21 January 2016
Imagining Don Quixote
‘Imagining Don Quixote’, a free exhibition focusing on how Cervantes’ novel has been illustrated over time, opened in the British Library’s Treasures Gallery on 19 January and runs until 22 May. It explores how different approaches to illustrating the work have reflected changing interpretations both of Don Quixote, the novel, and of its eponymous protagonist. The most significant shift has been in the perception of Don Quixote as figure of burlesque fun to noble idealist brought low. This blog post looks at the depiction of Don Quixote himself.
Miguel de Cervantes’ El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha, published in two parts (1605, 1615), tells how Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, his squire, set out to win fame by righting wrongs and succouring the weak and distressed. Cervantes gives succinct descriptions of Don Quixote: ‘approximately fifty years old; his complexion was weathered, his flesh scrawny, his face gaunt’ (DQ I, 1); later Don Diego de Miranda was ‘amazed by the length of his horse, his height, his thin, sallow face… a form and appearance not seen for many long years’ (DQ II, 16). Even so depictions of Don Quixote have varied over time and differences reflect changing views of the novel. In the 17th century it was appreciated for its burlesque, often physical humour, and character was subordinate to narrative. Illustrators do portray Don Quixote as tall and elderly, Sancho as shorter and more stout, but the contrast is not an exaggerated one, as in this anonymous English illustration:
Frontispiece of Miguel de Cervantes, The History of the Most Renown’d Don Quixote (London, 1687) Cerv.336
In the 18th century the editors of the first scholarly edition (1738) saw the novel as a satire directed against fantastical literature which caused readers to confuse fiction with history. They restricted the physical humour in the illustrations and sought to elevate the character of Don Quixote. Here he courteously greets two women as noble ladies, although Cervantes’ text indicates that they are prostitutes (DQ I, 2).
Miguel de Cervantes, Vida y hechos del ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (London, 1738) 86.l.2-5
John Vanderbank’s illustration adds a nobility of gesture to Quixote’s height, as prescribed by Cervantes.
One artist was crucial in establishing a sympathetic image of Don Quixote: Gustave Doré (1832-1883). The illustrations of his monumental edition (Paris, 1863) have been reproduced in many later editions. Doré’s Quixote is elongated and thin indeed but his bearing is altogether more heroic, especially in outdoor scenes. This portrayal – looking upwards, lance pointing skyward - accords with the growing Romantic tendency to see Don Quixote as an idealist brought low by harsh reality and the mockery of others (DQ I, 3).
Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote…. (London, 1876-1878) 12491.m.2
Until around the middle of the 19th century not only book illustration, but also prints, drawings and paintings had depicted specific episodes of the novel. However, Doré’s contemporary Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) focused almost exclusively on the two protagonists. The skeletal figure of the tall, thin knight on a painfully bony horse is instantly recognizable and has become part of our collective imagery. Here, Sancho Panza is represented only by the smaller, rotund figure in the background.
Honoré Daumier, Don Quixote (1868). Neue Pinakothek, Munich.
Mention Don Quixote and Sancho today to most people and the image of a tall, thin man, accompanied by a short, fat man will come to mind. And that is without having read Cervantes’s novel. The image they are recalling, however vaguely, is most probably Picasso’s pen-and-ink drawing of 1955.
Picasso ‘Don Quixote’ (1955) (image from Wikimedia Commons)
Don Quixote is long of face and body; his horse, Rocinante, more haggard still; by contrast, rotund Sancho Panza sits comfortably on his donkey. Picasso’s drawing continues the restricted representation begun by Daumier in the previous century. Picasso also includes the windmills that appear in the best-known episode, when Quixote mistakes them for giants. The sun makes the drawing more emblematic of Spain.
Separation of the image of Don Quixote from the novel’s narrative has also enabled its use in many other contexts: propaganda, advertising, postcards, playing cards, ceramics, porcelain figurines… All of which serve to keep the picture of the tall, thin knight and his rotund squire in our collective mind.
Geoff West, former Head of Hispanic Collections
References/further reading
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, translated by Edith Grossman (London, 2004). Nov.2005/1526
La imagen del ‘Quijote’ en el mundo (Barcelona, 2004). LF.31.b.1670
Patrick Lenaghan, Imágenes del Quijote: modelos de representación en las ediciones de los siglos XVII a XIX (Madrid, 2003). LF.31.a.88
Rachel Schmidt, Critical Images: the Canonization of Don Quixote through Illustrated Editions of the Eighteenth Century (Montreal & Kingston, 1999 2708.h.767
11 January 2016
East is East
European attitudes to the East have ranged from maurophobia and sinophobia to maurophilia and sinophilia, as we know from Edward Said’s superstellar work Orientalism and Robert Irwin’s lesser-known reply.
