The British Library’s recent study day devoted to the French Caribbean noted the parallels between the Windrush generation and the stream of migrants to France from its overseas départements such as Martinique and Guadeloupe. Although the emphasis was on immigration in the 20th century, one of the most notable individuals to undertake this voyage did so at a much earlier date to become one of the leading figures in 19th-century French literature.

Portrait of  the young Leconte de Lisle (c. 1840) by Jean-François Millet 
(Image from Wikiart) 

Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle’s journey took him from Réunion to Rennes. Born on 22 October 1818, he had made a stay in Nantes with his parents before returning home in 1828 to attend the Collège de Saint-Denis. However, with five younger children to educate his parents were anxious to see him established in a solid profession, and despatched him to Dinan in 1837 to lodge with his uncle Louis Leconte and read law at the University of Rennes. Before long, though, he became disenchanted with his arid legal studies and was more often to be found attending lectures in classical literature and history. In addition, he founded two short-lived literary journals, La Variété (1840) and Le Scorpion (1842), both of which collapsed for lack of funds. Not surprisingly, he failed to qualify as a lawyer, and in retaliation his irate parents cut off his allowance and forced him to return to Réunion and earn his bread by carrying out humdrum duties for various businesses. He poured out his resentment and disenchantment with the people of the island in his story Saintive, where the tragic abduction of a planter’s daughter arouses only dull indifference among the apathetic creoles. He was also incensed by the fact that his father used slave labour on his plantation, and when, in 1845, friends from Rennes invited him to collaborate with them on the newspaper La Démocratie pacifique (NEWS14710) he accepted with alacrity and set off for Paris.

The newspaper was based on the ideas of the philosopher Charles Fourier, whose doctrine of Associationism represented an early form of socialism in its vision of fraternal cooperation. In the years preceding the 1848 revolution, Leconte de Lisle enthusiastically embraced these ideals and became secretary to the editor of the paper’s monthly cultural review La Phalange (1600/966). In 1846 he made friends with the classical scholar Louis Ménard and the translator Thalès Bernard, whose influence coloured the poems on Greek themes which he published at this time.

With the outbreak of revolution, he was sent back to Dinan to advocate the republican cause. This, and his open advocacy of the abolition of slavery, met with a chilly reception in the conservative Breton town and did little to improve family relations. Further disillusionment followed with the failure of the revolution and of his attempt to secure a teaching post at the Collège de Saint-Denis.

Frontispiece by Louis Duveau for Leconte de Lisle, Poésies complètes (Paris, 1858) 11474.e.12

During the 1850s, however, his fortunes gradually improved with the publication of his collections Poèmes antiques (Paris 1852; 11482.cc.27) and Poèmes et poésies (Paris, 1855; 011483.cc.20), which won the Académie Française’s Lambert Prize in 1857, enabling him to marry. Translation, too, became a major preoccupation, and in the 1860s he published versions of Theocritus’s Idylls and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. His home on the Boulevard des Invalides became a meeting-place for young writers eager to follow new directions in poetry; Louis Napoleon awarded him a generous annual pension from his private funds, and in 1866 Alphonse Lemerre published the first volume of Le Parnasse contemporain, featuring contributions by Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarmé. Its second number was devoted entirely to Leconte de Lisle’s work.

Title page of Le Parnasse contemporain for 1876. 11483.i.4

It was this journal which gave its name to the Parnassian school, of which de Lisle would become the head. Its governing principle was a belief in the discipline imposed by form and structure rather than the indulgences of personal lyricism and sensibility. However, de Lisle believed passionately in the power of poetry to restore to the modern world, jaded by industrial and commercial concerns, the vitality and wholeness of ancient Greece, and of the poet to guide mankind towards this.

Drawing on myths and legends from classical antiquity, the Celtic and Scandinavian past and further afield, he plunged himself into other worlds, seeking to become ‘a sort of contemporary of every age’ to bring them to life. His evocations of a snowy battlefield where a dying hero asks a raven to carry his heart back to his beloved in Uppsala (‘Le Coeur de Hialmar’) or an eerie landscape where a bridegroom is ensnared on the eve of his wedding by a swarm of mysterious beings (‘Les Elfes’) are among the best-known pieces in French school anthologies but retain their vividness and power to startle even nowadays. His portrayal of nature is equally vigorous, whether describing the rippling muscles of a savage jaguar, the soaring of an albatross, or the scent of cloves and lychees on a tropical island, drawing on his observations of creatures in the Jardin des Plantes, his memories of Réunion, and his first impressions of the harsh contrast of the coasts and heathlands of Brittany.

After the disappointment of 1848 Leconte de Lisle cast aside the political traits which had been present in his earliest works. Forced to recognize that the mediocre modern era could never regain the unity of art and science found in ancient Greece, he grew increasingly embittered, and in 1894, the year of his death, affirmed that ‘the beautiful is not the servant of the true, because it contains Truth’, and that ‘art is an intellectual luxury accessible only to very rare spirits’. He was also compelled to acknowledge that such an exclusive view of poetry was unlikely to provide him with a living. The pension from the imperial government which he had been criticized for accepting despite his republican views disappeared with the fall of Napoleon III, and he had to accept a post as librarian to the Senate.

Leconte de Lisle’s work also lives on in settings by Fauré, Duparc and many other composers, and in his refusal to allow his poetry to be compromised by the drabness of an era of grubby materialism, he remains a figure for our own times.

Susan Halstead, Subject Librarian (Social Sciences) Research Services.

 

Title-page of Pedro Mexia, Silva de varia lection ... (Valladolid, 1551) C.20.e.15.

