By the mid-19th century, the works of Mark Twain, Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas had been widely translated and were inspiring boys throughout Europe with dreams of adventure and exotic voyages. Few of them however, grew up to live their dreams to such a degree as the young Nikolai Gumilev, or with such a lasting impact on literature.

Nikolai Gumilev, Lev Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova. Photo from 1915 by L. Gorodetsky (from Wikimedia Commons) 

Travel was in Gumilev’s blood from the first; his father was a ship’s doctor, and he was born on 15 April 1886 in the port of Kronstadt. He studied at the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, where one of his masters, the Symbolist poet Innokenty Annensky, first steered him towards poetry. Not surprisingly, his first efforts, published in his collection Ia v les bezhal iz gorodov (‘I ran from cities into the forest’, 1902), were inspired by the landscapes and creatures of far-off lands, including giraffes and crocodiles. His first travels, however, were to less distant countries, including France and Italy; he absorbed the influence of authors such as Flaubert and Rimbaud who shared his passion for Africa, and also of the Parnassian poets, and in Paris edited a short-lived literary journal, Sirius. In time he achieved his ambition of travelling to Africa, making regular journeys there and bringing back many African artefacts for the collections of the St. Petersburg museum of anthropology and ethnography, although some of his other exploits there, including lion-hunting, may seem questionable nowadays.

Gumilev’s interest in Théophile Gautier and the Parnassians, with their emphasis on disciplined form and craftsmanship, caused him to become disillusioned with what he regarded as the inchoate and woolly nature of Russian Symbolism, although he and his wife Anna Akhmatova had been enthralled by the Symbolist poet Vyacheslav Ivanov  and spent many evenings at the gatherings of writers and artists in his ‘turreted house’. Breaking away from Symbolism, Gumilev banded together with Akhmatova, Sergei Gorodetsky, Osip Mandelstam and others to found a new movement, a ‘guild of poets’ on the principles of the mediaeval guilds of craftsmen which had inspired artists in other countries including the German Lukasbund and the English Arts and Crafts movement. They stressed the importance of form and structure as well as inspiration, qualities embodied in Gumilev’s collections Zhemchuga (‘Pearls’; 1910) and Chuzhoe nebo (‘Alien Sky’; 1912). Unlike the Symbolists, who had little regard for the achievements of past civilizations, these Acmeists, in Mandelstam’s words, were filled with ‘nostalgia for world culture’ and especial reverence for the classical world’s legacy to Western civilization. In Gumilev’s case this reached even further back; as well as translating Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1919; YA.1996.a.22447) and old English ballads of Robin Hood (1919; 11622.de.14), he drew inspiration from the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh.

Cover of Gilgamesh (St Petersburg, 1919) YA.2001.a.5099

Akhmatova and Gumilev had first met when he had published her poetry in Sirius while she was still at school. After a turbulent courtship in which the lovelorn Gumilev responded to her indifference with several attempts at suicide, they married in 1910. Predictably, their union, which produced a son, Lev, proved equally tempestuous, not helped by Gumilev’s departure for one of his African trips within months of the wedding and his decision, on the outbreak of war, to enlist in a cavalry regiment. He was twice decorated for his bravery when fighting in East Prussia and Macedonia, but the long separations took their toll, and on his return to Russia the couple divorced in 1918.

Gumilev could not accept the rejection of religion in the name of revolutionary fervour, and was given to crossing himself in public regardless of others’ reactions. His sense of ideological conflict was mirrored in the verse play Gondla which he wrote in 1916, where the hero, an Irish Christian in ninth-century Iceland, bears the stamp of his own character, as Gondla’s bride Lera reflects that of Akhmatova. Chosen to be king but cast aside by the pagan Icelandic chieftains, Gondla sacrifices himself to establish Christianity in Iceland; despite its spiritual message and the cramped premises in which it was performed, the play achieved considerable success even after subsequent events had brought the author into disgrace.

Back in Russia after serving in the Russian Expeditionary Corps in Paris, Gumilev entered a new phase of life with a second marriage and the founding of the All-Russia Union of Writers in 1920. His Acmeist intellectual and cultural values, however, proved difficult to reconcile with what he perceived as the crude philistinism of the Bolsheviks, and he made no attempt to conceal his views, as is clear from the collection Shater (‘The Tent’, 1921; Cup.410.d.90), which gathered together his finest poems on Africa and its landscapes and wildlife.

Cover of Shater (Revel, 1921). Cup.410.d.90

Gumilev’s open refusal to compromise his artistic or spiritual integrity was inevitably fatal. On 3 August 1921 he was accused of involvement in the so-called Tagantsev conspiracy or Petrograd military organization which, it was claimed, supported the restoration of the monarchy. Three weeks later the Cheka declared that ‘Gumilev, Nikolai Stepanovich, aged 33, former member of the gentry, philologist, poet … former officer … actively promoted the composition of a counter-revolutionary proclamation’, and had plotted an uprising in Petrograd. His friend, the author Maxim Gorky, dashed to Moscow to acquire a personal order from Lenin for Gumilev’s release, but it came too late. On 25 August Gumilev was shot, together with 60 other alleged conspirators.

Gumilev’s work was banned during the Soviet era, and it was not until 1992 that his name was formally cleared. The British Library is fortunate in possessing eight editions of his poems and translations, including his version of Gautier’s Emaux et camées (1914; X.909/30266) and his African poem Mik (1918; YA.1997.b.3597). Published during the stormiest periods of Russia’s history, they represent a unique testimony to his efforts to maintain his creative mission and uphold the values of civilization in the midst of turmoil – for which he ultimately paid with his life.

