Jésus démarra à toute allure.

En ce temps-là, l’usage était, selon le bon rédacteur sportif saint Mathieu, de flageller au départ les sprinters cyclistes, comme font nos cochers à leurs hippomoteurs … Donc, Jésus, très en forme, démarra, mais l’accident de pneu arriva tout de suite. Un semis d’épines cribla tout le pourtour de sa roue avant.

[Jesus got away to a good start.

In those days, according to the excellent sports commentator St Mathew, it was customary to flagellate the sprinters at the start the way a coachman whips his horses … Jesus, then, got off in good form, but he had a flat right away. A bed of thorns punctured the whole circumference of his front tyre.]

The playful pataphysician Alfred Jarry published ‘La Passion considérée comme course de côte’ (‘The Passion of Christ considered as an uphill bicycle race’) in April 1903 in the satirical Le Canard Sauvage, three months after the inaugural Tour de France was advertised in the newspaper L’Auto, as ‘la plus grande épreuve cycliste du monde entier’ (the biggest cycling challenge in the whole world). Extreme competitive cycling, still relatively new at this point, becomes an ordeal of epic proportions – tantamount to the suffering of Christ, or at least to something never before experienced by man. Late 19th- and early 20th-century French literature absorbs the new image of the bicycle into its pages, as the Realism of Zola and others attempts to present the preoccupations of contemporary society in parallel, and the alternative literature of Jarry sees symbolic potential in the new machine.

Alfred Jarry cycling. (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)

Jarry’s last novel Le Sûrmale (The Supermale; 1902), thematises the bicycle once more, using it to transport a narrative exploration of man’s virility, power and death. André Marcueil, the protagonist, undertakes the impossible 10,000 mile cycle from Paris to Irkutsk, powered by perpetual-motion-food, a substance which allows constant muscular regeneration during activity – and which allows Marcueil the energy for a record-breaking sexual performance on the way (89 ‘conquests’, for those who might be interested). Jarry’s perpetual mover is an ‘coupling of man and machine’, to use Paul Fournel’s description of five-time Tour-winner Jacques Anquetil in his 2012 book Anquetil tout seul. As Freud might have it, the man(-machine) has become a kind of ‘prosthetic God’ – returning us, then, to the demiurgic realm of cycling where we began.

Indeed, cycling, according to French thinkers, can elevate man to the point of transcendence. Roland Barthes, in ‘Le Tour de France comme épopée’ (‘The Tour de France as Epic’, from Mythologies), suggests that, ‘The Tour too, at several points, brushes against the inhuman world: on the Ventoux, we have already left the earth, there we are next to unknown stars’. Cycling is self-discovery for the anthropologist, Marc Augé:

The first stroke of the pedal is the acquisition of a new autonomy, the great escape, palpable freedom, the movement of the point of the toe, when the machine responds to the body’s desire and almost pre-empts it. In a few seconds, the marked horizon frees itself, the landscape moves. I am elsewhere. I am an other, and yet I am myself like never before; I am what I discover. (Eloge de la Bicyclette)

But perhaps all this continental abstraction detracts from a more concrete freedom afforded by the bicycle, one which might temper the Supermale’s authority over it. In Emile Zola’s Paris (1897-8), Marie is confounded by some women upholding dress codes while cycling:

Can you understand that? Women, who have the unique opportunity to put themselves at ease, to fly like a bird, legs finally freed from their prison, and who refuse! If they believe to be more beautiful with a shortened schoolgirl’s skirt, they are wrong! And as for modesty, it seems to me that one ought to be more comfortable showing one’s calves than one’s shoulders […] There are only culottes, the skirt is abominable!

Women have the opportunity to wear short trousers – a freedom that the introduction of the bicycle demands! 1898 also saw the publication of Miss F. J. Erskine’s Lady Cycling (reissued by British Library publications in 2014) which joins Zola’s Marie in carving a space for women cyclists… ‘in moderation’. For Miss Erskine, ‘on no point… has a hotter controversy raged’. On fashion, however, the author cannot concede to the comforts of Marie in Paris. ‘Cycling dress was not the fine art it is now,’ writes Erskine, ‘for park riding we must have an artistically cut skirt, artfully arranged to hang in even portions each side of the saddle’.

Perhaps we need to travel once again to find the answer to the eternal question, succinctly phrased as ‘Rock oder Hose?’ (‘Skirt or Trousers?’), in Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort, published by Dr Paul von Salvisberg in 1897. Which is it to be? ‘Both, and, in fact, each have their appropriate time’. A practical compromise.  

Cycling gear for ladies (and gents), advertisement from Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort (Munich, 1897), British Library YA.1989.b.4724

Whether physically free from the dress and the corset, or free from terrestrial conventionality in a ride amongst the stars, cycling is freedom. That freedom is gained through joining the self (and machine) with nature, as one moves through it. As Dr Ludwig Ganghofer, in Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort, enthusiastically writes of a cycling tour:

On the leaves and grass, the dew sparkles; you hear a hundred birds, as if it were a single song; fresh air breathes all around you, and you drink it deeply in thirsty sips.
 

The poetical Dr Ganghofer, from Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort

As summer approaches, we too need to reunite ourselves with nature, ride amongst the stars… This may prove difficult in the city, and we should end here with a word of warning from Miss Erskine:

In the vicinity of large manufacturing towns the rowdy element may at times annoy ladies riding alone, though I have, myself, always met with the greatest kindness and courtesy; still, this may have been by exceptional good fortune, and I have no wish to boast of it.