But where is the East? What we used to call the Near East is now called the Middle East. (The Far East seems to have stayed more or less where it was.) The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, founded 30 years ago, is dedicated to “Improving the Quality of U.S. Middle East Policy”.
It is generally accepted that the literature of short fiction such as fables and novelle owes as much to eastern sources as classical. The Spanish are naturally proud of Petrus Alfonsi (Chaucer calls him Piers Alfonce, which makes him sound like a British public schoolboy), born Moses Sefardi in Aragon and converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1106. His Disciplina clericalis is a Latin translation “partly from the sayings of the philosophers and their counsels, partly from Arabic sayings and counsels and fables and verses, partly from bird and animal similitudes”. He is one reason why the Spaniards see themselves as the link between Christianity and Islam, in Menéndez Pidal’s memorable phrase.
The opening of the Disciplina clericalis from a late 13th/early 14th cent. English manuscript. (British Library Royal 10 B XII)
Other texts such as the Tales of Bidpai (alias Pilpay, etc.) travelled westward from Sanskrit to Arabic to Spanish and Latin.
Map showing the westward journey of Calila e Dimna from Gonzalo Menéndez Pidal, Atlas Histórico Español. (Barcelona, 1941) Maps 17.b.48.
The Spanish version, Calila e Dimna, c. 1250, is broadly contemporary with the Latin Directorium vitae humanae of John of Capua. Said John of Capua in his prologue writes:
This is the book of the parables of the ancient sages of the nations of the world. And it is called the Book of Kelila and Dimna; and previously it was translated into the language of the Indians then into the language of the Persians, and then the Arabs translated it into their language; and lastly it was put into the Hebrew language; and now our intention is to turn it into the Latin language.
Woodcut illustration from Directorium vitae humanae ([Strasbourg, ca. 1489]) G.7812.
In another wisdom tale, the clever servant girl Doncella Teodor (Maiden Theodora), in order to save her master’s life, is cross-examined by a committee of scholars on what the Middle Ages called “natural questions”:
Question: What was the first ship that went on the sea?
Answer: Noah’s Ark.
Q: Who is the man of most perfect goodness?
A: He who masters his wrath and and defeats his will.
Q: What is the cause which puts in debt the man who owes nothing?
A: He who uncovers his secret to another man or woman.
Q: Who was it who lived in this world in two bellies?
A: The prophet Jonah, who was in his mother’s womb and in the whale’s belly three days and three nights.
The Dialogue of Doncella Teodor was translated from Arabic (where she is Tawaddud) into Spanish and indeed into Mayan.
The advance of wisdom from east to west continues in the 18th century: as if Tawaddud were not eastern enough, Schiller makes her into a Chinese girl, by the name of Turandot.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections
References:
Margaret Parker, The story of a story across cultures : the case of the Doncella Teodor (Woodbridge, 1996) YC.1996.b.7242
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London, 1979) X.800/27520
Robert Irwin, For lust of knowing: the orientalists and their enemies (London, 2006) YC.2007.a.6196
Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, España, eslabón centre la Cristiandad y el Islam (Madrid, 1956)
F13/1626
07 December 2015
Spanish books in the library of Mary Queen of Scots
You’ll not be surprised to learn that Mary Queen of Scots had a good range of books in Latin, Greek, French (from five to eighteen she lived at the French court) and Italian (the most prestigious of the vernaculars) in her library, studied by Julian Sharman in 1889.
My eye was caught by two books in Spanish which appear in the inventory made at Edinburgh Castle in 1578:
p. 56: ANE COMPEND OF THE CHRONICLES IN SPANISH
Sharman’s note reads: ‘A collection of Spanish chronicles printed at Antwerp in 1571, under the title of “Los xe [=xl] libros d’el compendio historial de las chronicas de todos los reynos de España.” The author was Estevan de Garibay, who was librarian to Philip II.’
The British Library’s copy of Los xl. libros d’el compendio historial … (Antwerp, 1571) C.75.e.4.
p. 102: CONTRONERO DE ROMANSES
Sharman comments: ‘The title proved somewhat puzzling to the Scotsman engaged in deciphering the various labels upon the backs or frontispieces of this polyglot collection of books. It is, however, clearly intended for the “Cancionero de Romances,” a very popular Spanish ballad-book, printed about the year 1550 at Antwerp, and afterwards very frequently re-issued in different parts of Spain.’
The British Library’s copy of the Cancionero de Romances (Antwerp, 1550). C.20.a.36.