John Gough Nichols in his Literary Remains of King Edward VI (London, 1857; C.101.c.2.) gives a small ‘catalogue of such of the books in the Royal Library now preserved in the British Museum’ (pp. cccxxv-cccxxxviii), including:

SILUA DE VARIA LECTION, cōpuesta por el magnifico cauallero Pedro Mexia nueuamēte agora en el año de mil y quienientos [sic] et cinquenta y vno. Valladolid, 1551,
On the last leaf are these lines, written in a very neat Italian hand:
Il pouero s’affatica molto in cercar quel che gli manca. Et il ricco in conseruare quello che egli ha. Et il virtuoso in domander [sic] quel che gli bisogna.
[Google now identifies these line as coming from Doni’s Zucca (1551)]

 The manuscript inscription from the last leaf of Silva de varia lection ...

Nicols continues:

These lines resemble so much King Edward’s best hand that they may have been regarded as his. On the sides of the book are impressed these arms, in colours – Gules, on a chevron between three fleurs-de-lis or as many hurts, which render it a doubtful whether this was really one of the King’s books.

In the British Museum Library’s main catalogue of printed books (known as ‘GK’) this hardened to: “On the verso of the last leaf is written an Italian proverb, most probably in the handwriting of Edward VI., to whom the volume belonged.”

If Nichols was sceptical, T.A. Birrell was even more so: as he points out, the ‘E VI’ on the spine need mean no more than that the book was printed in his reign (p. 13).

And what could be less revealing of identity than a fine Italic hand?

The Tudors were all good linguists. Edward’s Greek and Latin were excellent, possibly better than his French: “conversing with him in Latin, Edward asked [Hieronymus] Cardano about his recent book which had been dedicated to him. There then ensued a debate upon the nature of comets, during which Cardano considered Edward ‘spoke Latin as politely and fluently as I did’” (Skidmore, p. 240).

I’ve no evidence of his knowledge of Spanish. There are no manuscript annotations in (t)his copy of Mexia, before you ask.

Whether this copy was Edward’s or not, it was a much-read book in its time throughout Europe. It’s a compendium of miscellaneous, curious knowledge, some of it useful and some of it useless (if knowledge is ever useless). Subjects include: did early men live longer than the moderns? The history of the Turks (a hot topic in 1540); the history of the Amazons; why a small head and broad chest is a bad sign; do mermen exist? Who was the first person to tame a lion? And many many more.

It attracted the attention of the Inquisition, who demanded the chapter on Pope Joan (I, ix) to be expurgated.

The entry for Silva de varia lection from the Novus index librorum prohibitorum et expurgatorum, issued by Cardinal Antonio Zapata (Seville, 1632) 617.l.27., p. 829 

Inquisition notwithstanding, Mexia was a best seller in Spanish (27 editions from 1540 to 1673), Italian (23 from 1544 to 1682), French (36 from 1552 to 1675), English (six from 1571 to 1651) and Dutch (four from 1588 to 1617).

What to me is interesting is not only the number of editions but that Mexia fell from favour in the 1670s and had disappeared by the 1680s.

Birrell charmingly calls it a “bedside book”, and although I don’t actually keep it by my pillow, I can attest from personal experience that it’s certainly good to dip into.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies

References

T. A. Birrell, English Monarchs and Their Books from Henry VII to Charles II, The Panizzi Lectures 1986 (London, 1987) 2719.e.1586

Chris Skidmore, Edward VI, the Lost King of England (London, 2007) YC.2007.a.8001

Of the over 1000 books on the subject of the mafia held at the British Library, about 700 were published after 1992, when the murders of Judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino made the whole world talk about the Sicilian mafia. Before then, in the 1980s, it was not uncommon to hear that ‘the mafia didn’t exist’, or that it only existed in Palermo, but not in the rest of Sicily. Denouncing the businesses of Sicilian Cosa Nostra, and its ties with the Italian government, had a high price to pay for too many intellectuals. Just to mention two, in 1978, Giuseppe ‘Peppino’ Impastato, and, in 1984, Giuseppe ‘Pippo’ Fava, paid for their work with their lives. Peppino Impastato was a political activist, who didn’t leave many writings behind. The other Giuseppe, on the other hand, was a celebrated playwright, a writer and an investigative journalist, so we have collected most of his works since the 1970s and have recently acquired the full run of the magazine that he edited until his murder, and which was the reason for his murder, I Siciliani.

 Giuseppe ‘Pippo’ Fava (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)

Coming from rural Sicily, Pippo Fava moved to the town of Catania to study law, and then became a professional journalist in 1952. He wrote for several newspapers and magazines, also establishing himself as author for theatre and cinema (he co-wrote the movie Palermo or Wolfsburg, which won the Golden Bear at the 1980 Berlinale). Given the task of editing Il Giornale del Sud, Fava recruited a team of young journalists and photographers to help him carry out some serious investigative journalism. When he was fired by the owners, who would have preferred him to avoid writing so much about the mafia, he used his charisma and influence to persuade these young journalists to join him in creating a fully independent and self-funded monthly magazine, a loud voice for the anti-mafia movement in Sicily, I Siciliani.

 Issues of I Siciliani 

Poor in budget but rich in ideas, Fava started with a very clear agenda of the topics to tackle. He wanted people to see Sicily as it really was. Showing the bad was a moral and ethical duty. Murders were photographed and reported without filters, corruptors were named and shamed. The damage to the environment caused by industrial and building speculation was clear to him, and he was not ashamed to talk about it. His stories are still relevant. His most important contribution was identifying the links between national politicians and the mafia, and stating that the mafia was effectively ruling the country; this was something Pippo Fava was saying out loud at times when nobody was ready to hear it (Pippo Fava’s last interview with Enzo Biagi, December 1983). But I Siciliani also portrays normal life, showing both the rich and profound culture of the island and as the urban lifestyle that must have surprised those who thought of Sicily as the land of The Godfather.

