On 16 November 1796 Catherine II of Russia had been Empress for 34 years, since the deposition and assassination of her husband Peter III in 1762. In accordance with her usual habit, she rose early and, after drinking her morning coffee, retired to her study to work on state papers. Shortly afterwards she retreated to her privy closet and, when her maid and manservant became alarmed when she failed to emerge, they broke down the door and discovered that the 67-year-old Empress had suffered a severe stroke. Unable to move her unwieldy body, they laid her on a mattress on the floor and summoned her Scottish doctor John Rogerson. He did what he could, but she never regained consciousness, and died the following night at around 9.45.

When she was born on 2 May 1729 as Sophie Friederike Auguste of Anhalt-Zerbst, there was little to indicate that this impoverished daughter of a minor German prince would achieve any kind of distinction. However, the Empress Elizabeth of Russia favoured her as a match for her nephew and prospective heir, Peter of Holstein-Gottorp, and although the young couple cordially disliked each other on sight, Sophie resolved, on arriving in Russia in 1744, to do whatever was necessary in order to become Tsarina. This involved conversion from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy, and with it the adoption of a new name and patronymic – Ekaterina Alekseievna. The following year, aged 16, she and Peter were married.

The union, which produced a son, Paul, was predictably unhappy, and both parties had numerous liaisons. After Peter’s accession to the throne in 1762, they moved to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. It was here, where she had been left while Peter took a holiday in Oranienbaum, that Catherine learnt that a projected plot to dethrone him was in jeopardy, and had her husband arrested and compelled to abdicate. A few days later he was strangled by Alexei Orlov, brother of one of her favourites, though no proof exists that Catherine was aware of plans for this.

Despite queries about her right to succeed her husband, Catherine was crowned on 22 September 1762 and maintained her position for the rest of her life. Her reign was notable for a considerable expansion of Russian territory, absorbing the Crimea, Northern Caucasus, part of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Courland as a result of the Russo-Turkish Wars against the Ottoman Empire and the Russo-Persian War. She had long entertained ambitions to embody the principles of the Enlightenment in her rule, corresponding with Voltaire until his death in 1778 and incorporating his library into the National Library of Russia; she also invited Diderot to finish his Encyclopédie under her patronage when its anti-religious nature jeopardized its publication in France. Yet with the outbreak of the French Revolution she was forced to reassess certain of her principles, although she continued to support the arts, writing not only fiction and memoirs but plays, several freely adapted from Shakespeare, which were composed and acted in French by a company of French actors at her private theatre, the Hermitage, in the 1780s. The British Library holds copies of these in both French and Russian (St. Petersburg, 1786; 1343.h.6).

Title-page of Podrazhanie Shakespiru: istoricheskoe predstavlenie bez sokhraneniia obyknovennykh teatral’nykh pravil iz zhizni Riurika (St. Petersburg, 1792) 1343.i.2.

However dangerous the precedent established by her rise to power and territorial expansion, Catherine achieved considerable advances through her reform of the administration of the provinces of the Russian Empire and of the educational system. She established the Moscow Orphanage, intended to be run on enlightened principles but doomed to failure as most of its young inmates died prematurely, and, more successfully, the Smolny Institute for daughters of the nobility, the first institution of its kind in Russia providing education for girls. Her plans for a national educational system with an emphasis on co-educational free schools was far in advance of its times.

Catherine’s attitude to religion was also ambivalent.Her tolerance of Islam in allowing her Muslim subjects to assimilate their schools into the Russian system contrasted with her imposition of additional taxes on her newly-acquired Jewish subjects after the partitioning of Poland, and her establishment of a Pale of Settlement to contain them.

Inevitably Catherine’s colourful personal life and many lovers, notably Potemkin, made her the object of gossip and scandal, as in the anonymous Histoire secrète des amours et des principaux amans de Catherine II, impératrice de Russie (‘par l’Auteur de la Vie de Frédéric II, roi de Prusse’). This came out in 1799, and concludes with a disapproving chapter on the ‘libertinage crapuleux de Catherine sur la fin de ses jours’.

Plate of Catherine and Potemkin from Histoire secrète des amours et des principaux amans de Catherine II, impératrice de Russie (Paris, 1799) 1200.f.10.

However, not all accounts of her reign were so scurrilous, and the fact that authors writing in other languages were prepared to devote considerable time and trouble to chronicling it testifies to their recognition of her importance. An example is J. H. Castéra’s Histoire de Catherine II, impératrice de Russie, published within four years of her death and recording her life and exploits in four volumes.

Portrait of Catherine II from J. H. Castéra, Histoire de Catherine II, impératrice de Russie (Paris, 1800) 151.c.11.

Perhaps it is fitting to conclude with a curious little book published in Kamchatka in 1797, L’ombre de Catherine II aux Champs Elysées (114.i.58). In it, the anonymous author portrays Catherine’s spirit arriving in the Elysian Fields to keep company with those of Louis XVI and Frederick the Great, discussing the politics of their times and speculating on the future. Her son and successor, Paul I, would see Russia embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars before suffering a similar fate to his father and being succeeded by his son, Alexander I. However unsatisfactory a ruler he became, there is some truth in the words which the author puts into his mouth as he reflects that the Empress had left him little to do but glean in her tracks: ‘tout ce que Pierre a conçu pour illustrer son pays, ma Mère l’a exécuté.’

 Susan Halstead, Content Specialist (Humanities and Social Sciences), Research Engagement.

Henryk Sienkiewicz, the most popular Polish writer of historical fiction, was born in 1846 in Russian-partitioned Poland. He started his literary career as a journalist writing for a few periodicals under the pseudonym Litwos.