Mary also had some translations from the Spanish: Amadis de Gaule in French (p. 37), Marcus Aurelius (or rather Antonio de Guevara) in Italian (p. 88), the Epistle of Ignatius [Loyola] in French (p. 114), the History of Palmerine probably in French (p. 136), the Horologe of Princis (Guevara again) in French (p. 141), and the Descriptioun of the Province of the Yndianis (Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo?).
This looks to me a familiar tale: like many British readers, Mary owned in Spanish only books which had not yet been translated.
And quite often the Spanish books in British libraries were histories: in Mary’s case, one book of chronicles proper and one book of ballads on historical themes.
It may also be significant that Mary’s two books are believed to be Antwerp editions. Although Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands was no freer than any town in Spain, it was a major centre for the printing and export of Catholic books.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies
References/further reading:
Julian Sharman, The Library of Mary, Queen of Scots ... (London, 1889). 011902.h.18.
Cancionero de romances, ed. A. Rodríguez Moñino (Valencia, 1967). YF.2008.a.7783
J. Peeters-Fontainas, Bibliographie des impressions espagnoles des Pays-Bas Méridionaux (Nieuwkoop, 1965) Rare Books and Music Reading Room RAR 090.9493
30 September 2015
Sir Roger L’Estrange, translator from the Spanish
Sir Roger L’Estrange 1616-1704 was a censor and an important figure in the development of political journalism in England. In 2008 a volume of studies devoted ten chapters to such topics as ‘Roger L'Estrange and the Huguenots: continental Protestantism and the Church of England’.
However, only the reader who persevered to the end, ‘The works of Roger L'Estrange : an annotated bibliography’ by Geoff Kemp, would discover that Sir Roger was also a translator from Latin (Seneca, Cicero, Terence, Erasmus; Aesop from the Latin of Dorpius), Greek (Josephus) and Spanish.
His Spanish translations were two:
1.) Spanish Decameron: ten tales, five from the Novelas ejemplares of Cervantes and five from La garduña de Sevilla by the much less remembered Castillo Solórzano. Wouldn’t you like to read:
‘The Perfidious Mistress’ – ‘The Metamorphos’d Lover’ – ‘The Imposture out-witted’ –T’he Amorous Miser’ – ‘The Pretended Alchemist’?
There’s a lesson here about the reception history of literature: the Novelas have been in print continuously since 1613; La garduña de Sevilla was first printed in 1642 and reprinted in 1955 1972, and 2012.
2.) Quevedo’s Sueños (Dreams, or, according to L’Estrange, Visions). This is a satirical parody of Dante’s Inferno, in which Quevedo sees the vices of his age laid bare.
Title engraving from Quevedo’s Sueños (British Library 635.g.3-5)
Samuel Pepys (a connoisseur of Spanish) loved it, writing in his diary on 9 June 1667 that he was:
making an end of the book I lately bought a merry satyr called “The Visions,” translated from Spanish by L’Estrange, wherein there are many very pretty things; but the translation is, as to the rendering it into English expression, the best that ever I saw, it being impossible almost to conceive that it should be a translation.
The Brussels edition has some tasty ilustrations, ‘muy donosas y apropriadas à la materia’ [witty and appropriate].
A suitably infernal scene from the Sueños
As a man who lived by his pen, L’Estrange’s choice of texts to translate was probably commercial rather than personal.
But there are some curious patterns to be drawn. Quevedo, translated by the translator of Seneca, was himself the translator, and imitator, of Seneca. And both L’Estrange and Quevedo shared the pungent parallelisms and jerky style of Seneca: what Williamson calls ‘The Senecan Amble’.
L’Estrange doubtless appreciated the sinewy satire of Quevedo:
The Physician is only Death in a Disguise, and brings his Patient’s Hour along with him. Cruel People! Is it not enough to take away a Man’s Life, and like Common Hangmen to be paid for’t when ye have done; but you must blast the Honour too of those ye have dispatcht, to excuse your Ignorance? Let but the Living follow my Counsel, and write their Testaments after this Copy, they shall live long and happily, and not go out of the World at last, like a Rat with a Straw in his Arse, (as a Learned Author has it) or be cut of in the Flower of their Days by these Counter-Feit Doctors of the Faculty of the Close-stool.
A procession of doctors (with their instruments of torture) from the Sueños
In 1709 Henry Felton wrote of him ‘a perfect Master of the familiar, the facetious and the jocular style, [he] fell out into his proper Province, when he pitched upon Erasmus and Aesop.’ (Williamson, p. 364). (Aesop was regarded as humorous.) The 18th century found him a bit too unbuttoned.
But in Quevedo he found a kindred spirit.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies
References
Francisco de Quevedo, Obras ... Nueva impression corregida y ilustrada con muchas estampas muy donosas y apropriadas à la materia. [Edited by Pedro Aldrete Quevedo y Villegas.] (Amberes, 1699). 635.g.3-5.
