Svetlana Aleksievich in 2013 (From Wikimedia Commons,   ©Elke Wetzig; Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

On 8th October a new winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was announced. Svetlana Aleksievich became the first writer from Belarus and the first woman author who writes in Russian to receive this prestigious award. Born in Ivano-Frankivsk to Ukrainian mother and Belarusian father, Aleksievich also provides Ukraine with an opportunity to take pride in her.

The Nobel Prize has always attracted so much attention and controversy that very few laureates were received with solid approval and joy. Aleksievich is not an exception, being in the honourable company of Ivan Bunin, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk and others. I will leave it for the readers to find more immediate responses to this award for themselves and take this opportunity to reflect on Aleksievich’s writings. 

Journalist by training, Svetlana Aleksievich finished her first book The Unwomanly Face of War just a few years before the launch of perestroika in the Soviet Union. Cut by censorship, cautious editors and the author herself, fragments of this book were first published in literary magazines and in 1985 – as a book. In a short time the overall print run of several consequent editions reached two million copies. The book told real stories of women – participants in WWII. Aleksievich interviewed hundreds of women veterans and let them speak for themselves in their own words, so that the book reads as a series of individual monologues: memoirs, accounts, cries and confessions. The tone of the book presented a sharp contrast with the Soviet official line on treating the subject of the war with Nazi Germany as heroic sacrifice for the Soviet Motherland. Aleksievich showed the war in its entirety as horror and madness, fear and pain, hard labour and exposure of the best human and the worst beastial features in people. On the one hand, Aleksievich followed the steps of Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin with their The Blockade Book and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Some critics trace the roots of her style to Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion.  On the other hand, Aleksievich turned document-based prose into a unique creative method. By removing the author figure from her books Aleksievich eliminated any distance between her heroes and the reader and created a narrative where the reader felt unprotected by an intermediary. The reader is ‘naked’ in front of the text and is wounded by the simple words in which the stories are expressed.

For the next 30 years Aleksievich continued to work in this genre, which I would describe metaphorically as ‘written oral history’. Together with her first book The Last Witnesses: A Hundred of Unchildlike Lullabys (about children at war), Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War, and Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster form the cycle that she entitled Voices from the Big Utopia. Her other two books Enchanted with Death (stories about suicides in the early post-Soviet period), and Second-hand Time (2013), that examines such as phenomenon as the Soviet Man, are written in a similar style and are closely linked to the cycle.

Prior to her major award, Aleksievich had received over twenty national and international prizes. Her works are translated into more than 30 languages. Over 20 films and a dozen theatre productions are based on Aleksievich’s books, including Prayer for Chernobyl  directed by Jenny Engdahl  at the New Vic Basement in 1999 and Juanita Wilson’s directorial debut The Door, a 16 minute short film based on Monologue About a Whole Life Written Down on Doors, the Testimony of Nikolai Fomich Kalugin – one of the accounts from Voices from Chernobyl. We sincerely congratulate Svetlana Aleksievich and wish her further great strength to write more books that challenge our understanding what it is to live, love and be human.

 Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections, European Studies

Lenin’s presence in London is well known and documented. A fascinating story of the area where he used to stay during his visits is described in the Survey of London.

A bust of Lenin from the Islington Museum (via Europe A la carta )

Lenin’s visits to the British Museum Library are also documented and written about (see our previous posts on Lenin at the British Library by our former colleague Dr Robert Henderson).

The British Museum Donation Register lists presents 152 (11 Jan. 1908) and 537 (14 Mar 1908):  Za 12 let (“12 Years Writings”) and Agrarnyi  vopros (“The agrarian question”) respectively.  These two books meant to constitute the first two volumes of a three-volume collection.  A copy of Za 12 let is Lenin’s only donation to bear a note made by a member of the British Museum staff: “Donation from the author”.  According to his letters, it doesn’t seem that Lenin left Geneva between January and March 1908, but he definitely was in London in May 1908, so who presented the volumes on these two occasions remains unclear.

 Za 12 let.  Tom pervyi. Shelfmark Cup.403.w.8

Lenin’s works appeared under one of his pseudonyms – Vl. Il’in. The title of the book is an allusion to then recently published collection of Georgii Plekhanov’s  works Za 20 let (“20 years of Writing”; St Petersburg, 1905). Lenin selected articles previously published between 1894 and 1905, edited and shortened some of them, and wrote a preface. The first volume that contained Chto delat’? (“What’s to be done?”), Shag vpered, dva shaga nazad (“One step forward, two steps back”), Zadachi russkikh sotsial-demokratov  (“The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats”), etc.  was legally published  in 1907 (although the date given on the title page is 1908) by the Bolshevik publishing house Vpered (“Forward”) founded and managed by a politician and writer Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, who served as Lenin’s secretary after the October revolution. When Vpered was closed by the police in summer 1907 all the materials very transferred to the publishing house Zveno (“A Chain”), led by Mikhail Kedrov, in the Soviet period – a Chekist and organizer of the first labour camps in the USSR. Printing was done by by the Bezobrazov printing house in St Petersburg, which produced books on a variety of topics from Greek etymology to the popular cookery book by Elena Molokhovets. 

Lenin attempted to publish his almost complete collection of writings (excluding Razvitie kapitalizma v Rossii - “The Development of capitalism in Russia”) for the second edition of which he had already had a contract with another publisher that brought him about 2,000 Roubles, at the very end of the period of press liberalisation that had started with the 1905 October Manifesto. After the second Duma  had been dissolved on 3 June 1907, the newly emerged free press was crushed by a system of fines and bans which in effect restored the pre-1905 censorship. However, advertisements  for this collection of works appeared in Russian newspapers, e.g. in the weekly Novaia kniga (“The New Book”) and subscription for the first two volumes at the price of four Roubles was announced. 

The subscription campaign was not very successful, and by the time the first book came out only 200 subscribers had contributed towards its cost. The first volume appeared in 3,000 copies, and Lenin received an agreed fee of 60 Roubles per  24 pages of typescript for reprinted works and 100 Roubles per 24 pages for contributions written specially for this edition.  It was not too bad money, considering that in the 1900s the best-paid ‘proletarian’ Russian author, Maxim Gorky's rate was around 1200 Roubles, Ivan Bunin's - 600 Roubles, and medium range authors received around 200 per 24 pages.

The first volume of Za 12 let was banned by the Russian authorities, as it was announced in the newspaper Rus’ on 11 December (28 November)  1907. So it was decided to publish the second volume under the separate title Agrarnyi  vopros (“The agrarian question”) in two parts, where part one would consist of previously ‘legally’ published articles, and part two would contain the Bolsheviks’ agrarian programme.

 Agrarnyi vopros. Chast 1.  British Library's shelfmark Cup.403.w.8

However, when the proofs were sent by the printers to the Zveno office, the police were already there to confiscate it. After this there were no further attempts before the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 to publish the rest of this collection.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections, European Studies

References/further reading:

Robert Service,  Lenin: a biography (London , 2000) YC.2001.a.8941

 

Taking into account Lenin’s great admiration for the Library of the British Museum, and the fact that he donated several of his books to other European libraries it is surprising to find only four donations recorded in the British Museum’s ‘Book of Presents’. This lists:

Present 152: (11 Jan. 1908) “12 Years Ago” " by Vl. Il'in, tom 1 (in Russian) Pres'd. by the Author.

Present 537: (14 Mar 1908) “The Agrarian Question”  by V.C. Oulsanov [sic] Pres'd.by the Author, Rue des deux Ponts 17, Geneve.

Present 857: (11 Apr 1908)  “Development of Capitalism in Russia” by V.Ilin, 1908. (In Russian) Pres'd. by Mr. Oulianoff,17 Rue des deux Ponts, Geneve. (i.e. Razvitie kapitalizma v Rossii. Izdanie vtoroe, dopolnennoe (St-Petersburg, 1908). 08226.i.22)

Present 2153: (11 Nov 1911)  “Deux Partis” par G. Kameneff,1911 Pres'd. by Mr. Oulianoff, 4 Rue Marie Rose, Paris. (i.e.: Dvie partii s predisloviem N. Lenina,"((Paris, 1911)  8094.k.43.

Dve partii s predisloviem N. Lenina

Presents 152 and 537 are the two parts of Za 12 let. Sobranie statei. tom 1,2 chast.1. (St Petersburg, 1908; Cup.403.w.8) marked in the catalogue as “Author’s presentation copy to the British Museum”, while  537 and 857 correspond to the two books mentioned in his letter of 18 May 1908. Many more of Lenin’s books held by the British Library bear the yellow stamp signifying a donated work. However, these are either not listed in the Book of Presents, or are entered as anonymous gifts or as donations from elsewhere. A case in point is Present 582 for 12 April 1902:

 “What's to be done” by N. Lenin  (in Russian) Pres'd. by J.H.W. Dietz, Nachf. Stuttgart. (Chto delat’? Nabolevshie voprosy nashego dvizheniia. (Stuttgart,1902) C.121.c.3.)

Chto delat’? Nabolevshie voprosy nashego dvizheniia

Unfortunately, it is impossible to say whether Dietz, his German publishers, made this donation on their own account, or whether they were instructed to do so by Lenin. On the other hand, the Library's copy of the first edition of K derevenskoi bednote (‘To the Village Poor’), also bears a yellow stamp, and even though it is not listed in the Book of Presents, one may be inclined to believe that if Lenin had to donate only one of his works this would most certainly have been his choice, since it was based largely on the research work which he carried out during his first visit to the Library.

K derevenskoi bednote (Geneva, 1903)  C.121.a.6(8)

R. Henderson, Honorary Research Associate, School of History, Queen Mary University of London

The names of 75 courageous women from 13 nations are etched into a beautiful memorial at RAF Tempsford,   home of the Special Duties Squadrons during the Second World War. These are the female special agents who volunteered for active service behind enemy lines as couriers and wireless operators, running escape lines and leading partisan armies. All were brave, and all deeply committed to the Allied cause, but they had little else in common. Although most were British or French, there were also women from the Soviet Union, Belgium, The Netherlands, Ireland, America, Switzerland, India, Australia and Chile, as well as two from Germany, sent in to support the domestic resistance, and two from Poland, including Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the subject of my last biography. Some were lucky, others not, many were beautiful which had its own pros and cons, some were plain, and one had a prosthetic leg. Most female agents were effective, at least for a short while, and Skarbek survived in active service for six years. The huge contribution of this diverse group of women came at a high price. 29 were arrested and 16 executed. One more chose suicide with her lethal ‘L’ pill.

Some of the names on the Tempsford Memorial, courtesy of Clare Mulley

Today there is increasing interest in these women. Over the last few years there have been many new biographies and anthologies about them and several memorials. Tempsford is important in that it is the only one that pays tribute to all the women by name. Its marble column stands on a granite plinth collectively honouring the two special duties squadrons that flew them into enemy occupied Europe, but there is no reference to the male agents. Perhaps now we need to ask why is it that we still distinguish heroines from heroes. After all, the Special Operations Executive, better known as SOE, was in many ways a great gender leveller. Selected women and men went through the same training, including in the use of guns and explosives, and silent killing, and were armed and sent to work alongside each other in the field.

It was, however, precisely because they were women, that these female agents were so valuable during the war. Unlike able-bodied men, civilian women travelling around France by train or bicycle attracted relatively little attention. This meant they were better-placed to serve as couriers between different resistance circuits or groups of Maquis hiding in the hills. Women transported messages, micro-film and radio codes, as well as heavy equipment such as weapons and wireless transmitters to arrange the delivery of agents and equipment, etc. Some of them, notably Pearl Witherington and Nancy Wake, went much further, commanding resistance armies of 2,000 men, and, among other achievements, Skarbek persuaded a German garrison on a strategic pass in the Alps to defect.

Skarbek, the first woman to work for Britain as a special agent, was employed in December 1939. Eighteen months would pass, during which time she served both across Eastern Europe and in the Middle East, before SOE was even officially established. The first female covert radio operator to be flown into France, Noor Inayat Khan, left England in June 1943. Even at this point, women in the British military were not officially allowed to carry guns or explosives. To circumvent this, SOE enrolled women into the FANYs, which officially operated outside of the Armed Forces but still theoretically offered some protection under the Geneva Convention in the event of capture, and provided pensions should the women become casualties.

Churchill had approved the employment of women in SOE, but their role was not made public until some time after the war for fear of a backlash. Meanwhile the women who had survived found their achievements were underplayed and their skills undervalued. While Skarbek’s male colleagues were reassigned to roles overseas, after she turned down a series of secretarial jobs for which she was monumentally unsuited, Skarbek was dismissed as ‘not a very easy person to employ’. Meanwhile the official papers sent to her were accompanied by belittling notes such as ‘Hope you are being a good girl!’ Even the honours the women received were less than their male counterparts, as women did not qualify for British military awards. Many felt bitter about this, but none expressed it as succinctly as Pearl Witherington. After being awarded the MBE (Civil), she famously commented that ‘there was nothing civil’ about the work she had undertaken.

It was only in the 1950s that the women’s stories began to be told. Having signed the official secrets act, many of the women, like the men they served with, refused to talk. Others, such as Odette Hallowes, spoke out, or like both Hallowes and Violette Szabo who had been executed at Ravensbrück, had their stories retold in biographies and films. And so the myth-making began. All too often, female agents and other women in the resistance have been honoured more for their courage and great sacrifice, than for their actual achievements. It has been judged more important that they tried, than that they succeeded. When the women did achieve, they still seem to have been feminised in the retelling, their beauty and sacrifices emphasised and their rough edges smoothed over. In order to be celebrated they have been, in effect, often recast as victims, rather than simply as heroes.

Ironically perhaps, today we need to reconsider the female special agents not only because historically they were marginalised but because, all too often, when given attention they have been judged as women, rather than as individuals doing an extraordinary job. If you have been the business of special operations, it is clearly self-defeating to be elevated as a heroine if at the same time you are diminished as an independent agent.

Clare Mulley at the Tempsford Memorial (courtesy of Pawel Komorowski)

 CLARE MULLEY is the award-winning author of The Spy Who Loved: the secrets and lives of Christine Granville, Britain’s first female special agent of the Second World War (Macmillan, 2012) [The British Library's shelfmark YC.2013.a.3179]. She is taking part in the panel discussion Churchill’s Heroines: Female Spies in WWII at the British Library on Saturday 10 October, 4-6pm. www.claremulley.com

The founder of the world’s first socialist state, Vladimir Il'ich Lenin, visited London six times between 1902 and 1911, and on at least five of these occasions found the time to call into the British Museum whose Library collections were in his view unparalleled. At the time of his 1907 visit he said:

It is a remarkable institution, especially that exceptional reference section. Ask them any question, and in the very shortest space of time they'll tell you where to look to find the material that interests you. ... Let me tell you, there is no better library than the British Museum. Here there are fewer gaps in the collections than in any other library.

Praise indeed from a man who was already well acquainted with many of the major libraries of Europe and Russia.

His attachment to the Library dates from 29 April 1902, when he first entered the Round Reading Room to commence his studies. He had arrived in London with his wife, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaia, earlier that month in order to set up publication of Iskra, the newspaper of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). The Twentieth Century Press had agreed to carry out the printing at 37a Clerkenwell Green, (now the Marx Memorial Library), and soon accommodation was found for the new arrivals not far from there, at 30 Holford Square, Pentonville.

It was from this address that Lenin first wrote to the Director of the British Museum requesting permission to study in the Library. The documents related to this episode are held in the British Library (Add. MS.54579.)

The letter (above), dated 21 April 1902, bears the signature “Jacob Richter”, the pseudonym Lenin had adopted to throw the Tsarist police off his track. The reference required  was supplied by the General Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions, I. H. Mitchell, but this did not satisfy the Admissions Office as Mitchell’s home address could not be found in the London street directories. Lenin wrote again enclosing another recommendation from Mitchell, who this time used the address of his union’s headquarters. The following day Lenin was informed that a Reader’s Ticket would be granted to him, and four days later he signed the Admissions Register and was issued with ticket number A72453 (below).

The ticket was valid for three months only, but the period was extended, first by three months, and then by a further six . Finally, on 29 April 1903, exactly one year after entering the Library for the first time, he surrendered his ticket and a few days later left England for France.

In August of the same year he returned for the famous 2nd Party Congress, during which the RSDLP made its historic split into “menshevik” and  “bolshevik”  factions, but there is no evidence to suggest that Lenin found the time to visit the Museum on this occasion, despite the fact that he said he used the Library whenever he was in London.

However, during the 3rd Party Congress, which again took place in London (from 25 April to 10 May 1905), it is known that he paid a visit to Great Russell Street, and there copied out extracts from the works of Marx and Engels. Unfortunately, there is no record of this in the Museum archives.

His next visit to London took place in early summer 1907, and from the reminiscences of his colleagues we know that he spent roughly a week in the Library at the beginning of June. The Temporary Admissions Register does mention that a J. P. Richter was admitted in May 1907 (no.3782), but one cannot be sure whether this was Lenin – Richter was not a particularly uncommon name. However, we can be quite sure about the details of his visit the following year. In mid-May 1908 he arrived in London with the express intention of spending a month in the Museum to work on his book, Materializm i empiriokrititsizm, and fortunately, his correspondence with the Museum authorities survives in the Library archives.

On 18 May 1908 under his real name, Vladimir Oulianoff, he wrote to the Director of the Museum requesting permission to study in the Library and referring to an earlier donation of two of his books. His recommendation came from a certain J. J. Terrett, an English Social Democrat, but history repeated itself, and just as in 1902, he was refused  admission. Two days later he wrote again enclosing a second reference, this time from his old friend, the manager of the Twentieth Century Press, Harry Quelch. This proved sufficient, and as in 1902, he immediately received instructions to call into the Library to collect his Reader's Ticket. On 22 May, he signed the Admissions Book, and was issued with a three-month pass, number A88740.

Lenin made use of the Library's collections only once more, during his lecture-tour of 1911, when he visited several European cities to deliver his paper on “Stolypin and Revolution”. The London reading took place on 11 November in the New King's Hall, Commercial Road, Whitechapel, and on the same day the Museum issued a temporary pass to Mr. Vladimir Oulianoff, making a note of his address, 6 Oakley Square, N.W., in their Card Index.

Although Lenin may indeed have had a favourite seat in the Reading Room, neither he nor anyone else has left any indication of which seat that may have been. Several numbers have been suggested, including: G7, H9, R7, R8, and L13. In fact, the latter is probably the most likely, positioned, as it was then in a row opposite the reference works on British and European history, which he doubtless made use of on several occasions.

R. Henderson, Honorary Research Associate, School of History, Queen Mary University of London

Last week Thursday the Dutch Centre screened the film ‘Michiel de Ruyter’, or ‘Admiral’ in the English version, about the 17th-Century admiral Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter, the Dutch Horatio Nelson. 

Michiel de Ruyter portrait. Painting by Ferdinant Bol 1667 (From Wikimedia Commons)

I had been invited to give a short introduction about De Ruyter. Not being an expert on this topic I delved into the British Library’s collections to look for suitable material. The film’s main focus is on the three Anglo-Dutch wars (1652-1654, 1665-1667, 1672-1674). De Ruyter fought in all of them.

One of the battles during the First Anglo-Dutch war was at Scheveningen on 10 August 1653. The Dutch High Admiral Maarten Tromp (played by Rutger Hauer ) was killed and De Ruyter was the only commander to make it to Tromp’s cabin. On his orders Tromp’s death was kept secret to keep morale up.

After the battle De Ruyter wrote a letter to the Grand-Pensionary of the States General, Johan de Witt. This letter got printed and we hold a copy within a so-called ‘tract-volume’, where you will find other publications from the period about the First Anglo-Dutch War gathered and bound together.

             Netherlands, Proclamations, etc. 1652-1655. The Hague, 1653. British Library D.N.2/1.(29)

In the hastily-written letter De Ruyter gives an account of the battle, which lasted two days and resulted in great losses on both sides, in both men and ships. De Ruyter describes his sorrow over the death of Admiral Maarten Tromp, the chase of the English and the battle. De Ruyter’s own ship The Lamb was so badly damaged it could hardly sail and had to be towed to safety by one of the other ships.  At one point he says he is too busy to report on everything that happened. His foremast is broken and he has 40 dead and 48 injured men. That gives an amazing glimpse in the state of mind De Ruyter must have been in. Here he is, sitting in his cabin, frantically writing his letter whilst anxious to get back on deck where his crew and ship need his attention.  Note how he meticulously records the date and place where he signs off.

The death of Maarten Tromp led to the publication of many pamphlets and poems. In another collection of tracts about the First Anglo-Dutch war there is this one (published in Dutch) A Little Conversation on the Old and the New Admiral, being a defence of M.H. Tromp against several false accusations, by a true Dutch seaman.  It is a fierce defence of the old admiral's actions during the battle, presented in the form of a dialogue between two men.

Een Praatje van den ouden en nieuwen Admiraal ...  door een oprecht Hollands zeeman.
Amsterdam, 1653. T.1720.(14)

After De Ruyter’s great victory on the Medway of June 1667, one of the greatest Dutch poets of the time, Joost van den Vondel  wrote a poem in which he called De Ruyter ‘The Lion of the Seas on the Thames’. Vondel relates how God brought down Charles II, sitting on his throne in his ‘haughtiness’  (with a swipe to his executed father Charles I) and thinking the chain across the Medway will ward off the Dutch.  Vondel exaggerates a bit here by saying that the chain spans from Dover to Calais. However, God sends his very own fleet, the States Generals’ with The Lion slashing and burning its way up the Thames and Medway to thrash the English fleet. ‘What do you say now, heh, Charlie?’ continues Vondel. He ends with how at Breda (where peace was made quickly after the Raid) three men were knighted: ‘Ruiter, Gent en Ruwaert Wit.’

De Zeeleeu op den Teems, J. V. Vondel. Amsterdam, 1653 (Image taken from www.geheugenvannederland.nl from 258 C 53 [76]], Plano’s en plakkaten, Koninklijke Bibliotheek)

The best English contemporary source on the Anglo-Dutch Wars are the diaries of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703).  The diaries are available online at www.pepysdiary.com

If you prefer print editions do consult our catalogue, where you will find hundreds of titles concerning Pepys, his diaries and his role at the Royal Navy. The early 20th Century children’s series ‘World Heroes’ includes a volume about Michiel de Ruyter. It has various coloured plates depicting scenes from De Ruyter’s life and career. 

Front cover of : Michael Adriaanszoon de Ruyter: the famous Dutch admiral ..., by H. Hillyard. (London, 1908)

Last year Robin Jacobs wrote a guest blog  about the prelude to the Raid on Chatham: Holmes Bonfire. Newly-published titles are added to the collection, so do keep coming back here to see what’s new.

 Marja Kingma, Curator Germanic Collections

References and further reading

P.J. Blok, The Life of Admiral De Ruyter. Translated by G. J. Renier. (London, 1933). 010760.f.37.

C.R. Boxer, The Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th century, 1652-1674. (London,1996). [2nd ed.] YK.1996.a.20068

D.R. Hainsworth & Christine Churches, The Anglo-Dutch naval wars, 1652-1674. (Stroud, 1998). YC.2000.b.684

Ronald Prud’homme van Reine, De Ruyter : Dutch admiral. (Rotterdam, 2011). YD.2015.b.526. This is the modern standard biography of De Ruyter.

 

Sir Roger L’Estrange 1616-1704  was a censor and an important figure in the development of political journalism in England.  In 2008  a volume of studies devoted ten chapters to such topics as ‘Roger L'Estrange and the Huguenots: continental Protestantism and the Church of England’.

However, only the reader who persevered to the end, ‘The works of Roger L'Estrange : an annotated bibliography’ by Geoff Kemp,  would discover that Sir Roger was also a translator from Latin (Seneca, Cicero, Terence, Erasmus; Aesop from the Latin of Dorpius), Greek (Josephus) and Spanish.

His Spanish translations were two:

1.) Spanish Decameron: ten tales, five from the Novelas ejemplares of Cervantes and five from La garduña de Sevilla by the much less remembered Castillo Solórzano.  Wouldn’t you like to read:

‘The Perfidious Mistress’ – ‘The Metamorphos’d Lover’ – ‘The Imposture out-witted’ –T’he Amorous Miser’ – ‘The Pretended Alchemist’?

There’s a lesson here about the reception history of literature: the Novelas have been in print continuously since 1613; La garduña de Sevilla was first printed in 1642 and reprinted in 1955 1972,  and 2012.

2.) Quevedo’s Sueños (Dreams, or, according to L’Estrange, Visions). This is a satirical parody of Dante’s Inferno, in which Quevedo sees the vices of his age laid bare. 

Title engraving from Quevedo’s Sueños (British Library 635.g.3-5)

Samuel Pepys (a connoisseur of Spanish) loved it, writing in his diary on 9 June 1667 that he was:

making an end of the book I lately bought a merry satyr called “The Visions,” translated from Spanish by L’Estrange, wherein there are many very pretty things; but the translation is, as to the rendering it into English expression, the best that ever I saw, it being impossible almost to conceive that it should be a translation.

The Brussels edition has some tasty ilustrations, ‘muy donosas y apropriadas à la materia’ [witty and appropriate].

A suitably infernal scene from the Sueños

As a man who lived by his pen, L’Estrange’s choice of texts to translate was probably commercial rather than personal.

But there are some curious patterns to be drawn. Quevedo, translated by the translator of Seneca, was himself the translator, and imitator, of Seneca. And both L’Estrange and Quevedo shared the pungent parallelisms and jerky style of Seneca: what Williamson calls ‘The Senecan Amble’.

L’Estrange doubtless appreciated the sinewy satire of Quevedo:

The Physician is only Death in a Disguise, and brings his Patient’s Hour along with him.  Cruel People! Is it not enough to take away a Man’s Life, and like Common Hangmen to be paid for’t when ye have done; but you must blast the Honour too of those ye have dispatcht, to excuse your Ignorance?  Let but the Living follow my Counsel, and write their Testaments after this Copy, they shall live long and happily, and not go out of the World at last, like a Rat with a Straw in his Arse, (as a Learned Author has it) or be cut of in the Flower of their Days by these Counter-Feit Doctors of the Faculty of the Close-stool.

A procession of doctors (with their instruments of torture) from the Sueños

In 1709 Henry Felton wrote of him ‘a perfect Master of the familiar, the facetious and the jocular style, [he] fell out into his proper Province, when he pitched upon Erasmus and Aesop.’ (Williamson, p. 364).  (Aesop was regarded as humorous.)  The 18th century found him a bit too unbuttoned.

But in Quevedo he found a kindred spirit.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies

References

Francisco de Quevedo, Obras ... Nueva impression corregida y ilustrada con muchas estampas muy donosas y apropriadas à la materia. [Edited by Pedro Aldrete Quevedo y Villegas.] (Amberes, 1699). 635.g.3-5.

The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas ... Made English by R. Lestrange (London, 1673) 12316.aaa.39

Pedro Urbano González de la Calle. Quevedo y los dos Sénecas (Mexico, 1965).  X.909/5543.

Theodore S.  Beardsley, Hispano-classical translations printed between 1482 and 1699 (Pittsburgh 1970)  X.0972/19b.(12.)

Roger L'Estrange and the making of Restoration culture, edited by Anne Dunan-Page and Beth Lynch (Aldershot, 2008)  YC.2008.a.6251; Document Supply m08/.16619

George Williamson, The Senecan Amble: a study in prose form from Bacon to Collier (London, 1951).  11869.b.19.

  

 

In a volume that was catalogued under the mysterious title A collection of 22 miscellaneous Russian periodicals, among single issues of various newspapers and magazines, such as Vestnik teatra (The Theatre Herald), Trudovaia mysl’ (Labour Thought), Vlast’ Sovetov (Soviets’ Power), Biulleten’ Khar’kovskoi gubernskoi pri Revkome Kommissii po obsledovaniiu zverstv uchinennykh Dobrarmiei (A Bulletin of  the Commission for investigation of atrocities committed by the Volunteer Army, attached to the Khar’kov regional Revolutionary Committee), Gornorabochii (The Miner), Krasnyi pakhar’ (The Red Ploughman), etc., I found  one issue of the Novoe Russkoe Ekho (New Russian Echo). The newspaper was published in Stockholm in both languages and had a parallel title in Swedish, Nya Ecco Rossiji: Rysk-Swvensk Tidning.

Novoe Russkoe Ekho, 31 January 1919 (P.P.7500.b)

Most of the materials – emotionally engaged appeals or newsreels – were signed by M.B.Khadzhetlashe = M. B. Hadjetlaché (in English spelling: Hadjetlashe),  a Circassian  journalist, writer, and apparently MI6 (SIS) and Cheka agent.  It looks as if the entire issue was written almost single-handedly by Hadjetlashe, as other articles, short pieces and even poems are signed by ‘MBKh’, ‘Ia. Timochkin’ or ‘Leilin’ (which are quite likely to be his other pseudonyms).

 Novoe Russkoe Ekho p. 4

His name rang a bell, but only after some time did I realise that I had read about him in literature. Aleksei Tolstoy in his novel Emigranty (The Emigrants) made him a character under his real (?) name:

I’m warning you: you got into  bad company… If, for example, Khadzhet Lashe learns about this conversation, I won’t be surprised if he sends my dismembered body in a luggage compartment somewhere far away. There were similar cases… In Constantinople, we signed a paper… Later, when I’m very drunk, I’ll tell you this story … They are training us for something… I guess this is all about Stockholm… When Levant orders us to get ready, they will take us to Stockholm, and the main business will be happening there… Please note, I’m not complaining… You cannot do anything for me… Anyway, damn it… I’m warning you, be vigilant - Levant is a terrible man. And the other, Khadzhet Lashe, the master, is even more terrible.

This novel is a fictitious account of a real affair: the activities of a short-lived anti-Bolshevik terrorist organisation which kidnapped and killed people.  When the police discovered the gang in 1919, three murdered bodies were found in Lake Norrviken. It is not impossible that the entire organisation was set up with help from or at least with approval of the Soviets and was meant to be a huge provocation. Vatslav Vorovsky, in 1918-1919 head of the Bolshevik legation in Stockholm, immediately published a brochure V mire merzosti i  zapusteniia: Russkaia belogvardeiskaia liga ubiits v Stokgol’me (‘In the World of abomination and desolation: Russian White Guard League of murderers in Stockholm’ (Moscow, 1919) 8094.cc.10.(10.)). Tolstoy’s novel was published soon after.

Before the revolution Hadjetlashe had contributed to the well-known journal Syn Otechestva (‘Son of the Fatherland’), and some Muslim Russian language publications. The best known of his projects was the journal Musul’manin (A Muslim) published in Paris. He also wrote several popular novels, such as Zapiski nachal’nika tainoi turetskoi politsii (‘The Notes of the Head of the Turkish Secret Police’) available, curiously enough, from  AbeBooks in Swedish translation. Hadjetlashe’s biography is full of unverified facts, myths and rumours; a lot of his activities remain extremely controversial, despite the fact that his archive is held at the Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (Musée D’Histoire Contemporaine). Recently Olga Bessmertnaya, a Russian academic researching materials related to Hajetlashe’s life gave a conference paper  ‘What Else But Politics?’ about the  ‘Erratic Autobiography of a Steady Russian Impostor (late 19th-early 20th Centuries)’, which was devoted to Mohammed Hajetlashe(1870-1929).

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections

References / Further reading:

A.Tolstoy. Emigranty.  (Moscow, 1940) 12594.b.19

Kadir I. Nantho. Circassian history.  (New York, 2009). [Not in BL]

Elena I. Campbell. The Muslim question and Russian Imperial governance.  (Bloomingtom,  2015). [Not yet shelfmarked]

Nezabytye mogily. (Moscow, 1999-). ZA.9.b.2512; Vol.6. (2007) Book 3. p. 17

 

The influence of Sigmund Freud and his theories of the mind on modern culture can hardly be underestimated. Whether we are admirers or detractors, whether we consider his views to be still valid or discredited today, no-one can deny that even a cursory knowledge of his ideas colours the way we view the world.  Terms like ego, libido, and indeed psychoanalysis, have passed into common use, and of course we all make ‘Freudian slips.’

Among Freud’s admirers in his own day was Stefan Zweig, who said that Freud had ‘deepened and expanded our knowledge of the human mind like no one else of our time’ and remembered his conversations with Freud as among the ‘greatest intellectual pleasures’ in his life. The correspondence and friendship between the two men began in 1908 when Zweig sent Freud a copy of his drama Thersites and continued until Freud’s death.

Zweig was fascinated by Freud’s theories and by the idea of examining human psychology.  In his fiction he often portrays particular psychological types and their reaction to specific situations, and it is striking how many of his stories are presented in a framing narrative, as letters or as an account told to an initial narrator by another, perhaps in part to place the first narrator (and the reader?) in the position of the listening analyst.

If Zweig admired Freud, the feeling was mutual. Freud enjoyed and appreciated Zweig’s works of both fiction and biography, praising his sensitivity and perception, and finding his own theories demonstrated in Zweig’s  fictional situations.  In 1924 he presented Zweig with the manuscript of his 1907 lecture ‘Der Dichter und das Phantasieren’  (‘The Creative Writer and Daydreaming’) , an appropriate gift from psychologist to author. In the lecture Freud describes creative writing as an adult substitute for the imaginative play of childhood, both – like dreams – being a way of expressing repressed desires. The manuscript was one of those that Zweig kept when he went into exile and is now in the British Library’s Stefan Zweig Collection.

The first leaf of ‘Der Dichter und das Phantasieren’, British Library Zweig MS 150

In 1931 Zweig published a study of Freud as one of three linked portraits of ‘mental healers’ (the others being Franz Anton Mesmer and Mary Baker Eddy). Freud was more guarded in his praise of this than of other works by Zweig, finding the portrayal of him too conventional, and damning Zweig with faint praise for managing a reasonable description of psychoanlaytic theory despite (as Freud believed) knowing nothing about it before starting work. However, Zweig was writing for a more general audience – indeed, this was one of the first studies of Freud aimed at a non-specialist public – and the book, like all Zweig’s works at the time, was a bestseller, whatever Freud’s reservations.

Towards the end of Freud’s life he and Zweig were both living in exile in London. Zweig regularly visited Freud in Hampstead, on one occasion in July 1938 bringing another great admirer, Salvador Dalí, with him. While Freud and Zweig talked, Dalí sketched a portrait of Freud. Later Zweig could not bring himself to show Freud the portrait  ‘because Dalí had prophetically shown death in his face,’ perhaps a strange attitude given Zweig’s admiration for Freud’s fearlessness in facing unpalatable truths, but clearly the reaction of an affectionate friend as well as a keen admirer.

Despite the cancer which was slowly killing him, Freud lived on for over a year after Dalí’s visit, dying on 23 September 1939. Zweig delivered the eulogy at his funeral and said that without Freud’s influence, ‘each of us would think, judge, feel, more narrowly, less freely, less justly.’

 Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies

References/further reading:

Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers  (Stockholm, 1943)  YA.1990.a.17913 (English translation by Anthea Bell, The World of Yesterday (London 2009) YC.2011.a.55)

Stefan Zweig, Die Heilung durch den Geist. Mesmer, Mary Baker-Eddy, Freud (Leipzig, 1931). 7409.aaa.7. (English translation by Eden and Cedar Paul, Mental Healers (London, 1933) 7409.b.19.)

Oliver Matuschek, Stefan Zweig: Drei Leben – eine Biografie (Frankfurt, 2006) YF.2007.a.24010

Jasmin Keller, ‘Ein Psychoanalytiker als Literaturkritiker: Sigmund Freud interpretiert Stefan Zweigs Werk’ at http://www.literaturkritik.de/public/rezension.php?rez_id=13741

 

The Flemish artist Jan van der Straet, also known as Joannes Stradanus (1523- 1605), spent most of his working life in Florence where his enormous output included religious paintings, frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio, tapestry cartoons, and also designs for various series of prints.

Portrait of Johannes Stradanus ca 1580. Print made by Johannes Wierix  after J. Stradanus.  British Museum 1879,0510.428  (©Trustees of the British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Between 1566 and 1577 Stradanus executed preparatory drawings for a series of hunting scenes  for tapestries to decorate the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano near Florence. The success of these led Flemish publishers to commission  hunting scenes by Stradanus for engravings, an indication that the artist’s fame had by then spread north of the Alps. Six large-format engravings with scenes representing the tapestries at Poggio a Caiano were published by the renowned print publisher Hieronymus Cock in 1570, and in 1574 and 1576 Volxcken Diericx, Cock’s widow, published two series prints based on the same designs but without their ornamental borders.

Wild Boar Hunt with Nets. 1570 (Series of hunting scenes with borders). Engraving. Published by Hieronymus Cock, after Jan van der Straet.  British Museum 1870,0514.1233 (©Trustees of the British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Stradanus had by then begun his collaboration with Philips Galle (1537-1612), another engraver and print dealer who had earlier worked in Cock’s workshop. This resulted in two new series of hunting scenes. The first, which numbered 44 prints, was published in 1578-80 and some 15 years later an additional 61 prints were produced, providing a greater variety of scenes. Both series were combined into a single collection  published in 1596 as Venationes, ferarum, arium, piscium [Hunts of wild animals, birds and fish]. Several engravers were engaged on this ambitious publication which was reprinted several times during the 17th century by Galle’s heirs.

Title page of Venationes Ferarum, Avium, Piscium. British Library C.107.k.7

The British Library has two copies of the work, 1899.cc.71 and C.107.k.7. Both  have the same engraved title page, on which the name of Joannes Galle  has replaced that of  his father Philips, as it does on all the plates. This edition was first published in 1634 but as the date does not appear on the title page of either of our copies, perhaps they are later reissues. Judging by the quality of the plates, 1899.cc.71 is the earlier of the two. It is incomplete – a selection of 38 plates – whereas  C.107.k.7 has all 104 plates. 

The prints are approximately 20 x 26.5 cm. They are grouped into thematically related depictions of animal and bird hunts, fishing, scenes from history or legend, fights between animals, or between wild animals and men in arenas. At the bottom of each picture there are verses explaining its subject. The examples below  give an idea of the great variety of subjects and their treatment, and of Stradanus’s inventiveness and exuberance. The landscapes, drawn following Flemish and Italian pictorial traditions, are a reminder both of the artist’s country of origin and of  his adopted country.

Scenes from history and legend

Whale Hunt by the Emperor Claudius at Ostia. Engraved by Adriaen Collaert [Plate 86]. Claudius fought a killer whale which was trapped in the harbour, an event witnessed by Pliny the Elder. The whale sinks a boat with a gush of water from its mouth.

Animal hunts

Hunting panthers using mirrors. Engraved by Jan Collaert II  [Plate 16]. In the foreground panthers are lured into traps which contain mirrors; on a wooded outcrop above, huntsmen wait to spring the traps; to right, other panthers are caught in nets; a group of hunstmen, with spears, approach along a riverbank.

Gazelle hunt.  Engraved by  Joannes Galle [Plate 51]. One of the most spectacular engravings in the collection.  At right foreground a group of hunters are preparing for the hunt, two of them putting on their climbing shoes. At left mid-ground, hunters armed with spears, accompanied by dogs, chase gazelles up cliffs; on the opposite side of the ravine, men drive the gazelles off the cliff.

Bird hunts

Hunting of reed warblers with owls. Engraved by Jan Collaert II [Plate 68]. Three owls perch on poles tethered with cords and a fourth stands on a cage. They attract the warblers which fly down to mock them. Lying on the ground are hunters camouflaged as bushes (their hands and faces can be seen) holding lime-twigs on which the birds land and become trapped. In the foreground, a couple is handing dead birds to an older woman who is putting them in a basket; a little boy observes the hunt.

Catching swallows from rooftops using discs. Engraved by Joannes Galle [Plate 85]. One of the rare cityscapes in the series. In the foreground, boys catch swallows from the roofs and balconies of buildings using circular discs suspended from long sticks; groups of figures watch them from an Italianate square.

Beekeeping. Engraved by Joannes Galle [Plate 83]. Beekeeping is curiously included as an example of bird hunting. A man on a ladder scrapes bees from the trunk of a tree into a hive; another figure supports the base of the ladder; two figures beat pans with sticks , and a third watches a swarm of bees flying above. A row of hives can be seen to right.

Fishing

Fishing with dip nets in the river Arno. Engraved by Joannes Galle [Plate 96].  In the right foreground a river god, holding a cornucopia, is seated upon a lion representing Florence; fishermen wade in the river Arno with dip nets; to left and right, the city of Florence flanks the river.

Chris Michaelides, Curator Romance Studies

References/further reading

Jan van der Straet, Philippus Gallæus, Cornelis van Kiel  Venationes Ferarum, avium, piscium, pugnæ bestiariorum et mutuæ bestiarum. … . ([Antwerp, after 1634?]). 1899.cc.71.

Jan van der Straet, Joannes Gallæus, Cornelis van Kiel, Venationes ferarum, auium, piscium….  (Antwerp,  [after 1634?]). C.107.k.7.

Alessandra Baroni & Manfred Sellink, Stradanus, 1523-1605 : court artist of the Medici  (Turnhout, 2012). LD.31.b.3160

Alessandra Baroni Vannucci,  Jan Van der Straet detto Giovanni Stradano: flandrus pictor et inventor.  (Milan, 1997).  LB.31.b.19393

Manfred Sellink, Philips Galle (1537-1612): engraver and print publisher in Haarlem and Antwerp.  ([Amsterdam?], 1997).  YA. 1999.b.4195.

Johannes Stradanus, compiled by Marjolein Leesberg; edited by Huigen Leeflang. (Amsterdam, 2008). YF.2009.b.2177

Yvonne Bleyerveld, Albert J. Elen, Judith Niessen, Bosch to Bloemaert : early Netherlandish drawings in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (Paris,  [2014]). YF.2014.b.1669.