In the first issue, dated January 1983, in his first editorial, Fava was the first to talk about the Catanian mafia, whose existence everyone else was trying to deny. He names the powerful entrepreneurs behind it; he shows their faces, as well as that of Bernardo ‘Nitto’ Santapaola, the local mafia boss.

Giuseppe Fava, ‘I Quattro Cavalieri dell’Apocalisse Mafiosa’ (above) and Bernardo Santapaola (below), from I Siciliani, Issue 1, January 1983.

It wouldn’t be long. One year later, that same man ordered his murder. Pippo Fava was killed on 5 January 1984, on his way to pick up his grandniece from a theatre rehearsal. I Siciliani tried to survive for a few more years, penniless, mostly relying on subscriptions and a few brave advertisers who didn’t fear the isolation of the magazine.

If you read it now, I Siciliani is still as shocking, powerful and compelling as it was 30 years ago. The issues are still there. The love for the place is still there. Nothing ever changes in Sicily: If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo)

Valentina Mirabella, Curator of Romance Collections (Italian) @miravale

References/Further Reading

I Siciliani (Sant’Agata li Li Battiati, 1982-[1985]) ZF.9.b.2335

Giuseppe Fava, Gente di rispetto (Milan, 1975) X.909/34407

Giuseppe Fava, Passione di Michele (Bologna, 1980) X.950/20292

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (London, 1974) X.908/28903

We have recently added a new book to our Italian Futurist collection. Guerrapittura is an important example of the synergy of text and graphics in Italian Futurist books. Some other acquisitions were made for the exhibition Breaking the Rules. The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937 in 2008, and our collections are constantly growing.

Carlo Carra’, Guerrapittura: futurismo politico, dinamismo plastico, 12 disegni guerreschi, parole in libertà (Milan, 1915) RF.2018.b.187

The Italian painter Carlo Carra’ wrote Guerrapittura (‘War-painting’) in 1915, when the First World War had started but Italy had not yet entered the conflict. His words are an important contribution to the interventismo (interventionism), where artists and intellectuals played a huge role in lobbying the public opinion to enter the War.

Guerrapittura is Carra’s last contribution to the Futurist movement. From 1917 he joined the painter Giorgio De Chirico on his conception of pittura metafisica. His patriotic views are expressed quite strongly in Guerrapittura, the war being an ‘incentive to creativity’ and a way to celebrate the ‘Italian creative genius’. The War is seen as the climax of the futurist way of thinking, an encounter between art and life, the last step towards an industrialized world. Literature and painting meet in the book, which features the iconic leaflet ‘Sintesi futurista della guerra’, authored on 29 September 1914 by Carra’, together with Marinetti, Boccioni, Piatti and Russolo. The ‘words in freedom’ in the leaflet celebrate FUTURISM vs TRADITIONALISM. Futurism is represented by Russia, France, Belgium, Serbia, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, Great Britain, against the traditionalism of Germany and Austria.

‘Sintesi futurista della Guerra’, from Guerrapittura, p. 109

The violence and ugliness of war are ignored in his words and in those of his fellow futurists, like in the magazine Lacerba, whose intolerant and anti-democratic views mirror those of Carra’ in Guerrapittura. Lacerba’s short life was linked to the interventismo from 1913-1915 and its reason to exist ceased when the war started. The last issue of Lacerba, dated 1915, celebrates Italy entering the War.

Lacerba, 15 May 1915, from the facsimile reprint Lacerba. Firenze, 1913-1915 (Rome, 1970). L.45/2625

The acquisition of Guerrapittura has been made possible by the Mirella De Sanctis special fund for the purchase of Italian books.

Valentina Mirabella, Curator, Romance Collections

Further reading

Breaking the Rules: the Printed Face of the European Avant Garde, 1900-1937 (London, 2007) YC.2008.b.251.

Mirella Bentivoglio ‘Innovative Artist’s Books of Italian Futurism’ in International Futurism in Arts and Literature, edited by Günter Berghaus (Berlin, 2000), pp. 473-486. YA.2002.a.8247.

Futurismo & Futurismi (Milan, 1986) YV.1986.b.694. [English edition (London, 1986) at YV.1987.b.2043.]

 

On Monday 24 September 2018 we will be holding a French Caribbean study day in the British Library Knowledge Centre.
This event accompanies the British Library’s current free Entrance Hall Exhibition, ‘Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land’, and celebrates the rich history, heritage, literature and visual arts of the French Caribbean and its diaspora.

The French Antilles. Detail from  Guillaume de l’Isle, Carte des Antilles françoise et des isles voisines (Amsterdam, between 1717 and 1730) Maps K.Top.123.65.

Our keynote speaker, H. Adlai Murdoch (Tufts University), introduces the multifaceted cultures and histories of the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Panels of leading specialists will explore the fascinating history and heritage of the French Caribbean as well as its rich literature. Our panellists will also discuss migration and its impact on postwar immigrants and their descendants.  There will be presentations on the graphic novel Peyi An Nou and on the British Library’s Windrush exhibition.