The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas ... Made English by R. Lestrange (London, 1673) 12316.aaa.39
Pedro Urbano González de la Calle. Quevedo y los dos Sénecas (Mexico, 1965). X.909/5543.
Theodore S. Beardsley, Hispano-classical translations printed between 1482 and 1699 (Pittsburgh 1970) X.0972/19b.(12.)
Roger L'Estrange and the making of Restoration culture, edited by Anne Dunan-Page and Beth Lynch (Aldershot, 2008) YC.2008.a.6251; Document Supply m08/.16619
George Williamson, The Senecan Amble: a study in prose form from Bacon to Collier (London, 1951). 11869.b.19.
16 September 2015
Bruto, a clever dog from the 1490s
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478-1557) is best known nowadays as the author of the Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535, second edition 1547), a pioneering account of the history and natural history of the Americas.
He is also of interest as a writer and courtier whose career spanned the Atlantic. He was also obviously something of a dog-lover.
The focus of today’s blog is the Libro de la cámara del príncipe don Juan. This is a very full account of the personnel and activities of the court of Prince John (born 1478), son of the Catholic Monarchs. John died young in 1497 at the age of 18. The Libro (first manuscript version 1547-48, revised a year later) was prepared by Oviedo for the guidance of Prince Philip (later King Philip II).
One detail which Oviedo added in the second version was this account of Bruto (Brutus), the prince’s greyhound.
He had black and white patches. He was not a handsome beast, as his father must have been a mastiff, and so he did not have a pretty head, but he was strongly built and not very tall. But he was clever, as dogged as could be and marvellously quick at the attack.
A contemporary greyhound. No stain of the mastiff here (British Library Royal MS 16 F II)
When on the road or hunting, the prince would deliberately drop a glove or handkerchief and once they had gone on a league or so, would say, “Bruto, bring me my glove.” And the dog brought it to him in his mouth, as pristine and clean of dribble as if a man had brought it; and this regardlesss of whether the terrain was open or thickly covered in trees.
A number of men could be fifteen, twenty or thirty paces away, and the prince would say, “Bruto, bring me that man.” And he would go and take him by the arm, very gently and without sinking his teeth. And when the prince said, “Not him,” Bruto left him and fetched another. And when he said, “Not him, but the one with the green, or grey cape,” as he was commanded so he did, in such as way that it seemed he knew his colours, like a person of good judgment. He was a marvellous tracker.
When the prince was buried at dawn on 5 October 1497 in the Cathedral of Salamanca, Bruto lay down at the head of the tomb, and whenever they took him away he returned to his place; so that finally they supplied him with a cushion to lie on, day and night, and they fed and watered him there, and when he went out to perform his necessities, he returned to his cushion. When the King and Queen left for their daughter’s weddding in Portugal, on their return they found him there still.
The prince’s final resting place was at Avila.
The tomb of Prince John at Avila (Image from Wikimedia Commons)
Writing in 1549 of events of 1497, Oviedo obviously found Brutus as admrable as Greyfriars Bobby was to be four and a half centuries later, an exemplar of canine loyalty above the bestial standards of the late medieval court.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies
References
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Libro de la cámara del príncipe don Juan, ed. Santiago Fabregat Barrios (Valencia, 2006), pp. 135-37.
Libro de la Cámara real del Príncipe Don Juan, é officios de su casa é seruiçio ordinario, ed. J. M. Escudero de la Peña (Madrid, 1870) Ac.8886/7.
Angel Alcalá and Jacobo Sanz, Vida y muerte del Príncipe Don Juan : historia y literatura (Valladolid, 1999) YA.2002.a.11935
21 August 2015
A lion at my feet
In the 1440s Juan de Mena dedicated a central section of his long political-moral allegory Laberinto de Fortuna (Labyrinth of Fortune, not apparently its original name), to the portrait of his patron John II of Castile:
Al nuestro rey magno, bienaventurado,
vi sobre todos en muy firme silla,
digno de reino mayor que Castilla:
velloso león a sus pies por estrado,
vestido de múrice, ropa de estado,
ebúrneo ceptro mandava su diestra
e rica corona la mano siniestra,
más prepotente que el cielo estrellado (Stanza 221)
[I saw our great blessed King
above all,on a firm throne,
worthy of a kingdom greater than Castile:
a furry lion at his feet for a footstool,
dressed in purple, clothing of state,
his right hand commanded an ivory sceptre
and his left a rich crown,
more powerful than the starry heavens.]
Commenting on the text in 1499, Hernán Núñez, professor of Greek at Salamanca, says:
El rey don Juan, segund dizen, tenía consigo un león manso y familiar, en el qual, estando él assentado en la silla real, ponía los pies
[King Juan, so they say, kept by him a tame and friendly lion, on which, when he was seated on the royal throne, he put his feet.]
