I get up in the evenin’ And I ain’t got nothin’ to say I come home in the mornin’ I go to bed feelin’ the same way I ain’t nothin’ but tired Man, I’m just tired and bored with myself Hey there, baby, I could use just a little help
You can’t start a fire You can’t start a fire without a spark This gun’s for hire Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark
Messages keep gettin’ clearer Radio’s on and I’m movin’ ’round my place I check my look in the mirror Wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face Man, I ain’t gettin’ nowhere I’m just livin’ in a dump like this There’s somethin’ happenin’ somewhere Baby, I just know that there is
You can’t start a fire You can’t start a fire without a spark This gun’s for hire Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark
You sit around gettin’ older There’s a joke here somewhere and it’s on me I’ll shake this world off my shoulders Come on, baby, the laugh’s on me
Stay on the streets of this town And they’ll be carvin’ you up alright They say you gotta stay hungry Hey baby, I’m just about starvin’ tonight I’m dyin’ for some action I’m sick of sittin’ ’round here tryin’ to write this book I need a love reaction Come on now, baby, gimme just one look
You can’t start a fire Sittin’ ’round cryin’ over a broken heart This gun’s for hire Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark
You can’t start a fire Worryin’ about your little world fallin’ apart This gun’s for hire Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark
Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark Hey baby
(“Dancin’ in the Dark“, Bruce Springsteen)
In my last blogpost (Middleton and other musings) I wrote about Thomas Middleton (18 April 1580 – July 1627), an English Jacobean playwright and poet, who was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jacobean period, and among the few to gain equal success in comedy and tragedy, and whom T. S. Eliot thought was second only to Shakespeare.
Of his works In the early 17th century, Middleton made a living writing topical pamphlets, including one –Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets – that was reprinted several times and became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry.
Above: Thomas Middleton
I have been unable, so far, to find neither a copy of this nor even a synopsis of what this pamphlet contained.
But the title intrigues me and has me asking a question:
Do writers (or any other artists) need be “threadbare“?
“A romantic notion persists:
The artist, the writer, crammed in a tiny city apartment, water stains above their head, mice running in the wall.
They are bent over a beautiful creation:
A painting, a story, a dish on a menu, a clay figurine.
They have flowers next to them, not in a vase, but in a bottle.
The window is open.
The night is starry and warm.
Above: The Starry Sky, Vincent van Gogh
The sounds of the city provide the eternal soundtrack.
You can hear the sound of the underground trains You know it feels like distant thunder You can hear the sound of the underground trains You know it feels like distant thunder
You know there’s so many people living in this house And I don’t even know their names You know there’s so many people living in this house And I don’t even know their names
I guess it’s just a feeling I guess it’s just a feeling (in the city) I guess it’s just a feeling I guess it’s just a feeling (in the city)
You can hear the sound of the underground trains You know it feels like distant thunder You can hear the sound of the underground trains You know it feels like distant thunder
Walls so thin, I can almost hear them breathing And if I listen in, I hear my own heart beating Walls so thin, I can almost hear them breathing And if I listen in, I hear my own heart beating In the city
I guess it’s just a feeling I guess it’s just a feeling (in the city) I guess it’s just a feeling I guess it’s just a feeling (in the city)
(Repeat 4X)
(“This City Never Sleeps“, Eurhythmics)
Though the writer wears thrift store finds, they are stylish enough, retro in a way.
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her And you know that she’s half-crazy but that’s why you wanna to be there And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China And just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her Then she gets you on her wavelength And she lets the river answer that you’ve always been her lover
And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind And then you know that she will trust you For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind
And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him, and you want to travel blind And then you think maybe you’ll trust him For he’s touched your perfect body with his mind
Now, Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river She’s wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters And the sun pours down like honey on our Lady of the harbor And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind And then you know that you can trust her For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind
(“Suzanne“, Leonard Cohen)
A bowl of noodles sits nearby, already cold because, being so consumed by the process of creation, the artist has forgotten to eat.
Because the art is everything.
This is the artist’s choice.
They are choosing to be a maker, a creater, someone who does something significant.
Above: Bedroom in Arles, Vincent van Gogh
They have no job.
They have no prospects but for this half-made art in front of them.
They have chosen to jump out of the plane without a parachute, dangerously, madly, wonderfully assured that they will figure out how to make a parachute on the way down.
She’s a good girl, loves her mama Loves Jesus and America too She’s a good girl, is crazy ’bout Elvis Loves horses and her boyfriend too
And it’s a long day livin’ in Reseda There’s a freeway runnin’ through the yard And I’m a bad boy, ’cause I don’t even miss her I’m a bad boy for breakin’ her heart
And I’m free Free fallin’ Yeah, I’m free Free fallin’
And all the vampires walkin’ through the valley Move west down Ventura Boulevard (Ventura Boulevard) And all the bad boys are standin’ in the shadows And the good girls are home with broken hearts
I wanna glide down over Mulholland (oh-ah) I wanna write her name in the sky (oh-ah) I’m gonna free fall out into nothin’ (oh-ah) Gonna leave this world for awhile (oh-ah)
And I’m free (free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m) Free fallin’ (free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m) Yeah, I’m free (free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m) Free fallin’ (free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m)
Free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m Yeah, I’m free Free fallin’
Oh! (Free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m) Free fallin’ (free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m) And I’m free (free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’) oh! (Now I’m)
Free fallin’ (free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m) Free fallin’, now I’m free fallin’, now I’m Free fallin’ (free fallin’, now I’m free…)
(“Free Fallin’, Tom Petty)
Follow your dreams, writers.
Reckless abandon.
Give your art your everything.
Tell your story at any cost.
Well, I won’t back down No I won’t back down You could stand me up at the gates of Hell But I won’t back down
No I’ll stand my ground Won’t be turned around And I’ll keep this world from draggin’ me down Gonna stand my ground And I won’t back down
Hey baby There ain’t no easy way out (I won’t back down) Hey I will stand my ground And I won’t back down
Well, I know what’s right I got just one life In a world that keeps on pushin’ me around But I’ll stand my ground And I won’t back down
Hey baby There ain’t no easy way out (I won’t back down) Hey I will stand my ground (I won’t back down) And I won’t back down
Hey baby There ain’t no easy way out (I won’t back down) Hey I won’t back down
Hey baby There ain’t no easy way out (I won’t back down) Hey I will stand my ground (I won’t back down) And I won’t back down (I won’t back down) No I won’t back down
(“I Won’t Back Down“, Tom Petty)
It all sounds quite nice.
It is not that this is entirely wrong.
A life in service to art and story is one that features a little bit of sacrifice, at least in the sense that when you choose to do something it means you perhaps close other doors.
Eventually, picking a path means rejecting other paths.
You can go back and return to those rejected paths, but that requires different sacrifices, including the sacrifice of time and effort.
As the idea goes, we have only so much time in our day and so many days in our life, so get busy writing or that time is lost.
Above: Scene from The Shawshank Redemption
But there is a line.
A very important line.
It is one thing to take your work seriously and give it your all.
It is another where you sacrifice a normal life and its essentials in its pursuit.
To cut to the chase:
You should not be ashamed of your day job.
Been working like a dog gone crazy I’ve been giving everything I’ve got I need something short and sweet to save me A little something that can hit the spot
I’ve been living like a man in a prison I’ve been living like a monk in a cave I need a woman with a good position I start searching at the end of the day
Pack it in and go to town When the sun goes down (down, down, down) And do the tomcat prowl When the sun goes down (down, down, down)
I’ve been punching out a clock since 15 I’ve been living on a working wage You keep paying me, and I’ll keep lifting I keep a-lifting ’til the end of the day
Then pack it in and go to town When the sun goes down, mmm, yeah! Do the moon dog howl When the sun goes down (down, down, down) And do the tomcat prowl When the sun goes down (down, down, down) Howl! (Down)
Gotta find a way to ease that pressure Gotta find a way to ease that pain Gotta find myself some buried treasure Gotta find it before the sun comes up again
It doesn’t matter if you’re sane or crazy It doesn’t matter if you’re weak or strong It doesn’t matter if your past is hazy It doesn’t matter, you can all come along
Pack it in and go to town When the sun goes down And do the tomcat prowl When the sun goes down (down, down, down) Sun goes down!
Pack it in and go to town When the sun goes down (sun goes down, yeah!) And do the tomcat prowl When the sun goes down (howl!)
Do the moon dog howl When the sun goes down
(“Tom Cat Prowl“, Doug and the Slugs)
Why are day jobs a good thing?
Starvation is not a good condition for making art.
Being worried about where your next paycheck is going to come from does not make it easy to effortlessly create art.
Half the time I would want to spend writing I would instead just looking for jobs.
It was easier to write when I was working jobs, despite jobs taking up the lion’s share of time.
And, on the flip side of it, having those moderately stupid and occasionally terrible jobs also reminded me that this was not what I wanted to do for a living.
So it gave the impetus to push, to look for different, to look for better, and to keep on writing every moment I could spare.
Before work, during lunch breaks, after work, I would write.
And eventually I seized an opportunity to write freelance and did that for just over a decade.
But I still didn’t quit my day job for years into that freelance gig.
When I did, ıt was a difficult transition:
I had to learn to budget, to really chase deadlines, to chase jobs.
And when I transitioned from freelance to writing novels, that was tough, too.
Last night, I had the strangest dream I sailed away to China In a little rowboat to find ya And you said you had to get your laundry clean Didn’t want no one to hold you, what does that mean? And you said
[Chorus] Ain’t nothin’ gonna break my stride Nobody gonna slow me down Oh no, I got to keep on moving Ain’t nothin’ gonna break-a my stride I’m runnin’ and I won’t touch ground Oh no, I got to keep on moving
You’re on a roll and now you pray it lasts The road behind was rocky But now you’re feeling cocky You look at me and you see your past Is that the reason why you’re runnin’ so fast? And she said
[Chorus] Ain’t nothin’ gonna break my stride Nobody gonna slow me down Oh no, I got to keep on moving Ain’t nothin’ gonna break-a my stride I’m runnin’ and I won’t touch ground Oh no, I got to keep on moving
Getting to go fulltime as a writer was, for me, an epic and profound privilege.
I only got to do it in part because the freelance work became so much that I had to either cut it or the day job out.
You need food to live and a roof over your head.
You need the security of health care.
Anthony works in the grocery store Savin’ his pennies for someday Mama Leone left a note on the door She said, “Sonny, move out to the country“ Workin’ too hard can give you A heart attack (ack, ack, ack, ack, ack) You oughta know by now (oughta know) Who needs a house out in Hackensack Is that what you get for your money?
It seems such a waste of time If that’s what it’s all about Mama if that’s movin’ up Then I’m movin’ out I’m movin’ out
Sergeant O’Leary is walkin’ the beat At night he becomes a bartender He works at Mister Cacciatore’s down On Sullivan Street Across from the medical center He’s tradin’ in his Chevy for a Cadillac (ack, ack, ack, ack, ack)
You oughta know by now And if he can’t drive With a broken back At least he can polish the fenders
It seems such a waste of time If that’s what it’s all about Mama if that’s movin’ up Then I’m movin’ out I’m movin’ out
You should never argue with a crazy mind (mi-, mi-, mi-, mi-, mi-) You oughta know by now You can pay Uncle Sam with the overtime Is that all you get for your money
If that’s what you have in mind If that’s what you’re all about Good luck movin’ up ‘Cause I’m moving out I’m moving out (mmm) Ou, ou, uh huh (mmm)
I’m moving out
(“Movin’ Out“, Billy Joel)
There is zero shame in a day job.
And a day job may very well be crucial, because writing – as a hobby, as a semi-pro endeavour or as a fully professional gig – is not always a delivery system for reliable income.
Hell, even when the money is good, it can arrive erratically.
Feast or famine.
During times of famine, a day job will keep you fed.
You get up every morning from your alarm clock’s warning Take the 8:15 into the city There’s a whistle up above and people pushin’, people shovin’ And the girls who try to look pretty And if your train’s on time, you can get to work by nine And start your slaving job to get your pay If you ever get annoyed, look at me I’m self-employed I love to work at nothing all day
And I’ll be taking care of business (every day) Taking care of business (every way) I’ve been taking care of business (it’s all mine) Taking care of business and working overtime, work out
If it were easy as fishin’ you could be a musician If you could make sounds loud or mellow Get a second-hand guitar, chances are you’ll go far If you get in with the right bunch of fellows People see you having fun just a-lying in the sun Tell them that you like it this way It’s the work that we avoid, and we’re all self-employed We love to work at nothing all day
And we be taking care of business (every day) Taking care of business (every way) We be been taking care of business (it’s all mine) Taking care of business and working overtime
Mercy Whoo All right
Take good care of my business When I’m away, every day Whoo
They get up every morning from their alarm clock’s warning Take the 8:15 into the city There’s a whistle up above and people pushin’, people shovin’ And the girls who try to look pretty And if your train’s on time, you can get to work by nine And start your slaving job to get your pay If you ever get annoyed, look at me I’m self-employed I love to work at nothing all day
And I be taking care of business (every day) Taking care of business (every way) I’ve been taking care of business (it’s all mine) Taking care of business and working overtime, take care
Takin’ care of business, whoo Takin’ care of business Takin’ care of business Takin’ care of business Takin’ care of business (every day) Takin’ care of business (every way) Takin’ care of business (it’s all mine) Takin’ care of business and working overtime, whoo
Takin’ care of business Takin’ care of business We be takin’ care of business We be takin’ care of business Takin’ care of business Takin’ care of business Takin’ care of business
(“Takin’ Care of Business“, Bachman Turner Overdrive)
Most artists have day jobs.
That is how it works.
Because the alternative is starvation.
If your belly is empty, you are not going to work at your best nor will you make excellent decisions.
Art doesn’t need to be made in discomfort.
There is zero shame in comfort, in paying your bills, in eating food and enjoying the shade that comes from a ceiling, which itself is underneath a roof.
You may even be likelier to make great art while comfortable, because you are not starving or drowning or despairing.
Yes, there is certainly a romance to the scrappy young artist, not kowtowing to The Man – but there is also a lot of power behind an artist who can afford some time and space and more than a packet of ramen upon which to subsist.
You can do both.
You can work a day job and continue to make art.
Great art.
Your art.
Risky, weird, wonderful art.
Above: Vincent van Gogh painting sunflowers (1888), Paul Gauguin
Now look at them yo-yos, that’s the way you do it You play the guitar on the MTV That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free
Now that ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it Lemme tell ya, them guys ain’t dumb Maybe get a blister on your little finger Maybe get a blister on your thumb
We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries We got to move these refrigerators, we got to move these color TVs
See the little faggot with the earring and the make up Yeah, buddy, that’s his own hair That little faggot got his own jet airplane That little faggot, he’s a millionaire
We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries We got to move these refrigerators, we gotta move these color TVs
We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries We got to move these refrigerators, we got to move these color TVs Looky here, look out
I shoulda learned to play the guitar I shoulda learned to play them drums Look at that mama, she got it stickin’ in the camera man We could have some
And he’s up there, what’s that? Hawaiian noises? Bangin’ on the bongos like a chimpanzee That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it Get your money for nothin’, get your chicks for free
We got to install microwave ovens, custom kitchen deliveries We got to move these refrigerators, we gotta move these color TVs
Listen here Now that ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it You play the guitar on the MTV That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free Money for nothin’, chicks for free Get your money for nothin’ and your chicks for free Ooh, money for nothin’, chicks for free Money for nothin’, chicks for free (money, money, money) Money for nothin’, chicks for free Get your money for nothin’, get your chicks for free Get your money for nothin’ and the chicks for free Get your money for nothin’ and the chicks for free
Look at that, look at that Get your money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my) Chicks for free (I want my MTV) Money for nothin’, chicks for free (I want my, I want my, I want my MTV) Get your money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my) And the chicks for free (I want my MTV) Get your money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my) And the chicks for free (I want my MTV) Easy, easy money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my) Easy, easy chicks for free (I want my MTV) Easy, easy money for nothin’ (I want my, I want my) Chicks for free (I want my MTV) That ain’t workin’
Money for nothing, chicks for free Money for nothing, chicks for free
(“Money For Nothing“, Dire Straits)
Art is enough of a risk as it is without you making it riskier.
Have the day job.
Don’t starve.”
(Gentle Writing Advice, Chuck Wendig)
“You are all set up as a writer now, so go ahead.
Resign.
In a week or two you will get an advance for your sample chapter that pays off the mortgage and buys you a holiday home in the south of France, right?
Take this job and shove it I ain’t working here no more My woman done left and took all the reason I was working for You better not try to stand in my way As I’m a-walkin’ out the door Take this job and shove it I ain’t working here no more
I’ve been workin’ in this factory For now on fifteen years All this time I watched my woman Drownin’ in a pool of tears And I’ve seen a lot of good folk die That had a lot of bills to pay I’d give the shirt right offa’ my back If I had the guts to say
Take this job and shove it I ain’t working here no more My woman done left and took all the reason I was workin’ for You better not try to stand in my way As I’m a-walkin’ out the door Take this job and shove it I ain’t workin’ here no more
Well that foreman, he’s a regular dog The line boss, he’s a fool Got a brand new flattop haircut Lord, he thinks he’s cool
One of these days I’m gonna’ blow my top And that sucker, he’s gonna’ pay Lord, I can’t wait to see their faces When I get the nerve to say
Take this job and shove it I ain’t working here no more My woman done left and took all the reason I was workin’ for You better not try to stand in my way As I’m a-walkin’ out the door Take this job and shove it I ain’t workin’ here no more
Take this job and shove it
(“Take This Job and Shove It“, Johnny Paycheck)
Wrong.
Firstly, an unknown writer won’t get an advance for a sample chapter.
How does the publisher know you can continue writing at that quality until the end of the book?
How do they know your rip-roaring story won’t fizzle out in a few chapters?
The best-case scenario would be an encouraging letter or email saying they like the sample and would be happy to look at the finished book when it is ready.
No commitment.
No money.
Months later, when you have finished the book and sent it to them, you will then have to wait weeks for a reply.
Sometimes months.
If they make an offer to publish, you still won’t see any of that advance until the contract is signed.
Even then you still won’t see any of that advance until the contract is signed.
Even then you will only receive a portion of it.
(The rest is reserved for when the book is published, probably 18 months later.)
So your payment might be as much as two years away.
That is if you are fortunate enough to get an offer from the first publisher you send it to.
Will that royalty advance change your life?
Enormous advances hit the headlines, so understandably that is what you think you will get.
But 99% of publishing deals do not involve huge sums of cash.
An average advance in the industry is unlikely to buy you a new sofa let alone a new house.
The dilution of the publishing world that followed the dramatic success of eBooks and the ease and affordability of digital self-publishing has resulted in even lower advances as publishers attempt to shield themselves from competition that seems to grow exponentially.
You will still be able to buy a sofa with your advance, but these days it is likely to be from the charity shop.
The cynical side of me would therefore say that the best way to make a living as a writer is to get another job (or keep the one you have already).
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
There has to be room for dreams and ambitions.
You write because you have the imagination and creativity to make something out of nothing.
If you have the power to perform such alchemy, the ability to monetize your output must be within your grasp.
Just don’t do anything to harm your original source of income until you have proven that not only can you replace it with cash derived from writing but that you can do so consistently.”
(How to Be a Writer, Stewart Ferris)
You may write for your own enjoyment or for the challenge of it, but it is not until your work is published – made public – that you can truly call yourself a writer.
Presumably you write in the hopes of making some money.
I work all night, I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay Ain’t it sad? And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me That’s too bad In my dreams I have a plan If I got me a wealthy man I wouldn’t have to work at all, I’d fool around and have a ball
Money, money, money Must be funny In the rich man’s world Money, money, money Always sunny In the rich man’s world Aha All the things I could do If I had a little money It’s a rich man’s world It’s a rich man’s world
A man like that is hard to find but I can’t get him off my mind Ain’t it sad? And if he happens to be free I bet he wouldn’t fancy me That’s too bad So I must leave, I’ll have to go To Las Vegas or Monaco And win a fortune in a game, my life will never be the same
Money, money, money Must be funny In the rich man’s world Money, money, money Always sunny In the rich man’s world Aha All the things I could do If I had a little money It’s a rich man’s world
Money, money, money Must be funny In the rich man’s world Money, money, money Always sunny In the rich man’s world Aha All the things I could do If I had a little money It’s a rich man’s world It’s a rich man’s world
(“Money Money Money“, ABBA)
If, however, you have to begin by writing for publishers who can’t afford to pay you, you will still gain valuable experience, compile a clipping file and increase your confidence for more lucrative assignments to come.
“Everything in life has to start everywhere and that somewhere is always at the beginning.
Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer, Jeff Kinney, Nora Roberts – they all had to start at the beginning.
Above: Stephen King
It would be great to say becoming a writer is as easy as waving a magic wand over your manuscript and “Poof!” you’re published, but that is not how it happens.
Above: Stephenie Meyer
While there is no one true “key” to becoming successful, along well-paid writing career can happen when you combine four elements:
Good writing
Knowledge of writing markets
Professionalism
Persistence
Above: Jeff Kinney
Good writing is useless if you don’t know which markets will buy your work or how to pitch and sell your writing.
Above: Nora Roberts
If you are not professional and persistent in your contact with editors, your writing is just that:
Your writing.
But if you are a writer who embraces the above four elements, you have a good chance at becoming a paid published writer who will reap the benefits of a long and successful career.
As you become more involved with writing, you may read articles or talk to editors and authors with conflicting opinions about the right way to submit your work.
The truth is, there are many different routes a writer can follow to get published, but no matter which route you choose, the end is always the same:
Becoming a published writer.
DEVELOP YOUR İDEAS, THEN TARGET THE MARKETS.
Writers often think of an interesting story, complete the manuscript and then begin the search for a suitable publisher or magazine.
While this approach is common for fiction, poetry and screenwriting, it reduces your chances of success in many non-fiction writing areas.
Instead, choose categories that interest you and study those sections in Writer’s Market.
Select several listings you consider good prospects for your type of writing.
Sometimes the individual listings will even help you generate ideas.
Next, make a list of the potential markets for each idea.
Make the initial contact with markets using the method stated in the market listings.
If you exhaust your list of possibilities, don’t give up.
Instead, reevaluate the idea or try another angle.
Contınue developing ideas and approaching markets.
Identify and rank potential markets for an idea and continue the process.
As you submit to various publications, it is important to remember that every magazine is published with a particular audience and slant in mind.
Probably the number one complaint editors have is the submissions they receive are completely wrong for their maagazines or book line.
The first mark of professionalism is to know your market well.
Getting that knowledge starts with Writer’s Market (or The Canadian Writer’s Market – for Canadians, eh?), but you should also do your own detective work.
Search out back issues of the magazines or the backlist of the book publishers you wish to write for, pick up recent issues at your local newsstand or recently published titles at your local bookstore, or visit magazines’ and publisher websites – anything that will help you figure out what subjects specific magazines and book publishers publish.
This research is also helpful in learning what topics have been covered ad nauseum – the topics you should stay away from or try another angle.
Continue developing ideas and approaching markets.
Identify and rank potential markets for an idea and continue the process.
Paperback writer (paperback writer)
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? It took me years to write, will you take a look? It’s based on a novel by a man named Lear And I need a job So I wanna be a paperback writer Paperback writer
It’s a dirty story of a dirty man And his clinging wife doesn’t understand His son is working for the Daily Mail It’s a steady job But he wants to be a paperback writer Paperback writer
Paperback writer (paperback writer)
It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few I’ll be writing more in a week or two I could make it longer if you like the style I can change it ’round And I wanna be a paperback writer Paperback writer
If you really like it you can have the rights It could make a million for you overnight If you must return it you can send it here But I need a break And I wanna be a paperback writer Paperback writer
When a submission is returned, check your file folder of potential markets for that idea.
Cross off the market that rejected the idea.
If the editor has given you suggestions or reasons why the manuscript was not accepted, you might want to incorporate these suggestions when revising your manuscript.
After revising your manuscript mail it to the next market on your list.
Take rejection with a grain of salt.
Rejection is a way of life in the publishing world.
It is inevitable in a business that deals with such an overwhelming number of applicants for such a limited number of positions.
Anyone who has published has lived through many rejections.
Writers with a thin skin are at a distinct disadvantage.
A rejection letter is not a personal attack.
It simply indicates your submission is not appropriate for that market.
Writers who let rejection dissuade them from pursuing their dreams or who react to an editor’s “No” with indignation or fury do themselves a disservice.
Writers who let rejection stop them do not get published.
Resign yourself to facing rejection now.
You will live through it.
You will eventually overcome it.”
(The Writer’s Market, Writer’s Digest Books)
In this proud land we grew up strong We were wanted all along I was taught to fight, taught to win I never thought I could fail
No fight left or so it seems I am a man whose dreams have all deserted I’ve changed my face, I’ve changed my name But no one wants you when you lose
Don’t give up ‘Cause you have friends Don’t give up You’re not beaten yet Don’t give up I know you can make it good
Though I saw it all around Never thought I could be affected Thought that we’d be last to go It is so strange the way things turn
Drove the night toward my home The place that I was born, on the lakeside As daylight broke, I saw the earth The trees had burned down to the ground
Don’t give up You still have us Don’t give up We don’t need much of anything Don’t give up ‘Cause somewhere there’s a place Where we belong
Rest your head You worry too much It’s going to be alright When times get rough You can fall back on us Don’t give up Please don’t give up
Got to walk out of here I can’t take anymore Gonna stand on that bridge Keep my eyes down below Whatever may come And whatever may go That river’s flowing That river’s flowing
Moved on to another town Tried hard to settle down For every job, so many men So many men no-one needs
Don’t give up ‘Cause you have friends Don’t give up You’re not the only one Don’t give up No reason to be ashamed Don’t give up You still have us Don’t give up now We’re proud of who you are Don’t give up You know it’s never been easy Don’t give up ‘Cause I believe there’s a place There’s a place where we belong
(“Don’t Give Up“, Peter Gabriel)
“There is more to becoming a successful writer than mastering the rules of grammar and syntax and being gifted with the ability to put to paper an interesting string of words.
These are necessary prerequisites, to be sure.
But to join that elite group of published writers – which consists of only 4% of all those who write – one must have endurance, perseverance and marketing savvy.
Whatever you do, don’t give up.
Richard Bach had his classic, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, rejected 16 times.
Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was turned down 121 times.
Dick Wimmer’s Irish Wine: 162 rejections
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen’s Chicken Soup for the Soul: 144 rejections
James Lee Burke, The Lost Get-Back Boogie: 111 rejections
Lisa Genova, Still Alice: 100 rejections
Kathryn Stockett, The Help: 60 rejections
Stephen King, Carrie: 30 rejections
John Grisham, A Time to Kill: 28 rejections
Frank Herbert, Dune: 23 rejections
Joseph Heller, Catch-22: 22 rejections
William Golding, Lord of the Flies: 21 rejections
Richard Hooker, M.A.S.H. : 21 rejections
James Joyce, Dubliners: 18 rejections
Bad news don’t ruin my appetite Don’t let the papers tell me if it’s wrong or right I just do what I do and I do it Day by day by day by day by day
Live a life and I take it slow Made mistakes but oh that’s the way it goes I just know what I know it Day by day by day by day by day
Day by day I’m feeling stronger Day by day I’m lasting longer Day by day you help me make my way
I speak up when I feel it’s right I jump up when I know that I got to fight Until then I just take it Day by day by day by day by day
Day by day I’m feeling stronger Day by day I’m lasting longer Day by day you help me make my way
With you don’t worry ’bout it With you don’t worry ’bout it With you don’t worry ’bout it Day by day by day by day by day
Sometimes they deny it and I I feel strangely blue? Sometimes they deny it and I Like the evil I get from you
Day by day you show me a better way Day by day you help me to find a place Day by day you help me make it Day by day by day by day by day
Day by day I’m feeling stronger Day by day I’m lasting longer Day by day you help me make it Day by day by day by day by day
Day by day I’m feeling stronger Day by day I’m lasting longer Day by day you help me make it Day by day by day by day by day
Day by day I’m feeling stronger Day by day I’m lasting longer Day by day you help me make my way
(“Day by Day“, Doug and the Slugs)
The point is clear.
If you have the talent and the passion for writing, don’t ever give up.“
(Writing for Dollars, John McCollister / “The Most Rejected Books of All Time“, Emily Temple, https://lithub.com)
“The professional writer is the amateur who didn’t quit.”
You do not need to be a permanent member of the Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets.
The people have spoken.
Just a little more time is all we’re asking for ‘Cause just a little more time could open closing doors Just a little uncertainty can bring you down
And nobody wants to know you now And nobody wants to show you how
So if you’re lost and on your own You can never surrender And if your path won’t lead you home You can never surrender
And when the night is cold and dark You can see, you can see light ‘Cause no one can take away your right To fight and to never surrender
With a little perseverance You can get things done Without the blind adherence That has conquered some
And nobody wants to know you now And nobody wants to show you how
So if you’re lost and on your own You can never surrender And if your path won’t lead you home You can never surrender
And when the night is cold and dark You can see, you can see light ‘Cause no one can take away your right To fight and to never surrender To never surrender
And when the night is cold and dark You can see, you can see light No one can take away your right To fight and to never surrender To never surrender
Oh, time is all we’re asking for To never surrender Oh, oh, you can never surrender
The time is all you’re asking for Ooh, stand your ground, never surrender Oh, I said You never surrender, oh
(“Never Surrender“, Corey Hart)
Sources
Wikipedia
Google Photos
“Takin’ Care of Business“, Bachman Turner Overdrive
“Paperback Writer“, The Beatles
“Suzanne“, Leonard Cohen
“Day by Day“, Doug and the Slugs
“Tomcat Prowl“, Doug and the Slugs
“This City Never Sleeps“, Eurhymthics
How to Be a Writer, Stewart Ferris
“Never Surrender“, Corey Hart
Get Started in Creative Writing, Stephen May
The Canadian Writer’s Market (McClelland and Stewart)
Writing for Dollars, John McCollister
“Take This Job and Shove It“, Johnny Paycheck
“Free Fallin’ “, Tom Petty
“I Won’t Back Down“, Tom Petty
“Dancin’ in the Dark“, Bruce Springsteen
“The Most Rejected Books of All Time“, Emily Temple, lithub.com, 22 December 2017
“I thought of the beautiful cool evening, how I long to be walking in it outside this cell.
All of this took place while I sat in the semi-dark reading a book.
The thoughts on freedom were only momentary but so powerful that they seem to tear my soul apart.