Cover of Jessica Oublié and Marie-Ange Rousseau, Peyi An Nou (Paris, 2017) YF.2018.a.5995

The programme for the study day is as follows: 

10.15-10.45  - Registration. Tea/Coffee (Dickens Room)
10.45-10.55  - Welcome: Janet Zmroczek (Head of European and Americas Collections, British Library)
10.55-11.40 -  Keynote: H. Adlai Murdoch (Tufts), ‘Introduction to the Francophone Caribbean: a comparative perspective’
11.40-11.45 -  Break
11.45-12.35  - Panel 1: History, heritage and migration
With Sophie Fuggle (Nottingham Trent), Antonia Wimbush (Birmingham), Emily Zobel Marshall (Leeds Beckett) (Chair: Gitanjali Pyndiah)
12.35-13.05 - Elizabeth Cooper (British Library) ‘Introduction to the British Library’s current Entrance Hall exhibition ‘Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land’’ (Chair: Phil Hatfield, Eccles Centre, British Library)
13.05-14.00 - Lunch. A sandwich lunch will be provided.
14.00-15.00 - Panel 2: Francophone Caribbean Literature
With Jason Allen-Paisant (Leeds), Vanessa Lee (Oxford), Kathryn Batchelor (Nottingham)
15.00-15.30 - Tea/Coffee
15.30-16.30  - Jessica Oublié (Author) and Marie-Ange Rousseau (Illustrator): Presentation of the graphic novel Peyi An Nou (‘Our Country’) (Chair: Charles Forsdick)
The presentation will be in French and an English version will be supplied.
16.30-17.00  - Jean-François Manicom (Acting Curator, International Slavery Museum, Liverpool) ‘Visual arts in the Caribbean’ (TBC)
17.00-18.00 - Wine reception sponsored by the Eccles Centre for American Studies

The study day has been organised by Professor Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool/AHRC) and Teresa Vernon (British Library). in partnership with the AHRC ‘Translating Cultures’ theme, the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library and the Institut français.

View of Fort Royal, Martinique, 1679. MS Add.28788, f.57.

The study day will be followed by a French Caribbean evening at the Institut français in South Kensington, organised in partnership with Festival America, the AHRC and the British Library, beginning at 19.00. This will be an exceptional opportunity to hear acclaimed Montreal-based Haitian writer Dany Laferrière talk about his writing and in particular his L’énigme du retour (The Enigma of the Return). The talk will be followed by a music session with Guadeloupean drummer Arnaud Dolmen, after an introduction to ‘jazz creole’ from journalist Kevin Le Gendre. 

Booking is open for both events. Please note that separate ticket are required for each. You can book for the study day online at https://www.bl.uk/events/translating-cultures-french-caribbean-history-literature-and-migration, or by contacting the British Library Box Office (+44 (0)1937 546546; box office@bl.uk). Bookings of for the evening event can be made at  https://www.institut-francais.org.uk/events-calendar/whats-on/talks/dany-laferriere/ 

Teresa Vernon, Lead Curator Romance Language Collections

One of the things I wanted to explore as part of my tenure as the British Library’s translator-in-residence was the way in which dominant or colonial languages absorb minority languages and the tongues of the colonised, from speech patterns in Welsh or Irish forms of English that obviously originating in the Celtic languages (‘I’m just after seeing him’ ‘Cold I am’), to the many words from Hindi, Arabic, Nahuatl, Yiddish etc., that are so essential in modern English. After all, where would we be without, ‘Chocolate’, ‘Chutzpah’, or indeed ‘Alcohol’? Or indeed, the words ‘thug’, ‘loot’, ‘juggernaut’ and ‘shampoo’, all of which entered English from Indian languages over the course of the 300 or so years of British presence in India.

 Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words ... New edition edited by William Crooke (Delhi, 1968). LEX.26

The son of an Indian father, I’ve for a long time been aware of the great lexicon of British India, A.C. Burnell and Henry Yule’s Hobson-Jobson, first published in 1903. The name itself, a mangling of the mourning cries of ‘Ya Hassan! Ya Hosain!’ in the Shia festival of Muharram, this eclectic and idiosyncratic glossary of words that entered English from the Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Persian, Chinese and Indian languages, has been called ‘the legendary dictionary of British India’ by none other than Salman Rushdie. Its influence has been great, with over 500 of its entries ending up in the OED, and the variety of its entries, including discussions of etymology, political asides and witty anecdotes, makes it a highly entertaining read. The entry for ‘mosquito’, for example, ends with the tale of a Scottish woman who, upon arrival in India apparently thought the first elephant she saw was an example of the dreaded mosquitoes she’d heard so much about!

An entry from Hobson-Jobson for the word ‘Bumba’, borrowed by Hindi from Portuguese and by English from Hindi.

Of course, English was not the only colonial language, and at its pinnacle the spread of the Portuguese empire was wide enough to rival that of its British counterpart. Likewise, Portuguese has been similarly marked by its encounters with, for example, Tupi in Brazil, Kimbundu in Angola and the many Asian languages spoken in former Portuguese territories, from Konkani in Goa to Tetun in Timor. Two of my favourite examples of loan words in Portuguese are actually both Arabic in origin: ‘salamaleques’, from the Muslim salutation, meaning an excessive or exaggerated greeting, and ‘mameluco’, taken from the Egyptian Mamluk dynasty, which in Brazil came to be used to describe the offspring of one European and one Native parent, and more generally people of mixed race-origin. Working in the other direction, food lovers may have noted that the name of the popular Mumbai snack, Pav Bhaji, where a curry is soaked up with Western-style bread comes from the Portuguese word for bread, ‘pão’.

In a conversation with Barry Taylor, the BL’s curator for Spanish and Portuguese, I asked if he knew of a Portuguese version of Hobson-Jobson, detailing the Asian words used during Portuguese rule in Asia, or in Portugal itself. All Barry had to do was email the right person, and within a week I was in possession of both volumes of Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado’s Glossário Luso-Asiático, the format of which pretty much mirrors that of Yule and Barnell’s tome.

 Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado, Glossário Luso-Asiático (Hamburg, 1983), X.0909/919

Though the Glossário lacks some of the wit of Hobson-Jobson, in its own way it’s as unique and idiosyncratic as its English-language cousin, by which it was clearly influenced, and which provided a source for some of its entries. Of Indian rather than European ethnicity, Dalgado was born into a family of Goan Brahmin Catholic converts, and as well as being a Catholic priest, wrote numerous studies of language in India, including a Konkani-Portuguese dictionary and several glossaries of Indo-Portuguese dialects across the sub-continent. Eschewing scholarly impartiality, his preface starts with a lament for the short-lived glory of Portuguese Asia, which despite leaving its traces across the continent in place names such as Colombo, Bombay and Formosa was very small by 1919. He takes solace in his belief that Portugal was ‘(the) heroic nation which, opening up the doors of the Orient, was the first to plant the seeds of Western civilisation, conquering lands for the king and gaining souls for Christ’, but is also quick to insist that ‘the Portuguese conquest is distinct from the others…owing to its efforts in bringing civilisation…and its highly egalitarian politics’.

 Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Just as Dalgado himself was the product of a complex Luso-Indian colonial context, cross-referencing the Glossário and Hobson-Jobson produces some interesting case studies For example, the English word ‘nabob’ did not come straight from the Hindustani ‘nawab’ but from the Portuguese corruption, ‘nababo’. The word originally described only the high-ranking governors who served under the Great Moghul, before becoming a ‘a title occasionally conferred, like a peerage, on Mohammedan gentlemen of distinction’. In English, however, it became far more familiar as a term used to describe those English people who returned from the East with great riches. Elsewhere, Hobson-Jobson notes that the term ‘Bengal’ once denoted a kind of wood from that region, but that it was barely used at the time of publication. The Glossário, on the other hand, describes how the specific term ‘cana de Bengala’ (Bengal-wood cane) was a specific term which was eventually shortened simply to ‘Bengala’, and in modern Portuguese is the common term for any kind of walking-stick.

 Entry for ‘Bengala’ from Glossário Luso-Asiático

Leaving aside other aspects of empire and colonialism for a moment, I feel one would be hard pressed to argue that English and Portuguese were not enriched by their encounters, violent or otherwise, with cultures in Asia, Africa and the Americas. To put these two books side-by-side is a fascinating comparative study of the differing fates of each country’s colonial project and a testament to the remarkable adaptability of language itself.

Rahul Bery, Translator in Residence

Authors mindful of the Duke of Wellington’s notorious injunction ‘Publish and be damned!’ might profitably consider the advice of a famous contemporary of the Iron Duke who decreed that his memoirs were to be published only after his death. True, this means sacrificing potential royalties, but at the same time avoids the libel actions which might follow the publication of indiscreet or controversial recollections – of which François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, included plenty in his Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe (1849-50).

 Woodcut of Chateaubriand by Jeanne Malivel (1922), reproduced on the cover of Chateaubriand 98 (Rennes, 1998) YA.2000.a.37359.

He was born in 1768 in St.-Malo, and grew up with nine older brothers and sisters in the family château at Cambourg. He was especially close to his sister Lucile, and her company, together with long walks through the Breton countryside, relieved a childhood overshadowed by his father’s sombre temperament. After retiring from a career at sea, the elder René had become a ship-owner and slave-trader, but had bequeathed to his youngest son a thirst for travel, and after considering the priesthood or the navy, René junior decided on a military career. He rapidly obtained a captaincy and, in Paris, moved in literary circles where he met André Chenier and other leading writers of his day. However, the outbreak of the French Revolution made his aristocratic origins dangerous, and in 1791 he set sail for America.

This was a time when naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt were discovering the unique flora and fauna of the New World, and Chateaubriand was keen to learn more about its botany, but also about the customs of its native inhabitants. A broken arm provided him with an opportunity to do so when an accident which he suffered as he followed the Mohawk trail towards Niagara Falls left him unable to travel for a month which he spent with a local tribe. The observations which he made there inspired him to write two linked novellas set in the region, Atala (1801) and René (1802). Both these contain not only detailed descriptions of the landscape and life in a Native American tribe but also rebuttals of Rousseau’s ideal of the ‘noble savage’; the brutality of the indigenous peoples is contrasted with the saintly qualities of the missionaries working among them, not surprisingly in a work which would form part of his Génie du christianisme (Paris, 1802; 223.h.12).

 The burial of Atala, from a Spanish translation, Atala y René. Episodios del “Genio del Cristianismo” (Barcelona, 1827) 1481.aa.16. 

In later years, though, Chateaubriand would heartily regret having written René at all. Its huge popularity threatened to make him into a one-book author who, like Goethe with his Werther, had captivated impressionable readers with his depiction of the world-weary wanderings of a hero whose ennui and near-incestuous relationship with his sister Amélie inspired not only Lord Byron but a host of lesser imitators. In a short time these tales were being not only widely translated but also parodied; in 1801 Louis-Julien Breton published Alala, ou les habitans du désert, satirizing readers’ obsession with the exotic world conjured up by Chateaubriand.

 Louis-Julien Breton, Alala, ou les habitans du désert (Paris, 1801) RB.23.a.37562.

