In a week’s time an important event will take place in the northern French town of Lille. Esperantists worldwide will meet again for their biggest annual gathering, the World Congress of Esperanto  – and this year for the 100th time.

As a curator of Esperanto Collections I am asked more often than I would like: “Is Esperanto still alive? Does anybody speak Esperanto these days?” and other rather annoying questions. I usually congratulate the person on meeting their first Esperantist (i.e. me) and invite them to check our rich Esperanto Collections. Type the word “Esperanto” in our electronic catalogue “Explore the British Library” and you will be surprised to find a lot of books, journals, musical scores in Esperanto (original literature, translations, history of Esperanto clubs, biographies of famous Esperantists etc.) and about Esperanto and Esperantists.

                        Cover of Sikosek’s book  Sed homoj kun homoj (Rotterdam, 2005) YF.2006.a.30996

No lack of information about World Congresses of Esperanto either. In 2005, to mark the 90th Esperanto Congress in Vilnius, Lithuania, Ziko Marcus Sikosek compiled  a good guide, Sed homoj kun homoj. Universalaj kongresoj de Esperanto 1905-2005, in which you can find most useful information about the history of the congresses and their chronology. The title of the book comes from the famous speech by L. L. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto, in 1905 in Boulogne-Sur-Mer, where the first congress took place. It emphasises the fact that during Esperanto  congresses all language barriers fall apart and everybody communicates with each other just as “a human being with human beings”.

The British Library holds various booklets and guides about some World Congresses of Esperanto.  Quite a few of them took place in Britain: the 3rd in Cambridge (1907), the 18th in Edinburgh (1926), the 22nd in Oxford (1930), the 30th in London (1938), the 46th In Harrogate (1961), the 56th in London (1971), the 74th in Brighton (1989).

Members of the Organisation Committee for the 22nd World Congress of Esperanto in Oxford (from XXIIa Universala Kongreso de Esperanto...; Oxford, 1930; 12902.aa.62) 

For each congress the Organization Committee (called in Esperanto LKK - La Organiza Komitato, picture of above) prepares a guidebook about the host country (some of these guides are part of our collections – photo below) 

Postcards, and sometimes stamps, are issued for each congress. The biggest collection of congress memorabilia is held in the Esperanto museum in Vienna, now part of the Austrian National Library.

                        Stamp of Lithuania for the 90th World Congress of Esperanto  in Vilnius, 2005 (From Wikimedia Commons)

The Esperanto movement has a rich history of prominent people from many countries who took an active role in organising the congresses. Amongst the pioneers I would like to mention Hippolyte Sebert, the French general and scientist, who learned Esperanto in 1898 and then dedicated many years of his long and active life to the organization of the Esperanto movement and congresses. The British Library holds his early books in French (about artillery, and a treatise about trees in New Caledonia), as well as edition of his letters to Zamenhof during 1909-1913, compiled and edited in Japan (Kial ludoviko abdikis? 1990; YF.2009.a.15613)

Nowadays many people researching their ancestors consult guides and books about the congresses, looking for their family members known to be enthusiastic Esperantists and travellers in their youth (or later years). Here is what the list of participants for the 4th Esperanto Congress in Dresden looked like (from Kongresa Libro;  Dresden, 1908;  YF.2012.a.27394).

These days the programme of 100th World Congress of Esperanto is easily available to all on the Internet.  At the moment 2485 Esperantists from 82 countries have joined the congress in Lille. Some will join on arrival. If you happen to  be in Lille between 25 July and 2 August 2015 pay attention to the languages spoken on the streets, hotels, in public transport.  You have a lot of chances to meet your first Esperantist and find out how very much alive and kicking the language is! And, as very recent events show, citizens are ready to be taken into custody and pay fines, as during the protests against the renaming of Esperanto Street in Kazan, the Russian Federation.

“Important event”, I said? Yes! It proves that the neutral “artificial” language, created in 1887, lives and prospers, bringing joy and all kind of social activities to its users (picture below from the 4th congress in Dresden in 1908), and starts to attract more researchers to study this  unique socio-linguistic phenomenon in depth.

Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies

When Heinrich Böll died on 16 July 1985 he was one of the best-known and best-regarded German writers of the postwar era, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Literature as well as Germany’s own prestigious Georg Büchner Prize in 1967, whose works were translated into some 30 languages.

Heinrich Böll in 1981. (Image Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F062164-0004 / Hoffmann, Harald / CC-BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons)

However, popularity, critical acclaim and even a Nobel Prize in a writer’s own lifetime are no guarantee of enduring fame. Fast forward to 2010, and no less a figure than Germany’s ‘Pope of Literature’, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, despite warm personal memories of Böll and an acknowledgement of his importance, pronounced his poetry and plays “worthless” and most of his novels “a disappointment” in an interview with the newspaper Die Welt. This was part of a general consensus among German critics and journalists that Böll was now largely forgotten; when a large part of his archive was destroyed in the collapse of the Stadtarchiv in Cologne in 2009 it seemed almost symbolic of the author’s own posthumous fate.