Portrait of Henryk Sienkiewicz from Album jubileuszowe Henryka Sienkiewicza  (Warsaw, 1898) 1870.c.21

The suppression of the January Uprising (1863-4) against Russian rule was a turning point in the political, ideological and cultural movement in Poland. It marked the end of the Romantic period in Polish culture. Positivism with its ideas of social, political and economic progress through education, the arts and sciences fell on fertile ground in Poland and was also reflected in Polish literature. Sienkiewicz, like other Polish positivists, believed that the national identity should be maintained not by fruitless uprisings against the overwhelming power of the occupying neighbours (Russia, Prussia and Austria) but by common effort called at the time the ‘organic work’ and constructive patriotism of the whole society. In his early works he explored the plight of the peasants, education and emigration, the last inspired by his American experiences in 1876-8. After his return from America Sienkiewicz turned to historical studies that resulted in the great historical epic Trilogy, set in mid-17th century Poland. The three novels which compose it, Ogniem i mieczem (‘With Fire and sword’), Potop (‘Deluge’) and Pan Wołodyjowski (‘Sir Michael’), published in 1884-1886, became extremely popular both at home and abroad. They describe consecutively the war with the rebellious Cossacks (1648-1657), the Swedish invasion of Poland (1655-1660) and the war with Turkey (1668-1673).

Kmicic company (The deluge) from Album jubileuszowe Henryka Sienkiewicza, (Warsaw, 1898) 1870.c.21

Sienkiewicz was praised by critics for his epic talent, great narrative power, rich language, vivid description, the ability to develop the plot and diversify characters as well as convey period details and style. Yet some critics objected to the lack of historical accuracy. Nevertheless, the patriotic tone of the novels, the belief in the survival of the nation and the glorification of the past achievements, which were skilfully combined with the plot, gave comfort to the Polish readers. Sienkiewicz was considered a national icon writing to raise the spirits in the dark times of history. Another historical novel, regarded as his greatest achievement, was Krzyżacy (‘The Teutonic Knights’; Warsaw, 1900; 012590.cc.2). The heart of the novel is the victorious battle of Grunwald (1410)  which brought down the Teutonic Knights as a military power. It had a contemporary political context in the ongoing Germanization of the Poles in German-partitioned Poland.

However, the book that earned him international fame was Quo Vadis (Warsaw, 1896; 012591.f.59), a depiction of Nero’s Rome and the rise of Christianity. In 1905 Sienkiewicz received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his outstanding merits as an epic writer. At the turn of the 20th century he was the most popular writer in Poland and was widely recognized abroad due to the numerous translations of his historical works. Sienkiewicz’s last novel was a book for young readers, W pustyni i w puszczy (‘In Desert and Wilderness’) published in 1911. It was based on his experiences during his African trip, and became a classic in its field.

Ubi tu Gaius, ibi ego Gaia (As you are Gaius, I am Gaia) from Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis, (Warsaw, 1910) LR.430.u.25

Sienkiewicz was also involved in social and political activities. His last major initiative was The Relief Committee for the Victims of the War in Poland which he established together with Ignacy Jan Paderewski  in Switzerland in 1915. Sienkiewicz died in Vevey on 15 November 1916. After the war his ashes were returned to Poland.

Quo vadis Domine? From Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo vadis,

 Magda Szkuta , Curator of East European Collections

Further reading:

The Trilogy companion: a reader's guide to the Trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz, edited by Jerzy R. Krzyżanowski (Ford Washington Pa., 1991) YA.1992.a.17375

Ruth Scodel and Anja Bettenworth, Whither Quo vadis? Sienkiewicz's novel in film and television (Malden, 2009) m08/37942

Henryk Sienkiewicz, With fire and sword (Ford Washington Pa., 1991). YA.1992.b.5508

Henryk Sienkiewicz, The deluge (New York, 1991) YA.1992.b.5507

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Fire in the steppe (New York, 1992) YA.1992.b.5747

 

The family of Henri Barbusse originated from a part of France with a strong radical tradition. He was born in Asnières-sur-Seine in 1873 to an English mother who died when Henri was three years old and a father whose Protestant forebears had lived in the hamlet of Anduze, near Alès, as far back as the 17th century. The Protestants of the Cévennes had suffered repeated persecution, and Adrien Barbusse, a journalist and theatre critic on Le Siècle, was anti-clerical and anti-monarchist by conviction. Not surprisingly, his son grew up to be an atheist, humanist and socialist, who, at the time of the Dreyfus affair, was convinced of the accused’s innocence. Henri wrote articles for La Paix par le Droit supporting international arbitration in place of war, and was also an enthusiastic supporter of Esperanto as a means to this end.

Portrait of Henri Barbusse from Eklumo en la abismo (Düsseldorf, 1923; YF.2010.a.19040),  a translation into Esperanto of  La Lueur dans l'abîme. (Paris, 1920; 08007.ee.6)

His earliest literary efforts were in poetry rather than political journalism, and in 1892 his entry for a poetry competition launched by L’Echo de Paris attracted the attention of the renowned poet Catulle Mendès, whose daughter Hélyonne he subsequently married. His first collection of poems, Pleureuses (Paris, 1895; reprinted 1920: 011483.c.74) was followed in 1908 by his first novel, L’Enfer (W16/3331), the story of a young bank clerk from the provinces who, bored and lonely in his dingy Paris lodgings, observes his neighbours through a crack in the wall. The sense of pessimism and human isolation which permeates its pages reflects the author’s awareness of the nationalism and militarism with which France was riddled, as destructive as the cancer destroying the body of one of the characters.

