses of the era following the Communist takeover of 1948.

However, when his writings of this nature have been justly forgotten, it is perhaps for his evocations of Prague itself, its people, buildings and landscapes, that Nezval will be remembered. He portrays in loving detail its shop-windows at Christmas-time, its office girls waiting for a tram, its bridges, chimneys, markets and acacia-trees, and Prague in the midday sun, ‘beautiful as the mystery of love and improbable clouds’. And, summing up the quirky contradictions of Poetism, here is one of the best-loved poems from his collection Sbohem a šáteček (‘A Farewell and a Handkerchief'; 1933), ‘Pocket Handkerchief’:

I’m taking off today; I feel like crying—
Just time to wave my handkerchief, I see;
If all the world were one great gaudy poster,
Cynic, I’d tear it, throw it in the sea.

Just like a fish, this vale of tears absorbed me,
Its image, broken thirty times, composed;
Now leave me, skylark, your great glorious error,
If I must sing, I’d sob a bit, one knows.

The kerchief flutters down; the city opens—
Grotesquely, at the tunnel’s mouth, it breaks;
A pity death’s not just a long black journey,
From which, in some unknown hotel, I’d wake.

You whom I loved like Andrea del Sarto,
Turn a silk kerchief for fair women’s eyes;
And, if you know death’s just a leap, a moment—
Don’t flinch, now—Good day, goshawk!—up one flies!
(Translation © Susan Reynolds, 2011.)

Susan Halstead (Reynolds), Subject Librarian (Social Sciences) Research Services.

In this centenary year of the independence of each of the Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, great efforts are being made to promote the three very distinct literatures of those countries in translation. Until now, when lists of works appearing in translation were produced by the literature-promoting agencies of each country, English translations made up the shortest list among the European languages.

Since English is more widely spoken in Europe than the other languages into which translations are made, it is a matter of urgency to rectify this, and now, in this centenary year, being marked by ‘market focus’ status at the London Book Fair in 2018, there is a chance to showcase the rich diversity of Baltic literature – in translation.

The reverse side of the coin is the huge competition for the attention of English-speaking readers in the marketplace. Only a small proportion of each country’s literature is seen as worth translating into English, given the relative unpopularity of translated literature among Anglophones.

Part of the problem in the Baltic case is that there are practically no opportunities to study these literatures, either in the original or in translation, at British universities. At the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (part of University College London), from 2018 it will be possible to study an undergraduate course introducing the literatures of these three countries in English translation. The range of available texts is now at last expanding rapidly.

Each of the Baltic republics’ governments operates a state-subsidised translation programme; these have existed almost since the countries regained their independence in 1991. With the centenary celebrations and the market focus at the London Book Fair, English is being emphasised as a target language this year. Both modern works and the classical canon are being represented, and the introductory course will try to give at least a taste of as many genres and generations of writing from each Baltic country as possible.

Cover (above) and title-page (below) of Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, Kalevipoeg (Tartu, 1935). Ac.9076/19. 

The languages are ancient, but the literary traditions are relatively young. To present the ‘folk’ literature of each nation is to be thrust into the 19th-century National Awakening which followed in the wake of Enlightenment scholars such as Herder and their influence filtered through the Baltic German nobility (at least in Livonia, the northern half of the region). In Estonia the national epic Kalevipoeg (The Son of Kalev) was largely the work of 19th-century authors Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald and Friedrich Robert Faehlmann, inspired by the more genuinely ancient folk poetry of the Kalevala in Finland.

In Latvia, too, the work of epic ancient heroism Lāčplēsis (The Bear Slayer) was the work of one 19th-century author, Andrejs Pumpurs. The germ of this creation, however, lay in much older oral verse, as gathered by Krišjānis Barons in his vast collection of dainas – short rhymed verses reflecting folk wisdom on various aspects of life, love and the annual cycle of the seasons.

Title page of Latwju dainas (Jelgawa, 1894). X.900/4488

The situation in Lithuania was slightly different, the result of different historical processes and the long political association with Poland. The first notable Lithuanian work available in any kind of English translation is Kristijonas Donelaitis’ 18th-century poetical cycle Metai (The Seasons) – there were earlier poets and writers, but their work is still virtually inaccessible to the English speaker.

From the 19th century onward certain trends are detectable that reflect European literary movements of the time, but the works are also specific to each country’s situation. 19th-century literature is inextricably linked to the struggle for recognition and development of the languages as literary vehicles in their own right.

Early examples of the novel genre, such as the Latvian Kaudzīte brothers’ Mērnieku laiki (The Time of the Surveyors), are not readily available in English. In fact, any literature written before the first independence period (1918-1940) is hard to come by in English translation. Breaking away from foreign cultural models was linked to the prevalence of Russian and German in education in the Baltic countries. The full flowering of the novel came with independence, with authors such as A.H.Tammsaare and Friedebert Tuglas in Estonia and Andrejs Upītis in Latvia. Among the most prolifically translated Baltic authors is Jaan Kross of Estonia.

Title-page and frontispiece of  Friedebert Tuglas, Riders in the sky (Tallinn, 1986). YA.1992.b.648

Poetry in translation is mostly confined to anthologised work, but it spans both of the independence periods. Some poets have achieved international distinction, such as Tomas Venclova from Lithuania and Jaan Kaplinski from Estonia. What is more difficult to obtain in English is drama – very few plays from the Baltic republics have appeared in English, not even the works of the Latvian Rūdolfs Blaumanis, and thus the survey of literature in translation is a little lopsided as to genres.

Cover of Jaan Kaplinski, Through the Forest, translated by Hildi Hawkins (London, 1996). YK.1997.a.3737

Contemporary literature is much more widely available in translation. Writers who lived into the second independence period, or are writing now, are making their literatures known more than ever before. In Lithuania, Ričardas Gavelis and Jurgis Kunčinas; in Latvia, Pauls Bankovskis and Zigmunds Skujiņš; in Estonia, Andrus Kivirähk and Indrek Hargla have recently become available in English, to name but a few.

Baltic literature in English translation is still patchy in its coverage. Certain writers who are central to the canon in their own countries – Oskar Luts in Estonia, Jānis Rainis in Latvia and Vincas Krėvė in Lithuania, are still sorely under-represented. But this is an exciting time to become acquainted with this previously little-known corner of Europe and the literary treasures it holds.