There is something about being alone in a cell, about the inability to rise from a chair, open a door and speak to someone.
I would like to get up this minute and discuss this subject with someone.
I would like to put these feelings into a piece of sculpture and although sitting typing out the feelings is important there is a tremendous amount of strain and frustration attached to it.
During these periods I find it hard to read a book or watch TV, which I hardly do anyway.
The only solution is to tackle the mood and try to do something about it.“
(Jimmy Boyle)
Above: Jimmy Boyle, Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow, Scotland
Eskişehir, Türkiye
Wednesday 17 April 2024
Above: Sazova Park, Eskişehir, Türkiye
Jimmy Boyle is a Scottish former gangster and convicted murderer who became a sculptor and novelist after his release from prison.
In 1967, Boyle (23) was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of another gangland figure, William “Babs” Rooney.
He served 14 years before his release in 1980.
Boyle has always denied killing Rooney, but has acknowledged having been a violent and sometimes ruthless moneylender from the Gorbals, one of the roughest and most deprived areas of Glasgow.
During his incarceration in the special unit of Barlinnie Prison, he turned to art, with the help of the special unit’s art therapist, Joyce Laing.
Above: Jimmy Boyle
He wrote an autobiography, A Sense of Freedom (1977), which was later turned into a film of the same name.
In 1980, while still in prison, Boyle married psychiatrist Sara Trevelyan.
In 2017, Trevelyan wrote Freedom Found, a book about her 20-year marriage to Boyle.
In an interview after her book’s publication, she stated that she had never felt unsafe with him.
Upon his release from prison on 26 October 1981, he moved to Edinburgh to continue his artistic career.
He designed the largest concrete sculpture in Europe called “Gulliver” for the Craigmillar Festival Society in 1976.
Above: “Gulliver“, Edinburgh, Scotland
In 1983, Boyle set up the Gateway Exchange with Trevelyan and artist Evlynn Smith:
A charitable organisation offering art therapy workshops to recovering drug addicts and ex-convicts.
Though the project secured funding from private sources (including actor Sean Connery, comedian Billy Connolly and John Paul Getty), it lasted only a few years.
In 1994, his son James, a drug addict, was murdered in the Oatlands neighbourhood of Glasgow.
Boyle has published Pain of Confinement: Prison Diaries (1984) and a novel, Hero of the Underworld (1999).
The latter was adapted for a French film, La Rage et le Rêve des Condamnés (The Anger and Dreams of the Condemned), which won the best documentary prize at the Fifa Montréal awards in 2002.
He also wrote a novel, A Stolen Smile, which is about the theft of the Mona Lisa and how it ends up hidden on a Scottish housing scheme.
Clearly our Jimmy has led an interesting life, but is his life an interesting story?
Above: Jimmy Boyle
From the cursory bio that Wikipedia provides it seems that Jimmy never studied literature at some fancy university.
That being said, he is a published diarist and novelist.
He somehow had to learn how to write.
A person can learn how to write, because I am still learning.
Jimmy wasn’t doomed to be just an ex con.
He learned craft, things that worked for him, that he could understand and use right away.
Craft can be taught and with diligence and practice, I, you, everybody, can improve our writing.
To break through with this thing called craft, you will need to be your own disciplinarian.
James Scott Bell recommends what it takes to learn:
Get motivated.
Write a statement of purpose, one that gets you excited.
“Today I resolve to take writing seriously, to keep going and never stop, to learn everything I can and make it as a writer.“
Put it on your wall where you can see it every day.
Come up with your own item of visual motivation.
(During my first Christmas here in Eskişehir our staff “Christmas” party had a Secret Santa arrangement where we would receive a gift from someone anonymously and give one in return to someone else anonymously.
Through the wonders of Photoshop, a colleague created a montage of me standing with Charles Dickens in front of the Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa beneath the caption “A Tale of Two Legends“.
That my colleague felt that I could be (one day) comparable to Dickens remains a great motivation for me.)
Above: Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870)
Go to bookstores and browse.
Look at the author’s pictures and bios.
Read their openings.
And think:
“I can do this!“
Find some ritual that gets your creative juices flowing.
Don’t waste it.
Turn it into words on a page.
2. Try stuff.
Try out what you learn, see if you get it and try some more.
Take the time to digest what you learn and then apply what you learn to your own writing.
3. Stay loose.
Write freely and rollickingly.
4. First get it written, then get it right.
“Let the world burn through you.
Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.”
(Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury)
5. Set a quota.
Writing is how you learn to write.
Writing daily, as a discipline, is the best way to learn.
Most successful writers make a word goal and stick to it.
The daily writing of words, once it becomes a habit, will be the most fruitful discipline of your writing life.
You will be amazed at how productive you will become and how much you will learn about the craft.
“I only write when I am inspired.
I make sure I am inspired every morning at 9 a.m.“
(Peter DeVries)
Above: American writer Peter De Vries (1910 – 1993)
6. Don’t give up.
The main difference between successful writers and unsuccessful writers is persistence.
There are legions of published novelists who went years and years without acceptance.
They continued to write because that is what they were inside:
Writers.
KEEP WRITING.
“When first we mean to build, we first survey the plot, then draw the model.”
(Henry IV, Part 2, William Shakespeare)
Above: William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
Plot happens.
But does it work?
Does it connect with readers?
What is this story about?
Is anything happening?
Why should you keep reaading?
Why should you care?
The what happens is your plot.
When you get right down to it, there is something uniquely satisfying in being gripped by a great plot, in begrudgiıng whatever real world obligations might prevent you from finding out what happens next.
It is especially satisfying to surrender to an author who is utterly in command of a thrilling and original story, an author capable of playing us like fish, of letting us get worried, then riled up, then complacent and then finally blowing us away when the final shocks are delivered.
While glorious prose is a fine thing, without an enthralling story, it is just so much verbal tapioca.
What the reader seeks is an experience that is other.
Other than what he normally sees each day.
Story is how he gets there.
A good story transports the reader to a new place via experience.
Not through arguments or facts, but through the illusion that life is taking place on the page.
Not the reader’s life.
Someone else’s.
Your characters’ lives.
An author creates a dream.
When we dream, we experience that as reality.
In reality there is one reason, and one reason only, that readers get excited about a novel:
Great storytelling.
Can creative writing be taught?
No.
Can the love of language be taught?
No.
Can a gift for stroytelling be taught?
No.
But….
Like most writers, you learn to write by writing and by reading books.
Writers learn by reading the work of their predecessorsand counterparts.
They study meter with Ovid, plot construction with Homer, comedy with Aristophanes.
Above: Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – AD 18)
Above: Bust of Greek poet Homer (8th century BC)
Above: Bust of Greek playwright Aristophanes (446 – 386 BC)
They hone their prose by absorbing the sentences of Montaigne and Samuel Johnson.
Above: French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592)
Above: English writer / lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)
And who could ask for better teachers?
Though writers have learned from the masters in a formal, methodical way – Harry Crews has described taking apart a Graham Greene novel to see how many chapters it contained, how much time it covered, how Greene handled pacing and tone and point of view – the truth is that this sort of education more often involves a kind of osmosis.
Above: English writer Graham Greene (1904 – 1991)
For example, copying out long passages of a great writer’s work, you will notice that your own work should become, however briefly, just a little more fluent.
In the ongoing process of becoming a writer, I read and re-read the authors I have most loved.
I read for pleasure, but also more analytically, conscious of style, of diction, of how sentences were formed and information conveyed, how the writer structured their plot, created characters, employed detail and dialogue.
Writing, like reading, is done one word at a time, one punctuation mark at a time, putting every word on trial for its life.
Writers learn that which cannot be taught.
Writers learn to write by practice, hard work, repeated trial and error, success and failure.
And from the books they admire.
My blog is a sort of a “what-happened-on-this day” creation.
I like to focus on the birthdays of other writers or mention what holiday is being commemorated on this day.
Imagine we are about to be plunged into a story – any story in the world.
The curtain rises.
The cinema darkens.
We turn to the first paragraph of a novel.
The narrator utters the timeless formula:
“Once upon a time…“
John Ford (17 April 1586 – 1639) was an English playwright and poet born in Ilsington in Devon, England.
His plays deal mainly with the conflict between passion and conscience.
Although remembered primarily as a playwright, he also wrote a number of poems on themes of love and morality.
Above: English writer John Ford
Ford is best known for the tragedy ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1633), a family drama with a plot line of incest.
The play’s title has often been changed in new productions, sometimes being referred to as simply Giovanni and Annabella — the play’s leading, incestuous brother-and-sister characters.
In a 19th-century work it is coyly called The Brother and Sister.
Shocking as the play is, it is still widely regarded as a classic piece of English drama.
It has been adapted to film at least twice:
My Sister, My Love (Sweden, 1966)
‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Belgium, 1978).
On the face of it, so limitless is the human imagination and so boundless the realm of the storyteller’s command, we think that literally anything could happen next…
His plays deal with conflicts between individual passion and conscience and the laws and morals of society at large.
Ford had a strong interest in abnormal psychology that is expressed through his dramas.
While virtually nothing is known of Ford’s personal life, one reference suggests that his interest in melancholia may have been more than merely intellectual.
“Deep in a dump alone John Ford was gat,
With folded arms and melancholy hat.”
(Choice Drollery, Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth)
The story will have a hero or heroine or both, a central figure or figures on whose fate our interest in the story ultimately rests.
Someone with whom we can identify.
The Laws of Candy is set in Crete — “Candy” and “Candia” being archaic names for the island.
In Ford’s fictional Candy, two unusual laws are in the statute books.
One is a (highly impracticable) law against ingratitude:
A citizen who is accused of ingratitude by another, and fails to make amends, can be sentenced to death.
The second law holds that after a military victory, the soldiers will select the one of their number who has done the most to achieve the success.
“Tell us, pray, what devil this melancholy is, which can transform men into monsters.“
(The Lover’s Melancholy, John Ford)
The second law is the cause of the play’s conflict.
The forces of Candy have just won a great victory over the invading Venetians.
(Historically, Venice conquered Crete in the early 13th century [1209 – 1217] and ruled the island until 1669, though with many rebellions by the local populace.)
The commander of the army, Cassilanes, the leading soldier of his generation, expects to receive the acclaim of the troops, and is incensed to find that he has a rival in his own son, Antinous, who has distinguished himself in his first battle.
The father’s concern is real:
Antinous wins the approval of the soldiers.
Paradoxically, Cassilanes is even more outraged when Antinous claims his reward from the state — and names a bronze statue of his father.
To Cassilanes, this is only one more assertion of the son’s assumed power.
Above: Island of Crete, Greece
“Melancholy is not, as you conceive, indisposition of body, but the mind’s disease.“
(The Lover’s Melancholy, John Ford)
Cassilanes is certainly an irascible old man — but he has an additional grievance.
He has mortgaged his estates to pay the troops, who otherwise would not have fought.
The state is in no hurry to rectify the matter.
The owner of the mortgage is Gonzalo, an ambitious Venetian lord.
Gonzalo is the play’s Machiavellian villain.
He plots and manipulates with the goal of becoming both the King of Candy and the Duke of Venice.
Gonzalo, however, makes two mistakes.
One is that he takes a young Venetian prisoner of war, Fernando, into his confidence, relying on their shared nationality.
When Cassilanes retreats to a poverty-stricken retirement, Gonzalo arranges for Fernando to live in the general’s little household to further his machinations.
Fernando is a noble young man, in mind as well as in birth.
Once he falls in love with Cassilanes’ daughter Annophel, he reveals Gonzalo’s plots.
Above: Location of the island of Crete (Kriti) (in red)
“Green indiscretion, flattery of greatness, Rawness of judgement, wilfulness in folly, Thoughts vagrant as the wind, and as uncertain.“
(The Broken Heart, John Ford)
Gonzalo’s second mistake is to fall in love himself, with the Princess Erota.
The play’s list of dramatis personae describes her as “a Princess, imperious, and of an overweaning Beauty“.
Royal, rich, witty, and beautiful, she is also extravagantly vain.
She is loved by many men, including a Prince of Cyprus named Philander, but scorns them all.
Until, that is, she meets Antinous and falls in love with him.
Motivated by that love, she manipulates the vain Gonzalo into selling her Cassilanes’ mortgage and also into committing his plots and plans to writing.
Above: Map of Crete
“Love is the tyrant of the heart.
It darkens reason, confounds discretion, deaf to counsel.
It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.“
(The Lover’s Melancholy, John Ford)
In the play’s final climactic scene, the other odd law of Candy comes into play.
Cassilanes comes before the Senate with a complaint of ingratitude against his son.
Antinous, resigned to death, refuses to defend himself.
But Erota makes a similar complaint of ingratitude against Cassilanes — which provokes Antinous to make the same complaint against her, in a sort of round-robin festival of egomania.
The solution to this tangle comes when Annophel enters and makes her own complaint of ingratitude against the Senate of Candy, for its treatment of her father.
Above: Firkas fortress in Chania, Crete, Greece
“Glories of human greatness are but pleasing dreams and shadows soon decaying.“
(The Broken Heart, John Ford)
The befuddled Senate turns the matter over to the Cypriot prince Philander for judgment.
Philander prevails on Cassilanes to repent and withdraw his complaint against Antinous, which allows all the subsequent difficulties to be resolved.
Almost as an afterthought, the Cretans and Venetians unite in condemning Gonzalo to punishment.
Erota’s pride is humbled (we know this, since she tells us so herself), and she accepts her most constant (and noble) suitor, Prince Philander, as her spouse.
Above: Venetian harbour in Chania, Crete, Greece
“The joys of marriage are Heaven on Earth, Life’s Paradise, great princess, the soul’s quiet, Sinews of concord, earthly immortality, Eternity of pleasures, no restoratives Like to a constant woman!“
(The Broken Heart, John Ford)
In The Witch of Edmonton, Elizabeth Sawyer is a poor, lonely, and unfairly ostracized old woman, who turns to witchcraft after having been unjustly accused of it, having nothing left to lose.
A talking devil-dog Tom (performed by a human actor) appears, becoming her familiar and only friend.
With Tom’s help, Sawyer causes one of her neighbours to go mad and kill herself, but otherwise she does not achieve very much, since many of those around her are only too willing to sell their souls to the Devil all by themselves.
The play is divided fairly rigidly into separate plots, which only occasionally intersect or overlap.
Alongside the main story of Elizabeth Sawyer, the other major plotline is a domestic tragedy centering on the farmer’s son Frank Thorney.
Frank is secretly married to the poor but virtuous Winnifride, whom he loves and believes is pregnant with his child, but his father insists that he marry Susan, elder daughter of the wealthy farmer Old Carter.
Frank weakly gives in to a bigamous marriage but then tries to flee the county with Winnifride disguised as his page.
When the doting Susan follows him, he stabs her.
At this point, the witch’s dog Tom is present on stage.
It is left ambiguous whether Frank remains a fully responsible moral agent in the act.
Frank inflicts superficial wounds on himself, so that he can pretend to have been attacked.
He attempts to frame Warbeck, Susan’s former suitor, and Somerton, suitor of Susan’s younger sister Katherine.
While the kindly Katherine is nursing her supposedly incapacitated brother-in-law, however, she finds a bloodstained knife in his pocket and immediately guesses the truth, which she reveals to her father.
The devil-dog is on stage again at this point, and “shrugs for joy” according to the stage direction, which suggests that he has brought about Frank’s downfall.
“Tempt not the stars, young man.
Thou canst not play with the severity of fate.”
(The Broken Heart, John Ford)
Frank is executed for his crime at the same time as Mother Sawyer, but he, in marked contrast to her, is forgiven by all.
The pregnant Winnifride is taken into the family of Old Carter.
The play thus ends on a relatively happy note — Old Carter enjoins all those assembled at the execution:
“So, let’s every man home to Edmonton with heavy hearts, yet as merry as we can, though not as we would.“
“Revenge proves its own executioner.“
(The Broken Heart, John Ford)
The note of optimism is also heard in the play’s other main plot, centering on the Morris dancing yokel Cuddy Banks, whose invincible innocence allows him to emerge unscathed from his own encounters with the dog Tom.
He eventually banishes the dog from the stage with the words:
“Out and avaunt!“
“He hath shook hands with time.“
(The Broken Heart, John Ford)
Despite the optimism of the play’s ending it remains clear that the execution of Mother Sawyer has done little or nothing to purge the play’s world of an evil to which its inhabitants are only too ready to turn spontaneously.
Firstly, the devil-dog has not been destroyed.
Indeed it resolves to go to London and corrupt souls there.
Secondly, the village’s voice of authority, the lord of the manor Sir Arthur Clarington, is represented as untrustworthy.
Mother Sawyer utters a lengthy tirade indicting his lechery – He had previously had an affair with Winnifride, which she now repents – and general corruption:
A charge which the play as a whole supports.
We are introduced to our central figure(s) in an imaginary world.
The general scene is set.
“Once upon a time…“
We are taken out of our present place and time into an imaginary realm where the story is to unfold.
We are introduced to our central figure(s).
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
The Witch of Edmonton may be very ready to capitalize on the sensational story of a witch, but it does not permit an easy and comfortable demonization of her.
It presents her as a product of society rather than an anomaly in it.
Something happens.
Some event, some encounter, precipates the story’s action, giving it a focus.
“Once upon a time there was Someone living Somewhere.
Then one day Something happened.”
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
The plot of The Fair Maid of the Inn concerns the intertwined fortunes of two prominent Florentine families.
Alberto is the Admiral of Florence.
He is married to Mariana.
Their children are Cesario and Clarissa.
Baptista, another old sailor, is a friend of Alberto, and father of Mentivole.
Like their fathers, Cesario and Mentivole are friends.
Alberto’s is a stable nuclear family.
Mariana is a doting mother, especially in regard to Cesario.
Baptista’s situation is less happy:
Fourteen years earlier, he, a widower in his prime, contracted a secret marriage with Juliana, a niece of the Duke of Genoa.
After a short three months of contentment, the Genoese Duke discovered the marriage, exiled Baptista, and sequestered Juliana.
He has not seen her since.
We meet a little boy called Aladdin, who lives in a city in China.
One day a sorcerer arrives and leads him out of the city to a mysterious cave.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
This situation is delineated in the play’s long opening scene.
At the scene’s opening, Cesario warns Clarissa to safeguard her virginity and her reputation, but Clarissa responds by reproving her brother about his rumoured affair with Biancha, the 13-year-old daughter of a local tavernkeeper.
(She’s the “fair maid” of the title.)
Cesario protests that his connection with the girl is above reproach:
Biancha, he says, is beautiful but chaste.
By the scene’s close, Mentivole expresses his love for Clarissa.
She responds positively and gives him a diamond ring as a token of her affection and commitment.
We meet the Scottish General Macbeth, who has just won a great victory over his country’s enemies.
Then, on his way home, he encounters mysterious witches.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
Friends though they are, Cesario and Mentivole have a falling-out over a horse race.
They quarrel, lose their tempers and draw their swords to fight.
They are separated by other friends, but only after Cesario is wounded.
The affair escalates into a major feud between the two families.
Alberto is called away by his naval duties and is soon reported dead.
Mariana fears that her son will be killed in the feud.
To prevent this, she announces (falsely) to the Duke and his court that Cesario is not really Alberto’s son.
Early in their marriage, she maintains, Alberto had wanted an heir, but the couple did not conceive.
Mariana exploited her husband’s absences at sea to pass off a servant’s child as her own.
Thus he is no longer Alberto’s son and safe from Baptista’s enmity.
But the Duke sees the injustice done against Cesario and decrees that the now-widowed Mariana should marry the young man and endow him with three-quarters of Alberto’s estate.
The remaining share will serve as Clarissa’s dowry.
We meet a girl called Alice, wondering how to amuse herself in the summer heat.
Suddenly she sees a white rabbit running past and vanishing down a mysterious hole.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
Cesario is amenable to this arrangement — but Mariana assures him that any marriage between them will never be consummated.
Cesario proposes a marriage between himself and Clarissa, though both women reject the idea out of hand.
And even Biancha turns against Cesario, when she comes to understand that he is not serious about marrying her.
Eventually matters are set right when Alberto returns to Florence.
Not dead, he was instead captured by the Turks, but rescued by Prospero, a captain in the service of Malta.
Prospero is an old friend of both Alberto and Baptista.
He is able to inform the world of the fate of Juliana, and the daughter that Alberto didn’t know Baptista had.
She is Biancha, the supposed daughter of the tavernkeeper.
This good news allows the compounding of all the previous difficulties.
The quarrel between Alberto and Baptista is resolved.
Cesario is restored to his rightful place as Alberto’s son.
Cesario and Biancha can marry, as can Mentivole and Clarissa.
Above: Firenze (Florence), Italia (Italy)
We see the great detective Sherlock Holmes sitting in his Baker Street lodgings.
Then there is a knock at the door.
A visitor enters to present him with his next case.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
The play has a comic subplot centered on Biancha, her supposed parents the Host and Hostess of the tavern, and their quests.
The comedy features a mountebank (a charlatan) and his clownish assistant, and their victims.
An event, a summons, provides the call to action which will lead the hero out of their initial state into a series of adventures or experiences which will transform their lives.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
The play’s storytelling is rough and rather inconsistent, most likely due to the multiple hands involved in its authorship.
The action the hero is drawn into will involve conflict and uncertainty, because without conflict and uncertainty there is no story.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
In The Queen, Alphonso, the play’s protagonist, is a defeated rebel against Aragon.
He has been condemned to death and is about to be executed.
The Queen of Aragon (otherwise unnamed) intercedes at the last moment and learns that Alphonso’s rebellion is rooted in his pathological misogyny.
The prospect of being ruled by a woman was too much for him to bear.
The Queen is struck with love at first sight.
She is, in her way, just as irrational as Alphonso is in his.
The Queen pardons Alphonso and marries him.
Alphonso requests a seven-day separation, to enable him to set aside his feelings against women.
The Queen grants his request.
The week extends to a month and the new King still avoids his Queen.
The intercession of her counsellors, and even her own personal appeal, make no difference.
In a bitter confrontation, Alphonso tells the Queen:
“I hate thy sex.
Of all thy sex, thee worst.“
The story carries us towards some kind of resolution.
Every story which is complete, and not just a fragmentary string of episodes and impressions, must work up to a climax, where conflict and uncertainty are usually at their most extreme.
Every story leads its central character in one of two directions.
Either they end happily with a sense of liberation, fulfilment and completion.
Or they end unhappily in some form of discomfiture, frustration or death.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
One man, however, sees a solution to the problem.
The psychologically sophisticated Muretto half-counsels, half-manipulates Alphonso into a more positive disposition toward the Queen.
Muretto praises the Queen’s beauty to Alphonso and simultaneously arouses his jealousy by suggesting that she is sexually active outside her marriage.
Muretto functions rather like a modern therapist to treat Alphonso’s psychological imbalance.
The psychological manipulation works, in the sense that Alphonso begins to value the Queen only after he thinks he has lost her to another man.
To say that stories either have happy or unhappy endings may seem such a commonplace that one almost hesitates to utter it, but it has to be said, because it is the most important single thing to be observed about stories.
Around that one fact, around what is necessary to bring a story to some sort of an ending, revolves the whole of their extraordinary significance in our lives.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
Yet with two such passionate individuals, reconciliation cannot come easily.
Alphonso condemns the Queen to death.
She can be reprieved only if a champion comes forth to defend her honour by meeting the king in single combat.
The Queen, however, is determined to bow to her husband’s will no matter the price and demands that all her followers swear they will not step forward in her cause.
Aristotle first observed that a satisfactory story – a story which is a “whole” – must have “a beginning, a middle and an end“.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
Above: Bust of Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 – 322 BC)
The play’s secondary plot deals with the love affair of the Queen’s General Velasco, the valiant soldier who defeated Alphonso, and the widow Salassa.
Velasco has the opposite problem from Alphonso:
He idealises his love for Salassa, terming her “the deity I adore“.
He allows her to dominate their relationship.
(Velasco’s friend and admirer Lodovico has a low opinion of Salassa, calling her a “frail commodity“, a “paraquetto“, a “wagtail“.)
Salassa indulges in her power over Velasco by asking him to give up all combat and conflict, or even wearing a sword and defending his reputation, for a period of two years.
When he agrees, Velasco finds that he quickly loses his self-respect and the regard of others.
He regains those qualities only when he steps forward as the Queen’s champion, ready to meet the King on the field of honour.
There are tragic stories, stories in which the hero’s fortunes usually begin by rising, but eventually “turn down” to disaster.
(The Greek word catastrophe means literally a “down stroke“, the downturn in the hero’s fortunes at the end of a tragedy.)
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
Before the duel can take place, however, the assembled courtiers protest the proceeding.
Muretto steps forward to explain his role in manipulating Alphonso’s mind.
Finally, Alphonso is convinced of the Queen’s innocence and repents his past harshness.
Their rocky relationship reaches a new tolerance and understanding.
A humbled Salassa also resolves to give up her vain and selfish ways to be a fit wife for Velasco.
There are comedies, stories in which things initially seem to become more and more coomplicated for the hero, until they are entangled in a complete knot, from which there seems to be no escape, but eventually comes the peripeteia, the reversal of fortune.
The knot is miraculously unravelled (from which we get the French word denouement, an “unknotting“.
The hero is liberated.
We and all the world rejoice.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
The play’s comic relief is supplied by a group of minor characters – two quarrelling followers of Alphonso, the astrologer Pynto and a bluff captain named Bufo, plus Velasco’s servant Mopas and the matchmaker/bawd Madame Shaparoon.
The plot of a story leads its hero either to a catastrophe or to a denouement, to frustration or liberation, to death or a new lease on life.
(The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker)
In ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Giovanni, recently returned to Parma from university in Bologna, has developed an incestuous passion for his sister Annabella and the play opens with his discussing this ethical problem with Friar Bonaventura.
Bonaventura tries to convince Giovanni that his desires are evil despite Giovanni’s passionate reasoning and eventually persuades him to try to rid himself of his feelings through repentance.
Above: Parma, Italy
“Nice philosophy may tolerate unlikely arguments, but Heaven admits no jest.“
(‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, John Ford)
Annabella, meanwhile, is being approached by a number of suitors including Bergetto, Grimaldi, and Soranzo.
She is not interested in any of them.
Giovanni finally tells her how he feels (obviously having failed in his attempts to repent) and finally wins her over.
Annabella’s tutoress Putana (“Whore“) encourages the relationship.
The siblings consummate their relationship.
“I have spent many a silent night in sighs and groans, ran over all my thoughts, despised my fate, reasoned against the reasons of my love, done all that smoothed-cheek Virtue could advise, but found all bootless:
‘Tis my destiny that you must either love or I must die.“
(‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, John Ford)
Hippolita, a past lover of Soranzo, verbally attacks him, furious with him for letting her send her husband Richardetto on a dangerous journey she believed would result in his death so that they could be together, then declining his vows and abandoning her.
Soranzo leaves and his servant Vasques promises to help Hippolita get revenge on Soranzo and the pair agree to marry after they murder him.
“Delay in vengeance gives a heavier blow.“
(‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, John Ford)
Richardetto is not dead but also in Parma in disguise with his niece Philotis.
Richardetto is also desperate for revenge against Soranzo and convinces Grimaldi that to win Annabella, he should stab Soranzo with a poisoned sword.
Bergetto and Philotis, now betrothed, are planning to marry secretly in the place Richardetto orders Grimaldi to wait.
Grimaldi mistakenly stabs and kills Bergetto instead, leaving Philotis, Poggio (Bergetto’s servant), and Donado (Bergetto’s uncle) distraught.
“There is a place, in a black and hollow vault, where day is never seen.
There shines no sun, but flaming horror of consuming fires – a lightless sulphur, choked with smoky fogs of an infected darkness.
In this place dwell many thousand thousand sundry sorts of never-dying deaths.“
(‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, John Ford)
Annabella resigns herself to marrying Soranzo, knowing she has to marry someone other than her brother.
She subsequently falls ill and it is revealed that she is pregnant.
Friar Bonaventura then persuades her to marry Soranzo before her pregnancy becomes apparent.
Donado and Florio (father of Annabella and Giovanni) go to the Cardinal’s house, where Grimaldi has been in hiding, to beg for justice.
The Cardinal refuses due to Grimaldi’s high status and instead sends him back to Rome.
Florio tells Donado to wait for God to bring them justice.
“Why, I hold fate clasped in my fist and could command the course of Time’s eternal motion, hadst thou been one thought more steady than an ebbing sea.”
(‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, John Ford)
Annabella and Soranzo are married soon after.
Their ceremony includes masque dancers, one of whom reveals herself to be Hippolita.
She claims to be willing to drink a toast with Soranzo and the two raise their glasses and drink, on which note she explains that her plan was to poison his wine.
Vasques comes forward and reveals that he was always loyal to his master and he poisoned Hippolita.
She dies spouting insults and damning prophecies to the newlyweds.
Seeing the effects of anger and revenge, Richardetto abandons his plans and sends Philotis off to a convent to save her soul.
“There’s not a hair sticks on my head but, like a leaden plummet, it sinks me to the grave:
I must creep thither.
The journey is not long.“
(The Broken Heart, John Ford)
When Soranzo discovers Annabella’s pregnancy, the two argue until Annabella realises that Soranzo truly did love her and finds herself consumed with guilt.
She is confined to her room by her husband, who plots with Vasques to avenge himself against his cheating wife and her unknown lover.
On Soranzo’s exit, Putana comes onto the stage and Vasques pretends to befriend her to gain the name of Annabella’s baby’s father.
Once Putana reveals that it is Giovanni, Vasques has bandits tie Putana up and put out her eyes as punishment for the terrible acts she has willingly overseen and encouraged.
In her room, Annabella writes a letter to her brother in her own blood, warning him that Soranzo knows and will soon seek revenge.
The Friar delivers the letter, but Giovanni is too arrogant to believe he can be harmed and ignores advice to decline the invitation to Soranzo’s birthday feast.
The Friar subsequently flees Parma to avoid further involvement in Giovanni’s downfall.
“Love is dead.
Let lovers’ eyes locked in endless dreams, th’ extreme of all extremes, ope no more, for now Love dies.”
(The Broken Heart, John Ford)
On the day of the feast, Giovanni visits Annabella in her room and after talking with her, stabs her during a kiss.
He then enters the feast, at which all remaining characters are present, wielding a dagger on which his sister’s heart is skewered and tells everyone of the incestuous affair.
Florio dies immediately from shock.
Soranzo attacks Giovanni verbally and Giovanni stabs and kills him.
Vasques intervenes, wounding Giovanni before ordering the bandits to finish the job.