How prophetic this insight had been became clear with the outbreak of war in 1914. Although aged 41 and suffering from a lung condition, Barbusse did not hesitate to enlist, and in December 1914 joined the 231st infantry regiment, serving as a stretcher-bearer in the front line. Transferred to Artois, he was twice mentioned in dispatches for bravery before dysentery and chest problems caused him to be invalided out into a desk job in 1916. With time to reflect on his experiences, he began work on the book nowadays regarded as his masterpiece – Le Feu.

Cover of Le Feu (Paris, 1916) 12548.tt.32

It was a shrewd move to publish the novel in serial form in L’Oeuvre, for this enabled Barbusse to outwit another enemy: censorship. His raw and outspoken portrayal of life in the trenches was calculated to offend the sensibilities of those who entertained sentimental notions of glorious death on the battlefield, not least by his unsparing use of the ‘gros mots’ employed by the common soldiers – farmhands, shopkeepers, manual labourers – experiencing the monotony, squalor and misery of life under enemy bombardment. With a blend of black humour and clinical precision he describes the coarse jokes and unexpected camaraderie of men all too conscious that at any time they may end up like the muddied, seared and mutilated remnants of humanity whose scattered limbs lie all around them. The first-aid post provides scant relief; the overtaxed doctors, trying to stretch their meagre resources to deal with the carnage confronting them, can do little to treat the horrific injuries of hundreds of casualties.

In Chapter 23, the narrator and his comrades spend a few days on leave in Paris, a completely different world where they encounter pen-pushers, comfortable in reserved occupations, and gushing women with romantic visions of young heroes rushing to die with a smile on their lips. The narrator swiftly realizes that there is little point in trying to convey to them any idea of the true nature of war – the purpose, as it were, of Barbusse’s novel - and the closing pages reveal an army of mud-caked ghosts stumbling about in the devastated landscape, ‘like the Cyranos or Don Quixotes that they still are’, as they acknowledge that they were no more than ‘honest killers. (…) The act of killing is always ignoble – necessary sometimes, but always ignoble’. In the final paragraph, a solitary voice declares, ‘If this present war had advanced progress by a single step, its miseries and massacres will count for little’, as a single ray of light breaks through the storm-clouds, `proof none the less that the sun exists’.

Portrait of Barbusse from Lettre aux intellectuels (Rome, 1921) 08282.a.40.

The novel inevitably provoked strong and frequently hostile reactions, but its significance was rapidly recognized, and in December 1916 Barbusse received a letter informing him that it had won the Prix Goncourt. It would pave the way for other outstanding works based on wartime experiences, including Roland Dorgelès’s Les Croix de bois (Paris, 1919; 012547.aa.12) and Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nicht Neues (Berlin, 1929; W13/8499). Barbusse himself became, in 1917, the co-founder of the Association républicaine des anciens combattants (ARAC) and a supporter of the Russian Revolution, making several journeys to the USSR and writing a biography of Stalin (Staline. Un monde nouveau vu à travers un homme: Paris, 1935; 20003.a.24). That same year, he died suddenly, aged 62, on 30 August during a visit to Moscow (some sources claimed that he was poisoned on Stalin’s orders, although his long-standing pulmonary trouble makes the official cause of death – pneumonia – at least plausible). He was also, however, one of the founders of the pacifist Amsterdam-Pleyel movement, and a prominent member of the Front populaire, attracting huge crowds to pay their last respects when, on 7 September 1935, he was buried close to the Mur des Fédérés in the cemetery of Père Lachaise.

Barbusse’s dedication of Le feu

Le Feu bears a dedication to the memory of Barbusse’s comrades who fell beside him at Crouy and on Hill 119. Within a month of his joining his regiment, around half the men in his unit were killed on the front near Soissons. On Armistice Day, whatever Barbusse’s subsequent political views, it is fitting to remember not only those soldiers and the fallen on both sides but also his testimony to them as a moral witness.

Susan Halstead Content Specialist (Humanities and Social Sciences) Research Engagement

In a recently broadcast episode of the Sky Arts series Treasures of The British Library Professor Robert Winston looked at an 18th-century book from the King’s Library that includes some delightful images of Sami skiers.

Sami skiers. From Knud Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, deres Tungemaal, Levemaade og forrige Afgudsdyrkelse. (Copenhagen, 1767) British Library 152.f.17.

In the illustration chosen, the skiers can be seen on a downhill run, one nonchalantly balancing a pole on his shoulder, the other manoeuvring his skis to break his descent. As the author Knud Leem (in the 1808 English translation of the original text) describes it, ‘by a certain wooden machine, of an oblong figure, fastened to their feet, commonly called wooden sandals, they are carried with such rapidity over the highest mountains, through the steepest hills …. that the winds whiz about their ears and their hair stands on end’.

Title page of Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper.

The book in which the illustration appears, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, published in 1767, is a long and detailed (over 600 pages in the original) description of the Sami people of Finnmark  in northern Norway and was written by the Norwegian missionary and linguist Knud Leem who lived amongst the Sami for a number of years. The parallel text in Danish and Latin is accompanied by over a hundred illustrations by O.H. von Lode based on Leem’s descriptions, and together they provide a fascinating insight into how the Sami lived at this time. The subject matter ranges from the basics of everyday life such as shelter, clothes and food to reindeer herding, marriage customs and religion, the latter covering both the religion which Leem pointedly describes in the original title as that ‘previously’ practised by the Sami, and the Christian conversion which was the focus of his work.

Herding Reindeer. From Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper.

Leem’s father, also a priest, had worked in Finnmark for a number of years and it is probably from this family connection that Leem’s interest in the Sami people was originally awakened. He studied theology in Copenhagen (Norway was at that time part of the Danish kingdom and was yet to establish a university of its own) and while waiting for an appointment in the mission to become vacant, he spent two years in Trondheim learning the Sami language. In contrast to earlier attempts by missionaries to teach Danish to the Sami, Leem’s belief was that in order for missionary work to succeed, he and future missionaries needed to be able to communicate with the Sami in their own language. He writes that in this way ‘… a much greater progress in the salutary knowledge of the true God is made’. During the years he spent in Finnmark from 1725 to 1733, he would preach and conduct services in the Sami language, at times in the open air.

Conducting a service in the open air. From Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper.

As well as his ethnographic work on the Sami people, of which there are three copies in the British Library, Leem also wrote a Sami grammar (En lappisk Grammatica, 1748), a Danish-Sami dictionary (En lappesk Nomenclator, 1756) and an extended Sami-Danish-Latin dictionary (Lexicon Lapponicum bipartitum, 1768-81, the second part of which was completed by Gerhard Sandberg and published after Leem’s death). Copies of the grammar and of the first dictionary form part of the Hannås collection, a collection of Scandinavian linguistic material donated to the British Library in 1984 by the antiquarian bookseller Torgrim Hannås. The Leem titles from this collection have now been digitised and are available online through our catalogue.

En lappesk Nomenclator (Trondheim, 1756) Han.135 

The other substantial piece of work for which Leem is remembered today also has a Hannås connection. It is a study of Norwegian dialect words, Norske Maalsamlingar fraa 1740-aari, which was only published many years after his death, in 1923. The editor of that work was Torleiv Hannaas, a professor at Bergen University and father to Torgrim Hannås. The bookplates of both these distinguished book collectors, father and son, appear in our copy of Leem’s Grammatica.

Bookplates in En lappisk Grammatica (Copenhagen, 1748) Han.110

Knud Leem’s contribution to the area of Sami studies, both linguistic and ethnographic, continues to be important and recognised to this day.

Sami couple in traditional dress. From Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper.

Barbara Hawes, Curator Germanic Studies

References and further reading

Knud Leem, An account of the Laplanders of Finmark, their language, manners, and religion.
(London, 1808) L.R.80.c.1

Knud Leem og det samiske : foredrag holdt ved et seminar i regi av Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab 11.-12. oktober 2002. (Trondheim, 2003) Ac.1060(2)[2003,No.2]

Professor Knud Leems Norske Maalsamlingar fraa 1740-aari-handskr. nr. 597. 4to i Kallske samling. Ed. Torleiv Hannaas. (Kristiania, 1923) Ac.5561/27

Treasures of the British Library will be broadcast on Sky Arts at 21.00 on Tuesdays until 22 November 2016.

 

On 21 October, to mark the approaching 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and of the start of the Protestant Reformation as well as the 350th anniversary of the death of Samuel Boguslaus Chylinski, the British Library hosted a seminar on the first printing of the Bible in Lithuanian (1660), the legacy of Chylinski and links between British and Lithuanian Protestants.

Samuel Boguslaus Chylinski, the son of a Calvinist preacher, was born around 1633 in Šventežeris, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Educated in the Calvinist school in Kėdainiai, in 1653 Chylinski was sent to the Franeker Academy  in the Netherlands to study theology in preparation for the translation of the Bible into Lithuanian. Unable to return to the Grand Duchy because of the war, in 1657 Chylinski travelled to England where he received encouragement and financial support from his compatriot Samuel Hartlib as well as English Protestants including Henry Wilkinson, John Wallis and Robert Boyle. Boyle, a scientist and liberal thinker, was preoccupied with the idea of translating the Bible into vernacular languages, among others Irish, Welsh, Malay, Turkish and Lithuanian.

In 1659 Chylinski published an ornate pamphlet An Account of the Translation of the Bible into the Lithuanian Tongue in which he claims to have translated the whole of the Bible. An Account also includes a testimonial from Oxford professors and other prominent public figures supporting Chylinski in his endeavour. The pamphlet was meant for English patrons and was published in order to raise funds for the printing of Chylinski’s translation. The Latin version of the brochure, Ratio Institutae Translationis Bibliorum in Linguam Lithuanicam, was published in Oxford in 1660.

 

Samuel Boguslaus Chylinski, An Account of the Translation of the Bible into the Lithuanian Tongue (Oxford, 1659)
1214.a.5

On July 12, 1661, Royal letters patent was issued by King Charles II, ordering a collection to be held towards the printing of the Lithuanian Bible and towards the relief for the Lithuanian Protestant churches devastated by the war. Money was to be collected in churches throughout England and Wales; door-to-door collections were also to be organised if necessary. The brief was sent to at least 40 major towns. A Privy Council memorandum, issued on the same day, stated that the brief should not serve as a precedent as the case was unique.

The printing of Chylinski’s translation started in 1660 but came to a halt in 1662 due to disagreements among Lithuanian Protestants. Chylinski’s printing expenses were misrepresented as his private debts and doubts were cast on the quality of his translation (it is important to remember that one of the persons appointed by the Vilnius Provincial Synod to check the translation was working on his own version). Chylinski lost the support of his patrons. His manuscript translation of the New Testament, in the British Library’s collections, includes many inscriptions, among others an unaddressed draft letter in which the author, destitute and desperate to return to his mother country, is asking for financial help. It is not known who the addressee was and whether the letter reached them. Chylinski died in poverty in 1666.