Christopher Moseley, Teaching Fellow in Estonian, SSEES, UCL

On 9 April the British Library will be hosting ‘Being Baltic’, a discussion with three leading Baltic writers – Mihkel Mutt (Estonia), Nora Ikstena (Latvia) and Kristina Sabaliauskaitė (Lithuania) chaired by Rosie Goldsmith. You can find more details and book online here.

 

The tradition of Easter Passion Plays, re-enacting the Biblical story of Jesus’s last days, crucifixion and resurrection, dates back to the Middle Ages, but the world’s most famous Passion Play, performed once every decade in the Bavarian village of Oberammergau, has its origins in the 17th century.

Oberammergau and its Passion-Play theatre in 1890. From John P. Jackson, Album of the Passion-Play at Ober-Ammergau ... (Munich, 1891) 1871.d.24

During a plague epidemic in 1633 the villagers swore an oath to re-enact the Passion every ten years if they were spared from further deaths. The death-toll allegedly fell to nothing and in 1634 the villagers duly staged their play for the first time. The regular performance year was later moved to the last year of each decade.

Opening of the oldest surviving version of the script (1662), and a programme for the 1780 performance. Reproduced in Norbert Jaron and Bärbel Rudin, Das Oberammergauer Passionsspiel: eine Chronik in Bildern (Dortmund, 1984) YV.1987.a.740.

The play combines the action of the Passion story with sung choruses and tableaux of Old Testament scenes interpreted as prefigurations of the life of Jesus. As Oberammergau had no existing Passion play tradition, the first play-text was put together from various sources. In its first two centuries it underwent various revisions and rewrites, reaching its longest-lasting form in 1860 in a version by the local priest, Joseph Alois Daisenberger.

‘Jacob receives Joseph’s bloodstained coat’. Tableau from a performance in 1850. Illustration by Friedrich Pecht from, Eduard Devrient, Das Passionsschauspiel in Oberammergau und seine Bedeutung für die neue Zeit (Leipzig, 1851). 11746.l.16.

In the mid-19th century, the Oberammergau Passion Play began to attract wider attention, as more visitors from outside began to attend the performaces and to publish accounts of their impressions. One such account of the 1850 play by the actor Eduard Devrient was particularly influential in establishing the play not just as a moving religious experience but also as an expression of the ‘German national spirit’.

Cover of Devrient’s, Das Passionsschauspiel in Oberammergau ...

It was the former aspect (as well as improvements to transport and the development of international tourism) that began to draw ‘pilgrims’ from beyond Germany to the play. Even those prepared to be cynical, fearing crude performances by uneducated peasants, tended to find themselves overwhelmed by religious feeling. Gerard Molloy, writing about the performances of 1871 (the regular cycle had been disrupted by the Franco-Prussian War), quotes a number of emotional responses from British visitors, including a woman who ‘forgot all but the wonderful story of our salvation and cried all day.’ A less overwrought account is found in Jerome K. Jerome’s Diary of a Pilgrimage (Bristol, 1891; 12331.i.36.), which combines a comical description of the author’s journey to Oberammergau in 1890 with a fairly straight discussion of the play itself.

Jesus (played by Josef Mayr) blessing John (Johannes Zwink) and Peter (Jakob Hett) in the 1871 production. From Gerard Molloy, The Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau, in the summer of 1871 (London, 1872) RB.23.a.26273.

As the play’s international popularity grew, guidebooks and programmes began to appear, featuring not only details of the performances but also advertisements for local hotels, restaurants and shops, and advice about places to visit nearby. The play was becoming a focus for package holidays and an important part of the local economy.

Guidebooks to Oberammergau and the Passion Play from 1880 (10240.e.3), 1900 (11791.c.55) and 1930 (11795.p.21.)

Some of the local performers also began to enjoy a degree of celebrity. Their portraits featured in many accounts, and one lavish souvenir volume of the 1890 performances even includes pictures of the principal performers’ houses. Anton Lang who played Jesus from 1900-1920 published an autobiography which ran to two editions. But despite all the publicity and the commercial aspect of the festival, the people of Oberammergau continued (and continue) to see the play first and foremost as a solemn religious undertaking.

Above: Portraits of the principal performers in 1890, from John P. Jackson, Album of the Passion-Play; Below: Title-page of Anton Lang, Aus meinem Leben (Munich, 1938) 10710.a.47, with a portrait of Lang in the character of Jesus

In 1934 additional performances of the play took place. These marked the 300th anniversary of the original production, but were also used by Germany’s new Nazi rulers to link the play and Devrient’s conception of its ‘German national spirit’ with their own regime. The introduction to the 1934 edition of the play-text makes this clear, speaking of ‘the fortune of a new life which unites us all in our race’ and of ‘the suppression of the antichristian powers in our fatherland’.

Title-page and frontispiece from the official 1934 play-text, Das Passions-Spiel in Oberammergau (Munich, 1934)  11749.aa.12.

One feature of the play that particularly appealed to the Nazis was the strongly anti-semitic slant of the text. This troubling aspect was highlighted as early as 1901 in a book by an American Rabbi, Joseph Krauskopf, who had seen the play in 1900 and was shocked and angered at ‘seeing one gross misrepresentation of the Jewish people after the other’.

Title-page and frontispiece portrait from Joseph Krauskopf, A Rabbi’s Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play (Philadelphia, 1901.) 011795.aaa.4. Text available online at: http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/rio/index.htm

Astonishingly, however, even after 1945 the issue of antisemitism was not addressed for some decades, in spite of growing international complaints and a partial boycott of the 1970 performances in protest. Although the play had a history of being revised and rewritten, Daisenberger’s 1860 text had somehow acquired a canonical status which the organisers were obstinately unwilling to challenge, and it was used more or less unchanged until the 1980s. It was only in the following decade that Oberammergau began seriously to reconsider the play’s depiction of Jews and Judaism. Change has been gradual, but recent directors have worked with both Jewish and Catholic experts to create a script and presentation more in keeping with a modern understanding of the New Testament story, and in particular to remind audiences that Jesus himself was Jewish.

How well these challenges have been met will be apparent when the play is next performed. It is to be hoped that this remarkable , nearly 400-year-old tradition of community performance can survive in a form fitted to our times, to be appreciated by religious and secular audiences of all backgrounds alike.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

Further reading:

The Oberammergau passion play: essays on the 2010 performance and the centuries-long tradition, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore (Jefferson NC, 2017) YC.2018.a.11909

Tomas Dashuber, Ecce Homo: die Entstehung des Oberammergauer Passionsspiels (Munich, 2000) LB.31.b.20379

James Shapiro, Oberammergau: the troubling story of the world's most famous Passion play (London, 2000) YC.2000.a.8555.