Pardaad Chamsaz, Collaborative Doctoral Student

References

Alfred Jarry, The Supermale: A modern novel, trans. Barbara Wright, (London, 1968; X.908/14696)

Alfred Jarry, La passion considérée comme course de côte, available via Wikisource; English translation available at: http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/misc/passion.html

Paul Fournel, Anquetil tout seul, (Paris, 2012) ; YF.2014.a.22730

Marc Augé, Eloge de la bicyclette, (Paris, 2008) ; YF.2009.a.37308

Emile Zola, Paris, (Paris, 1898) ; B.26.a.12

Miss F. J. Erskine, Lady Cycling, (London, 1898) BL 07905.ee.7; (2014 reissue: YKL.2014.a.3213)

Dr. Paul von Salvisberg, Der Radfahrsport in Bild und Wort, (Munich, 1897) YA.1989.b.4724

At the opening of Don Quixote Cervantes describes the would-be knight’s bachelor home life:

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays [‘duelos y quebrantos los sábados’],  lentils on Fridays and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income ...( I, i)

Duelos y quebrantos is defined in early texts as an omelette made with brains.

By examining early cookery books, Professor Barry Ife concluded that it may have been eating cat flesh that made Quijano/Quixote lose his senses.

Quixote’s experiences with cats were not happy ones:

Chapter XLVI: Of the terrible bell and cat fright that Don Quixote got in the course of the enamoured Altisidora’s wooing

[...]  Don Quixote had got so far with his song, to which the duke, the duchess, Altisidora, and nearly the whole household of the castle were listening, when all of a sudden from a gallery above that was exactly over his window they let down a cord with more than a hundred bells attached to it, and immediately after that discharged a great sack full of cats, which also had bells of smaller size tied to their tails. Such was the din of the bells and the squalling of the cats, that though the duke and duchess were the contrivers of the joke they were startled by it, while Don Quixote stood paralysed with fear; and as luck would have it, two or three of the cats made their way in through the grating of his chamber, and flying from one side to the other, made it seem as if there was a legion of devils at large in it. They extinguished the candles that were burning in the room, and rushed about seeking some way of escape; the cord with the large bells never ceased rising and falling; and most of the people of the castle, not knowing what was really the matter, were at their wits’ end with astonishment. Don Quixote sprang to his feet, and drawing his sword, began making passes at the grating, shouting out, “Avaunt, malignant enchanters! avaunt, ye witchcraft-working rabble! I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, against whom your evil machinations avail not nor have any power.” And turning upon the cats that were running about the room, he made several cuts at them. They dashed at the grating and escaped by it, save one that, finding itself hard pressed by the slashes of Don Quixote's sword, flew at his face and held on to his nose tooth and nail, with the pain of which he began to shout his loudest. The duke and duchess hearing this, and guessing what it was, ran with all haste to his room, and as the poor gentleman was striving with all his might to detach the cat from his face, they opened the door with a master-key and went in with lights and witnessed the unequal combat.

Don Quixote assailed by the cats, by Bartolomeo Pinelli, from his Le azioni più celebrate del famoso cavaliere errante Don Chisciotte della Mancia  (Rome, [1834?])  British Library Cerv.64

The duke ran forward to part the combatants, but Don Quixote cried out aloud, “Let no one take him from me; leave me hand to hand with this demon, this wizard, this enchanter; I will teach him, I myself, who Don Quixote of La Mancha is.” The cat, however, never minding these threats, snarled and held on; but at last the duke pulled it off and flung it out of the window. Don Quixote was left with a face as full of holes as a sieve and a nose not in very good condition, and greatly vexed that they did not let him finish the battle he had been so stoutly fighting with that villain of an enchanter.  (Book II, Ch. 46)

But look at the below picture from the 1830s. The dog at Quixote’s feet in straight from the text.  But where did the cat at his elbow come from?

Don Quixote at home, by Barolomeo Pinelli. (Cerv.649)

As I see it, not being much of a cat lover, the idea that a cat is a cosy companion to reading is a comfy 19th-century notion.

You probably know of Pangur Bán, who features in the ninth-century Irish poem:

I and Pangur Bán, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.
[...]
'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind. [...] (Robin Flower’s translation)

But Pangur serves as a metaphorical parallel to the reading scholar rather than a literal reading companion.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections

References

Miguel de Cervantes, The ingenious gentleman : Don Quixote of La Mancha : a translation with introduction and notes by John Ormsby. (London, 1885). 12489.k.4. (Available online at: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Don_Quixote)

B. W. Ife, ‘Mad Cats and Knights Errant: Roberto de Nola and Don Quixote’, Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, 7 (1999), 49-54. ZC.9.a.4077

En torno al Quijote : adaptaciones, imitaciones, imágenes y música en la biblioteca / Biblioteca Histórica Municipal de Madrid. (Madrid, 2005) LF.31.a.890

 

This April saw the launch of Prozhito.org  (‘Lives Lived’), an online database of thousands of 20th-century diary entries in Russian. Although the site primarily includes the published diaries of prominent writers, scientists and other notable public figures, its creators have also started to digitise the diaries of ordinary citizens from a range of backgrounds, an addition which will provide a fascinating insight into how different people experienced events such as the Russian Revolution. 

I recently came across one such ‘ordinary’ diary during my research at the British Library, which is yet to be published by Prozhito.org. Written by a young Russian girl named Nelly L’vovna Ptashkina, the diary contains her account of life between 1918 and 1920, a period of revolution and civil war in Russia. Nelly was from a middle class background and she describes how the Bolsheviks targeted her family, forcing them to flee Moscow for Kiev and eventually immigrate to Paris in late 1919.