Manuscript of Chylinski’s translation of the New Testament, 1658. Add MS 41301

Chylinski wasn’t the first person who translated the Bible into Lithuanian. Jonas Bretkūnas translated the Bible between 1579 and 1590. His translation, never published, was based on Luther’s Bible  whereas Chylinski’s one was based on the Dutch Statenbijbel.

At the beginning of the 20th century there were three known copies of Chylinski’s Bible. The so-called Berlin copy has been missing since World War II; the Vilnius copy has been lost since 1918. The only surviving fragment of Chylinski’s printed translation of the Old Testament (Genesis-Joshua), acquired by the British Museum in 1893, is in the British Library’s collections.

A page from Chylinski’s Old Testament translation, (London 1660-1662) C.51.b.13

Ela Kucharska-Beard, Curator, Baltic Collections

References:

Gina Kavaliūnaitė, Samuelio Boguslavo Chylinskio Biblija (Vilnius, 2008- ). ZF.9.b.1272

 

Five years ago, from 15-17 September 2011, The Dutch Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley organised a conference on Dutch literature overseas: ‘Colonial and Postcolonial Connections in Dutch Literature’. A selection of papers presented at this conference was published as Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (Newcastle, 2013; British Library YC.2013.a.14249).

In his introduction to the volume Jeroen Dewulf, states that ‘Dutch literature is much more than just literature from a tiny piece of land at the estuary of the Rhine. From the Carribean to Southern Africa and from Southeast Asia to Western Europe, the Dutch language formed a common bond in a literature that has been deeply marked by intercontinental connections.’

Dutch authors like Couperus, ‘Multatuli’, Hella Haasse, Marion Bloem and Adriaan van Dis, to name but a few, all had close ties to the Dutch East Indies. Their novels about the region address the issues surrounding colonial rule and are firmly placed in the canon of Dutch literature. This is reflected in the Library’s collections. For example, we hold various editions of Multatuli’s Max Havelaar, considered to be one the finest novels in the whole of Dutch literature.

The same cannot be said of literature from the other side of the world, Suriname and the Dutch Antilles (Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao). With the exception of writers such as Frank Martinus Arion, Cola Debrot and Edgar Cairo only in Dutch, there is not the coverage of titles as the Dutch East Indies has. An author like Astrid Roemer, who this year received the P.C. Hooftprijs, the most prestigious literary award of the Netherlands, deserves every bit as much attention as Hella Haasse does.

A colonial-era view of Suriname, from A. Halberstadt, Kolonisatie van Europeanen te Suriname: opheffing van het pauperisme, ontwikkeling van handel en industrie (Leyden, 1872) 10480.g.7. 

Earlier this year Frank Martinus Arion passed away, leaving a formidable corpus of novels, poetry, essays and critiques. Why is he not as famous as Van Dis?

There may be many reasons for this: bias towards the Dutch East Indies as somehow more important than the Dutch West-Indies, bias towards authors with a white Dutch background, who knows – curators are not perfect.

And yet the 5-volume Een geschiedenis van de Surinaamse literatuur (A history of Surinamese Literature) by Michiel van Kempen makes clear that there are rich pickings to be had among the literature from Suriname and the same is true for the Antilles.

Michiel van Kempen, Een geschiedenis van de Surinaamse literatuur (Paramaribo, 2002) YF.2005.b.2372

I think it’s time to shift the compass and uncover the treasures of the literature from Suriname and the Dutch Antilles.

Marja Kingma, Curator Germanic Collections 

When on 28 October 1816 another daughter was born into the large family of Ludwig Carl George Philipp Revalier, no-one could have predicted that she would grow up to be a revolutionary sympathizer. Her father, major-domo at the court of Wilhelm I of Hessen, was promoted by the latter’s son Wilhelm II in 1825 to the nobility as a mark of gratitude for his service as an adviser, and when young Malwida von Meysenbug grew up to write her autobiography Memoiren einer Idealisten (1869-76; the British Library holds the third edition of 1882 at shelfmark 12357.c.12), she recalled that she had taken great pride and pleasure in belonging to the aristocracy. Yet those memoirs were written in political exile in England, where she had fled after supporting the democratic cause in the revolutions of 1848, and where she acted as governess to the daughters of Alexander Herzen.

Portrait of Malwida von Meysenbug in old age, from Emil Reicke, Malwida von Meysenbug: die Verfasserin der Memoiren einer Idealistin (Berlin, 1911) 010705.ee.16.

In her memoirs, she devotes the longest chapter to the 1830 revolution, which made a profound impression on the 14-year-old girl. Although she affectionately describes her family as close and happy, there are hints that all was not idyllic; in the chapter dedicated to the 1848 revolution, she mentions the ‘tyranny of the family, which in this case still rests on the regrettable principle that the woman should not think for herself but remain in the place to which fate has assigned her, no matter whether her individuality is submerged or not’.

As her interest in politics became more marked, she became increasingly estranged from her relatives. In this her relationship with the theological student and revolutionary thinker Theodor Althaus was a major factor in influencing her to question her father’s political stance and develop her own ideas. Much as she admired her father’s efforts to draft what she described as ‘the most liberal of all German constitutions’, it did not go far enough for her. He died in Frankfurt late in 1847; this placed Malwida in an ideal location to witness the preliminary planning for a pan-German Parliament in the spring of 1848, but she was bitterly disappointed to find that only men were admitted for lack of space, and had to observe the proceedings from a window.

 Malwida’s portrait of Theodor Althaus, reproduced in Mildred Adams’s English edition of Malwida’s memoirs, Rebel in a Crinoline (London, 1937). 010709.h.2.

1847 had also seen the end of her relationship with Althaus, who broke it off as he did not reciprocate her feelings. A strong-minded woman whose portraits show an equally determined and formidable physique, she had no further romantic attachments, though her lively intellect and independent cast of thought equipped her to become the friend of several of the most outstanding men of the age, including Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche.

With her family’s reluctant consent she made a journey to Ostend in 1849 of which she wrote an account, Eine Reise nach Ostende (Berlin, 1905; 010107.g.11). Far from being a conventional travel narrative, it presents evidence of her political convictions, reflected in her remarks on memorials to those who fell in the struggle to free the Netherlands from Spanish domination and her strong identification with the common people.

In 1852 she was forced to flee to London as a result of those same principles, and made contact with her fellow political exiles Gottfried and Johanna Kinkel. Refusing to accept support from her family, she took a situation as governess to the two motherless daughters of Alexander Herzen. She became especially attached to the younger girl, Olga, and in 1861, at Herzen’s request, she assumed permanent charge of her. She provided stability and consistency for her small charges amid the chaotic domestic life described by Herzen’s friend Nikolai Ogarev in his sketch Bedlam, or A Day of our Life (1857-58), reproduced in E. H. Carr’s The Romantic Exiles (London, 1933; 010795.i.84). The liaison between Herzen and Ogarev’s wife Natalia created a febrile and tense milieu in which Malwida’s tact and firm principles were sorely needed, and she became a second mother to Olga, who in 1873 married Gabriel Monod, the French historian who edited and published several of her works.

 Malwida and her foster-daughter Olga Herzen (later Monod), reproduced in Rebel in a Crinoline

It was in 1854/55 that she first met Richard Wagner, initiating a friendship which lasted for many years and is frequently mentioned in Cosima Wagner’s diaries. She was present at the disastrous Paris performances of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, and left an account in the Memoiren of the whoops and whistles with which the notorious Jockey Club ruined the evening. ‘So this,’ she shouted, ever the governess, ‘is the public that claims to set the standards of taste for the whole world! A rabble of street urchins, without even manners enough to let people who differ from them listen in peace and quiet!’ After the debacle of the third performance she described visiting Wagner at two a.m. and finding him outwardly composed but trembling with suppressed emotion before writing to withdraw the opera from performance.

It was though the Wagner connection that she met Nietzsche in 1872 at Bayreuth, when the ceremony took place at which the foundation stone of the Festspielhaus was laid. Their shared love of Italy led her to invite him and Paul Rée  to the Bay of Naples in 1876 for a stay at Sorrento, where Nietzsche began his Menschliches, Allzumenschliches and Rée his Origin of the Moral Sensations (1877).

Malwida’s salon in Rome, with a bust of Wagner in the corner. Reproduced in Rebel in a Crinoline

Malwida had settled permanently in Rome in 1877, and received Romain Rolland, among other distinguished guests, in her home there. She died in Rome in 23 April 1903, aged 86 – the first woman ever to be nominated (by Monod in 1901) for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and an inspiration to all her female compatriots who fought against the suffocating conservatism of Wilhelmine Germany.

Susan Halstead, Content Specialist, Humanities and Social Sciences, Research Engagement.

Dear Sir,
I take the liberty of sending you our catalogue of Russian books and pamphlets forbidden by the Russian censorship. Should you wish to order anything from us for the Russian department of the British Museum Library, we could give a discount of 10 per cent on all prices. We have also some new works of Leo Tolstoy, also forbidden in Russia.

This letter was registered in the British Museum as incoming post on 10 October 1892. It was written on Russian Free Press Fund headed paper and signed by one J. Kelchevsky, the pseudonym of a Polish revolutionary and bibliophile, Wilfrid Voynich, probably now better known not for his revolutionary activities, but for the famous mysterious manuscript formerly in his possession. The Keeper of the Department of Printed Books, Richard Garnett, replied expressing interest, and so “some orders [were] given”. These books, periodicals and brochures, mostly published outside the Russian Imperial borders, contributed to the British Library’s now considerable collection of Russian émigré and Diaspora publications.

A selection of uncensored brochures published by the Russians abroad

The output of printing activities by the first wave of Russian post-revolutionary émigrés is also well represented in the collections, from rare book art items and newspapers, such as, Novaia Rossiia (‘New Russia’), started in 1936 by Alexander Kerensky, a key political figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917, to popular periodicals.

Title-page of an an undated art book edition of Pushkin’s drama Boris Godunov, with plates by Plates by Boris Zvorykin, published in Paris. RB.23.b.5893

 Kerensky’s periodical Novaia Rossiia; NEWS 15932

An advertisement in Russian from Zaria Kharbina (‘The Dawn of Harbin’), a popular newspaper published by the Russian community in China (PP.7611.ccd)

In the 1980s and 1990s the British Library continued building its collection of Russian émigré publications from various sources, including donations, and several commercial vendors, one of whom – André Savine – was a dedicated bibliophile who created a personal database of Russian publications abroad.

We actively continue collecting material produced by Russians abroad.

 New Russian books just arrived from North America.

Whether uncensored or banned by political regimes in Russia and the Soviet Union, or produced for the local Russian language community by various Russian language publishing enterprises aboard, the British Library’s collections of such material have never formed a discrete unit. The materials were not acquired at any single point in time and they have no name that one can refer to (such as ‘free Russian press, ‘Russian underground collection’, etc.). The materials are not stored together in one place but scattered among the Library’s general collections. Moreover, since the material was not always easy for cataloguers to deal with, it is sometimes not obvious under what headings to look for relevant items in the catalogue. Research into these collections can bring to life many interesting stories, change our understanding of the mechanisms of publishing (including new media and digital formats) in the diaspora and by local communities, and help in formulating new challenges in the world of digital media.

Collaboration is important for us. We have invited academics at UK universities to submit proposals for AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships with the Library. One of the topics this year is ‘Studying migration and diaspora through Russian language publishing’, a project which will help to meet some of the challenges described above. Please visit our website for more information and application form or contact details. 

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator of East European Collections

What links Trotsky, Sri Lanka and a young Bolshevik woman journalist? The answer lies in a 20-page book published in Maradana, Sri Lanka, in 1948.

 Larisa Reiner, Svyazhsk: An Epic of the Russian Civil War – 1918 (Maradana, 1948) 9458.b.10

Entitled Svyazhsk: An Epic of the Russian Civil War – 1918, the book contains the only known English-language translation of a civil war-era work by Larisa Reisner, a journalist and writer who reported on the Russian Civil Wars while simultaneously serving as a political commissar in the Red Army.

 Portrait of Larisa Reisner (From Wikimedia Commons) 

Svyazhsk tells the story of the Red Army’s successful campaign in the town of the same name – 490 miles southeast of Moscow on the Volga River – to recapture the nearby city of Kazan from anti-Bolshevik forces in August/September 1918. Reisner, who participated in the events as part of the Fifth Army, describes how Trotsky was sent to organise the campaign:

No matter what his calling or his name, it is clear that this creator of the Red Army, the future chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, would have had to be in Svyazhsk; had to live through the entire practical experience if these weeks of battle; had to call upon all the resources of his will and organisational genius for the defence of Svyazhsk, for the defence of the army organism smashed under the fire of the whites.

A version of Svyazhsk was first published in Russian in 1923, in the Soviet historical journal Proletarskaia revoliutsiia (‘Proletarian revolution’; Mic.C.1326). The following year, a slightly longer version was published in Front, an edited collection of Reisner’s articles from the frontline. Almost a decade later, in 1943, an English-language translation of the Front piece – by John G. Wright, a leader of the American Socialist Workers Party (SWP) who became well-known as a translator of many of Trotsky’s works into English, and the lesser known Amy Jensen – appeared in the SWP’s journal Fourth International (Mic.B.617/1,2). While remaining faithful to Reisner’s text, Wright and Jensen added headings – such as ‘The Arrival of Trotsky’s Train’ – to signpost various stages of the campaign. It is this translation which was published in book form in Sri Lanka in 1948. Four years later, in 1952, the book was deposited in the British Museum Library.

 Bolshevik propaganda painting showing Trotsky, depicted as a lion, destroying the counter revolution. This is the original of the image shown in grainy black-and white on the front over of the LSSP edition of Svyazhsk. Image from: http://foto-history.livejournal.com/9467159.html

As detailed on its front cover (along with a striking pro-Trotsky propaganda image), the book is dedicated to the memory of Trotsky, who was assassinated in August 1940. It was published by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) – a Trotskyist party founded in Sri Lanka in 1935. Several works by, or relating to, Trotsky were published by the LSSP, making Sri Lanka one of the main places to publish Trotskyist works at a time when they were banned in the Soviet Union. As noted by the editors of the LSSP edition of Svyazhsk, Reisner’s civil war sketches were also forbidden in the Soviet Union during this period ‘for their unforgettable portraits of the civil war leaders murdered by Stalin.’ The chapter Svyazhsk was removed from later editions of Front – even those published as late as 1980 (X.950/14395).

 The logo of the Fourth International as printed on the inside-back cover of the LSSP edition of Svyazhsk

Reisner undoubtedly provides a celebratory account of Trotsky’s role in the Svyazhsk campaign, but her piece was also chosen by the LSSP as a memorial publication for another reason. Trotsky and Reisner were close acquaintances, writing informally to each other in the decade after the October Revolution. The feeling of admiration was clearly mutual. In Trotsky’s autobiography My Life, published a few years after Reisner’s untimely death at the age of 31 in 1926, he described her as an ‘Olympian goddess’ who ‘combined a subtle and ironical mind and the courage of a warrior.’

Katie McElvanney, British Library – QMUL Collaborative PhD student

References

Larisa Reisner, Izbrannoe (Moscow, 1980). X.950/14395.

Larisa Reisner, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1928). 12593.l.24.

Trotsky, Leon, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography (Harmondsworth, 1979). X.708/22026.

 

In 1995 a tiny book of great significance for Anglo-Serbian relations was donated to the British Library. It is a brief account of the life of Florence Maw and a record of her years in Serbia and Yugoslavia from 1915 to 1953. The book was privately printed in London in 1957 and only three copies are recorded in British public collections.

 Florence Brereton Maw (1876-1953); front cover of Una P. Moffet, Lena A. Yovitchitch, Florence Maw: the chronicle of her lifework in Serbia. (London, 1957). British Library YA.1995.a.26004.

Maw was one among the hundreds of British women who volunteered their services for Serbian people in the First World War. She was a native of Cheshire, from a Quaker family, and during the war served as a member of the London-based Serbian Relief Fund, a charity formed in 1914 to provide humanitarian aid to Serbia.

This biography also sketches a portrait of Jean Rankin, Maw’s lifelong friend and collaborator, who was among the first to go to war-torn Serbia, whose people were in dire need of help. Rankin served as a trained nurse in the Serbian Relief Fund’s first hospital in Skopje in 1914, while Maw served as an orderly in the Fund’s third hospital in Kragujevac in 1915. They assisted soldiers and civilians affected by war and lived through the great typhus epidemic  Maw took part in the gruelling retreat of Serbia in 1915.

Although only a short biography drawing on a few surviving personal records, the book provides an insightful account of the work of the Serbian Relief Fund. Thanks to the generosity of the British people the Fund organised six hospitals for Serbia, looked after 65,000 Serbian prisoners of war, and supported the education of over 300 Serbian children in Britain, among other humanitarian efforts.

After the liberation of Serbia in 1918, the Serbian Relief Fund played a prominent role in bringing relief to the devastated country. Serbia lost over 22% of her pre-war population and up to 250,000 Serbian children were orphaned by the end of the First World War. In the aftermath of the war the Fund worked with the government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to establish modern medical and social institutions primarily for the care of children, disabled war veterans and the sick people.

Funds raised by British children for Serbian orphans during the war were used for the creation and upkeep of an orphanage in the town of Niš in Serbia. In 1919 Maw was put in charge of this orphanage which, in the absence of any suitable housing, was accommodated in a dilapidated former poorhouse.

Serbian orphans in the countryside. The Home’s annual summer camp was set up in the hamlet of Manastir in Sićevo, 20 kilometres east of Niš. From Florence Maw. 

As the work of the Serbian Relief Fund was ending in 1921, the Committee decided to invest the remaining funds in a purpose-built modern orphanage in Niš. Construction began in 1924 in the grounds of the St. Pantaleon Church, between the village of the same name and the Nišava River, two kilometres from the town centre. Maw closely supervised the building of the orphanage designed by Iulian Diupon, a Russian émigré architect.

The Anglo-Serbian Children’s Home (Englesko-srpski dečiji dom), with British, Serbian and Yugoslav national flags flying. (From Florence Maw).

The Anglo-Serbian Children’s Home was built to accommodate 50 children and about six staff. It had a large open space around it with a garden, an orchard, and a large playground. Its inauguration on 7 November 1926 was a local and national event in the presence of Prince Paul and Princess Olga, government and church officials, British envoys and guests, and Church of England delegates. The Serbian Relief Fund was represented by Mrs Carrington-Wilde, a former president of its subcommittee for the education of Serbian children in Britain, who came from England for the occasion. She continued to visit the Home every two years on behalf of the Serbian Relief Fund estate. The Home was mainly funded by a proportion of the interest earned from the Fund’s final investment, deposited for this purpose in 1921. Other income came from donations from the local authorities, charities and people of Niš.

Maw and Rankin were responsible for the children’s upbringing, with a focus on discipline, practical training and traditional moral values. Children were brought up in the Orthodox tradition and religious holidays were observed according to Serbian and British customs. The children were directed according to their potential or abilities to apprenticeships, the army, engineering, nursing, commerce, teaching, law or religion. Maw was known in Niš and at the Home as “Sister Mother” (сестра-мајка), a term of respect used in Serbia for British nurses in the First World War. She had great authority over the children but never mastered Serbian and addressed her protégés only in English as “my child”.

The book finishes with a chapter on her precarious life under German occupation and the struggle to keep the children safe in the vortex of the Second World War. The Gestapo had taken possession of the Home and by the time the children were allowed to return at the end of 1944 the Home and its estate had been plundered and damaged, and the country was under the control of Yugoslav Partisans.

After the Second World War the communist authorities sought to undermine the Home’s strong link with the Serbian Church and to impose their own ethos and values. These pressures ultimately led to Maw’s and Rankin’s resignations and the handover of the Home to the city of Niš in 1946.

Maw and Rankin decided to retire on modest state pensions to a little cottage in Dubrovnik. In 1951 they made a final visit to Britain before returning to Yugoslavia. Rankin died suddenly in 1952 and only a few months later Maw passed away. Two of Maw’s devoted war orphans were beside her until the end.

 The cottage in Dubrovnik where Maw and Rankin lived in retirement from 1947 to 1953 (From Florence Maw).

In 1954 on the initiative of a former member of the staff of the Home, the Serbian Church had a marble plaque made with the following inscription: “To the Glory of God and in memory of Florence Maw and Jean Rankin who devoted their lives to the service of the children of Serbia, 1915-1947.”

The Home today is a listed building widely known as “The English Home” (Енглески дом). Since 1965 it has been a hall of residence for High School Students. Photograph © Bratislav Arsić, 2016.

In 1953 the British authorities transferred the ownership of the Home to the Yugoslav authorities on two conditions: to serve its original purpose as a home for children, and to set up a Serbian Relief Fund commemorative plaque on a wall of the Home.

A 1938 bust by the sculptor Slavko Miletić of Mrs Carrington Wilde in front of the Home.The Serbian inscription reads “A great friend of the Serbian people.” The bust was removed from the courtyard in 1948 but reinstated in 2004.
Photograph © Bratislav Arsić, 2016.

The Anglo-Serbian Children’s Home is a lasting memorial to the work of the Serbian Relief Fund. It represents the outstanding achievement of a band of truly exceptional people who made a difference in the First World War. Its archives were destroyed in the Second World War, but we can assume that several hundred orphaned children were brought up by this institution from 1919 to 1946.

The Home will celebrate its 90th anniversary on the present site on 7 November 2016.

Milan Grba, Lead Curator Southeast European Collections

Further reading:

Francesca M. Wilson, Portraits and Sketches of Serbia. (London, 1920) 012350.f.15.

Simon Milčić, Engleski dom, kuća nade i ljubavi: svim domcima ma gde bili (Niš, 2009).

Aleksandar Rastović, Marija Ranđelović. English-Serbian Children’s Home: 1926-2011. (Niš, 2014).