Reading this the other day I thought Núñez was guilty of taking as historical fact what was obviously a piece of royal symbolism of the sort the Middle Ages loved, an example of which can be seen on the tomb of King John of England, a replica of which is displayed in the Magna Carta exhibition, though his lion looks more like a draft-excluder.
King John’s tomb in Worcester Catherdral (Photo by Bob Embleton from the Geograph Project via Wikimedia Commons)
![Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved]](http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif)
But in a further note in De Nigris’s edition I was proven wrong:
Después desto vinieron allí los embaxadores del Rey Charles de Francia ... El Rey estaba en su estrado alto, asentado en su silla guarnida, debaxo de un rico doser de brocado carmesí, la casa toldada de rica tapicería, e tenía a los pies un muy gran león manso con un collar de brocado, que fue cosa muy nueva para los embaxadores, de que mucho se maravillaron ... los embaxadores se partieron del Rey contentos e alegres (The Chronicle of Juan II, cited by De Nigris, p. 294, referring to events of 1425)
[After this came the ambassadors of King Charles of France ... The King was on a high dais, seated on a garnished throne, under a rich canopy of crimson brocade, the house hung with rich tapestries, and at his feet he had a big tame lion with a brocade collar, which was a very new thing for the ambassadors, at which they marvelled greatly. ... The ambassadors left the King feeling contented and happy.]
Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (1419-1467) portrayed with a lion at his feet, from Chroniques abrégées des Anciens Rois et Ducs de Bourgogne (late 15th century), British Library Yates Thompson MS 32
I wonder: was this a tame lion, or an elderly one? Thornton Wilder, author of the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, also taught modern languages at Harvard. He has an article that reveals that lions appear no less than three times in the plays of Lope de Vega:
For a year or two [the actor-manager] Pinedo was in possession of a lion or a costume made from a lion-skin. [...] I am inclined to think that Pinedo enjoyed the services of a poor aged and edentate beast, simply because the lion is always called upon to do the same thing – to come to the feet of a leading player and lie down. Were it an actor in a skin the lion would certainly have been given more varied and more thrilling things to do.
But a senior lion can look no less regal for being of pensionable age: remember the MGM lion, so tame the stars happily had their photos taken with him.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies
References
Juan de Mena, Laberinto de Fortuna y otros poemas, ed. Carla De Nigris (Barcelona, 1994) YA.1995.a.643
Thornton Wilder, ‘Lope, Pinedo, Some Child Actors, and a Lion’, Romance Philology, 7:1 (Jan. 1953); 19-25. P.P.4970.gc.
07 August 2015
Monkeys ahoy!
In Lisuarte de Grecia, Book VII of the Amadis de Gaula cycle, what should heave into view but a ship crewed by monkeys, sent by the damsel Alquifa to summon Perion, son of Amadis, to her aid:
The ship crewed by monkeys, from Le quatriesme liure d'Amadis de Gaule (Paris, 1560). British Library RB.23.a.36495
The medievals knew well how good imitators monkeys were (Peter of Blois called wine “simia vini”, according to Curtius) and discerned a resemblance between man and monkey, but did not consider there was a genetic relationship.
Don Juan Manuel, among other things a keen huntsman, classified the animals according to their way of getting food: Some animals hunt each other, such as lions and leopards;
Et otras bestias [ay] pequennas que caçan caças pequennas, et de noche, a fuerça o con enganno, asy commo xymios et adiues et raposos et maymones et fuynas et tessugos et furones et gardunnas et turones, et otras bestias sus semejantes. Libro del cavallero e del escudero, ch. xl.
(there are other small animals that hunt other small animals, and by night, by strength or cunning, such as monkeys and jackals and foxes and apes and weasels and badgers and ferrets and martens and stoats, and other animals like them)
The author of the Orto do esposo, the Old Portuguese (14th century?) compilation of ascetic, exemplary and pseudozoological literature, was not a hunting man but he was a chauvinist: he classifies the animal kingdom by their human-serving function:
todalas geerações das animalias forom criadas pera bõo uso e proveito do homen, segundo diz o filosafo e Joaham Demaceno, doctor catolico mui grande. Ca algūas animalias forom criadas pera comer e mantiimento do homem, assi como os gaados e os cervos e as lebres, e as outras animalias semelhantes a estas. E outras forom creados pera serviço do homem, assi como os asnos e os cavalos e as outras taes animalias. (IV, iii, p. 96)
(all the generations of animals were created for the good use of man, as the philosopher [Aristotle] and St John Damascene, a very great Catholic doctor, say. For some animals were created for the eating and nourishment of man, such as cattle and stags and hares, and other animals like them. And other animals were created for the service of man, such as donkeys and horses and other such animals.)