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

Nikolai Gusev, Tolstoy’s personal secretary, stated in his memoirs that “for Tolstoy music was not an amusement but an important business in life” as Tolstoy was “a good musician and composer”. The professor of music at the Moscow conservatory, Aleksandr Goldenveizer, a regular visitor to Tolstoy’s home for some 15 years, noted that Tolstoy, as well as many members of his family, was musical by nature and that in his youth, when he occupied himself for hours on the piano, he even thought of becoming a musician. During this period Tolstoy composed a waltz for piano. Goldenveizer recorded in his memoirs, how he and the composer Taneev  wrote down the waltz when Tolstoy played it for them at Iasnaia Poliana in 1906.

Aleksandr Goldenveizer and Sergei Taneyev in 1906. Photograph by Sophia Tolstaya, reproduced in Z.G. Paliukh & A.V. Prokhorova. Lev Tolstoi i muzyka : chronika, notografiia, bibliografiia. Moscow, 1977) X.989/75936

Tolstoy’s ‘Waltz in F’, his only known musical composition, was recorded several times, for example by Christopher Barnes and Imogen Cooper (both available in the British Library’s sound collections). Tolstoy remained a dilettante in music all his life, but was sensitive to it to a considerable extent.

Tolstoy’s autograph MS of his 'Waltz in F’, reproduced in Lev Tolstoi i muzyka.

Tolstoy was always deeply interested in the question of what music was and what the philosophical grounds of its inner existence were: What is music? What does it do? Why was it made? Why do sounds of different pitch and degrees of strength, separate or simultaneously sounding together, following one after another in time and combining in a kind of rhythmical construction, have such a powerful, infectious influence on man? Why does this sound combination appear on one occasion as a senseless assortment of sounds, and on another as the symphonies of Beethoven? No satisfactory answer can be given to these questions.

Tolstoy’s ideas on music were related to his ideas on nature (i.e. concrete objects portrayed): how in literature and the fine arts some kind of nature is always reproduced (whether taken from actual life or from the artist’s fantasies), and how in instrumental, chamber and symphonic music of (opera and programme music are excluded) there is the very absence of nature. His conclusion is that the contents of a musical work are clearly and forcefully conveyed by the musical work itself and do not need any kind of literal translations. In 1850s, Tolstoy defined music as “a means to arouse through sound familiar feelings or to convey them” later noted in his diary that “music is a stenograph of feelings”. Goldenveizer even recalled from his conversations how Tolstoy developed an analogy between music and dreams where there is a discrepancy between responses and their causes. This leads to the conclusion that “music does not cause states such as love, joy, sadness but summons them up in us”.

Tolstoy at the piano.

Tolstoy liked music with definitely expressed rhythm, melodically distinct, lively or full of passionate excitement. His favourite composer was Chopin. Listening to Chopin, Tolstoy experienced (in his own words) the feeling of “complete artistic satisfaction”. Tolstoy also liked Mozart, Haydn and Weber, particularly Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which was remarkable as he did not like opera as a genre in general and considered it a false kind of art. He seldom went to the opera and having seen Wagner’s Siegfried once, gave a destructive account of it in Chto takoe iskusstvo? (‘What is Art?’, 1897). Instrumental music made a stronger impression on Tolstoy than singing; he is quoted as saying about singing: “This union of the two arts has never had an effect on me. You always only listen to the music, but don’t pay attention to the words”. This is why the singing of Fyodor Shaliapin  did not make a big impression on Tolstoy.

An early edition of Leo Tolstoy, Chto takoe iskusstvo? (Moscow, 1898) 1578/5199.

Tolstoy also showed an ambivalent attitude towards the music of Beethoven. When Tolstoy heard Beethoven he admired and was captivated by him, but when he spoke or wrote about Beethoven he often responded negatively considering that Beethoven began the decline of musical art. There are amazing descriptions of Beethoven’s sonatas in Tolstoy’s works, for example in The Kreutzer Sonata (1890) or Semeinoe schast’e (‘Family happiness’, 1859), where the mournful majestic sounds of the sonata‘Quasi una fantasia’ make the heroine confess “Beethoven lifts me to a radiant height”.

It is likely that Tolstoy’s wavering in his evaluation of Beethoven is down to the fact that Beethoven and Tolstoy were very similar in temperament: Tolstoy instinctively opposed all kinds of authority - Beethoven thrilled Tolstoy with his powerful individuality and this made him angry as he did not like to submit.

Russian folk-song and dance, from a collection of illustrated postcards, ca. 1900. A.868.z.

Tolstoy’s attitude towards folk music was always positive. He also liked gypsy singing, which can be found in works like Dva gusara (‘Two Hussars’, 1857). Tolstoy’s attitude to certain composers and types of music seemed to be influenced by the performances he witnessed or by the performers who visited him. Among musicians who visited Tolstoy and played for him were Anton Rubinshtein, Taneev, Skriabin, Rakhmaninov and Rimsky-Korsakov, who had been extremely negative about the ideas contained in Tolstoy’s What is Art?, but held back from expressing this at the time.

 Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections, and Peter Hellyer, former curator Russian Collections

Further reading:

Lev Tolstoi i muzyka: vospominaniia , (Moscow, 1953). 7901.a.16.

Tolstoï et la musique, publié sous la direction de Michel Aucouturier. (Paris, 2009). Ac.8808.d/8[tome120]

I. N. Gnezdilova, Literatura i muzyka : A. Ostrovskiĭ, F. Dostoevskiĭ, I. Turgenev, L. Tolstoĭ, A. Chekhov. (Tiumenʹ, 2006.) YF.2008.a.19917

 

If that title sounds like a cryptic crossword clue, so much the better.