Roland Kaltenegger, Oberammergau und die Passionsspiele 1634-1984 (Munich, 1984) YV.1987.b.1758

In 2018 Leeuwarden is not only capital of the province of Friesland, but also European Capital of Culture. 

To celebrate this special year I shall be writing a series of blog posts on our holdings of Frisian literature throughout the year. As it happens today (29 March) is the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of Friesland’s best known and most prolific poets: Obe Postma.

Portrait of Obe Postma from his collection Fan wjerklank en bisinnen (Drachten, 1957) 011565.h.8.

He was the son of a farmer from Koarnwerd, Friesland. The Frisian landscape in which he grew up became his life-long inspiration for his poetry, even when he moved to Amsterdam to study mathematics and physics. He would never live in the countryside again, teaching mathematics and mechanics at the HBS (Higher Civil School) in Groningen for his whole working life. After retirement he moved to Leeuwarden, where he died in 1963.

A Frisian landscape: ‘Nieuwebrug’, oil on canvas by Bonne Dijkstra, reproduced in Sjouke Visser (ed.) Het Friese landschap (Harlingen, 1986) LB.31.b.309

Postma’s career as a poet took off relatively late, at the age of 34, but continued right up to his last days, spanning six decades. In 1918, at the age of 50, he published his first collection of poetry: Fryske Lȃn en Fryske Libben

Cover of Fryske Lân en Fryske Libben (Snits, 1918) 011557.l.33

His early career is characterised by poetry about the Frisian landscape, which earned him the accolade of ‘Poet of the Frisian Landscape’. Postma is sometimes seen as a ‘naïve’ and nostalgic, even ‘provincial’ poet, but this ignores the fact that he was deeply influenced by literature and philosophy, as well as by his scientific background. He knew what was going on in the world of poetry, both in Friesland and beyond. He combined a sharp eye for the simple day-to-day realities, such as a flower meadow, with a feeling for the sublime, with ‘beauty as living principle within the cosmos, the infinite that penetrates the finite, the absolute in the relative.’

Postma saw in Emily Dickinson a kindred spirit. He placed her alongside Elizabeth Browning, Christina Rossetti and Emily Brontë as one of the greatest female poets. Dickinson’s lack of sentimentality, her sober choice of words, range of subject matter, but perhaps most of all her love of nature appealed to him. In his literary notes Postma writes: ‘She has played a unique role in restoring to poetry those important characteristics of simplicity, sensuousness, and passion.’ Like no other poet Dickinson expressed most clearly his ideas about what ‘nature’ is and what ‘culture’. He writes that in order to grasp this, ‘ I need to go to Emily Dickinson’s bees.’ 

Above: Emily Dickinson’s ‘The Murmuring of Bees’, from The complete poems of Emily Dickinson (London, 1975) X.909/40625. Below: Obe Postma’s translation, ‘Ut Natûr’, from Samle fersen (Baarn, 1978) X.950.11642.

The British Library holds one anthology of Postma’s poems in English translation, published in 2004. ‘Easter Monday’ is an example of Postma’s early work in which he shows signs of his later philosophy, setting his senses wide open to the wider context in which his beloved Frisian landscape sits.

‘Easter Monday’, originally published in 1927, in De Ljochte Ierde (Snits, 1929) X.909/88993. Translated into English by Anthony Paul and published in What the Poet Must Know (Leeuwarden, 2004) YK.2006.a.1764.

Marja Kingma , Curator Germanic Collections.

References/further reading:

De dichters en de filosofen, ed. Philippus Breuker en Jan Gulmans. (Leeuwarden, 2008). YF.2009.a.25393

Emily Dickinson in leven en dood, ed. Philippus Breuker and J. Gulmans. (Leeuwarden, 2009) YF.2011.a.6038. I am particularly indebted to Albertina Soepboer’s article on Postma and Dickinson in this collection (pp. 62-75)

In útjefte ta gelegenheid fan de ûntbleating fan de búste fan de dichter en wittenskipsman Obe Postma (1868-1963) ed. Geart van der Meer, Jan Gulmans. (Ljouwert, 2014). YF.2017.a.9947

 

 

 Le journal de Marseille, 1793-94, RB.23.a.37976.

This year, a grant from the Friends of the British Library enabled the purchase of the complete set of a rare periodical published in 1793-94 during the French Revolution: 62 issues of the Journal de Marseille, along with 14 issues of its Supplement. It is an important addition to our holdings from the period of French Revolution, in particular the French Revolution tracts collection, comprising some 2,200 volumes.

 French Revolution tracts in the British Library basement

The world of print changed dramatically during and after the French Revolution and the development of the Press reflected the vivacity of the political debates, contributing to the emergence of a public opinion. In the Library’s collections, the Journal de Marseille complements accounts of the revolutionary events which happened in Marseilles and the South of France, printed either in Paris or locally. It can be read alongside other periodicals, such as the Bulletin des Marseillois (R.522.(3)),  the Journal du Département du Var (R.523.(7)),  the Journal de Lyon (F.1074) or the Journal de Bordeaux (R.521.(25)), as well as the Jacobin Journal des débats de la Société des Amis de la Constitution (F.89*-96*). 

Journal de Marseille, 1st issue, 1 October 1793

Marseilles was a key city during the French Revolution (it gave its name to the revolutionary national anthem). The Journal de Marseille et des départemens méridionaux shows how debates within the revolutionary movement added to tensions between royalists and republicans. It was published three times a week (Sunday, Wednesday, Friday) between October 1793 and February 1794 by the Club des Jacobins de Marseille, a local branch of this left-wing society which included members of rival political factions, the Girondins and the Mountain. The Mountain, led by Maximilien Robespierre, and supported by the most militant members of the Club des Jacobins de Marseilles, held radical views which led to extremism and the Reign of Terror in the years 1793-1794. They brutally expelled the Girondins from the National Convention in the summer of 1793, an event which fostered rebellions, especially in the South, where the Girondins, who promoted federalism, were very influential.

 Journal républicain de la Commune sans nom, issue 58, 12 Pluviôse an II (31 January 1794)

The Convention sent troops against the Marseilles insurgents: they took control of the city on 25 August 1793 and set up a Republican tribunal. The city was then deprived of its name and temporarily re-baptised “la Ville sans nom”: from issue 52 onwards, the name of the periodical thus changes to Journal républicain de la Commune sans nom et des départemens méridionaux.