An undated portrait of Nelly Ptashkina in the Russian-language edition of her diary. (British Library 010795.b.50.)

Nelly flits between astutely describing and reflecting on the political situation and relating her girlish and adolescent thoughts, interests and dreams, the latter giving away the fact she was only 15 when she began this diary in 1918. She is conscious of the gravity of the events unfolding around her and writes of her wish to record them:

Truly we are going through a terrible, terrible time … It would be a good thing to collect the newspapers, but that is impossible as we move from place to place; at least I have my diary. (29 January 1918)

While Nelly’s diary offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a young girl during a period of immense change and upheaval, there is a tragic story attached to its publication. In July 1920, just days after passing her Baccalaureat examination at the Paris Sorbonne, Nelly slipped while walking by the Le Dard waterfall in Chamonix and fell to her death. She was just 17 years old. Two years previously, Nelly had written about a sudden premonition she had had of her coming death: 

I love to stand at the edge of an abyss, at the very edge, so that a single movement—,
and … to-day, stepping closer to the brink of a precipice, although not so deep as I should have wished, the thought came into my mind that some day I should die thus, crashing headlong into the chasm…  (20 October 1918)

Yet Nelly’s diary is also full of her hopes and dreams for the future, making her untimely death all the more tragic. Nelly’s mother decided to publish her daughter’s diary in Paris in 1922 to preserve her memory and so that others could ‘appreciate the tender unfolding of a soul’. The publication of Nelly’s diary is not only a tribute to a sensitive and talented young writer, but it also serves as a reminder of the experience of countless children during the revolution and civil war.

Katie McElvanney, CDA PhD student

References

Ptashkina, Nelly L’vovna, Dnevnik, 1918-1920, ed. by S. Svatikov (Paris, 1922). 010795.b.50.

Ptashkina, Nelly L’vovna, The Diary of Nelly Ptashkina, trans. by Pauline de Chary (London, 1923). 012591.aa.38.

The first book in the Basque language was printed in Bordeaux as late as 1545.  It is a collection of poems by the vicar of St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, Bernat Etxepare, entitled Linguae Vasconum Primitiae (‘First fruits of the Basque language’). Only one copy survives, in  the Bibliothèque national in Paris. Subsequent printing in Basque, both in France and Spain, was not extensive. So how it is that so many books in Basque are now in the British Library’s collections?

In fact books in a wide variety of languages, including Basque, were in the foundation collection of Sir Hans Sloane, who owned copies of three editions of Jean Etcheberri de Çiboure’s Noelac eta berce canta esperitual berriac (‘Carols and new spiritual songs’; Bordeaux, 1645; Bayonne, 1699; Bayonne: [1700?]; British Library 1064.a.30.(30), (2), (1) respectively). He also possessed the third edition of Etcheberri’s Eliçara erabiltceco liburua (‘A book to carry to Church’).

 
Jean Etcheberri, Eliçara erabiltceco liburua (Pau, 1666)  C.53.gg.20.

It is doubtful that Sloane knew Basque, but books in foreign languages, including minority languages, were intrinsic to his collecting policy as language was seen as fundamental to the description of peoples. He also owned two key works about the Basque Country and the language: Andrés de Poza, De la antigua lengua, poblaciones, y comarcas de las Españas (Bilbao, 1587; 627.d.32) and Baltasar de Echave, Discursos de la antigüedad de la lengua cantabra vascongada (Mexico, 1607; C.33.i.6).  Both emphasized Basque’s perceived status as the first language of the  Iberian Peninsula.

The King’s Library contains a copy of what is arguably the most iconic book in the Basque language, Joannes Leiçarraga’s New Testament, printed in 1571.  For the Basques this text is their Tyndale and King James versions combined.

The opening of St Matthew’s Gospel from Joannes Leiçarraga’s Basque New Testament Iesus Christ Gure Iaunaren Testamentu Berria (La Rochelle in 1571) 217.d.2

In the second half of the 19th century, purchase became the main means of acquiring foreign books. Thanks to Antonio Panizzi, Keeper of Printed Books from 1837 until 1856, the British Museum Library secured sufficient funds to acquire contemporary works of foreign scholarship systematically. These included books about Basque, as about other foreign languages.

The increase in acquisition budgets also allowed the Museum to bid ambitiously at book sales.  One of the most important for minority language material was the 1873 Paris sale of the Bibliothèque patoise of  French bibliophile Jean Henri Burgaud des Marets (1806-1873), which included  more than 300 works relating to Basque. Of these the Museum purchased 130, mostly religious works, but also periodicals, books of music, travel writing, and scholarly works on the Basque language and region. Most were printed in the 19th century, but a number were from the 18th, e.g. Basque versions of  The Imitation of Christ (Bordeaux, 1720; IX.Basq.7.) and  St Francis de Sales, Introduction à la vie dévote (Toulouse, 1749; 886.d.2.)

The Museum received important donations material from two scholars of Basque during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first was Napoleon I’s nephew, Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte, who spent much of his life in London.  He commissioned translations of the Song of Songs and of St Matthew’s Gospel into several minority languages and dialects, most notably Basque.  These  were used to compare dialects and as a result Bonaparte produced his dialect map of the seven Basque Provinces (Carte des sept provinces basques, 1863; Maps 18649(4)). Bonaparte’s basic divisions have largely stood the test of time.  

