30 October 2013
In search of the lost palace in Białowieża National Park
We are all so switched on to social media these days that we sometimes forget how recent a development this has been. Every so often, when I go into Facebook, I am confronted by wonderful photographs posted by the Białowieża National Park, a nature reserve in the primeval forest straddling the Polish-Belarusian border. Known for being the last place in Europe that bison still live, the reserve hosts scientific conferences and is a popular resort for walkers and cyclists, as well as for people who simply come to look at the animals and enjoy the enveloping quiet of the forest all around.
But just a decade ago, Białowieża was all but unknown outside Poland and certain scientific circles, and its web presence was negligible. At that time, I was involved in researching the history of the place – originally for a friend’s book (Greg King, Court of the Last Tsar, BL shelfmarks YC.2006.a.13165 and m06/.22031); but we also gathered enough information for a long magazine article.
Białowieża Park started life as a hunting ground for the Lithuanian and Polish kings, and the forest’s (few) inhabitants enjoyed a tax-free status on condition they looked after it. In due course, following the partitions of Poland, it fell into the hands of the Romanovs, who set about restocking a forest now much damaged and depleted by invasions. Tsar Alexander III, a particularly enthusiastic huntsman with solidly bourgeois tastes, built himself a massive lodge there in the 1890s, transforming the simple estate into an imperial park, complete with outbuildings and landscaped grounds. Polish presidents and Nazi viceroys used it later, but the palace was damaged in World War Two and subsequently torn down. Today, the scientific study centre stands in its place.
The Hofmarschal’s House, one of the remaining outbuildings (©J.Ashton/C.Martyn)
The estate gets odd mentions in memoirs and histories of the late imperial period – particularly of Nicholas II’s reign – but practically nothing was written about it in detail. It took Greg and me some time to even work out where it actually was, but both of us have a particular interest in architecture, and were fascinated by the first picture we saw of the turreted behemoth that had been Alexander’s palace.
Getting to Białowieża in 2004 proved a reasonable challenge. There was no direct route by public transport from Warsaw, and the resulting car trip took many hours longer than anticipated, mainly due to farm vehicles passing very slowly along the little roads. On the other hand, it was very peaceful and relaxing! The town of Białowieża, two uneven roads lined with wooden houses, has probably not changed greatly since Tsarist days, save for the addition of two modern hotels. The park opens from the end of one street, and in its gatehouse – one of the few remaining traces of Alexander’s gothic fantasy – was an exhibition on the history of the palace. In Polish, of course.
The Palace in its heyday
These days, there are plentiful photos of the whole estate on the net, and a boutique hotel cashing in on the Tsarist connection has opened in the disused imperial station. There is a direct bus from Warsaw and lots of websites in English.
Janet Ashton, WEL Cataloguing Team Manager
Some more BL resources on Białowieża Palace:
Białowieża, carska rezydencja, by Swietlana Czestnych, Karen Kettering (LF.31.a.3514)
Saga Puszczy Białowieskiej, by Simona Kossak (YA.2003.a.20990)
Białowieża : zarys dziejów do 1950 roku, by Piotr Bajko (YF.2004.a.2209)
09 October 2013
The British Library & British Museum Singers celebrate Verdi’s Birthday
Join the British Library and British Museum Singers for this performance on 10 October to mark the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth on 10 October 1813.
When: 13.00-13.40, Thursday 10 October 2013
Where: Entrance Hall, British Library, St Pancras
Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi by Giovanni Boldini, 1886, from Wikimedia Commons
This free event will be conducted by Peter Hellyer and accompanied by Giles Ridley.
The programme will include these choruses and arias from Verdi operas:
Chorus of Hebrew slaves (Nabucco)
Brindisi (La traviata) - solos: Andrew Bale, Hidemi Hatada
Chorus of Scottish refugees (Macbeth)
Matadors’ chorus (La traviata)
Soldiers’ chorus (Il trovatore)
Rataplan (La forza del destino)- solo Kirsten Johnson
Triumphal scene (Aida)
Please come and join in the repeat of Va, pensiero (Chorus of Hebrew slaves) from Nabucco at the end of the concert.