And he was also something of a poet:
E outras forom criadas pera solaz e prazer do homem, assi como as simeas e as aves que bem cantam e os paãos
(And others were created for the consolation and pleasure of man, such as monkeys and beautifully singing birds and peacocks.)
‘Consolation and pleasure’: Monkeys and birds in the border of a 16th-century German manuscript of Salomon Trismosin, Splendor Solis (Harley 3469)
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies
References:
Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages [German original 1948] (Princeton, 1990) HLR 809.02
H. W. Janson, Apes and ape lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1952) Ac.4569/6.(20.)
Horto do Esposo; coordenação, Helder Godinho (Lisbon, 2007) YF.2010.b.34
Don Juan Manuel, Obras completas, ed. J.M. Blecua (Madrid, 1982-83), vol. I. X.0800/1790
03 August 2015
Arming for the Armada? A 16th-century German view of Drake
In late July and early August 1588, English ships were skirmishing in the Channel against the Spanish Armada, the naval invasion force sent against England by Philip II of Spain. Probably the best known of the English captains then, and certainly the best remembered today, was Sir Francis Drake, whose Cadiz Raid the previous year had significantly set back plans for the Armada and whose circumnavigation of the globe in 1577-80 had brought him wealth and royal favour.
Drake’s fame was not restricted to England, as a rare hand-coloured broadside acquired by the British Library in 2008 demonstrates. Printed in Germany (or possibly the Low Countries), it shows Drake preparing for a military expedition, and is accompanied by a set of verses in German, put into the mouth of Drake himself and calling upon ‘all Christians’ to join him in fighting the ‘Antichrist’. Drake calls himself ‘Drach’ – a Germanisation of his name which, like the Spanish ‘Draque’ or Latin ‘Draco’ can also mean dragon, but while in Spanish propaganda Drake was the dragon as marauding beast, here he is the dragon as bold protector.
Drake Broadside, British Library HS.85/39
The broadside is a curious production. On the right-hand side is a full-length portrait of Drake, dressed in armour and carrying a musket. While this is carefully and realistically done and appears to be based on reliable contemporary depictions, the rest of the image is clumsily executed: the ship on the left-hand side is a most unseaworthy vessel, long and impossibly narrow. At the stern is a small cabin-like structure in which are huddled five badly-drawn figures. They, and the ship as a whole, are out of scale with the other three sailors and the cargo which they are loading.
Drake as depicted in the broadside (above) and in an engraving of 1577 by Jodocus Hondius (below, from Wikimedia Commons)
The textual elements also appear ill-designed. The inscription has a redundant extra T at the end of the second line and the letters of ‘Circumducto’ are crammed close together. The box containing the verses is placed off-centre and gives the impression of being an afterthought rather than part of a whole design; at first glance it can appear to have been pasted on to an existing picture, an illusion encouraged here by the thick border painted around it. And the verses are not exactly great poetry, but that is hardly unusual in this genre (and besides, Drake has inspired plenty of doggerel throughout the centuries).
The broadside is undated, but clearly post-dates Drake’s circumnavigation (referred to in the inscription), and its call to arms suggests a date in the mid- to late-1580s, around the time of the Cadiz Raid or the Armada. Although it has been suggested that the threat to Christendom referred to in the verses is the Ottoman Empire, the text includes enough familiar elements of Protestant anti-Catholic discourse to make it more likely that the Catholic Church (and Spain in particular) is the ‘enemy’ being described.
While not a great work of art either visually or poetically, the broadside is a fascinating piece of 16th-century propaganda, and shows how the fame of one country’s hero could travel in the age of print.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections
24 July 2015
What European Studies owe to J. M. Cohen (1903-1989)
We’re always hearing how the UK publishes a shamefully small number of translations compared with other nations: 3 per cent?
This is probably true of new bestsellers, but is it true of long-sellers? In my formative years, and possibly yours, the sole locus of European literature on the high street was the Penguin Classics, much more visible than the World’s Classics or Everyman. There’s a good history of the collection in the 1987 festschrift for Betty Radice. Founded in 1946, its first authors included Homer, Voltaire and Maupassant. The introductions were non-academic – Aubrey De Sélincourt’s prologue to Herodotus is four pages – and the translations middle-brow (W.C. Atkinson translating Camões: “Venus is now Cytherea, now Erycina, now Dione, now the Cyprian goddess, now the Paphian. It is in short a mark of erudition [...]. For such learning the modern term is pedantry, and it becomes a service to the reader of today [...] to call things by their names and ask of each divinity that he or she be content with one.”) The translators were rarely university lecturers (unlike today): in fact they seemed to me mostly to be schoolteachers.