In 1792 Chateaubriand returned to France in such penury that he had to borrow money to pay the captain who had brought him across the Atlantic. He was persuaded by his family to enter into an arranged marriage with Céleste Buisson de la Vigne, the daughter of another Breton noble family; the bride was 17 and the couple had never met before their wedding, performed in secret by a ‘refractory’ priest followed by a second ceremony by one who had sworn allegiance to the new regime. Shortly afterwards the groom set off for Coblenz to join the Breton Regiment in the Armée des Princes, a corps of émigré nobles supporting the royalist cause. Until called to serve in the siege of Thionville, he passed his time working on Atala and acting as a cook; during the siege, he received a leg wound which could have been far more serious had the manuscript in his pack not protected him. He managed to limp to Brussels where, with the help of his brother, he set out for exile in England but was put ashore in the Channel Islands as the captain doubted that he would survive the voyage. Defying all expectations, he reached Beccles to teach French, and then moved to Bungay in Suffolk, where he met and fell deeply in love with Charlotte Ives, a clergyman’s daughter. The family would happily have accepted him as a suitor, but he was forced to confess that he was already married and flee to London.

 Cover of Terry Reeve, Only the Springtime (Peterborough, 2011) H.2012/.7482, a novel inspired by Chateaubriand’s time in Suffolk.

In 1797 Chateaubriand finally completed his Essai historique, politique et moral sur les révolutions anciennes et modernes, considérées dans leurs rapports avec la Révolution Française, claiming to offer the compendium of his existence as poet, moralist, publicist and politician’.

  Title-page of  Essai historique, politique et moral sur les révolutions anciennes et modernes, considérées dans leurs rapports avec la Révolution Française (London, 1797) C.133.d.6.

On returning to France in 1800 under an assumed name, he achieved fame at last with Atala, and then as a defender of Christianity in his Génie du christianisme. Taken up by Napoleon, he was appointed secretary of the French Embassy in Rome, the beginning of a distinguished if turbulent diplomatic and political career which culminated in his ambassadorship to Rome. The outbreak of the July Revolution of 1830, however, led to his resignation and financial ruin which left him with little more to his name than the late Pope Pius VIII’s cat, especially when he refused to swear allegiance to the new king Louis-Philippe and resigned his status as pair de France. 

Pencil sketch by Claudius Lavergne of Chateaubriand in 1835, reproduced in Chateaubriand 98

Despite this, Chateaubriand’s final years were full of political and romantic intrigue surrounding the son of the murdered Duc de Berry, recognized by legitimists as Henri V, and the famous salonnière Madame Récamier, to whom the widowed Chateaubriand unsuccessfully proposed. He died shortly afterwards in 1848, having witnessed another revolution; his colourful life befits the founder of French Romanticism, who may indeed be regarded as a true ‘cousin à la mode de Bretagne’ to Byron.

Susan Halstead, Subject Librarian (Social Sciences), Research Services.

 

Visitors to the recent exhibition Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece at the British Museum will have seen, among the photographs of the sculptor at work in his studio among his disciples, the image of a dark-haired young woman whose gaze was equally intense when fixed on the master or on her own work – Rodin’s pupil, model and mistress Camille Claudel.  Her stormy relationship with him and her reputation as a pioneering woman sculptor, depicted in biographies, plays and films, have raised her profile outside her native France, where, despite this, the name Claudel is more readily associated with her younger brother Paul.

Together with their sister, Camille and Paul grew up in Villeneuve-sur-Fère (Aisne) in a family with solid roots in farming and banking. The young Paul’s approach to spiritual matters was equally rational and prosaic, tending towards atheism, until at the age of 18 he underwent a profound conversion experience while hearing the choir of Notre-Dame singing Vespers on Christmas Day. He remained a devout Catholic for the rest of his life, and considered becoming a Benedictine monk. Instead, however, he went into the diplomatic service, and found an outlet for his religious fervour in poetry and drama.

At the same time, his experiences of living in other countries provided him not only with inspiration but also with a deeper understanding of their cultures than the mere taste for exoticism. and especially for Oriental culture, common in France at the turn of the century. He made rapid progress in his career, rising from first vice-consul in New York and Boston to become French consul in China, living in Shanghai, Fuzhou and Tientsin, before being posted to Prague in December 1909.

 Paul Claudel during his time as consul in Prague, reproduced in Paul Claudel et la Bohême: dissonances et accord, ed. Didier Alexandre & Xavier Galmiche (Paris, 2015) YF.2016.a.2114

Czech artists and authors had already established a thriving community in Paris in the 19th and early 20th century, and Claudel’s time in Prague similarly contributed to the deepening of cultural relationships between France and Bohemia. One of his most important contacts was with the Czech artist Zdenka Braunerová, who introduced him to her circle of friends, including Vilém Mrštík, Julius Zeyer and Jan Zrzavý. She had spent part of every year in Paris during the period 1881-1893, promoted Czech culture in France, and invited Auguste Rodin to visit Bohemia and Moravia in 1905. Claudel chose her as godmother to his daughter, born during his residence in Prague, and their lasting friendship enhanced the understanding of Czech art in France and of French literature in Bohemia.

Inspired by his exploration of the Czech spirit and its expression in art, Claudel composed a sequence of poems, Images saintes de Bohême, of which the British Library possesses a bilingual edition in French and Czech a testimony to the deep impression made on him by a city which he had initially greeted with distaste as an ‘icy bivouac’.

 ‘St Ludmila’, illustration by Miroslav Šašek from Paul Claudel, Images saintes de Bohême = Svaté obrázky České (Rome, 1958) 11517.p.35.

Claudel subsequently served as consul in Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg, as ministre plénipotentiaire in Rio de Janeiro and Copenhagen, and as ambassador in Tokyo, Washington, D.C. and Brussels. Several of his works were published abroad, including his translation of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (Fuzhou, 1896; YA.1986.a.1815) and the exquisite edition of his poem ‘Sainte Geneviève’, composed in Rio de Janeiro in July 1918 and issued in a limited edition with Japanese woodcuts executed in Tokyo from drawings by Claudel’s friend Audrey Parr.