The British Library & British Museum Singers perform four concerts a year in the British Library, the British Museum or St Pancras Church. Wherever possible it links its programmes to current exhibitions and features items held by the British Library or the British Museum. This year it has given concerts celebrating the anniversaries of Benjamin Britten (Britten and Purcell) and Verdi (Verdi and Monteverdi). On 10 October in the British Library Entrance Hall we will be repeating some of Verdi’s best-known choruses on the actual day of his birth. Our next concert entitled “A French Connection” will mark the 50th anniversary of Francis Poulenc’s death and will include his Gloria and songs set to words by Apollinaire. This concert will take place on Thursday 21 November in St Pancras Church at 1.15.
The operas of Verdi were all the rage in Russia in the 1860s. La forza del destino which features in our celebration was in fact first performed in the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre of St. Petersburg, Russia on 22nd November 1862. After further revisions it was performed in Rome, Madrid, New York and London and elsewhere. It was the version after further revisions, with additions by Antonio Ghislanzoni which premiered in La Scala in 1869 that became the standard performance version. One of the notable celebrations of Verdi’s anniversary in Russia this year has been at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
Peter Hellyer, Musical Director British Library & British Museum Singers and Curator Russian Studies
02 October 2013
Theatre life in Soviet Kharkiv, Joseph Schillinger and Persimfans
It is not unusual for a big library to have “hidden collections” – items that were difficult to identify or catalogue so that the records of their existence remain vague. Two such catalogue records in the British Library, with the indistinguishable titles Theatrical and orchestral programmes, not catalogued separately (shelfmark X.905/64) and A collection of theatrical and concert posters (shelfmark Tab.11747.a.(151.)), concealed seventeen concert programmes and advertisements relating to the well-known composer, music theorist and composition teacher Joseph Schillinger, the author of a system of musical composition. This small collection of programmes was purchased by the British Museum, probably in the 1950s or 1960s (there is no date on the acquisition stamps).
The quite random selection of programmes reflects Schillinger’s performing activities in the 1920s in Soviet Russia and Ukraine before leaving for New York in 1928 where he died in 1943. In 1920-21, at the age of 25, Schillinger taught composition and was principal conductor of the Ukrainian Symphony Orchestra in Kharkiv, then capital of Soviet Ukraine. The supplement to the magazine Teatral’nye ivestiia (Teatre News) No. 3 announced a poetry reading and music recital on Friday 23 April in the “Hall of the Public Library” presented by Schillinger and the poet Evgenii Lann, then chairman of the Russian section of the All-Ukrainian Literature Commission.
23 August fell on a Friday in 1920, so we can be sure that the event in question happened that year. According to the programme, apart from the Schillinger-Lann show, theatregoers could choose between quite a few venues: the Taras Shevchenko Theatre (“former State”, as it is described on the advert), the 2nd Soviet Theatre (former “Malyi”), the 1st Soviet Theatre, the Jewish Soviet theatre “Unzer Vinkel“ and the Comedy Theatre. Among the shows on offer were contemporary dramas such as Na provesni by Adrian Kashchenko, Savva by Leonid Andreev and Nadezhda Teffi’s short comedy Tonkaia psikhologiia (Delicate consciousness).
Another programme relating to the cultural life of Kharkiv in the 1920s advertises a concert on Tuesday, 24 August in the so-called “Narodnyi Dom” (People’s House). The concert started at 9 pm and consisted of three parts with an introduction by Schillinger himself. That evening Kharkiv music lovers could listen to seven pieces, including the Overture to Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Handel’s Largo and a fantasia on Tchaikovsky’s themes from the Queen of Spades.
For 1920, the programmes from this collection also document Schillinger’s lectures on Scriabin on 6 January and on some general musical topics “with illustrations” on 31 March at the Kharkiv Institute of Music.
Bulleten’ Teatral’nykh Izvestii (The Bulletin of the Theatre News) No. 9 of 7-9 November 1921 advertised a show called Podvigi Gerkulesa (Hercules’s Heroic Deeds) at the State Theatre “Fairy-Tales” (former “Ekaterininskii”). Music for this play was written by Schillinger and the stage design was by Nikolai Akimov, then a very young avant-garde artist and later quite a prominent Soviet theatre artist. The show was one of the first by the group that later turned into the famous Kharkiv Theatre for Children and Young Adults. On the same page one can see an advert for Mayakovsky’s Mistery Bouffe performed by the “Heroic Theatre” (former “Malyi”), which on the previous programme was referred to as the 2nd Soviet Theatre. It was a time of rapid changes indeed!