This 30th anniversary of Böll’s death is a good moment to revisit him, not least given the death earlier this year of Günter Grass, with whom Böll was often linked during his lifetime. Although very different writers, they moved in the same literary and political circles, and their works show the same concern with confronting Germany’s past and holding up a critical mirror to the country’s present. 

For Böll, of course, the German present did not extend to the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification. This seems to be one of the reasons for loss of interest in his work, which is seen by some contemporary writers, critics and teachers as firmly rooted in the Federal Republic of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and no longer relevant to the very different world of the 21st-century ‘Berlin Republic’.

British school editions of some of Böll’s works. Böll was  a staple of the A level German curriculum in the 1970s and 80s, but is less read and studied in Britian today.

Despite the specific social and historical setting, however, many of Böll’s underlying themes do have contemporary relevance. For example, he often evokes the sense of a spiritual void and lack of humanity in a materially successful society. A short story like ‘Es wird etwas geschehen’, where the frantically busy staff of a company are forever discussing what they will achieve while never truly achieving  anything, could be a satire on today’s business methods and management-speak.  In ‘Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen’ (described by Reich-Ranicki as “perhaps his best work”), a radio editor collects and listens to recordings of silence as a contrast to the self-important yet often trivial programmes which his station broadcasts – and silence in the face of a self-important and trivial media is an even rarer commodity today.

Böll’s most famous novel, Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, also has contemporary echoes. Inspired both by German press coverage of the Baader-Meinhof Gang and by the hounding of Böll himself as an apologist for terrorism after he published an essay criticising the tabloid Bild-Zeitung in particular, it tells how Katharina Blum’s life and reputation are ruined after she spends the night with a petty criminal and helps him to evade the police. The press falsely depicts the man as a ruthless bank-robber, murderer and potential terrorist, and Katharina as his cold, calculating and promiscuous accomplice. Statements in her defence are twisted against her, friends and family are pursued, strangers send hate mail, and eventually Katharina is driven to shoot the journalist who has led the witch-hunt against her. In a modern version Katharina would be lynched on social media as well as in print, but that is the only difference.

Even if not all of Böll’s work has stood the test of time so well, he deserves  also to be remembered as a humanitarian who supported dissident writers and political prisoners and spoke up for what he considered to be right. In the words of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, a Green political foundation named in his honour:

he embodied that rare combination of political awareness, artistic creativity, and moral integrity which remains a model for future generations. The courage to stand up for one's beliefs; encouragement to meddle in public affairs; and unconditional activism in support of dignity and human rights. (https://www.boell.de/en/content/heinrich-boell)

Not a bad legacy.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

References:

Heinrich Böll, Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (Cologne, 1974) X.989/36213

Heinrich Böll, Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen, und andere Satiren (Cologne, 1958) X.989/70833 (collection includes ‘Es wird etwas geschehen’)

The Palais-Royal, which still survives today in Paris, just north of the Louvre, was built between 1637 and 1641, and remodelled between 1781 and 1784, when it belonged to the Orléans family and operated as a garden surrounded by an arcade of shops and restaurants. It became notorious as a resort of prostitutes, and five editions of an eight-page guide to ladies of pleasure can be found in the French Revolutionary tracts (shelfmark F.441.(1).)

The Tarif des filles du Palais-Royal was published in 1790, for the benefit of the many strangers drawn to the capital by their love of liberty and desire to participate in patriotic festivals. Many such visitors are being scandalously over-charged by the ‘Commerçantes de Cythère’ so these ladies, some of whom actually resided in the Palais-Royal, are listed, with their charges, which vary considerably, from six to two hundred livres, or more.  Sophie and her sister are willing to entertain you for the night, with supper, for two hundred livres in the rue basse du Rempart.  Duchausour and her sister lodge with a tapestry-maker in the rue de Fers, and charge one hundred and eighty livres. Stainville, nicknamed the Maréchale, has a brothel of six girls in the rue neuve des bons enfans (rather ironic as they are not good children, unless at their profession). Issue three mentions the trades followed by some of the ladies, such as sellers of dress or jewellery, actress or singer.

Issue four advises readers of either sex that they can consult La Dame le Large, midwife, at her office near the Opéra over their health, for a subscription of three louis a year. All ‘damaged’ persons can be ‘made new’. This issue also adds some descriptions of the ladies, such as ‘black, crinkly hair’, ‘soft and inactive’ and ‘warning that she sleeps all night’. Other ladies are described as ‘very pretty’, having ‘a beautiful throat’, or having ‘seductive features but too large a mouth’. One is ‘very clean and has a bidet’. Another is no longer in business since her last child. Georgette is a little ‘mignarde’ (mannered), but loosens up after she has drunk a bowl of punch. Issue five details some of the refreshments provided, such as cakes, vanilla ices or beer.  Others offer gambling or card games such as biribi and bouliotte. Mademoiselle Grand-Jean offers a ‘chansonnette’, a light-hearted or satirical song.  A lady called Saint-Fard is ‘polissonne’ (‘teasing’ or ‘licentious’) if well paid.

A stark contrast is provided by tract F.437.(9), an eight-page attack on saints and aristocrats by L. Boussemart, known as ‘Moustache’. On the first page ‘La guillotine permanente’ [above] is an engraving of the guillotine in action, which a footnote informs us is the guillotine at the Carousel (next to the Louvre) drawn from life, an illustration which can be purchased separately as a print.

Boussemart admits he was a former monk, and launches a virulent attack on saints Laurence and Bartholomew for being aristocrats. Now, he says, we have saints Rousseau, Voltaire and Francklin [sic – ie Benjamin Franklin] who have revealed the people’s rights.  As it is too late to guillotine Laurence and Bartholomew, they should be erased from history. He ends with words for a bloodthirsty song calling for a quick trial for traitors leading straight to the guillotine, so that their heads should pay for the cost of the machine. The last verse calls La Fayette to the guillotine so that this ‘monsieur blondinet’ should also pay the price of his treachery.  The Marquis de La Fayette, hero of the struggle for American independence, was a moderate revolutionary, and his support for the king and a constitutional monarchy resulted in his denunciation as a traitor by the time this pamphlet was written, probably in 1793.

Morna Daniels, Former Curator French Collections

Basque, the only non-Indo European language in Western Europe, is an isolate, a language unrelated to any other living or dead. Nonetheless attempts have been made to demonstrate a relationship with a variety of languages including ancient Iberian, Pictish, Etruscan, and Berber. The most consistently proposed kinship has been with the Kartvelian family of Caucasian languages, in particular with Georgian.

The origin of Basque has been bound up with theories about the origin of the Basque people themselves. Greek and Roman historians referred to the region corresponding to modern Georgia as eastern Iberia, as distinct from western Iberia, i.e. Spain and Portugal. The Greek geographer Strabo referred both to the Iberians of the Caucasus and to the ‘western Iberians’ (Geographica, bk. XI, ch. II, 19). Appian of Alexandria later wrote ‘some people think that the Iberians of Asia were the ancestors of the Iberians of Europe; others think that the former emigrated from the latter’ (Historia Romana, bk. XII, ch. XV, 101). However, he continued ‘still others think that they merely have the same name, as their customs and languages are not similar’. The Georgian language was also known, confusingly, as Iberian.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Basque historians adopted the prevalent Spanish legend according to which after the Flood, Tubal, a son of Japheth, was the first settler in the Peninsula, but they added that he settled first in Cantabria, i.e. the Basque region. Esteban de Garibay (born 1525) found evidence for this claim in similarities between place names in northern Spain and in Armenia, e.g. Mount Ararat (in modern Turkey) = Aralar, the mountain range in Gipuzkoa and Navarra. He also links the Basque Mount Gorbeia  to an Armenian peak ‘Gordeya’. He considered Basque the first language of the whole Peninsula and, presumably, the language of Tubal. Other writers followed Garibay, notably Andrés de Poza and Baltasar de Echave. Garibay’s identification of similarities between toponyms, however fantastical, can be seen as a forerunner of the Basque-Caucasian hypothesis.

Esteban de Garibay, Los XL libros del Compendio historial… de todos los reynos de España (Antwerp, 1571) British Library C.75.e.4.

In the early 20th century philologists developed more scientific arguments for a link between Basque and Caucasian languages. Typological similarities certainly exist between Basque and Georgian. For example both are ergative languages. Put at its simplest, this means that the subject of a transitive verb appears in the ergative case (or ‘agentive’), while the object is in the absolutive case and is unmarked. Thus, in Basque we have ‘gure aitak etxe berria erosi du’ (‘our father has bought a new house’) contrasted with ‘gure aita Donostian bizi da’ (‘our father lives in Donostia’).  In Georgian, ‘father’ in the first sentence would be rendered by ‘mamam’ and by ‘mama’ in the second. However, the ergative construction would not be employed in subject-direct object-verb constructions in all tenses and aspects. In Basque the ergative is more regularly employed.

Another notable similarlity is that the verb morphology of both languages is pluripersonal, i.e. the form of the verb may encode not just the subject of the sentence, but any direct or indirect objects present. In Basque this is illustrated in the examples:

Nere semeak kotxe berri bat erosi du = My son has bought a new car
Nere semeak bi kotxe erosi ditu = My son has bought two cars.

The infix it in the auxiliary verb in the second example agrees with the plural object bi kotxe. However, the verb morphology of Georgian is extremely complex and functions very differently from Basque.

Typological parallels are all very well, but ergativity and pluripersonal agglutinative verbal morphology are not exclusive to Basque and Georgian, and doubt concerning possible kinship between them arises when lexical coincidences are cited. According to Basque philologists today, the majority of those seeking similarities have cast their nets very wide, claiming cognate fish when most should have been thrown back. Cognates with Basque have been sought among several Caucasian languages, although a genetic relationship between the Northern and Kartvelian groups remains unproven. Furthermore, in many cases proto-Basque forms have not been matched with proto-Georgian forms; many coincidences are thus anachronistic. The philologist R.L. Trask also stressed that the Basque, in its hypothetical early form, had a vastly impoverished consonantal system in contrast to the wealth of consonants of the Northern Caucasian groups in particular. Today, Georgian has 28 consonants, Basque 21.

The 36 letters of the Georgian alphabet according to Alphabetum ibericum, sive georgianum… (Rome, 1629); 621.c.33.(1.)

The case for a relationship between Basque and other languages intensified in the early 20th century with the philologists Hugo Schuchardt, C.C. Uhlenbeck and Alfredo Trombetti. Much of the debate was conducted in scientific periodicals, particularly the Revue Internationale des Etudes Basques (P.P.4331.aeb.). We might add here the Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr who developed the so-called Japhetic theory linking Kartvelian with Semitic languages and subsequently the theory that all languages had a common origin. He also found parallels between Kartvelian languages and Basque.

Marr (third from right) with a group of Basques, reproduced in Nikolai Marr, Basksko-kavkazskie leksicheskie paralleli (Tbilisi , 1987) YA.1991.a.23022

The case for possible Basque-Caucasian cognates continued to be advanced in the second half of the last century by linguists such as René Lafon and Antonio Tovar. However, later scholars, notably Luis (Koldo) Michelena and Trask, firmly rejected the Caucasian link.  This has not stemmed the tide of speculation, which in fact has widened to include Basque in a macro-language family (Dené-Caucasian) and even beyond in the hypothetical single language of the so-called proto-world. This notion seems to bring us back to Nikolai Marr. These last speculations find approval also among those still hoping to prove a common ethnic origin for the Basques and the Iberians of the Caucasus. Given that the Basque language remains alone in a class of one, it is wisest to conclude that the case for a link remains unproven.

Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic studies and Anna Chelidze, SEE Cataloguer Russian/Georgian

References

Itzia Laka, A Brief Grammar of Euskara ([Vitoria-Gasteiz], 1996); available at http://www.ehu.eus/es/web/eins/basque-grammar

Juan Madariaga Orbea, Anthology of Apologists and Detractors of the Basque Language (Reno, 2006). YC.2007.a.857.

R.L. Trask, The History of Basque (London, 1997). YC.1997.b.547

José Ramón Zubiaur Bilbao, Las ideas lingüísticas vascas en el s. XVI. Zaldibia, Garibay, Poza (Donostia, 1989). YA. 1993.a.5626.

La Prensa Iberica interview with Davit Turashvili:  http://www.laprensaiberica.org/?p=414

 

A few weeks ago the $10,000 Read Russia Prize 2015 was won by Vladimir Sharov’s Before & During, translated by Oliver Ready and published in 2014 by Dedalus books. The novel beat new translations of novels by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky; Sharov is a towering intellectual presence who stands comparison with these greats of Russian literature.  

Vladimir Sharov at the Moscow International Book Fair in 2013. Photo by Dmitry Rozhkov from Wikimedia Commons

Dedalus prides itself in publishing books which are different and unlikely to be picked up by another English-language publisher. Bizarre, fantastical, intellectual game-playing novels appeal to us, books which are very European in style and content. We use the term ‘distorted reality’ to describe such works, but Before & During must be the most extraordinary novel which we have published in the last 30 years.

                      Vladimir Sharov, Before & During (Cambridge, 2014) British Library H.2014/.9215

Before & During blends Soviet communism with religion, a hundred years of history with the drama of everyday life, and gives a voice to individuals denied one in the Soviet era. The most unusual character in the book is Nikolai Fyodorov the ascetic philosopher, who believed the human race was to be saved by the self generation of its ancestors replacing human reproduction. Indeed the heroine of the novel is the self-replicating Madame de Staël. We start off with the 19th-century Madame de Staël and end up with the 20th-century begetter of the revolution, mother and then lover of Stalin. Tolstoy and his followers for a time take centre stage in the novel, and we learn that Tolstoy’s oldest son is in fact his twin brother whose gestation was delayed and was carried on by Tolstoy’s wife.

Although Sharov’s writing has been described as magical historicism and is full of fantastical occurrences it does not read like science fiction or fantasy. The quality of the writing transcends all else. It is, as Rachel Polonsky writes in a July 2015 article in the New York Review of Books  “at times funny, at times so piercingly moving, so brimful of unassuaged sorrow, that it causes a double-take.”

Whatever I say cannot prepare the reader for what he or she will read, especially for readers not versed in Russian culture and history, so get ready to be surprised and start reading.

Eric Lane, Dedalus Books


Other works by Vladimir Sharov in the British Library

Mne li ne pozhaletʹ ...  (St Petersburg,  2014). YF.2015.a.7961

Vozvrashchenie v Egipet  (Moscow, 2013). YF.2014.a.17277

Staraia devochka (Moscow, 2013). YF.2014.a.4620

Do i vo vremia  (Moscow, 2009). YF.2013.a.9691

Iskushenie revoliutsiei (Moscow, 2009). YF.2010.a.31651

Budʹte kak deti (Moscow, 2008). YF.2009.a.24255

Repetitsii (St Petersburg, 2003). YF.2004.a.24060

Voskreshenie Lazaria  (Moscow, 2003). YF.2004.a.24053

Sled v sled (Moscow, 2001). YA.2003.a.29041

Stikhi (Moscow, 1996). YF.2004.a.8145

As well as being one of the greatest publishers of livres d’artiste in Paris for some five decades [see my earlier blog post on his relationship with Matisse], Tériade played an important role in promoting contemporary Greek art in France and he was a key figure in the discovery of the ‘naïve’ artist Theophilos. Like Tériade, Theophilos (Theophilos Chatzēmichaēl or Kephalas, 1868-1934) was born in Vareia, a suburb of Mytilene on the island of Lesvos. He spent several years in Smyrna and later in Thessaly (Volos and Pēlion) moving from village to village, painting shop signs and decorating the walls of churches, houses and inns. Most of his work from that period has consequently not survived. His eccentric behaviour and appearance – he dressed in fustanella (the traditional Greek costume) and as Alexander the Great – often made him the butt of cruel practical jokes.

Theophilos and his sister Eirene (1904). Mytilene, Hetairia Lesviakon Meleton.  Reproduced in  Theophilos [Ekdosis Emporikēs Trapezēs tēs Hellados.] (Athens, 1966). J/X.423/1787.

In 1927 Theophilos returned to his birthplace and it was there where Tériade met him, bought some some of his paintings, and commissioned more works from him. This newfound financial security proved beneficial as Theophilos produced some 120 paintings in five years.

The Wrestlers of Smyrna (1930). Mytilene, Theophilos Museum, Tériade Collection.Reproduced in Theophilos: zōgraphikoi pinakes, Dēmos Mytilēnes-Mouseio Theophilou (Mytilene, 1986) LB.31.b.4493.

His sources ranged from Byzantine art to popular prints and postcards and the subjects of his paintings include Ancient Greek mythology, Byzantine history, portraits, genre scenes, and landscapes. Erotokritos, the great epic poem of the 17th-century Cretan Renaissance was a special favourite. 

Above: Demeter, the goddess of Agriculture (1933). Mytilene, Theophilos Museum , Tériade Collection. Below: Erotokritos and Aretousa. 1928. Mytilene, I. Deles collection. Both reproduced in Theophilos (Athens, 1966)

In 1936, two years after the death of Theophilos, Tériade exhibited his work in Paris where it was inevitably compared to the the work of the Douanier Rousseau. An exhibition of his work in Greece had, however, to wait until 1947, thirteen years after his death. It was held in the British Council in Athens, organised by Ronald Crichton. Rex Warner, the director of the institute, described the reactions to the exhibition in the tense political climate of the immediate post-Second World War years and in the midst of the Greek Civil War. The Communist press saw Theophilos as a popular artist and a man of the people and therefore gave the exhibition its approval with the warning, though, that it was being held “by the wrong people, in the wrong place, and in the wrong way”. Right wing groups were also negative as they detected elements of Stalinist art in the style of Theophilos!

Despite the controversy (or, perhaps, because of it) the exhibition was a great success consecrating Theophilos as the epitome of Greekness. George Seferis gave a deeply-felt inaugural speech, published in the May 1947 issue of the journal Angloellēnike epitheorēsē (PP. 7618.dq) which was dedicated to Theophilos. Most of the works were lent by private collectors, notably by Andreas Empeirikos, Nikolaos Hatzēkyriakos-Gkikas (Ghika), Angelos Katakouzēnos, Alexandros Xydēs, and Odysseas Elytēs, in other words the cultural elite of Athens. In his speech Seferis talked about his gratitude to those who had had the foresight to recognise the genius of the artist, did their best to protect his paintings from destruction, and lent to the exhibition some of the best works still remaining in Athens – the last remark surely a reference to Tériade’s removal of Theophilos’s work from Greece.