Brados do desengano contra o profundo sono do esquecimento. II. Parte. Escrita por Leonarda Gil da Gama, natural da Serra de Cintra. (Lisbon, 1739). RB.23.a.36813

An improving novel in the baroque style, interspersed with poems. The author (1672-1760?) was born Maria Magdalena Eufémia da Glória. When she entered the Franciscan order at the convent of Nossa Senhora da Esperança in Lisbon, she took the name in religion Magdalena da Gloria. She wrote under the pseudonym Leonarda Gil da Gama, an anagram of her religious name. Her convent was home also to Maria do Ceu (b. 1658), author of several baroque works. Sister Maria has been studied in recent years, but it looks as if Leonarda’s star has yet to rise again.

The reason for her affecting a pseudonym was not her sex (Maria do Ceu had no such problem) but presumably her vocation. One wonders how much of a secret this was: the Prologues recognise that her name is an anagram, and given the anagram-crazy culture of the Baroque it must have been child’s play to unmask her.

Leonarda’s use of an anagrammatic pseudonym as mentioned in the preliminaries to the book. 

The Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658) hid his identity under that of his brother Lorenzo and the anagram García de Marlones.

Baroque style lived on in Portugal in prose and verse when it was rather in decline elsewhere. One indication of this is that most of the 17th-century poets are to be read in the anthology A Fenix renascida (‘Phoenix reborn’) of 1716-28 (we have a mixed set at 11452.a.23.).

In his bibliography, Innocêncio Francisco da Silva tells us she was much admired in her own time, dubbed the Phoenix of Wits (Phenix dos Ingenhos), although ‘today [1860] few would be able to bear reading her works, on account of her exquisitely conceptista style’.

This is a new acquisition. We have other works by her, all apparently acquired quite recently, an indication both of the long period of neglect which she has suffered and a sign that her fortunes may be rallying.

Should you wish to assist this process of reassessment, where better to start than the British Library?

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance language collections

References:

Leonarda Gil da Gama, Aguia real, fenix abrazado, pelicano amante, historia panegyrica, e vida prodigioza do inclito Patriarca ... S. Agostinho ... (Lisbon, 1744). RB.23.a.8047

Leonarda Gil da Gama, Reyno de Babylonia, ganhado pelas armas do empyreo; discurso moral …
(Lisbon, 1749). Cup.407.n.4. (also available online) Illustrated with alegorical emblems.

Sóror Maria do Céu, Triunfo do rosário : repartido em cinco autos; tradução e apresentação de Ana Hatherly. (Lisbon, 1992). YA.1995.a.8273

Rellaçaõ da vida e morte da serva de Deos a veneravel Madre Elenna da Crus : transcriçaõ do Códice 87 da Biblioteca Nacional precedida de um estudo histórico / por Maria do Céu ; Filomena Belo. (Lisbon, 1993). YA.2000.a.29236

Walter Begley, Biblia Anagrammatica, or the Anagrammatic Bible: a literary curiosity gathered from unexplored sources and from books of the greatest rarity ... With a general introduction and a special bibliography. (London, 1904) 3129.e.77.

 
Decorative header from Brados do desengano contra o profundo sono do esquecimento

 

Having spent years in Constantinople, learning over 20 Turkic dialects and studying the Quran and Muslim customs, Ármin Vámbéry was well respected in the Ottoman Empire. Aged 31, this entirely self-made Hungarian orientalist undertook a perilous journey incognito into the very midst of Central Asia, where few Westerners had set foot since the 1600s. His main purpose was to establish the origin and connections of the Hungarian language. Vámbéry thought it a good idea to assume a false identity, convinced that as a European he would not be able to move around freely and explore the region’s languages.

Armin Vambery in dervish dress in the 1860s (CC-PD, from Wikimedia Commons)

Setting off from Tehran in late March 1863 Vámbéry, or rather ‘dervish Reshid’, joined a group of pilgrims returning from Mecca. He told them he had long dreamed of a pilgrimage to the sacred places of Islam in Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand, and hiked with them for six months, making heartfelt friendships in the process. 
 
Map of the travels of Ármin Vámbéry in Central Asia (Image by Lepeltier.ludovic. CC-BY-SA, from Wikimedia Commons)

When no camel, donkey or cart was at his disposal, he made use of his own two feet, though lame in one leg from infantile paralysis. As poor pilgrims his party were offered provisions in most places en route and also received alms, which helped pay for their transport or frequent and often arbitrary customs duties.

Vámbéry must have endured extreme tension whenever an encounter with new people was looming. In low moments he feared that even the sufferings inflicted by the hostile desert were preferable to the dangers that humans might pose. Stories of foreigners being imprisoned, tortured or executed were common, and Vámbéry was so convinced of this danger that he kept strychnine pills sewn into his modest attire.

Whenever anyone accused him of not being who he claimed, which happened with alarming regularity, our adventurer somehow wriggled out of the situation. Despite his best efforts to alter his European appearance, many picked up on some unexplained peculiarity about his person and he was time and again suspected of being a secret envoy for the Sultan, or worse, a spy (or a European). Every town had its informant, so he had to appear before many a local ruler and answer challenging queries into his being a genuine hadji. The breadth of his knowledge saved him and occasionally he even turned these difficult conversations to his advantage, returning with useful gifts.

 ‘I swear you are an Englishman!’ In: Ármin Vámbéry, Közép-ázsiai utazás… (Pest, 1865). 10077.e.24. and available online.