In Leningrad, Schillinger’s piano music was performed on 19 March 1926 as part of a concert organised by the Association of Contemporary Music, and on 28 April and 9 May 1927 Schillinger gave a public lecture, Jazz-band and the music of the future. Schillinger was also associated with the Leningrad-based Kruzhok druzei kamernoi muzyki (Circle of Friends of Chamber Music), and his music was played at some of the Circle’s concerts. Schillinger also kept his connections with theatre, and wrote music for the classical play by Alexander Ostrovsky Dokhodnoe mesto (A Profitable Position) staged by Konstantin Khokhlov at the Leningrad Academic Theatre in 1928.
In Moscow, the composer was associated with the Persimfans ( First Symphony Orchestra), which was famous at that period, and his piece Postup’ Vostoka (Oriental March) was played along with the works of Rachmaninov and Stravinsky in the 1927-1928 season.
Schillinger’s papers are held at the New York Public Library and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but now a small missing piece of the puzzle has been re-discovered in the British Library. These seventeen sheets can not only tell us more about the composer, but could also contribute to a bigger picture of the early Soviet theatre and music scene.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead East European Curator (Russian)
30 September 2013
Six lyrics and Kalashnikov
The choice is unusual at a first glance. What do they have in common, these two poets, except the same year of birth - 1814?
One, Mikhail Lermontov, the famous Russian romantic poet, was born in a noble family, which, accordingly to family legends, goes back to the Scottish Earls of Learmont; the other, Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian national poet, was born in a serf peasant family in a Ukrainian village, and in 1838 was made a free man thanks to “the Great Karl” - the painter Karl Bryullov - and other Ukrainian and Russian friends in St. Petersburg.
But the producer of a small book, entitled Six lyrics from the Ruthenian of Taras Shevchenko also The Song of the merchant Mikhail Kalashnikov from the Russian of Mikhail Lermontov, published in London in 1911 (12205.w.3/86.), knew what she was doing. Ethel Lilian Voynich (1864-1960), a translator and already established Irish writer, felt instinctively that the most unifying factor in publishing them together was as simple as this: both were true poets.
The author of the popular novel The Gadfly loved poetry herself but was very modest about her own abilities as a translator. Her burning desire to make Shevchenko known to English speakers is explained in her “preface”: “But if a man leaves immortal lyrics hidden away from Western Europe in a minor Slavonic idiom between Russian, Servian and Polish, it seems hard that he should go untranslated while waiting for the perfect rendering which may never come. Inadequate as are these few specimens, they show some dim shadow of the mind of a poet who has done for the Dnieper country what Burns did for Scotland”. And she goes on translating this “peasant poet of the Ukraїna” and adds an extensive essay about his life and work.
The six lyrics selected are among the most popular in Ukraine; Ukrainians know them by heart. “I care not…” is one of the most quoted poems in Ukrainian poetry and one of my favourites by Shevchenko (his self-portrait from 1840 below - from Wikimedia Commons). The poem was written in 1847 in the Fortress of Sts Peter and Paul in St Petersburg after poet's arrest:
I care not, shall I see my dear
Own land before I die, or no,
Nor who forgets me, buried here
In desert wastes of alien snow;
Though all forget me, - better so.
And the final stanza:
I care no longer if the child
Shall pray for me, or pass me by.
One only thing I cannot bear:
To know my land, that was beguiled
Into a death-trap with a lie,
Trampled and ruined and defiled…
Ah, but I care, dear God; I care!
In 2008 in the new edition of Taras Shevchenko's poems in English translations Vera Rich translated the same title as "It does not touch me, not a whit..."
“As for Lermontov and his masterpiece”, writes Voynich, “they are both too well known to need any help from me”. In my own observations, people in the 21st century know mainly about Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creator of AK-47. So who was he, Lermontov’s Kalashnikov? The hero of Lermontov’s epic poem was a wealthy and bold merchant in the time of the tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, known as Ivan the Terrible. He had the misfortune that his beloved wife Alyona Dmitrevna became the object of desire of a lusty young oprichnik Kiribyeyevich. Lermontov [portrait right, from Wikimedia Commons] tells the story of Stepan Paramonovich Kalashnikov, who fights the Tsar’s favourite oprichnik at a boxing-match in Moscow in the presence of the Tsar himself. He kills the oprichnik and in consequence loses his life by order of the Tsar. “I include this version of the famous “Song of Kalashnikov” because making it has given me so much pleasure that I hope others may find pleasure in reading it”, Voynich writes.