Following the massacre, the Cardinal orders Putana to be burnt at the stake, Vasques to be banished, and the Church to seize all the wealth and property belonging to the dead.
Richardetto finally reveals his true identity to Donado and the play ends with the cardinal saying of Annabella:
“Who could not say,
‘Tis pity she’s a whore?“.
“Fly hence, shadows, that do keep, Watchful sorrows, charmed in sleep.“
(The Lover’s Melancholy, John Ford)
The Lady’s Trial employs the multiple-plot structure that is typical of Ford and common in the dramas of the era.
The main plot concerns Auria, an aristocrat of Genoa, and his marriage to the beautiful and virtuous but lowly-born Spinella.
Auria’s marriage across class lines is controversial among other Genoese nobles, like his friend Aurelio.
When Auria announces that he is going off to the wars against the Turks to repair his fortunes – Spinella brought no dowry – Aurelio opposes the move on two counts:
Spinella will be exposed to temptations.
The role of soldier of fortune is unbecoming to a nobleman.
Auria replies that he trusts his wife and that he would rather stand on his own than depend on his friends.
The contrast is drawn between the two men:
Aurelio is rule-bound and conventional, while Auria is more independent in his judgments.
“He is a noble gentleman; withal Happy in his endeavours: the general voice Sounds him for courtesy, behaviour, language, And every fair demeanour, an example: Titles of honour add not to his worth; Who is himself an honour to his title.“
(The Lady’s Trial, John Ford)
Aurelio is right in one respect:
Spinella is exposed to temptation in her husband’s absence.
The nobleman Adurni tries to seduce Spinella, though he is so convincingly repulsed that he reforms and abandons his lustful ways.
Spinella’s reputation is compromised, however, when Aurelio exposes their meeting.
Even when Adurni confesses his transgression and apologizes to the returned husband, the scandal comes to a head in a formal trial of Spinella (“the lady’s trial” of the title).
The trial allows Spinella to exonerate herself and prove to the world, and to aristocratic Genoese society, her honour and virtue.
Auria accepts Adurni’s repentance as sincere and chooses the path of reason over violent retribution.
Adurni in turn takes Spinella’s sister Castanna as his bride, as a seal of their reconciliation.
“Let them fear bondage who are slaves to fear; The sweetest freedom is an honest heart.”
(The Lady’s Trial, John Ford)
The secondary plot involves the divorced couple Benatzi and Levidolche.
Levidolche has been seduced by Adurni.
Benatzi seeks to catch her in the act by wooing her in disguise — but Levidolche recognizes him and decides to reform.
But she tries to manipulate Benatzi into taking revenge on Adurni — an attempt that fails comically.
“We can drink till all look blue.“
(The Lady’s Trial, John Ford)
The third level, the comic subplot, deals with the Amoretta, a comical young lady with a lisp who has an obsession with horses.
She is pursued by two ridiculous suitors.
Firstly Guzman, a Spanish soldier with breath smelling of garlic and herring and Fulgoso a good looking but rather dim witted Dutchman who whistles constantly.
The two would-be suitors are encouraged by Futelli and Piero for the pairs own amusement.
Through various hilarious failed attempts by the two foreigners, the play is provided some much needed comic relief.
Amoretta eventually marries the vermin-like Futelli.
“A bachelor may thrive by observation, on a little.
A single life’s no burden, but to draw in yokes is chargeable and will require a double maintenance.“
(The Fancies, Chaste and Noble, John Ford)
The play ends with four marriages.
In a pattern typical of the comic genre, everyone has learned his or her lesson.
In Auria, Ford’s portrayal of a husband who “responds rationally to the rumour of his wife’s infidelity” provides a bold departure from, and a stark contrast to, earlier figures in English Renaissance drama like Othello, as well as the precedents of Ford’s own earlier plays.
“Sister, look ye, how, by a new creation of my tailor’s I’ve shook off old mortality.”
(The Fancies, Chaste and Noble, John Ford)
Thornton Niven Wilder (17 April 1897 – 1975) was an American playwright and novelist.
He won three Pulitzer Prizes for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a US National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.
Above: American writer Thornton Wilder
“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.“
(The Woman of Andros, Thornton Wilder)
Wilder began writing plays while at the Thacher School in Ojai, California, where he did not fit in and was teased by classmates as overly intellectual.
According to a classmate:
“We left him alone, just left him alone.
And he would retire at the library, his hideaway, learning to distance himself from humiliation and indifference.”
“Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.“
(TIME magazine, 12 January 1953, Thornton Wilder)
After graduating, Wilder went to Italy and studied archaeology and Italian (1920 –1921) as part of an eight-month residency at the American Academy in Rome.
He then taught French at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, beginning in 1921.
His first novel, The Cabala, was published in 1926.
In 1927, The Bridge of San Luis Rey brought him commercial success and his first Pulitzer Prize (1928).
He resigned from the Lawrenceville School in 1928.
From 1930 to 1937 he taught at the University of Chicago, during which time he published his translation of André Obey’s own adaptation of the tale “Le Viol de Lucrece” (1931) under the title “Lucrece“.
In Chicago, he became famous as a lecturer and was chronicled on the celebrity pages.
Above: University of Chicago shield
In 1938 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Our Town.
He won the Prize again in 1943 for his play The Skin of Our Teeth.
“Many plays — certainly mine — are like blank checks.
The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.“
(The New York Mirror, 13 July 1956, Thornton Wilder)
Above: Thornton Wilder
He went on to be a visiting professor at Harvard University, where he served for a year as the Charles Eliot Norton professor.
Though he considered himself a teacher first and a writer second, he continued to write all his life, receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1957 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.
In 1968 he won the National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.
“The most valuable thing I inherited was a temperament that does not revolt against Necessity and that is constantly renewed in Hope.“
(Thornton Wilder)
Above: Frank Kraven as The Stage Manager in Our Town
The Bridge of San Luis Rey(1927) tells the story of several unrelated people who happen to be on a bridge in Peru when it collapses, killing them.
Philosophically, the book explores the question of why unfortunate events occur to people who seem “innocent” or “undeserving“.
It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928.
In 1998 it was selected by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.
The book was quoted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the memorial service for victims of the September 11 attacks in 2001.
“For my reading I have chosen the final words of The Bridge of San Luis Rey written by Thornton Wilder in 1927.
It is about a tragedy that took place in Peru, when a bridge collapsed over a gorge and five people died.
“A witness to the deaths, wanting to make sense of them and explain the ways of God to his fellow human beings, examined the lives of the people who died, and these words were said by someone who knew the victims, and who had been through the many emotions, and the many stages, of bereavement and loss.
But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left Earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.
But the love will have been enough.
All those impulses of love return to the love that made them.
Even memory is not necessary for love.
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love.
The only survival, the only meaning.“
(The Guardian, Friday 21 September 2001, Tony Blair)
Above: Tony Blair
Since then its popularity has grown enormously.
The book is the progenitor of the modern disaster epic in literature and film-making, where a single disaster intertwines the victims, whose lives are then explored by means of flashbacks to events before the disaster.
The first few pages of the first chapter explain the book’s basic premise:
The story centers on a fictional event that happened in Peru on the road between Lima and Cuzco, at noon on Friday 20 July 1714.
A rope bridge woven by the Inca a century earlier collapsed at that particular moment, while five people were crossing it, sending them falling from a great height to their deaths in the river below.
The collapse was witnessed by Brother Juniper, a Franciscan friar who was on his way to cross the bridge himself.
A deeply pious man who seeks to provide some sort of empirical evidence that might prove to the world God’s Divine Providence, he sets out to interview everyone he can find who knew the five victims.
Over the course of six years, he compiles a huge book of all of the evidence he gathers to show that the beginning and end of a person is all part of God’s plan for that person.
Part One foretells the burning of the book that occurs at the end of the novel, but it also says that one copy of Brother Juniper’s book survives and is at the library of the University of San Marcos, where it now sits neglected.
Part Two focuses on one of the victims of the collapse:
Doña María, the Marquesa de Montemayor.
The daughter of a wealthy cloth merchant, the Marquesa was an ugly child who eventually entered into an arranged marriage and bore a daughter, Clara, whom she loved dearly.
Clara was indifferent to her mother, though, and became engaged to a Spanish man and moved across the ocean to Spain where she married.
Doña María visits her daughter in Spain, but when they cannot get along, she returns to Lima.
The only way that they can communicate comfortably is by letter.
Doña María pours her heart into her writing, which becomes so polished that her letters will be read in schools in the centuries after her lifetime.
“Love is an energy which exists of itself.
It is its own value.“
(TIME magazine, 3 February 1958, Thornton Wilder)
Doña María takes as her companion Pepita, a girl raised at the Convent of Santa María Rosa de las Rosas.
When she learns that her daughter is pregnant in Spain, Doña María decides to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa María de Cluxambuqua to pray that the baby will be healthy and loved.
Pepita goes along as company and to supervise the staff.
When Doña María is out at the shrine, Pepita stays at the inn and writes a letter to her patron, the Abbess María del Pilar, complaining about her misery and loneliness.
Doña María sees the letter on the table when she gets back and reads it.
Later, she asks Pepita about the letter.
Pepita says she tore it up because the letter was not brave.
Doña María has new insight into the ways in which her own life and love for her daughter have lacked bravery.
She writes her “first letter” (actually Letter LVI) of courageous love to her daughter, but two days later, returning to Lima, she and Pepita are on the bridge of San Luis Rey when it collapses.
“Love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it gives birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest.
Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties.”
(Thornton Wilder)
Esteban and Manuel are twins who were left at the Convent of Santa María Rosa de las Rosas as infants.
The Abbess of the convent, Madre María del Pilar, developed a fondness for them as they grew up.
When they became older, they decided to be scribes.
They are so close that they have developed a secret language that only they understand.
Their closeness becomes strained when Manuel falls in love with Camila Perichole, a famous actress.
“Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.“
(The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder)
Perichole flirts with Manuel and swears him to secrecy when she retains him to write letters to her lover, the Viceroy.
Esteban has no idea of their relationship until she turns up at the twins’ room one night in a hurry and has Manuel write to a matador with whom she is having an affair.
Esteban encourages his brother to follow her, but instead Manuel swears that he will never see her again.
Later, Manuel cuts his knee on a piece of metal and it becomes infected.
The surgeon instructs Esteban to put cold compresses on the injury:
The compresses are so painful that Manuel curses Esteban, though he later remembers nothing of his curses.
Esteban offers to send for the Perichole, but Manuel refuses.
Soon after, Manuel dies.
“Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.“
(The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder)
When the Abbess comes to prepare the body, she asks Esteban his name and he says he is Manuel.
Gossip about his ensuing strange behavior spreads all over town.
He goes to the theatre but runs away before the Perichole can talk to him.
The Abbess also tries to talk to him, but he runs away, so she sends for Captain Alvarado.
“Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.”
(Thornton Wilder)
Captain Alvarado, a well-known sailor and explorer, goes to see Esteban in Cuzco and hires him to sail the world with him, far from Peru.
Esteban agrees, then refuses, then acquiesces if he can get all his pay in advance to buy a present for the Abbess before he departs.
That night Esteban attempts suicide but is saved by Captain Alvarado.
The Captain offers to take him back to Lima to buy the present.
At the ravine spanned by the bridge of San Luis Rey, the Captain goes down to a boat that is ferrying some materials across the water.
Esteban goes to the bridge and is on it when it collapses.
“I am not interested in the ephemeral — such subjects as the adulteries of dentists.
I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions.“
(The New York Times, 6 November 1961, Thornton Wilder)
Uncle Pio acts as Camila Perichole’s valet, and, in addition, “her singing-master, her coiffeur, her masseur, her reader, her errand-boy, her banker.
Rumour added: her father.”
He was born the bastard son of a Madrid aristocrat and later travelled the world engaged in a wide variety of dubious, though legal, businesses, most related to being a go-between or agent of the powerful, including (briefly) conducting interrogations for the Inquisition.
His life “became too complicated” and he fled to Peru.
He came to realize that he had just three interests in the world:
independence
the constant presence of beautiful women
the masterpieces of Spanish literature, particularly those of the theatre
“Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor – Look at their houses! Look at their clothes – could really suffer.
Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.“
(The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder)
He finds work as the confidential agent of the Viceroy of Peru.
One day, he discovers a 12-year-old café singer, Micaela Villegas, and takes her under his protection.
Over the course of years, as they travel from tavern to tavern throughout Latin America, she grows into a beautiful and talented young woman.
Uncle Pio instructs her in the etiquette of high society and goads her to greatness by expressing perpetual disappointment with her performances.
She develops into Camila Perichole, the most honoured actress in Lima.
“99% of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.“
(The Matchmaker, Thornton Wilder)
After many years of success, the Perichole becomes bored with the stage.
The elderly Viceroy, Don Andrés, takes her as his mistress.
She and Uncle Pio and the Archbishop of Peru and, eventually, Captain Alvarado meet frequently at midnight for dinner at the Viceroy’s mansion.
Through it all, Uncle Pio remains faithfully devoted to her, but as Camila ages and bears three children by the Viceroy she focuses on becoming a lady rather than an actress.
She avoids Uncle Pio.
When he talks to her she tells him to not use her stage name.
“Money is like manure.
It is not worth a thing unless it is spread around encouraging young things to grow.“
(The Matchmaker, Thornton Wilder)
When a smallpox epidemic sweeps through Lima, Camila is disfigured by it.
She takes her young son Don Jaime, who suffers from convulsions, to the country.
Uncle Pio sees her one night trying hopelessly to cover her pockmarked face with powder.
Ashamed, she refuses to ever see him again.
He begs her to allow him to take her son to Lima and teach the boy as he taught her.
Despairing at the turn her life has taken, she reluctantly agrees.
Uncle Pio and Jaime leave the next morning.
They are the 4th and 5th people on the bridge of San Luis Rey when it collapses.
“Physicians are the cobblers, rather the botchers, of men’s bodies.
As the one patches our tattered clothes, so the other solders our diseased flesh.“
(The Lover’s Melancholy, John Ford)
Brother Juniper labors for six years on his book about the bridge collapse, talking to everyone he can find who knew the victims, trying various mathematical formulas to measure spiritual traits, with no results beyond conventionally pious generalizations.
He compiles his huge book of interviews with complete faith in God’s goodness and justice, but a council pronounces his work heretical.
The book and Brother Juniper are publicly burned for their heresy.
“Imagination draws on memory.
Memory and imagination combined can stage a servants’ ball or even write a book, if that’s what they want to do.”
(Theophilus North, Thornton Wilder)
The story then shifts back in time to the day of a funeral service for those who died in the bridge collapse.
The Archbishop, the Viceroy and Captain Alvarado are at the ceremony.
At the Convent of Santa María Rosa de las Rosas, the Abbess feels, having lost Pepita and the twin brothers, that her work to help the poor and infirm will die with her.
A year after the accident, Camila Perichole seeks out the Abbess to ask how she can go on, having lost her son and Uncle Pio.
Camila gains comfort and insight from the Abbess.
It is later revealed she becomes a helper at the Convent.
Later, Doña Clara arrives from Spain, also seeking out the Abbess to speak with her about her mother, the Marquesa de Montemayor.
She is greatly moved by the work of the Abbess in caring for the deaf, the insane and the dying.
The novel ends with the Abbess’ observation:
“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.“
Wilder wrote Our Town, a popular play (and later film) set in fictional Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire.
It was inspired in part by Dante’s Purgatorio and in part by his friend Gertrude Stein’s novel The Making of Americans.
Above: Italian writer Dante Aligheri (1265 – 1321)
Above: American writer Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946)
Wilder suffered from writer’s block while writing the final act.
Our Town employs a choric narrator called the Stage Manager and a minimalist set to underscore the human experience.
Wilder himself played the Stage Manager on Broadway for two weeks and later in summer stock productions.
Following the daily lives of the Gibbs and Webb families, as well as the other inhabitants of Grover’s Corners, the play illustrates the importance of the universality of the simple, yet meaningful lives of all people in the world in order to demonstrate the value of appreciating life.
The play won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize.
“Wherever you come near the human race there’s layers and layers of nonsense.”
(Our Town, Thornton Wilder)
The Stage Manager introduces the audience to the small town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire and the people living there as a morning begins in the year 1901.
Joe Crowell delivers the paper to Doc Gibbs, Howie Newsome delivers the milk, and the Webb and Gibbs households send their children (Emily and Wally Webb, George and Rebecca Gibbs) off to school on this beautifully simple morning.
Professor Willard speaks to the audience about the history of the town.
Editor Webb speaks to the audience about the town’s socioeconomic status, political and religious demographics, and the accessibility and proliferation, or lack thereof, of culture and art in Grover’s Corners.
The Stage Manager leads us through a series of pivotal moments throughout the afternoon and evening, revealing the characters’ relationships and challenges.
“That’s what it was to be alive.
To move about in a cloud of ignorance.
To go up and down trampling on the feelings of those about you.
To spend and waste time as though you had a million years.
To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion or another.
Now you know — that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to.
Ignorance and blindness.“
(Our Town, Thornton Wilder)
It is at this time when we are introduced to Simon Stimson, an organist and choir director at the Congregational Church.
We learn from Mrs. Louella Soames that Simon Stimson is an alcoholic when she, Mrs. Gibbs, and Mrs. Webb stop on the corner after choir practice and “gossip like a bunch of old hens“, according to Doc Gibbs, discussing Simon’s alcoholism.
It seems to be a well known fact amongst everyone in town that Simon Stimson has a problem with alcohol.
All the characters speak to his issue as if they are aware of it and his having “seen a peck of trouble” a phrase repeated by more than one character throughout the show.
While the majority of townsfolk choose to “look the other way“, including the town policeman, Constable Warren, it is Mrs. Gibbs who takes Simon’s struggles with addiction to heart, and has a conversation with her husband, Doc Gibbs, about Simon’s drinking.
“Nurse one vice in your bosom.
Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it.
Then you’ll have the miser who is no liar and the drunkard who is the benefactor of the whole city.“
(The Matchmaker, Thornton Wilder)
Underneath a glowing full moon, Act I ends with siblings George and Rebecca, and Emily gazing out of their respective bedroom windows, enjoying the smell of heliotrope in the “wonderful (or terrible) moonlight” with the self-discovery of Emily and George liking each other, and the realization that they are both straining to grow up in their own way.
“The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.“
(Thornton Wilder interview, Writers at Work)
The audience is dismissed to the first intermission by the Stage Manager who quips:
“That’s the end of Act I, folks.
You can go and smoke, now.
Those that smoke.”
“I think myself as a fabulist, not a critic.
I realize that every writer is necessarily a critic — that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on.
But, as I have just suggested, I believe that the practice of writing consists in more and more relegating all that schematic operation to the subconscious.
The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg — nine-tenths of him is underwater.“
(Thornton Wilder interview, Writers at Work)
Three years have passed.
George and Emily prepare to wed.
The day is filled with stress.
Howie Newsome is delivering milk in the pouring rain while Si Crowell, younger brother of Joe, laments how George’s baseball talents will be squandered.
George pays an awkward visit to his soon-to-be in-laws.
Here, the Stage Manager interrupts the scene and takes the audience back a year, to the end of Emily and George’s junior year.
Emily confronts George about his pride.
Over an ice cream soda, they discuss the future and confess their love for each other.
George decides not to go to college, as he had planned, but to work and eventually take over his uncle’s farm.
In the present, George and Emily say that they are not ready to marry — George to his mother, Emily to her father — but they both calm down and happily go through with the wedding.
“A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George.
All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot’s tied in a mighty public way.“
(Our Town, Thornton Wilder)
Nine years have passed.
The Stage Manager, in a lengthy monologue, discusses eternity, focusing attention on the cemetery outside of town and the people who have died since the wedding, including Mrs. Gibbs (pneumonia, while travelling), Wally Webb (burst appendix, while camping), Mrs. Soames and Simon Stimson (suicide by hanging).
Town undertaker Joe Stoddard is introduced, as is a young man named Sam Craig who has returned to Grover’s Corners for his cousin’s funeral.
That cousin is Emily, who died giving birth to her and George’s second child.
Once the funeral ends, Emily emerges to join the dead.
Mrs. Gibbs urges her to forget her life, warning her that being able to see but not interact with her family, all the while knowing what will happen in the future, will cause her too much pain.
Ignoring the warnings of Simon, Mrs. Soames and Mrs. Gibbs, Emily returns to Earth to relive one day, her 12th birthday.
She joyfully watches her parents and some of the people of her childhood for the first time in years, but her joy quickly turns to pain as she realizes how little people appreciate the simple joys of life.
The memory proves too painful for her and she realizes that every moment of life should be treasured.
When she asks the Stage Manager if anyone truly understands the value of life while they live it, he responds:
“No. The saints and poets, maybe – they do some.”
Emily returns to her grave next to Mrs. Gibbs and watches impassively as George kneels weeping over her.
The Stage Manager concludes the play and wishes the audience a good night.
“I can’t.
I can’t go on.
It goes so fast.
We don’t have time to look at one another.
I didn’t realize.
So all that was going on and we never noticed.
Take me back — up the hill — to my grave.
But first:
Wait!
One more look.
Good-bye, Good-bye, world.
Good-bye Grover’s Corners – Mama and Papa.
Good-bye to clocks ticking and Mama’s sunflowers.
And food and coffee.
And new ironed dresses and hot bath and sleeping and waking up.
Oh, Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do human beings ever realize life while they live it?
Every, every minute?
I’m ready to go back.
I should have listened to you.
That’s all human beings are!
Just blind people.“
(Our Town, Thornton Wilder)
His play The Skin of Our Teeth opened in New York on 18 November 1942, featuring Fredric March and Tallulah Bankhead.
Again, the themes are familiar:
the timeless human condition
history as progressive, cyclical, or entropic
literature, philosophy, and religion as the touchstones of civilization
Three acts dramatize the travails of the Antrobus family, allegorizing the alternate history of mankind.
It was claimed by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, authors of A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, that much of the play was the result of unacknowledged borrowing from James Joyce’s last work.
“The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape.”
(Thornton Wilder interview, Writers at Work)
Act One is an amalgam of early 20th century New Jersey and the dawn of the Ice Age.
The father is inventing things such as the lever, the wheel, the alphabet and multiplication tables.
The family and the entire northeastern US face extinction by a wall of ice moving southward from Canada.
The story is introduced by a narrator and further expanded by the family maid, Sabina.
There are unsettling parallels between the members of the Antrobus family and various characters from the Bible.
In addition, time is compressed and scrambled to such an extent that the refugees who arrive at the Antrobus house seeking food and fire include the Old Testament prophet Moses, the ancient Greek poet Homer, and women who are identified as Muses.
“I hate this play and every word in it.“
(The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder)
Act II takes place on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the Antrobuses are present for George’s swearing-in as president of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Mammals, Subdivision Humans.
Sabina is present, also, in the guise of a scheming beauty queen, who tries to steal George’s affection from his wife and family.
The conventioneers are rowdy and party furiously, but there is an undercurrent of foreboding as a fortune teller warns of an impending storm.
The weather soon transforms from summery sunshine to hurricane to deluge.
Gladys and George each attempt their individual rebellions and are brought back into line by the family.
The act ends with the family members reconciled and, paralleling the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark, directing pairs of animals to safety on a large boat where they survive the storm and the end of the world.
“My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it is on your plate — that’s my philosophy.“
(The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder)
The final act takes place in the ruins of the Antrobuses’ former home.
A devastating war has occurred.
Maggie and Gladys have survived by hiding in a cellar.
When they come out of the cellar we see that Gladys has a baby.
Sabina joins them, “dressed as a Napoleonic camp-follower“.
George has been away at the front lines leading an army.
Henry also fought, on the opposite side, and returns as a general.
The family members discuss the ability of the human race to rebuild and continue after continually destroying itself.
The question is raised:
“Is there any accomplishment or attribute of the human race of enough value that its civilization should be rebuilt?“
The stage manager interrupts the play-within-the-play to explain that several members of their company can’t perform their parts, possibly due to food poisoning (as the actress playing Sabina saw blue mold on the lemon meringue pie at dinner).
The stage manager drafts a janitor, a dresser and other non-actors to fill their parts, which involve quoting philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle to mark the passing of time within the play.
The alternate history action ends where it began, with Sabina dusting the living room and worrying about George’s arrival from the office.
Her final act is to address the audience and turn over the responsibility of continuing the action, or life, to them.
“I have never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle.
I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for — whether it is a field, or a home, or a country.“
(The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder)
In his novel The Ides of March (1948), Wilder reconstructed the characters and events leading to, and culminating in, the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Above: Roman general / statesman Julius Caesar (100 – 44 BC)
He had met Jean-Paul Sartre on a US lecture tour after the war.
He was under the influence of existentialism, although rejecting its atheist implications.
Above: French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980)
“Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.”
(Thornton Wilder interview, Writers at Work)
In 1962 and 1963, Wilder lived for 20 months in the small town of Douglas, Arizona, apart from family and friends.
There he started his longest novel, The Eighth Day, which went on to win the National Book Award.
According to Harold Augenbraum in 2009, it “attacked the big questions head on, embedded in the story of small-town America“.
“It is only in appearance that time is a river.
It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.”
(The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilder)
During a weekend gathering of the Ashley and Lansing families, Breckenridge Lansing is shot while the men are practicing shooting.
Townsfolk suspect that Eustacia Lansing, Breckenridge’s wife, and John Ashley were having an affair.
Ashley is tried, convicted, and sentenced to execution.
Miraculously, days before the scheduled execution, he is rescued by mysterious masked men.
He then escapes to Chile, where he assumes the identity of a Canadian named James Tolland and finds work in the copper mining industry.
“Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipient of confidences.”
(The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilder)
While Ashley escapes to Chile, his family — left destitute without his income — turns to running a boarding house to make ends meet.
His son, Roger, assumes a fake name and moves to Chicago.
After working a series of odd jobs, Roger makes a name for himself as a writer for a newspaper.
Ashley’s daughter, Lily, also assumes a fake name and becomes a famous singer in Chicago, later moving to New York.
“Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous.
It is nothing if it is not ridiculous.”
(The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilder)
At the end of the book, it is revealed that a group of Native Americans, one of whom was friends with Roger, is responsible for helping Ashley escape his execution.
The group did this because, after a flood wiped out their local church, Ashley loaned them money to rebuild it.
It is also revealed that Ashley did not kill Lansing.
Lansing’s son George did, because Lansing was becoming violent towards his wife, George’s mother.
George feared for his mother’s safety, and consequently killed his father and then ran away to San Francisco, and later Russia, to work as an actor.
“A sense of humour judges one’s actions and the actions of others from a wider reference and a longer view and finds them incongrous.
It dampens enthusiasm.
It mocks hope.
It pardons shortcomings.
It consoles failure.
It recommends moderation.”
(The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilder)
Though there is a murder mystery in the novel, the main focus of the work is the history of the Ashley and Lansing families.
Wilder muses frequently on the nature of written history throughout the book.
Towards the end, he writes:
“There is only one history.
It began with the creation of man and will come to an end when the last human consciousness is extinguished.
All other beginnings and endings are arbitrary conventions — makeshifts parading as self-sufficient entireties.
The cumbrous shears of the historian cut out a few figures and a brief passage of time from that enormous tapestry.
Above and below the laceration, to the right and left of it, the severed threads protest against the injustice, against the imposture.“
Above: Thornton Wilder
The book concludes with a number of flash-forwards describing the rest of the lives of the characters.
Ashley’s wife, Beata, moves to Los Angeles and starts a boarding house there.
Roger marries one of Lansing’s daughters.
Ashley’s daughter Sophia suffers from dementia and moves into a sanitarium.
Ashley’s daughter Constance becomes a political activist and moves to Japan.
“We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.”
(The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilder)
His last novel, Theophilus North, was published in 1973.
It was made into the film Mr. North in 1988.
In 1920s Newport, Rhode Island, Theophilus North is an engaging, multi-talented middle class Yale University graduate who spends the summer catering to the wealthy families of the city.
He becomes the confidant of James McHenry Bosworth, and a tutor and tennis coach to the families’ children.
He also befriends many from the city’s servant class including Henry Simmons, Amelia Cranston and Sally Boffin.
“Man is not an end but a beginning.
We are at the beginning of the second week.
We are the children of the eighth day.”
(The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilder)
Complications arise when some residents begin to ascribe healing powers to the static electricity shocks that Mr. North happens to generate frequently.
Despite never claiming any healing or medical abilities, he is accused of quackery and with the help of those he had befriended must defend himself.
In the end, Mr. North accepts a position of leadership at an educational and philosophical academy founded by Mr. Bosworth and begins a romance with Bosworth’s granddaughter Persis.
“When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery.
He wants him to know all that being alive can bring.
That is His best gift.
There is no happiness save in understanding the whole.”
(The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilder)
Donald Richie (17 April 1924 – 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan and, especially, Japanese cinema.
Richie was a prolific author.
Above: Donald Richie
Among his most noted works on Japan are The Inland Sea, a travel classic, and Public People, Private People, a look at some of Japan’s most significant and most mundane people.
The Inland Sea is nearly a land-locked body of water bounded by three of Japan’s four major islands.
It has been called “the Aegean of the East“, bounded as it is by the Honshu mainland on one side and the various lands of the Japanese archipelago on the other.
The people who live with the Seto Naikai, a name meaning “the sea within the straits”, remain isolated from each other and from the mainland.
The travels are real.
The chronology is real.
The people are real.
The places are all real.
They are there in the Inland Sea, within easy reach of the enterprising traveller.
The history and folklore are also real.
One’s thoughts about Japan tend to be contradictory.
And this is fitting in a land where mutual contradictions are entertained with no seeming inconvenience.
Consistency is no great virtue.
Indeed, the quite consistent is the quite dead.
We must all remember that for the Westerner, Japan is a great mirror.
In it we can see the land and the people clearly – but we can also see ourselves.
“I hear that they are building a bridge
To the island of Tsu
Alas…
To what now
Shall I compare myself?”
(Old Japanese poem)
He compiled two collections of essays on Japan:
A Lateral View
Partial Views
A collection of his writings has been published to commemorate 50 years of writing about Japan:
The Donald Richie Reader
The Japan Journals: 1947–2004 consists of extended excerpts from his diaries
Cynthia Ozick (born 17 April 1928) is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist.
Ozick’s fiction and essays are often about Jewish American life, but she also writes about politics, history, and literary criticism.
In addition, she has written and translated poetry.
Above: Cynthia Ozick
“She thought:
How hard it is to change one’s life.
And again she thought:
How terrifyingly simple to change the lives of others.
