The spell which the South cast over many poets from Northern Europe – Goethe, Byron, Shelley and Ibsen, to name but a few – is well known. Less familiar but equally potent was the enchantment which it held for the Russian Symbolist poet, playwright and philosopher Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was born in Moscow 150 years ago on 28 February 1866.

 
Portrait of Viacheslav Ivanov in later life, from the frontispiece of his poetry collection Chelovek (Paris, 1939) 011586.f.114.

After studying history and philosophy in Moscow, Ivanov travelled to Berlin in 1886 to pursue his studies of Roman law and economics under Theodor Mommsen, but at the same time discovered the writings of Nietzsche and the German Romantics, especially the mystical poetry of Novalis and Hölderlin’s highly personal evocation of ancient Greece. His passion for archaeology took him to Rome in 1892 to complete a doctorate in that subject, and it was here that he met the poet and translator Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, who became his wife in 1899. Together they travelled to Athens, Geneva, Egypt and Palestine, as well as Italy, where Ivanov devoted himself to a new interest – the art of the Renaissance – as well as drawing inspiration from the landscape for his first sonnets.

Viacheslav Ivanov’s first work, Kormchiia Zviezdy (St Petersburg, 1903) 011586.h.101.

On their return to St. Petersburg in 1905, the Ivanovs’ home near the Tauride Palace became a vibrant literary salon and the cradle of the Symbolist movement. Every Wednesday, visitors including Aleksandr Blok, Nikolai Berdyaev and Vsevolod Meyerhold thronged to their soirées in such numbers that internal walls had to be demolished to accommodate them all. In a feverish cosmopolitan milieu, they discussed everything from ancient Greek to contemporary Scandinavian and French poetry, theatre and philosophy.

Facsimile of Ivanov’s handwriting from K. Balʹmont [et al.], Avtografy (Moscow?, 1920) RF.2005.b.173

As time passed, a second phase of Symbolism evolved, exchanging the influence of the French Decadents for that of Nietzsche and Wagner. Like them, Ivanov explored the message of the classical world for modern civilization, with special reference to the Dionysian mysteries and their role in the development of tragedy. Like Hölderlin, he was preoccupied by the gulf between the spiritual values of antiquity and the materialism and barrenness of contemporary society, and like Nietzsche with the contrast between the ecstatic cult of Dionysus and the joyless rigidity of institutionalized religion. He would follow Hölderlin in writing his own dramatic version of the legend of Prometheus, Prometei, in which he followed the principles of Aeschylean tragedy.

Viacheslav Ivanov, Prometei (Petersburg, 1919) X.909/88128.

The British Library copy, with its limp, unassuming cover, gives little idea of the importance of this work. It was printed under conditions of extreme austerity in the midst of the Russian Civil War (1917-22), testifying to Ivanov’s importance as a cultural figure who offered the hope that drama, the most powerful of the arts, could take the place of the Orthodox Church in guiding post-revolutionary Russia and offering a new kind of religious belief. Meyerhold in particular seized on Ivanov’s vision of a theatre in which (as in Wagner’s Bayreuth) there would be no separation between stage and auditorium, allowing actors and public to mingle and improvise freely, sharing masks, costumes and a sense of participating in a sacred rite where Dionysus/Christ would provide an example of ‘the total unity of suffering’.

The death of his wife in 1907 marked a turning-point in Ivanov’s creative as well as his personal life. His poetry became increasingly mystical, and he gradually abandoned it altogether in favour of a series of articles on Symbolism and translations of Aeschylus, Alcaeus, Sappho and Petrarch into Russian. Following the death of his second wife Vera (Lydia’s daughter by a previous marriage) in 1920, he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Baku, and, when the Soviet government finally allowed him to leave Azerbaijan in 1924, he settled in Rome as professor of Old Church Slavonic at the Collegium Russicum. His eclectic approach to religion culminated in his reception into the Russian Catholic Church  in 1926, claiming that by doing so he became ‘truly Orthodox’ and embodied the principle of the unity of the Eastern and Western churches before the Great Schism.

Frontispiece by Konstantin Somov for Ivanov’s Cor Ardens (Moscow, 1911) 11586.dd.14.

The British Library’s collections span the full range of Ivanov’s work, from a first edition of his earliest collection of poems, Kormchiia Zviezdy (‘Lodestars’)and the sumptuously-illustrated Cor ardens (‘The burning heart’ ) to a collection of facsimile autograph items by Ivanov himself and other leading writers of his time including Konstantin Bal’mont and Sergei Esenin. They bear witness to the creative vitality of a man whose ability to move effortlessly between cultural and religious traditions and the sensuous and the scholarly resulted in a vivid and inspiring view of their power to redeem and transform.

Susan Halstead, Content Specialis (Humanities and Social Sciences), Research Engagement

In the poem Razzia (‘Manhunt’) the narrator is awake at night. He listens to the sounds around him, thinking about his family lying asleep in the house. Suddenly he hears a lorry driving down the street and coming to a halt.  Listening intently, his heart racing, he tries to gauge where the lorry has stopped. Then, the lorry moves on and they are safe- for now.  We do not get to know the fate of a neighbouring family who may not have been so lucky. The British Library’s copy of this poem is one of only 25 made, clandestinely printed by Fokke Timmermans and donated to the Library in 1969 by Mr. Timmermans himself.

Razzia, anonymous poem. (The Hague, 1944) Cup.406.d.9

Manhunts happened up and down occupied countries, as a way to arrest and deport Jewish citizens.

When, on 22 and 23 of February 1941 the German Ordnungspolizei  sealed off part of the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam and rounded up 425 Jewish men, aged between 20 and 35, in the first major manhunt on Dutch occupied territory during the war, the people of Amsterdam sprang into action.

Plan, showing the sealed off area in the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam, with the Jonas Daniël Meijerplein.  Reproduced in:  B. A. Sijes, De Februaristaking. (Amsterdam, 1978) X:702/3672

Jewish men held by Ordnungspolizei on the Jonas Daniel Meijerplein. Photos taken by a German onlooker, of which the developer made extra copies. Reproduced in Gerard Maas, Kroniek van de Februari-staking 1941. (Amsterdam, 1961) 9105.ee.47.

On Monday 24 February members of the clandestine Communist Party Netherlands held a public meeting at the Jonas Daniël Meijer Plein. This was where the Jewish men had been brought together to be transported to the camps Buchenwald and Mauthausen, via the oldest transit camp on Dutch soil, Schoorl. Most did not return. 

The Communists called all workers in Amsterdam to a general strike, to begin on the following day, 25 February.

Pamphlet calling a strike. Reproduced in: Gerard Maas, 1941 bloeiden de rozen in februari. (Amsterdam, 1991) YA.1994.a.8919.

Tram drivers from the municipal transport company were the first to answer this call, so when no trams were running Amsterdam citizens knew the strike was on. Workers from the dockyards soon followed.

Civil servants were not allowed to strike, but at least 4,400 employees of the Amsterdam city council defied this rule.  Surrounding cities as far as Utrecht joined in.

Once the Germans had recovered from their surprise they declared that anyone who would continue to strike would face the death penalty. Still, the following day the strike went on. The Ordnungspolizei mercilessly struck down the strike. Nine people were shot dead, more than 40 were wounded and 200 people, some strikers, some not, were arrested and many mistreated whilst under arrest. By 27 February the strike was over.

Both individuals and institutions were severely punished for their actions. Amsterdam civil servants suffered a pay-cut and city councils were fined between 500,000 and 2,500,000 guilders.  Some paid the ultimate price, in particular the men commemorated in the most famous resistance poem of the war, De Achttien Dooden (‘The Eighteen Dead’), by Jan Campert, journalist and poet. These were the leaders and members of the resistance and the Communist Party who had called for the strike. They were arrested and executed by firing squad on 13 March 1941.

Jan Campert,  De Achttien Dooden, first published anonymously 1941/42. The British Library’s edition (Cup.406.d.28) dates from 1943 and has the illustration by Coen van Hart (‘Braveheart’), pseudonym of Fedde Weidema.

The February strike was the first, and some say only, open mass protest by non-Jewish people in Europe against the deportation of the Jews. 

In 1946 the first memorial for the victims of the February strike took place at the Jonas Daniël Meijer Plein, as it is still done.  In 1952 Queen Wilhelmina unveiled the memorial ‘The Dock worker’ by Mari Andriessen and tonight people will gather there for the 75th anniversary of the February strike. This will be broadcast live by the NPO. Lest we forget.

The Dock Worker (image from http://www.dedokwerker.nl/februaristaking.html)

Marja Kingma, Curator Germanic Collections.

References and further reading:

L. de Jong, De Bezetting, Tekst en beeldmateriaal van de uitzendingen van de Nederlandse Televisie-Stichting over het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. 1940-1945  (Amsterdam, 1966). X.702/378.

O.C. A. van Lidth de Jeude, Londense dagboeken van Jhr.ir. O.C.A. van Lidth de Jeude januari 1940 - mei 1945, bewerkt door A.E. Kersten, met medewerking van Eric Th. Mos. (the Hague, 2001). 9405.p [Kleine Ser No.95-96] (A digital edition is freely available at: http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/retroboeken/lidt/#source=1&page=392&view=imagePane)

J. Presser, Ondergang (The Hague, 1965) W.P.2258/10. (English translation by Arnold Pomerans : Ashes in the Wind (London, 1968).  X.709/7096.

B.A. Sijes, De februari-staking (Amsterdam, 1978). X:702/3672 (With English summary)

A. Simoni, Publish and be free:  a catalogue of clandestine books printed in the Netherlands, 1940-1945, in the British Library (London, 1975. 2725.aa.1

On the web:

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the February strike the National Institute for War-Holocaust and Genocide Studies ( NIOD ) is running a special website on the event: http://www.niod.knaw.nl/nl/nieuws/februaristaking-de-collecties-van-het-niod

The Amsterdam City Archives is calling for the general public to send in photographs of family members and friends who took part in the strike, to put faces to numbers: https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/english/

The memorial De Dokwerker has its own website with a treasure trove of information (in Dutch only): http://www.dedokwerker.nl/februaristaking.html

Looking at portraits of several of the leading figures in 19th-century Czech literature, it is hard to reconcile their sober and often diffident appearance with the worlds of fantasy which they conjured up on the page. Svatopluk Čech (February 21, 1846 – February 23, 1908) was one of these. Born in Ostředek near Benešov as the son of the steward on a nobleman’s estate, he plunged into his father’s library to discover the works of the European Romantics and developed a strong sense of patriotism which coloured his writings but did not entirely obscure his critical vision.

Svatopluk Čech, frontispiece portrait from his Pravý výlet pana Broučka do měsíce (Prague, 1889)  YA.1995.a.4931

After his studies in Prague he embarked on a career in law, but abandoned it in 1879 to live by his pen, and quickly established himself as a journalist, contributing to the nationalist periodicals Květy, Lumír, and Světozor, which he edited. He had already achieved success with his first poem, ‘Husita na Baltu’ (The Hussite on the Baltic), published in the almanac Ruch in 1868, contrasting the turmoil of the Hussite wars  with the bonds between human beings. His choice of historical themes often served to point up the uncertain situation of the Czechs in the 19th century, in thrall to the Habsburgs at a time when their nationalistic feelings were increasing in strength, as in Václav z Michalovic, a story of oppression by the Jesuits set during the Thirty Years’ War when the catastrophic Battle of the White Mountain marked the conquest of the Protestant Bohemian nobles by the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor.

Title-page of Svatopluk Čech, Václav z Michalovic (Prague, 1882). X.902/777.

In his epic poem Evropa (1878) Čech describes an allegorical voyage on the ship Europa, where conflict breaks out among the passengers of different nationalities and is resolved by the union of two of them. In other works he adopts a more lyrical tone, both in poetry (Jitřní písně [Morning Songs], 1887) and in prose (Ve stínu lípy [In the shadow of the lime-tree], 1879), but blends his memories of an idyllic childhood in the Bohemian countryside with awareness of the social and political realities of his times. In his poem Lešetínský kovář (The Blacksmith of Lešetín; 1883 (confiscated); 1899) he addresses the problems of industrialization in a rural area, and his cycle of 23 poems Písně otroka (Songs of a Slave; 1895) attack the subjection of the Czechs to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

It is, however, as a satirist that he is best known outside his native country. Although his mock epic Hanuman (1884) recounts a civil war between clothed cosmopolitan and naked ‘natural’ (nationalist) apes based on the corrupt and bureaucratic milieu of the Habsburgs, it is equally applicable to any authoritarian regime, and was translated into English well before the end of the century.

While several of his works were dramatized and later filmed, it is on the operatic stage that one of his creations achieved particular fame. Matěj Brouček (his singularly unheroic name means ‘little beetle’) is a prosperous but small-minded and cowardly Prague landlord whose fondness for beer leads him to frequent his local tavern, from which he is fantastically transported to the moon (full of pretentious artists and poets, mocking contemporary trends in literature) where he hitches a ride on Pegasus and where Čech himself appears as an apparition.

Brouček is transported back from the moon. Illustration by Viktor Oliver from Pravý výlet pana Broučka do měsíce

In a sequel Brouček travels through subterranean passages below the pub and emerges in the 15th century amid the Hussite warriors, where he fails to distinguish himself in battle and wakes up behind a barrel to discover that it was all a dream. These stories inspired Leoš Janáček to compose his opera Výlety pana Broučka (‘The Excursions of Mr. Brouček’ 1920), taking the pusillanimous protagonist on yet another journey and suggesting comparisons with another picaresque Czech anti-hero, Jaroslav Hašek’s not-so-Good Soldier Švejk. 

Cover of Svatopluk Čech, Nový epochální výlet pana Broučka tentokrát do patnáctého století (Prague, 1889) 1568/802.

The pan-Slav movement which inspired poems such as Slavie (1882), set on another ship where the Russian brothers Vladimir and Ivan discuss materialism and idealism, may seem remote nowadays, but represents only one of Čech’s many themes. Through trenchant satire and mordant humour, this solitary and introverted man was able to transcend both his own limitations and those of a narrow nationalism to challenge chauvinistic patriots and express a breadth of vision and humanity which is as topical as ever nowadays.

Susan Halstead, Content Specialist (Humanities and Social Sciences), Research Engagement

The long poem ‘Weltwehe’ was written by August Stramm (1874-1915), one of the most original and intense poets of German Expressionism.  For most of his adult life an official in the German Post Office, Stramm experimented with writing drama and poetry alongside his regular work. In 1913 he began contributing to the Expressionist periodical Der Sturm,  developing a close friendship with its editor Herwarth Walden and beginning a productive period of writing during which he refined his highly individual poetic voice, but which was tragically cut short by his death in action in 1915.

August Stramm, ca. 1911. Reproduced in August Stramm, Das Werk, herausgegeben von René Radrizzani (Wiesbaden, 1963)  X.909/12637.

Stramm’s poetry, influenced by Italian futurist experiments,  condenses and intensifies language, playing with syntax and blurring the boundaries between different parts of speech. The resulting works are powerful and evocative,  if not always easy to understand.  The title of ‘Weltwehe’ is an example. ‘Wehe’ can mean labour pains, pain or woe generally, or the blowing of a wind. Is Stramm referring to a world being born, a world in pain or a world though which a wind blows – or which is itself waving in a wind? (The title may also be a deliberate echo of Jakob van Hoddis’s ‘Weltende’, a seminal work of German Expressionism although in a very different style to Stramm’s poetry.)

In 1922 the artist Hugo Meier-Thur (1881-1943) produced an illustrated limited edition of ‘Weltwehe’ (hyphenating the title into Welt-Wehe) as a joint commission for a Hamburg bibliophile society and the Sturm publishing house.

Title-page from Hugo Meier-Thur, Welt-Wehe: ein Schwarzweissspiel in Marmorätzungen zu einem Gedicht von August Stramm (Berlin, 1922) Cup.408.rrr.22

The entire work – covers, titlepage, poem and colophon – is composed of Meier-Thur’s white-on-black marble etchings, an unusual form which produces an almost ghostly effect, simultaneously magical and disturbing. Meier-Thur gave the book the subtitle ‘ein Schwarzweisspiel’ – a game (or play) in black and white.

The book opens with a series of fantastical images – landscapes, cityscapes, inscapes? – followed by the poem itself, engraved over seven leavess against similar backgrounds.

The poem begins with the words ‘Nichts nichts nichts’ (‘Nothing nothing nothing’) and rolls through associations of rhyme, alliteration and meaning, before ending with the same repeated words as it began.

The opening (above) and closing (below) pages of Welt-Wehe

Meier-Thur’s illustrations both enhance Stramm’s poem and deepen its mystery and many ambiguities. For example the page shown below could be seen as depicting a sun and stars with a dreamlike crystalline palace on the left-hand side, yet also as the explosions of shells in battle with the structure on the left fragmenting and falling before the forces of destruction. The poem was written in the last year of Stramm’s life when he had experienced the reality of the First World War, and Meier-Thur had also fought in the conflict.

Meier-Thur lived to see  another World War engulf Europe. He was an opponent of Nazism and, as a teacher at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts, bravely refused to condemn modernism in favour of state-approved art. In 1937 copies of Welt-Wehe were removed from some libraries and destroyed as examples of ‘degenerate art’. The war brought worse tragedies: the deaths of his son in battle and his wife in a street accident, and the destruction of a large part of his original work when his house was bombed. Shortly after this last blow, in July 1943, Meier-Thur was arrested by the Gestapo; he died in December of that year as a result of torture. 

  Hugo Meier-Thur, reproduced in Maike Bruhns, Kunst in der Krise . Bd. 2 Künstlerlexikon Hamburg (Hamburg, 2001) YA.2002.b.1607

Although Meier-Thur remains little known as an artist, not least because of the loss of so much of his work, he is now commemorated with plaques outside his former home and workplace in Hamburg as part of the ‘Stolpersteine’ project, and a biographical dictionary of artists from the city persecuted under the Nazi regime has a long evaluative entry on him and his work. Decades after his murder, he has been brought out of the shadows. Yet the mysteries of Welt-Wehe - both words and images - continue to intrigue.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

Maurice Vignaux (d. 17 February 1916) was twice world champion in the game of billiards, a man famous on both sides of the Atlantic for his prowess and his technical knowledge of the game. As the magazine Sporting Life described on the occasion of his death 100 years ago, ‘Vignaux was born in Frogonville [sic], in the South of France, in 1846. While a youth in Toulouse, where he was reared, he displayed talent for the game and attracted the attention of François Ubassy, one of the greatest players in France. With Ubassy as mentor, Vignaux made rapid progress, and in 1874 he came to the United States and in his introductory tournament became a champion, winning the first three ball tournament for the championship of America.’

Title-page and frontispiece portrait of Vignaux from Le Billiard (Paris, 1895) 7913.e.31.

 Vignaux contributed to billiards in a further way. His hefty ‘traité du billiard’ entitled Le Billiard carries the enticing subtitle Théorie des effets – Coups de Série – Détermination du point du choc – Quantité de bille – Différence entre le point de choc et le pont visé – Angle de déviation – Visé special des coups de finesse. It is an illustrated manual for the game detailing the logic behind impact, angles of deviation, strike zones, as well as all possible shots in billiards as it was developed up until that point. The 200 pictorial representations of games scenarios make this 400-page book a not uninteresting read for the uninitiated. As a word of warning, H. Desnar, who wrote the preface, suggests that although ‘it does not contain transcendental mathematics […] a veritable attention is necessary to grasp all the demonstrations.’

 

Diagrams and explanations of game scenarios from Le Billiard

If anything, this curio, written by a ‘great player before God’ in the words of Desnar, serves to show  the taste for such a work amongst a certain demographic at a particular time. The British Library’s copy has a handwritten note on the inside (right) putting it in the possession of a British captain stationed in the Persian Gulf in 1910. Perhaps it was still in his possession a few years later during wartime. If so, Charles Darwin’s alleged resort to billiards in order to ‘drive the horrid species out of his head’ might have been the same experience our captain found in Vignaux’s study.

Pardaad Chamsaz, Collaborative Doctoral Student, British Library / University of Bristol

The British Library has gratefully received a donation of a set of postage stamps which commemorate the role played by British female doctors, nurses and humanitarian aid volunteers in Serbia during the First World War.

The Serbian Mail  issued the commemorative stamps last December in partnership with the British Embassy in Belgrade which donated a set to the British Library. BBC Scotland recently reported on this initiative, while the British Embassy in Belgrade dedicated a Facebook page  to the commemoration of the First World War events in Serbia.

 The stamps tell the story of the British women who arrived to Serbia to assist the wounded and sick in war. They came individually or as part of two organisations which were set up in Britain at the beginning of the war to assist the allied countries in wartime. The Scottish Women’s Hospitals was founded by the Scottish Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies in Edinburgh through the efforts of Elsie Inglis, and the Serbian Relief Fund was founded in London by the journalist Bertram Christian, among other British experts on the Balkans.

  Stamps showing Flora Sandes (left) and Katherine MacPhail (right). Sandes (1876-1956) was officially recruited to the Serbian Army in 1915 and promoted to Sergeant in 1916. She was the only British woman in active military service in the First World War and the only female officer in the Serbian Army. MacPhail (1997-1974) worked at the Military Hospital in Belgrade during the First World War. After the war she remained in Serbia where she founded the country’s first children’s hospital in 1921.

The collection of postage stamps is accompanied by biographical details of six British women, four of whom were members of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, a voluntary organisation staffed entirely by women. The portraits of the women, together with the images, present instances of their work in Serbia and on the Salonika front.

Stamps showing Isabel Hutton (left) and Elsie Inglis (right). Hutton (1887-1960) worked on the Salonika Front, transferring to Vranje in 1918 where she treated victims of the typhus and Spanish flu epidemics and, in 1919, helped to found a civilian hospital. Inglis (1860-1917) was the founder of Scottish Women’s Hospitals and established the first war hospital in Serbia. She refused to leave the hospital when the Serbian Army was forced to retreat, and was imprisoned and later repatriated.

The Serbian Mail issued the commemorative postage stamps in Serbian Cyrillic and Latin scripts in parallel English translation with captions in German and French.

The Serbian army and civilians suffered terribly from the war, cold, hunger and infectious diseases. The Scottish Women’s Hospitals and the Serbian Relief Fund medical units were among the first to arrive to Serbia to attend and nurse the sick and wounded. They also, together with their Serbian colleagues, doctors and hospital orderlies, gave their lives in the service of others and were among the early victims of war and disease in Serbia.

Stamps showing Evelina Haverfield (left) and Elizabeth Ross (right). Haverfield (1867-1920) came to Serbia in 1915. Like Elsie Inglis, she was imprisoned and repatriated after the retreat of the Serbian Army but continued to work organising the Serbian Relief fund and later helped to establish soup kitchens on the Salonika Front. After the war she opened a home for war orphans in Bajina Bašta. (On Elizabeth Ross, see below.)

Elizabeth Ross, who came to Serbia from Persia where she had been working as a doctor, died in the Serbian typhus epidemic of February 1915. Dimitrije Antić, the director of the hospital where Dr Ross worked, left this account of her:

It is my duty, and the place is right, to mention with great respect the name of a foreign colleague from Scotland, Miss Elizabeth Ross, who came to help as a volunteer in the most difficult moments for my hospital. She tirelessly treated soldiers sick with typhus, fearless for her life, day and night. Everyone around her was falling down with typhus; she saw that very well and she was aware that the same destiny awaited her; but, despite my appeals and warnings to look after herself, she heroically performed her grave and noble duty till the end. Unfortunately, the inevitable came quickly: Miss Ross contracted typhus. She was even more courageous in sickness: severely ill, she lay quietly in her bed in a very modest hospital ward. Her only complaint was that she couldn’t provide medical assistance any longer to our sick soldiers! Indeed, one of the rare shining examples of medical sacrifice. She is buried in Kragujevac town cemetery.

Upon hearing the news of her death in Serbia, the residents of her home town of Tain in Scotland raised funds for the memorial ‘Dr Elizabeth Ross Bed’ at the Kragujevac Military Hospital where she served, and for surgical and medical needs in Serbia. The Serbian daily Samouprava informed its readers how Dr Ross managed six wards in the hospital without nurses, relying solely on the help of hospital orderlies. “There was no wood for cooking or for heating, something was always missing; one day there was no bread,another there were no eggs or milk and so on.” On the day of her funeral service all local stores were closed and large numbers of the people of Kragujevac came out to pay their respects.

The tradition of respect has been kept alive to the present day. Each year on 14 February at noon Kragujevac remembers Dr Elizabeth Ross.

Milan Grba, Lead Curator South Eastern European Collections

References/further reading:

A History of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. Edited by Eva Shaw McLaren. (London, 1919). 9082.bbb.32.

Elisabeth Macbean Ross, A Lady Doctor in Bakhtiari Land. Edited by Janet N. MacBean Ross. (London, 1921). 010076.de.28

D. Antić, ‘Pegavi tifus u kragujevačkoj i rezervnoj vojnoj bolnici 1914-15’. In Vladimir Stanojević, ed., Istorija srpskog vojnog saniteta (Belgrade, 1925). YF.2011.a.22007.

Želimir Dj. Mikić, Ever yours sincerely: the life and work of Dr Katherine S. MacPhail. (Cambridge, 2007). YK.2008.b.4740. Serbian original: Uvek vaša: život i delo dr Ketrin Makfejl. (Novi Sad, 1998). YF.2015.a.24057.

Louise Miller, A fine brother: the life of Captain Flora Sandes. (Richmond, 2012). YC.2013.a.2462.

Ž. Mikić, A. Lešić, ‘Dr Elizabeta Ros – heroina i žrtva Prvog svetskog rata u Srbiji’. Srpski arhiv za celokupno lekarstvo, 2012, vol. 140, 7/8, pp. 537-542. Available via SCIndeks

 

The Mexico edition of Francisco Meseguer, El Don Quixote de ahora con el Sancho Panza de antaño, was published in 1809, after the Córdoba edition of the same year. It includes a the coloured fold-out cartoon apparently not present in the Spanish editions, which focuses on the situation in Spain in 1808 sometime after the ‘Dos de Mayo’ uprising in Madrid against the French.

Fold-out caricature from Francisco Meseguer, El Don Quixote de ahora con el Sancho Panza de antaño (Mexico, 1809) 9180.e.6.(30)

The main caption reads: ‘El Quijote de n[ues]tros t[iem]pos (Napoleon) caballero sobre su rocin (Godoy) y puestos los ojos en la encantada Dulcinea (America) Consuela á su buen escudero Sancho (Murat) de la perdida del Gobierno de la Insula Barataria (España)’ (‘The Quixote of our times (Napoleon) astride his nag (Godoy) and with his gaze fixed on the enchanted Dulcinea (America) consoles his good squire Sancho (Murat) for the loss of the Isle of Barataria (Spain)’.

During the confused period in Franco-Spanish relations, 1807-08, Spanish Prime Minister Godoy had in effect collaborated with Napoleon who, according to the historian Raymond Carr, despised him. Godoy, cast as Rocinante, the figure to the right on all fours, admits ‘Esto y mucho mas merezco‘ (‘All this and more I deserve’). In March 1808 Godoy’s ever increasing unpopularity in Spain prompted his dismissal by Carlos IV, who himself abdicated in favour of his son Fernando.

Manuel Godoy, portrait by Goya (image from Wikimedia Commons) 

The ambitions of General Murat (as Sancho, in centre), Napoleon’s lieutenant in Spain, were frustrated after the brutal suppression of the Madrid uprising: ‘Todo se lo llevó el Diablo. Ya no soy gov[ernad]or’ (‘The Devil has taken everything. I am no longer governor’), he laments. ‘Insula Barataria’, depicted as a castle to the left of Murat, refers to the make-believe island of which Sancho Panza was made governor in one of the practical jokes devised by the Duke and Duchess in Part II of Don Quixote.

 
General Murat, ca. 1808, portrait by François Gérard (Image from Wikimedia Commons).

The consolation offered to Murat by Napoleon/Quixote is a possible role in the Spanish colonies: ‘q[u]e si logro desencantar a Dulcinea te hare Arzob[is]po u Adelantado’ (‘if I succeed in disenchanting Dulcinea, I shall make you Archbishop or Governor’). This is a further allusion to Part II of Cervantes’ novel in which Sancho Panza convinces his master that Dulcinea’s appearance as a peasant girl is the work of enchanters.

America is represented as Dulcinea (top, centre; detail above) but in the guise of a woman wearing a native American headdress. The text reads ‘La América será una Dulcinea encantada q[u]e jamas has de pose[e]r’ (‘America shall be an enchanted Dulcinea that you will never possess’). The focus on the colonies in the cartoon is consonant with the reprinting of the work in Mexico. Following the French invasion of Spain and the imposition of Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne, Mexicans either affirmed their allegiance to Fernando VII or sought independence.

Bonaparte, represented as the ‘Quixote of our times’ (above), is depicted much as Don Quixote had been in the many editions of the novel hitherto. He wears ancient body armour and on his head the so-called helmet of Mambrino, in reality a barber’s basin. The basin-helmet is labelled the crown of Spain, with the caption ‘No tiene encaje este yelmo, no le biene á tu cabeza’ (‘This helmet does not fit; it is not right on your head’). His shield however has the emblem of the Gallic rooster and the motto ‘El caballero de los gallos’ (‘The Knight of the Roosters’). Napoleon is somewhat thin, but not short of stature, as the Emperor was usually depicted and is indeed described in Meseguer’s text.

The windmill (far left) references the most famous episode of Don Quixote (Part 1, ch. 8). The caption reads ‘Con un molino basta para asorarte’ (‘A single windmill is sufficient to put the wind up you’). Don Quixote was brave – and rash – enough to charge one of the group of windmills. The fearsome sight of just one would have been too much for Napoleon, ‘The Quixote of our times’? The ambiguity, bravery-rashness, takes us back to the ambivalence of Meseguer’s text.

Geoff West, former Head of Hispanic Collections

References/further reading

Raymond Carr, Spain 1808-1975. 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1982) 82/22993

Charles J. Esdaile, Spain in the Liberal Age. From Constitution to Civil War, 1808-1939. (Oxford, 2000) YC.2000.a.11398.

Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote (1605, 1615) has not only inspired later writers, artists and subsequently film-makers, but his characters have also been used for other purposes, notably in propaganda and advertising. The behaviour of Don Quixote himself, whether seen as  fool, madman or noble idealist, has made him a most suitable figure for use in propaganda.

In the 17th and early 18th centuries the novel was regarded primarily as a funny book, but this began to change with the publication of the London editions of 1738 (in Spanish) and 1742 (in English) commissioned by Lord Carteret.  The emphasis shifted from slapstick comedy to literary and social satire. The subsequent publication of the Spanish Real Academia’s edition in 1780 elevated the literary status of the novel within Spain itself.  However, the absence of a single predominant interpretation of the novel entailed different attitudes towards the protagonist himself.  This divergence can be seen in some of the Spanish propaganda following Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808 and the imposition of his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne.

Spanish generals surrender to Napoleon in December 1808, painting by Jean-Antoine Gros, Musée du Château, Versailles (image from Wikimedia Commons)

One work in particular demonstrates this double focus: Francisco Meseguer’s El Don Quixote de ahora con Sancho Panza el de antaño (‘Today’s Don Quixote and the Sancho Panza of Yesteryear’). It was published in Spain in 1809 (in Córdoba, Mallorca, Murcia and Tarragona) and then in Mexico the same year –  which was not uncommon for this type of publication.  The British Library has a copy of this last edition (shelfmark 9180.e.6.(30.)), which also contains a coloured print representing the Emperor as Don Quixote.

Francisco Meseguer, El Don Quixote de ahora con Sancho Panza el de antaño (Mexico, 1809)

Meseguer’s work recounts a dream in which the narrator overhears a conversation between a modern-day Quixote and the original Sancho Panza.  After a brief introduction, it takes the form of a dialogue between the two in the manner of the conversations between Cervantes’ original knight and squire.  The modern-day Quixote is immediately identified with Napoleon, but as the ‘Caballero de la mala figura’ (‘Knight of the Evil Countenance’), a variation on Quixote’s epithet ‘Caballero de la triste figura’ (‘Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance’).  However, Sancho remembers not just the unwise actions but also the aims and ideals of his original master.  Therein lies the ambivalence. 

Sancho recalls three adventures from Part I of the novel: the attack on the flock of sheep, the freeing of the galley slaves, and the Princess Micomicona episode, each an example of Quixote’s folly or delusion. At the same time he succeeds in either highlighting one of Don Quixote’s virtues or in turning the argument back against Napoleon.  Don Quixote showed great bravery as, in his delusion, he actually believed the sheep to be a large opposing army.  Sancho draws a parallel between the freeing of the galley slaves (who turned on Don Quixote when he bade them go and pay homage to Dulcinea) and Napoleon’s one-time support for Manuel Godoy, since both actions were futile given the bad character ascribed to both the slaves and the very unpopular Spanish Prime Minister.  
 
Don Quixote attacking the flock of sheep (top) and freeing the galley slaves (bottom). From The History of the most renowned Don Quixote of La Mancha... (London, 1687). Cerv.336. 

According to Meseguer’s Sancho, the Micomicona episode gave his master the opportunity of usurping the throne of the pretend Princess, an opportunity he ignored in contrast to the actions of Napoleon in Spain, who placed his brother, Joseph, on the throne. Moreover, Quixote demonstrated great fidelity to his lady Dulcinea by declining to wed the Princess who is part of the Priest’s plan to get Don Quixote safely back home.  Finally Sancho, recognising reality, recalls how so many of his master’s rash adventures ended in disaster, but, he adds, this will also be the fate of Napoleon’s Spanish expedition.

The nub of Sancho’s case is that the original Don Quixote was a true knight errant who wished to right wrongs and to protect the weak.  Napoleon, on the other hand, is the very opposite: his soldiers ‘have ruined countless maidens, raped married women and widows, leaving in tears those who were living happily, abandoned those who were well protected, and orphaned those who had a father’.  He also opposed loyal Spaniards such as Fernando VII and his supporters, favouring instead the likes of Godoy in furtherance of his personal ambition.

There is also a divergence between the description of the ‘Today’s Don Quixote’ and the one of yesteryear.  Sancho says the latter was ‘tall as a pine tree, lean… and solid as a rock’, while Napoleon/Quixote was ‘short of stature’ and had a ‘face like a monkey’.  This brings us neatly to the cartoon in the Mexico edition, which will be the subject of a second blog post.

Geoff West, former Head of Hispanic Collections

References/further reading

Caro López. ‘Don Quijote en la guerra del Francés’, Anales cervantinos, 41 (2009), 39-61.  Available on-line at: http://analescervantinos.revistas.csic.es/index.php/analescervantinos/article/view/52/52

A copy of the Córdoba edition can be consulted at: https://archive.org/details/eldonquixotedeah00mese

On 5 February 1916 at the Holländische Meierei restaurant on Spiegelgasse 1, Zürich, the Cabaret Voltaire was launched. The Cabaret was the brainchild of Hugo Ball (1886-1927) in collaboration with a small group of artists and writers disillusioned with conventional politics and an equally conventional aesthetic response. 100 years since the inauguration of the Cabaret Voltaire, it is worth sparing a thought for this radical intervention that resonates still today. Dada m’dada, dada m’dada dada mhm, dada dera dada.

 Hugo Ball in 1916, reproduced in Hugo Ball, Gesammelte Gedichte (Zürich, 1963). X.907/140.

Immediately unsuccessful and threatened with closure, the Cabaret Voltaire housed performances of progressively more outrageous, absurd and irrational pieces of poetry (of the “sound” and “parallel” varieties most famously), song, drama and manifesto. Their provoking output piqued the curiosity as well as the anger of the Zürich public.

Hugo Ball performing at the Cabaret Voltaire, image from Wikimedia Commons 

Irrationality was precisely the point, as Richard Huelsenbeck explains in his interview with Basil Richardson entitled ‘Inventing Dada’. Huelsenbeck, a German expressionist writer who helped establish the Cabaret in 1916, gives an account of the invention of Dada out of the foundations of the Cabaret Voltaire. He describes the humble beginnings borne out of life experience and not any concerted artistic movement as such. Ball and his companion Emmy Hennings worked factory jobs before deciding they must do something. This “something”, Huelsenbeck continues, was uncertain and undefined, or undefinable– what were they fighting for or against? He and the others soon realised that it was precisely this uncertainty that could define the motivations of their activity – irrationality was its essence.

Richard Huelsenbeck’s history of Dada, En avant dada (Hanover, [1920]). Cup.403.z.47.

Out of this sense of novelty and unconventionality came Ball’s sound poems, first performed in June at the Cabaret Voltaire. One famous example is ‘Gadji beri bimba’ (1916), a recording of which, among other sound poems, is to be found on the audio collection Dada for Now. The first verse reads:

gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori
gadjama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassassa laulitalomini
gadji beri bin blassa glassala laula lonni cadorsu sassala bim
gadjama tuffm i zimzalla binban gligla wowolimai bin beri ban
o katalominai rhinozerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo
gadjama rhinozerossola hopsamen
bluku terullala blaulala loooo

Ball tried to free himself from everyday language and invent new sound patterns, ultimately attempting to display a new level of artistic invention and creativity. (The Talking Heads song ‘I Zimbra’ from the album Fear of Music sets ‘Gadji beri bimba’ to music, giving it an African-inspired beat.) One month later, on 14 July 1916, at a Dada Soirée, Ball presented the first Dada manifesto, explaining his impulse to break from all rational notions of “the word”:

Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.

Ball soon separated himself from the ambitions of the Dadaists and, consequently, the group’s second driving force, Tristan Tzara, declared a “Dada Movement”, exactly the kind of fixity and purpose Ball and Huelsenbeck wanted to avoid. However, the last word should go to the founder of the Cabaret Voltaire, the Hugo Ball of 100 years ago,

gaga di bumbalo bumbalo gadjamen
gaga di bling blong
gaga blung

Hugo Ball ca 1916, drawn by fellow-dadaist Marcel Janco. Reproduced in Gesammelte Gedichte.

Pardaad Chamsaz, Collaborative Doctoral Student, British Library / University of Bristol

References

Breaking the rules: the printed face of the European avant garde, 1900-1937, ed. By Stephen Bury (London, 2007) YC.2008.b.251

Richard Huelsenbeck, Inventing Dada (interview with Basil Richardson) (1959), 1CD0268503

Dada for Now: A Collection of Futurist and Dada Sound Works (1985), 1LP0007598

Talking Heads, Fear of Music (1979), 1CD0000326

Hugo Ball, Gesammelte Gedichte. Mit Photos und Faksimiles, herausgegeben von Annemarie Schütt-Hennings (Zürich, 1970) X.900/11006.

 The Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich today (Photo from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0) 

 

Martín Martínez (1684-1734) was a major figure in the reform of Spanish medicine.

Martín Martínez, Medicina sceptica, y cirugia moderna, con un tratado de operaciones chirurgicas ... (Madrid, 1748) RB.23.a.36759

This newly-acquired book is a nice example of how in times earlier than our own there was no division between the Two Cultures: in the 18th century scientific works had to written with literary style.

Science in Spain was still heavily dependent on unquestioning acceptance of the authority of the Greeks and Romans. But Martínez was a sceptic, defined by the first dictionary of the Spanish Academy as: “adjective applied to a certain philosophical school, which affirmed nothing and defined nothing, and was empoyed only in impugning the opinions of others, doubting everything” :

SCEPTICO, CA. adj. que se aplica à cierta secta Philosóphica, que nada afirmaba, ni definía; sí solo se empleaba en impugnar las [r.57] opiniones de los otros, dudandolo todo (Diccionario de Autoridades, Tomo VI (1739))

Note that for the Academicians these Sceptics lived (past tense) in Antiquity.

This work on modern medicine takes the form of a dialogue between Galenico (a follower of Galen), Chimico (a chemist) and Hippocratico (a follower of Hippocrates). But the author, as a true sceptic, is not himself mired in the past: he cites “Hyppocrates, Erasistrato, Celso” [all ancients] but also “Boyle, Sidenham, Capoa, Silvio, Gassendo ... and the most celebrated men of the last century” (I, Introduccion, e3r).

Although the language of medicine in the 18th century was still Latin (the language in which he read those foreign worthies cited in the previous paragraph), Martínez writes in Spanish, because “mejor es saber en Romance, que ignorar en Latin” [it is better to be knowledgable in the vernacular than ignorant in Latin].

If there was a controversy going in 18th-century Spain, Father Benito was not going to be left out. Here he weighs in with a defence of his fellow sceptic and doubter of authority.

An added interest is the contemporary soft parchment binding, with bead and loop fastenings. In this case, as usual, the loops are there and the beads have gone.

And although there is a printed table of contents (I, d5rv) an early reader has added his own handwritten table of contents on the flyleaf at the end of vol. I.

This book fills a gap in the British Library’s collection which goes back to 1955. In that year the Library acquired a pamphlet written in defence of the Medicina sceptica:

Pedro Salinas, Opusculo nuevo. Monita chimica secreta, en favor de la Medicina sceptica del Doctor D. Martin Martinez. ([Madrid?, c. 1760] ) 1481.c.41.(48)

And now we know what the fuss was about.

Barry Taylor, Curator Hispanic Studies