In Bukhara’s bazaar, Vámbéry noticed some goods labelled with the names of Manchester and Birmingham, which gave him a warm feeling, as if meeting a compatriot in such a distant land, but he was afraid that showing his delight might give him away. At the book market he spotted precious manuscripts that could have filled major gaps in oriental studies in the West. Sadly he could not buy more than a small handful of them, partly for lack of finance, but also because he feared a display of enthusiasm for secular knowledge would place him under more suspicion.

The Emir entering Samarkand, after a sketch by Lehmann. In: Ármin Vámbéry, Közép-ázsiai utazás…

In Samarkand some friendly locals offered to accompany him all the way back to Mecca, where he said he was returning. It ‘would have been slightly awkward for all parties if we then ended up on the shores of the Thames instead of the Kaaba’. Therefore, for his return journey via Afghanistan, he attached himself to several successive caravans where he enjoyed less attention. Once back in Persia he could finally bid farewell to his dervish disguise.

Exactly a year after his expedition had begun, Vámbéry left Tehran again, this time for Europe. He took with him a ‘Tatar’ mullah called Iskhak, originally from Khiva. Iskhak was the only person to whom Vámbéry had revealed his true identity, although not until safely back in Tehran. The two had grown so close while travelling together that Iskhak decided to start a new life in the Hungarian capital instead of going on to Mecca. He learnt the language and worked at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Mihály Kovács. Portrait of Ármin Vámbéry. 1861 (CC-PD, from Wikimedia Commons)

Vámbéry may not have discovered the exact origin of the Hungarian language, but he brought back a wealth of new information about the places he visited, which he first published in English as part of his Travels in Central Asia. The book, along with the fascinating and by all accounts highly entertaining lectures he gave around Britain earned him much academic acclaim and fame, and the doors of élite society were suddenly thrown open to him. He also became a professor and an honorary member of the Academy in Budapest despite never having a university degree.

Two extracts from an report about one of Vámbéry’s lectures, The Leeds Mercury, 19 March 1866, p. 3 (from the British Newspaper Archive)

In fact he gained such trust in Britain that he was later employed by the Foreign Office as a secret agent in the Near East. Undoubtedly, this was in no small part thanks to his (mostly) skilful impersonations, enhanced by outstanding linguistic ability and charismatic demeanour.

Ildi Wollner, Curator, East-Central European Collections

References / Further reading:

Ármin Vámbéry, Travels in Central Asia, being the account of a journey from Teheran across the Turkoman Desert on the Eastern shore of the Caspian to Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand, performed in the year 1863. (London, 1864.) 2354.d.1.

Hungarian edition: Közép-ázsiai utazás, melyet a Magyar Tudományos Akademia megbizásából 1863-ban Teheránból a Turkman sivatagon át a Kaspi tenger keleti partján Khivába, Bokharába és Szamarkandba tett / és leirt Vámbéry Ármin, a Magyar Tud. Akadémia tagja. (Pest, 1865). 10077.e.24. 

French translation: Voyages d'un Faux Derviche dans l'Asie Centrale de Téhéran à Khiva. (Paris, 1867). 10057.aa.22. and 12206.k.20.(2.)

Ármin Vámbéry, Sketches of Central Asia: additional chapters on my travels, adventures, and on the ethnology of Central Asia. (London, 1868). 2354.e.15. and B.18.d.5

German translation: Skizzen aus Mittelasien. Ergänzungen zu meiner Reise in Mittelasien .... (Leipzig, 1868). 10057.ee.18. and available online

Russian translation: Очерки Средней Азіи… (Moscow, 1868) 1609/5266. and available online

 

Under the auspices of the German Studies Library Group and in association with the British Library, a lecture in memory of Graham Nattrass (1940-2012) will be delivered on 17th June 2016 at the British Library. Professor Joachim Whaley, LittD FBA, will speak on ‘The Empire of Print: Governance and Communication in the Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806’.

Graham Nattrass enjoyed a long and distinguished career at the British Library and its antecedents, having started work in 1971 at the National Central Library in Yorkshire (a predecessor of the BL’s Document Supply Service). In 1976 he moved to the Library’s London base, then in the British Museum, and joined the newly-constituted German Section the following year. Graham went on to become Head of Germanic Collections and by the time of his retirement in 2005 was Head of West European Collections. He was a founding member of the German Studies Library Group and its Chairman from 2003 until 2007. His memoir of his life and career at the British Library was published in the Group’s Newsletter, issues 44-45, 2012-13 (British Library ZK.9.b.1089).

Graham Nattrass (3rd from right) with Germanic Collections colleagues in the Round Reading Room of the British Museum, June 1997.

Joachim Whaley is Professor of German History and Thought at the University of Cambridge (Graham’s own alma mater). He is currently a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College having previously held fellowships at Christ’s College and Robinson College, and he was first appointed to a lectureship at the University’s German Department in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages in 1980. His publications include Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529-1819 (Cambridge, 1985; X.800/41744) and Germany and the Holy Roman Empire 1493-1806, 2 vols (Oxford, 2012; YC.2012.a.17809 & YC.2012.a.14001).  He is currently writing a history of Austria and German-speaking Europe from the later Middle Ages to the present day.  Professor Whaley has been a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 1984, was awarded a LittD in 2013 by the University of Cambridge for his books and articles on early modern German history, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in July 2015.

The Emperor and Princes of the Holy Roman Empire. From Hartmut Schedel, Liber Chronicarum (Nuremberg, 1493) IC.7542.