(Foreign Bodies, Cynthia Ozick)
Henry James occupies a central place in her fiction and nonfiction.
The critic Adam Kirsch wrote that her “career-long agon with Henry James reaches a kind of culmination in Foreign Bodies, her polemical rewriting of ‘The Ambassadors‘ “.
Above: American author Henry James (1843 – 1916)
“Sometimes starting is so difficult, because it is all chaos.
It is the difference between writing an essay, which if it is about Henry James, at least you know that much, but with fiction you don’t.
It could be a scene in your mind or it could be some kind of tendril that you can barely define.
So I have to force it.
And then after – this is real compulsion, real self-flagellation – it kind of takes off.
But there is a lot of agony before.
And sometimes during.
And sometimes all through.
But just before the end and revelations start coming, that’s the joy.
But mostly that’s Hell.”
(The Guardian, 4 July 2011, Cythnia Ozick)
Above: Cynthia Ozick
The Holocaust and its aftermath is also a dominant theme.
Above: “Selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau in German-occupied Poland, around May 1944. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber.
For instance in “Who Owns Anne Frank?” she writes that the diary’s true meaning has been distorted and eviscerated “by blurb and stage, by shrewdness and naiveté, by cowardice and spirituality, by forgiveness and indifference“.
Above: German Jewess diarist Anne Frank (1929 – 1945)
“I don’t think one writes for immortality.
I think beginning writers always think they will have fame.
But if fame – which is power – is what you want, then you will get it, probably.
But it is not something necessary to want or need.“
(NPR, 17 July 2016, Cynthia Ozick)
Above: Logo of National Public Radio
Much of her work explores the disparaged self, the reconstruction of identity after immigration, trauma and movement from one class to another.
Above: Cynthia Ozick
“I think the word is intractable.
I blame the lack of live and let live.
And which side is ıt coming from more than the other side?
I think it is coming from people who call other people infidels.
That’s how it strikes me.”
(The Guardian, 4 July 2011, Cynthia Ozick)
Ozick says that writing is not a choice but “a kind of hallucinatory madness.
You will do it no matter what.
You can’t not do it.”
She sees the “freedom in the delectable sense of making things up” as coexisting with the “torment” of writing.
Above: Cynthia Ozick
“I cannot not write.
I mean, what else am I going to do with my life?
That’s another way of putting it.
I simply must.
Writers cannot help themselves.
In a way they are sort of like the Queen of England.
Every writer is doomed to their profession.
What else is the Queen going to do with her life?
She was born a Queen.
She’s stuck.
And writers are stuck, too.“
(NPR, 17 July 2016, Cythnia Ozick)
Above: Cynthia Oznick
The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971) is the second book and first collection of stories published by American author Cynthia Ozick.
“I always knew that this was what I wanted to do.
I think this is true of most writers — especially anybody who has read ‘Little Women’, which is every writer.
Not so much the male writers, let’s admit it, but every writer who grows up has wanted to be Jo.“
(NPR, 17 July 2016, Cynthia Ozick)
Above: Cythnia Ozick
The Pagan Rabbi is about a rabbi who had just committed suicide by hanging himself in a public park.
He is remembered by his widow for having recently discovered a passion for nature and his widow felt that he left his beliefs of Judaism for Paganism.
Envy is about an American Yiddish poet who is bitterly jealous of his more-successful contemporary.
The main character also has a personal vendetta against televangelists who are attempting to convert Jews to Christianity.
The Suitcase is about a retired Imperial German fighter pilot, whose son is a well-recognized artist.
One of the artist’s friends finds that her purse has been stolen, and they try to figure out who stole it.
The woman who lost her purse accuses the father of the artist, because he was in the Imperial German army.
The Butterfly and the Traffic Light is basically an argument between a college girl and her professor about how traffic lights are the icons of American cities.
The Shawl follows Rosa, her baby Magda, and her niece Stella on their march to a Nazi concentration camp in the middle of winter.
They are described as weak and starving during the march.
Stella’s knees are described as “tumors on sticks“.
Rosa is said to be a “walking cradle” because she constantly carries Magda close to her chest wrapped in her shawl.
Rosa contemplates handing Magda off to one of the villagers watching their march, but decides that the guards would most likely just shoot them both.
Rosa says the shawl is “magic” when Magda sucks on it because it sustained Magda for three days and three nights without food.
Stella observes that Magda looks Aryan, but Rosa sees the observation as some kind of threat to Magda.
At the camp, Rosa continues to hide Magda, but is in constant fear that someone will discover and kill her.
“If you’re alone too much, you think too much.”, Persky said.
“Without a life, a person lives where they can.
If all they got is thoughts, that’s where they live.”, Rosa answered
(The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick)
One day, Stella takes Magda’s shawl away to warm herself.
Without her shawl, Magda, who hadn’t made a sound since the march, begins screaming for her “Ma“.
Rosa hears the screaming, but does not run to Magda because the guards will kill them both.
Instead, she runs to get the shawl and begins waving it in the hope that Magda will see it and calm down.
She is too late and watches as the Nazi guards pick Magda up and throw her into the electric fence, killing her.
Rosa stuffs the shawl into her mouth to stop herself from screaming.
“This is very nice, cozy. You got a nice cozy place, Lublin.”
“Cramped,” Rosa said.
“I work from a different theory.
For everything, there’s a bad way of describing, also a good way.
You pick the good way, you go along better.”
“I don’t like to give myself lies.
Life is short.
We all got to lie.”, Rosa said.
(The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick)
Ozick was inspired to write The Shawl by a line in the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer.
The book mentioned a real event, a baby being thrown into an electric fence.
Ozick was struck by the brutality of the death camp and felt inspired to write about that event.
“Because she fears the past she distrusts the future — it, too, will turn into the past.“
(The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick)
Nick Hornby (born 17 April 1957) is an English writer and lyricist.
He is best known for his memoir Fever Pitch (1992) and novels High Fidelity and About a Boy, all of which were adapted into feature films.
Hornby’s work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.
His books have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide as of 2018.
In a 2004 poll for the BBC, Hornby was named the 29th most influential person in British culture.
He has received two Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay nominations for An Education (2009), and Brooklyn (2015).
Prior to his career as a novelist, Hornby worked for a time as a secondary-school English teacher.
Above: Nick Hornby
Fever Pitch, published in 1992, is an autobiographical story detailing his fanatical support for Arsenal Football Club.
“I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.“
(Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby)
It consists of several chapters in chronological order, from the time the author first became a football fan as a child until his early 30s.
Each chapter is about a football match that he remembers watching, most but not all at Arsenal Stadium, Highbury, and how it related to the events that were going on with his life.
“By the early 70s I had become an Englishman — that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do.“
Above: Flag of England
As well as recounting Arsenal’s highs and lows, Hornby talks about other football clubs that play in London, and his interest in the contrasting surroundings of Cambridge United and Cambridge City, whose matches he attends while at university.
“As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of the people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive.“
(Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby)
As a result, Hornby received the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award.
In 1997, the memoir was adapted for film in the UK, and in 2005 an American remake was released, following Jimmy Fallon’s character’s obsession with the Boston Red Sox, a baseball team.
With the book’s success, Hornby began to publish articles in the Sunday Times,Time Out and the Times Literary Supplement, in addition to his music reviews for the New Yorker.
High Fidelity — his third book and first novel — was published in 1995.
Rob Fleming is a 35-year-old man who owns a record shop in London called Championship Vinyl.
His lawyer girlfriend, Laura, has just left him and now he is going through a crisis.
At his record shop, Rob and his employees, Dick and Barry, spend their free moments discussing mix-tape aesthetics and constructing desert-island “top-five” lists of anything that demonstrates their knowledge of music, movies, and pop culture.
Rob uses this exercise to create his own list: “The top five most memorable split-ups.”
This list includes the following ex-girlfriends:
1) Alison Ashworth
2) Penny Hardwick
3) Jackie Allen
4) Charlie Nicholson
5) Sarah Kendrew
“Where’s the superficial?
I was, and therefore am, dim, gloomy, a drag, unfashionable, unfanciable, and awkward.
This doesn’t seem like superficial to me.
These aren’t flesh wounds.
These are life-threatening thrusts into the internal organs.“
(High Fidelity, Nick Hornby)
Rob, recalling these breakups, sets about getting in touch with the former girlfriends.
Eventually, Rob’s re-examination of his failed relationships, a one-time stand with an American musician named Marie LaSalle, and the death of Laura’s father bring the two back together.
Their relationship is cemented by the launch of a new purposefulness to Rob’s life in the revival of his disc jockey career.
“I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and, frankly, I think my guts have shit for brains.“
(High Fidelity, Nick Hornby)
Also, realizing that his fear of commitment (a result of his fear of death of those around him) and his tendency to act on emotion are responsible for his continuing desires to pursue new women, Rob makes a token commitment to Laura.
“Then I lost it.
Kinda lost it all, you know.
Faith, dignity, about fifteen pounds.“
(High Fidelity, Nick Hornby)
The novel, about a neurotic record collector and his failed relationships, was adapted into a 2000 American film starring John Cusack, a Broadway musical in 2006, and a television show High Fidelity starring Zoë Kravitz in 2020.
His second novel, About a Boy, published in 1998, is about two “boys“ — Marcus, an awkward yet endearing adolescent from a single-parent family, and the free-floating, mid-30s Will Freeman, who overcomes his own immaturity and self-centredness through his growing relationship with Marcus.
Set in 1993 London, About a Boy features two main protagonists:
Will Freeman, a 36-year-old bachelor
Marcus Brewer, a 12-year-old incongruous schoolboy described as “introverted“ by his suicidal mother, Fiona, despite his tendencies to bond and interact with people.
Will’s father wrote a successful Christmas song, the royalties of which have afforded Will the ability to remain voluntarily redundant throughout his life – he spends his plentiful free time immersing himself in 1990s culture, music, and pursuing sexual relations with women.
“There had been times when he knew, somewhere in him, that he would get used to it, whatever it was, because he had learnt that some hard things became softer after a very little while.“
(About a Boy, Nick Hornby)
After a pleasant relationship with a single mother of two, Angie, Will comes up with the idea of attending a single parents group as a new way to pick up women.
For this purpose, he invents a two-year-old son called Ned.
Will then makes a number of acquaintances through his membership of the single parents group, two of which are Fiona and her son Marcus.
Although their relationship is initially somewhat strained, they finally succeed in striking up a true friendship despite Will being largely uninterested during the early-middle stages of the novel.
Will, a socially aware and “trendy” person, aids Marcus to fit into 1990s youth culture by encouraging him not to get his hair cut by his mother, buying him Adidas trainers, and introducing him to contemporary music, such as Nirvana.
Marcus and Will’s friendship strengthens as the story progresses, even after Marcus and Fiona discover Will’s lie about having a child.
“Single mothers — bright, attractive, available women, thousands of them all over London — they were the best invention Will had ever heard of.“
(About a Boy, Nick Hornby)
Marcus is befriended by Ellie McCrae, a tough, moody 15-year-old girl, who is constantly in trouble at school because she insists on wearing a Kurt Cobain jumper.
He also spends some time with his dad Clive, who visits Marcus and Fiona for Christmas together with his new girlfriend Lindsey and her mother.
Clive has a minor accident during some D.I.Y. work and breaks his collarbone.
This prompts Clive into having “a big think” about the meaning of his life.
He summons Marcus to Cambridge to see him.
Marcus decides to bring Ellie along with him for support.
However, they are arrested on the way as Ellie smashes a shop window displaying a cardboard cut-out of Kurt Cobain – accusing the shopkeeper of “trying to make money out of him” after his suicide.
“Each day was a bad day, but he survived by kidding himself that each day was somehow unconnected to the day before.“
(About a Boy, Nick Hornby)
Meanwhile, to Will’s despair, he falls in love with a woman called Rachel.
Rachel is a single mother with a son named Ali (Alistair), who is the same age as Marcus.
The two originally fight, but quickly become friends.
Will’s emotional faculties are liberated and he begins to “shed his old skin” of emotional indifference.
Simultaneously Marcus is becoming more typical of his age.
He begins to enjoy his life more.
“These feelings were exactly what he had been so afraid of, and this was why he had been so sure that falling in love was rubbish, and, surprise surprise, it was rubbish, and … and it was too late.“
(About a Boy, Nick Hornby)
The penultimate scene takes place in a police station in Royston (a small suburban town), where nearly every significant character in the novel is present, their common link being Marcus.
The novel ends during a three-way dialogue between Marcus, Will and Fiona, where Will, to see if Marcus has truly changed, proposes the idea that he play a Joni Mitchell song on Fiona’s piano, which she is enthusiastic about.
However, Marcus responds saying he “hates” Joni Mitchell, whereby Hornby concludes the novel with the narration saying:
“Will knew Marcus would be OK“.
Hugh Grant and Nicholas Hoult starred in the 2002 film version.
In 1999, Hornby received the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Hornby’s next novel, How to Be Good, was published in 2001.
The female protagonist in the novel explores contemporary morals, marriage and parenthood.
“What if a sense of humour is like hair — something a lot of man lose as they get older?“
(How to Be Good, Nick Hornby)
It centers on characters Katie Carr, a doctor, and her husband, David Grant.
The story begins when David stops being “the Angriest Man In Holloway” and begins to be “good” with the help of his spiritual healer, DJ Good News (who also shows up briefly in Hornby’s A Long Way Down).
The pair go about this by nominally convincing people to give their spare bedrooms to the homeless, but as their next scheme comes around, “reversal” (being good to people one has not been good to in the past), this proves to be fruitless and thus David gives up his strivings and his plans for a book on how to be good, appropriately named “How to be Good“.
The protagonist, Katie, briefly encounters a minor character named Dick whose description and attitude towards music are reminiscent of the character of the same name from Hornby’s first novel, High Fidelity.
It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2001.
He won the W.H. Smith Award for Fiction in 2002.
“And after tea, we play Junior Scrabble. We are the ideal nuclear family. We eat together, we play improving board games instead of watching television, we smile alot. I fear that at any moment I may kill somebody.”
(How to Be Good, Nick Hornby)
Part of the money he earned with his next book, Speaking with the Angel in 2002, was donated to TreeHouse, a charity for autistic children:
Hornby’s own son is autistic.
He was editor of the book, which contained 12 short stories written by his friends.
He also contributed to the collection with the story “NippleJesus“.
“Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness.“
(Songbook, Nick Hornby)
In 2003, Hornby wrote a collection of essays on selected popular songs and the emotional resonance they carry, called 31 Songs (known in the US as Songbook).
“Indeed, there is a moment on the first CD — the electrifying opening to “I Got Loaded,” which sounds like an R&B standard but isn’t — when you might find yourself asking whether anyone who has ever been smitten by pop music can fail to have his heart stopped by the chords, the swing, and, once again, Steve Berlin’s wonderfully greasy sax.“
(Songbook, Nick Hornby)
A Long Way Down is a 2005 novel written by British author Nick Hornby.
It is a dark comedy, playing off the themes of suicide, angst, depression and promiscuity.
The story is written in the first-person narrative from the points of view of the four main characters, Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ.
These four strangers happen to meet on the roof of a high building called Toppers House in London on New Year’s Eve, each with the intent of committing suicide.
Their plans for death in solitude are ruined when they meet.
The novel recounts their misadventures as they decide to come down from the roof alive – however temporarily that may be.
Disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp, lonely single mother Maureen (51 years old), unsuccessful musician JJ and rude teenager Jess (18 years old) meet at Toppers House in London on New Year’s Eve.
They all want to commit suicide by jumping from the roof.
Their plans for death in solitude, however, are ruined when they meet.
After telling their individual stories to the others, they decide to hold off on jumping and to help each other.
Thus a group of four unfortunate and very individual people forms.
Jess’s condition not to jump is that they help her to find her ex-boyfriend Chas.
So they take a taxi and drive to the party they suppose Chas to be at.
After finding and talking to Chas they decide to go to Martin’s place where they find Penny, who has obviously been crying.
She accuses Martin of cheating on her because he had left the party they had both attended that evening without any explanation.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no disturbed mental balance here, my friend.
I’d say he got it just right.
Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing.
Surely that’s fair enough?
Surely the coroner’s report should read:
“He took his own life after sober and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles it had become.”
(A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby)
The next morning Jess’s dad learns that the newspapers are publishing a story about Jess and Martin.
Jess tells him that she slept with Martin, to avoid him finding out the truth of her attempted suicide.
He takes her to task because the whole thing is very awkward for him.
He is the Junior Secretary of Education and has a reputation to lose.
He goes out to get an early edition of the paper and sees the story about her ‘suicide pact‘ with Martin, so Jess’s “whole sex confession bit had been a complete and utter fucking waste of time“.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no disturbed mental balance here, my friend.
I’d say he got it just right.
Bad thing upon bad thing upon bad thing.
Surely that’s fair enough?
Surely the coroner’s report should read:
“He took his own life after sober and careful contemplation of the fucking shambles it had become.“
(A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby)
Jess’s father asks Martin to clear up the accusations.
Martin denies that he slept with Jess.
After the conversation, her father asks Martin to protect Jess and gives him money.
Afterwards, a reporter calls JJ wanting to know why they decided not to jump, but JJ refuses to discuss it.
“But I’d felt as if I’d pissed my life away in the same way that you can piss money away.
I’d had a life, full of kids and wives and jobs and all the usual stuff, and I had somehow managed to mislay it.
No, you see, that’s not right.
I knew where my life was, just as you know where the money goes when you piss it away.
I hadn’t mislaid it at all.
I had spent it.“
(A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby)
Later Jess calls Maureen.
They decide to organise a meeting at Maureen’s place.
At the meeting, Jess suggests that they try to profit from the suicidal-report in the newspaper.
Her idea is to confess to the press that they saw an angel who saved them from jumping.
Martin, Maureen and JJ don’t like the idea and they try to convince Jess out of talking to the press.
The next morning they find out that Jess told a reporter, Linda, that they saw an angel that looked like Matt Damon.
Jess also promised Linda an interview with Martin, Maureen and JJ.
Although they are upset with Jess’ behaviour, they decide to do the interview.
Linda uses the interview to attack Martin in the press.
Thus Martin is fired from his cable TV “Feet Up TV!”, but he receives a second chance by promising to his boss that the other three will be guests in his show.
The show is a disaster and Martin loses his job.
At another TV show Jess admits that the angel story was not true.
“And another way of explaining it is that shit happens, and there’s no space too small, too dark and airless and fucking hopeless, for people to crawl into.“
(A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby)
Later, JJ decides that the four of them have to go on holiday for Maureen’s benefit.
Martin, Jess and JJ help Maureen to find a place for Matty, her son.
One week later they are on a plane to Tenerife.
On the second day, Jess sees a girl who looks very similar to her lost sister Jen.
Jess bothers the girl and they have a fight.
Out of frustration Jess gets drunk and the police have to take her back to the hotel.
JJ meets a girl that saw his old band and they spend the night together.
Martin decides to leave the hotel after a fight with Jess.
During his absence from the others, he thinks about his life and decides that he has made no mistakes.
He blames other people for how his life has turned out.
In the taxi to the airport they talk about their holiday and plan another meeting for Valentine’s Day.
They meet at 8 o’clock on the roof of Toppers House on Valentine’s Day.
“And another way of explaining it is that shit happens, and there’s no space too small, too dark and airless and fucking hopeless, for people to crawl into.“
(A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby)
While they have a conversation, they see a young man who is planning to jump from the roof.
They try to stop him from committing suicide but he jumps.
They decide to go home and to meet the following afternoon at Starbucks.
“I couldn’t get the mood back; it was as if one of the kids had woken up just as Cindy and I were starting to make love. I hadn’t changed my mind, and I still knew that I’d have to do it sometime. It’s just that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it in the next five minutes.”
(A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby)
Martin tells them about a newspaper article he read according to which people who want to commit suicide need 90 days to overcome their predicament.
So they decide to hold their decision until 31 March.
Maureen and Jess decide to visit Martin’s ex-wife Cindy to bring her back to him.
Cindy Sharp lives with her kids in Torley Heath and has a new partner Paul, whom Maureen and Jess later find out is blind.
Cindy explains to them that Martin made many mistakes and that he didn’t take care of the children.
After that, Jess organises a meeting in the basement of Starbucks.
She invites relatives of the four.
All in all, 17 people appear, but the meeting is a disaster.
Jess and her parents are screaming at each other, because her mother claims that she had stolen a pair of earrings from Jen’s untouched room.
While they are fighting Jess runs out of the Starbucks.
JJ and a former member of his band are leaving the basement to have a fight and Martin has an argument with one of Maureen’s nurses because he claims that he is flirting with Penny.
Maureen is the only one of the four who is still present.
She talks to Jess’ parents and speculates that Jen may have come back to take the earrings.
The nurses Sean and Stephen help Maureen to bring Matty home and on the way Sean asks her if she is interested in joining their quiz team.
At the quiz, an old man from the team offers Maureen a job in a newsagent’s.
When Jess comes back from her trip to London Bridge, her mother apologizes for accusing her.
Jess accepts the apology, seeing the hope Maureen’s suggestion has given her mother.
Maureen, JJ and Martin have new jobs now.
Martin is a teacher and wants to start a new life.
JJ is a busker and is happy to make music again.
Maureen has started work at the newsagent’s.
The 90 days have passed and they meet in a pub near Toppers House.
They decide to go on the roof again.
While watching the London Eye from the roof, they realise that their lives aren’t that bad.
They decide to delay their final decision on killing themselves for another six months.
“I wanted to make my life short, and I was at a party in Toppers’ Hose, and the coincidence was too much.
It was like a message from God.
OK, it was disappointing that all God had to say to me was, like, jump off a roof, but I didn’t blame Him.
What else was He supposed to tell me?“
(A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby)
Hornby’s bookSlam was published on 16 October 2007.
It is his first novel for young adults and was recognised as a 2008 ALA Best Books for Young Adults.
The protagonist of Slam is a 16-year-old skateboarder named Sam, whose life changes drastically when his girlfriend gets pregnant.
The novel’s protagonist is a troubled 16-year-old skateboarder, Sam, who lives in London.
His mother, Annie, gave birth to him when she was just 16.
They therefore have an unconventional relationship.
He has a poster of Tony Hawk in his room that serves as his friend and confidant.
Sam’s two best friends are Rabbit and Rubbish, two skateboarders.
Sam’s father, Dave, is somewhat estranged from the family, visiting them only occasionally.
After being introduced to Alicia at a party thrown by Annie’s co-worker, Andrea, Sam and Alicia start dating.
He believes he is in love with her and visits her numerous times, almost daily, in which they have sex several times.
However, one time Sam and Alicia try having sex not wearing protection.
Sam knows that due to him having sex with Alicia without a condom, she might be pregnant.
He’s just not ready to be a father.
After a while, Sam gets bored of his relationship and decides to break up.
A while later, Alicia calls him to meet so they can talk. Sam, realizing what news she has, has a prophetic dream of waking up next to Alicia in the future.
She is ugly and heavy, and their baby, Roof, is loud and obnoxious.
He attends the local college occasionally throughout the week, pursuing a career in art and design.
Moreover, Annie is pregnant.
Sam awakens the next morning.
He is back to his normal time and presumes that he was sent in the future by the mystical powers of his Tony Hawk poster.
In fear of the obvious news that Alicia will give him, he runs away to Hastings and throws his mobile phone in the sea.
Thinking he can make a permanent residence there, Sam goes to several attractions, only to be told there is no work.
While in a seedy bed and breakfast, Sam meets a rude old man, Mr Brady, that hires him as a helper with various day-to-day activities (helping him up and down the stairs, and retrieving his remote control).
In the middle of the night, Mr Brady barges into his room demanding he helps him find the remote that has fallen behind his bed.
Sam grudgingly retrieves it, only to decide that he no longer wants to stay in the town.
Above: Hastings, England
He returns home to Annie who has called the police.
After spending some time with Annie, Sam and Alicia meet up and she reveals that she is in fact pregnant.
Refusing to get an abortion, Alicia and Sam work up the nerve to tell Alicia’s elitist parents, Andrea and Robert.
Originally upset, Andrea and Robert try to convince Alicia to have an abortion.
When Alicia refuses, Andrea and Robert lash out and blame Sam for ruining Alicia’s life.
Sam, Alicia, Andrea and Robert march over to Sam’s apartment, only to find Annie with her new boyfriend Mark.
When told of the pregnancy, Annie breaks down and cries, furious that Sam would ruin his life.
That night, Sam has another prophetic dream in which he takes Roof (the name, he finds, being a contraction of Rufus) to a doctor’s appointment.
Again, Sam has no idea how to take care of Roof and no idea what is going on.
Sam upsets his son Rufus, and he again, realizes he is not a suitable father.
Fortunately, he meets with a young mother – whom he does not know, but who seems to know him – and gets her to show him how to change Roof’s diapers, though she says:
“But you are very good at doing it.”
When waking up he realizes that, like it or not, he is going to have a life of taking care of his son.
Gradually, he gets used to the idea.
As soon as Mark moves into their house, Annie becomes pregnant.
Sam moves into Alicia’s house only to find that he really isn’t welcome there.
He begins to take part-time college classes.
He encounters one of Alicia’s previous boyfriends who insinuates that Sam’s son Rufus is actually his.
He confronts Alicia when he believes that she conveniently made it look like it was his child – which she angrily disproves, but the scene adds to spoiling their relationship.
He moves back into his mother’s apartment, resulting in him researching the Internet for facts about teenage pregnancies.
He discovers that four out of five male teenage parents lose contact with their children.
He goes to Alicia’s and begins to row with Alicia, resulting in her thinking he is seeing another girl.
Eventually Alicia’s parents clear the matter up.
When Alicia’s time comes, Sam is very confused, but eventually does manage in a credible way the role of being at her side.
He then finds out the origin of the baby’s name – when recovering from birth-giving Alicia was listening to Rufus Wainwright.
It was Sam himself who changed it to “Roof“.
Soon afterwards, Sam’s mother gives birth to a daughter, Emily – who is strictly Roof’s aunt, though being a month younger than him.
Sam gets involved in taking care of Emily, too.
Soon after this Sam and Alicia take Rufus out for the day with Alicia and Sam having sex later.
Alicia’s mum discovers them and gets particularly angry.
Sam and Alicia finally confirm to each other they were from the beginning wrong for each other.
Then Sam has a third prophetic dream, presumably a few years in the future.
He wakes up with a beautiful girl he doesn’t know.
It is revealed she is his current girlfriend, Alex, as Alicia and he broke up.
The two go to meet Alicia and her new boyfriend, Carl, in a restaurant.
It is made clear that Alicia is the primary caretaker of the baby, but that she and Sam still have a friendly relationship.
Hornby’s following novel, titled Juliet, Naked, was published in September 2009.
Addressing similar themes as his earlier novel High Fidelity, the book is about a reclusive 1980s rock star who is forced out of isolation, after the release of demo recordings of the songs on his most famous album brings him into contact with some of his most passionate fans.
Duncan, an obsessive music fan, receives a CD of Juliet, Naked, an album of solo acoustic demos of the songs on the album Juliet by his favourite artist, Tucker Crowe.
Duncan’s girlfriend, Annie, opens it first and listens to it on her own.
Duncan is angry, especially when she expresses her dislike for it.
He writes an enthusiastic review for the fan website he runs.
Annie writes a passionate article criticising it and receives an email response from Tucker Crowe himself. Further email correspondence ensues, much of which consumes Annie’s thoughts.
Tucker Crowe is in Pennsylvania preparing for a visit from his daughter Lizzie, whom he has never met.
He has five children from four relationships.
His youngest son Jackson and Jackson’s mother, Cat, are the only ones he lives with.
Lizzie reveals that she is visiting because she is pregnant.
Duncan meets a new colleague called Gina, whom he sleeps with.
He tells Annie of his affair and she insists he move out.
The next day Annie talks to her judgmental therapist Malcolm.
Duncan regrets leaving Annie but she refuses to take him back.
Cat breaks up with Tucker, but Tucker remains to look after Jackson.
Annie places a photo of Tucker and Jackson on her fridge and invites Duncan round to make him see it, gleeful that he doesn’t know the significance of it, and tells him she is in a relationship with him.
She ponders the years she has wasted with Duncan and ends up going to the pub with her friend Ros.
She meets Gav and Barnesy, two Northern Soul dancers.
Barnesy comes back to her house and tells her he loves her, but leaves after she says she won’t sleep with him.
Annie discusses the incident the next day with Malcolm.
Tucker learns that Lizzie has lost the baby.
He and Jackson fly to London to see Lizzie.
On arrival at the hospital in London, Tucker has a heart attack and is admitted.
Lizzie invites all his children and their mothers to visit for a family reunion.
A mini-narrative describes the events which caused Tucker to end his career after hearing that he had a daughter, Grace, from the relationship before/during Juliet.
Annie visits him in the hospital.
He suggests staying at her house to avoid the family reunion.
The next day Annie visits again.
Annie discovers he had not yet met with Grace.
Tucker tells her about Grace and Juliet.
Annie insists he call his family.
They discuss his work.
Tucker sees it as inauthentic rubbish, while Annie thinks it is deep and meaningful music while clarifying that while the music is good, it doesn’t mean that Tucker as a person is good.
She also admits that she was in a relationship with Duncan, whom Tucker knows of from the website.
Annie encourages Tucker to meet Duncan, but he refuses.
The next day, they bump into Duncan.
Tucker introduces himself, but Duncan doesn’t believe him.
After considering it, Duncan comes over.
Tucker shows Duncan his passport as proof.
They have tea together.
Tucker clarifies some of Duncan’s beliefs about him, while Duncan expresses his love of his music.
Grace calls Tucker.
She says she understands how he and she can’t be close because it would mean giving up Juliet.
An exhibition Annie has been working on opens at the Gooleness Museum, where she works as a curator.
She suggests that Tucker could open it, but the councillor in charge says he’s never heard of him and invites Gav and Barnsey to do it instead.
At the party, Annie admits to Tucker that she likes him romantically.
Afterwards they have sex.
Annie says she has used a contraceptive, but she hadn’t.
Tucker and Jackson return to America.
Annie tells Malcolm about it all and tells him that she would like to sell her house and move right away to America to join Tucker and Jackson.
Malcolm’s paternalistic comment make her realise that she needs to leave England.
In the epilogue, Duncan and other fans review on the fan website a new release from Tucker, which they think is terrible.
One of them writes ‘Happiness Is Poison‘.
Only one new member says she and her husband love the new album, while they find Juliet too gloomy for their liking.
In 2010, Hornby co-founded the Ministry of Stories, a non-profit organisation in East London dedicated to helping children and young adults develop writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
This blog has its own missions.