The series was edited by people with names whose pronunciation a London teenager could only guess at: Betty Radice I now assume is pronounced like Giles Radice MP; but what of E. V. Rieu: ‘REE-oo’ or ‘ ree-YERR’?
One of my school-leaving prizes was J. M. Cohen’s translation of Don Quixote (in print 1950-1999, my well-read copy shown above). The biographical (as opposed to bibliographical) information on the half-title was meager: ‘J. M. Cohen was born in 1903 and has been writing and translating since 1946.’ As I read more Romance literature, again and again these works were translated by Cohen: Rousseau (in print 1953-), Rabelais (1955-1987), Montaigne (1958-1993), Teresa of Avila, The Penguin Book of Spanish Verse, Bernal Diaz’s Conquest of New Spain, Columbus, Rojas.
These were reprinted again and again.
Whenever I was faced with the question from the man in the street, “Oh, is there any Spanish literature?”, my rock and refuge were the Penguin Classics, and Cohen the prophet.
But of Cohen’s translations, only Rousseau, St Teresa and Columbus, I believe are in print any more. It’s a maxim of the translation industry that each generation needs its own Cervantes et al. This may or not be true (it isn’t true, but I want to appear broad-minded) but that’s no reason to consign earlier translators of the callibre of Cohen to a damnatio memoriae: M.A. Screech never refers to Cohen in his Rabelais or Montaigne.
A project is now underway to catalogue Cohen’s papers, which are in Queens’ College Cambridge. But his true legacy is in the minds of people like you and me.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections
Penguin classics editions translated by J.M. Cohen:
Miguel de Cervantes, The Adventures of Don Quixote (1950) W.P.513/10a.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions (1953) W.P.513/33.
François Rabelais, The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1955) W.P.513/47.
St Teresa of Ávila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila (1957) W.P.513/73.
Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1958) W.P.513/83.
Blaise Pascal, The Pensées (1961) W.P.513/110.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain (1963) W.P.513/123.
Fernando de Rojas, The Spanish Bawd. La Celestina (1964) W.P.513/142.
Benito Pérez Galdós, Miau (1966) W.P.513/181.
Agustín de Zárate, Discovery and Conquest of Peru (1968) X.708/3888.
The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1969) X.808/6013.
References:
‘J. M. Cohen, Gifted translator of foreign prose classics’ (Obituary), The Times (London), 22 July 1989
‘Obituary of JM Cohen: An opener of closed books’, Guardian, 20 July 1989
The Translator’s Art : Essays in Honour of Betty Radice, edited by William Radice and Barbara Reynolds (Harmondsworth, 1987). YC.1988.a.329
Vladimir Alexander Smith-Mesa, ‘Making Our America Visible. J. M. Cohen (1903-1989): El Transculturador’, Aclaiir Newsletter, 23 (2014), 14-17. P.525/398; a version of the article as a blog post can be read here
10 July 2015
Basque and Georgian – are they related?
Basque, the only non-Indo European language in Western Europe, is an isolate, a language unrelated to any other living or dead. Nonetheless attempts have been made to demonstrate a relationship with a variety of languages including ancient Iberian, Pictish, Etruscan, and Berber. The most consistently proposed kinship has been with the Kartvelian family of Caucasian languages, in particular with Georgian.
The origin of Basque has been bound up with theories about the origin of the Basque people themselves. Greek and Roman historians referred to the region corresponding to modern Georgia as eastern Iberia, as distinct from western Iberia, i.e. Spain and Portugal. The Greek geographer Strabo referred both to the Iberians of the Caucasus and to the ‘western Iberians’ (Geographica, bk. XI, ch. II, 19). Appian of Alexandria later wrote ‘some people think that the Iberians of Asia were the ancestors of the Iberians of Europe; others think that the former emigrated from the latter’ (Historia Romana, bk. XII, ch. XV, 101). However, he continued ‘still others think that they merely have the same name, as their customs and languages are not similar’. The Georgian language was also known, confusingly, as Iberian.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Basque historians adopted the prevalent Spanish legend according to which after the Flood, Tubal, a son of Japheth, was the first settler in the Peninsula, but they added that he settled first in Cantabria, i.e. the Basque region. Esteban de Garibay (born 1525) found evidence for this claim in similarities between place names in northern Spain and in Armenia, e.g. Mount Ararat (in modern Turkey) = Aralar, the mountain range in Gipuzkoa and Navarra. He also links the Basque Mount Gorbeia to an Armenian peak ‘Gordeya’. He considered Basque the first language of the whole Peninsula and, presumably, the language of Tubal. Other writers followed Garibay, notably Andrés de Poza and Baltasar de Echave. Garibay’s identification of similarities between toponyms, however fantastical, can be seen as a forerunner of the Basque-Caucasian hypothesis.