The event will take place in the British Library Conference Centre’s Brontë and Eliot Rooms and will start with refreshments at 5.30 pm, with the lecture commencing at 6 pm. There is no charge to attend, but places are strictly limited. If you wish to come, please email Dorothea Miehe, Chair of the German Studies Library Group: [email protected].

Fools have a long history in literature as people who dare to speak truth to power or figures of fun who reflect and thus rebuke our own follies. In early modern Germany, the popular genre of Narrenliteratur used the latter kind of fool to satirise contemporary types and their behaviour, most notably in Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff.

Title-page of Ein kurtzweilig leren von Dyl Ulenspiegel  ... (Strassburg, 1515) C.57.c.23(1); this is the only complete surviving copy of this early edition.

A less didactic German literary fool from the same period is the trickster Till Eulenspiegel, whose exploits first appeared in print around 1511. Most of Till’s tricks spring simply from a love of mischief. In the second of the 95 chapters in the book, we learn that from the age of three he ‘applied himself to all kinds of mischief’ and was declared a scoundrel (‘Schalck’) by his neighbours. Confronted with this accusation by his father, young Till offers to ride behind him through the village to prove that he is unfairly maligned; unseen by his father, he bares his backside at the neighbours, whose loud complaints convince the father that Till was simply ‘born in an unlucky hour’.

Till tricks his father and offends the neighbours. From Ein kurtzweilig leren... (f. 4r)

Sometimes Till plays tricks not just for the sake of mischief, but to gain food or money or as a form of vengeance against those who exploit or insult him. Employed as a watchman by the Count of Anhalt, when nobody remembers to bring him food he deliberately shirks his duty, claiming he is too weak with hunger to blow his horn. Later he sounds a false alarm which sends the Count’s men rushing from the castle so that he can steal their dinner.

Till as watchman. From Ein kurtzweilig leren... (f. 28v)

Till attempts many trades and crafts in his life and generally causes mayhem, often by deliberately misunderstanding an instruction or taking figurative language literally. Again, this is sometimes a ploy to get his own back on a master he dislikes, but sometimes just pure foolery, as when he works for a tailor and is told to sew ‘so that no-one will see it’ so hides beneath a tub to work.

In other tricks, Till exposes the folly or greed of authority figures. Even on his deathbed, he manages to trick a greedy priest into digging deep into a ‘pot of gold’ which in fact contains excrement beneath a thin layer of coins. If this seems a tasteless detail, it is in fact one of the milder examples of the scatological humour which characterises many of the tales. This element was gradually toned down in later centuries when the stories became popular as children’s literature; it was only with the revival of academic interest in the book that unexpurgated editions became  more widely available again.

Till tricks the greedy priest. Illustration by Alfred Crowquill, from The marvellous adventures and rare conceits of Master Tyll Owlglass translated by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (London, 1860). 12316.d.22. In this bowdlerised version the pot contains pitch beneath the coins.

The last chapter shows Till’s epitaph with the motif of an owl and a mirror. ‘Owl-Mirror’ is the literal translation of ‘Eulenspiegel’, and in one tale Till leaves pictures of these attributes with the Latin words ‘hic fuit’ over the door of a smithy where he has tricked his master – ‘Eulenspiegel woz ere’.  A memorial in the North German town of Mölln shows a figure holding the same symbols and is claimed as the resting place of the original Till, who lived in the early 14th century. However, in its present form the plaque post-dates the first publication of the book by at least two decades, and there is no firm evidence that there was ever a ‘real’ Till Eulenspiegel.

Till’s epitaph (and the printer’s colophon), from Ein kurtzweilig leren ... (f. 130r)

But whether based on a real figure or entirely imagined, once in print Till was unstoppable. The book went through many editions and translations, and the character of Till became well-known in Germany and beyond. Wilhelm Busch borrowed two of Till’s pranks for his own classic tricksters Max und Moritz, while Richard Strauss’s 1895 tone poem Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche  was inspired by the character and stories. Till’s name has been given to a satirical magazine and a publishing house as well as various other brands. There are at least three Eulenspiegel museums in Germany, and even some schools bear his name, something which might give a touch of rebellious pleasure to any disaffected pupil who has read how the uneducated Till defeated the learned professors of Prague and Erfurt.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies

Till ‘teaches an ass to read’ to get the better of the Erfurt professors, from Ein kurtzweilig leren ... (f. 39v)

The first complete illustrated edition of Cervantes’s novel of Don Quixote appeared not in the original Spanish but in a Dutch translation, printed in Dordrecht in 1657. It contained as many as 24 illustrations, plus two frontispieces. Jacob Savery, the printer, was most probably also responsible for the engravings. In 1662, 16 of his illustrations were then reused in a Spanish edition printed by Jan Mommaert in Brussels. Then in 1672/73, Hieronymus and Johannes Baptista Verdussen of Antwerp printed an edition with the two frontispieces and 32 engravings of which the 16 were retained from the 1662 edition and 16 were new. These latter were engraved by Frederik Bouttats; the artist is unknown.

The illustrations of the three editions focus inevitably on narrative action with an emphasis on the more physical episodes. This supports the argument that in the 17th century Don Quixote was read largely as a work of entertainment. Limitations of space have restricted the current display in the British Library’s Treasures Gallery  to just two examples from this important tradition. Savery’s illustration of the unfortunate Sancho being tossed in a blanket is common to all three editions. One feature of these illustrations is the inclusion of more than one incident in a single image. Here, two incidents in chapters 17-18 of Part 1 are combined: the tossing of Sancho in a blanket (ch. 17) and Don Quixote’s attack on the flock of sheep in the background (ch. 18).

 Sancho Panza is tossed in a blanket in the inn yard; Don Quixote attacks the flock of sheep (Background). Miguel de Cervantes, Den verstandigen vroomen ridder Don Quichot de la Mancha (Dordrecht, 1657) Cerv.114. facing p. 58.

The same technique can be seen also in Savery’s illustration in all three editions depicting the concluding moments of Part 1 chapter 8. The narrative ends abruptly with Don Quixote and the ‘brave Basque’ confronting each other with swords raised ready to strike. The interruption occurs because, so it is claimed, the source text ended at this point. (The ‘discovery’ of a continuation is subsequently described in chapter 9.). Don Quixote and the Basque are placed in the foreground, in front of a coach and its lady passenger whom the Basque is escorting. In the background we can see also the preceding incident of chapter 8, Don Quixote’s disastrous charge against the windmills.

 Don Quixote and the vizcaíno with raised swords; the charge against the windmills (background). Miguel de Cervantes, Vida y hechos del ingenioso cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha (Brussels, 1662), vol. 1. 1074.i.5., facing p. 52.

The illustrations added to the Antwerp edition of 1672/73, engraved by Fredrick Bouttats, are technically superior to those in the editions of 1657 and 1662. Don Quixote’s meeting with the enchanted Dulcinea, the result of Sancho’s stratagem, includes the same characters, but is livelier and more expressive. Both the knight and his squire are shown kneeling in homage to the ‘lady’ Dulcinea. Moreover, unlike Savery’s 1657 illustration, it illustrates in the background the subsequent action when Dulcinea rides off and is unseated by her donkey. Quixote and Sancho come to her aid.

Don Quixote and Sancho greet the supposedly enchanted Dulcinea; Dulcinea is thrown from her mount (background). Miguel de Cervantes, Vida y hechos del ingenioso cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha (Antwerp, 1672-73), vol. 2, 1074.i.8. facing p. 80.

On their own the images of the 1657 edition had limited subsequent circulation except in Dutch versions, but those in the 1672/73 Antwerp edition were widely used in versions in French, English, German and Spanish until well into the 18th century.

Geoff West, former Curator Hispanic Collections

References/further reading:

Patrick Lenaghan, Imágenes del Quijote: modelos de representación en las ediciones de los siglos XVII a XIX (Madrid, 2003). LF.31.a.88

José Manuel Lucía Megías. Leer el ‘Quijote’ en imágenes. Hacia una teoría de los modelos iconográficos. (Madrid, 2006). YF.2007.a.12503

Centro de Estudios Cervantinos. Quijote Banco de imágenes 1605-1915: http://qbi2005.windows.cervantesvirtual.com/

Throughout Europe, the tradition of the Passion Play has a long history, reaching back to an age where it was a powerful means of bringing the dramatic events of the last week of Christ’s life before the eyes of those who could not read. Although the comparatively late Oberammergau Passionspiel  is perhaps the best-known example, many others were performed in the Eastern as well as Western churches.

             Bust of Nikos Kazantzakis in Heraklion (Image from Wikimedia Commons CC-BY.2.0)                    

It is one of these which the Cretan author Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) describes in his novel Ho Christos xanastauronetai (1948). The British Library holds a numbered copy of the seventh edition signed by his widow Eleni Kazantzakis. It was translated into English in 1954 by Jonathan Griffin under the tile Christ Recrucified (12589.d.18), and ran into several subsequent editions.

Signature of Eleni Kazantzakis from copy no. 216 of a limited edition of the Greek original of Christ Recrucified. (Athens, [1959?]) 11411.e.96 

Kazantzakis was born at a time when Crete was still part of the Ottoman Empire rather than the modern Greek state which had existed for just over 50 years, and the village of Lykovrissi (‘Wolf’s Spring’) in which he sets the action recalls his experience of growing up in a society where Greek and Turk, Christian and Muslim existed side by side in comparative harmony for the most part. What destabilizes the equilibrium of the community is not internal friction but the arrival of a group of refugees whose own village has been destroyed by the Turks. They reach Lykovrissi at a time when parts are being allocated for the next year’s Passion Play, performed every seven years, and these two events ignite the tumult which ultimately ends in bloodshed and self-sacrifice.

Throughout his life Kazantzakis was a spiritually questing and perpetually restless soul whose challenges to established religious dogma and practice caused him – like his hero Manolios – to face excommunication, though it was never actually pronounced. However, his later novel The Last Temptation of Christ (1955) caused such a furore that the Roman Catholic Church placed it on its index of forbidden books. Though controversial, his portrayal of Christ as a fully human being who understands and engages in the dilemmas of existence to the utmost is close to those of Kahlil Gibran and Dennis Potter, and provided the basis for Martin Scorsese’s film of the same name (1988). Christ Recrucified was also made into a film in 1957,  Celui qui doit mourir, by Jules Dassin, with Melina Mercouri in the role of Katerina . 

It was in another medium, though, that Christ Recrucified found additional dramatic expression. Throughout his life Kazantzakis had been a frequent traveller, and had lived in many countries, including the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. When the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů encountered his work, he immediately recognized its potential for an opera, and the two artists began a correspondence in French which is available in a Czech edition as Řecké pašije: osud jedné opery : korespondence Nikose Kazantzakise s Bohuslavem Martinů, edited by Růžena Dostálová and Aleš Březina (Prague, 2003; YF.2005.a.6912).

Bohuslav Martinů in 1942. Image from Bohuslav Martinu Centre in Policka, inventory number: PBM Fbm 115, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 CZ)

Martinů composed the original version of his opera between 1954 and 1957, when memories were still fresh of the Slánský show trials  and the worst excesses of political intolerance and corruption within a communist state where religion was actively suppressed. With no chance of staging it in Czechoslovakia, he offered it to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, but it was not until 1961 that a revised version received its premiere in Zürich, two years after the composer’s death.  The Royal Opera House staged a production by David Pountney (in English) in 2004, conducted by Charles Mackerras, thus making amends for not producing it earlier as originally intended.  

Kazantzakis himself, though disillusioned with Soviet communism and never a party member, had admired Lenin and the general principles which he believed communism represented, many of which find their way into his novel. As the year progresses, the villagers – Manolios, cast as Christ, Katerina, the widow and prostitute chosen as Mary Magdalene, and the various disciples, as well as Panayotaros, the Judas – gradually find themselves assuming the characteristics of the figures whom they portray, and embodying them in their actions towards one another and the starving refugees. The village priest Grigoris denies the fugitives shelter for fear of cholera, and sends them and their own priest Fotis to starve on the mountain of Sarakina. Manolios, regarded with suspicion by the village elders as a ‘Bolshevik’ and ‘Muscovite’, leads his neighbours to help them, and offers his life to save the village from the wrath of the local Agha following the murder of his boy favourite Yousouffaki, but it is Katerina who sacrifices hers, struck down by the Agha after claiming responsibility for a crime which she did not commit. As Manolios inspires others to leave their possessions and join him in a life of prayer and seclusion, the mob, headed by Panayotaros, kills Manolios on Christmas Eve as the refugees resume their flight, led by Father Fotis, who reflects, ‘When will You be born, my Christ, and not be crucified any more, but live among us for eternity?’

Cover of Nikos Kazantzakis, Christ Recrucified , translated by Jonathan Griffin (London, 1962) X.908/5908.

Though nominated nine times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Kazantzakis never won the award. However, in this as in his other works, he proved himself to be not only a truly European but a universal figure, whose writings continue to raise existential issues of personal integrity and human responsibility – more timely than ever as a new stream of refugees pours into Greece in the weeks before another Easter.

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

How much truth is in a proverb? Perhaps, you, dear reader, were pondering this question the last time you heard someone saying ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ or ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’

Proverbs have a long history, some going back all the way to antiquity, and they are an important part of many languages. Each culture and each generation can form new proverbs or cause others to die out. Moreover, equivalent proverbs exist in multiple languages to express similar sentiments, e.g. the German proverb ‘Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund’ and the American ‘The early bird gets the worm’ essentially mean the same thing.

When it comes to their truthfulness though, proverbs evade any concrete assessment by being both ambiguous and contradictory. This does not usually become apparent in conversations, because we always choose a proverb to fit a situation, which makes them appear to be of universal wisdom.

 Title page of Deutsche Sprüchwörter und Spruchreden in Bildern und Gedichten (Düsseldorf, ca 1852)  555.d.40.

The illustrations in Deutsche Sprüchwörter und Spruchreden in Bildern und Gedichten (‘German Proverbs and Sayings in Pictures and Poems’) explore the meaning of proverbs by creating specific situations to match various German sayings, many of which are still in use today. An interesting example is the image that accompanies the proverb ‘Nach gethaner Arbeit ist gut ruhen’ (‘After finishing work, one can rest well’).

The illustration ingeniously portrays two meanings at once: firstly, the old man as a gravedigger who just finished a day’s work and can now relax; and secondly, the old man at the end of a strenuous life, ready to finally rest in peace. The young girl looking into the grave might even underline the meaning of the proverb by contrasting it with its opposite, namely that an untimely death is never peaceful – for the person or their family.

Another fascinating example is the illustration that goes with ‘Der grade Weg, der beste’ (‘The straight/direct path is the best,’ the equivalent of ‘Better beg than steal’).

As you can see, here the illustrator opted for a literal and rather ironic representation of the proverb. Again, multiple readings are possible: perhaps the two men should have gone directly to church without stopping at a pub and getting drunk, which only made them end up in a riverbed; or they show us that if the direct path is through a riverbed, maybe you should accept that you have to walk longer to take the bridge but at least that way you will not make a fool of yourself.

Proverb expert Wolfgang Mieder states that the truly marvellous thing about proverbs is their ubiquity. Proverbs do not only exist in many languages, but they have also inspired a lot of literary and artistic work. A prominent example is Pieter Bruegel’s painting ‘Netherlandish Proverbs’, in which he portrayed at least 112 common sayings. Especially for proverbs in English, Shakespeare’s influence has to be mentioned. The bard, whose 400-year anniversary the British Library celebrates with an exhibition which opens on 15 April, has coined a large number of proverbial sayings still used today. Mary Cowden Clarke’s 1848 collection of Shakespearean proverbs is a beautiful little volume worth checking out.

Sample Page from Mary Cowden Clarke, Shakespeare Proverbs; or, the Wise Saws of our wisest poet collected into a Modern Instance (London, 1848) 1344.a.20 

Lena Böse, Intern, Western Heritage Collections

References / Further Reading

Wolfgang Mieder, Wise Words : Essays on the Proverb. (New York, 1994). YC.1994.a.2436.

Wolfgang Mieder, Sprichwort – Wahrwort?! Studien zur Geschichte, Bedeutung und Funktion deutscher Sprichwörter. (Frankfurt am Main, 1992). X.0709/839(23.).