 Journal de Marseille, 2nd issue, 4 October 1793

The Journal was thus at the centre of burning political interests. Its initial editors were Alexandre Ricord (1770-1829) and Sébastien Brumeaux de Lacroix (b. 1768). Ricord was general prosecutor of the Bouches-du-Rhône department and between March 1792 and May 1793 had co-edited the Journal des départemens méridionaux et des débats des amis de la Constitution de Marseille  (whose publication was interrupted by the federalist movement in Marseilles) and issues 2 to 8 of the Journal de Marseille. Lacroix, “jacobin de Paris”, was sent to Marseilles as a delegate appointed by the Convention, and took the sole editorship of the periodical from issue 9 onwards.

 Journal de Marseille, Prospectus, pp. 6-7

The Journal results from an initiative of the Convention delegates for southern French departments: it was designed to “remedy the vagaries of public opinion, its lack of instruction and enlightenment” and “purge the public spirit from the venom distilled by enemies of the Motherland, coward federalists”, given the difficulties in disseminating Paris journals. It is conceived as the voice of “the Nation, responsible for providing moral food for the people and enlightening it on its interests, rights and duties”. It gives accounts of the Convention’s meetings and discussions.

 

Journal de Marseille, Prospectus, p. 1

The political dimension of the Journal de Marseille is clear from the start, its Prospectus starting with the motto “Le salut du peuple est la suprême loi”, and a declaration praising the “journaux patriotiques” which since 1789 have enlightened the people and promoted Freedom, supporting the durable Rule of All rather than One. The periodical places itself against publications “paid for by aristocrats, royalists and federalists”, accused of “delaying the progress of human reason”. In ominous terms, the editor vows to “track traitors in their cellars and attics, to unmask the looters of the Nation, to denounce to the jury of the public opinion unfaithful administrators, conspiring generals, and delegates of the people”, including “members of the Mountain, the Marsh or the Plain, federalists and their vile supporters.” Under the Reign of Terror, the Journal is openly conceived as the nexus of an “active and general surveillance, a beacon to illuminate federalist conspiracies.” It wants to inspire the people with “the strength so necessary in the fight between crime and virtue, freedom and slavery.”

 Journal de Marseille, issue 44, 14 Nivôse an II (3 January 1794)

From issue 44 onwards, “Mittié fils” succeeded Lacroix as editor of the Journal de Marseille. Both names still appear on the first page until issue 55, when Mittié’s name remains. Jean-Corisandre Mittié, who was sent by the Comité de Salut public to Marseilles in 1794, authored dramatic works like La prise de Toulon, which features at the end of our volume.

 Journal de Marseille, Supplément, issue 1, 3 frimaire an II (23 November 1793)

While the Prospectus and first eight issues of the Journal were published by Marc Aurel, “printer of the people’s representatives sent to the southern departments”, later issues were printed by Auguste Mossy, a printer who played an important role in Marseilles politics under the Revolution and the First Empire. Auguste came from a family of Marseilles printers: he worked, alongside his brother Jean (1758-1835), in their father’s printing shop before opening his own press.

The copy of the Journal de Marseille acquired by the British Library is kept in a modest but original brown leather binding with parchment corners and paste paper sides. It is stained, but traces of important use attest to the interest the collection has raised. Indeed, additional revolutionary tracts with a strong southern anchorage, including several pamphlets printed by the Mossy presses, are collected at the end of the volume – they will be the subject of another blog post!

Irène Fabry-Tehranchi, Curator Romance collections

References / Further reading

Audrey C. Brodhurst, ‘The French Revolution Collections in the British Library’, British Library Journal (1976), 138-158.

Christophe Cave, Denis Reynaud, Danièle Willemart, 1793: l’esprit des journaux (Saint-Étienne, 1993). YA.1994.b.4058

René Gérard, Un Journal de province sous la Révolution. Le “Journal de Marseille” (originally the “Journal de Provence”) de Ferréol Beaugeard, 1781-1797 (Paris, 1964). W.P.686/29.

Hubert C. Johnson, The Midi in revolution: a study of regional political diversity, 1789-1793 (Princeton, 1986). YH.1987.b.380

Michael L. Kennedy, The Jacobin Club of Marseilles, 1790-1794 (Ithaca, 1973). 73/13539

Des McTernan, ‘The printed French Revolution collections in the British Library’, FSLG Annual Review, 6 (2009-10), 31-44.

 

I remember very vividly my confusion when in March 1990 I found myself on a park bench reading a thin samizdat publication, Dzien Voli (‘Freedom Day’), dedicated to the anniversary of Belarusian independence. It was delivered to Minsk from Vilnius where much Belarusian samizdat was published at that time. In the Soviet Union, we were told that Belarus and Belarusians had always been part of something else – of other countries and peoples.

From Dzien Voli I learned for the first time a story of the Belarusian Democratic Republic (also translated as Belarusian People’s Republic; BNR in its Belarusian abbreviation). It was proclaimed independent by representatives of civic and political organisations and parties in Minsk on 25 March 1918. They used a very short window of opportunity – just a few days – between the Russian Bolshevik army leaving Minsk and the advancing Germans entering the city.

Flag and state coat of arms of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, frontispiece from Za Dziarzhaunuiu Nezalezhnasts' Belarusi = For national independence of Byelorussia (London, 1960). 8296.tt.46

Neither the occupying German authorities nor the Russian Bolshevik government fully recognised the BNR, though both had to take its existence into account. The BNR government in Minsk attempted to form its own army, school system, local authorities, trade and diplomatic missions. It was most successful in building relations with the Ukrainian Democratic Republic, which had declared its independence three months earlier and secured recognition from the occupying German authorities. The BNR’s main income came from forest wood sold to the Ukrainian government in exchange for cash and food supplies. The BNR government managed to established diplomatic missions in several other countries and took part in the Versailles Peace Conference after the First World War.

National Secretariat (the first government of the Belarusian Democratic Republic). Reproduced in  Uladzimir Arloŭ, This country called Belarus: an illustrated history. (Bratislava, 2013). YD.2013.b.892

In January 1919, the BNR government left Minsk before the advancing Bolshevik army. It later operated in Vilnius, Hrodna (Grodno), Berlin and Prague. After the Second World War the Belarusian diaspora sustained its existence. Its role as a government in exile has always been symbolic, but symbols are capable of communicating memories and inspiring the strongest feelings.