Esteban de Garibay, Los XL libros del Compendio historial… de todos los reynos de España (Antwerp, 1571) British Library C.75.e.4.
In the early 20th century philologists developed more scientific arguments for a link between Basque and Caucasian languages. Typological similarities certainly exist between Basque and Georgian. For example both are ergative languages. Put at its simplest, this means that the subject of a transitive verb appears in the ergative case (or ‘agentive’), while the object is in the absolutive case and is unmarked. Thus, in Basque we have ‘gure aitak etxe berria erosi du’ (‘our father has bought a new house’) contrasted with ‘gure aita Donostian bizi da’ (‘our father lives in Donostia’). In Georgian, ‘father’ in the first sentence would be rendered by ‘mamam’ and by ‘mama’ in the second. However, the ergative construction would not be employed in subject-direct object-verb constructions in all tenses and aspects. In Basque the ergative is more regularly employed.
Another notable similarlity is that the verb morphology of both languages is pluripersonal, i.e. the form of the verb may encode not just the subject of the sentence, but any direct or indirect objects present. In Basque this is illustrated in the examples:
Nere semeak kotxe berri bat erosi du = My son has bought a new car
Nere semeak bi kotxe erosi ditu = My son has bought two cars.
The infix it in the auxiliary verb in the second example agrees with the plural object bi kotxe. However, the verb morphology of Georgian is extremely complex and functions very differently from Basque.
Typological parallels are all very well, but ergativity and pluripersonal agglutinative verbal morphology are not exclusive to Basque and Georgian, and doubt concerning possible kinship between them arises when lexical coincidences are cited. According to Basque philologists today, the majority of those seeking similarities have cast their nets very wide, claiming cognate fish when most should have been thrown back. Cognates with Basque have been sought among several Caucasian languages, although a genetic relationship between the Northern and Kartvelian groups remains unproven. Furthermore, in many cases proto-Basque forms have not been matched with proto-Georgian forms; many coincidences are thus anachronistic. The philologist R.L. Trask also stressed that the Basque, in its hypothetical early form, had a vastly impoverished consonantal system in contrast to the wealth of consonants of the Northern Caucasian groups in particular. Today, Georgian has 28 consonants, Basque 21.
The 36 letters of the Georgian alphabet according to Alphabetum ibericum, sive georgianum… (Rome, 1629); 621.c.33.(1.)
The case for a relationship between Basque and other languages intensified in the early 20th century with the philologists Hugo Schuchardt, C.C. Uhlenbeck and Alfredo Trombetti. Much of the debate was conducted in scientific periodicals, particularly the Revue Internationale des Etudes Basques (P.P.4331.aeb.). We might add here the Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr who developed the so-called Japhetic theory linking Kartvelian with Semitic languages and subsequently the theory that all languages had a common origin. He also found parallels between Kartvelian languages and Basque.
Marr (third from right) with a group of Basques, reproduced in Nikolai Marr, Basksko-kavkazskie leksicheskie paralleli (Tbilisi , 1987) YA.1991.a.23022
The case for possible Basque-Caucasian cognates continued to be advanced in the second half of the last century by linguists such as René Lafon and Antonio Tovar. However, later scholars, notably Luis (Koldo) Michelena and Trask, firmly rejected the Caucasian link. This has not stemmed the tide of speculation, which in fact has widened to include Basque in a macro-language family (Dené-Caucasian) and even beyond in the hypothetical single language of the so-called proto-world. This notion seems to bring us back to Nikolai Marr. These last speculations find approval also among those still hoping to prove a common ethnic origin for the Basques and the Iberians of the Caucasus. Given that the Basque language remains alone in a class of one, it is wisest to conclude that the case for a link remains unproven.
Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic studies and Anna Chelidze, SEE Cataloguer Russian/Georgian
References
Itzia Laka, A Brief Grammar of Euskara ([Vitoria-Gasteiz], 1996); available at http://www.ehu.eus/es/web/eins/basque-grammar
Juan Madariaga Orbea, Anthology of Apologists and Detractors of the Basque Language (Reno, 2006). YC.2007.a.857.
R.L. Trask, The History of Basque (London, 1997). YC.1997.b.547
José Ramón Zubiaur Bilbao, Las ideas lingüísticas vascas en el s. XVI. Zaldibia, Garibay, Poza (Donostia, 1989). YA. 1993.a.5626.
La Prensa Iberica interview with Davit Turashvili: http://www.laprensaiberica.org/?p=414
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