On the Web

You can find a list of all the proverbs identified in Pieter Bruegel’s painting here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlandish_Proverbs

If you can read German, the Deutsche Welle has a really interesting interview with Professor Mieder on its website: http://www.dw.com/de/no-pain-no-gain-warum-wir-immer-noch-in-sprichw%C3%B6rtern-sprechen/a-18809256

It is startling to reflect that a painter’s reputation may stand or fall on the reception of a limited number of works, and this is particularly true in the case of the Russian artist Vasilii Ivanovich Surikov. Although he created a wide variety of cartoons, still lifes and portraits, the crowning achievement of his career was a series of seven large-scale historical paintings, each of which took several years to complete.

Photo of Vasilii Surikov by F. Bruckmann  from V.A. Nikolskii, V.I. Surikov (St Petersburg, 1923); YA.1991.a.2860

From the beginning he was something of an outsider, born not in Moscow or St. Petersburg but far away in Siberia, in Krasnoyarsk, into a family descended from the Don Cossacks who had followed Yermak  in the 16th century on his conquest of Siberia, a theme which would later inspire one of Surikov’s paintings (1895). Throughout his life he retained great pride in his Cossack heritage and its traditional values of independence, directness, love of liberty and zeal in defending their territory from enemy encroachment – qualities which he regarded as his ‘family heirlooms’ and repeatedly evoked in his work.

In 1869 he set off for St. Petersburg to study for two years with Pavel Chistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts.  Although he complied with the requirements of the syllabus, painting conventional nude studies, Biblical themes and other traditional subjects, these never obliterated the mental pictures of Siberia which he carried wherever he went. His studies, however, stimulated his interest in antiquity, and he was inspired by the history of ancient Egypt, Rome and the early Christian era to tackle scenes such as Belshazzar’s feast and the court of Cleopatra (both 1874). In that same year, though, he painted his first surviving work on a theme from Russian history, The Princely Court, in response to an assignment set by the Academy’s professors on ‘the clash of Christianity and paganism in the time of Prince Vladimir’.

Looking at any of his most famous canvases, the viewer might be led to compare Surikov’s work with that of Delacroix or Rembrandt in their shared capacity to people the scene with a vast number of figures, all individually characterized but forming part of a cohesive whole. Surikov, it is true, travelled widely, visiting Italy, Germany, Paris and Vienna in 1883 and Switzerland in 1897, but the influences which he absorbed there were drawn into the service of a greater national purpose.

In 1877 Surikov had settled in Moscow, where he had been commissioned to create a series of paintings for the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. On completing these the following year, he set to work on what would become one of his most famous paintings, The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy. This work, depicting the last moments of members of a corps of guardsmen established by Ivan the Terrible, following their failed rebellion against Peter the Great in 1698, was exhibited in 1881 at the ninth exhibition of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers), a group of artists set up in 1870 by Ivan Kramskoi with the aim of holding travelling exhibitions. Surikov was accepted as a member that same year, joining Il’ya Repin, Ivan Shishkin, Isaak Levitan and Valentin Serov. All these artists rejected the artificial conventions of academic painting in favour of a fresh and vigorous view of nature and unsparing realism in their handling of subjects reflecting the social turmoil and inequality of Russia in the 19th century.  

Utro streletskoi kazni (The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy). Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Historical painting had several advantages. On the surface, it gave the artist an opportunity to portray heroic exploits from the glorious past, and also to recreate in minute detail the costumes and artefacts of bygone ages which were increasingly attracting attention with the development of the Pan-Slav movement  and  the founding of the Historical Museum in Moscow and similar institutions. At the same time, though, in an age of rigid censorship it allowed him to comment implicitly on the poverty, injustice, corruption and repression which were all too characteristic of his own times.  

Surikov – the father of two daughters – was also inspired by Ivan Zabelin’s book on women in mediaeval Russia to portray strong and heroic female figures, as in the uncompleted Princess Olga Meeting Igor’s Corpse (1915), where the heroine is shown vowing revenge on the Drevlians  for her husband’s death. Even more famous is The Boyarynya Morozova (1887), in which the central figure is shown being dragged in chains to torture for her refusal to abandon the practices of the Old Believers, mocked by the crowd as she defiantly raises her hand to make the sign of the cross with two rather than three fingers.

 
Boiarynia Morozova by Surikov (From Wikimedia Commons)

Surikov’s work won him numerous awards and commissions, including one for illustrations to editions of Pushkin’s writings (1898), and others for Nikolai Kutepov’s essay on the history of imperial hunting in Russia. His importance was recognized during his lifetime by several studies, including one by Viktor Nikolskii, first published in 1913 (YA.2003.a.45820).

‘Bolshoi morskoi maskarad v 1722 godu na ulitsakh g. Moskvy’  from N.I. Kutepov’s colletion of hunting scenes, Velikokniazheskaia  i tsarskaia okhota na Rusi, vol. 3: Imperatorskaia okhota na Rusi, konets XVII i XVIII vek (St Petersburg, 1896-1911). L.R.30.c.6

Though Surikov’s paintings depict the past, they never lapse into stilted rhetoric or decoration for its own sake, despite their exact and authentic rendering of jewels, richly textured fabrics or weapons. He was so intent on capturing his figures’ experiences faithfully that in Switzerland in 1897, while making studies for Suvorov Crossing the Alps (1899), he actually experimented with sliding down a snowy slope near Interlaken to record the resulting motion and sensations. For him, as for his fellow peredvizhniki, the fate and feelings of the common soldiers or the mass of the crowds in his works were as important as those of the generals or heroes, and in a century where, sadly, certain of the abuses which they subtly attacked are still all too prevalent, Surikov’s art remains as vivid and timeless as ever.

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