European studies blog

Exploring Europe at the British Library

84 posts categorized "Poland"

11 October 2013

To Kolomea with love

I dare say that many of us can talk with enthusiasm about the “dream cities” of our childhood and present a long list of names. Something in the name itself, or even the way it was pronounced for the first time we heard it, catches our imagination and makes us dream about visiting them. The usual “list of suspects” includes Paris, London, Rome, Vienna, Barcelona...

Well, they all were on my own list. Yet there was another town, much closer to my native Ivano-Frankivsk  in Ukraine. It was even in the same region of Western Ukraine, known also as Eastern Galicia. It could be that the humorous aphoristic songs, called “kolomyiky”, which my dear father Vasyl liked to sing on many joyful occasions, are “guilty” of my particular attraction to this town.

Painting of Ukrainian folk-dancers

Type “kolomyiky” in our electronic catalogue Explore the British Library  and you will find some interesting material. These cheerful Ukrainian folk songs (only two lines, with fourteen syllables each), as well as the folk dance with the same name, have rightfully merited their own Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH). Polish-Armenian  painter Teodor Axentowicz painted his vivid Kolomeyka in 1895 (picture from Wikimedia Commons).

Photograph of Leopold von Sacher-MasochYes, my other dream city bears the name of Kolomea, Kolomyia  in Ukrainian. The English–language Wikipedia presents a yet incomplete list of famous people (Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian) who were born there or spent a good part of their life there. The   town itself has its rightful place on the European literary map too with the Austrian writer’s  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s  (picture right from Wikimedia Commons) erotic novel Don Juan von Kolomea (Don Juan of Kolomea), published in German in 1866. English-language readers are familiar with his Venus in Furs   but  the story of the Ukrainian Don Juan from Galicia has only recently became available (as an e-Book only) in an English translation by Richard Hacken  as “Don Juan from Colomea”.

Jewish, Ukrainian and Polish publishers have flourished in Kolomea  for many centuries. The famous publisher Yakiv Orenshtain (1875-1944), a native of Kolomea,    established in 1903 the “Halyts’ka Nakladnia”, which published books in many languages and also specialised in postcards, capturing the beauty of the town and scenes from colourful multi-ethnic Galician life (see one of Orenshtain's postcards below). Our Ukrainian Collection recently acquired some lovely books about old postcards from Kolomea (YF.2006.b.2068 and YF. 2006.b.2080)

Old postcard of street in Kolomea

My long-standing dream  of visiting Kolomea (after Paris, London, Vienna, Barcelona etc.) is finally going to become a reality. I am going there to  a conference to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first journal of Ukrainian Esperantists, called Ukraina Stelo (The Star of Ukraine). It was published in 1913-1914 and revived after the horrors of the First World War in 1922 in what was then the Polish Republic. The Austrian National Library  has digitised this rare publication and now it is available to all. Yes, Kolomea was also an important centre of teaching and publishing in Esperanto. The memorial plaque to the editor of Ukraina Stelo, Orest Kuzma (1892-1968), another famous citizen of Kolomea, will be solemnly unveiled.

Hope to send to my colleagues in European Studies a modern multilingual postcard from Kolomea - with  lots of love.

Olga Kerziouk, Curator Ukrainian and Esperanto Studies

25 September 2013

Marcel Reich-Ranicki (1920-2013)

Germany’s renowned literary critic, the “Pope of Literature”, Marcel Reich-Ranicki died on 18 September 2013. Reich-Ranicki was an institution in Germany. His programme Literarisches Quartett (“Literary Quartet”) was a fixed point of the weekly schedule on German TV channel ZDF from 1998 until 2001. The programme’s passionate discussions attracted even those otherwise not so interested in literature to the screen to watch. Yet he mainly had built his reputation through newspaper essays, his reviews featured in the “Feuilleton” (culture section) of the heavyweight Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (British Library shelfmark MF522NPL).

Reich-Ranicki was of Polish-Jewish origin and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust. From 1948-49 he worked as a diplomat in the Polish Consulate-General in London; in 1958 he settled in the Federal Republic of Germany.  Within a short time he grew to be an established figure in West German literary life and became associated with the literary association “Gruppe 47”.