I have been advised by my wife (Ute) and my social media mentor (Emir) that I should consider reducing the size of my blogposts, that we live in an ADD (attention disorder deficit) society that is both unwilling and unable to read for any extended length of time.
But the length of my posts, including this one, is to fight against this feeling.
This post’s goal is simple.
I want you to read.
Whether or not you intend to be a writer or simply long for good writing to read.
These days it is impossible to get away from discussions of whether the book will survive the digital revolution.
Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles on the subject appear daily, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting ignorance of the future.
In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo put these famous words into the mouth of Archdeacon Claude Frollo:
“The book will kill the building.
When you compare architecture to the idea, which needs only a sheet of paper, some ink and a pen, is it surprising that the human intellect should have deserted architecture for the printing press?”
The great cathedrals – those “Bibles in stone” – did not vanish, but the avalanche of manuscripts and then printed text that appeared at the end of the Middle Ages did render cathedrals less important. As culture changed, architecture lost its emblematic role.
So it is with the book.
Above: Notre Dame de Paris
There is no need to suppose that the electronic book will replace the printed version.
Has film killed painting?
Television cinema?
However, there is no doubt that the book is the throes of a technological revolution that is changing our relationship to it profoundly.
A book represents a sort of unsurpassable perfection in the realm of the imagination.
What is a book?
What will change if we read onscreen rather than by turning the pages of a physical object?
Old-fashioned habits, perhaps.
A certain sense of the sacred that has surrounded the book in a civilization that has made it our Holy of Holies.
A peculiar intimacy between the author and the reader, which the concept of hypertextuality is bound to damage.
A sense of existing in a self-contained world that the book and, along with it, certain ways of reading used to represent.
What we call culture is in fact a lengthy process of selection and filtering.
Contemporary civilization, armed with every conceivable kind of technology, is still attempting to conserve culture safely, without much lasting success.
However determined we are to learn from the past, our libraries, museums and film archives will only ever contain the works that time has not destroyed.
Culture is made up of what remains after everything else has been forgotten.
The Internet has returned us to the alphabet.
If we thought we had become a purely visual civilization, the computer returns us to Gutenberg’s galaxy.
From now on, everyone has to read.
In order to read, you need a medium.
This medium cannot simply be a computer screen.
Spend two hours reading a novel on your computer and your eyes turn into tennis balls.
The book is like the spoon, the scissors, the hammer, the wheel.
Once invented, it cannot be improved.
There is no doubt that a lawyer could take his 25,000 case documents home more easily if they were loaded onto an e-book.
In many areas, the electronic book will turn out to be remarkably convenient, but I remain unconvinced – even with fast-rate reading technology – that it would be particularly advisable to read War and Peace on an e-book.
Hermann Hesse had some interesting things to say about the “re-legitimization” of the book that he thought would result from technical developments:
“The more the need for entertainment and mainstream education can be met by new inventions, the more the book will recover its dignity and authority.
We have not yet quite reached the point where young competitors have taken over functions from the book that it cannot afford to lose.“
Above: German writer / artist Hermann Hesse (1877 – 1962)
Cinema, radio and even television have taken nothing from the book – nothing that it couldn’t afford to lose.
At a certain point of time, man invented the written word.
Writing is an extension of the hand and therefore it is almost biological.
It is the communication tool most closely linked to the body.
Once invented, it could never be given up.
We have never needed to read and write as much as we do today.
If you cannot read and write, then you cannot use a computer.
Why do we read?
Generally, to profit from it, to grow somewhere in mind or spirit.
Good books, fiction or nonfiction, deserve reading.
Ask questions while you read – questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.
There are four main questions you must ask about any book:
WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE?
Try to discover the leading theme of the book and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way.
2. WHAT IS BEING SAID IN DETAIL AND HOW?
Try to discover the main ideas, assertions and arguments that constitute the author’s particular message.
3. IS THE BOOK TRUE, IN WHOLE OR IN PART?
You have to know what is being said before you can decide whether it is true or not. When you understand a book, however, you are obligated, if you are reading seriously, to make up your own mind.
4. WHAT OF IT?
If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance.
Why does the author think it is important to know these things?
Is it important to you to know them?
And if the book has not only informed you, but also enlightened you, it is necessary to seek further enlightment by asking what else follows, what is further implied or suggested.
The four questions summarize the whole obligation of a reader.
Knowing what the four questions are is not enough. You must remember to ask them as you read.
Merely asking questions is not enough.
You have to try to answer them.
Grab a pen.
Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it part of yourself.
The best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it.
Why is marking a book indispensible to reading it?
First, it keeps you awake.
Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking.
Thinking expresses itself in words.
The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he is thinking.
Why do we write?
To know what we are thinking.
Third, writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author.
Understanding is a two-way operation.
The learner has to question himself and question the teacher.
He even has to be willing to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying.
Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author.
It is the highest respect you can pay him.
Reading with pen in hand allows intimate communication with the writer.
We all begin as close readers.
Word by word is how we learn to hear and then read.
The more we read, the faster we can perform that magic trick of seeing how the letters have been combined into words that have meaning.
The more we read, the more we comprehend, the more likely we are to discover new ways to read, each one tailored to the reason why we are reading a particular book.
Reading a book can make you want to write one.
A work of art can start you thinking about some aesthetic or philosophical problem.
It can suggest some new method, some fresh approach to fiction.
More often the connection has to do with whatever mysterious promptings make you want to write.
The better the book, the more you imagine.
Reading a masterpiece can inspire us by showing us how a writer does something brilliantly.
Books are teachers, authorities to advise us, the models that inspire us with energy and courage to learn.
I will try to show you some writers that deserve a reading.
A movie may move us, but it demands little more than our attention.
A book demands we feel and think about what the book is trying to tell us, to use both our intelligence and our imagination.
God willing, I too will produce literature worthy of your time and attention, health and time permitting.
Put your phone down.
Turn the TV off.
Grab a book and a pen.
Begin the adventure of reading now.
Sources
Wikipedia
Wikiquote
Google Photos
How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
Plot and Structure, James Scott Bell
The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker
Daily Rituals, Mason Currey
This is NOT the end of the book, Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière
Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose
The Assassin’s Cloak, edited by Irene and Alan Taylor
As the dates below will show, this blog (The Chronicles of Canada Slim) (one of two) has suffered from neglect.
I offer only one explanation:
I have been….distracted.
Above: Flag of Canada
The purpose of The Chronicles of Canada Slim is to capture in writing my adventures prior to the calendar year.
Generally, the Chronicles tells the tales of travels in Alsace, Italy, Lanzarote, London, Porto, Serbia and Switzerland.
Above: Flag of AlsaceAbove: Flag of ItalyAbove: Lanzarote (red) of the Spanish Canary IslandsAbove: London, EnglandAbove: Flag of Porto, PortugalAbove: Flag of SerbiaAbove: Flag of Switzerland
But much has been happening since the finale of my Zwingli Way Walk (recorded here): an accident which broke both my arms, work commitments, a visit to Canada, the Corona virus, and the decision to work here in Turkey.
Please see Canada Slim and…..
the City of Spirits (3 January 2016)
the Push for Reformation (5 January 2016)
the Genius of Glarus (14 August 2016)
the Road to Reformation (12 November 2017)
the Wild Child of Toggenburg (20 November 2017)
the Thundering Hollows (27 November 2017)
the Basel Butterfly Effect (3 December 2017)
the Vienna Waltz (9 December 2017)
the Battle for Switzerland’s Soul (18 December 2017)
the Last Walk of Robert Walser (25 December 2017)
the Monks of the Dark Forest (8 January 2018)
the Privileged Place (26 January 2018)
the Lakeside Pilgrimage (24 April 2018)
the Battlefield Brotherhood (8 July 2018)
the Family of Mann (12 August 2018)
the Anachronic Man (8 October 2018)
the Chocolate Factory of Unhappiness (30 January 2019)
the Third Man (26 June 2019)
the Humanitarian Adventure (10 December 2019)
the Succulent Collection (14 November 2020)
the Zürich Zealots (19 November 2020)
I have tried to contribute regularly to my other blog Building Everest, which tries to relate events of this calendar year along with ongoing accounts of Swiss Miss‘s world wanderings and recollections of my 2020 travels in Canada just prior to Covid-19’s impact being felt globally.
As well, other writing projects have also suffered, but as long as I breathe I will still believe that these too will eventually be accomplished.
Above: Mount Everest
Landschlacht, Switzerland, Thursday 3 December 2020
All things end.
One day these fingers will stop typing and my mind will go silent.
One day one breath will be my last.
Death is the one commonality we all share, regardless of whether pauper or prince, peasant or president, saint or sinner.
And it is accepting this inevitability that all of us must come to grips with, in our own way, in our own time.
Save for the suicidal or the sick, few of us wake up in the morning and think to ourselves:
Perhaps today is a good day to die.
Perhaps an exception to this rule of the suicidal or the painfully sick are the lives of those in risky professions, such as health care, the police force, the military.
Above: St. Leonhard Chapel, Landschlacht, Switzerland
As death is part of, and the end of, life, the question we all ask and the answer we all fear is what, if anything, follows death.
The afterlife (also referred to as life after death or the world to come) is an existence in which the essential part of an individual’s identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body.
According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, of an individual, which carries with it and may confer personal identity or, on the contrary nirvana.
Belief in an afterlife is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.
In some views, this continued existence takes place in a spiritual realm, and in other popular views, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this latter view, such rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a spiritual realm or otherworld.
Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics.
Some belief systems, such as those in the Abrahamic tradition, hold that the dead go to a specific plane of existence after death, as determined by God, or other divine judgment, based on their actions or beliefs during life.
In contrast, in systems of reincarnation, such as those in the Indian religions, the nature of the continued existence is determined directly by the actions of the individual in the ended life.
Above: Danube cemetery, Cernavoda, Romania
The Abrahamic religions, also collectively referred to as the world of Abrahamism, are a group of religions that claim descent from the worship of the God of Abraham, an ancient Semitic religion of the Bronze Age Israelites and the Ishmaelites, the direct predecessor of various ancient Israelite sects, including the remaining two extant Israelite religions of Judaism and Samaritanism, with all other Abrahamic religions descending from Judaism.
The Abrahamic religions are monotheistic, with the term deriving from the patriarch Abraham (a major figure described in the Torah, Tanakh, Bible, and Qu’ran, variously recognized by Jews, Samaritans, Christians, Muslims, and others).
Above: Portrait of Abraham, by Guercino, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy
The three major Abrahamic religions trace their origins to the first two sons of Abraham: for Jews and Christians it is his second son Isaac, and for Muslims his elder son Ishmael.
Above: The Angel Hinders the Offering of Isaac, by Rembrandt, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Abrahamic religions spread globally through Christianity being adopted by the Roman Empire in the 4th century and Islam by the Umayyad Empire from the 7th century.
Today the Abrahamic religions are one of the major divisions in comparative religion (along with Indian, Iranian and East Asian religions).
The major Abrahamic religions in chronological order of founding are Judaism (the source of the other two religions) in the 6th century BCE, Christianity in the 1st century CE, and Islam in the 7th century CE.
Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the Abrahamic religions with the greatest numbers of adherents.
Above: The Star of David, symbol of JudaismAbove: The cross of Christ, symbol of ChristianityAbove: The word “Allah” in Arabic calligraphy, symbol of Islam
Christians are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
The words Christ and Christian derive from the Koine Greek title Christós (Χριστός), a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ) (usually rendered as messiah in English).
While there are diverse interpretations of Christianity which sometimes conflict, they are united in believing that Jesus has a unique significance.
The term “Christian” used as an adjective is descriptive of anything associated with Christianity or Christian churches, or in a proverbial sense “all that is noble, and good, and Christlike.”
It does not have a meaning of ‘of Christ’ or ‘related or pertaining to Christ‘.
Above: Christ the Saviour (Pantokrator), a 6th-century icon, Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt
According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there were 2.2 billion Christians around the world in 2010, up from about 600 million in 1910.
Today, about 37% of all Christians live in the Americas, about 26% live in Europe, 24% live in sub-Saharan Africa, about 13% live in Asia and the Pacific, and 1% live in the Middle East and North Africa.
Christians make up the majority of the population in 158 countries and territories.
280 million Christians live as a minority.
About half of all Christians worldwide are Catholic, while more than a third are Protestant (37%).
Orthodox communions comprise 12% of the world’s Christians.
Other Christian groups make up the remainder.
By 2050, the Christian population is expected to exceed 3 billion.
According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, Christianity will remain the world’s largest religion in 2050, if current trends continue.
Christians are the one of the most persecuted religious groups in the world, especially in the Middle East, North Africa, East Asia, and South Asia.
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
It is the world’s largest religion, with about 2.4 billion followers.
Its adherents, known as Christians, make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories, and believe that Jesus is the Christ, whose coming as the Messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, called the Old Testament in Christianity, and chronicled in the New Testament.
Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches, as well as in its doctrines concerning justification and the nature of salvation, ecclesiology, ordination and Christology.
The creeds of various Christian denominations generally hold in common Jesus as the Son of God who ministered, suffered and died on a cross, but rose from the dead for the salvation of mankind, referred to as the Gospel, meaning the “good news“.
Describing Jesus’ life and teachings are the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, with the Old Testament as the Gospel‘s respected background.
Above: Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, by Carl Bloch (1877)
Christianity began as a Judaic sect in the 1st century in the Roman province of Judea.
Jesus’ apostles and their followers spread around the Levant, Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Transcaucasia, Egypt and Ethiopia, despite initial persecution.
Above: The eastern Mediterranean region in the time of Paul the Apostle (5 – 64 CE)
It soon attracted Gentile (non-Jewish) God-fearers, which led to a departure from Jewish customs, and, after the Fall of Jerusalem (70 CE), which ended the Temple-based Judaism, Christianity slowly separated from Judaism.
Above: Siege and destruction of Jerusalem, by David Roberts (1850)
Emperor Constantine the Great (272 – 337) decriminalized Christianity in the Roman Empire by the Edict of Milan (313), later convening the Council of Nicaea (325) where early Christianity was consolidated into what would become the state church of the Roman Empire (380).
Above: Bust of Constantine, Capitoline Museum, Rome
The early history of Christianity’s united church before major schisms is sometimes referred to as the “Great Church” (though divergent sects existed at the same time, including Gnostics and Jewish Christians).
The Church of the East split after the Council of Ephesus (431) and Oriental Orthodoxy split after the Council of Chalcedon (451) over differences in Christology, while the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church separated in the East-West Schism (1054), especially over the authority of the Bishop of Rome.
Protestantism split in numerous denominations from the Catholic Church in the Reformation era (16th century) over theological and ecclesiological disputes, most predominantly on the issue of justification and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome.
Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization, particularly in Europe from late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Following the Age of Discovery (15th – 17th century), Christianity was spread into the Americas, Oceania, sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the world via missionary work.
Above: Various depictions of Jesus
The four largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church (1.3 billion / 50.1%), Protestantism (920 million / 36.7%), the Eastern Orthodox Church (230 million), and the Oriental Orthodox churches (62 million) (Orthodox churches combined at 11.9%), though thousands of smaller church communities exist despite efforts toward unity (ecumenism).
Despite a decline in adherence in the West, Christianity remains the dominant religion in the region, with about 70% of the population identifying as Christian.
Christianity is growing in Africa and Asia, the world’s most populous continents.
Protestantism is a form of Christianity that originated with the 16th-century Reformation, a movement against what its followers perceived to be errors in the Catholic Church.
Protestants originating in the Reformation reject the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal supremacy, but disagree among themselves regarding the number of sacraments, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and matters of ecclesiastical polity and apostolic succession.
They emphasize:
the priesthood of all believers
justification by faith (sola fide) rather than by good works
the teaching that salvation comes by divine grace or “unmerited favour” only, not as something merited (sola gratia)
affirm the Bible as being the sole highest authority (sola scriptura / “scripture alone“) or primary authority (primascriptura / “scripture first“) for Christian doctrine, rather than being on parity with sacred tradition.
The five solae of Lutheran and Reformed Christianity summarize basic theological differences in opposition to the Catholic Church.
Protestantism began in Germany in 1517, when Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Catholic Church, which purported to offer the remission of the temporal punishment of sins to their purchasers.
Above: Door displaying the Ninety-five Theses, All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg, Germany
The term, however, derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in March 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical.
Above: German reformer Martin Luther (1483 – 1546)
Although there were earlier breaks and attempts to reform the Catholic Church — notably by Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe and Jan Hus — only Luther succeeded in sparking a wider, lasting and modern movement.
Above: Statue of French reformer Pierre Vaudès (aka Peter Waldo) (1140 – 1205), Worms, GermanyAbove: English reformer John Wycliffe (1328 – 1384)Above: Portrait of Jan Hus (aka John Hus) (1372 – 1415)
In the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Iceland.
Above: Lutheranism in the world, 2013 – The darker the region, the more Lutherans therein.
Calvinist churches spread in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland and France by Protestant Reformers, such as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and John Knox.
Above: French reformer Jehan Cauvin (aka John Calvin) (1509 – 1564)Above: Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484 – 1531)Above: Scottish reformer John Knox (1514 – 1572)
The political separation of the Church of England from the Pope under King Henry VIII began Anglicanism, bringing England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement.
Above: English King Henry VIII (1491 – 1547)
Today, Protestantism constitutes the second-largest form of Christianity (after Catholicism), with a total of 800 million to 1 billion adherents worldwide or about 37% of all Christians.
Protestants have developed their own culture, with major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts and many other fields.
Protestantism is diverse, being more divided theologically and ecclesiastically than the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church or Oriental Orthodoxy.
Without structural unity or central human authority, Protestants developed the concept of an invisible church, in contrast to the Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, which all understand themselves as the one and only original church — the “onetrue church” — founded by Jesus Christ.
Some denominations do have a worldwide scope and distribution of membership, while others are confined to a single country.
A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of Protestant denominational families:
Adventists
Anabaptists
Anglicans / Episcopalians
Baptists
Calvinist / Reformed
Lutherans
Methodists
Pentecostals
Charismatic, Evangelical, Independent and other churches are on the rise and constitute a significant part of Protestantism.
Above: Key figures of the Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther and John Calvin depicted on a church pulpit, Mikolow, Poland. These reformers emphasized preaching and made it a centerpiece of worship.
As regular followers of my blogs know, I have, for quite some time, been writing about my following in the footsteps of Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli.
By “following in the footsteps” I do not refer to following the example of Zwingli’s life as a model for my own.
But rather I mean that I have been tracing on foot the life path of Zwingli by walking from his place of birth in Wildhaus in the Toggenburg region to his final resting place in Kappel am Albis – a five-hour / 19 km walk south of Uetliberg overlooking Zürich.
Above: Marcel and Yvonne Steiner
Huldrych Zwingli or Ulrich Zwingli (1484 – 1531) was a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland, born during a time of emerging Swiss patriotism and increasing criticism of the Swiss mercenary system.
Above: Birthplace of Huldrych Zwingli, Wildhaus, Canton St. Gallen, Switzerland
He attended the University of Vienna and the University of Basel, a scholarly center of Renaissance humanism.
Above: Seal of the University of Vienna (Austria)Above: Logo of the University of Basel (Switzerland)
He continued his studies while he served as a pastor in Glarus and later in Einsiedeln, where he was influenced by the writings of Erasmus.
In 1519, Zwingli became the Leutpriester (people’s priest) of the Grossmünster in Zürich where he began to preach ideas on reform of the Catholic Church.
In his first public controversy in 1522, he attacked the custom of fasting during Lent.
In his publications, he noted corruption in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, promoted clerical marriage, and attacked the use of images in places of worship.
Among his most notable contributions to the Reformation was his expository preaching, starting in 1519, through the Gospel of Matthew, before eventually using biblical exegesis to go through the entire New Testament, a radical departure from the Catholic mass.
In 1525, he introduced a new communion liturgy to replace the Mass.
He also clashed with the Anabaptists, which resulted in their persecution.
Historians have debated whether or not he turned Zürich into a theocracy.
The Reformation spread to other parts of the Swiss Confederation, but several cantons resisted, preferring to remain Catholic.
Zwingli formed an alliance of Reformed cantons which divided the Confederation along religious lines.
In 1529, a war was averted at the last moment between the two sides.
Above: Religious map of Switzerland, 1536
Meanwhile, Zwingli’s ideas came to the attention of Martin Luther and other reformers.
They met at the Marburg Colloquy and agreed on many points of doctrine, but they could not reach an accord on the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Above: Woodcut illustration of the Marburg Colloquy (1 – 4 October 1529)
In 1531, Zwingli’s alliance applied an unsuccessful food blockade on the Catholic cantons.
The cantons responded with an attack at a moment when Zürich was unprepared….
Above: Battle of Kappel, 11 October 1531
Zwingli wanted to enforce the Reformed sermon in the entire area of the Swiss Confederation.
He tried to break the resistance of central Switzerland by force of arms.
This was his undoing.
The Reformation in Switzerland was unstoppable.
It prevailed in church and state and gave the authorities more power.
But there were also opponents of the Reformation.
Zwingli and his innovations were sharply criticized, but that didn’t detract from its popularity.
The people flocked to the Grossmünster for its services.
Zwingli commented on theological, ecclesiastical and political questions in the pulpit.
He tried to renew the Church from the inside and to abolish the excesses and abuses with the consent of the Bishop and Pope.
His mission was to lead the entire Swiss Confederation to true Christianity.
He could not accept that the five places involved in the pension system continued to withhold the Reformed sermon from the central Swiss.
Above: Switzerland, 1530
The struggle for the right belief, in his opinion, required courageous action.
Zwingli wrote:
“I believe that just as the Church came to life through blood, it can also be renewed through blood, not otherwise.”
The open break with the Pope and the Church became evident on 29 January 1523, when the Zürich Council obliged the pastors to preach the “pure gospel” based on Zwingli’s example.
At Easter 1525, the Evangelical Last Supper formulated by Zwingli was celebrated instead of Mass for the first time.
Above: Zürich, Switzerland
There were similar developments in other parts of the Swiss Confederation.
Zwingli was in contact with like-minded people.
Well-known exponents of the Reformation in the Swiss Confederation were:
Johannes Dörig (1499 – 1526)
Walter Klarer (1500 – 1567)
Johannes Hess (1486 – 1537)
Valentin Tschudi (1499 – 1555)
Fridolin Brunner (1498 – 1570)
Sebastian Hofmeister (1494 – 1533)
Above: Swiss reformer Sebastian Hofmeister
Berchtold Haller (1492 – 1536)
Above: German reformer Berchtold Haller
Niklaus Manuel (1484 – 1530)
Above: Swiss reformer Niklaus Manuel
Konrad Pellikan (1478 – 1556)
Above: German reformer Konrad Pellikan
Wilhelm Reublin (1484 – 1549)
Johannes Oekolampad (1482 – 1531)
Above: German reformer Johannes Oekolampad
Johannes Comander (1484 – 1557)
Jakob Salzmann (1484 – 1526)
Dr. Joachim von Watt (aka Vadian) (1483 – 1551)
Above: Swiss reformer Joachim Vadian
The disputes about what it meant to be a good Christian led to internal political tensions in the Swiss Confederation.
The 1524 Diet did not lead to an audible solution in dealing that the true gospel should be preached to all confederates.
The Swiss Confederation was weakened.
Above: Flag of the Swiss Confederation
The Pope and the French tried to influence.
Johannes Eck (1486 – 1543), who fought on behalf of the Pope, and Martin Luther (1483 – 1546), took part in the 1526 Baden Disputation.
Above: German counter-reformer Johannes Eck
Eck needed nine places in the Confederation to ostracize and ban Zwingli as Emperor Charles V (1500 – 1558) had done with Luther in 1521.
Above: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
However, the decision was never implemented.
Tensions continued.
Zwingli thought armed conflicts were possible.
He wanted to prevent the Reformed places from being reintegrated into the Catholic Church by military force.
He consulted with Zürich officers and at the beginning of 1526 he drafted a war plan for the attention of the Zürich authorities.
In February 1528, Bern officially converted to the Reformation.
Zwingli took note of this pleasure and satisfaction.
Above: Bern, Switzerland
On Zwingli’s advice, Zürich concluded so-called “Christian castle rights” with the Reformed cities of Bern, Konstanz, St. Gallen, Biel-Bienne, Mühlhausen, Basel and Schaffhausen.
Above: Konstanz, GermanyAbove: St. Gallen, SwitzerlandAbove: Old town, Biel, SwitzerlandAbove: Mühlhausen, GermanyAbove: Basel, SwitzerlandAbove: Schaffhausen, Switzerland
The cities pledged to help each other should they be attacked because of their beliefs.
As a reaction to this, the Catholic towns of Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Zug and Unterwalden allied themselves with Ferdinand von Habsburg-Austria (1503 – 1564) in the “Christian Association“.
Above: Images of Luzern, SwitzerlandAbove: Flag of the Canton of UriAbove: Schwyz, SwitzerlandAbove: Zug, SwitzerlandAbove: Flag of the Canton of Unterwalden
In the early summer of 1529 the situation came to a head:
Both parties committed attacks, the Unterwaldner in the Bernese Oberland, the Zürichers in St. Gallen, and the Schwyzers by executing Reformed pastor Jakob Kaiser (1485 – 1529).
The Zürich government decided to go to war on 4 June 1529.
On 9 June, 4,000 people in armor and guns were standing in Kappel am Albis on the border with the canton of Zug.
Zwingli and several like-minded pasters were there.
Zwingli wanted to ride of his own accord, but the army commanders would have preferred because of the hospitality against Zwingli that he would have stayed at home.
They appointed another pastor to be the field chaplain.
Above: Kappel am Albis, Switzerland
The troops of the Reformed towns numbered 30.000 men, the central Swiss had an army of 9,000 men.
In view of the great overwhelming power, the people of Zürich saw themselves marching into Zug and Luzern without much bloodshed, thus enforcing the free preaching of the Gospel and the prohibition of mercenaries and pensions throughout the entire Confederation.
Above: Coat of arms of ZugAbove: Coat of arms of Luzern
But shortly before the attack, the Glarner Landammann Hans Aebli suddenly wanted to parley.
The central Swiss troops were not yet fully armed and one should refrain from a brotherly fight.
So a break was agreed and the Zürich authorities informed of the Glarus request.
Above: Flag of Canton Glarus
Zwingli wanted to use the numerical superioriry of the Reformers at all costs.
He wrote from the field to the Zürich Council:
“Be steadfast and do not fear war.
We do not thirst for someone’s blood.
We are only concerned with one thing:
That the nerve of the oligarchs’ policy must be cut.
If that does not happen, neither the truth of the Gospel nor the servants of the Gospel safe with us.
We do not contemplate the cruel, but the good and patriotic.
We want to save people who otherwise perish from ignorance.
We thirst for freedom to be preserved.
So do not be afraid of our plans.“
Above: Flag of Zürich
As a condition for peace he suggested to the Council:
The Gospel should be able to be preached unhindered throughout the Confederation.
No more pensions should be accepted.
Those who brokered pensions in the five towns were to be punished while the Zürich troops were still in Kappel.
The Zürichers were to receive war compensation.
Schwyz had to make amends for the children of Pastor Kaiser of 1,000 guilders.
Zwingli’s admonitions and warnings to the Zürich authorities were not heard.
Above: Flag of Canton Schwyz
In the meantime, the central Swiss were ready to fight, but the fighting spirit waned on both sides.
The federal spirit gained the upper hand.
In addition, the men suffered from shortages on both sides.
The central Swiss lacked bread.
The Zürichers lacked milk.
A couple of people from central Switzerland put a bucket of milk on the border.
The people of Zürich got the hint:
They brought the chunks of bread for the soup, which went down in history as “Kappel milk soup“.
But the wait and the negotiations continued.
Above: Kappel Milk Soup
Since the assembly of 14 June in Aarau did not bring an agreement, the negotiations were conducted at Zwingli’s suggestion in front of the assembled troops in the vicinity of Kappel.
Above: Aarau, Switzerland
The ambassadors of the central Switzerland, Zürich and Zwingli expressed themselves.
Zwingli wrote to the Zürich authorities:
“For God’s sake, do something brave!“
The formulation of a peace agreement progressed resinously and after more than two weeks of negotiations the First Kappeler Landfrieden was finally proclaimed on 26 June 1529:
The Reformed sermon was allowed everywhere and the central Swiss cancelled with the Habsburgs.
This strengthened the “Christian castle rights” of the Reformers who felt themselves to be victorious.
Zwingli was on the one hand satisfied with the bloodless peace.
On the other hand, he did not trust the central Swiss.
Above: Huldrych Zwingli
The wording of the peace treaty left a lot of room for interpretation, which just two months later led to violent disputes at a parliamentary meeting.
In particular, there was a dispute over the sovereignty over belief in the individual areas.
Both sides demanded that the minority bow to the majority.
So it was allowed in Zürich to stick to the old faith and attend Catholic mass.
In central Switzerland, Reformers were not allowed to hold their own church services in communities that remained mostly Catholic.
There was also a quarrel about war compensation.
Instead of the 80,000 guilders demanded by Zürich and Bern, they awarded only 2,500 guilders from both places, which the central Swiss did not want to pay either.
The mutual trust was gone.
The Reformers were suspicious of the central Swiss, despite the contractual ban they were again in contact with the Habsburgs.
Zwingli and Zürich feared that Emperor Charles V and the Habsburgers could attack the Reformed areas in the Confederation and Germany with the support of central Switzerland.
Above: Flag of the Habsburg Monarchy
Zwingli wanted to defend the Reformed areas of the Confederation and tried to forge an alliance with Hesse and other Reformed states in Germany, as well as with Venice and Milan.
His attempts were unsuccessful.
Above: Coat of arms of the German state of HesseAbove: Images of Venice, ItalyAbove: Images of Milan (Milano), Italy (Italia)
At the beginning of 1531, Zürich again asked the central Swiss to allow the Reformer sermon.
They felt their autonomy was threatened and rejected the request.
Zwingli urged the Zürich Council to force the people of central Switzerland to make this concession.
Above: Zürich, Switzerland
They were not convinced by the food boycott either.
At a meeting on 14 June 1531, the two parties – Zürich and Bern on one side, the five central Swiss towns on the other – sat opposite one another.
No agreement could be reached, negotiations were held on 20 June and 11 July with no results.
Zwingli could not stand the hesitation of the people of Zürich and decided on 26 July to leave the city immediately.
The influential lords of the city did not want to allow that to happen.
They literally begged him to stay.
After a period of reflection, Zwingli withdrew his resignation.
Above: Zürich in the time of Zwingli
Since the negotiations between Zürich, Bern and central Switzerland were still going on, Zwingli arranged to meet the Bern representative before the meeting on 11 August and tried to win them over a war against the five central Swiss towns.
Shortly afterwards, Zwingli wrote in a letter:
“I am prepared for more than just one disaster.“
He felt himself at a loss.
“The retirees don’t want to be punished.”
They had too much popular support.
Instead of going to war, Bern advised in September 1531 to lift the supply block against central Switzerland.
Above: The Bern negotiations, 1531
The people of Zürich were informed of the preparations for war by the central Swiss from various quarters, but they remained inactive.
When, on 9 October 1531, a runner from Luzern demanded the delivery of the federal letters, Zürichers did not expect an attack.
Even after the central Swiss had already mobilized their troops, the people of Zürich still did not call their soldiers to arms.
Only when reports came in on 10 October that the central Swiss were at Baar did the Zürich-based vanguard send an advance guard to the border with Zug.
Above: City Hall, Baar, Switzerland
The central Swiss invaded and plundered Freiamt.
Above: Coat of arms of Freiamt, Switzerland
The Grand Council of Zürich now sent its main force to support the vanguard.
Instead of the expected 4,000 men, only 1,000 arrived.
Zwingli rode at their head as field preacher together with the captains.
More troops arrived.
Finally on 11 October 1531, 7,000 central Swiss troops faced 3,500 soldiers in Kappel.
The people of Zürich who hurried up in forced marches were exhausted even before the fight.
When the central Swiss attacked at 4 pm, they fled after a brief resistance.
Zwingli fell in the front ranks.
More than 500 people from Zürich died with him in this second battle of Kappel.
The central Swiss had fewer than a 100 deaths to mourn.
Above: The Battle of Kappel, 11 October 1531
Zwingli did not immediately die, as the Menzinger Jahrezeitenbuch reported:
The central Swiss recognized the wounded man and offered him a confessor.
Zwingli refused.
Then a captain killed him with a halberd.
Above: The murder of Zwingli, by Karl Jauslin
The following day, “martial law was held over the dead body of this dishonourable God and the unfaithful, perjured, vow-breaking arch heretics and seducers of the people“.
As a result, Zwingli was “first cut off as a traitor to the entire Confederation by the Luzern executioner and then burned to ashes as an arch heretic“.
As a resulr, Zwingli was “first cut off as a traitor to the entire Confederation by the Luzern executioner and then burned to ashes as an arch heretic“.
Above: Zwingli memorial, Kappel am Albis, Switzerland
Zwingli’s death triggered a fall in friends and followers in Zürich and raised hope among his opponents, but the majority of the population wanted to hold on to the Reformation.
As a result of Zwingli’s interference in urban and federal politics, a clear separation of religions and politics was sought.
Pastors were instructed not to interfere in politics, but to concentrate on the preaching of God’s word and to work for peace and tranquility.
Anyone who did not comply was dismissed by the Zürich Council.
The Council appointed Heinrich Bullinger (1504 – 1575) as the new pastor at the Grossmünster on 9 December 1531.
In doing so, he fulfilled Zwingli’s wish:
He had recommended Bullinger as his successor if he did not return from Kappel.
Above: Heinrich Bullinger
The Second Kappel War was not ended by Zwingli’s death.
More defeats for the people of Zürich and Bern followed on the battlefield.
After the defeat, the forces of Zürich regrouped and attempted to occupy the Zugerberg, and some of them camped on the Gubel hill near Menzingen.
Following the defeat at Kappel, Bern and other Reformed Cantons marched to rescue Zürich.
Between 15 and 21 October, a large Reformed army marched up the Reuss Valley to outside of Baar.
Above: Reuss River, Luzern, SwitzerlandAbove: Baar today
At the same time, the Catholic army was now encamped on the slopes of the Zugerberg.
Above: Zugerberg and the city of Zug
The combined Zürich-Bern army attempted to send 5,000 men over Sihlbrugg and Menzingen to encircle the army on the Zugerberg.
Above: Babenwaag bridge in Sihlbrugg
However, the Reformed army marched slowly due to poor discipline and looting.
By the night of 23–24 October, they had only reached Gubel at Menzingen.
Above: Coat of arms of Menzingen
That night they were attacked by a small Catholic force from Aegeri and driven off.
Above: Oberaegeri (formerly Aegeri), Switzerland
About 600 Protestant soldiers died in the attack and the panicked retreat that followed.
This defeat destroyed much of the combined Zürich – Bern army and, faced with increasing desertion, it had to retreat on 3 November back down the Reuss to Bremgarten.
Above: Bremgarten, Switzerland
The retreat left much of Lake Zürich (Zürichsee) and Zürich itself unprotected.
Zürich now pushed for a rapid peace settlement.
Above: Map of Lake Zürich
On 20 November 1531, the Second Treaty of Kappel was concluded on the mediation of the federal states that had remained neutral.
It was stipulated that each canton could determine its own denomination.
The Abbey of St. Gallen was taken from Zürich and restored.
Above: Abbey of St. Gall, St. Gallen, Switzerland
The “Christian castle law” of the Reformed cantons repeatedly led to tensions and disputes.
After a long domination of the Catholic towns, the Reformed towns of Bern and Zürich gained the upper hand in the Swiss Confederation in 1712 in the Second Villmerger War (or Toggenburg War) (12 April – 11 August 1712).
Until the French Revolution, there were always new denominational disputes.
Above: The Helvetic Republic (1798 – 1803)
They also played a role in the Sonderbund War (3 – 29 November 1847), which led to the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848.
Above: Switzerland, 1847
Zürich to Kappel am Albis, Switzerland, Friday 13 March 2018
I am not a religious man, though I do respect the morality and traditions that religion tries to maintain.
I am considered by statistics as a man without religion, though I do consider myself a fairly moral man who was raised in the tenets of Christianity – my foster mother was a non-practising Baptist, my foster father was a non-practising Catholic, my foster sister and her family are fundamentalist Christians – I do not adhere to the notion that there is only one faith to follow to salvation – if there is indeed salvation at all.
My following in the footsteps of Huldrych Zwingli was far less a pilgrimage of faith as it was a pedestrian project of walking a path divided into many stages and accomplished in separate stages when time and money permitted.
I was not searching for God or holy illumination but rather I simply wished to get a sense of a historical period before my own and I felt that there was no better way to get a sense of Zwingli than to march along with his memory.
I have always preferred walking to any other method of transportation as the slowest of journeys generates the deepest experiences.
I have always held that the moment one puts wheels beneath them the journey loses its significance and the destination becomes the primary goal.
I wanted to imagine what the places I saw now appeared back then.
How did it come to this?
What did the people of yesterday think?
How did they feel?
How different were they from us?
How similar to us were they?
The Steiner book had led me in eight stages since 11 October 2017 from Wildhaus to Wollishofen in downtown Zürich.
Above: WildhausAbove: Wollishofen with the Uetliberg in the background
Today would be the final march that would take me from Zürich to Uetliberg, Hotel Uto Kulm, Balderen, Felsenegg, Buchenegg, Näfenhüser, Albispass, the Albis Hochwacht, Schnabellücken and Kappel am Albis.
Above: Limmat River, ZürichAbove: Uetliberg, seen from Lake ZürichAbove: Hotel Uto Kulm, UetlibergAbove: Balderen houseAbove: FelseneggAbove: Restaurant Chusperhüsli, BucheneggAbove: NäfenhüserAbove: Rüschlikon and AlbispassAbove: Albis Hochwacht (lookout)Above: SchnabellückenAbove: Kappel Monastery, Kappel am Albis
From the Haus zur Sul, at Kirchgasse 22, Zwingli’s official residence from 1522 to 1525, the last three years of his life, I walk from there to the Zürich Hauptbahnhof (Grand Central Station), to catch the Uetliberg train and the official start of this last leg of the Steiner trail.
Above: Haus zur Sul, ZürichAbove: Zürich Hauptbahnhof
The Uetliberg railway line (Uetlibergbahn) is a passenger railway line which runs from the central station in Zürich through the city’s western outskirts to the summit of the Uetliberg.
The route serves as line S10 of the Zürich S-Bahn (street railway/trams) with the Zürcher Verkehrsverband (Zürich Transport Commission)’s (ZVV) standards zonal fares applying.
The line was opened in 1875 and electrified in 1923.
In 1990 it was extended to its current terminus at Zürich Hauptbahnhof (Central Station).
Above: Zürich Hauptbahnhof
Today it is owned by the Sihltal Zürich Uetliberg Bahn, a company that also owns the Sihltal line and operates other transport services.
The line has a maximum gradient of 7.9% and is the steepest standard gauge adhesion railway in Europe.
It carries both leisure and local commuter traffic.
Above: Sihltal Zürich Uetliberg Bahn
The Uetliberg line shares a common terminus with the Sihltal line, utilising a dedicated underground island platform (tracks 21 and 22) at Zürich Hauptbahnhof.
There is no rail connection to the rest of the station, but the platform is served by the same complex of pedestrian subways and subterranean shopping malls that link the station’s other platforms.
From the Hauptbahnhof to Zürich Giesshübel station the two lines share a common twin-track line, initially in tunnel, partly running along and under the Sihl River.
Above: Giesshübel StationAbove: Sihl River near Sihlbrugg
The current Selnau station is located in this under-river tunnel section.
Above: Selnau Station
Although the two lines diverge at Giesshübel station, and the depot for Uetliberg trains is located there, Uetliberg line trains do not stop.
Just beyond Giesshübel, the line serves Zürich Binz station.
Above: Binz Station
The line then commences a long, steep but relatively straight climb through the Zurich suburbs, serving the stations of Zürich Friesenberg, Zürich Schweighof and Zürich Triemli.
Above: Friesenberg StationAbove: Schweighof StationAbove: Triemli Station
This section of line is single track, with a double track section between Binz and Friesenberg.
Triemli station is adjacent to the Triemli Hospital , one of Zürich’s main hospitals, and is the terminus for some trains on the line.
Above: Triemli Hospital
The station has two tracks and two platforms.
Beyond Triemli the line enters a more wooded and hilly environment, and executes a broad U-shaped route to the summit of Uetliberg, which is 5.9 km (3.7 mi) from Triemli by rail, but only 1.5 km (0.93 mi) away in a direct line.
Above: Uetliberg, seen from Felsenegg
This section of line serves Uitikon Waldegg and Ringlikon stations, and is single track, with double track sections between Triemli and Uitikon Waldegg, and at Ringlikon.
Above: Waldegg StationAbove: Ringlikon Station
Uetliberg station lies some 650 m (2,130 ft) from, and 56 m (184 ft) below, the summit of the Uetiberg.
The station has two terminal tracks, and a substantial station building, including a restaurant.
Above: Uetliberg Station
A refuge castle existed on the Uetliberg as early as the Bronze Age or an oppidum in Celtic times.
Various archaeological finds such as ramparts and the Prince’s grave mound Sonnenbühl can still be visited today.
From 1644 it was the location of a high watch.
Above: Sonnenbühl
The Uetliberg and the nearby Albiskamm were the location of six castles in the Middle Ages, of which only remnants are left today: Uetliburg, Sellenbüren, Frisenberg, Baldern, Schnabelburg and Manegg.
Above: Uetliberg Castle Above: Sellenbüren Castle ruinsAbove: Old mill, Friesenberg CastleAbove: Original location of Baldern CastleAbove: Schnabelburg Castle ruinsAbove: Manegg Castle
Uotelenburg was first mentioned in a document in 1210.
In 1267 the people of Zürich allegedly destroyed the Uetliburg under Rudolf von Habsburg (1218 – 1291) in the course of the Regensberg feud (1268 – 1269), but this is not considered historically certain.
Above: Grave slab of Rudolf von Habsburg, Speyer Cathedral, Germany
Twice (perhaps) Zwingli ascended Uetliberg in 1531 en route to battle.
That a man of the church sought bloodshed leaves me disappointed, but lives had already been lost in Zürich in the name of his religious reforms.
Above: Zwingli Monument, Wasserkirche, Zürich
In 1750 the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724 – 1803) climbed the mountain.
He too would cause others to doubt his religious convictions.
Above: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock grew up as the eldest of 17 children in a pietistic family.
His father, Gottlieb Heinrich, the son of a lawyer, was a commissioner and had leased the estate of Friedeburg, so that Friedrich Gottlieb spent his childhood here from 1732 until the lease was given up in 1736.
Above: Klopstock birthplace, Quedlinburg, Germany
His mother Anna Maria had the Bad Langensalza council chamberlain and merchant Johann Christoph Schmidt (1659 – 1711) as a father.
Above: Anna Maria Klopstock (née Schmidt)
After attending the Quedlinburg grammar school, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock came to the Fürstenschule in Schulpforte at the age of 15 , where he received a thorough humanistic education.
Above: Pforta State School (Fürstenschule), Schulpforte, GermanyAbove: Klopstock Memorial Stone, Pforta School
Klopstock read the Greek and Latin classics: Homer, Pindar, Virgil and Horace.
Above: Bust of Homer, Glyptothek, Munich, GermanyAbove: Replica of Pindar (522 – 446 BCE), Capitoline Museum, Rome, Italy Above: Representation of Virgil (70 – 19 BCE), Monnus Mosaic, Trier, Germany
Here he also made his first own poetic attempts and wrote a first plan for the Messiah, a religious epic.
In 1745 he began studying Protestant theology in Jena, where he also wrote the first three chants of the Messiah, which he initially laid out in prose.
After moving to Leipzig, the work was reworked in hexameters the following year.
The appearance of the first parts in the articles in Bremen in 1748 caused a sensation and became the model for the Messiad literature of its era.
In Leipzig, Klopstock also created the first odes.
Above: Messiah, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
After completing his theology studies, he took a private tutor in Langensalza (according to the custom of all theology candidates).
During the two years of his stay in Bad Langensalza, Klopstock experienced the passionate love for the girl Maria-Sophia Schmidt, the intoxication of hope, the despair of disappointment, and finally the elegy of renunciation.
Above: Old quarter, Bad Langensalza, Germany
This led to, during these two years, his composing the most beautiful of his earlier odes for the unapproachable lover.
The publication of the odes sparked a storm of enthusiasm among opponents of the “reasonable” poetics of Johann Christoph Gottsched, which had prevailed up until then.
Above: German writer, “the literary pope“, Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700 – 1776)
It was the hour of birth of pure poetry.
Above: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Contacts were made with Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698 – 1783), who invited Klopstock to Zürich in 1750.
Above: Swiss philologist Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698 – 1783)
Klostock gladly accepted the invitation from Bodmer, the Swiss translator of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, where Klopstock was initially treated with every kindness and respect and rapidly recovered his spirits.
Above: English writer John Milton (1608 – 1674)
Bodmer, however, was disappointed to find in the young poet of the Messiah a man of strong worldly interests, and a coolness sprang up between the two men.
After eight months, Klopstock went at the invitation of King Frederick V of Denmark (1723 – 1766).
With Friedrich’s support he was able to complete his work.
This granted him a life pension of 400 (later 800) thalers a year.
He spent three years of his life in Denmark.
Above: King Frederick V of Denmark and Norway (1723 – 1766)
On 10 June 1754, Klopstock married Margreta (Meta) Moller (1728 – 1758), whom he met in Hamburg in 1751 while traveling to Copenhagen.
She died of a stillbirth on 28 November 1758.
For thirty years Klopstock could not forget her and sang about her in his elegies.
It was not until old age (1791) that he married Johanna Elisabeth Dimpfel von Winthem (1747-1821), a niece of Meta Moller.
Above: Johanna Elisabeth von Winthem
From 1759 to 1762 Klopstock lived in Quedlinburg, Braunschweig and Halberstadt, then travelled to Copenhagen, where he stayed until 1771 and exerted a great influence on the cultural life in Denmark.
In addition to the Messiah, which finally appeared in full in 1773, he wrote dramas, including Hermanns Schlacht (Herman’s Battle) (1769).
He then returned to Hamburg.
Above: St. Michaelis Church, Hamburg, Germany
In 1776, he moved temporarily to Karlsruhe at the invitation of Margrave Karl Friedrich von Baden (1728 – 1811).
Above: The statue of Karl Friedrich von Baden, Karlsruhe Castle, Karlsruhe, GermanyAbove: Karl Friedrich von Baden
After his death on 14 March 1803 at the age of 78, Klopstock was buried on 22 March 1803 with great public sympathy in the church cemetery in Ottensen.
Above: Klopstock Grave, Ottensen, Hamburg, GermanyAbove: Klopstock’s grave under the linden tree, Ottensen bei Altona
In Quedlinburg, the Klopstockhaus provides information about the poet.
Above: Klopstockhaus, Quedlinburg, GermanyAbove: Klopstock Memorial, Brühl Park, Quedlinburg, Germany
In 1831, a memorial was inaugurated in the local park in Brühl.
Above: Brühl Park, south of Quedlinburg
As a father of the German nation-state idea, Klopstock was a proponent of the French Revolution, which he described in the 1789 poem Know Yourself as the “noblest deed of the century”.
Klopstock also called on the Germans for a revolution.
In 1792, the French National Assembly accepted him as an honorary citizen.
Later, however, he castigated the excesses of the revolution in the 1793 poem The Jacobins.
Here he criticized the Jacobin regime, which had emerged from the French Revolution, as a snake that winds through all of France.
Above: Jacobin hat, Army History Museum, Vienna, AustriaAbove: Jacobin Club session, January 1792
Klopstock’s enlightened utopia The German Republic of Scholars (1774) is a concept that installs an educated elite in power for the princely rule, which is regarded as incapable of governing.
The republic is to be ruled by “aldermen“, “guilds” and “the people“, whereby the former – as the most learned – should have the greatest powers, and guilds and people accordingly less.
The “rabble”, on the other hand, would only get a “shouter” in the state parliament, because Klopstock did not trust the people to have popular sovereignty.
Education is the highest good in this republic and qualifies its bearer for higher offices.
This republic would do extremely well in accordance with the learned approach and would be pacifistic too:
Klopstock estimates sniffing, scornful laughter and frowning as punishments between the scholars.
This made special demands on the executors:
“Whoever wants to become one of them must have two main characteristics, namely a great skill in being very expressive, and then a very special larval face, whereby the size and shape of the nose come into consideration.
In addition to this, the scornful laugher must have a very strong and at the same time rough voice.
It is customary to release Schreyer from being expelled from the country and to raise him to a sneer if his nose has the necessary properties for this task.”
Klopstock’s conception of Heaven, shaped by the scientific achievements of NIcolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) and Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630), is not that of an ancient sky at rest in itself, whose stars are gods and heroes.
Its celestial sphere is rather a world harmony, a rhythm and symmetry of the spheres.
Above: Polish scientist Nikolaus Kopernikus (1473 – 1543)Above: German mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630)
So it says in the first song of the Messiah:
In the middle of this gathering of the suns the sky rises, round, immeasurable, the archetype of the worlds, the abundance of all visible beauty, which, like fleeting brooks, pours out, imitating it through the infinite space. So, under the Eternal, it revolves around itself.
While he is walking, the spherical harmonies resound from him, on the wings of the wind, to the shores of the suns high. The songs of the divine harpists resound with power, as if animating. These agreed tones lead the immortal hearer past many a high praise song.
Above: Kepler’s Platonic model of the Solar System
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) will take up this picture again in Faust.
The “Prologue in Heaven” begins like this:
The sun resounds in the old fashion in the fraternal song of contests, And its prescribed journey completes it with a thunderous walk.
Above: German polymath Johann Wolfgang von GoetheAbove: Faust in his study, by Georg Friedrich Kersting
Klopstock gave the German language new impulses and can be seen as a trailblazer for the generation that followed him.
He was the first to use hexameter in German poetry with his Messiah, and his examination of the “German hexameter“, as he called it, led him to his doctrine of the word foot (the smallest rhythmic unit.
This paved the way for free rhythms such as those used by Goethe and Friedrich Hölderlin (1770 – 1843) for example.
Above: German poet Friedrich Hölderlin
Klopstock also fought against the strict use of rhyme according to the Martin Opitz (1597 – 1639) school.
Opitz’s aim was to elevate German poetry on the basis of humanism and ancient forms to an art object of the highest order, and he succeeded in creating a new kind of poetics.
In his commemorative speech on the 100th anniversary of Opitz’s death in 1739, Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700 – 1766) called him the first who had succeeded in bringing the German language to a level that met all the demands of sophisticated diction and eliminated everyday language, which allowed him to advance of the French.
With his reflections on language, style and verse art, Opitz gave German poetry a formal basis. In doing so, he drew up various laws that served as guidelines and standards for all German poetry for over a century:
He demanded strict observance of the meter, taking into account the natural word accent.
He rejected impure rhymes. (Probably rejected dirty limericks, too!)
He forbade word abbreviations and contractions.
He also excluded foreign words.
Opitz’s aesthetic principles included the Horace (65 – 8 BCE) Principle:
“Poetry, while it is pleasurable, must be useful and instructive at the same time.”
Above: German poet Martin Opitz
Klopstock gave the poet’s profession a new dignity by exemplifying the artistic autonomy of the poet, and thus freed poetry from didactic poems.
Klopstock is considered to be the founder of experiential poetry and German irrationalism.
His work extended over large parts of the age of the Enlightenment.
Unlike most Enlighteners, however, he was not committed to reason, but to sensitivity.
In 1779 he coined the term inwardness, which he called one of nine elements of poetic representation:
“Inwardness, or highlighting the actual innermost nature of the thing.”
Furthermore, he is considered an important pioneer for the movement of Sturm und Drang – literally “storm and desire”, though usually translated as “storm and stress“, where individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression.
Above: Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers, an example of “Sturm und Drang“
In The Sorrows of Young Werther, Klopstock’s effect is felt in the writing of Goethe:
“We went to the window, it thundered to the side and the wonderful rain rustled on the land, and the most refreshing fragrance rose to us in the fullness of warm air.
She stood on her elbow and her eyes penetrated the area, she looked up at the sky and at me, I saw her eyes full of tears, she put her hand on mine and said – “Klopstock!”
I sank into the stream of sensations which she poured out on me in this loosing.
I could not stand, leaned on her hand and kissed it with the most delightful tears.
And looked at her eye again –
Noble!
You would have seen your admiration in this look, and now I would never hear your name, which has so often been desecrated, mentioned again.“
In spite of all this, the young Lessing registers:
“Who will not praise a Klopstock? But will everyone read it? – No! We want to be less exalted and read more diligently.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Above: Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther
Klopstock reminds me of Zwingli.
Both strong men, both well-educated, both advocating radical change.
In 1812 the Uetliberg watch was erected.
Above: Lookout Tower, UetlibergAbove: The view from Uetliberg
The Alt Uetliberg is a small farm west below the former Annaburg.
Mentioned in a document 400 years ago and probably much older, the mountain home is a witness of old farming culture on the Uetliberg.
In 1984 the canton of Zürich wanted to demolish the building.
A petition successfully opposed this.
Today the buildings serve as a scout home.
Above: Alt Üetliberg
A wooden ski jump was built in 1954 south of the Alt Uetliberg farmhouse .
A hill record of 41.5 meters was achieved in the 1970s.
Due to the frequent lack of snow and decreasing public interest, the ski jump was demolished in 1994.
Above: Ski jump, Uetliberg
During the Second World War, the Uetliberg and Waldegg area was fortified with over 100 bunkered shelters as part of the first army position.
Above: Waldegg tank trench
In 1815 an inn opened in the former Hochwacht.
In 1838 Friedlich Bluntschli acquired the summit area from his cousin Gerber Bluntschli
The Zürich architect Johann Caspar Breitinger built the first spa house for Friedlich Bluntschli.
In 1840 Friedrich Beyel opened the Uetliberg guest house and spa.
Above: Hotel Uto Kulm, Uetliberg
Friedrich von Dürler was the son of Xaver von Dürler, a businessman from Lucerne, and Barbara Gossweiler from Zurich.
Above: Friedrich von Dürler (1804 – 1840)
After the early death of his father, he trained as a businessman, but soon gave up the profession to devote himself to archeology and gymnastics.
He was close friends with Ferdinand Keller, the founder of the Antiquarian Society of Zürich, and as treasurer of the association took part in excavations on the Lindenhof in Zurich and the Uetliberg.
Above: Swiss archaeologist Ferdinand Keller (1800 – 1881)
Together with the theologian Alexander Schweizer, Dürler was one of the early promoters of gymnastics based on the ideas of the father of German gymnastics Friedrich Ludwig Jahn.
Above: German educator Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778 – 1852)
From 1836 the bachelor served as secretary for the Zurich poor relief.
In September 1838 Dürler became a member of the Swiss Society for Natural Research.
On 19 August 1837, he had the chamois hunters and mountain farmers Bernhard and Gabriel Vögeli and Thomas Thut from Linthal take him up to the Glarner Tödi to prove their first ascent of the peak from the north on 11 August 1837.
Dürler is still honored today with a plaque in Linthal.
Above: Tödi Mountain, Canton Glarus, Switzerland
Dürler and friends climbed the Uetliberg, where the first restaurant had just opened.
On 8 March 1840, this mountaineer, naturalist and Zürich secretary for the poor, Friedrich von Dürler (1804 – 1840) fell to his death after visiting the inn while descending.
On the basis of a bet, he slipped down a steep gully on his alpine stick, fell over a rock and died.
The friends erected a memorial stone with a plaque on the ridge east of today’s Uto Staffel Restaurant, the Dürlerstein.
Inscription:
Here Friedrich von Dürler fell down and died on March 8th MDCCCXL Mourning friends set this stone for him
Above: The Dürler Stone, Uetliberg
In 1873 the hotelier Caspar Fürst bought the mountain inn.
The existing house was enlarged and a hotel was built to the north of it.
In 1927 the Uetliberg Hotel was taken over by the City of Zürich and the ETH Zürich-Lehrwald (teaching forest) was established.
Above: Logo of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
In 1935 the Niedermann brothers, both major butchers in Zürich, bought the hotel.
In 1943 it was closed.
In 1973 the hotel came into the possession of the general contractor Karl Steiner.
In 1983 the Swiss Bank Corporation bought the Uto Kulm mountain inn.
In 1999 Giusep Fry bought the hotel with a lookout tower.
He subsequently carried out various modifications that were declared illegal by the Federal Supreme Court.
Tourist development began in the 19th century with the Uetlibergbahn (opened in 1875) and the construction of various hotels and guest houses on the Uetliberg and the Albis chain.
Today the traditional Hotel Uto Kulm and the Uetliberg observation tower, open to the public all year round, stand on the summit of the Uetliberg.
Above: Hotel Uto Kulm and observation tower, Uetliberg
Car-free Üetliberg is accessed by the S10 line of the Sihital-Zürich-Uetliberg Bahn, which is part of the Zurich S-Bahn network, is Europe’s steepest standard-gauge adhesion railway, running from Zürich Main Station to the Uetliberg station – a ten-minute walk below the summit.
Above: Uetliberg, by Hans Leu the Elder
From the train station, the Uetliberg – Felsenegg Planet Path leads to Felsenegg, where the Adliswil – Felsenegg aerial cableway leads down to Adliswil.
Various hiking trails lead from the city of Zurich to the summit in around an hour:
The varied Denzlerweg leads from Albisguetli (tram line 13 terminus) in a fairly straight direction to the summit. It is named after a baker Denzler who is said to have brought his rolls to the Hotel on the summit every morning on this route and is said to have made this route about 4,000 times.
Above: The Denzler Path
Also from Albisgüetli, the Laternenweg leads a little further west onto the ridge. It takes its name from its earlier gas lantern lighting, which has been electrified since 2003.
Above: Lantern Path in winter
From Triemli (tram line 14 terminus) the Hohensteinweg leads up a mountain shoulder, which is particularly popular as a toboggan run in winter.
Above: The High Stone Path
A forest road leads from Uitikon-Waldegg (parking lot) to the summit. This path has the least incline.
The Uetliberg is particularly popular in winter, as its summit is often above the Zürich fog.
In the past, in such inversion weather conditions, the tram lines that go to the foot of the Uetliberg carried the sign “Uetliberg hell”.
In winter, some of the hiking trails are used as toboggan runs.
Swisscom operates an important telecommunications system on the Uetliberg (the Uetliberg television tower) for the transmission of radio and television programs.
The Uetliberg offers – especially from the Uetliberg observation tower on the mountain top – a view of the entire city and Lake Zürich.
When the weather is good, the view extends to the north as far as Hohentwiel, and from east to south to Glarus, Graubünden and the Bernese Alps.
Other mountain ranges in Germany (the Black Forest / Schwarzwald), France (Vosges) and Austria can also be seen.
Above: Uetliberg
The Felsenegg (810m) is a lookout point on the Albis chain and the mountain station of the Adliswil – Felsenegg aerial cableway southwest of Zürich.
The Albis is one of the most important local recreation and hiking areas in the greater Zürich area.
Via the Felsenegg, the hiking trail from Uetliberg leads along the Albis ridge in an easterly direction to the Albis Pass, starting with the Uetliberg – Felsenegg Planet Trail.
Above: Felsenegg
The Uetliberg – Felsenegg PlanetTrail is a hiking trail in the canton of Zürich on the Albis.
The path leads from the Uetliberg railway station of the Uetlibergbahn to Staffel, Annaburg, above the Fallätsche via Mädikon to the Felsenegg station of the Adliswil – Felsenegg aerial cableway, via Felsenegg to Buchenegg.
The duration of the hike is around two hours.
The trail was designed by Arnold von Rotz and opened on 26 April 1979.
The patronage was taken over by the Astronomical Society Urania Zürich.
Above: Urania Observatory, Zürich
The path is laid out on a scale of 1:1 billion and thus offers a clear representation of the sizes and distances in the solar system.
One meter of the model corresponds to one million kilometers in reality.
The planetary path includes not only the Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, planets Mercury, but also the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto.
Above: Representation of the Solar System – We are the third rock from the Sun.
The planet models are attached to boulders on the Linth or Reuss glacier along the way.
Above: Reuss glacier boulder with model of Jupiter
The smaller planet models were poured into glass and set into a niche in the boulder, the larger ones attached to the top of the boulder.
Above: Venus model in a Malmkalk boulder
A board on each planet provides information about its position in the solar system and additional information, such as equatorial diameter, rotational speed, orbital speed, orbit circumference, and the like.
As a model of the sun, a yellow sphere with a diameter of 1.39 meters was attached to a pole, which can be seen clearly from the first planetary models .
Above: Sun model with two Reuss glacier boulders
Dwarf planet Pluto is represented with three stations because of its strongly elliptical orbit:
Above: Pluto
The first position corresponds to the perihelion, while it lies ahead of Neptune.
Above: Model of Neptune with view of Uetliberg
The second position at Felsenegg corresponds to the mean distance and the third station near Buchenegg corresponds to the aphelion.
The next star, Proxima Centauri, would be around 40,113 kilometers away on the same scale.
Above: Proxima Centauri, as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope
(For comparison: the circumference of the Earth is around 40,030 kilometers).
Above: Earth
A steep forest path built between 1908 and 1912 leads from Adliswil up to Felsenegg.
Above: Uetliberg
Adliswil is located in the lower Sihl valley between Albis and Zimmerberg on the border with the city of Zürich.
The forest covers a third of the municipal area, the settlement area and traffic almost half, 20% are still used for agriculture.
The graves from the early Middle Ages, which were found in the Grüt near the border with the city of Zurich, give evidence of settlements.
The slopes of Zimmerberg and Albis were settled first, as the valley floor along the Sihl was repeatedly endangered by floods.
Above: Adliswil and the Sihl Valley
A bridge over the Sihl has been documented since 1475.
The first mill with a weir (dam) is also mentioned in the 15th century.
The manorial power lay with the Grossmünster and Frauminister of Zürich, as well as the monasteries of Muri and Rüti, and passed to the city of Zürich in 1406.
Above: Grossmünster, ZürichAbove: Fraumünster, ZürichAbove: Müri MonasteryAbove: Rüti Monastery before the fire of 1706
From 1942 to 1945, the second largest internment camp in Switzerland, which was set up as a result of the German occupation of southern France, was located in Adliswil.
It was housed in the rooms of a disused mechanical silk weaving mill.
In particular, German Jews who had previously found refuge in southern France tried to escape to Switzerland afterwards.
The transit camp, which, despite its size, was little known among the population because it was shielded by the military, offered space for around 500 people.
The community experienced a strong growth spurt in the 19th century through industrialization, during which a large spinning company, the Mechanische Seidenweberei Adliswil (MSA), was built.
Above: The Mechanical Silk Manufacturing Company, Adliswil
The village was also home to the chocolate manufacturer Norma, which later became part of the Cima – Norma SA company in Dangio – Torre.
Above: Buildings of Cima-Norma SA, Dangio-Torre, Canton Ticino, Switzerland
Today many of the residents work in Zürich.
The majority of the resident companies operate in the tertiary sector.
In particular, insurance companies (Generali, Swiss Reinsurance Company) have located part of their administration in Adliswil.
The Liechtenstein tool manufacturer Hilti has its Swiss headquarters in Adliswil.
A total of around 5,000 people in all sectors work in Adliswil.
Above: Coat of arms of Adliswil
Some personalities of Adliswil:
Stefan Bachmann is a Swiss-American author of novels and short stories.
Above: Stefan Bachmann
His debut novel The Peculiar was published in 2012.
Bachmann was born in Colorado, but soon moved with his family to Adliswil.
He was home schooled by his American mother and four siblings through high school.
Above: Adliswil
He attended the Zürich Conservatory since he was 11, and then the Zürich University of the Arts, where he studied organ and composition.
His first novel was published when he was 19 years old.
He writes his books in English.
The Peculiar is about the opening of a portal to the fairy world, as a result of which a multitude of magical creatures come into the human world.
Since the portal closed, the fairies and elves have been prevented from returning and have to live side by side with the humans.
Children of a human and a fairy are called “the Peculiar” and are especially outlawed as crossbreeds on both sides.
Bartholomew and his little sister Henrietta “Hettie” Kettle are mixed race whose fairy father has left the family.
They live with their mother on Krähengasse in Bath and are almost never allowed to leave the house, as very few people shy away from killing “mixed race children”.
One day Bartholomew observes a lady in a plum-colored dress from the window of a secret attic room who is picking up another mongrel boy from the neighbors.
When Bartholomew follows her, he is magically wrapped in feathers and taken into a distant, noble room, which he leaves shortly afterwards in the same way.
Arthur Jelliby is a parliamentarian and member of the Council of State in London, which also includes a fairy elite.
For some time now, mongrels have been mysteriously disappearing and then found dead, which most of the Members of Parliament don’t care much.
When Jelliby is invited to the fairy attorney general Lickerish, he gets lost in his house in a corridor and is tracked down by Lickerish’s fairy butler, who suspects him to have spied.
By chance, Jelliby overhears Lickerish in an office and comes across a diabolical plan to open the portal to the fairy world in order to deliver England to the fairies.
To do this, Lickerish needs a certain mixed-race child that the lady in the plum-colored dress named Melusine is supposed to get for him.
In the meantime, Bartholomew has tried to conjure up a house ghost and instead leads Lickerish’s henchmen to him, who kidnap Hettie.
At the same time, Jelliby arrives in Crow Alley and comes across Bartholomew, who is desperately looking for his sister.
Together they make their way to the fairy market to get weapons for defense, and then to a lonely place in the forest where an old fairy lives in a trailer and tells them about Lickerish’s plans.
He wants to invade all magical beings from the fairy world to England in order to subdue people and to rule over them.
Bartholomew and Jelliby travel back to London, where they locate an old warehouse with access to an airship over the city.
That is where Lickerish is holding Hettie.
He is responsible for the disappearance and death of the other mixed race children because he was looking for the right one.
Hettie is the portal to the fairy world and is supposed to open it that night.
When it happens, Bartholomew and Jelliby join them.
They want to prevent the portal from opening, but fail, and Hettie disappears into the fairy world together with the fairy butler.
The story ends with Bartholomew’s decision to bring Hettie home at all costs.
Bachmann wrote The Peculiar in English at the age of 16, inspired by The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, among others.
Above: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
According to his own information, he needed six months for the first version with 400 pages, plus another six months for the revision.
Above: Bachmann at the time of the publishing of The Peculiar
An agent sent the manuscript to US publisher Harper Collins, who published it on 18 September 2012.
According to some media reports, the novel quickly became a bestseller in the US, which also led to the film industry’s interest in film rights.
Along with the publication, a book trailer was produced, the musical accompaniment of which was composed by Bachmann himself.
A reading tour through the USA and a blog tour through Asia followed in 2013 and brought the author an income in the six-figure range.
The book has been translated into seven languages, including Czech, Polish, and Spanish.
The German translation was published on 26 February 2014 by the Swiss Diogenes Verlag.
Both the press, as well as representatives of fantasy literature judged The Peculiar mainly positive.
The New York Times wrote in September 2012 that The Peculiar was “a story young fantasy buffs are sure to enjoy”.
The Los Angeles Times wrote “Bachmann’s prose is so elegantly witty.”
Publishers Weekly described the novel as “limitless reading pleasure for readers of all ages.”
Christopher Paolini, author of the fantasy series Eragon, praised the book as “swift, strong and entertaining, highly recommanded”.
Above: Christopher Paolini
Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan said:
“Stefan Bachmann breathes fresh life into ancient magic.”
Above: Rick Riordan
Margrit Baur (1937 – 2017) was a Swiss writer and secretary.
She was born and raised in Adliswil.
After teachers’ college, she attended a drama school in Vienna, where she also appeared in small theatres for a few years after completing her training.
Back in Switzerland, she worked in various “bread and butter” jobs in order to be able to devote herself freely to writing.
She brought up this juxtaposition of professional life and “real” life above all in Survival (1981) and Downtime(1983)
Baur lived in Gattikon near Zürich until 2017.
Above: Margrit Baur
Franz Fassbind (1919 – 2003) was a Swiss writer, playwright and journalist.
Franz Fassbind was the son of photographer and small publisher Bernardin Fassbind (1887 – 1954) and Lina Fassbind-Marty (1884 – 1931) in Unteriberg in the canton of Schwyz.
Above: Unteriberg
He grew up in poor conditions, first in the Engadine, then in Zürich’s industrial district and in Wipkingen.
Above: The course of the Inn River – Within Swiss territory the Inn (En) River Valley is called the Engadine.Above: Zürich’s Industrial QuarterAbove: Wipkingen
Later he attended the collegiate school of Einsiedeln Monastery and the Jesuit college in Feldkirch.
Above: Einsiedeln MonasteryAbove: The former Jesuit college, Stella Matutina (today: the Vorarlberg State Conservatory), Feldkirch, Austria
During these years Franz Fassbind wrote his first poems and small compositions.
After dropping out of high school, he studied music at the Zürich Conservatory from 1936 and German studies at the University of Zürich.
Above: The Zürich Conservatory (today: Zürich University of the Arts)
Without ever finishing a degree, he worked as a freelance journalist, writer and composer.
His first poems were published in 1936, Radio Beromünster broadcast his first radio play at Christmas 1938, and his first novel was published three years later.
Above: Landesender Beromünster, home of Radio Beromünster, Gunzwil, Canton Luzern, Switzerland
Franz Fassbind became known primarily for his work for Swiss Radio.
His radio plays and features had a formative effect on the medium from 1938 to 1974.
Just as important was the series of programs he initiated, “The International Forum”, in which he allowed well-known scientists to have their say.
His radio reviews in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung found a wide readership.
His journalistic work is also an expression of the spiritual defense movement.
Above: Logo for Swiss Radio
(The spiritual defense movement is the cross-party strengthening of values and customs perceived as “Swiss” in order to ward off totalitarian ideologies.
At first it was directed primarily against National Socialism (Nazism) and Facism, later during the Cold War against Communism.
Even when intellectual national defense was no longer actively pursued by the authorities, the cultural, anti-totalitarian values remained in effect.
Swiss politicians still use the terms and metaphors of intellectual national defense today.)
Above: Marble sculpture Readiness for military service, Ramisstrasse, Zürich
In the Dramaturgy of the Radio Play published in 1943 , he also reflected on his radio work theoretically.
In 1956 he turned to the medium of film.
For The Art of the Etruscanshe provided both the script and the music.
The work earned him the 1st Film Prize of the City of Zürich.
From 1948 Fassbind’s main poetic work, Die Hohe Messe (The High Mass), was published in demanding terzins – an Italian rhyming scheme wherein each stanza consists of three verses – based on Dante.
There, as in his novels from the post war period, the focus is on dealing with Catholicism in today’s world.
Above: Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321)
Fassbind married Gertrud Schmucki in 1941.
Their only child, a daughter, Ursula was born in 1943.
The family lived in Adliswil near Zürich, where Franz Fassbind died on 9 July 2003 at the age of 84.
Peter Wild published an edition of his work at Walter Verlag in Olten.
Above: Fassbind’s Zeitloses Leben (Timeless Life)
Hannes Gruber (1928 – 2016) was a Swiss painter.
Above: Hannes Gruber
Hannes Gruber was the second son of Paul and Erna Gruber-Hartmann.
He spent his youth and school days in Oberrieden on Lake Zürich.
Above: Oberrieden
In 1943 – 1944 he attended the Zürich School of Applied Arts (1883 – 2007).
From 1944 to 1948 he did an apprenticeship with Swiss bookseller Orell Füssli in Zürich, at the same time he attended courses in the painting at the Zürich School of Applied Arts.
After moving to Grevasalvas in the Upper Engadine (1948) he worked there as a freelance painter.
In 1953 his son Stefan (now known as filmmaker Steff Gruber) was born.
Above: Grevasalvas, Upper Engadine
After returning to Zürich (1954), Hannes Gruber opened his own graphic studio.
In 1957 his daughter Ursina was born.
In 1968 his daughter Sandrina was born.
Above: Hannes Gruber painting
The next year Gruber opened a studio on the Hirzel, a Swiss pass in the foothills of cantons Zürich and Zug, between Wadenswil and Sihlbrugg.
Above: Hirzelpass
In 1972 he moved to the Engadin again, this time to Sils Baselgia.
Above: The towns of Sils Maria (left) and Sils Baselgia (right)
He moved into a studio in Bondo.
Above: Bondo
Gruber made his first painting trip to Northern Italy in 1949.
Above: Flag of Italy
A study trip took him to the Netherlands in 1950 and another painting trip to Denmark in 1952.
Above: Flag of the NetherlandsAbove: Flag of Denmark
He made further trips to Italy (1958) to Bergamo and Verona, then to Sicily (1966) and Tuscany (1967).
Above: Bergamo, ItalyAbove: Images of Verona, ItalyAbove: Flag of SicilyAbove: Flag of Tuscany (Toscana)
A summer stay in Spain (1969) earned him a commission for several wall paintings on a building on Ibiza.
Above: Mediterranean Spanish island of Ibiza
He travelled to New York in 1974.
Above: Images of New York City
Another summer stay in Italy took place in 1977..
Above: Emblem of Italy
His first watercolours of landscapes from the area around Oberrieden were created in 1940.
He painted in oil for the first time in 1942.
Above: Oberrieden
Above: Oberrieden, by Hannes Gruber
In 1950 he received an order for large murals for the Olma – the annual agricultural fair in St. Gallen.
Above: OLMA (Swiss Fair for Agriculture and Food) halls, St. Gallen
In 1966 he illustrated an edition of Tristan by Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955).
In 1971 he was commissioned with a three-dimensional wall design in the Fuhr schoolhouse in Wädenswil.
Above: Fuhr Schulhaus, Wadenswil
Peter Holenstein (1946 – 2019) was a Swiss journalist and author.
Above: Peter Holenstein
In his journalistic work, for example in the Swiss weekly magazine Weltwoche, Peter Holenstein dealt in particular with topics relating to criminal justice and crime, the perpetrator-victim problem and the causes of violent crimes.
His book The Incredible: The Murderous Lifeof Werner Ferrari in 2007 led to a review of the child murder case of Ruth Steinmann at the Baden District Court, which ended in Ferrari’s acquittal.
Werner Ferrari is a Swiss serial killer.
As a five-time child murderer, he is one of the most famous prison inmates in Switzerland.
For example, he kidnapped or lured children away from public festivals, abused some of the victims and strangled them.
Ferrari grew up in various children’s and youth homes and was considered an introvert.
He performed various jobs as an unskilled worker.
In 1971 Ferrari committed his first infanticide:
In Reinach (BL), he murdered 10-year-old Daniel Schwan.
Above: Daniel Schwan (1961 – 1971)
Ferrari was sentenced to ten years in prison and released early after eight years in prison from the Zürich prison in Regensdorf.
Above: Regensdorf Prison
Between 1980 and 1989, 21 children disappeared in Switzerland, 14 of whom were found abused and murdered.
Seven children, including Peter Roth (8) from Mogelsberg (SG), Sarah Oberson (5) from Saxon (VS), and Edith Trittenbass (9) from Gass-Wetzikon (TG), are still missing today despite intensive searches.
Above: Peter RothAbove: Edith Trittenbass
On 30 August 1989, four days after Fabienne Imhof’s murder, Werner Ferrari called the police – and stated that he had nothing to do with her death.
Above: Fabienne Imhof
Shortly afterwards he was arrested in his apartment in Olten, and he made confessions in four cases.
Above: Olten
Ferrari vehemently denied the murder of 12-year-old Ruth Steinmann, who was found on 16 May 1980 in a wooded area near Würenlos (AG).
In 1995 Ferrari was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Baden District Court for fivefold murder, including for the crime committed against Ruth Steinmann.
Seven years later, research by journalist and book author Peter Holenstein discovered evidence that Ferrari could not be responsible for the murder of Ruth Steinmann.
Among other things, a DNA analysis initiated by the journalist revealed that a pubic hair that could be secured on Ruth Steinmann’s corpse did not come from Ferrari.
On the basis of Holenstein’s research, the higher court of the canton of Aargau overturned the judgment against Ferrari in the Ruth Steinmann case in 2004 and referred it back to the Baden District Court for reassessment.
As a result, a suspect on Ruth Steinmann was exhumed in March 1983 in Wolfhalden (AG) who had committed suicide.
A dental report from the Scientific Service of the Zürich City Police showed that the bite marks on the girl’s body were definitely not from Ferrari, but from the man who died in 1983 and who looked very similar to Ferrari.
In a national appeal, Werner Ferrari was found innocent on 10 April 2007 by the Baden District Court for the murder of Ruth Steinmann and acquitted of this crime.
However, he remains detained for the other four cases.
Above: Ruth Steinmann (1968 – 1980)
As early as 1979, Holenstein succeeded in resolving a murder case in Italy with his research:
After he was able to convict the right perpetrator and he made a confession, the 46-year-old Swiss Werner Rudolf Meier was declared innocent in Elba Prison after 24 years served and was pardoned by Italy’s President Sandro Pertini.
Above: Sandro Pertini (1896 – 1990), 7th Italian President (1978 – 1985)
From Dominique Strebel and Christoph Schilling, Beobachter, 28 December 2006
The fortnightly Swiss magazine Beobachter (The Observer) reveals grievances where state arbitrariness is worst: in educational, reformatory or penal institutions.
Everywhere where the individual is exposed to state power without protection.
And this is most glaringly shown in the case of errors of justice, to which the Beobachter repeatedly points out.
Take the case of the Zürich furniture maker Werner Rudolf Meier, who was imprisoned in Italy for 24 years – for a murder that he demonstrably did not commit.
Only when the journalist Peter Holenstein researched meticulously did the matter move.
Holenstein convicted the real murderer, who made a full confession.
A revision procedure failed, because the court declared the confessing perpetrator to be insane.
Holenstein continued to write about the case until Federal Councilors Willi Ritschard and Pierre Aubert spoke directly to the Italian President Sandro Pertini on behalf of Meier.
He was finally released in 1979.
“Without the Beobachter, this would not have been possible,” said Holenstein.
“It played a decisive role in putting pressure on us.”
Meier was not acquitted, but pardoned.
Therefore, he did not receive any compensation for unlawful detention.
Even now, the Beobachter does not let Meier fall and “participates in the necessary health, professional and human integration efforts with advice and action”.
Above: Logo of the Beobachter (Observer)
In 2001, Holenstein was awarded the German Regino Prize for the best judicial report of the year for Der Verdacht (TheSuspicion), published in the magazine Tages-Anzeiger (Daily Indicator).
Above: Logo of Das Magazin (formerly Tages-Anzeiger)
Peter Holenstein was a member of the Swiss Working Group for Criminology (SAK) and the Swiss CriminologicalSociety (SKG / SSDP).
At the age of 72, he died in Zürich in January 2019 as a result of a heart attack.
Pjotr Kraska, actually Peter Johannes Kraska, also known as Kraska rex (1946 – 2016) was a Swiss action artist, writer, visual artist, critic of the authorities and a Zürich original.
Above: Pjotr Kraska
In the late 60s he appeared, sometimes together with Dieter Meier, in experimental theatre and in avant-garde shows that startled the bourgeoisie at the time.
Above: Dieter Meier
His book, The Big Throw, reflects on speaking and writing.
One poem (1978/79) was partly enthusiastically discussed.
In 1980 he declared himself “King of Zürich and Bilbao, ruler of the Zen and A-centric empires” and from then on fought a bitter but unsuccessful dispute over free travel on the Zürich public transport network (ZVV).
Above: Kraska’s “Triumphal Arch Card” for the entire transport network in the canton of ZürichAbove: ZVV logo
Kraska, the son of East Prussian parents, grew up as the third of four children in Oberleimbach (Adliswil).
Above: Adliswil
After leaving school, he attended the Appenzell-Ausserrhoden (AR) cantonal school in Trogen, but took off before completion, deciding that he was an actor.
Above: The Kantonsschule Trogen
He later lived in Zürich’s old town in Niederdorf.
In 1966, Kraska began writing and performing experimental plays.
He made his first public appearance on the occasion of the performance of Ladislav Kupkovic’s Písmená by the Zürich Chamber Choir in Fred Barth’s piece Forum Concert .
Above: Slovak musician Ladislav Kupkovic (1936 – 2016)
In 1968 the 22-year-old Kraska founded the Wath-Tholl-Theater, where he performed the Darkroom play the same year:
“What can be admired in the non-stop, two and a half hour Darkroom piece is the concentration of the actors, the consistency with which the audience is alluded to that openly expressing incomprehension, and above all the virtuoso leadership of a – if one may say so – musical perceived arc to which the text is subordinated.
Kraska’s problem is – and in this piece, in this nightmare, in any case in an annoying way, he chokes it out of himself – the lack of relationships, the groping in the pitch dark.
Must this artistically inadequate examination of what may afflict a sensitive young man today take place in public and on a stage? “
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 16 June 1968
Above: The King of Zürich’s 1968 passport
In 1969 Kraska took part with the Wath-Tholl-Theater in the avant-garde show Underground Explosions, which was performed in Munich (München), Zürich and Cologne (Köln), among others, together with the rock groups Amon Düül and Guru Guru Groove, the Bavarians Paul and Limpe Fuchs (aka Anima) with experimental primal scream music, as well the Viennese performance artists Valie Export and Peter Weibel.
Above: Austrian artist Waltraud Stockinger (née Lehner) (aka Valie Export)Above: Austrian artist Peter Weibel
The Zürich concept artist Dieter Meier and Munich film activist Karl Heinz organized the shows, which culminated in student revolts, pop revolts and avant-garde culture, which grew into tangible scandal.
Der Spiegel (The Mirror) devoted a whole page to the occasion after the performance in the Munich Circus Krone (which claims to be the biggest circus in the world) and in the Zürich Volkshaus, led to panic and chaos.
The Wath Tholl theatre of Zürich actor Pjotr Kraska (22):
The group of twelve, aged between 16 and 24, spent the winter at an Andalusian farm honing their style.
The Kraska clan entered the Krone Circus with animal screams, attacked each other in combat ballets and ecstatic Blocksberg hugs.
Kraska, who uses his pants as a notepad, wants to achieve “unity between mind and body”.
When a spectator kissed a Kraska girl, she fell to the ground as if touched by lightning.
Der Spiegel, 21 April 1969
Above: Pjotr Kraska
Even later, Kraska appeared as an action artist.
For example, in 1982 he invited to a “simple monarchical-clerical celebration” on the Pestalozziwiese in Zürich , where Kristin T. Schnider was supposed to “let go“, as was announced – apparently with little public success:
Above: Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi Monument, Pestalozziwiese (park), Bahnhofstrasse, Zürich
“Now Kristin T. Schnider is no longer black-haired and no longer a poet, but rather bald and, as one hears, the first court poet to Kraska’s spiritual monarchy.
And the actors pull away.
The honoured audience sinks back into the grass and into boredom.“
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24 – 25 July 1982
Above: Swiss writer Kristin T. Schnider
From the 1970s, Kraska shifted increasingly to writing and worked as a publicist.
In 1979 his first book, The Big Throw, was published.
A poemwas enthusiastically reviewed by some of the critics and reprinted in 2000:
“The Big Throw is a ‘narrative‘ (246 pages) about writing, about language itself, which is rare in the linguistic landscape of Switzerland and which has so far hardly been heard of reflexive density, biblical form of language and metalinguistic stubbornness.
Stubbornness repeatedly brought back the litter before it could still hit.
Sounds fall silent in meaning, profundity evaporates in letters:
In every way language is driven out of language, but hollowness and fullness now fall back all the more into the words.
Here there is no commitment to this or that, here is total commitment to the language.
There is an intelligent and at the same time eloquent talent at work.”
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2 May 1978
Above: Kraska’s Der Grosse Wurf (The Big Throw)
In 1981 the novella Death in Napleswas followedin 1982 by the novel The Hand in the Clong, and Buddha smiles forever.
Above: Images of Naples (Napoli), Italy (Italia)Above: Buddha statue, Sarnath Museum, India
Kraska also published several articles in the Neue Zürcher Zeitiung on bullfighting and flamenco.
Above: Matador and bull, Cancun, MexicoAbove: Flamenco dancers, Cordoba, Spain
He had an ambivalent relationship with the Kunsthaus Zürich.
Above: Kunsthaus Zürich (Zürich Arthouse)
For the exhibition Dada Global(1994) he was allowed to design a showcase as a “contemporary representativeof Dadaism.”
In 2013 the Kunsthaus acquired two Swiss banknotes painted by Kraska, and the museum library owns a complete collection of Court News.
Conversely, the latter refused to include the “royal coat of arms” designed by Peter Fischli in the Fischli / Weiss retrospective, whereupon Kraska burned it in a public staging in front of the Kunsthaus.
Above: Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946 – 2012)
Most recently, Kraska bequeathed his urn with the ashes to the Kunsthaus – a gift that was not accepted.
Above: Kraska burns the coat of arms, Kunsthaus Zürich
During the Zürich youth riots of 1980, Kraska declared himself “His Majesty King Kraskaof Zurich and Bilbao, ruler ofthe Central and A-Central Empire“.
Above: Images of Bilboa, Spain
During this time, he published the Crown’s Official Court News every nine months.
In this glossy magazine he printed, among other things, excerpts from his numerous disputes in court, wrote instructions for the production of blank stamp cards, glorified the Spanish bullfight and rounded off everything with numerous photographs of himself and his followers.
In 2015 he laid down the “crown”.
In the 80s and 90s he quarreled with the Zürich transport company (ZVV) and the responsible city councilor, Jürg Kaufmann:
Above: Jürg Kaufmann
The “King” took the right to travel without a ticket and declared himself a “green driver” (“in the service of theenvironment”) and fought a bitter dispute through all court instances until the Federal Court upheld a sentence of 30 days in prison in 1987.
Above: Federal Courthouse, Lausanne, Switzerland
In another trial, the Zürich District Council sentenced Kraska to three months’ imprisonment for “continued fraudulentactivity“.
Above: District Courthouse, Zürich
Kraska unsuccessfully sued the Zürich city councilman Jürg Kaufmann for “insulting”, as he had described him in the magazine Bonus 24 as a “total weirdo”.
Kraska’s defense attorney was temporarily the politically committed lawyer Barbara Hug, who had also represented the “escape king” Walter Stürm , the “sprayer of Zürich” Harald Naegeli and the alleged terrorist Giorgio Bellini in court.
Above: Walter Stürm (1942 – 1999)Above: Harald NaegeliAbove: Giorgio Bellini
As the quotations interspersed here show, Kraska’s work was controversial.
In a résumé, the Tages Anzeiger wrote:
“In fact, King Kraska, together with Dieter Meier and other Dadaists, took up what had moved the 1960s: the liberation from authority and bourgeois morals.
Today, the 67-year-old’s art and subjects are outdated.
The civil fright has degenerated into a civil servant fright.“
Tages-Anzeiger, 26 June 2014
Above: Pjotr Kraska
His work as an artist faded increasingly into the background in the public perception, and from the 1980s his persistent fight for free use of public transport was at the center (“Schwarzfahrer-König“), which occupied all court instances.
For the Beobachter, Kraska was therefore “a prominent example of the type of the modern resister“.
In the obituaries published in 2016, Kraska was drawn primarily as a city original.
Above: Pjotr Kraska (right), Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich, 2007
Kamil Krejčí is a Czech-Swiss actor, director and author who has lived in Switzerland since 1968.
Above: Kamil Krejčí
Kamil Krejčí attended the Zürich Acting Academy, where he trained as an actor and director.
Since 1987 he has been active on the stage and in film.
After a permanent engagement at the Stadttheater St. Gallen and the Stadt Bühnen Münster, he was a freelance actor and director.
Above: Stadt Theater, St. GallenAbove: Theater Münster, Germany
Krejčí worked on many stages in Switzerland and Germany, for example, the B. Fritz Rémond Theater, comedy in the Bayerischer Hof (Bavarian Court), Stadttheater Bern, Luzern and Solothurn.
Above: The B. Fritz Rémond Theater, Frankfurt am Main, GermanyAbove: The Bavarian Court, Munich, GermanyAbove: Stadt Theater, Bern, SwitzerlandAbove: Stadt Theater, Bern, SwitzerlandAbove: Stadt Theater Solothurn, Switzerland
He also played Erwin Imhof in Mannezimmer (Swiss television) in 65 episodes.
He was the founder of various theater companies, such as BIM Stage, Artsi Fartsi or Take Theater.
Above: Bühne Imst Mitte (BIM)(Stage in the middle), Zürich
Kamil Krejčí was responsible for the text editing of Der kleine Horrorladen (Little Shop of Horrors), as well as the Swiss-German version of the musical Elternabend (Parents’ Night) for the Theater am Hechtplatz or s’Dschungelbuech (TheJungle Book) for the Bernhardtheater.
Above: Virginia Theater, Broadway, New York CityAbove: Theater am Hechtplatz, ZürichAbove: Bernhard Theater, Zürich
The family musicals Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice), De chli Isbär (The Little PolarBear), s’Dschungelbuech (The Jungle Book) and D’Schatzinsle (Treasure Island) toured Switzerland for several years.
Krejci wrote the scripts for TheSorcerer’s Apprentice, The LittlePolar Bear and Treasure Island.
For Dschungelbuch he was responsible for the direction and the text version.
Above: First page of Der Zauberling by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Kamil Krejčí is the “inventor” of the “Adliswil Christmas Calendar”.
From 2001 to 2018 he organized and hosted his living Christmas calendar in Adliswil.
Together with Brigitte Schmidlin and Beat Gärtner (Stadt Theater) he told his own and adapted Christmas stories every day of Advent.
Krejci now has a “story pool” of more than 200 Christmas fairy tales written in Swiss German.
Above: The Adliswil Christmas Calendar
From 2005 he wrote columns for the Zürcher Tages Anzeiger, then until 2016 in the newspaper “Züri 2”.
In addition, a number of radio plays were created both under his direction and under his pen, for example, various Schreckmümpfeli (horror stories), but also several CDs with Papa Moll stories produced by SRF.
In many other radio plays he acts as a speaker.
Above: Papa Moll and son
Felix Mettler (1945 – 2019) was a Swiss writer.
Above: Felix Mettler
Mettler studied veterinary medicine and worked for several years as a senior assistant at the Institute for Veterinary Pathology at the University of Zürich.
His first work, The Wild Boar, was translated into English and Italian.
The novel also served as the basis for the film Death of a Boar (2006) with Joachim Król.
The 73-metre high transmission tower Felsenegg – Girstel transmission tower of Swisscom is visible from afar and is around 300 metres from the mountain station of the Felseneggbahn cable car.
The tower was built in 1959 to broadcast radio and television programs in the region.
With the completion of the directional tower in 1963, radio and television broadcasting began in Switzerland.
The Felsenegg station was the most important national technical center for television broadcasting.
It was the control centre for many private Swiss television stations and allowed national and international distribution.
Above: Felsenegg transmission tower, 1963
With the introduction of the REAL system, several transmission systems were distributed to 27 other Swisscom towers.
As a result, the tower lost its originally outstanding central importance.