Title-page (above) and illustrated fold-out page (below) from Sainte Geneviève (Tokyo, 1923) Cup.410.c.170

Although initially influenced by Rimbaud and the Symbolists, Claudel struck out in a different direction, deeply imbued with his Catholic faith. Not surprisingly, the saints frequently figured in his work; for example, he provided the text for his friend Arthur Honegger’s oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (s.l., [1935]; Music Collections I.1650), and also wrote a poem on St Thérèse of Lisieux, published in another limited edition with illustrations by Maurice Denis.

 Opening of Sainte Thérèse ([Paris], 1916) 11483.h.49.

Among the treasures in the British Library’s Stefan Zweig Collection of Manuscripts  is a fair copy of Claudel’s play L’Annonce faite à Marie (1911), signed by the author and presented to Zweig in 1913. Like his other dramas, such as the Everyman-like Le Soulier de satin (Paris, 1929; 12516.v.27), set in the age of the Conquistadores, it explores the timeless themes of human responsibility, guilt and divine grace.

 Dedication to Zweig and opening of the prologue, from the manuscript of L’Annonce faite à Marie. Zweig MS 139. Ff.2v, 3r  (below)

The careers of Camille and Paul Claudel appeared to diverge widely; while one plunged into an unconventional milieu and died in an asylum, the other was outwardly a pattern of respectability, representing his country abroad and forming part of the Catholic literary tradition continued by Mauriac and Gide. Yet both, equally controversially, pursued their chosen forms of art with a passion and intensity which sought to transcend the banalities of everyday life and infuse it, even at its humblest, with a spark of the divine, as may be glimpsed from a few lines of one of Paul Claudel’s poems in the metre that he devised:

Now winter has come in earnest, and St Nicholas trudges again
Through the firs; two sacks on his donkey, full of toys for the young of Lorraine.
There’s an end to mouldering autumn, and the snow is here with good reason;
There’s an end to the autumn and summer, and all the other seasons.
(O all that was still not finished, where this black soaked path, yesterday, went
Under the ragged birch in the mists, and the great oak with its strong scent!)
[…]
But in a white world there are only angels completely at ease;
There is not a living man in all of the diocese,
There is not a soul awake, not even a small boy breathing,
O mighty Bishop of Myra, at the hour of your coming at evening!

‘St. Nicolas’, from Corona benignitatis anni Dei (1915).
This translation © Susan Reynolds, 2011.

Susan Halstead, Subject Librarian (Social Sciences), Research Services

It is a cliché in the world of publishing that nobody loves a one-book author, but one which Emily Brontë  proved wrong with a defiance wholly in keeping with her character. When Maria, the wife of the Irish-born clergyman Patrick Brontë, gave birth to her fifth child and fourth daughter on 30 July 1818, she also unwittingly contributed to a legend which would put the Yorkshire moors well and truly on the map and send hordes of tourists scurrying to the bleak and remote village of Haworth.

200 years later, the flood shows no sign of abating. The short lives of Emily and her siblings Charlotte, Branwell and Anne continue to capture the imagination of readers throughout the world, and their writings are studied by scholars, dissected as set books in schools and colleges, and devoured by those captivated by the fortunes of Jane Eyre or the passions of Heathcliff and Cathy. Still others know the Brontës’ works through dramatizations, films or Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’; Emily Brontë’s novel of the same name, first published in 1847, would inspire operas by Bernard Hermann, Carlisle Floyd ([United States], 1958; 11792.bb.78) and, in French, by Thomas Stubbs to a libretto by Philippe Hériat (Paris, 1961; 11303.i.103), as well as a 1996 musical starring Cliff Richard as a somewhat unlikely Heathcliff.

Later novelists drew on them for fantasies such as Rachel Ferguson’s The Brontës went to Woolworths (Harmondsworth, 1940; 12208.a.1/245) and Jennifer Vandever’s The Brontë Project (London, 2006; H.2007/2870), while others wittily satirize the Brontë industry. In Milly Johnson’s White Wedding (London, 2012; H.2013/.5979) the sparky heroine Bel visits Haworth and is startled to discover Isabella’s Chilli Con Carne, Linton Trifle and Wuthering Heights Bakewell Tart on the menu in Cathy’s Café, while Charlie Rhymer, the narrator of Trisha Ashley’s Every Woman for Herself (Long Preston, 2002/2003; LT.2013.x.1215) and her siblings are the products of her eccentric father’s ‘breed your own Brontës’ project, designed to prove his theory that Branwell actually wrote his sisters’ works (it goes awry – his own Branwell turns out to be an expert on Amharic and Anne no meek governess but a feisty war correspondent).

Before any of this, however, the first medium by which Wuthering Heights conquered the hearts of readers worldwide was translation. The British Library holds a wide selection of versions in 13 languages, including Assamese and Burmese, Polish and Hungarian, testifying to the novel’s power to overcome the boundaries of space, language and culture. It shares this with the work of an author equally skilled in evoking the landscape of northern England on the other side of the Pennines – Beatrix Potter. Yet while the biggest hurdle facing Potter’s translators might be the unusual names invented for her characters, those attempting to tackle Emily Brontë’s novel are confronted with a major obstacle in the very first word on the title-page: how best to convey the eerie, haunting and very specifically Yorkshire nature of ‘wuthering’? Add to this the impenetrable dialect of the old servant Joseph, which many a native English speaker finds barely intelligible, and you have a challenge capable of reducing even the most skilful linguist to wails as despairing as those of Cathy’s ghost as she seeks to find a way back into her old home.