As the 200th anniversary of the birth of two great poets (in March and October 2014) approaches I wonder what new pleasures and surprises the translators of today will offer us.
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Ukrainian Studies
30 August 2013
Everything you wanted to know about Russia, but were afraid to "ask a librarian"
Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin (1834-1912) is well known in the history of Russian journalism, publishing and bookselling. His articles and short stories appeared in Russkii invalid (The Russian Invalid), Sovremennik (The Contemporary), Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland), Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti (Saint Petersburg News) and other popular central Russian periodicals. He was owner and publisher of the well-known newspaper Novoe vremia (The New Times). With a circulation reaching 60,000 copies this newspaper contributed considerably to Chekhov’s success in literature when he started publishing his short stories there.
Suvorin also created a series called Deshevaia biblioteka (The Cheap Library) to publish Russian and foreign classics - e.g. Hamlet and King Lear (British Library shelfmarks 11758.aaa.16 and 11763.a.2). He founded bookshops and had a personal interest in theatre criticism and drama. To find out more about Suvorin I recommend reading his diaries, published in London in 1999 (YK.1999.a.9774).
However, Suvorin’s ambitious reference projects, such as his 45-volume publication Russkii kalendar’ (The Russian Calendar) produced annually between 1872 and 1916, and multi-volume directories Vsia Moskva (All Moscow), Ves’ Sankt-Peterburg (All St Petersburg) and Vsia Rossiia (All Russia) still can be considered his most valuable contribution to Russian publishing. For example, Vsia Rossiia for the year 1903 (P.P.2458.yd), a 9.5cm thick red volume with a nicely decorated cover, contains information on the Russian imperial family, lists of officers employed by the central governing bodies, ministries and state organisations, full lists of all private enterprises arranged geographically and by industry, lists of landlords with their addresses, and plenty of adverts.
The cover of Suvorin’s Russkii kalendar’ for 1902.
The directory gives a comprehensive overview of Russian society, industry and statistics. Within the geographical section material on the administrative units known as ‘guberniyas’ is arranged alphabetically. Subordinate units and towns form the subsections. There is summary statistical information on the entire guberniya, including numbers of churches, schools and other establishments, figures for the last tax year etc., supported by a transportation map, and a list of high-ranking officials. Each smaller unit, apart from more specific statistical information, would also include notes on the banking system and lists of local businesses (including saunas, libraries and specialist seed shops).
If we remember that the results of the first all-Russia census of 1897 were not fully published until 1905, that the main bulk of the individual questionnaire sheets didn’t survive, and that those which did are dispersed among numerous local archives, the information published by Suvorin becomes really invaluable. Of course, it is still not possible to trace many people, but if you are searching for a civil servant, academic, landlord or business owner, you stand a very good chance of finding some information. For example, among businesses based in Kiev and entrepreneurs involved in sugar production, I found the names and addresses of the Zaitsevs, Landaus and Galperins – relatives of the Russian author Mark Aldanov, which was very helpful for my research on him.
I also did some personal genealogical research and found several people with my husband’s family name “Rogatchevski” and four entries for my maiden name “Vilkov(a)”: one of these owned a grocery in Nizhnii Novgorod, another was a bookseller in the Don region, the third ran a photographic studio in the town of Sarapul in the Viatka region, and a lady called Sora Leiz.[erovna] Vilkova was owner of a manufactory. Of course, whether we are related, is a separate question altogether which I probably won’t be able to answer with Suvorin’s help.
If your research involves social history, Russkii kalendar’ (P.P.2458.z.) would be very useful. For example, if you want to find information on calendars of festivals celebrated by most of the religions in the Russian Empire, check a couple of useful mathematical formulas, learn how much capital was declared by various Russian banks, compare European currency exchange rates or know how to calculate pregnancy periods related to the time of conception, these are the books for you. If you are unsure where to go for mineral water treatment or what the symptoms of death are, want to see photographs of recent events or be reminded of how the solar system is organised, they would also come in handy.