The second donor of Basque books to the Museum was the irascible and obsessive Oxford Bascophile Edward Spencer Dodgson (1857-1922).  A pupil of Resurrección María de Azkue, the first director of Euskaltzaindia, the Basque language academy, Dodgson devoted most of his life to studying Basque language and bibliography. This latter interest extended to collecting Basque books, most of which he donated to the British Museum.  These fall into two broad categories. The first were cheap, popular, small-format books in Basque. Their subject-matter goes beyond the usual works of popular piety to include translations of episodes from Dante’s Inferno and Cervantes’ Don Quijote, a popular tale, and various dramatic works.  The second group consists of Dodgson’s own publications: works about Basque, notably the verb, and his editions of earlier works (e.g. those of Rafael Mikoleta and Agustín Kardebaraz). Basque language courses, readers and conversation manuals can also be conveniently included in this group.

A conspicuous feature of Dodgson’s donations are his manuscript annotations. These indicate how, when and where he obtained a particular book, what he paid for it or who gave it to him. Other notes are corrections, including intemperate comments on the authors’ linguistic incompetence. Inside a copy of Tomás Epalza’s El euskara ó el baskuenze en 120 lecciones  he wrote: ‘The author of this collection of bad Basque and silly Castilian is Thomas Epalza of Bilbao’. He corrected the text in many places. In a second copy he wrote: ‘This book is of very little value.  Its lightest mistakes are misprints. These are very numerous indeed.’


Dodgson’s note in one of his copies of Epalza’s El euskara ó el baskuenze en 120 lecciones (Bilbao, 1896) 12978.c.38.(1)

The British Library’s early Basque holdings were thus built up in part fortuitously and in part strategically. That collection strategy has been maintained, with some variation. Today, the Library focusses on works about the language, editions of classic texts in Basque and a selection of contemporary literature (including in Spanish translation).

Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic Studies

Scholarship will always be indebted to George II, one of Britain’s least scholarly kings. In 1757 George boosted the reputation of the fledgling British Museum by donating some of the most precious books owned by his predecessors – 2,000 manuscripts and some 9,000 printed books. This donation, known as the Old Royal Library, has since passed to the British Library, where the manuscript portion is now known as the Royal Collection.

Among these manuscripts is an inconspicuous paper volume, written in a beautiful  late 16th-century Secretary hand. It contains the (then) only known, yet unfinished copy of the elaborately titled A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Provinces United with that Crowne, Anno 1598, familiar to historians as the most detailed English account of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The title-page of A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Provinces United with that Crowne, British Library Royal MS 18 B. i.

Because 16th-century Poland-Lithuania stretched into what is now Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, and Estonia, A Relation of the State of Polonia has become an important source for many Central and Eastern European historians. But  the work  also marks a milestone in the history of English travel writing: it is a highly sophisticated account of Poland-Lithuania’s politics, law, administration, culture, and diplomatic relations, together with risk assessment – not unlike the country profiles contained in the CIA’s World Factbook.

Poland-Lithuania in the late 16th century, from Giovanni Botero, Eynkommen, Reichthumb, vnd Schätz aller Keyser, Könige, vnd vornembster Fürsten der gantzer weiten Welt ... (Cologne, 1599) 10660.i.6.(2.)

Such a wealth of knowledge called for a well-connected author, and scholars were quick to suggest George Carew, a career diplomat who was sent in 1598 to negotiate with Poland’s Sigismund III Vasa. Others put forward the Scot William Bruce (c.1560–after 1613), a professor of the civil law at the Zamojski Academy. Whereas Bruce’s authorship can be firmly excluded on the grounds of language and religion, Carew’s involvement is largely speculative.

In 2013 I decided to re-examine  the British Library manuscript, in the hope of finding evidence – any evidence – that would point towards the work’s author. It turned out that the text and the notes in the margin were written at different times: the events mentioned took place in 1598, but the marginal notes were added between 1602 and 1603. I also discovered that the paper came from Poland: I traced the watermark to the Olkusz paper-mill near Cracow, and it appears in two books printed in 1596 and 1597 by the court printer Jan Januszowski. With these new clues, I started to look for an Englishman who was in Poland between spring and autumn 1598, passed through Cracow, and had reason to update the text between 1602 and 1603.

That’s when I found John Peyton (1579–1635), son of Sir John Peyton (1544–1630), Lieutenant of the Tower. Peyton was in Cracow in the spring of 1598, and wrote a letter to his father detailing troop movements (I have since been able to prove that the younger Peyton was a spy in the employ of Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster Robert Cecil). Peyton’s trail led to a manuscript (Kk v. 2) in Cambridge University Library. This gathers Peyton’s travel accounts, including one on Bohemia with an eerily familiar title: A Relation of Bohemia and the United Provinces of That Crowne. Anno 1598. What’s more, the collection contains the copy of a letter, sent to King James’s secretary, in which Peyton explains that his ‘discourse of Polonia’ is missing because he had ‘presented [it] to the king at his Majestyes first comming to London’ (fol. 6r.). I realised that the British Library manuscript must have been presented to James I during his coronation in the summer of 1603.

The discovery of Peyton’s authorship of this important text meant that the existing entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography  needed radical expanding: at this time, John Peyton only figured as a paragraph in the entry for his more prominent father. The Dictionary’s editors responded enthusiastically to this find, and invited me to prepare a new, standalone entry for the younger John Peyton,  for publication in one of the ODNB’s regular online updates.

I started looking for other copies of the text, trawling through countless 18th- and 19th-century auction catalogues. The quest proved rewarding: a copy entitled A Relation of the Kingdom of Polonia, and the United Provinces of the Crowne, by Sir John Peyton changed hands at least five times between 1751 and 1898, when the trail went cold after a Sotheby’s action. Anthony Payne,  a former Director of Bernard Quaritch booksellers, located an annotated copy of the 1898 catalogue, which revealed that the book had been acquired by one of the Munich-based Rosenthal brothers – I later discovered that the buyer was Jacques Rosenthal. The ‘lost’ manuscript has since been acquired from an anonymous seller from Prague by St Andrews University Library  (I discuss this new manuscript, ms 38902, in the journal The Library).

But why would Peyton go through the expense of producing a lavishly written and gilded copy, which is then left unfinished? I found out that Peyton was among those waiting at Elizabeth’s deathbed in March 1603, on his father’s orders. When the queen died, Peyton raced to Edinburgh to break the news to James VI. He arrived second, but the king bestowed estates on Peyton and knighted him, publicly referring to Peyton as his ‘first knight’. The British Library copy was a well-timed coronation gift for James, its completion was interrupted by Elizabeth’s death. But the marginal notes and the change in the title from ‘Kingdom’ to ‘State’ (as an afterthought as is visible in the image), reveal that Peyton’s marginal notes furnished James with details about the then 200-year-old union of Poland and Lithuania – the only existing parliamentary union at the time. Unsurprisingly, James kept bringing up this type of union between England and Scotland over the next few years, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was frequently discussed in British constitutional debates.  

Sebastian Sobecki, Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture, University of Groningen

This post is based on the author’s research on medieval and early modern travel writing and on his identification of John Peyton’s authorship, first published as ‘John Peyton’s A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Accession of King James I, 1598–1603’ in the English Historical Review.   

In out last post marking European Literature Night 2015, Slovenian author Evald Flisar, who took part in this year’s event, looks back at the evening. 

I had been chosen (apparently there were 55 nominees) to appear at the widely publicised event European Literature Night at the British Library on 13 May as one of the six best European writers. I felt honoured, of course, as well as mildly surprised and modestly pleased. It just wouldn’t be right to jump up and down, shouting,  “Look at me, look at me!” Certainly not at the age of 70, when one is supposed to have put away childish things. Besides (let’s indulge in a little arithmetic), in the next ten years 60 more  “best European writers” will appear at this grand event (presuming that authors cannot be recalled for a repeat performance). And so, with the passing of years, the importance of my attendance will gradually be diluted to the point of astonishment at the fact that the continent of Europe, however small, can boast such a great number of “best writers”.

That may well be true, and we (inside and outside EU) may be unforgivably ignorant of the quality  
of our neighbours’ writing (publishers please note!), but surely ... the best? Well, never mind. Perhaps this year’s  “six of the best” are justified in believing that their writing warrants the inclusion in this exclusive club (after all, 49 authors among the 55 nominees didn’t make it), and most certainly I should be grateful for the invitation to attend the event that has brought one of my books to the attention of many (generating, among other things, a glowing review in The Irish Times). 

Evald Flisar’s novel My Father's Dreams, published in the author’s own translation by Istros books and presented at European Literature Night 2015

I am grateful, of course. Not only grateful but also glad that the event is over and that (by some miracle) I have avoided making a fool of myself. I have even (not intentionally, of course) succeeded in amusing the audience. All in all, my impressions (of the event and even, to a lesser degree, my performance) are considerably better than good, and I am delighted to have been invited (delighted in spite of 144 translations into 36 languages, or the fact that I have so far attended over 50 similar events round the world). I have read from my work in Washington, New York, Milwaukee, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Sao Paolo, Frankfurt, Prague, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Wrocław, Brno, Cairo, Alexandria Library, New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Tokyo, Taipei ... that’ll do, the line between facts and self-praise is perilously blurred.

ELN host Rosie Goldsmith interviewing Ewald Flisar at European Literature Night 2015. (Photo © Metaphoto. There are other photos - and drawings - of the event at: http://eurolitnetwork.com/european-literature-night/)

However, not one of these guest appearances (with the possible exception of Mumbai’s Literature Live Festival)  can compare with the faultless organisation of the European Literature Night in London. Not to mention the publicity it has generated. It may well be that I am slightly biased. Having lived in London for almost 20 years, being (even after a 20-year absence) still English at heart (not to say in the mind), I may be tempted to give any literary event in London some extra (subjective) points. But that is not so. Appearing at the British Library really was one of the highlights of my long literary career. And all thanks to my publishers, the ambitious Istros Books, for whom quality, far from being a mere promotional phrase, is in fact their raison d'être. Long may they prosper!

Evald Flisar

May 24th marks the centenary of Italy’s entry into the Great War. In previous blog entries related to this event, I have focussed on the Isonzo/Soča Front, which bore the brunt of the first Italian military operations.  For today’s entry, I return there again, to write about a character who played a significant role in that action, but who had died almost a decade before war broke out.

Portrait of Simon Gregorčič from Anton Burgar, Simon Gregorčič: življenjepis (Ljubljana, 1907) X.989/6888.

Simon Gregorčič is one of Slovenia’s best-loved poets, and a significant figure in the 19th-century struggle for national rights. He was born in 1844 in the village of Vrsno, nestling beneath Mount Krn very close to the then Austro-Italian border, and the local landscape and lifestyle imprinted itself profoundly on his work. His family were peasant farmers who raised sheep in the pastures of the Soča valley, but young Simon had been born at a time of fast-rising literacy. He went to the grammar school in the regional capital Görz/Gorica (now Gorizia, in Italy), and then studied to become a priest; yet, apart from a brief period at the University of Vienna, he never really went far from his beloved Valley.

He worked as a chaplain in Kobarid, not far from his birthplace, where he had a formative love affair with a young teacher and promoted the cultural life of the little town. During subsequent appointments, Gregorčič began to publish poetry, each of his four books called “Poezije”, with its number. For these, which he promoted in public readings, he became a local celebrity in his own lifetime. His style was profoundly musical, full of feeling and even sensuality – for this Catholic priest had quite a number of intense relationships with women.  He wrote about social injustice, Slovene rights, the landscape that surrounded him. Among his best-known poems – and one of the few which have been translated into English - was  ‘Ash Wednesday Eve’, in which he warned the rich and proud among his congregation of their mortality while inviting the poor and dispossessed, including his relatives, to take their place in the Church and celebrate “Resurrection morn.” Its theme may sound gloomy and didactic, but the poem is so beautifully written that it evokes the twilight falling over his native Valley, its little churches lit up amid the dark peaks, spilling smells of incense into the night air as the people hurry in from near and far.

Gregorčič’s most famous poem of all is ‘Soči’ – ‘To the Soča’- describing the river’s progress from its mountain source to the plains of Trieste. At the beginning the turquoise water (it really is!) is fast and vigorous, “like the walk of the highland girls”, and its refrain runs, “You are splendid, daughter of the heights!” (“Krasnà si, hči planin!”). But when the river reaches the exposed plain it grows sluggish, sensing its vulnerability. Gregorčič foresaw a day when it would be filled with blood, surrounded by a “hail of lead”, and would need to burst its own banks to “draw the foreigners ravenous for lands to the bottom of your foaming waves.”  

Postcard, reproduced in Mihael Glavan, Simon Gregorčič na Soški fronti (Nova Gorica, 2012) YF.2014.a.12826

Simon Gregorčič suffered lifelong ill-health (probably tuberculosis) and died in Gorizia in 1906. His funeral procession from the city to his grave in the village Smast was a huge public event. Nine years later, Gorizia, along with Trieste and the whole Soča Valley, would be among Italy’s chief targets in its attack on the Austrian Empire. Simon Gregorčič  was summoned from the grave to spur on the Slovene troops in defence of their homeland: he was shown on postcards greeting the Emperors Franz Joseph or Karl when they visited the battle-torn region, or looking protectively down upon the river with the military commanders Archduke Eugen or Svetozar Boroević von Bojna alongside him in the sky (pictures above). Sadly prophetic, the words of ‘Soči’ featured widely, particularly the verse urging the river to drown the foreign invader.

Funeral of  Simon Gregorčič un 1906 (From Wikimedia Commons)

Austria’s one major victory in the awful stalemate was 1917’s infamous Caporetto (the Italian name for Kobarid). The town which lay so close to the poet’s heart was symbolically the site of a total rout of the Italian invaders. A bust of his friend, the composer Hraboslav Volarić, symbolically watched from a corner of the square.

They would, however, return victorious a year later, and Kobarid stayed under Italian rule until 1945. Volarić’s bust, along with other symbols of Slovene culture, was badly damaged by fascists, but in 1945 the town became part of Yugoslavia. The bust was replaced, and a full-length statue to Gregorčič  erected in 1959 on the opposite side of the main square.

Naturally, Simon Gregorčič’s birthplace is now a tourist site, and hikers can follow his route and inspiration through the villages and meadows around.

Janet Ashton, WEL Cataloguing Team Manager

With particular thanks to Jože Šerbec of the Kobarid Museum.

Bibliography:

Mihail Glavan. Simon Gregorčič na Soški fronti. (Nova Gorica , 2012). YF.2014.a.12826

Simon Gregorčič. Poezije. (Ljubljana, 1885-1908). 11530.a.26

W.A. Morison (translator). “Ash Wednesday Eve”, in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 23, No. 62 (Jan., 1945), pp. 23-25, Ac.2669.e.  (also available online via  JSTOR).  

Translation of Soči by an unknown author at http://spinnet.eu/wiki-anthology/index.php/Soca_River

 

Janet Ashton, WEL Cataloguing Team Manage

Janet Ashton, WEL Cataloguing Team Manager

 

With the Eurovision Song Contest celebrating its 60th anniversary, and still regularly attracting around 200 million viewers, this year presents a great opportunity to look beyond the glitz of modern Eurovision and consider the changes in European culture, society and politics which it reflects.

We must thank the Italian members of the European Broadcasting Union  for the idea of the contest, originally conceived to help promote peace and harmony in a Europe still recovering from the Second World War. Since that first contest in 1956 in Lugano, Switzerland between seven participating countries, it has expanded to include as many as 43 entries in the record year of 2008;  now qualifying rounds are required before the grand finals.

 
Map of countries participating in the contest and the years they first took part (picture from Wikimedia Commons)

How amazed those Italian broadcasters, whose stated mission was to “stimulate the output of original high- quality songs in the field of popular music by encouraging competition between authors and composers through the international comparison of their works,” would be to see the power of YouTube, enabling viewers to compare in seconds the first ever winner, Switzerland’s Lys Assia singing Refrain, with Conchita Wurst’s winning Rise like a Phoenix for Austria in 2014.

 Above: 1956 Eurovision winner Lys Assia (image from Beeld en Geluidwiki via Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA-3.0). Below: 2014 winner Conchita Wurst (Photo: Albin Olsson, via Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-SA-3.0)

As a child of mixed heritage growing up in a small, monocultural English city, I loved the reporting of votes from the national juries even more than the songs – seeing the glamorous multilingual presenters, usually framed by an iconic national landmark first gave me a sense that I fitted in somewhere as a European and really inspired me to study foreign languages. Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the closed doors of those national juries? Wonder no more! Via the EU Screen portal you can now see the terribly solemn 1976 Belgian jury deliberating at length over a nice cup of tea and contributing to one of the highest scores ever for a winning entry – the UK’s Brotherhood of Man’s inimitable Save Your Kisses for Me. 

Everyone will have their favourite Eurovision moments and associations, but there is far more to this event than sequins, folk-costumes and cheesy songs. On one level, Eurovision can be viewed as consolidating nationalistic stereotypes, but by encouraging viewers to encounter Europe in their living rooms it can also be seen as contributing to a sense of a common European identity. It is family viewing for today’s European family in all its diversity – gay and straight, old and young – all sharing the same experience but bringing their own readings to it. This European identity is then projected further afield with many enthusiastic viewers around the world – the contest is so popular in Australia that in this  anniversary year Australia’s Guy Sebastian will be a guest participant.

Winners of the 2015 second semi-final, with a range of national flags on stage and in the audience (photo from  EUROVISION/EBU, © Andres Putting (EBU))

Through the prism of Eurovision we can also see the changing shape of Europe. In the 1990s there was a rapid expansion of participants from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  The socialist countries had previously held separate song contests, with only Yugoslavia breaking the mould by joining Eurovision in 1961. Viewers behind the Iron Curtain watched the annual Sopot Music Festival from Poland or its short-lived offshoot, the Intervision Song Contest. The Sopot Festival was the brainchild of Władysław Szpilman, the Polish Jewish musician immortalised in Roman Polanski’s film The Pianist, bringing singers from around the world to perform, initially at the Gdańsk shipyards, then moving along the coast to Sopot. Intervision/Sopot also attracted huge audiences not least because guest artistes such as Boney M were invited to play in the intervals. 

By the 1990s participating in Eurovision was often a way for the new entrants to assert sovereignty, contribute to nation-building and project a particular national image around the world. Take for example Ukraine’s 2004 winning entry Wild Dances, performed by Ruslana  and featuring a version of the dances, costumes and rituals of the Hutsul people from western Ukraine, which then came to represent universal Ukrainian folk traditions for international viewers.

Eurovision also brings its viewers face to face with key political issues facing contemporary Europe. One can learn much about regional and cultural alliances by observing voting patterns, or about  linguistic politics within Europe, such as the rapid rise of English as a lingua franca, demonstrated by the fact that so many entries are now sung in English in order to reach the widest possible audience. 

But perhaps one of the key reasons for Eurovision’s enduring success is the way in which it has come to symbolise diversity and tolerance, far exceeding the original hopes of the EBU. It can be seen to represent a certain stability and unity in the face of an increasingly fragmented Europe.  To quote Conchita Wurst, who was welcomed in November 2014 by UN Secretary General  Ban Ki-Moon as an ambassador for human rights, “The Eurovision Song Contest is about love and respect for different languages, cultures and people, who in the end have more in common than differences” 

Two of the many books about the Eurovision Song Contest in the British Library's collections

The British Library catalogue lists a huge range of resources relating to the Eurovision song contest – from books and academic articles, to audio and video recordings and archived websites. Some appear in unexpected places such as the article “ How does Europe Make Its Mind Up? Connections, cliques, and compatibility between countries in the Eurovision Song Contest” published in the scientific publisher Elsevier’s serial Physica A. (Vol. 360, No. 2, 2006, 576-598; British Library 6475.010000). However, not every author feels the love which Conchita Wurst refers to, as shown by S. Coleman’s article “ Why is the Eurovision Song Contest Ridiculous? Exploring a Spectacle of Embarrassment, Irony and Identity” in Popular communication (Vol 6, No. 3, 2008, 127-140; 6550.310000)

But whether they come to love or to mock, millions across the continent will be  sitting down this Saturday evening to watch the contest once again.

Janet Zmroczek, Head of European and Americas Collections

Further reading:  

Media, nationalism and European identities / edited by Miklós Sükösd, Karol Jakubowicz, (Budapest, 2011) YD.2011.a.8708

A song for Europe: popular music and politics in the Eurovision Song Contest / edited by Ivan Rakoff and Robert Deam Tobin (Aldershot, 2007) YC.2007.a.15111

John Kennedy O’Connor, The Eurovision Song Contest: the official history. (London, 2007) YK.2008.b.3530

Jan Feddersen, Merci, Jury: die Geschichte des Grand Prix Eurovision de la chanson. (Vienna, 2000) YA.2002.a.7182

K. Sieg , “Cosmopolitan empire: Central and Eastern Europeans at the Eurovision Song Contest” European journal of cultural studies. (Vol 16, No. 2, 2013), 244-226.  ZC.9.a.5325

Eurovision Song Contest 60th Anniversary Conference – webcast http://www.eurovision.tv/page/webtv?program=129423

SQS 2/2007 : Queer Eurovision/ Guest Editors: Mikko Tuhkanen & Annamari Vänskä  http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/sqs/sqs2_07/sqs_contents2_07.html

 

Basque, or Euskera, as the Basques call it, is a pre-Indo-European language now spoken in four provinces of northern Spain and three in France, on either side of the Western Pyrenees. It once extended over a much wider area, but how much wider is a matter of conjecture, as indeed is the prehistory of the language and people. In spite of perceived similarities and lexical coincidences between Basque and an extraordinary number of languages, living and dead, from across the world, only surviving fragments of Aquitanian, a language once spoken in South-Western Gaul, have been shown to have meaningful coincidences with Basque. Aquitanian can thus reasonably be regarded as an ancestor or close relative. Today Basque is an isolate, and the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in Western Europe.

Basque is a difficult language for speakers of other Western European languages. For example, the relationship of subject and object is quite different from what we are familiar with in English, or Spanish, and from what we may recall from Latin with its nominative (subject) and accusative (object) cases. Wikipedia  tells us that:

Basque is an ergative-absolutive language. The subject of an intransitive verb is in the absolutive case (which is unmarked), and the same case is used for the direct object of a transitive verb. The subject of the transitive verb is marked differently, with the ergative case (shown by the suffix -k).

Here are two contrasted, basic examples: ‘nire anaia etorri da’ (‘my brother has come’); ‘nire aitak emakumea ikusi du’ (‘my father saw the woman’).

The Basque verb is especially complex. Wikipedia again:

The auxiliary verb accompanies most main verbs, agrees not only with the subject, but with any direct object and the indirect object present. Among European languages, this polypersonal agreement is only found in Basque, some languages of the Caucasus, and Hungarian (all non-Indo-European).

So in Basque we have the sentence ‘nire aitak Mireni liburu eman zion’ (‘my father gave the book to Miren’) where the auxiliary (zion) recapitulates the relationship between ergative, direct and indirect objects.     The first Basque grammar, Manuel de Larramendi’s El impossible vencido, (Salamanca, 1729) G.16752. The title means ‘The Impossible Overcome’

The present-day Basque Country, or Euskal Herria, straddles France and Spain and within Spain it is divided between the Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco and the Comunidad Foral de Navarra.  The three French provinces (Labourd, Basse Navarre and Soule), together with Béarn, make up the department of the Pyrénées Atlantiques.  The Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco comprises the three provinces of Alava, Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia. In Spain the language is spoken most widely in Gipuzkoa, Bizkaia and the northern parts of Navarra. The number of Basque speakers in France is declining and the majority of speakers are elderly. However, usage among young people has increased according to figures from 2011.

The  Basque Country (highlighted).  Source: UCLA Language Materials Project

The Basque Country is also divided linguistically: according to Louis-Lucien Bonaparte’s dialect map (London, 1869; Maps 18649.(4.)), the language can be classified into eight dialects. The situation in the late 20th century has been described by Koldo Zuazo as consisting of five dialects.
Since the late 1960s concerted efforts have been made to create a standardized form of Basque, known as batua (= unified; < bat = one).

In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the use of Basque was forbidden in education and public life as part of General Franco’s quest to impose national unity. At its most harsh, his regime forbade even the speaking of Basque in public. By the late 1960s the situation had eased somewhat and private schools, ikastolak, which had been functioning in secret, were now tolerated. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 gave Basque co-official status in the Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco and in some areas of Navarra. The introduction of the teaching of Basque in state schools by the autonomous Basque Government has saved the language from what would almost certainly have been total extinction. Basque imaginative literature has re-emerged and the works of prominent writers such as Bernardo Atxaga and Kirmen Uribe  have been widely translated.

The most recent survey of the state of the language (V Encuesta Sociolingúística, 2011) has permitted broadly positive conclusions. Nearly 60% of people in the Comunidad Autónoma del P.V. now have some knowledge of Basque, an increase of 14.5% over the past 30 years. The percentage of fairly competent speakers now stands at 36.4% of the population, a roughly similar increase. Strangely, one worrying aspect of the survey is that the use of Basque in the home has dropped very slightly.  However, the broad conclusion of the survey is that the future of Basque – in Spain – lies with the Basques themselves.

Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic Studies

Further reading

Roger Collins, The Basques, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1990). YC.1990.a.10183 and 90/20865

Alan R. King, The Basque Language: a Practical Introduction (Reno, 1994). YA.1999.b.3105

R.L.  Trask, A History of the Basque Language (London, 1997).  YC.1997.b.547 and 97/06294

The 2015 Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages will take place on Monday 1 June in the Eliot Room of the British Library Conference Centre. This year’s programme covers a wide range of topics,  languages and places, from early modern Constantinople to 1960s France. The programme for the day is as follows:

10.30       Registration and Coffee

11.00    Anke Timmermann (London), Page Layout in Scientific Codices: A Perspective on                          Manuscripts and Printed Books in the Long Fifteenth Century

11.45    John L. Flood (London), The English Sweating-Sickness and the Sixteenth-                         Century German Book Trade

12.30      Lunch (Own arrangements).

1.45     Ian H. Magedera (Liverpool), French Books on India: Book List, Online Library and Data             Visualization

2.30    Sophie Heywood (Reading), Censorship and Children’s Book Publishing: The             Subversive ’60s in France

3.15        Tea

3.45     Nil Pektas (London), The Beginnings of Printing in the Ottoman Capital: Book             Production and Circulation in Early Modern Constantinople

4.30    Joseph Ross (Notre Dame), Cyrillic Alphabetic Quire Signatures

The Seminar will end at 5.15 pm.

The seminar is free, but please notify Barry Taylor ([email protected]) or Susan Reed ([email protected]) if you wish to attend.

 
Bookbinders, from Assemblage nouveau des manouvries habilles = Samlung der mit ihren eigenen Arbeiten und Werckzeugen eingekleideten Künstlern, Handwerckern und Professionen ([Augsburg, 1735) British Library 1266.i.15.