Without BNR, the Bolshevik government might never have permitted the creation of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR), which was among the founding members of the Soviet Union in 1922. Having their own state entity as part of the Soviet Union, though powerless in many respects, allowed the Belarusians to survive and develop further as a nation until full independence in 1991.

The BNR’s proclamation of independence was preceded by two other charters from the same body of civic and political representatives in February-March 1918. They confirmed the intention to build the future national state on democratic principles which can be easily found in the contemporary Constitution of the Republic of Belarus. The BNR government adopted the ancient Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s coat of arms as the state emblem and the white-red-white flag as the state flag. The independent post-Soviet Republic of Belarus initially adopted the same symbols. They were replaced, however, with variations of the BSSR symbols four years later –society was not yet ready for radical changes.

Pahonia: Stamp of Belarusian Democratic Republic (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

For decades, the BNR was the subject of ideological wars and myths. The discourse started acquiring a more evidence-based form when in 1998 two monumental volumes Arkhivy Belaruskaĭ Narodnaĭ Rėspubliki (‘Archives of the Belarusian Democratic Republic’) were published. These contained about 60 percent of documents from the early years of the BNR government. These documents survived in the State Historical Archives of the Lithuanian Republic  in Vilnius. Until the end of the Soviet Union, only selected and approved researchers had access to them. After Lithuania regained its independence, Siarhiej Šupa, a talented  journalist and translator (among his translations into Belarusian were George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984), stumbled upon them almost by chance and spent six years preparing their publication.

Arkhivy Belaruskaĭ Narodnaĭ Rėspubliki (Vilnius, 1998) YA.2001.a.24459

In Belarus, the consensus about the Belarusian Democratic Republic is still in its infancy. The topic has been politicised to an extreme degree until very recently. A new political situation, partly prompted by the events in Ukrainian Crimea and Donbas, has forced the authorities to re-examine the nation’s foundational events. The newspaper Nasha Niva recently reported that the Presidential Administration commissioned a report on the role of the BNR from the Belarusian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of History. The report has not been made public, but its essence can be deduced from the book to which the Director of the Institute referred the journalist investigating the story. In the Institute’s collective work Historyia belaruskaĭ dziarzhaŭnastsi ŭ kantsy XVIII - pachatku XXI st. (‘A history of Belarusian statehood from the end of 18th to the beginning of 21st centuries’) the BNR is characterised as the first attempt at a national Belarusian state.

Historyia belaruskaĭ dziarzhaŭnastsi ŭ kantsy XVIII - pachatku XXI st. (Minsk, 2011-2012) ZF.9.a.9153

A new generation of civic leaders, more pragmatic than those who led the political opposition in Belarus in the last twenty years, worked on getting permission from the authorities to celebrate the BNR centenary publicly. They also run a large and successful crowdfunding campaign to fund the celebrations. Among the events the authorities agreed on is a large open-air concert in Minsk and the installation of a memorial plaque on the building in which the independence of the Belarusian Democratic Republic was proclaimed on 25 March 1918. It is fascinating to see how a sleepy (until very recently) country gets busy on rethinking its own past and how this past may shape the nation’s future.

Ihar Ivanou, Head of Learning Resources, QA Higher Education, London.

Further reading:

D. Michaluk, ‘From the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Belarusian Democratic Republic: the Idea of Belarusian Statehood, 1915-1919’. Journal of Belarusian studies vol 7, no. 2 (2014), pp. 3-36. ZC.9.a.9127

Pers Anders Rudling, The Rise and Fall of Belarusian nationalism, 1906-1931. (Pittsburg, 2015). YC.2016.a.6887

Jan Zaprudnik, Belarus: at a crossroads in history (Boulder, 1993). YC.1995.b.7225

The proclamation of Byelorussian independence, 25th of March 1918. (London, 1968). X.709/26118.

Siarhiej Šupa talks about his research [in Belarusian]: https://www.svaboda.org/a/29048119.html 

In an earlier post I discussed the popularisation of the image of witches flying on broomsticks by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

This chimes with what Balthasar Bekker writes in his famous De Betoverde wereld (‘The Enchanted World’), namely that the idea of witches flying to gatherings at night on a broomstick ‘is today a widely held belief amongst the common people’.

Title-page of Balthasar Bekker, De Betoverde wereld (Leeuwarden, 1691) 8630.bbb.25

How did prosecutors go about proving that someone accused of being a witch was indeed a witch?

There was one practice that was uniquely reserved for witch trials, namely ‘trial by ordeal’, or divine judgements. In his Malleus Maleficarum (first published Speyer, ca 1487; IB.8581.), Heinrich (Institoris) Kraemer stated that witches could fly because they were weightless. So, all one had to do was establish the weight of the accused and when she (it was mostly women who were prosecuted) was found indeed to be weightless this pointed strongly to her being a witch.

Title-page of an early 16th-century edition of the Malleus Maleficarum (Paris, [1510?]) 1606/312.

There were two ways to establish weightlessness:

The first was by water, a very popular method in the Netherlands, for obvious reasons: water aplenty! Throw the accused in the water and see if they float. If they sink they are innocent, if they float they are too light, and must be a witch. At the end of the 16th century this method was officially abolished in Holland, following a thorough academic study on the validity of the method by scholars from the University of Leyden.

This left the second method of trial by weighing. This was usually done on the scales of the local weighing house, where goods brought to market were weighed to quality-check them and therefore big enough for a person to stand on. Although seemingly pretty straightforward, there are accounts of places where the scales were fiddled with to show ‘0’ on the dial, leading to gross miscarriages of justice. No such tricks were played at what became known as the ‘Witches Weighing House’ at Oudewater, a small town between Rotterdam and Utrecht.

The Weighing House at Oudewater, from Casimir K. Visser, Van de heksenwaag te Oudewater. (Lochem, 1941) Cup.502.l.30

The authorities in Oudewater made sure that weighings were carried out correctly, with several witnesses apart from the weighing master, thus making sure all persons had a weight matching their stature. Moreover, the weighing house issued a certificate stating that the person was not a witch, which they would show magistrates back home. It is no surprise that none of the weighings carried out at Oudewater resulted in a prosecution.

 The scales of the weighing house at Oudewater, from Van de heksenwaag te Oudewater.

Oudewater was not well known in the Netherlands in the 16th century, when most witch trials took place. It was not until the witch trials had virtually ended there that it came into its own, during the 17th and first half of the 18th century. Oudewater attracted almost exclusively people from outside the Netherlands, who were sent there by magistrates in their home towns.

It is not known why it was that towns sent defendants all the way to Oudewater; why did they not carry out weighings themselves?

Over time belief in witchcraft diminished and the scales at Oudewater became an anachronism. This is poignantly expressed by the owner of a travel guide to the Netherlands, published in French in Amsterdam in 1779. It is entitled La Hollande aux dix-huitième siècle. In the chapter about Schiedam on page 36, the travel guide says that after 1593 not one person in Schiedam, nor in Holland for that matter, was punished for witchcraft.

Title page of La Hollande au Dix-Huitième Siecle. (The Hague, 1779). RB.23.a.37831

I recently bought a copy this travel guide for our collections. Inside it were several loose pieces of paper inserted with handwritten comments by what must have been the owner of the book. Imagine my surprise when I found that one note described the practice of weighing witches at Oudewater! Here is what it says:

A Oudewater on a une balance fameuse par l’usage qu’on en faisait pour peser les femmes accus[é]es de sorcellerie. Malheur à celles qui étoient trouvées trop légères. La derniere épreuve en à été faitte [sic] sur une vielle rabatteuse, il n’y a qu’une quarantaine d’ années, ce qui est assez singulier dans le XVIII siècle.
(At Oudewater they have a famous scales for the use of weighing women accused of sorcery. Woe betide those found to be too light. The last trial was made on an old vagrant woman not even forty years ago, which is exceptional for the 18th century. )

 Inserted manuscript note on Oudewater found in La Hollande au Dix Huitième Siecle

Marja Kingma, Curator Germanic Collections

References and further reading:

A.W. den Boer, Oud-Oudewater. ([Oudewater], 1965). X.808/3056

Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra / Willem Frijhoff (eds), Nederland betoverd: toverij en hekserij Van de veertiende tot in de twintigste eeuw. (Amsterdam, 1987). YA.1990.b.7167.

Jacobus Scheltema, Geschiedenis der heksenprocessen. (Haarlem, 1828). 8631.i.15

With the current enthusiasm for all things Danish, from the cult of hygge to crime dramas, it is fitting, on the 50th anniversary of his death, to examine the legacy of Denmark’s greatest contributor to the history of cinema, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968).

Portrait of Dreyer directing in 1931, from Ebbe Neergaard, En filminstruktørs arbejde. Carl Th. Dreyer og hans ti filmer (Copenhagen, 1940) 11796.bb.43

Certainly, judging by the subjects of his films and the events of his own life, it would be difficult to regard Dreyer as a typical representative of ‘Europe’s happiest nation’. He was, in fact, only half Danish; his mother, Josefine Bernhardine Nilsson, was a servant on a farm in Sweden where she was seduced by her Danish employer Jens Christian Torp – a situation familiar to readers of Martin Andersen Nexø’s novel Pelle Erobreren (Copenhagen, 1906-10; 12581.r.18.). Torp was already married, and when Josefine died he placed their illegitimate son in an orphanage. At the age of two the little boy was adopted by a typographer named Carl Theodor Dreyer, and his wife, Inger Marie, who gave him a home and a name but little in the way of emotional warmth or security. When he was 16 he broke away from his adoptive parents, but their lasting influence is evident in the ideology which underpins many of his films, set in a Denmark where religious conservatism prevails and failure to conform can have fatal consequences.

At the time when Dreyer made the transition from journalism to film, the Danish silent cinema was in its early stages, and even during his mature career as a director he lacked the support of a well-established national film industry. This apparent disadvantage, in fact, accorded well with Dreyer’s preference for solitude and independence at all costs. In his biography En filminstruktørs arbejde, Ebbe Neergaard describes the moment when the young Dreyer, visiting the vaults of the Great Northern Telegraph Company in the company of an elderly accountant who proudly pointed to his life’s work – a collection of musty files – recoiled in horror from the prospect of a similar fate and promptly resigned his post to strike out alone.

Throughout his life Dreyer was outspoken in his criticism of mass-production film-making, and his insistence on the integrity of the individual, no matter what the outcome, runs through his work. He began in a small way, writing film scripts for Nordisk Film (1913-19). Although he later called this period ‘a marvellous school’, it coincided with the decline of Danish film during the First World War, where, although neutral, Denmark lost many of its foreign markets and Nordisk’s German theatre chain was bought up by Ufa in 1917. Dreyer then left Denmark to work in the French film industry; while living in France he met Jean Cocteau and other members of the French artistic scene and in 1928 he made his first classic film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. This, like his next effort, Vampyr (1932), privately funded by Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg who also played the hero, was a commercial failure. Both were subsequently recognized as masterpieces of emotional realism and surreal expressionism, but Dreyer was deterred from making any more films until 1943, when he directed one of his greatest works, Day of Wrath. Denmark was by now under German occupation, and this story of the persecution of alleged witches in a remote Danish village stands as a metaphor for the climate suspicion and oppression which flourished in those days.

Montage of images from The Passion of Joan of Arc reproduced on the cover of  En filminstruktørs arbejde

Many of Dreyer’s films are set in small, tightly-knit communities in rural districts. However, they do not portray an idealised world of neighbourly cosiness but demonstrate how an apparently secure web of relationships can become a trap. In Master of the House (1925), he depicts a tyrannical father’s hold over his family and its eventual subversion; on a wider scale, The Word (1955) shows the stranglehold of religious bigotry over the lives of villagers, with a strict father forbidding his daughter to marry out of their sect and a young man transformed into an eccentric ‘holy fool’ by excessive theological study. Yet there remains hope, even though in this case it requires the death of his sister-in-law Inger in childbirth to bring about the miracle which eventually transcends and dissolves the artificial boundaries which constrict their lives.

‘The degeneration of family life’: the birdcage scene from Master of the House; pictures from En filminstruktørs arbejde

David Bordwell’s The Films of Carl-Theodor Dreyer (Berkeley, California, 1981; L.42/1194) provides a masterly study of the cinematic techniques which Dreyer employed throughout his career, culminating in his last film, Gertrud (1964). He analyses not only Dreyer’s use of the camera but his choice of plays and stories to adapt in exploration of spiritual conflict, social pressure to conform and the fate of those who defy it, and the concepts of sin and transgression (though Dreyer later disowned Two People (1945), based on a crime story and directed while he was living in exile from the Nazis in Sweden). But in his choice of Kaj Munk’s play Ordet as the source for The Word, he made common cause with a figure whose defiance of a corrupt regime, like Joan of Arc’s, cost him his life. Unsparing in his condemnation of moral compromise and hypocrisy alike, Dreyer invites his audience to explore the borderlands of the natural and the supernatural, earthly and spiritual, and to think for themselves in drawing their own conclusions.

Susan Halstead, Subject Librarian (Social Sciences), Research Services

Further Reading

Carl Theodor Dreyer, Fire film ... Jeanne d'Arc, Vampyr, Vredens Dag, Ordet. Udgivet med indledning af Ole Storm. (Copenhagen, 1964) X.900/560. (English translation: Four Screenplays (London, 1970) X.981/1902.)

Carl Theodor Dreyer, Om filmen. Artikler og interviews. Udgivet af Erik Ulrichsen (Copenhagen, 1964) X.908/793. (English translation: Dreyer in double reflection ed. by Donald Skoller (New York, 1973) 75/22116

Claude Perrin, Carl Th. Dreyer ... points de vue, documents, filmographie, bibliographie, chronologie, 50 illustrations (Paris, [1969])

Tom Milne, The cinema of Carl Dreyer (New York, 1971) X.900/6387.  

Maurice Drouzy, Carl Th. Dreyer, né Nilsson (Paris, 1982) X.950/26307

Edvin Kau, Dreyers filmkunst (Copenhagen, 1989). YA.1991.b.411

The title does not refer to the mythical indiscretions of Catherine the Great, although she indeed kept a number of Arabian horses, but to the enthusiasm which many famous Russian equestrians and breeders have had for the type.

An Arabian from an album of characteristic horse breeds of the USSR, 1953. S. V. Afanas’ev, Al’bom porod loshadei SSSR (Moscow, 1953). Cup.1253.dd.28.

Among the British Library’s collections, one book in particular illustrates the aristocratic infatuation with the Arabian. Prince A. G. Shcherbatov and Count S. A. Stroganov’s Kniga ob Arabskoi Loshadi (Saint Petersburg, 1900; 7293.l.33.) combines an overview of the breed with an account of the authors’ journey to what is now Syria, purchasing stallions for breeding back in the Russian Empire. It was translated into English as The Arabian Horse: A Survey, which the Library also holds (London, 1989; YK.1990.b.3731).

Above:  The lavish cover to Shcherbatov and Stroganov’s book. Below: A mare called Latifa, bought by Stroganov in Damascus in 1895.

Shcherbatov and Stroganov championed the Arabian against the English Thoroughbred, another popular breed. They considered the Thoroughbred inferior, as it had emerged during a great confusion of equine bloodlines after the English Civil War. Cromwell’s revolution had led to the destruction of stud books and heavy loss of stallions – ‘it turned out to be impossible to reconstitute the pedigrees of the surviving animals’.

By contrast, Bedouin traditions ensured no confusion of bloodlines: ‘Our belief in the pure blood of the Arabian horse stems above all from the importance which the Arabs in horse-breeding attach to blood’. The purity of the Arabian appealed to principles close to the hearts of Russia’s ruling classes, who meticulously traced their own genealogies as well as those of their animals.

Shcherbatov and Stroganov argued that the increasing encroachment of the railway and the disruption of traditional Bedouin ways of life, such as the shift in warfare to the use of rifles from the back of camels rather than lances on horseback, brought the future of this unspoiled breed into question in its native homeland.

It fell to Russia to ensure the preservation of the Arabian’s pure bloodline, for Russia alone remained true to the aristocratic conception of an ideal purity of blood within a perceived sea of international vulgarity. In its turn, they thought, only the pure-blooded Arabian could help breed horses to out-compete the constitutional monarchies and democratic republics in equestrian sports and on the battlefield.

By 1900, the Arabian had already clearly proved its worth for improving the Empire’s stock. In the late 18th century, an Arabian stallion named Smetanka had been used as the basis for one of Russia’s best known breeds – the Orlov trotter.

 An Orlov trotter from the album of Soviet horses.

The project to develop a Russian trotting horse had been taken up by Count Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov-Chesmensky, in his retirement after an eventful military career. Orlov had been a central player during the 1762 coup which secured the throne for Catherine the Great, and was rumoured to have personally assassinated the deposed Tsar Peter III. Through his rigorous and experimental breeding programme, the Orlov trotter emerged as one of the leading horses for harness racing and other sporting disciplines of the 19th century.

Above: A portrait of Count Aleksei Orlov-Chesmensky from Sergy Dmitrievich Sheremetev, Alekhan (Saint Petersburg, 1898). 09603.dd.13. Below: Tolstoy based his 1886 work Kholstomer on the life of the Orlov trotter Muzhik I, born in 1805. Leo Tolstoy, Kholstomer (Moscow, 1951). YF.2011.b.1596.

According to the coaching expert Andreas Nemitz, wealthy Russians typically used Orlov trotters as the centre of a troika to pull their droshkys, flanked by two gallopers. Captain M. H. Haynes, a British observer of Russia’s equine culture at the end of the 19th century, wrote that Orlov trotters ‘admirably suit the requirements of fashionable Russians, who love to go as fast as their coachmen can drive them, even over the roughest cobble stone pavement, which of course does not suit the long fetlocks’.

 A pair of Orlov trotters in harness from Capt. M. H. Haynes, Among Horses in Russia (London, 1900). 07293.i.46.

Russia’s Arabian and Orlov trotter populations declined sharply during the 20th century, harmed by the wars and social upheavals of this time. In 1997, enthusiasts founded the International Committee for the Protection of the Orlov Trotter to secure the future of the breed.

Despite the development of more competitive breeds since its heyday, the Orlov trotter is still well loved by enthusiasts and amateurs alike. As Sherbatov and Stroganov wrote in 1900: ‘One has only to glance at the Orlov-type trotters … to recognise immediately in the proudly-arched neck, the bright, prominent eye, the thin skin, the silky mane, the high-soaring tail and the overall nobility of their bearing, the Arabian blood infused only once, more than a century ago’.

Above: An Orlov trotter, image from Wikimedia Commons. Below: 
 the Orlov trotter in action, image from Wikimedia Commons. 

Mike Carey, Eastern European Curator.

References

‘A Russian History’, The Arabian Magazine 29.5.2013 

Vsevolod A. Nikolaev & Albert Parry, The Loves of Catherine the Great (New York, 1982). 83/10566.

Andreas Nemitz, ‘Traditions and Styles in the Way of Driving Horses Part One’, The Carriage Journal 36, 4 (Spring, 1999), 152-4. P.P.8003.qn.

‘Orlov Trotter’, International Museum of the Horse (2018) [online] available at http://www.imh.org/exhibits/online/breeds-of-the-world/europe/orlov-trotter/ 

 

 

One of the curious aspects of working with the material book is the sudden confrontation of its physical properties, the weight of proofs, the storage of sheets and missing gatherings – and its combustibility.

I was reading a work by Hugh Walpole, written in Russia during the First World War. A copy of the first edition of this novel, The Dark Forest, published in 1916 is in the British Library, and contains two curious pieces of evidence: a printed dedication to Konstantin Somov, and a pencil annotation stating that almost the whole of the edition was destroyed in a fire at the printer’s warehouse.

Hugh Walpole, The Dark Forest (London, 1916) C.134.c.9. Front endpapers with a note describing the fate of the edition and a handwritten dedication by Walpole to Sir Gerald Kelly

Fires were not, unfortunately, uncommon in the printing trade at that time and accounts abound with records of losses or inventories depleted by smoke damage. More commonly mice or cats are blamed for the loss of sheets or full gatherings. However, I had been reading about Walpole’s experiences writing a novel and attending to proofs in the conflagration of the Eastern front, so a fire in what was the safe shores of ‘home’ was all the more shocking.

Walpole was a popular, though now largely forgotten, English writer who, in the First World War, travelled to Eastern front as a volunteer for the Russian Red Cross. He stopped in Petrograd before joining his ‘Otriad’ on a tour of duty near Lviv in May 1915. He managed to get a position as a ‘sanitar’ (medical orderly) and in his memoir ‘The Crystal Box’ he vividly described the conditions in which he wrote his novel at the Galician front:

Standing beside some carts in the Galician lane, my knees trembling with terror, the wounded moving restlessly on their straw, the afternoon light like the green shadow of a dried-up conservatory, I found a pencil and, steadying my shaking body against the cart, I wrote.

After his tour ended in October 1915 Walpole returned to the UK to publish his novel, excited by what he had achieved. The Dark Forest and his second novel The Secret City: ‘capture an atmosphere that would I know escape me afterward. … they are not bad books because as records of a foreigner’s apprehension of a country at its most critical time, they are true.’ In 1916 he went back to Russia to found the Anglo-Russian Bureau in Petrograd, part of a British initiative to counteract German propaganda.

Walpole’s time in Russia was formative of his literary taste. On 28 March 1915 he noted in his diary that he was with Arthur Ransome, Hamilton Fyfe, Konstantin Somov, and other Russian friends debating that ‘realism no good any more for Russia – Symbolism also dead. Alexis Tolstoi most interesting new novelist.’

 After Walpole left the Anglo-Russian Bureau, his friend Arthur Ransome continued to report on the situation as in this pamphlet, The Truth about Russia (London, 1918) 8286 f. 17.

Walpole’s mentor in Russia was the acclaimed painter Konstantin Somov. A former member of the ‘Pickwickians of the Neva’, the circle whose ideas were to be key in the creation of innovative magazines such as Mir Isskusstva (‘The World of Art’), and of the Ballets Russes, Walpole was a sentimentalist and his reaction to the Russian Modernists is complex: in his appreciation of plays at home or in Russia he frequently mentions the emotion of specific scenes, individual actors or joint performances. He was not ‘highbrow’ and also went with Somov to watch wrestling and barebacked riding, and his enthusiastic observations are drawn into his novel: ‘I adore a circus; and when I can find one with the right sawdust smell, the right clown, and the right enthusiasm, I am happy.’ Yet he was drawn to the idealism of the Russian Revolution.

 Illustration by Somov from Frans Blei Das Lesebuch der Marquise: ein Rokokobuch (Munich, 1923) YA.1994.a.19985. Somov was working on this book when Walpole was in Russia.

Somov had not followed Diaghilev to the West, finding for the time being artistic fortune in his own country. Escorted by Somov, Walpole was thus able to socialise with leading representatives of Russia’s new culture, such as Sologub, Glazunov and Scriabin, and to see legendary stars such as Tamara Karsavina in La Fille Mal Gardée, recording that she ‘seemed inspired’. In addition to the Anglo-Russian Bureau in Petrograd, Walpole set up a small office in Moscow with R.H. Bruce Lockhart which had good relations with Moscow’s cultural life. As Karsavina recalled in her memoir Theatre Street, entertainments continued, Lockhart gave banquets, wrote stories for the wide-circulation Russian trench newspapers and took propaganda films to the Russian troops. Walpole himself reported on the build-up to the October Revolution, writing the official report for the British government, and portraying it in his second novel The Secret City which won the inaugural James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1919.

Picture by Edmund Dulac of Tamara Karsavina in the ballet Parade in 1920, reproduced in Karsavina’s memoir, Theatre Street (London, 1930) 010795.d.46. in which she records her friendship with Walpole.

The development of his taste in Russia would lead to Walpole’s re-evaluation of the role of cultural production and his desire for a ‘broadbrow’ view of the arts. He recalled his Russian experiences in the forewords to his works on Russia, recommended Lockhart’s A British Agent to the British Book Society, and wrote an introduction for an edition of Saki's Reginald and Reginald in Russia. His experiences also gave him a lifelong collecting habit; he filled his house in Cumbria with paintings, books and sculptures and later donated works to the Tate and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

On his return to Britain Walpole helped Russian friends who came over after the Revolution, seeing Somov again on his way to New York for an exhibition of Russian revolutionary art in January 1924. Somov urged Walpole to support the artists by writing magazine articles, but Walpole had moved on.

Somov was disappointed in their US reception: the American public were more interested in pre-revolutionary art and icons. He moved to France he continued to paint and produce illustrations. He corresponded briefly in his later years with Walpole, offering to sell him paintings to add to his collection, something Walpole could not resist.

Illustration by Somov from Longus Daphnis et Chloé translated by Paul Louis Courier. Grande Collection du Trianon, No.8 (Paris, 1931) 012403.f.38.

Giannandrea Poesio and Alexis Weedon, University of Bedfordshire

This work is part of a larger project and forthcoming article ‘The origins of the ‘Broadbrow’: Hugh Walpole, Konstantin Somov and Russian modernism’ co-authored by Giannandrea Poesio and Alexis Weedon.

References

Hugh Walpole, ‘The Crystal Box: Fragments of Autobiography’, in The Bookman (Feb 1923) PP.6479.e.

Hugh Walpole, The Secret City: a novel in three parts. (London, 1919) NN.5340