The names of the characters are less of a problem; they mostly remain as they are, with the only question being whether to leave Cathy and young Catherine, her daughter, with their original names or transform them into a Slavonic Katka and Kateřina Lintonová, as Květa Marysková does in her translation Na Větrné hůrce.

Above: title-page and frontispiece by Zdeněk Brdlík from Emily Bronteová, Na Větrné hůrce (Prague, 1960; YF.2012.a.25773). Below: a brooding Heathcliff by the same artist, pictured later in the book.

Marysková opts for a translation of the title which suggests the windswept nature of the landscape, something which is also conveyed by the stormy notes of the Russian Grozovoĭ pereval (Moscow, 1990; YA.1994.a.3286), the Italian Cime tempestuose (Milan, 1926; 012604.cc.1) and the Spanish Cumbres borrascosas (Barcelona, 1963; W23/2895).

None of these, though, achieves the splendid onomatopoeia of the French translation by Frédéric Delebecque, Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent (Paris, 1925; 012601.dd.23), although the ‘traduction nouvelle de Georges-Michel Bovay’ (Lausanne, 1944; YA.1994.a.8093) breaks off in a completely different direction with Les Hauteurs tourmentées – an allusion, perhaps, to the proud and stubborn spirits of Heathcliff and Cathy? This, however, proved too much for the more prosaic Dutch translator Elisabeth de Roos, who simply rendered the heights ‘desolate’ or ‘bleak’ (De Woeste Hoogte).

Title-page (above) and vignette (below) from De Woeste Hoogte (Amsterdam, 1941; X.950/11265); wood engravings by Nico Builder. 

Fittingly, in view of the Brontës’ Irish ancestry, the British Library possesses a copy of a translation into Irish by Seán Ó Ciosáin which very sensibly interferes with the title as little as possible:

 Seán Ó Ciosáin’s Irish translation of Wuthering Heights (Baile átha Cliath, 1933; 875.k.58.)

It may be that the exigencies of attempting to grapple with the title or render Joseph’s Yorkshire fulminations comprehensible in plain language (‘Honte sur vous! Asseyez-vous, méchants enfants!’) left translators with little energy for the flights of fancy inspired by another Brontë sister’s most famous creation  but with the British Library’s Translating Cultures study day on the French Caribbean coming up  it is worth noting that in her novel La Migration des coeurs (Paris, 1995; YA.1996.b.3850) Maryse Condé transposes the story of Heathcliff and Cathy (Razyé and Catherine Gagneur) to her native Guadeloupe. It bears the dedication: ‘À Emily Brontë qui, j’espère, agréera cette lecture de son chef-d’oeuvre. Honneur et respect!’ – a sentiment surely shared by Emily Brontë’s readers, translators and admirers throughout the world on her 200th birthday.

Susan Halstead,  Subject Librarian (Social Sciences), Research Services.

Not many people have a good word for tobacco nowadays, but the Spanish physician Antonio Lavedán gives cases for and against all four commodities, collected out of authorities ancient and modern, in his Tratado de los usos, abusos, propiedades del tabaco, café, té y chocolate of 1796.

 Title-page of Antonio Lavedán, Tratado de los usos, abusos, propiedades del tabaco, café, té y chocolate: extractado de los mejores autores que han tratado de esta materia (Madrid, 1796). RB.23.a.38178

In favour of tobacco, he says it is a simple, that is a drug taken straight. He gives full details of how the Indians of South America take it. Some early authors say it was cultivated ‘for the delight of the eyes’; but the Inca Garcilaso says the Indians ‘took it through in powdered form to unload the head through the nostrils’ (p. 18). People of quality in the Indies take it in rolls called tigarillos (p. 22). It’s interesting that so great was the authority of Galen that Lavedán cites him constantly on the subject of a plant which he could not possibly have known (p. 42). The humours are still going strong in 1796: tobacco will benefit or harm a person according to whether his habitation is cold and dry (may be used in moderation); hot and dry (don’t touch it); cold and wet; or hot and wet (take as much as you like, as it will expel the humours).

A seller of coffee, tobacco, tea and chocolate, from Assemblage nouveau des manouvries habilles = Samlung der mit ihren eigenen Arbeiten und Werckzeugen eingekleideten Künstlern, Handwerckern und Professionen. (Augsburg, 1735) 1266.i.15

Now for coffee. It was virtually unknown in the West before the 16th century (p. 103). All agree it’s good for sedentary persons of weak condition; it destroys cold humours, strengthens the stomach, helps digestion and cures palpitations (p. 110-11). On the other hand, it’s bad for melancholy and bilious persons and older women (p. 116). It’s particularly bad for persons of letters, as it causes sleeplessness, tremors, and premature old age.

Tea is not as common in Spain as in England, Holland or the East Indies. Its effects are generally positive, though Lavedán says they are hard to prove (167). He describes an experiment in which some beef in steeped in water and some in a mixture of two teas: the meat rotted in 48 hours in the water; the meat in tea had not decayed after 72 hours (pp. 168-69).

 The opening of Lavedán’s chapter on tea. 

The medical effects of chocolate are also controverted, but vary according to the humours of the patient, unumquodque recipitur admodum recipientis (p. 225). It is beneficial when taken in the morning (let’s remember we’re talking about drinking chocolate) but not later in the day, as it mixes with food (p. 223). Its effects are weakened by constant use (p. 228).

Humoral though he is, Lavedán is no moralist: his concerns are wholly medical.

Lavedán seems to have been a compiler and translator of books on medical subjects. The British Library also has his Tratado de las enfermedades epidémicas, pútridas, contagiosas, y pestilentes, traducido y recopilado de varios autores (Madrid, 1802; 7561.dd.24).

 Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies