02 October 2023
Forgotten stories still to be uncovered
What do you think links audio recordings of Italian traditional theatre from Florence, card diaries written in 1932 by archaeologists in Soviet Ukraine, a typescript of a play on the life of Romani people in Bulgarian, a photo album that belonged to a Roma family from Moldova, a page from a Muslim religious text originated in Bulgaria, and a journal published by Serbs in exile?
Card diaries by T.M. Movchanoskiy, 1932 (EAP220/1/3) - Archival records from Saving archival documents of archaeological researches conducted during the 1920s and 1930s in Ukraine
Catalogue record of the digital audio collection
All these image and many more were digitised through the Endangered Archives Programme. The physical archives that were under a threat of disappearance remain where they were, but digital images are available freely to anyone who would like to do research or learn. In the words of the Programme’s co-founder, Lisbet Rausing, and much echoed by the Head of the EAP Sam van Schaik , “the Endangered Archives Programme captures forgotten and still not written histories, often suppressed or marginalised. It gives voice to the voiceless: it opens a dialogue with global humanity’s multiple pasts. It is a library of history still waiting to be written”.
Ismail Osmanov. “Gypsy on the new way. A play in two parts, 1953” (EAP067/4/1) –
Archival records from Preservation of Gypsy/Roma historical and cultural heritage in Bulgaria
Roma family album No 1 (EAP699/23/2) – Archival records from Safeguarding of the intangible Romani heritage in the Republic of Moldova threatened by the volatilisation of the individual unexplored collections (EAP699)
Here in the British Library, we research the collections and try to tell more people about them. Here is the most recent report from Anna Maslenova, a PhD student who came to work with us for three months on placement: ‘Contextualising a digital photographic archive of Siberian Indigenous peoples: PhD placement report’ . A Chevening fellow from Ukraine Nadiia Strishenets helped us to improve metadata for image related to the project Saving the original lifetime archive of the well-known Ukrainian poet, artist and thinker, T.H. Shevchenko (EAP657). If you have used any of the EAP collections in your research, we would be extremely grateful if you could tell us about your research and experience.
Muslim religious texts (EAP1392/5/2) – Archival records from Rediscovering the cultural heritage of the Muslims in Bulgaria (1920-1950) (EAP1392)
The Serbian Fatherland: a monthly magazine for Serbian youth in exile [1918] (EAP833/1/2/1/7) – Archival records from Safeguarding the fragile collection of the private archive of the Lazic family (EAP833)
The call for the 19th round of applications is open.
We hope that readers of this blog will help us to promote EAP, so that we could save more disappearing archives, uncover fascinating stories and capture forgotten voices from all over the world.
Katya Rogatchevskaia Lead Curator, East European Collections
13 September 2023
The Slovenian Age of Enlightenment
The Enlightenment in Slovenian lands was initiated by a group of like-minded people who advocated the change of the linguistic and cultural practices of the time, which relied exclusively on the use of the Latin and German languages. The Slovenian educators believed that the national language could be used equally for religious and secular purposes. Guided by this idea, they produced a critical body of literature that not only preserved the Slovenian language but also paved the way for the development of a modern literary language.
Grammars, dictionaries, histories, textbooks, translations of religious and secular texts from Latin and German, the first newspapers, original plays and modern literary adaptations were the main means to save the Slovenian language and raise national awareness.
In 1768, the priest, grammarian and lexicographer Marko Pohlin (1735-1801) published Kraynska grammatika (‘Carniolan Grammar’), which started off this cultural movement.
The 1972 facsimile reprint of Marko Pohlin, Tu malu besedishe treh jesikov = Das ist: das kleine Wörterbuch in dreyen Sprachen = Quod est: parvum dictionarium trilingue (Ljubljana, 1781). X.950/9786. The original can be seen in the Slovenian Digital Library
Anton Tomaž Linhart, Versuch einer Geschichte von Krain und der übrigen südlichen Slaven Oesterreichs (Nuremberg, 1796). BL 1437.e.11. This is the second edition of Linhart’s History of Carniola and Other South Slavs of Austria, which was originally published in two volumes in Ljubljana in 1788-1791.
Anton Tomaž Linhart (1756-1795) was the author of the first authoritative history of the Slovene nation. He was also the first Slovene playwright and theatre producer, author of Şhupanova Mizka (‘Micka, the Mayor’s Daughter’) and Ta veşsęli dan, ali: Matizhek şe shęni (‘This Merry Day or Matiček is Getting Married’), an adaptation from Beaumarchais’s The Marrige of Figaro.
Valentin Vodnik, Pésme sa pokúshino (‘Trial Poems’) (Ljubljana, 1806.) Cup.401.a.15.
Valentin Vodnik (1758-1819) a poet, journalist and linguist was the editor, writer, translator and technical designer of the first Slovene newspaper, Lublanske novize (‘The Ljubljana News’). Modelled on the Wiener Zeitung and used for promoting Slovenian language, culture and identity, it was printed by Janez Friderik Eger in Ljubljana between 1797-1800. Vodnik translated European news from German and he also published local news from Ljubljana and Carniola. Lublanske novize was first published as a semi-weekly and later as a weekly.
'A Song About My Countrymen', the title of the first poem from Pésme sa pokúshino. From Slovenian Digital Library
Bartholomæus Kopitar, Grammatik der Slavischen Sprache in Krain, Kärnten und Steyermark. (Ljubljana, 1808) 829.e.12.
Jernej Kopitar (1780-1844) a Slavist and national revivalist was the author of a scholarly and influential Grammar of the Slavonic Language in Carniola, Carinthia and Styria printed by Wilhelm Heinrich Korn in Ljubljana in 1808.
Pohlin, Linhart, Vodnik and Kopitar, among other Slovenian writers and scientists, were part of the cultural group named after their patron, Baron Sigismund (Žiga) Zois (1747-1819), a large landowner, naturalist and enlightened person. The group was united by their shared values of education and the promotion of Slovenian language, literature and culture.
Page one of Valentin Vodnik, Pismenost ali gramatika sa perve shole (Ljubljana, 1811) 1488.bb.8.
Vodnik’s Pismenost ali gramatika sa perve shole (‘Literacy or Grammar for the Elementary Schools’) contains an introductory part, and on eight unnumbered pages, a hymn entitled ‘Iliria oshivlena’ (‘Illyria resurrected’) in honour of Napoleon Bonaparte and the formation of the Illyrian Provinces as part of his French Empire from 1809 to 1814. During this period the Illyrian Provinces made economic and cultural advances felt long after the Austrians retook the territory in 1814. Vodnik’s Slovene language textbook also endured with the exception of its pro-French introductory parts.
Milan Grba, Lead Curator South East European Collections
Slovenian Enlightenment literature from Slovenian Digital Library:
Geschichte des Herzogthums Krain, des Gebiethes von Triest und der Grafschaft Görz (Valentin Vodnik, 1809)
Pismenost ali gramatika sa perve shole (Valentin Vodnik, 1811)
Dictionarium slavo-carniolicum. III partis a 1787/1798 manuscript by Blaž Kumerdej (1738-1805) a school teacher, philologist and educator
Svetu pismu noviga testamenta, id est: Biblia sacra novi testamenti ... ( A 1784-1786 translation of the New Testament)
Svetu pismu stariga testamenta id est: Biblia sacra veteris testamenti ... (A 1791-1802 translation of the Old Testament)
Glossarium Slavicum in supplementum ad primam partem Dictionarii Carniolici (Marko Pohlin, 1792)
Vadenje sa brati v' usse sorte pissanji sa sholarje teh deshelskeh shol v' zessarskih krajlevih deshelah (Reading textbook for schoolchildren, translation by Blaž Kumerdej, 1796)
Navúk k' osdravlenju te pluzhníze s' shelesnato solno kislostjo (Treatment of lung disease, 1804)
Mustertafel zur Aufsuchung krain : Wörter (Blaž Kumerdej, 1750-1800)
19 April 2023
Siberian Ethnographic Museums: Indigenous Lives Exhibited
In his autobiographical novel The Chukchi Bible, Yuri Rytkheu tells the story of how his grandfather, Mletkin, a Chukchi shaman from the village of Uelen, in the Russian Far East, was put on display for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (otherwise known as Chicago World’s Fair), “tasked with presenting to the public” the “world’s yet uncivilized tribes in a setting as realistic as possible” (Rytkheu, p. 255). During the exposition, Mletkin, dressed in a shaman robe and equipped with a tambourine, was asked to perform a shamanic ritual – kamlanie – in front of a yaranga (a Chukchi hut). Rytkheu describes how his grandfather was struck by the arrogance of the ‘white’ organisers of the exhibition and its visitors who “held themselves apart from the rest of humanity, or at least from the part that was inhabiting the village, emphasizing their superiority to the Chukchi, the Eskimos, the Indians, Malaysians, Africans, Aleutians, and all those who tomorrow would be the subject of wonder, curiosity, or perhaps disdain, on the part of the fair’s visitors” (Rytkheu, p. 260).
At the turn of the 20th century, the performance of shamanic rituals for a white audience, similar to the one described by Rytkheu, was a common entertainment not only in North America, but also in the Russian Empire. A collection of glass plate negatives, digitised as part of the Endangered Archives Project (EAP016) includes evidence of similar colonial practices. For instance, in April 1910, the city theatre of Krasnoyarsk organised an ethnographic evening performance of a shamanic ritual, executed by the Khakass shaman Petr Sarlin. An ethnographic exhibition, including a Khakass yaranga, was installed in the theatre hall, and local photographer, Ludvig Vonago, took photographs of Sarlin dressed in shamanic gear (pictures 1 and 2).
Picture 1 The ethnographic evening at the Krasnoyarsk city theatre. Shaman. April 2, 1910. Photographer: Vonago. (All captions are my own translations of the original annotations made by the Russian photographers)
Picture 2 Shaman.
In his novel, Rytkheu describes how during the exposition Mletkin was impregnated with feelings of humiliation and alienation as he stood “firmly beyond that invisible rope that separated the living exhibits of the World’s Fair from the rest of their fellow humanity” (Rytkheu, p. 263). Even though we do not have any written account of Sarlin’s experience of performing in front of the Krasnoyarsk audience, the likeness of his and Mletkin’s stories suggest that he might have also been aware of ‘the invisible rope’ separating him, a Khakass shaman on display, and the Russian spectators. In this blogpost, I suggest further exploring Rytkheu’s ‘rope’ metaphor through the BL’s collections of digitised photographs taken by Vonago and other photographers during the first 30 years of the 20th century.
Many images in EAP016 demonstrate that Siberian indigenous peoples were often depicted as museum exhibits rather than real people. The photographers focused on the ethnographic peculiarities and anthropological features of their models rather than on their psychological portraits. In pictures 3–7, we see the images of the cultural ‘others’ photographed from the side-, front-, and back-views.
Picture 3 A Khakass woman, Ekaterina Ivanovna Mainagasheva, 48 years old, in her winter coat. A full body picture, front-view. Seskin ulus, Askizskii region.
Picture 4 Ekaterina Ivanovna Mainagasheva.
Picture 5 A Kachinets Shaman, Fedor Nikolaevich Samrin, 60 years old, photographed in his shaman clothes holding a drum and thumper. Samrin ulus.
Picture 6 Fedor Nikolaevich Samrin.
Picture 7 Fedor Nikolaevich Samrin.
In Russian pre-revolutionary museums, such photographs were often used for ethnographic exhibitions alongside the various material objects of the indigenous cultures. For example, pictures 8 and 9, taken in the ethnographic museum of Krasnoyarsk, demonstrate how the exotic ‘curiosities’ – such as the traditional hunting and fishing tools, the cooking utensils and crockery, the wooden cradle, the religious objects as well as the mannequins dressed in the traditional clothes – were aimed at enlightening Siberia’s Russian population about ‘other’ dwellers of the region.
Picture 8 The Ethnographic Exhibition. The little exhibits are in the cupboards; the drum sets are at the top; the mannequins are along the walls. The Ethnographic Museum of Krasnoyarsk.
Picture 9 The Glass Cabinet with the Ostyak Objects. 1906-07. Photographer: A.Tugarinov. The Ethnographic Museum of Krasnoyarsk.
The photographs of Siberian ethnographic museums after the installation of the new Soviet regime, on the other hand, offer a new perspective on the indigenous population. The State sought to integrate indigenous people into the political system by means of sedentarisation, collectivisation, and education. Even though the new regime proclaimed that all Soviet nations were equal, the invisible rope between ‘backward’ and ‘civilized’ nations did not disappear (Gavrilova, p. 151). Moreover, the photographers continued to take pictures (see 10, 11) that exoticized anthropological and cultural features of the indigenous population.
Picture 10 Photographer: Man'yafov. Taim. Nganasan Savalov Abaku. 1938.
Picture 11 Photographer: A.V. Kharchevnikov. Taim. Detty Turdagin. 1938.
The post-revolutionary ethnographic exhibitions never ceased to exoticize the indigenous peoples, but the collections became additionally politicised with the state’s propaganda. A geographer researcher, Sofia Gavrilova writes that the Soviet ethnographic museums received specific protocols that required them to ‘build exhibitions with the encompassing theme that the new socialistic face of a krai [region] was a result of “the politics of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, the result of Lenin-Stalinist theory, and the program of solving the national question” (Gavrilova, p. 152). The new ethnographic exhibitions were supposed to show the process of Sovietization of the indigenous peoples of the USSR. The historian Francine Hirsch describes the new agenda of the ethnographic museum as follows:
The museumgoer did not simply travel through the museum and visit its peoples, either randomly or according to their level of cultural development […] Instead, he or she embarked on an “evolutionary” adventure through the stages on the Marxist historical timeline. Along the way, the museumgoer learned about the differences among feudal, capitalist-colonial, and Soviet social structures, economic practices, and cultures (Hirsch, p. 220).
Among the EAP016 images, we find evidence of the described transformation in the museum narratives through many new signs that interpretated the exhibits. In pictures 12 and 13, for example, we find the scene from the history of religions – that were banned in the USSR. The wax figure of a shaman is set next to the Orthodox priest’s vestment and Buddhist sculptures which simultaneously demonstrate the relics of the past and the enemies of the Soviet ideology. Hirsch notes that after becoming acquainted with “kulaks, mullahs, and other class enemies in the museum, the museumgoer would then be able to identify them through their clothing, culture, and practices—and participate in the campaign to eradicate them—outside of the museum’s walls” (Hirsch, p. 220). There was no place for a shaman, a priest, or Buddhist monk in the new Soviet world.
Picture 12 Photographer: N. V. Fedorov
Picture 13 The Ethnographic Exposition in the Museum. 1939. Photographer: Ivan Baluev.
The ethnographic museums created new narratives about the evolution of the indigenous peoples. Picture 14 shows the mobile hut, known as a balok, that was used for nomadic schools in the northern parts of Siberia. The museums also told the stories of the new Soviet heroes who came from indigenous backgrounds and became loyal citizens of the USSSR. In picture 15, for example, we find portraits of the Siberian Communists (next to the portrait of Stalin) who contributed to the ultimate goal of building communism. The material objects of the northern indigenous cultures in this exhibition seemingly indicated their rapid transformation from a ‘primitive’ to a ‘civilized’ way of life. Additionally, the exhibitions provided detailed information about the economic achievements of Soviet Siberia. Pictures 16 and 17, for instance, inform us of the significant developments in the hunting and fishing industries.
Picture 14 The Exposition ‘Balok’. 1939. Photographer: Baluev.
Picture 15 The Exposition. 1938. Photographer: Baluev.
Picture 16 The Museum Exposition. 1939. Photographer: Baluev.
Picture 17 The Exposition ‘Our Old North’: Fish Industry. 1936. Photographer: S. Malob.
The process of industrial evolution in Siberia is evident from picture 18: the yaranga with the sign ‘The Old North’. Thanks to the help of the ‘developed’ Russian nation, the northern population were moved out from their ‘primitive’ huts into the new Soviet types of accommodation.
I’d like to finish this post with another reference to Rytkheu’s novel where he describes his family yaranga in the centre of Uelen:
This yaranga survived to my own childhood. In the beginning of the 1950s, when my tribesmen were being moved into new wooden housing, it was pulled down, along with the other ancient shacks not fit to shelter a Soviet citizen of those enlightened times. The last time I saw my family yaranga, or rather its likeness, was in the municipal museum of Nome, Alaska, during my first visit to the United States in 1978. The photographer had shot a panoramic view of Uelen, with our family home at the forefront of the composition. I made a copy of the photograph and it is now stored in my archives (Rytkheu, p. 129).
It is striking that Rytkheu’s experience suggests that the ethnographic museum – stager of exotic curiosities and propaganda ¬– became the last place he could see artefacts of his heritage. Whilst these images are specific products of colonial attitudes towards indigenous peoples, they remain available records of their material culture. One can hope that the BL’s digitised collection of photographs, being open access, can help Siberians and us to explore and reflect upon this history.
Picture 18 The Exposition ‘The Old North’. 1939. Photographer: Baluev.
Anna Maslenova, British Library PhD placement student working on the project ‘Contextualising a digital photographic archive of Siberian Indigenous peoples’
References and further reading:
Yuri Rytkheu, Poslednii shaman (St Petersburg, 2004) YF.2004.a.26238 (English translation by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse, The Chukchi Bible (New York, 2011)
V. M. Iaroshevskoĭ, I. V. Kuklinskiĭ, L. Iu. Vonago — fotograf na vyezd: Krasnoiarsk i ego okrestnosti v fotografiiakh Liudviga Vonago, ed. by A. B. Ippolitova (Krasnoiarsk, 2020).
Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, N.Y, 2005) YC.2005.a.7999
Roland Cvetkovski, ‘Empire Complex: Arrangements in the Russian Ethnographic Museum, 1910’, in An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and
the USSR, ed. by Roland Cvetkovski and Alexis Alexis (Budapest, 2014), pp. 211–251 YD.2014.a.1342.
Sofia Gavrilova, Russia’s Regional Museums Representing and Misrepresenting Knowledge About Nature History, and Society (Abingdon, 2022) ELD.DS.709608;
Sofia Gavrilova, ‘Producing the “Others”: The Development of Kraevedenie in Chukotka’, Études Inuit Studies, 45: 1/2 (2021) 147–170.
21 March 2023
The Colonisation of Novaya Zemlya through the Photographs and Short Stories of Konstantin Nosilov
Content warning: This blog reproduces an image of a dead animal; the vocabulary drawn from the original texts is now considered racist.
Thanks to the typo of British cartographers, Stephen and William Borough – who in the 16th century created several maps of Russia – a northern archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, Novaya Zemlya, became in the Western imagination a remote and romanticised land, Nova Zembla.
Nova Zembla is mentioned in Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books as the residence of ‘a malignant deity called Criticism,’ who ‘dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova Zembla’. We find a reference to Nova Zembla in Tristram Shandy, where ‘North Lapland’ is described as ‘those cold and dreary tracks of the globe […] where the whole province of a man’s concernments lies for near nine months together within the narrow compass of his cave […]— there the least quantity of judgment imaginable does the business — and of wit — there is a total and an absolute saving — for as not one spark is wanted — so not one spark is given’. The ‘[d]istant northern land’ of Zembla becomes the abandoned kingdom of the deposed King Charles (Kinbote), the character of Nabokov’s metafictional novel, Pale Fire.
William Borough's Map of Coasts of Norway and Russia, 1557. Nova Zembla is in the top right corner. Royal MS. 18. D.III f.124
Although inspired by the long history of Nova Zembla’s presence in world literature, this post explores the image of Novaya Zemlya, rather than of its literary double. It focuses on an episode from the history of its colonisation: the legacy of a Russian ethnographer, photographer, and writer, Konstantin Nosilov (1858¬–1923). The British Library holds a substantial collection of digitized glass plate negatives from Nosilov’s collection (EAP016/1 and EAP016/3) including his photographs of Novaya Zemlya as well as other parts of Northern and Southern Siberia, his family life, and European travels.
Nosilov besides a fireplace (All captions are my own translations of the original annotations made by the Russian photographers)
Nosilov’s father
Paris
The BL also holds several collections of Nosilov’s short stories in which he shared reminiscences of his ethnographic expeditions, and which are illustrated with his photographs.
Various editions of Nosilov's short stories available at the BL
Nosilov was born to the family of a priest who lived near Shadrinsk in the Urals region. Nosilov did not finish his own theological studies and instead from 1879 he started to work as a geologist exploring the basins of the rivers Sosʹva, Lialia, and Lozʹva – prospecting them for gold. Having become a member of Imperial Russian Geographical Society, Nosilov undertook numerous ethnographic expeditions to Siberia, exploring the traditions and lifestyles of the Mansi (also known as Voguls), Khanty (Ostyaks), and Nenets (Samoyed). The collection includes numerous photographs taken by Nosilov during these expeditions.
The Mansi’s summer camp
The Nenets’ place of sacrifice
Novaya Zemlya occupies a very special place in Nosilov’s life and work. Being on the outskirts of the vast Russian Empire, the archipelago had been hardly explored by Russian ethnographers. Norwegian hunters and fishermen, on the other hand, frequently visited the waters around Novaya Zemlya and its shores. To reinforce the Russian Empire’s control of its territorial possession, it was regarded as crucial to establish permanent settlements on the island – Novaya Zemlya had been uninhabited due to its severe environment. Nosilov volunteered to organise a permanent settlement on the archipelago.
In 1887 a lifeboat station, Malye Karmakuly, was founded on the island of Iuzhnyi, and several Nenets families were relocated to the area. An ambitious colonialist, Nosilov was the first Russian explorer who, together with the Nenets, spent three winters on Novaya Zemlya 1887–1889 and 1890–1891. By his own example, Nosilov wanted to prove that the archipelago was suitable for year-round living.
Nosilov's house on Novaya Zemlya
Novaya Zemlya, Malye Karmakuly
Novaya Zemlya: view from the sea
Novaya Zemlya: cliffs and the sea
On Novaya Zemlya, Nosilov installed a meteorological station, that was essential to help the inhabitants prepare for severe weather conditions and regular storms, one of which is described in Nosilov’s story ‘Poliarnaia buria’ (‘Polar Storm’). Together with the Orthodox priest Father Iona, Nosilov revived an abandoned Orthodox chapel on the island, and they also started a school for the Nenets, – described in his story ‘Samoedskaia shkola’ (‘The Samoyed School’). Nosilov was especially proud of this, the most northern school in the world. In the story, he describes how both children and adults were keen on learning not only language but basic maths and other general subjects. Full of gentle humour, the story also tells how Father Iona was terrified by the ‘school inspectors’ – polar bears – who frequently visited.
Describing the Nenets settlement on Novaya Zemlya, Nosilov used many tropes that are now considered as typical for colonialist literature depicting colonisers’ interactions with indigenous peoples. The narrator in Nosilov’s stories shows a patronizing attitude toward the Siberians, who are treated like children, or, as he constantly calls them, ‘the children of nature’. Although Nosilov also frequently refers to the indigenous peoples in a way that now would be considered as racist, calling them ‘barbarians’ (‘dikari’), his attitude towards them is not derogatory, but rather sympathetic, especially when it comes to their studies of the Russian language and religion.
Some indigenous traditions which Nosilov witnessed, nevertheless terrified him. For instance, in one of his stories about the Mansi, ‘Iz zhizni vogulov’ (‘From the Life of the Voguls’), Nosilov describes the ceremonial slaughter and eating of a reindeer as bloodthirsty and barbaric: ‘looking at their passionate faces lit by the light of the fire, I saw the real barbarians, whom I had not yet suspected under the always modest and quiet figures of the Voguls’. However, most of his stories, especially those dedicated to the life of his colony on Novaya Zemlya, are full of admiration for the indigenous peoples, their skills and instincts.
In his story ‘Tainstvennoe iz zhizni samoedov’ (‘Mysterious in the Life of the Samoyeds’), for example, Nosilov describes an elderly Nenets woman with a gift of clairvoyance who not only predicted the fortune of hunters, but also once foretold the arrival of a Norwegian ship from Tromsø. Despite being a devout Christian – fulfilling, among other things, the duty of missionary work – Nosilov was keenly interested in indigenous spirituality and the native peoples’ special skills of forefeeling.
Novaya Zemlya, Matochkin Shar
Many of Nosilov’s stories are addressed to younger readers in central Russia. Nosilov tried to enlighten them about the life in the remote parts of the Russian Empire. Among such stories is the story of a Nenets girl, Tania Logai. The plot might be interesting for a Gender Studies analysis: Nosilov describes various episodes from Tania’s life showing how, instead of learning female domestic duties, she was much more interested in hunting. Tania even becomes a local celebrity for killing a polar bear that attacked her family hut whilst all the male hunters were away. Even when she reaches womanhood, Tania refuses to change. She does not want to get married and chooses to stay with her family and help her father hunt.
Novaya Zemlya. The female bear killed by Nosilov
Alongside being entertaining and enlightening, Nosilov’s stories also featured the acute social and economic problems experienced by the indigenous population of the north. These problems were primarily provoked by the invasion of European Russians who disturbed the traditional ways of living. Discussing the State’s response to the problems of the indigenous peoples, Yuri Slezkine notes:
[…] more and more travelers and more and more readers assumed that the administrators – local or otherwise – were generally incapable of enlightening anyone and that helping savages advance was the special mission of special people who were the sole legitimate representatives of the highest stage of intellectual development (the “intelligentsia”) (Slezkine, 1994, p. 112)
This sense of personal mission is notable in Nosilov’s stories. The final story in his collection Na Novoi Zemle, titled ‘Nashi liudoedy’ (‘Our Cannibals’) discusses the problems of the Nenets population living on the Taz Estuary. The story tells how the indigenous people, facing terrible poverty despite living in one of the richest fishing areas of Russia, hungered so badly that they had to resort to cannibalism. Nosilov regards this as the fault of the European Russians and urged measures to help indigenous populations. Nosilov also published numerous articles describing the problems of the North, including the increasing alcoholism among native peoples after vodka was introduced by Russians.
Nosilov’s texts sometimes reveal his personal doubt as to whether intrusion into the worlds of indigenous peoples was a truly good thing. This instance of the coloniser’s self-reflexivity is an interesting topic to consider: Nosilov’s rich cultural heritage requires a new critical reading framed with post-colonial theory. The story of Nosilov’s final years brings an additional dramatic element to it. Due to his deteriorating relationship with the State after the installation of Bolshevik rule in 1917, his family had to leave their estate, Nakhodka near Shadrinks (EAP016 includes numerous pictures of the estate) and moved to Georgia where Nosilov died in 1923.
Nosilov's estate 'Nakhodka'
Anna Maslenova, British Library PhD placement student working on the project ‘Contextualising a digital photographic archive of Siberian Indigenous peoples’
References and further reading:
K. D. Nosilov, Tania Logaĭ: razskaz i zhizni sievernykh inorodtsev (Moscow, 1907). RB.23.a.32078.
K. D. Nosilov, U vogulov: ocherki i nabroski (St Peterburg: 1904). 10292.k.21
K. D. Nosilov, Na Novoi Zemle: Ocherki i nabroski (St Peterburg: 1903) (10292.k.20),
Konstantin Nosilov, Severnye rasskazy (Sverdlovsk, 1938). X.808/9359.
Johanna Nichols, ‘Stereotyping Interethnic Communication: The Siberian Native in Soviet Literature’ in Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture, ed. by Galya Diment and Yuri Slezkine (New York, 1993), pp. 185–214. YC.1993.a.3771
Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, 1994). YC.1994.b.5452
A. K. Omelʹchuk, K. Nosilov (Sverdlovsk, 1989).
N. B. Gramatchikova, ‘Tvorcheskii putʹ K. D. Nosilova: zhiznennyi putʹ i publitsistika’ in Deviatye Chupinskie kraevedcheskie chteniia: materialy konferentsii, ed. by E. N. Efremova (Ekaterinburg, 2018)
10 March 2023
Digital Shevchenkiana – a Joint English-Ukrainian Project
Do not forget, with good intent
Speak quietly of me
(Taras Shevchenko, ‘Testament’, translated by Vera Rich)
Every year, on 9-10 March, ‘Shevchenko’s Days’ (Shevchenkivs’ki dni) are celebrated in Ukraine. The national poet, founder of modern Ukrainian literature and famous artist Taras Shevchenko was born on 9 March 1814. On 10 March 1861 he died at the age of 47 after more than 10 years in exile as a private in the Russian military garrison in Orsk (near the Ural Mountains) and then in Kazakhstan. The Tsar added to his sentence: ‘Under the strictest surveillance, without the right to write or paint’. But Shevchenko’s talent went beyond such restrictions. His poems had an immense impact on Ukrainian society and became a vital source of the consolidation of the Ukrainian nation.
As a result of a joint project between the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), administered by the British Library, and the Taras Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv (Ukraine), the British Library holds copies of a digital collection of Shevchenkiana (works by, about, or relating to Shevchenko). It includes books, serials and archival materials dating from the 19th to the early 20th century (about 60,000 images). The collection, which is called ‘Saving the original lifetime archive of the well-known Ukrainian poet, artist and thinker, T. H. Shevchenko’, is available via the EAP website and can be searched via the British Library Archives and Manuscripts catalogue.
Shevchenkiana includes not only the publications of the poet’s own works, including those from his own lifetime, but also literary journals and almanacs, where his poems were published (Lastovka, 1841; Molodyk, 1843; Khata, 1860; Osnova, 1861–1862, etc.). There are also publications about Shevchenko, books by writers and poets of his time, translations of his works and archival materials.
Shevchenko lifetime editions: Hamaliia (ref: EAP657/2/1/7); and Kateryna (ref: EAP657/2/1/8)
Of special value among the editions published in Shevchenko’s lifetime are those containing his personal autographs. For instance, on the title page of the poem ‘Naimychka’ (1860) the poet made an inscription: ‘To Orlovs’ky from T. Shevchenko’. We can assume that it is Volodymyr Orlovsky, a Ukrainian artist famous for his landscape painting (1842–1914). In December 1860, Shevchenko wrote about Orlovsky’s daily visits to him in a letter and expressed the hope that he would have a promising future. Shevchenko not only gave drawing lessons to his young compatriot, but he also provided him with a letter of recommendation to the Saint Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts.
Or another autograph written in pencil on the cover of Psalmy Davydovi to a Serhii Syl’vestrovych whom T. Shevchenko calls ‘Dear compatriot’.
Shevchenko editions with his autographs: Naimychka (ref: EAP657/2/1/6); Psalmy Davydovi (ref: EAP657/2/1/6).
The digitised collection also includes issues of the famous Ukrainian literary journal Osnova (published January 1861–October 1862). Osnova united Ukrainian writers and scholars who wrote fiction, poems, works on history, bibliography, literary criticism, etc. The journal had a noticeable impact on Ukrainian cultural and literary life. Over 70 poems by Shevchenko appeared in it. Novels and poems by well-known Ukrainian writers such as Panteleimon Kulish, Leonid Hlibov, Oleksa Storozhenko, Oleksandr Konys’ky, Hanna Barvinok, Marko Vovchok and others were also published in this journal as well as scholarly research. For instance, Mykola Kostomarov, an outstanding historiographer and historian, contributed scholarly articles and discussed contemporary issues of Ukrainian history. It is important to note that the British Library Archives and Manuscripts catalogue provides an analytical description of all novels, articles and cycles of poems printed in Osnova and other serials.
Osnova, 1861, July-September (ref. EAP657/2/1/19); Khata [almanach], 1860 (ref. EAP657/2/1/13)
The collection also includes some digitised editions of translations of Shevchenko’s works, among them translations into Polish by Antony Gorzałczyński (1862). In the preface to the book Gorzałczyński wrote that Shevchenko’s poetry is a huge lute, composed of a million strings of folk feelings. It contains crying, laughter, pain, groaning, and even mad despair - everything has its own strings and chords. Few of Shevchenko’s contemporaries understood the scale of his legacy so deeply as Gorzałczyński.
Antony Gorzałczyński, Przekłady pisarzów małorossyjskich. T. 1: Taras Szewczenko (z portretem). (Kyiv, 1862). (ref. EAP657/2/3/4)
In ‘Publications of Shevchenko era’, which is another part of this e-collection, there are digitised books by the Ukrainian writers Panteleimon Kulish, Marko Vovchok, Mykhailo Hrushevs’ky, Osyp Bodians’ky, and others, as well as ‘Notes of the Shevchenko Scientific Society’ in Lviv, primers and reading books for children, and other publications characteristic of that era.
An important part of the collection are archival materials which include documents, letters, and manuscripts relating to Shevchenko. Among them: ‘Case of the arrest of A. Navrotsky, V. Belozersky and T. Shevchenko’ (1847), after which Shevchenko spent more than 10 years in exile (ref. EAP657/1/10); ‘Case of the Ukrainian Slavic Association’ (1847) (ref. EAP657/1/14); and ‘Case of the despatch of the private Taras Shevchenko to Ural’sk city’ (1857) with correspondence about the release of Shevchenko from exile (ref. EAP657/1/7).
‘Case of the arrest of A. Navrotsky, V. Belozersky and T. Shevchenko’ (28 Mar 1847–04 Aug 1847) (ref. EAP657/1/10)
Now, after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine reports 1322 cases of damage or destruction of cultural objects and buildings, including 508 libraries, international projects to digitise Ukrainian cultural heritage are gaining special importance. This work provides an opportunity for the long-term preservation of collections, at least in digital form, and provides access to them for readers.
Nadiia Strishenets, Leading researcher at the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine and British Academy Fellow
References
Volodymyr Orlovsʹkyĭ (1842–1914), Mykola Pymonenko (1862–1912), (Khmelnytskyi, 2006.): LF.31.a.3570
05 January 2023
The Photographic Collection of Indigenous Childhood
The digitised photographic archive of Siberian indigenous peoples (available online from the British Library’s website) is a rich source of information about late Russian and early Soviet colonisation of Siberia. The collection of over 4000 images is the result of five years of exploratory work led by David Anderson (University of Aberdeen,) and Craig Campbell (University of Alberta) in Central Siberia. The research group digitised glass plate negatives in five Siberian archives: Irkutsk, Minusinsk, Ekaterinburg, and Krasnoiarsk. Although many photographs lack any original descriptions, and thus it is not always easy to identify where and when they were taken, the visual archive nevertheless provides great insight into the lives of Siberian indigenous peoples, in particular, Mansi, Nenets, Evenki, Buryat, Karagas, Soyot, Nganasan, Dolgan, Khakas, Khanti, and Kety.
In their articles based on the results of their research, Anderson and Campbell suggested several common tropes to interpret the photographs of indigenous peoples. They explored the themes of ‘travel photography’, ‘ethnographic photography’, ‘expedition photography’, and ‘community-driven portrait photography’, and provided examples. This, however, is by no means an exhaustive list of possible tropes to explore the vast visual collection. Drawing on Anderson and Craig’s observations, I would like to suggest exploring the subject which arrested my attention and the attention of several colleagues at the BL: the visual representation of indigenous childhood and its transformation during the time of intense Soviet collectivisation in the 1920s and 1930s.
Taimyr. The family of Nganasan, Dyutamo Turdagina: his wife Palai, son Murkari, baby Kurvak. 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev. (All captions are my own translations of the original annotations made by the Russian photographers)
Children during their class at school
The British Library’s digital photographic collections contain many photographs representing children, taken by various photographers – whose names are not always identifiable – during their expeditions. Although the goals of each expedition require some separate research, it is often possible to deduce from the photographs whether the photographers took pictures for ethnographic purposes or for political propaganda.
The ethnographic expeditions to Siberia usually sought to collect information about the ‘sparse’ native peoples of Siberia, and the children in such photographs are usually portrayed as immersed in their families’ social and professional lives, or engaged in traditional games. They are dressed in the national costumes which represent the ‘exotic’ features of Siberian peoples. It was a common colonial practice to collect various artefacts representing indigenous cultures, such as traditional clothing, musical instruments, tools, and housewares which would form vast museum collections.
Family
A woman with her child
Taim. A Nganasan man, Dyutalyu Turdagin, setting a fish trap, 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
Taim. The Stalin collective farm: the collective farmer, Aksenova Evdokiia, a Sakha native, is making a sleeping bag. 1938. Photo by Tyurin
Taim. Durakova, a collective farmer at the Stalin collective farm, is decorating the male parka with some beads. She is considered a skilled worker. 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
A woman with two children. 1927. Photo by Tyurin
Studies of indigenous childhood had been one of the prominent areas of study in the Russian Empire’s ethnography, and it became even more significant in the 1920s and 30s, when the Soviet State rushed to construct a new society by culturally assimilating Siberian peoples. Indigenous children became the chief target of Soviet policies concerned with the creation of new generations of Soviet people. The photographs of children were not ideologically neutral: they were designed to show the transformation of the old into the new.
Pictures of children taken during the Soviet expeditions often represented them as integrated into Soviet culture rather than as representatives of their national cultures. Soviet photographs of children were often intended to demonstrate the result of Soviet reforms and the transformation of ‘savages’ into educated Young Pioneers. In the photographs we see the children dressed in uniform Soviet clothing.
A group of pioneer-children. Photo by Nosilov (assumed)
A group photograph of Evenki. Photo by Nosilov (assumed)
They are playing Soviet games.
Taim, Volochanka. Sakha children in the Volochanka residential school, in the playroom
The Nizhne-tunguskaia expedition. Children making a pyramid. 1925
We also find pictures of children visiting a picture gallery, something that can be interpreted as their symbolic initiation into the world of Soviet ‘civilised’ culture.
Buryat children visiting a picture gallery. 24.07.1923
Many such photographs were taken during the census expeditions of 1926, which were conducted in cooperation with geographers and ethnographers. The census was a worldwide colonial statistical practice, and the Soviets employed and developed new approaches to classifying the peoples of their vast empire. The indigenous peoples were surveyed within their households and individually to collect demographic data describing their diet, economy, trade data, beliefs, folklore, and so on. If the statistical information collected during the census was intended to provide an objective summary of life in the remote parts of the Soviet Union, then the photographs often offered a somewhat idealised picture of the social inclusion of indigenous peoples within Soviet life. The photographs of children were especially important as they depicted the social and cultural production of the new generation of loyal Soviet citizens.
Numerous aspects of Soviet modernisation were introduced in indigenous settlements, such as medical care, veterinary services, and housing. Often photographers chose to take pictures of children in these new Soviet settings.
Tura. An Evenk student, Hukochar Emel'yan, 11 years old, at a tuberculosis dispensary for a blood test. January 1939. Photo by Ivan Baluev
A young Yakut mother with a new-born at the Eseiskoi hospital. December 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
The most common setting for the pictures were school classrooms: the photographers were specifically advised to document ‘the dawn of cultural and primary school education’ among Siberian peoples, and the work of teachers liquidating illiteracy (Anderson, Batashev, Campbell, 2015, p. 501). To the modern eye, these pictures might look somewhat dystopian: students sit under a poster showing Stalin surrounded by children, located next to another with a wolf trying to kill two little pigs; children eat their meal under a poster instructing ‘eat only from your plate’; or a photograph taken during a sport class where all children synchronically perform the same exercise with a huge portrait of Stalin in the background.
Tura. Children playing a game at the district health department. January 1939. Photo by Ivan Baluev
Tura, the Evenk national republic. A group of students during the May Day demonstration. May 1, 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
Tura, the Evenk national republic. Children at the Turinsk District Health Department. January 1939. Photo by Ivan Baluev
Tura, the Evenk national republic. Lunch in the nursery at the District Health Department. January 1939. Photo by Ivan Baluev
The most touching pictures are probably those where we see groups of children sitting in densely bedded dormitories. Taken away from their families – often involuntarily – children stayed in the residential schools during the academic year and were returned to their parents only for the summer holidays.
Tajm, Letov'e. The teacher of Letov'e school, Zlobin, meeting the first year Nganasan students who are accompanied by the leader of the Avamo-nganasansk settlement, Baikal, Turdachin
The Nizhne-tungusk expedition. Girls’ bedroom. 1925
Away from their families, children were expected to develop a sense of belonging to the larger Soviet society with its new system of values. The residential schools were also instrumental in the process of reorganising the indigenous populations of Siberia into cooperative settlements and demolishing their original tribal structures. During the first years of the Soviet Union the State tried to accommodate the educational needs of reindeer herders by initiating an experimental project of nomadic schools, which moved together with the clan, but by the end of the 1930s this practice was terminated. The number of residential schools in various parts of Siberia, on the other hand, reached 20 by 1935. Often reindeer herders chose to stay close to their children instead of continuing the traditional nomadic lifestyle. As a result, the introduction of residential schools greatly decreased the nomadic way of living, and saw indigenous Siberians become more settled.
The Nizhne-tungusk expedition. A man in suit sitting at his desk. The poster in the background reads ‘The diagram showing the growth of the number of schools’. 1925
The exhibition ‘Nomadic School’. 1938. Photo by Ivan Baluev
In the 1990s, several cultural initiatives tried to revive the idea of nomadic schools as a means of restoring traditional lifestyles and culture. Several nomadic schools were successfully organised, for instance, in the Republic of Sakha.
The residential schools continue to run in different part of Siberia, and a basic internet search shows many negative feelings associated with them. The experiences of indigenous peoples in the residential schools are actively explored by contemporary scholars. For example, in the 1990s, Alexia Bloch, an anthropologist from the University of British Columbia, collected accounts of elderly Evenki women, who studied at residential schools. Relying on these records, Bloch conclusively demonstrated a blend of positive feeling about the schools contrasted with ambivalence about the termination of the Soviet colonial project in general. Following the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, many Evenki women recalled their time at the residential schools with a sense of nostalgia for the socialist era.
For many indigenous children, residential schools became a source of radical social mobility within Soviet society. After graduation, young people received an opportunity to continue their studies at university and move to big cities in central Russia, or secure more prestigious jobs back home. We do not know which paths were taken by the children in the photographs in the British Library’s digital collection, and this might be one of the questions which scholars could explore using the BL’s vast visual archive.
Anna Maslenova, British Library PhD placement student working on the project ‘Contextualising a digital photographic archive of Siberian Indigenous peoples’
References and further reading:
David G. Anderson, ‘The Turukhansk Polar Census Expedition of 1926–1927 at the Crossroads of Two Scientific Traditions’, Sibirica, 5: 1 (2006), pp. 24–61.
David G. Anderson and Craig Campbell, ‘Picturing Central Siberia: The Digitization and Analysis of Early Twentieth-Century Central Siberian Photographic Collections’, Sibirica, 8: 2 (2009), pp. 1–42)
David G. Anderson, Mikhail S. Batashev and Craig Campbell, ‘The photographs of Baluev: capturing the “socialist transformation” of the Krasnoyarsk northern frontier, 1938-1939’ in From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme, ed. by Maja Kominko (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 487–530. ELD.DS.46613
Georgii Vinogradov, Etnografiia detstva i russkaia narodnaia kulʹtura v Sibiri (Moscow, 2009) YF.2011.a.853
«Provintsialʹnaia» nauka: etnografiia v Irkutske v 1920-e gody, ed. by A. Sirina (Irkutsk, 2013).
Olga Laguta and Melissa Shih-hui Lin, ‘Language and Cultural Planning in Siberia: Boarding School System Represented in the Texts of the Siberian Indigenous Writers’, Taiwan Journal of Indigenous Studies, 12: 1 (2019), pp. 1–37.
Sargylana Zhirkova, ‘School on the Move: A Case Study: Nomadic Schooling of the Indigenous Evenk children in the Republic of Sakha Yakutia (Russian Far East)’ (unpublished master’s dissertation, University of Tromsø, 2006)
Alexia Bloch, Red Ties and Residential Schools: Indigenous Siberians in a Post-Soviet State (Philadelphia, 2004). m04/19814
Alexia Bloch, ‘Ideal Proletarians and Children of Nature: Evenki Reimagining Schooling in a Post-Soviet Era’, in Bicultural Education in the North: Ways of Preserving and Enhancing Indigenous Peoples’ Languages and Traditional Knowledge, ed. by Erich Kasten (Münster, 1998), pp. 139–157. m03/16772
Alexia Bloch, ‘Longing for the Kollektiv: Gender, Power, and Residential Schools in Central Siberia’, Cultural Anthropology, 20: 4 (2005), pp. 534–569. 3491.661000
Natalia P. Koptseva, Ksenia V. Reznikova, Natalia N. Pimenova and Anastasia V. Kistova, ‘Cultural and Anthropological Studies of Indigenous Peoples of Krasnoyarsk Krai Childhood (based on the field studies of Siberian Federal University in 2010-2013)’, Journal of Siberian Federal University: Humanities & Social Sciences 8 (2014), pp. 1312–1326.
30 December 2022
An A to Z of the European Studies Blog 2022
A is for Alexander the Great, subject of the Library’s current exhibition.
B is for Birds and Bull fighting.
C is for Czechoslovak Independence Day, which marks the foundation of the independent Czechoslovak State in 1918.
D is for Digitisation, including the 3D digitisation of Marinetti’s Tin Book.
E is for Annie Ernaux, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in October.
Examples of Fraktur letter-forms from Wolfgang Fugger, Ein nützlich und wolgegründt Formular manncherley schöner Schriefften ... (Nuremberg, 1533) C.142.cc.12.
F is for Festive Traditions, from songs to fortune telling.
G is for Guest bloggers, whose contributions we love to receive!
H is for Hryhorii Skovoroda, the Ukrainian philosopher and poet whose anniversary we marked in December.
I is for our series on Iceland and the Library’s Icelandic collections.
J is for Jubilees.
Abetka (Kyïv, 2005). YF.2010.a.18369.
K is for Knowledge systems and the work of Snowchange Cooperative, a Finnish environmental organisation devoted to protecting and restoring the boreal forests and ecosystems through ‘the advancement of indigenous traditions and culture’.
L is for Limburgish, spoken in the South of the Netherlands.
M is for Mystery – some bibliographical sleuthing.
N is for Nordic acquisitions, from Finnish avant-garde poetry to Swedish art books.
O is for Online resources from East View, which are now available remotely.
Giovanni Bodoni and Giovanni Mardersteig, Manuale tipografico, 1788. Facsimile a cura di Giovanni Mardersteig. (Verona, 1968) L.R.413.h.17.
P is for our wonderful PhD researchers, current and future.
Q is for Quebec with a guest appearance by the Americas blog featuring the work of retired French collections curator Des McTernan.
R is for Rare editions of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar.
S is for Samizdat and the Library’s Polish Solidarity collection.
T is for Translation and our regular posts to mark Women in Translation Month.
Alphabet Anglois, contenant la prononciation des lettres avec les declinaisons et conjugaisons (Rouen, 1639). Digital Store 1568/3641.(1.)
U is for Ukrainian collections and our work with Ukrainian partners.
V is for Victory – a contemporary Italian newspaper report of the Battle of Trafalgar.
W is for Richard Wagner who wrote about a fictional meeting with Beethoven.
X is for... (no, we couldn’t think of anything either!)
Y is for You, our readers. Thank you for following us!
Z is for our former colleague Zuzanna, whom we remembered in February.
Azbuka ōt knigi osmochastnye̡, sirěchʹ grammatikii (Lviv, 1574). Digital Store 1568/3641.(1.)
05 May 2022
John Cruso of Norwich: a man of many parts
John Cruso (b. 1592/3) of Norwich, the eldest son of Flemish migrants, was a man of many parts: author, virtuoso networker, successful merchant and hosier, Dutch church elder and militia captain. His literary oeuvre is marked by its polyvocality. He wrote verse in English and Dutch, often sprinkled with Latin and French. He was also a noted military author, publishing five military works, which made a significant contribution to military science before and during the English Civil Wars. These works display Cruso’s knowledge of the canon of classical and Renaissance literature, allowing him to fashion himself as a miles doctus, a learned soldier, and to contribute to military science in Stuart England. Cruso’s great nephew, Timothy, studied with Daniel Defoe at the Dissenters’ Academy in Newington Green, London, and thus inspired the name of Defoe’s great literary creation, Robinson Crusoe.
Cruso’s parents, Jan and Jane, left Flanders in the years after the Iconoclastic Fury and Alva’s Council of Troubles. They arrived in Norwich, which already had a thriving Stranger community and Jan worked as a textile merchant.
The Strangers’ Hall in Norwich, the merchants’ house of the Flemish Strangers (Image from Wikipedia Commons)
Their eldest son, John, received a classical humanist education at Norwich free grammar school, which he would draw on in his published verse and prose. He became a freeman and took over running the family hosiery and cloth business from his father. In 1622, he published his first verse, a Dutch elegy. This appeared in a collection of Latin and Dutch elegies to the late minister of the London Dutch church, Simeon Ruytinck. It included verses by Constantijn Huygens and Jacob Cats and is arguably the most important Anglo-Dutch literary moment in the seventeenth century. In the late 1620s, Cruso wrote three English elegies, including one sonnet, on the late minister of St. Andrew’s Church, Lawrence Howlett. He was also the subject of an English verse by the Norfolk prelate and poet, Ralph Knevet.
Between 1632 and 1644, Cruso published several military works. In 1632, he published Militarie Instructions for the Cavallrie, which was the first book published in England devoted solely to the cavalry. This was republished in 1644. In 1639 and 1640, Cruso published his English translations of two French military works, one of which was re-published in 1642. In the same year, as the opening shots in the First English Civil War were being fired, he published two military handbooks on the construction of military camps and the order of watches. He also had time, it seems, to publish two Dutch verses, an elegy to Johannes Elison, the late minister of the Dutch church in Norwich and an amplificatio on Psalm 8. His final publication, in 1655, was a collection of 221 Dutch epigrams, printed in quarto by Arnold Bon in Delft.
John Cruso, Militarie Instructions for the Cavallrie (Cambridge, 1632) 717.m.18
John Cruso, Castrametation, or the Measuring out of the quarters for the encamping of an army (London, 1642) 1398.b.7.
Most of Cruso’s works are in the British Library. A copy of the epigram collection, EPIGRAMMATA Ofte Winter-Avondts Tyt-korting (‘Epigrams or Pastimes for a Winter’s Evening’), shelfmark 11555.e.42.(4.), is the only known copy of this work.
Title page of I. C., Epigrammata, ofte Winter Avondts Tyt-korting (Delft, 1655) 11555.e.442 (4).
On the title page, Cruso uses his initials, I.C. In this copy someone has made C into O with a pen. Beneath the title are two lines from the Roman epigrammatist, Martial, which hint at the scabrous nature of some of the verses: ‘Non intret Cato theatrum meum: aut si intraverit, spectet’ (‘Do not let Cato enter my theatre: or if he does enter, let him look’), and ‘Innocuos permitte sales: cur ludere nobis non liceat?’ (‘Allow harmless jests: why should we not be allowed to joke?’). Many of Cruso’s Dutch epigrams are like Latin epigrams written by Sir Thomas More, and Cruso may have been inspired by some of these. One example is Epigram 94:
In Nasutissimum
Vergeefs ghy voor u Huys een Sonne-wijser stelt;
Want gaapt maar, en men stracx aan uwe Tanden telt
De Uyren van den Dach. De Son dat wijst gewis
End uwen langen Neus den besten Gnomon is.
(On someone with an extremely large nose.
In vain, you place a sundial in front of your house;
For just open your mouth and people will be able to
Count the hours of the day by your teeth. And the sun shows
That for sure your long nose is the best style (gnomon) for the sundial.)
We know little about the reception of this collection, but the fact that the British Library has the only extant copy is one example of the importance of the Library to modern scholarship.
Christopher Joby, Adam Mickiewicz University
Christopher Joby is Professor in Dutch Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland, and Visiting Scholar at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. His research focusses on the intersection of the Dutch language and culture and other languages and cultures in a historical context. His latest book is John Cruso of Norwich and Anglo-Dutch literary identity in the seventeenth century (Cambridge: D S Brewer, 2022) DRT ELD.DS.659151 (non-print legal deposit)
27 April 2022
Reframing the Tin Book
In 1913, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), founder and chief promoter of Italian Futurism, extended the Futurist revolution to the field of typography:
My revolution is aimed at the so-called typographical harmony of the page, which is contrary to the flux and reflux, the leaps and bursts of style that run through the page. On the same page, therefore, we will use three or four colours of ink, or even twenty different typefaces if necessary […]. With this typographical revolution and this multi-coloured variety in the letters I mean to redouble the expressive force of the words, Destruction of Syntax –Imagination without Strings – Words in Freedom (1913).
The so-called ‘Tin Book’ is one of the best examples of the radical rethinking that the Futurists applied to the arts and the book in particular.
The British Library's copy of the Tin Book, digitised as part of the AHRC funded project Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020. Interart/Intermedia, was manufactured in Savona in 1932. A selection of word-in-freedom texts by Marinetti are accompanied, on the verso, by a ‘chromatic-poetic’ Futurist synthesis by Tullio d’Albisola (1899-1971), a second generation Futurist whose activities spanned ceramics, poetry, and design. The arrangement has been seen by critics as a potential flaw of the project: we cannot read simultaneously Marinetti’s words-in-freedom and d’Albisola’s visual chromatic-poetic response. Be that as it may, this object-book is no less revolutionary in the way it invites an expanded multi-sensorial reading, signalled by the proper title of the book: Parole in Libertà Futuriste Olfattive Tattili Termiche (‘Futurist Words in Freedom - Olfactory, Tactile, Thermal’).
Portrait of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti/Tullio d’Albisola Parole In Libertà Futuriste
The act of opening the book and turning the pages is first and foremost an acoustic experience. Italian artist and critic Mirella Bentivoglio performed a reading in 1982 at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The performance piece was called Jouer la page. This is how she describes it: ‘air pressed between the pages at different times and distances from the microphone produced unexpected results. The tin book proved to be a regular instrument furnished with a sounding-box. The cylinder of the spine is an elementary flute through which the pages seem to materialize as sounds’.
The Tin Book took an industrial material and turned it literally into poetry, fusing art and industry. The metallic sound evokes the ‘infinite variety of noises’ of modern life which Luigi Russolo (1885-1947) saw as part of the extraordinary diversity of sound (including music-sound and noise-sound) that would generate the new Art of Noises (The Art of Noises. A Futurist Manifesto, 11 March 1913).
The material and its sonic qualities de-familiarize the reader with the traditional sensorial experience of reading a paper (or digital) book. The association with industrial sounds, turns the book into a machine, and, on a more ordinary level, reminds the reader of the colourful packaging of tin boxes and glossy advertising metal plates that were part of interwar material and visual culture.
The smooth and rough surfaces of the pages have a visual equivalent in shiny and duller areas of the lithographed images, blurring the boundary between text, image, and object. The act of reading the Tin Book pushes meaning to the surface, allowing the reader to experience a multi-sensorial perception in which meaning is not principally held by the words in the book. The process recalls also the principles of the tavole tattili which Marinetti had composed in the later 1910s, especially during the war years. In the 1921 Manifesto of Tactilism, Marinetti introduced the new art of touch—tactilism—which was a means to reconnect with the sense of touch and use it as another important channel of communication and means to experience the world.
The introduction of concrete elements in poetry was a seismic shift in the concept of literature: the fundamental overlapping between word and image (and their connection to sound and touch) opened up new pathways to explore the boundaries between the arts, exposing the artificial separation between arts and media. The Futurist tin books, by playing with the sonic qualities of the book as object, took literature into the realms of sculpture, design and modern technology.
Giuliana Pieri, Professor of Italian and the Visual Arts and Executive Dean (School of Humanities), Royal Holloway University of London
Further reading
Futurist Manifestos, ed. by Umbro Apollonio (London, 2009).
Giovanni Lista, Le Livre Futuriste. De libération du mot au poème tactile (Modena, 1982).
Mirella Bentivoglio, ‘The Reinvention of the Book in Italy’, The Print Collector’s Newsletter, 24.3 (1993). 93-96. 6613.160000
'The Tin Book', European Studies Blog, 12 March 2014
If you are interested in finding out more about this topic, Prof Giuliana Pieri is among the speakers of the upcoming event: Italian Collections in UK Libraries: Past, Present & Future, on Friday 17 June, in person at the British Library. Bookings are open on the BL website.
08 October 2021
1848 Revolutions: the Czech perspective
‘With the sudden onset of the 2011 “Arab Spring” in the Middle East and North Africa, the phenomenon of revolution has new life in the social sciences’. This opening sentence of the article ‘The Structure of Comparison in the Study of Revolution’ by Colin J.Beck (Sociological Theory, 2018. Volume: 36 issue: 2, page(s): 134-161) indicates a growing interest in the phenomenon of revolution in social sciences. The author conceptualizes ‘comparison as a network of cases, suited for the tools of social network analysis’, as ‘in comparative studies, cases do not just exist as independent units—rather, they lie in interdependent webs of comparison’.
Such an approach might work very well in relation to sources that researchers are studying. The primary focus for information professionals is to help researchers in creating webs and networks of sources. Having checked recently the British Library Flickr account, I noticed a significant number of illustrations from the same book - Na úsvitě nové doby. Dějiny roku 1848. v zemích českých (‘At the dawn of a new age. History of 1848 in the Czech lands’) by Josef Jakub Toužimský and was surprised how well it fits with other parts of our collections.
Cover of Josef Jakub Toužimský, Na úsvitě nové doby. Dějiny roku 1848. v zemích českých (Prague, 1898) 09315.ee.17
One of our online collections guides – 1848 Revolutions – provides an overview of the British Library highlights. Toužimský’s book, with its 101 illustrations and 272 facsimiles of documents and other contemporary materials gives the Czech perspective on the events of 1848.
Chapter 5: The Fall of Metternich. Caricature of March 1848: Metternich’s March panic
Josef Toužimský was born in the year of the revolution, and published his book by its 50th anniversary. He was one of the leading Czech journalists of his time, who was interested in and focused on national liberation movements, especially in the Balkans. In 1875-76, during the Serbo-Turkish War, he worked as a correspondent for the newspaper Národní listy. After the war, he continued to work in this newspaper together with another famous Czech journalist and writer Josef Holeček.
Toužimský’s book on the Revolution of 1848 combines the author’s historic research with a unique collection of illustrations that, apart from portraits of historical figures and politicians traditional for historical books, include reproductions of caricatures from the Czech press and artistic representations of the scenes.
Medical doctor Fischhof [Adolf Fischhof, a Hungarian-Austrian writer and politician], a fighter for the rights of the peoples of Austria, contemporary portrait [by Jan Vilímek]
Metternich, a great state bloodsucker; caricature of 1848
The last job. Administrator (locking the door): So – it’s just the right time for me to disappear too; caricature of 1848.
‘Slovanka’, a female leader on the barricades during the bloody days of the 1848 Pentecost.
Franciscan Fathers on the barricades.
Symbolic drawings play a decorative function and open every chapter. The drawings most likely were created by Jan Vilímek (1860-1938), who is known as a painter of many portraits of famous Bohemians and other Slavs and a prolific illustrator for popular magazines, such as Humoristické Listy, Zlatá Praha and Světozor.
Drawing from Na úsvitě nové doby
Drawing from Na úsvitě nové doby
I hope that highlighting this book might contribute to creating wider networks of sources for researchers in history, social sciences, history of art and other subjects.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections
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