The final consecration of Theophilos came in 1961 with the exhibition in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris of 44 paintings from Tériade’s collection. In 1965 the Theophilos Museum, financed by Tériade and housing his entire collection of works by the artist, opened in Vareia followed, in 1979, by the Tériade Museum-Library  which holds Tériade’s publications and also works by other French and Greek artists.

Perhaps Theophilos himself should have the last word, in the wonderful story recounted with gusto by Seferis in his above-mentioned speech:

Once upon a time, as they say, a baker commissioned a poor painter to paint a picture of him taking loaves of bread out of the oven. The painter started on his work, and when he came to putting in the baker’s rake, instead of following the laws of perspective and making it horizontal, he drew it perpendicular, showing the whole breadth of its surface; then, in the same way, he drew a loaf of bread on the rake. A clever man came past and said to the painter, “That loaf of bread is going to fall down, the way you’ve painted it.” Without bothering to turn his head, the painter replied, “Don’t worry. Only real loaves fall down; the painted ones stay put, and in a picture one ought to show everything.”

A Bakery in Larisa. (1933). Mytilene, Theophilos Museum , Tériade Collection. Reproduced in Theophilos: zōgraphikoi pinakes, Dēmos Mytilēnes-Mouseio Theophilou (Mytilene, 1986)

Chris Michaelides, Curator Romance collections

References

Kitsos Makrēs, Ho zōgraphos Theophilos sto Pēlio (Volos, 1939). YA.1994.a.14281.

Théophilos [catalogue of the exhibition in the Musée des arts décoratifs, June-September 1961]. (Paris, 1961). 7873.bb.29.

Rex Warner, Views of Attica. (London, 1950). 010127.b.20

George Seferis, On the Greek style: selected essays in Poetry and Hellenism. Translated by Rex Warner and Th. D. Frangopoulos. (London, 1967). X.908/9883

Hoi Hellēnes zōgraphoi. Tomos 1. Apo ton 19o aiōna ston 20o. (Athens, 1974). L.R.430.C.10.

Four painters of 20th century Greece: Theophilos, Kontoglou, Ghika, Tsarouchis. (London, 1975). X.410/10030

Tōnēs Spēterēs, Treis aiōnes neoellēnikēs technēs, 1660-1967. (Athens, 1979). X.421/25448.

George Seferis, Dokimes.  (Athens, 1981). X.950/24516.

Ver, oir, oler, gustar, tocar; empresas, que enseñan, y persuaden su buen uso, en lo politico, y en lo moral; que ofrece el hermano Lorenço Ortiz .. En Leon de Francia : en la Emprenta de Anisson, Posuel y Rigaud. A costa de Francisco Brugieres, y Compañia, 1687. British Library RB.23.a.22596

A very Jesuitical book, this: meditations on the five senses of man and the rightful uses to which they should be put.  And the genre it belongs to is one close to the heart of the Society of Jesus: the emblem book.

The emblem typically consists of a picture, a motto and a commentary, the daddy of the genre being the Emblemata of man of law Andrea Alciati, first printed in 1531. The briefer the motto, the better; the more obscure the picture, the better. The commentary, sometimes a poem, sometimes in prose with verse quotations, had to be clearer. And ever since its birth, the emblem was erudite: any sort of classical or biblical knowledge could be marshalled.

Father Ortiz begins his book of emblems with an emblem to orientate the reader (below). Look at your hands: they have five fingers, as you have five senses. And if your right hand is rightful, your left is sinister.

There follow five chapters on the senses.  Let’s focus on Taste.

So, a picture of a hand (a right one) picking a fig from a dish.  

We learn that Xerxes king of Persia went to war with the Greeks because he loved to eat their figs. There follow examples of the gluttony of the banqueters of antiquity, such as Dionysius Tyrant of  of Sicily, who made his palace into a ‘bodegón’, a still life of groaning tables loaded with delicacies. Mention of the tongue leads Ortiz into thoughts on speech and its vices (see blog of 24 September 2014).  Nowhere is so far away that it can’t furnish an improving example: the Hoitzitziltot bird (the humming bird) teaches us not to be overdelicate in our tastes, as it dies in summer when the flowers which are its favourite food wither. Ortiz then invents his versions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (frequently allegorised in the 17th century): a glutton turned into a dog; a fusspot turned into a cat; the excessive abstainer turned into a chameleon (they lived on air, you remember), etc. etc.

And the motto?  After 40 pages of disquisition on taste, Ortiz ends with a poem whose final line forms the motto in the picture: ‘O si bien loco, general empleo!’, which I take to mean ‘Oh, taste, you are good but foolish, and common to all’.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections

References:
 
Glasgow University Emblem Website: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/

Pedro F. Campa, Emblemata Hispanica : an annotated bibliography of Spanish emblem literature to the year 1700 (Durham, NC, 1990), pp. 67-68.   Open Access Rare Books and Music Reading Room RAR 704.946

The Treaty of Amiens which ended the war between Britain, France, The Batavian Republic and Spain, prompted the Dutch to attempt to reclaim, amongst others, the Cape Colony in Southern Africa.

A former possession of the Dutch East India Company,  it had been taken by the British in 1795. The government of the Batavian Republic sent Commissioner General J. A. de Mist as head of a  new administration to rule the Cape according to the principles of the French revolution: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity!

One of the officials was a young nobleman from Ommen in the province of Overijssel  Andries van Pallandt van Eerde, whose father had lost his privileges in the new Batavian Republic.

Andries van Pallandt pictured on the cover of Siem van Eeten,   Andries van Pallandt van Eerde, belevenissen van een 19e-eeuwse klokkenluider (Zutphen, 2015) YF.2015.a.11274

Upon arrival in the Cape, Andries was appointed private secretary to the Governor. He started his work full of enthusiasm, quickly establishing good relations with the English, among them probably John Barrow, the author of Travels into the Interior of South Africa. Barrow had a Dutch wife.

View of Cape Town from John Barrow, Travels into the Interior of South Africa (London, 1806) 10094.g.10.

Andries soon realized that the reality on the ground differed from the ideas of the Dutch policy makers and concluded that the Colony would never be self-supporting. What’s more, it would be extremely difficult to defend the Cape against the British enemy with the small number of Dutch troops, without support from indigenous people. However, the Dutch colonists, the Afrikaners, had treated the local tribes so badly, that they were considered more likely to support the English who treated them far better.  

Van Pallandt found it impossible to discuss his ideas with his superiors, so in 1803 he wrote a pamphlet, entitled Remarques générales sur le Cap de Bonne Espérance (English translation General remarks on the Cape of Good Hope; Cape Town, 1917;  09061.ff.55; picture below)  He had the pamphlet printed in the Government’s printing-office at his own expense, to be sent to the Netherlands in order to trigger a debate.

When De Mist found out about the pamphlet he was furious. He ordered an investigation by the Attorney General, Beelaerts van Blokland. To avoid a public shaming, which would mean the end of his career, Van Pallandt signed a confession and was found guilty of using the Government’s printing office without permission. All printed copies of the pamphlet were confiscated, apart from the three he had already sent to important people in the Republic.

Disappointed, Van Pallandt returned home. In the meantime, war had resumed between Britain and the Batavian Republic and on 1 January 1804 his ship was taken by a Guernsey privateer.  Andries was held captive on Guernsey for several months. There he wrote a journal about his adventures, which has now been translated from French into Dutch  as  Andries van Pallandt van Eerde, belevenissen van een 19e-eeuwse klokkenluider; a launch event for the book was held in the Castle of Eerde (Netherlands), the former home of the Van Pallandt family, on 29 April 2015, and the book is available for  consultation in the British Library.

Siem van Eeten, independent researcher.  [email protected]


References and further reading:

A. van Pallandt’s diary of his time on Guernsey:  Free online resource

Interrogation of Andries van Pallandt at St. Peters Port, Guernsey on 17 January 1804.
Free online resource

Eeten, S. van, ‘A captured Dutch nobleman in Guernsey: a chance discovery’, In: Report and transactions / Société Guernesiaise, Vol XXVII (2013) , Part III. DSC7638.242000.

There are two major book fairs in Spain annually. One (LIBER) takes place in the autumn, in Madrid or Barcelona alternately, and is aimed at professionals in the book trade world-wide.  The other caters for the general public and since 1933 has been held over in late May/early June and in recent years in the Buen Retiro park in Madrid.  This year it ran from May 29 to June 14. As many as 368 booths were hired by national publishers and bookshops and, as ever, there was great competition to secure those with most shade – and thus maximum possible sales – as the sun generally blazes down until early evening.  The books on display cover many genres and most subjects: comics, children’s books, maps and guides, literature, art books, expensive facsimiles, academic and even official publications. Unlike at LIBER, the books are readily on sale.

Visitors browsing at the Retiro Book Fair (Photograph: Geoff West)

Arguably, the most notable feature of the Retiro Fair is the opportunity to have your book signed by one of your favourite writers. This year’s authors included the novelists Javier Cercas, Luis Goytisolo, Almudena Grandes and Arturo Pérez Reverte; the Swedish crime writer, Camila Läckberg; the polemical right-wing historian Pío Moa; and the lawyer and new Mayor of Madrid, Manuela Carmena. Other politicians were signing this year, particularly members of the various new parties.  A more familiar face to me was that of another novelist, Juan Pedro Aparicio, former Director of the Instituto Cervantes in London, who has just published an ironic and distinctly fantastical look at the English in a series of interlinked microfictions, London Calling.

There is also the opportunity to attend events similar to those at literary festivals.  This year, three ‘big names’, Elvira Lindo, Luis Landero and Javier Marías spoke about the three Ages of Reading (one’s first books; books for young people and books for adults).  There were homages paid to two famous authors who had recently died, Carmen Martín Gaite and Ana María Matute. There was space too for the less famous and for participation: opportunities for new writers; storytelling for children; a young poet who would write a poem for you to order; a wall where you could pin a microrelato (‘brief encounters’ seemed a popular theme) and compete for a prize.  

      The official poster for the 2015 Feria by Fernando Vicente, expressing the love of books and reading

The Feria is a very important cultural event – opened this year as in other years by Queen Sofía – for booksellers who boost their sales, the public whose appetite for books and reading is hopefully renewed, and for children who find more than enough to entertain them. By books, I do mean those on paper – the e-book is still conspicuous by its absence from the Feria.  

So what then is in it for the librarian from overseas?  I for one have made useful discoveries: the highly imaginative graphic re-working of Don Quixote by the German artist Flix, works of up-and-coming Spanish writers, new editions of classic works that are new editions.  As an employee of a major research library some publishers have generously donated books with a view to their output being better known, or with a view to future sales!  I have also been made aware of just what a small proportion of Spain’s total published output would come within our scope even with the most generous budget, but also how selective we are forced to be when budgets are as hard-pressed as they are now. There is nothing like actually having  a book in your hand before making the decision whether to buy.  So long may the Feria continue.

Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic Studies

The British Library’s online and microfilm newspaper collections are an invaluable resource for the cultural historian. In a year of significant anniversaries related to the Second World War – from the liberation of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps to the rescue of 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – these archives can provide an indirect glimpse of events as they unfolded.

Submerged in the mythological narratives, hackneyed rhetoric and clichéd images that have accumulated in the intervening decades, we are in danger of losing touch with the reality of these events. The reports, photographs and readers’ letters found in the newspapers can enable us to reconnect with that reality through the words of those who were living through it.

The liberation of Bergen-Belsen by British troops in April 1945 was one of the most momentous events of the war’s final months. Using online, word-searchable archives of the Daily Express and Daily Mirror alongside microfilm archives of the Evening Standard, three of the most widely read newspapers in 1940s Britain and all available to access in British Library reading rooms, I’ll take a closer look at reaction to this shocking event.

On 19th April 1945, the Daily Express printed some of the earliest photographs taken at Belsen after its liberation. These were evidence, the paper asserted, ‘of the vileness of the creatures we are fighting’ and of ‘the depths of sadistic brutality to which the German has reverted’. In other words, the unexpected and horrific revelations were taken as proof that anti-German wartime propaganda was rooted in truth, that Germany was a nation of barbarians.

Readers’ letters published in the Daily Mirror and the Evening Standard a few days later echoed these sentiments. ‘The evidence of the German maniacal guilt is for all the world to see’, wrote one, while another claimed, ‘The only decent German is a dead German’, echoing a popular wartime phrase. A Mirror reader suggested conducted tours of the camps for anyone who thinks ‘there are still any good Germans. Perhaps then they would change their minds’.

Sign erected by British forces at the gates of Bergen-Belsen after the liberation (Photograph BU 6995 from the Collections of the Imperial War Museum, via Wikimedia Commons)

Such reactions are perhaps unsurprising after six years of total war and a vigorous Ministry of Information propaganda campaign designed to arouse hostility among Britons towards the whole German nation, not just the Nazi elite.

What is more unexpected is the number of obstinately liberal voices that made themselves heard in the midst of a conservative clamour. The Very Rev. W. R. Inge, previously Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, argued in the Evening Standard against the wholesale denunciation of Germany. Germany is ‘a nation of decent people’, he claimed, and we must attempt to understand how they came to ‘acquiesce in these atrocities’. Others, such as cartoonist David Low, emphasised the number of German nationals imprisoned and killed in the camps, while a reader in south-west London demanded the end of ‘the nonsensical generalisation, so dangerous for the future peace of Europe, that Gestapo, Nazis and Germans mean all the same thing.’

 
‘Don’t forget some of us are Germans’: Cartoon by David Low, Evening Standard 19 May 1945 (© Solo Syndication, image from British Cartoon Archive. Reproduced with kind permission)

These brief examples offer a glimpse of the fascinating and diverse public debate in Britain in the days surrounding the liberation of Belsen. With the resources available at the British Library, we can push the clutter of history aside and return, through the words of journalists and readers, to this and thousands of other momentous events across the world and throughout history.

Judith Vonberg

Judith Vonberg is a PhD student in Cultural History and freelance journalist. You can read and follow her own blog here: https://judithvonberg.wordpress.com