For modern researchers not only are maps, statistics, and lists of names important, but such information as theatre seating plans, prices, railway regulations etc., could also be very helpful. The material on the 19th-century advertising in Russia is also very rich and definitely under-researched, as designs, advertising techniques and printing types probably deserve more specialist attention.
A typical advertisment from Russkii kalendar’ for 1897.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator Russian Studies
19 August 2013
Second World War Soviet Propaganda
Eighteen envelopes full of World War II Soviet propaganda material, containing about 350 items, including leaflets, newspapers and flyers are held in the Official Publications collection at the British Library (S.N.6/11.(2.)) and were accessioned by the British Museum on 31 August 1955. A short typewritten note in Russian, signed by one IU.Okov and addressed to a Mr Barman survives as part of the collection: “Dear Mr Barman, please find enclosed several of our leaflets in German and Hungarian. Yours sincerely, IU. Okov”.
In the same envelope is a typewritten list of items, probably enclosed with the same letter. The letter is dated January 1945 and was sent by the Soviet Office of Propaganda, presumably to some British counterpart. However, as the collection contains more items in other languages, including Finnish, Polish and Romanian, it is very likely that this correspondence originated on more than one occasion. It would be very interesting to learn more about the provenance of the collection and its whereabouts before it came to the Library. Unfortunately, we don’t have any information on Mr Okov or Mr Barman, but it would be very interesting to learn who they were.
When war with the Nazi Germany broke out on 22 June 1941, the Communist Party of the USSR took a decision to create a new organisation, which was called the Soviet Office of Political and Military Propaganda (later reformed into the Office of Propaganda on Enemy and Occupied Territories). By the end of 1941, eighteen propaganda newspapers were being published in the Soviet Union in various foreign languages, ten of them in German.
Even the German intelligence accepted that the Soviet propaganda was very effective. Propaganda aimed at Nazi soldiers and civilians in Germany and on occupied territories didn’t focus on communist ideology or criticise religion, the class structure of society, etc. The main objective was to condemn Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party.
The propaganda materials vividly illustrated atrocities by Nazi troops on the occupied territories on the one hand and the strength of the Soviet Army and consequently its inevitable victory on the other. Among various propaganda techniques one of the most important was an emotional appeal to ‘common’ people who were forced to fight a war that was not in their interests. Images of women and children waiting for their husbands, sons and fathers back at home were widely used. Women and children in these pictures appeared miserable and ashamed that their loved ones were fighting on the Eastern front, and these impressions came out as genuinely poignant and moving.
Most of the flyers contain a pass written in German and Russian that could be torn off and presented to the Soviet troops when surrendering. In 1942, after the first German defeats, a special series of propaganda materials demonstrating the enemy's losses was launched. The propaganda message addressed to Germany's allies stressed the argument that the German fascists were using their allies' troops in the most dangerous situations and campaigns.
Several items from this collection can be seen in the current BL exhibition 'Propaganda: Power and Persuasion' which is on till 17 September 2013.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator Russian Studies
12 August 2013
Britain and Russia in the First World War and the Revolution of 1917: some interesting sources in the British Library collections
As someone who is half Russian and half English, Anglo-Russian relations have always been a source of fascination for me – at a time like the First World War, these would have been far more important and complex than usual.
During my work experience at the British Library, I came across a report about the first time British and Russian soldiers fought side by side in the First World War: Report on R.N.A.S. Armoured Car Squadron under Commander O. Locker-Lampson ... serving in Russia. ([London], 1918; X.802/2122). The Squadron was sent to the Eastern Front when its capabilities on the Western Front were thought to be limited due to trench warfare.
The nature of the various negotiations regarding the terms of the squadron being sent to aid the Russian forces are the primary essence of this report by Nugent M. Clougher. The general terms of the treaty revolve around the British Government providing travel expenses and ammunition, whilst the Russian Government was to provide salaries and food for the soldiers as well as upkeep costs for the cars.
The document is typewritten – which adds to the interest for an observer even if the very meticulous content is not overly fascinating. Indeed, the specifics of the report are somewhat repetitive. However, some of these specifics are visually interesting, such as a diagram showing the growth of expenditure sanctioned by the R.G.C. at the end of the report.
King George V took a personal interest in the work of the squadron in Russia and in a message to his men said: “Tell the men under your command how glad I am that they have been placed at the disposal of His Majesty the Emperor of Russia. I know they will uphold that high reputation which they have already earned in the Western Theatre of War” (p. 8).
In his message sent to Tsar Nicholas II via the squadron’s commander, Oliver Locker-Lampson he also stated: “I trust they will be of some service to your brave army. They share my satisfaction that Russian and British Comrades will now for the first time in this war fight side by side.”
(Left: Messages from King George V from the Report on R.N.A.S. Armoured Car Squadron. X.802/2122)
Interestingly, Locker-Lampson became involved in Russian politics during his time in Russia, allegedly having been asked to participate in the 1916 assassination of Rasputin and in Kornilov’s failed coup against the provisional government of Kerensky. He is also said to have planned to rescue Tsar Nicholas II from Bolshevik-controlled territory following his abdication. Partially because of his experiences in Russia, Locker-Lampson became fiercely anti-Communist and suspicious of covert Bolshevik influence in Britain's economy, society and politics (he was a fairly prominent pro-Churchill Conservative MP).
Although towards the end of 1917 the squadron was no longer needed as Russia left the war, it remained in its winter base in Kursk for months. In the following years Britain would join the “Whites” in the Civil War that resulted from the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power. The Czar’s British Squadron by Bryan Perrett and Anthony Lord (London, 1981) [X.622/11785 and 83/34072] tells the full story of the squadron from 1915-1918. It provides an intriguing perspective from English soldiers in Russia during this troubled period that led to one of the most infamous governments in history becoming all-powerful in Eastern Europe.
I also had access to other books regarding Bolshevism in Russia and British opinions towards it. As it became clear that the Communists would not give up in their bid to control Russia, streams of anti-Communist propaganda were created in Britain where there were fears that a similar uprising could occur. A collection of tracts (shelfmark 8092.dd.9) published by the Russian Liberation Committee one of the most active Russian émigré organizations operating in London in the period following the Russian Revolution with the aims of “the overthrow of Bolshevism, the restoration of order in and the regeneration of Russia”, shows that, although mostly written by Russians, they also try to reflect the British viewpoint on events in Russia.
Journalists Harold Williams and his Russian wife Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams were among the supporters of the anti-Bolshevik cause of the Russian Liberation Committee and wrote for this series. Further reflections can be also found in Ariadna’s From Liberty to Brest-Litovsk: The first year of the Russian Revolution (London, 1919; 8095.h.8). The unique Tyrkova-Williams collection of pamphlets and press-cuttings which they saved while in Russia during the Civil War was also deposited with the British Museum Library.
Leaflet from the Tyrkova-Williams Collection, Cup.410.c.312.(33)
Tom Walters, Work Experience Student
References:
Charlotte Alston, ‘The Work of the Russian Liberation Committee in London, 1919–1924’, Slavonica, Vol. 14, No. 1 (April 2008), pp. 6-17 (12) P.901/3414.
09 August 2013
Some 2013 anniversaries
This year’s musical anniversaries, especially the bicentenaries of Verdi and Wagner and the centenary of Britten, have so far somewhat overshadowed the centenaries of some momentous events in literature, the visual arts, and music, all happening in Paris in 1913, an annus mirabilis for French and European culture, and the culmination of the activity that made the city the epicentre of artistic creation in the first years of the century.
Earlier this year, the BBC marked the centenary of some of these events with a series of five 15-minute talks. The programmes looked at Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann, Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes, and Apollinaire’s Alcools, all published in 1913, Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on 29 May 1913, and, curiously, Cubism (even though the movement dates back to 1907).
Two other events during the same extraordinary year, not covered in the series, were the creation of Debussy’s ballet Jeux and the publication of Blaise Cendrars/Sonia Delaunay’s La Prose du Transsibérien.
Jeux, painting by Dorothy Mullock (1888-1973). Image from Wikimedia Commons
Jeux (‘Games’), Debussy’s last orchestral score, had the misfortune to be premiered by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes on 15 May 1913, just a fortnight before the same company’s first performance of The Rite of Spring. Both ballets were conducted by Pierre Monteux who, a year earlier, had conducted the first performance of Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé. (How many conductors can claim as much?)
Debussy’s ballet (or ‘poème dansé’), was burdened with a scenario and choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky which was much ridiculed by, among others, Erik Satie; the plot involved a man, two women, and a game of tennis. Obviously Nijinsky’s knowledge of tennis was nebulous, as the ball used on stage was nearly the size of a football, and the dancers’ movements resembled those of golfers rather than tennis players.
Jeux was eclipsed by the sensation caused by The Rite of Spring which, ironically, echoed the scandal that greeted, exactly a year earlier, the creation of another short ballet by Debussy, also choreographed and performed by Nijinsky, based on the earlier symphonic poem ‘Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune’, in the final scene of which the faun appears to masturbate. Jeux was subsequently dismissed as an example of Debussy’s declining powers in his last years, and it is only recently that it has been hailed as a masterpiece with echoes of Wagner’s Parsifal and looking forward to the music of Messiaen and Boulez.
La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France [Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France], a poem by Blaise Cendrars with pochoir illustrations in watercolour and gouache by Sonia Delaunay was published in October 1913. An edition of 150 copies of this ‘first simultaneous book’ was planned; as each was printed on a sheet unfolding to a length of 2 metres, if all the copies were placed end to end they would reach 300 metres, the height of the Eiffel Tower, a symbol of modernity celebrated in the poem and in other paintings by Robert and Sonia Delaunay. In the event, only 60 copies were produced initially and the outbreak of war the following year prevented further printing of what has been called ‘one of the most beautiful books ever created’.
The book was one of the highlights of the 2007-2008 British Library exhibition ‘Breaking the Rules: the Printed Face of the Avant-Garde 1900-1937’. A podcast about it and a zoomable image of it can be found on the British Library website, and there is a modern facsimile available at YK.2011.a.17509.
Chris Michaelides, Curator Italian and Modern Greek Studies
References:
L’Après-midi d’un Faune. Vaslav Nijinsky 1912: Thirty-Three Photographs by Baron Adolf de Meyer. (London, 1983). L.45/3369
Robin Holloway Debussy and Wagner (London, 1979). X.439/8747
Robert Orledge, Debussy and the theatre (Cambridge, 1982). X.950/19866 and 82/32509
Blaise Cendrars/Sonia Delaunay, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France (Paris, 1913)
11 June 2013
Make your own anti-soviet propaganda!
Looking for material in the British Library's Russian collections that could be shown in our current exhibition Propaganda: Power and Persuasion, I found a small collection of anti-Soviet propaganda purchased by the Library in 1978 [British Library shelfmark HS.74/2168].
The collection consists of about 50 items published in the 1950s by the Narodno-trudovoi Soiuz (The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists) a Russian far-right anticommunist organization founded in 1930 by a group of young Russian White émigrés in Belgrade. The organization also set up a radio station called ‘Radio Free Russia’; during the Cold War its programmes were broadcast from West Germany to the Soviet-occupied eastern zone until the West German government, responding to pressure from the Soviet government, shut the station down.
The NTS actively sent out propaganda leaflets via air balloons and other means, including direct mail. Messages containing anti-Stalinist slogans and the NTS’s political programme were printed on leaflets, handkerchiefs, fake roubles, false books, etc. to be smuggled into the Soviet Union.
For example, in our collection we have a leaflet addressed to the entire ‘population of the country’ with an image of a hundred-rouble note on the reverse, which of course could not be taken for a real banknote. Other items are presented as handwritten letters to a friend, and some are really small pieces – about the size of a matchbox - with graphic images and some text on them. It is difficult to say whether these tricks and others, such as a fake newspaper intended to imitate the established Soviet newspaper, Literaturnaia Gazeta (The Literary Newspaper), really helped to smuggle more material into the USSR
.
A fake Literaturnaia Gazeta
In my view, the most interesting items in this collection are two templates which could be used to produce more copies of anti-Soviet propaganda. The instructions for doing this are not exactly simple: “Take 22 teaspoons of water, 5 teaspoons of potato starch, 8 teaspoons of real ink, and 2 teaspoons of glycerine. Mix all the ingredients very well and heat slowly till the mixture becomes fairly thick. Using a small piece of wood smoothed by fabric or rubber, rub this substance into paper through this template. Rinse and dry the template after use”.
Make your own Propaganda! One of the NTS templates
I’m afraid that even those who have a valid reader’s ticket for the British Library won’t be able to try this out. But the collection will soon go undergo conservation treatment and will be available to consult in the reading rooms in 2014.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator Russian Studies
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