He wrote more than fifty books, including works on Goethe, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. The British Library Catalogue has over a hundred entries for works by him, edited by him, or about him, including Sieben Wegbereiter: Schriftsteller des 20. Jahrhunderts: Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, Alfred Döblin, Robert Musil, Franz Kafka, Kurt Tucholsky, Bertolt Brecht. (Stuttgart, 2002; YA.2002.a.38364). His autobiography Mein Leben (Stuttgart, 1999; YA.2000.a.4908) was top of the German bestseller list for several years running, and has been translated into English by Ewald Osers as Marcel Reich-Ranicki: the Author of Himself (London 2001; YC.2001.a.21184).

Graffiti mural of Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Marcel Reich-Ranicki portrayed in a graffiti mural outside a bookshop in Menden, Germany - a demonstration of his huge public impact and high popular profile. (Image by Mbdortmund from Wikimedia Commons)

Marcel Reich-Ranicki was a friend of literature, freedom and democracy. His death marks the end of an era – not least because it so happens that two of his great contemporaries and friends – Hans Werner Richter, the founder of Gruppe 47, and Walter Jens – also died during the last year.

Dorothea Miehe, Curator German Studies

07 August 2013

Propaganda of Success

This term was used to describe the period often referred to as Gierek’s decade (1970-1980) in Poland. Edward Gierek, the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza PZPR) came to power in December 1970 following a wave of strikes that had been provoked by the announcement of a drastic food price increase. After many years of economic stagnation under Gomułka’s rule Gierek promised the nation economic reforms and industrial modernisation. His new political style raised hopes that the socialist system might be reformable and was well received by the majority of people.
 
Through foreign loans new companies sprang up and consumer goods were filling the shops. Products that had been absent from the shelves in previous decades such as bananas, oranges, chewing gum and the symbol of ‘the rotten West’, Coca-Cola, were easily available.

Gierek aimed at mass motorisation so that every worker could afford a car. He also relaxed travel restrictions, allowing people to travel to the previously forbidden West.  At the beginning of this ‘bonanza’ a lucky potential traveller could even purchase 150 dollars in a bank at a competitive tourist rate (this was usually half the rate on the black market), so the standard of living rose considerably.

Gomułka’s ideology was replaced by Gierek’s consumerism. His language of political propaganda included a broad range of populist slogans of which the most popular were ‘building a second Poland’,  ‘economic miracle’, and  ‘let Poland grow strong and people be prosperous’.  ‘Will you help?’ was the first phrase spontaneously formulated by Gierek at the very beginning of his rule and is now regarded as the basic catchword in the linguistic canon of that period.  

The period of prosperity was, however, short-lived. In the mid-70s the signs of the coming economic crisis were apparent. 1976 saw another wave of protests in response to a planned massive increase in food prices. The repressions which followed led to the formation of illegal opposition groups and this, in turn, laid the foundation for the growth of the Solidarity movement in 1980. 

Not without reason the Polish People’s Republic was seen as the jolliest barrack in the socialist camp. Poland enjoyed a comparatively high degree of freedom among the countries of the communist bloc. In such a climate humour and satire flourished, targeting the distortions of the system and its weaknesses. Satire was regarded as a form of social resistance, and also helped people to survive turbulent times. To pass the censor’s approval cartoonists had to employ subtle allusions and hidden metaphors.  Any cartoon which might have had the slightest anti-communist undertone was immediately censored. There were, however, cases of the withdrawal of the entire circulation of a paper because of a joke that escaped the censor’s attention.

The current British Library exhibition Propaganda: Power and Persuasion  includes some examples of the works by Andrzej Krauze, a great Polish illustrator and cartoonist noted for his allegorical drawings. He lives and works in London. His illustrations have been published in The Guardian since 1989 and in other prominent newspapers and journals around the world.

Magda Szkuta,  Curator of Polish Studies

Cartoon showing customers queuing outside a closed and empty shop

 

Cartoon from Andrzej Krauze’s Poland. (London,  1981)  X.958/7224. (By kind permission of the author and publisher)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

26 July 2013

La Unua Libro

126 years ago, on 26 July 1887, a modest little  book was published in Warsaw. The book appeared under the pseudonym “Dr Esperanto” and was entitled (in Russian) “International Language. Introduction and Complete Textbook for Russians”. The title-page explained: “In order that a language may be worldwide, it is not enough to call it so”, adding the price of 15 kopecks and the imprint “Warsaw: Printing House of Ch.Kelter, Nowolipie street no.11 1887”.

The first book in esperanto

"The First Book" in Russian (image from Wikimedia Commons)

This “harmless eccentricity”, as the author’s father called it, succeeded in changing the lives of millions of people all over the world and still continues to do so. Esperanto speakers of the world lovingly talk about “La Unua Libro” [“The First Book”], and 26 July is recognised as Esperanto Day.

The creator of Esperanto –  27-year old Ludovic Zamenhof –  published his book first in Russian as it was much easier to receive permission from the severe Tsarist censors for Russian books. His father, Marcus Zamenhof, persuaded his friend A. Lagodovsky, then censor for Russian books in Warsaw, to give permission. Versions in other languages – French, German and Polish – followed the same year. The British Library holds two first editions of “The First Book”: Langue Internationale: Préface et manuel complet por Francoj [12902.aa.45] and Internationale Sprache. Vorrede und vollständiges Lehrbuch por Germanoj [12902.aa.46], both also published in Warsaw in 1887.

The first manual for English speakers was published a year later, again in Warsaw: Dr. Esperanto's International Tongue: Preface and complete method, edited for Englishmen by J St. [12902.aa.55.(1)]. In the words of Zamenhof’s British biographer Dr Marjorie Boulton, the editorial work of J.St. was not a total success: “one of his early converts, Julius Steinhaus, though himself qualified and produced a disastrously bad translation.”  This poor translation was suppressed by Zamenhof himself and is now a great rarity. Fortunately, an extremely gifted Irishman, Richard H. Geoghegan,  “who at the age of twenty-two had just finished a four-year course in philology at Oxford and received a university prize in Chinese” (Boulton), adapted further manuals for English speakers and became one of the most fervent pioneers of Esperanto.

Portrait of Zamenhof

Portrait of Zamenhof (image from Wikimedia Commons)

Zamenhof, of course, was not the first man to offer a new language of international communication to the world. Volapük, created only seven years before by Roman Catholic priest Johann Martin Shleyer, was still in fashion. But the genius of Zamenhof was already evident in “The First Book”. It included the“promise form” (“Promeso”) for purchasers: “I, the undersigned, promise to learn the international language proposed by D. Zamenhof, if it appears that ten million people have publicly given the same promise” and eight reply coupons which could be cut out and mailed to the author. It also presented translations into the new language and original poems by Zamenhof himself.  In the words of Geoffrey Sutton, “Zamenhof understood the vital importance of the role of literature from the outset, undertaking the lonely task of testing the language with translated and original writing even before anyone outside his family could share his thought in it”.

How did the new “international language” sound? Here are some examples from “The First Book”: Translation: “Patro nia, kiu estas en la  ĉielo, sankta estu Via nomo, venu reĝeco Via, estu volo Via, kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankau sur la tero” (opening of the Lord’s Prayer);
Original poetry from year 1887 “Oh, My Heart”: “Ho, mia kor’, ne batu maltrankvile, / El mia brusto nun ne saltu for! / Jam teni min ne povas mi facile / Ho, mia kor’!”
Esperanto speakers from the USA, China, Brazil, Israel, Poland, Lithuania, Slovenia and Ukraine, meeting together, can recite this poem of Zamenhof’s by heart. I witnessed this myself in the London Esperanto Club.

One of the biggest linguistic experiments in the history of humankind is still going on. Happy birthday, Esperanto! Feliĉan naskiĝtagon!

Olga Kerziouk, Curator of Esperanto Studies

Further reading:

Boulton, Marjorie. Zamenhof: creator of Esperanto. (London, 1960) [W63/5649]

Star in a Night Sky. An Anthology of Esperanto Literature.  Edited by Paul Gubbins. (London, 2012).

Concise encyclopedia of the original literature of Esperanto, 1887-2007. Edited by Geoffrey Sutton.  (New York, 2008). [YC.2008.a.12495]




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