The Felsenegg transmission tower is now integrated in the general network of transmission towers.
Since fiber optics became popular, conventional broadcasting of radio programs has also declined.
The tower shone until 10 December 200 as VHF radio from Radio Zürisee before it was switched to the Üetliberg.
In 2020 the Felsenegg Tower was released from the canton’s inventory of historical monuments.
In 2021 the dilapidated Felsenegg tower will be replaced by a 73-meter high lattice mast tower.
The old concrete tower is to be dismantled by the end of 2022.
Above: Felsenegg transmission tower seen from Adliswil
Skyguide – the air traffic control company that monitors Swiss airspace and adjacent airspace – has been operating a radio receiving station there since 2005.
The directional beam tower was built by Zürich architect Edwin Schoch.
It is 51 meters high and was made of reinforced concrete and clad with aluminum.
This cladding not only has significant technical advantages, but also has a special play of light that adapts the tower’s color to the changing moods of the day and the weather.
By choosing a consistently slim tower shape, it was possible to avoid a forest fall on the narrow ridge of the Felsenegg.
A triangular floor plan with cut corners makes the tower light and at the same time allows the large antennas mounted on special platforms outside the tower to be placed in the desired main beam directions without difficulty.
At the top there is a 22-meter high dipole antenna made of steel.
The tower has 16 floors and one underground floor in which the operating rooms are located.
The antennas are mounted on the top five platforms and the roof.
This includes parabolic and directional antennas.
The maximum radiated power to the Nods Chasseral transmitter 111.3 kilometers away, as the crow flies, is 10 watts.
Above: Felsenegg transmission tower
The Türlersee (Türler Lake) is located in the Säuliamt in the canton of Zürich, on the border of the communities Aeugst and Hausen am Albis at 643 metres above sea level.
Above: Türler Lake
The Türlersee lies for the most part in the municipality of Aeugst.
The lake is around 1.4 kilometers long and around 500 meters wide.
On the southeastern bank there is a campsite and the Türlen Lido.
Above: Türler Lake, Türlen
Türlen is a hamlet that belongs to the municipality of Hausen am Albis and is located on the Türlersee, west of the Albis in the canton of Zürich.
Türlen has a bus stop where regional buses run to and from Wiedikon, Hausen am Albis, Ebertswil and Affoltern am Albis, a restaurant and the outdoor pool on the Türlersee.
The only campsite on the Türlersee is near Türlen, where on 26 May 2009, 17 caravans burned out due to a gas explosion and fire.
Sixteen people were injured.
In the north the River Reppisch leaves the lake.
Above: Reppisch River at Dönibach
A landslide on the Aeugsterberg changed the landscape at the end of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago.
The Aeugsterberg, made up of molasse (sedimentary rock), rose like an island out of the ice masses formed by the Reuss and Linth glaciers.
Above: Molasse rock
After the glacier melted, the pressure on the mountain flank eased, and at the same time the meltwater streams increased the erosion at the foot of the mountain.
The slope lost its stability and 60 million cubic meters of rock slid into the valley and dammed the Reppisch to the Türlersee.
Above: Aeugsterberg and Türlersee
First the Türlersee flowed over the Hexengraben (witches’ pit) towards the Reuss, only later over the Reppisch into the Limmat.
Above: The Hexengraben
With a path around the lake and through the surrounding forests, the lake is a popular local recreation area.
A lido, as well as other beaches and jetties, offers bathing opportunities.
First and foremost, the landscape at the Türlersee is a diverse nature and landscape protection area with natural banks, species-rich flat and sloping moors and dry meadows.
The lake is of cantonal importance as a spawning area for common frogs and toads.
Above: TürlerseeAbove: Common frogAbove: Common toad
In 1786 a coal seam was discovered north of the Aeugsterberg near Gottert, which led to the construction of the Riedhof Mine, in which coal was mined during the periods of 1786–1814, 1917–1921 and 1942–1947.
In 1944 the first ordinance for the protection of the Türlersee was issued, which was adjusted due to the steadily increasing influx of visitors in 1998 and 2001 (Protection Ordinance of December 17, 2001).
For this reason, intensive recreational use is only possible in the demarcated areas:
In the area of the campsite, near the cantonal road at the northern end of the Lake and at the Hexengraben.
Above: Türlersee
The Türlersee was frozen over in January 2009 and January 2012, with an accessible layer of ice.
Because of its sheltered location between Albis and Aeugsterberg, the water of the Türlersee is hardly circulated.
Therefore, the water circulation in winter is supported by a circulation system.
The Türlersee is easy to reach by public transport:
From the city of Zürich, take tram 14 to Triemli and Postbus 235 or take the S5 Zürich S-Bahn to Affoltern am Albis, then Bus 223 via Hausen am Albis to Türlersee.
Above: Zürich tram symbolAbove: Logo of the Zürich Transportation Authority
The Türlersee is on the regional cycling route 51 Säuliamt – Schwyz – Zurich – Schwyz.
There is a legend about the origin of the water:
Where the Türlersee now spreads, there used to be a beautiful farm with fertile fields.
The owner had an only child, a graceful, dear daughter.
She caught the eye of the young lord of Schnabel Castle, and he pursued her passionately.
But the honorable child persistently refused all his promises.
Then the lord of the castle persuaded the father to bring the girl to the Castle at midnight under all sorts of pretenses.
He opened the gate himself and pulled the reluctant daughter in.
As he was about to close the gate, she noticed what was being played and uttered a cry of curse on her traitorous father.
At that moment lightning flashed from the sky and struck her parents’ house.
She saw how a fiery chasm opened and the neat and once so blessed courtyard with all its fields disappeared into it.
In the morning, however, there was a lake in its place.
Above: Türlersee
The Affoltern district is a district in the southwest of Canton Zürich.
It lies between the Albis chain and the Reuss with borders in the west and northwest with Canton Aargau, in the south with Canton Zug.
The district is identical to the Knonaueramt region (or Knonauer Amt) and is popularly called Säuliamt .
The name Zürcher Freiamt , which was also used in earlier centuries, is virtually unknown today.
Above: Coat of arms of Affoltern
From the beginning of the 15th century until the Reformation, the city of Zürich gradually gained control over the areas between Albis and Reuss.
Already in 1406 the heirs of John of Hallwyl sold Langnau, Kappel, Rifferswil, Maschwanden, Ottenbach, and portions of today’s Obfeldens to Switzerland’s largest city.
In the course of the Swiss conquest of Aargau in 1415, Zürich then annexed the Freiamt Affoltern and jurisdiction over Steinhausen, the Maschwanderamt and the Kelleramt.
During the Old Zürich War (1440 – 1446), the entire region was severely affected by acts of war and was administered by Schwyz, Glarus, Lucerne and Zug between 1443 and 1450.
Above: Knonau Castle
One of the traditional autonomy rights of the Freiamt was its own jurisdiction.
The courts handed down from the Habsburg era (1173 – 1415) were Rifferswil, Affoltern am Albis and Berikon.
Above: Old courthouse, Affoltern am Albis
The Freiamtsgemeinde met in the Mettmenstein church.
It met for the last time on 26 March 1795, but had to be moved to Rüteli near today’s train station because the church was too small for the large number of visitors.
Above: Reformed Church, Mettmenstetten
From 1507 to 1512, the Zürich government combined the abovementioned areas to form the Knonau bailiff and standardized the legal system.
The centralization efforts of the city of Zürich’s guild regime provoked the resistance of the Ämtler population, for example in the Waldmann trade in 1489, in the Wädenswil uprising in 1646 (a tax revolt in Wädenswil and in the Knonaueramt, which Zürich condemned with military actions, executions and heavy fines), in Ämtlerhandel (1794 – 1795), and in the Bock War (1804).
Above: Wädenswil and the Zürichsee
This last uprising ended the Knonaueramt with the disarmament and military occupation of the villages, imprisonment and fines as well as the execution under martial law of two revolutionaries, Jakob Schneebeli from Affltern am Albis and Heinrich Häberling from Knonau.
Their names (together with those of the also executed Hans Jakob Willi from Horgen and Jakob Kleinert from Schönenberg) are immortalized on a memorial stone at Affoltern train station.
Above: Affoltern Station
Hans Jakob Willi was born in Horgen as the son of the shoemaker Johann Jakob Willi and his wife Anna Maria Leuthold.
After completing his apprenticeship as a shoemaker in his father’s workshop, Willi started working as a mercenary in Spain and France at the age of 15.
After escaping from British captivity, he returned to Horgen in 1801.
On 28 March 1803 he married Anna Anton von Horgen.
Above: Horgen
The Mediation Constitution of 1803 shifted the balance of power in favor of the city of Zürich.
Above: The Mediation Constitution
Willi, with his war experience, became the leader of the rebels in the countryside.
The battles were named Bockenkrieg (Bock War) after the Bocken inn in Arn bei Horgen.
Above: Bocken Inn, Arn bei Horgen
Three warships were used to bombard Horgen from Lake Zürich.
The insurgents won the battle, but Willi had to retire injured.
The uprising now collapsed very quickly.
After the battle at the Bocken, Hans Jakob Willi stayed in hiding until he was caught in Stäfa after seven days.
An unconstitutional court martial condemned him despite the intervention of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Above: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821)
On 25 April 1804 at 2 p.m. Willi was executed in Zürich along with two co-defendants.
Above: Old city, Zürich
“We are free Swiss, citizens with equal rights throughout.
If our government does not want to hear the voice of the people, it is tyrannical.“
Hans Jakob Willi
Above: Willi memorial plaque, Horgen
In 1798 the authorities of the Helvetic Republic created the district of Mettmenstetten, which included the core area of the Landvogtei Knonau, as well as Aesch, Birmensdorf, Oberurdorf, Wettswil, Stallikon and Bonstetten.
Langnau was assigned to the Hirgen district on this occasion.
Steinhausen came to Canton Zug and Canton Baden, which in turn became part of the new Aaargau in 1803.
In its current boundaries, the district emerged as the Knonau Oberamt after the end of the Mediation Constitution in 1814.
The district capital was relocated in 1837 from the former bailiff’s seat of Knonau to the more centrally located Affoltern am Albis.
This gave the district its current name.
Above: Coat of arms of Affoltern am Albis
After the turmoil and crises of the beginning of the century, a strong industrialization set in around the middle of the 19th century, which also found its expression in transport technology with the opening of the Zürich – Zug railway in 1864.
The opening of National Highway 4 in 2009 marked another important turning point, as Affoltern am Albis could now be reached from Zürich and Zug in less than 15 minutes.
In the 1980s a regional protest movement postponed the construction of the motorway for more than twenty years with growth-critical and ecological arguments, but ultimately could not stop the suburbanization of large parts of the district.
In 2012 almost 50,000 people lived in the Affoltern district and there were 16,000 jobs.
In the last ten years, the district has recorded a population growth of 16.1% (compared to 14%, the cantonal average).
Above: Affoltern train and bus station
Hausen am Albis is located in the south of the canton of Zürich in the Affoltern district, on the south side of the Albis.
The community, located in the upper Jonental Valley, consists of the villages of Hausen am Albis and Ebertswil and the hamlets of Türlen, Vollenweid, Tüfenbach, Hinter-, Mittel- and Oberalbis, Husertal, Hirzwangen and Schweikhof.
The municipality extends from Sihlbrugg to the Türlersee.
This makes Hausen am Albis the largest municipality in the district with a total of 13.64 km².
The highest point in the municipality is 916 metres above sea level.
Bürglen is the lowest point at 532 metres above sea level.
Hausen am Albis is located between the cities of Zürich and Zug.
Above: Hausen am Albis
Hausen am Albis was first mentioned in a document in 869 as Huson, today’s district of Heisch in 1184 as Heinsche.
During this time the lords of Hausen were the Barons of Eschenbach.
It was they who built the Schnabelburg on the Albis ridge in 1150 and founded the Cistercian Abbey of Kappel in 1185 .
Above: Kappel Monastery
The Schnabelburg is the ruin of a hilltop castle on the beak-like elevation north of the Schnabellücke near the village of Hausen am Albis.
In 1185 Walter I, Baron von Eschenbach, named himself after the newly built castle.
Above: Eschenbach coat of arms
However, it is not known for sure whether it was really the same castle, the ruin of which is known today.
Archaeological investigations of the castle complex have shown that the castle was probably built in the 13th century, and that it was built very hastily.
However, no traces have been found in the vicinity of the ruins that are visible today, which would suggest that another castle was built first.
In 1218 the last Duke of the Zähringen family, with whom the castle owners were connected, died, and the economic decline of the family of the Lords of Eschenbach-Schnabelburg began with Berchtold II.
Above: Zähringen coat of arms, New City Hall, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
In 1270 von Eschenbach became a friend of Rudolf I von Habsburg, the new lord of the castle of Schnabelburg.
Berchtold II fought with the Habsburg in the decisive battle – one of the largest knight battles in Europe – on the Marchfeld (26 August) against Ottokar von Böhmen in 1278.
Above: The iron and gold king of Bohemia, Ottokar II Přemysl (1232 – 1278)Above: Memorial stone of the battle, Dürnkrutfeld, Austria
It can be assumed that the Eschenbach knight fell in the decisive battle near Göllheim in 1298, as he disappeared from documents at that time.
Above: Göllheim, Germany
A son of Berchtold, Walter von Eschenbach, helped murder King Albrecht I of Habsburg in 1308.
After that, he was given the imperial ban.
Above: Equestrian seal of Albrecht I (1255 – 1308)
In August 1309, the Habsburgs then besieged and conquered the Schnabelburg in revenge for the regicide.
According to archaeological findings, the castle was either not destroyed during the siege or was later rebuilt.
In 1955, Hugo Schneider carried out excavation work and conservation measures at the ruins.
Above: Ruins of Schnabel Castle
In 1309 Eschenbach rule was ended by the destruction of the Schnabelburg, because Walther von Eschenbach was involved in the murder of King Albrecht.
Albrecht I was the first legitimate son of the Roman – German King Rudolf I of Habsburg, born in wedlock, from his first marriage to Gertrud Anna von Hohenberg (died 1281).
His older half-brother Albrecht von Schenkenberg, who received the Grafschaft Löwenstein from his father, was born out of wedlock.
His motto were “Fugam victoria nescit” (“The victory knows no flight.”) and “Quod optimum idem jucundissimum” (“The best is the most pleasant.”)
From 1273 he officiated as Landgrave in the Landgraviate of Upper Alsace.
After the 1278 victory in the Battle of Marchfeld over King Ottokar Premysl of Bohemia, he was appointed by his father in May 1281, when he left the conquered Vienna again, as imperial administrator over the imperial fiefs of the Duchy of Austria and the Duchy of Styria.
The office had been vacant in the turmoil of the Austrian Interregnum since June 1278 because the Wittelsbach Heinrich XIII, had defected from Bavaria to the enemy.
On 17 December 1282, at the Reichstag of Augsburg, he was appointed Duke of Austria and Styria together with his brother Rudolf.
One year later on 1 June 1283 in the Treaty of Rheinfelden, he ruled alone in these rights.
Above: King Albrecht I sends a messenger to Pope Boniface
Rudolf was to be compensated for this with other territories in southwest Germany, but this did not happen until his death in 1290.
Albrecht quickly made himself unpopular with his policy of pushing back the natives through his Swabian clientele, especially the Lords of Walsee.
Above: Coat of arms of the Lords of Walsee
In 1291 – 1292, the Landsberger Bund revolted in Styria, against whom Albrecht was able to quickly assert himself.
Above: Deutschlandsberg Castle (1681), Styria, Austria, from whence the Landsperger Bund (conspiracy of nobles) was derived
In 1295 the Austrian nobility rose up as well.
In Vienna, too, Ottokar Přemysl remained much more popular for a long time – not least because of economic relations with the Bohemian region.
After all, Vienna got a new city charter in 1296.
Above: Coat of arms of Vienna (Wien), Austria (Österreich)
Rudolf I tried to make Albrecht co-king during his own lifetime in order to make the royal dignity in the House of Habsburg hereditary.
Above: Habsburg Castle, Habsburg, Canton Aargau, Switzerland
However, the Electors, especially the Count Palatine (officials and representatives of the King or Emperor) and the clerical Electors, did not allow this to happen.
An elector was one of the originally seven, later nine and finally ten highest-ranking princes of the Holy Roman Empire (modern Germany), who had had the sole right to elect the Roman (German) King since the 13th century.
This royal title was traditionally associated with the right to be crowned Emperor by the Pope.
Above: The Codex Balduineus (1340) contains the first known pictorial representation of the college of electors: Here the electors elect Heinrich of Luxembourg (1278 – 1313) as King. The Electors are, recognizable by their coats of arms (from left to right), the Archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg and the King of Bohemia, who was actually not present when Heinrich was elected.
In 1290 Rudolf wanted to put his son on the throne of Hungary, which after the assassination of Ladislaus IV was regarded as a reverted fiefdom, but his death in 1291 thwarted this plan.
Above: King of Hungary and Croatia Ladislaus IV (1262 – 1290)
As Rudolf’s successor, Adolf von Nassau was elected the new Roman (German) king in 1292.
Above: King Adolf von Nassau (1250 – 1298)
In the following years Albrecht hardly intervened in imperial politics, as he was bound by revolts by various nobles in his Austrian lands.
In 1295 he was seriously poisoned, the reason for which remained unclear.
Maybe the kitchen had processed slightly spoiled food or an assassin had mixed poison in the food.
In any case, Albrecht collapsed from convulsions.
His doctors gave him laxatives.
After the colic, when he got angry, he lost consciousness and, faced with the fear of death, was hung upside down on both legs so that the poison could flow out of his body.
The patient survived this procedure, but one eye was destroyed.
Above: Statue of Albrecht I, Army History Museum, Vienna, Austria
When Adolf was deposed again in 1298, Albrecht was elected as his successor as King on 23 June 1298.
In the Knight’s Battle of Göllheim (Battle of the Hasenbühel) on 2 July 1298, Adolf fell while fighting the Habsburgs.
On 27 July, Albrecht was elected a second time and then crowned King in Aachen on 24 August 1298.
Above: Modern Aachen, Germany
On his first court day in Nuremberg in the same year he enfeoffed (gave) his sons – Rudolf, Fredrich the Beautiful and Leopold the Glorious – Austria and Styria.
Above: Stained glass depiction of Rudolf I (1282 – 1307), St. Stephan’s Church, ViennaAbove: Seal of Frederick the Beautiful and his wife Isabella, Duke (#1) and King’s seal of Frederick (#5), Queen’s seal of Isabella (#9). Friedrich is shown enthroned frontally on the king’s seal with a crown and scepter. His feet rest on a lion.Above: Stained glass depiction of Leopold I (1290 – 1326), Königsfelden Monastery
Through a marriage connection with France, Albrecht I achieved peace with Philip IV the Fair, with whom he had previously been in dispute over the course of the border.
Above: French King Philippe IV (1268 – 1314)
Albrecht also reached an agreement with Wenceslaus II (Vaclav) of Bohemia in the dispute over rule over Poland:
The Bohemian king added the most important parts of the recently re-established kingdom to a new collapse into his territory, but recognized Albrecht’s suzerainty onwards.
Above: Wenceslas II (1271 1305) with the Bohemian and Polish crowns, illustration from the Chronicon Aulae Regiae
Opponents of Habsburg power, however, remained the Rhenish Electors, including Pope Boniface VIII.
The papal approbation was only obtained in 1303 in return for far-reaching concessions which severely restricted the King’s power, especially in Italy, and which could have been understood as an oath of subjection towards the papacy.
However, Albrecht refused the coronation offered by Boniface.
Above: Pope Boniface VIII (né Benedetto Caetani) (1235 – 1303)
In 1304 Albrecht and his son Rudolf moved together against Wenceslaus II, who, after the death of Andreas III the Venetian, his son Wenceslaus III became the Hungarian king.
Above: King of Hungary and Croatia Andreas III the Venetian (1265 – 1301)Above: King of Hungary, Bohemia and Poland Wenceslaus III (1289 – 1306)
Since the Pope would have liked to see another Italian on the Hungarian throne in the form of the Neapolitan Prince Karl Robert, he asked Albrecht for help.
Albrecht made the strangest demands on Wenceslaus II.
When this did not fulfill them, the imperial ban was imposed on him.
Wenceslaus then transferred the Hungarian crown jewels from Ofen to Prague.
Above: King of Hungary and Croatia Karl I (1288 – 1342)Above: The Hungarian Crown Jewels
On the following campaign Albrecht and Rudolf Kuttenberg besieged Kutná Hora, the silver mine in Bohemia.
Their Cuman auxiliaries committed terrible atrocities in the country.
At the beginning of winter, hunger broke out in their army and they withdrew.
Above: modern Kutná Hora, Czech Republic
A political unification of Central Europe under the leadership of the Habsburgs seemed within reach.
Albrecht succeeded after the death of the childless King Wenceslaus III on 4 August 1306, who himself became king in Bohemia after the death of his father in 1305, installed his son Rudolf as King of Bohemia.
But then the Bohemian estates rebelled and decided to depose the king.
Albrecht quickly forced them to recognize his sovereignty.
However, 1307 brought a serious setback for the Habsburg hegemonic plans.
After Rudolf’s early death, Heinrich von Carinthia from Meinhardingen became the new King of Bohemia.
Above: Seal of Heinrich von Carinthia (1265 – 1335)
In connection with a controversial reverted fiefdom in Thuringia and Meißen, Albrecht also lost the Battle of Lucka against the sons of Albrecht the Degenerate from the House of Wettin.
Above: Coinage of Albrecht the Degenerate (1288–1307), Margrave of Meißen and Landgrave of Thuringia
When King Albrecht invaded with a large army, the Margraves Dietrich IV of Lausitz and Friedrich I of Meißen fought him, at the head of armed citizens and peasants as well as Braunschweig cavalry bands, Albrecht suffered a complete defeat on 31 May 1307.
Above: Friedrich I the Bitten (1257 – 1323) and Dietrich IV (1260 – 1307)Above: Wettinger Fountain commemorating the Battle, Lucka, Germany
In the dispute over the customs posts of German princes, Albrecht soon cracked down on them until the archbishops and Rudolf, the Count Palatine near the Rhine, surrendered.
However, Pope Boniface stood in the way of breaking up the Kurkollegium.
Unrest in Swabia, Baden, Alsace and Switzerland also increased again during this period.
Peace remained elusive.
Above: The Electors in the royal election in 1308: From left – Peter von Mainz (1245 – 1320), Balduin von Trier (1285 – 1354) and Rudolf I (1274 – 1319)
Albrecht was murdered in 1308 near Windisch, now in Switzerland, not far from his ancestral castle.
The murderers were his nephew Johann von Schwaben – who was nicknamed Parricida (relative murderer) because of his deed – Baron Rudolf von Wart (1274 – 1309), Baron Rudolf von Balm, Baron Walter von Eschenbach and Baron Konrad von Tegerfelden.
Above: Johann Parricuda (1290 – 1313)Above: BaronRudolf von Wart’s wife Gertrud von Balm (1286 – 1322) pleads with Albrecht’s daughter Agnes of Hungary (1281 – 1364) for her husband’s life, by August Weckesser
The exact course of the murder is presented differently by the chroniclers.
Albrecht was probably on the way from Baden to his wife in Rheinfelden.
In the morning, Duke Johann had claimed his inheritance at Stein Castle – as he had often done before – which led to a scandal.
Above: Johann Parricida and his accomplices murder Albrecht after crossing the Reuss River. In the background are the cities of Brugg and Königsfelden as well as Habsburg Castle. Coloured pen drawing, The Chronicle of 95 Dominions (1480), City Library, BernAbove: Stein Castle, Aargau Canton, Switzerland
According to the chronicler Matthias von Neuenburg (1295 – 1364) the first sword cut that pierced Albrecht’s neck was received from his nephew Johann, then Rudolf von Wart pierced him with his sword, while Rudolf von Balm split the King’s skull in two.
Johann was the son of Albrecht’s early deceased brother Rudolf II, who had renounced the regency in Austria in the Treaty of Rheinfelden and had become Duke of Swabia, Alsace and Aargau.
Above: The murder of Albrecht in Königsfelden, Windisch, Switzerland, 1308
According to Chronicle reports, the failure to pay Johann in compensation was the main motive.
Depending on the sources, Johann’s blood lust is also given as the motive for murder.
The successor as Duke was Albrecht’s son Friedrich the Fair, but he did not succeed as King.
The royal dignity went to the House of Luxembourg with Henrich VII (1278 – 1313), where it remained until 1437 – interrupted by the governments of Ludwig of Bavaria (1282 – 1347) and Ruprecht of the Palatinate.
Above: Statue of Heinrich VII, Pisa Cathedral, Pisa, ItalyAbove: Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian, Frauenkirche, Munich, GermanyAbove: Ruprecht (1352 – 1410) with his wife Elisabeth von Hohenzollern-Nürnberg (1358 – 1411) in a miniature copy of a now-lost mural in Heidelberg Castle, Germany
King Albrecht was first buried in the Wettingen monastery (in today’s Switzerland).
Above: Wettingen Monastery
In 1309, at the instigation of Henrich VII, his body was transferred to Speyer, where he was buried side by side with his former rival Adolf von Nassau in the Speyer Cathedral.
Above: Speyer Cathedral, Speyer, Germany
As a result of Eschenbach’s treachery Hausen am Albis was subordinated to the Hallwylers, who ceded it to the city of Zürich in 1406.
Above: Coat of arms of Hausen am Albis
It is said that the storyline of The Game of Thrones franchise was inspired by England’s Wars of the Roses, but I submit that the story of Albrecht I and his assassination is also worthy of dramatic accounts.
Kappel am Albis is first mentioned in 1185 as de Capella.
The settlement was founded in 1185 as a Cistercian monastery which today houses a seminar centre, hotel, cafe and a restaurant.
Above: Kappel am Albis
It was the location of the Wars of Kappel in 1529 and 1531, during the turmoil that accompanied the Reformation of Huldrych Zwingli.
Above: Huldrych Zwingli
A monument to Zwingli is located nearby at the hamlet of Näfenhäuser, marking the spot where he met his fatal end.
Above: Zwingli Monument, Näfenhäuser
In 1185 the Monastery was founded by the Barons of Eschenbach – Scnabelburg and confirmed by the Bishop of Konstanz Hermann II.
Above: Coat of arms of the Diocese of Konstanz
A chapel was available to the first abbot Wilhelm and his monks to build a Cistercian monastery.
The mother monastery of Kappel was Altenryf (Hauterive) Abbey (Freiburg Canton).
Above: Hauterive Abbey, Posieux, Canton Freiburg, Switzerland
Through Pope Innocent III, the monastery received the Privilegium commune Cisterciense and it was placed under the protection of the Papacy in 1211.
Above: Pope Innocent III (né Lotario dei Conti di Segni) (1161 – 1216), San Benedetto Monastery, Subiaco, Italy
Until the end of the 14th century, the Monastery received donations from the founding family and other noble families, especially in the Knouauer Amt, in Zugerland (today’s Aargau), in Luzern Canton, on Lake Zürich (Zürichsee) and in the Zürich Lowlands (Zürich Unterland).
There were also isolated lands in central Switzerland.
The Monastery got into financial difficulties through the social development, especially the emerging money economy, the upswing of the cities and through the competition of the mendicant orders.
In addition, the Monastery came more and more under the influence of secular lords, especially after the assassination of King Albrecht in 1308.
Above: Kappel Monastery
In 1344 the Monastery concluded a permanent alliance with the city of Zug in 1344 and a similar one with Zürich in 1403.
Through these alliances, the Monastery got between the fronts in the Old Zürich War (1440 – 1446) and was plundered by the Confederates in 1443.
On 15 January 1493, a fire devastated the convent building, which the then Abbot Ulrich had rebuilt.
Due to his dissolute lifestyle, Abbot Ulrich was forced to resign in 1508.
Above: Kappel Monastery
A new spirit arrived under Abbot Ulrich’s successor, Wolfgang Joner.
In 1523 he summoned Heinrich Bullinger, who was only nineteen, to Kappel, where he taught the monks and young men from the area as a private tutor.
Through Bullinger, the teachings of the Reformation found their way to Kappel, and so pictures (icons) were removed from the Monastery Church on 9 March 1525.
Holy Mass was abolished on 4 September of the same year.
A year later, on 29 March 1526, the monks celebrated the Lord’s Supper for the first time according to the Reformed order and took off their robes.
Many left the Monastery and turned to a trade or became preachers.
The convent finally handed the Monastery over to the city of Zürich in 1527.
Wolfgang Joner, Heinrich Bullinger and four other men stayed in Kappel and continued to run the school as a boarding school for boys.
The previous monastery church became the parish church of Kappel.
Above: Statue of Heinrich Bullinger, Grossmünster, Zürich
During the First Kappel War in 1529, Kappel became the scene of the June deployment of the Reformed and Catholic troops, which came to a peaceful end with the legendary Kappel milk soup.
Above: The Milk Soup Stone Memorial, Kappel am Albis
At the end of June 1529, the Zürich troops marched against the central Swiss cantons.
In this First Kappel War, thanks to the mediation of the neutral towns, a fratricidal war among the Confederates was prevented.
According to the reports, the common footmen of the two armies used the time while the leaders were negotiating to fraternize and put a large saucepan on a fire near Kappel am Albis, exactly on the border between the two cantons.
The people of Zug are said to have contributed the milk and the people of Zurich the bread for a milk soup, which was then eaten by both armies together.
Today the “Milchsuppenstein” (milk soup stone) is located on a hill southwest of Ebertswil.
The large pot from which everyone ate together was of great symbolic value for the later historiography and identification of Switzerland.
Above: Kappel milk soup
In memory of this event, Kappeler milk soup is still served today when a dispute can be settled through negotiation, for example by Federal Councilor Pascal Couchpin at the conclusion of the St. Gallen cultural property dispute in 2006.
Above: Pascal Couchepin
It was entirely different on 11 October 1531, when the Zurich reformer Zwingli was killed in the second battle near Kappel.
Above: The death of ZwingliAbove: Zwingli’s helmet
After the Reformation, the Monastery remained Zürich’s domain.
Above: Kappel Monastery, 1741
From 1834 the buildings were used for social purposes, and since 1983 by the Zürcher Landeskirche (Zürich Canton Church) as a seminar hotel and educational center called the House of Silence and Encounter.
Since 2008 it has been called Kloster Kappelagain.
The Monastery has been renovated since 2009.
The Monastery Church shows a glass painting work by the Swiss graphic artist and painter Max Hunziker in the choir .
The Kappel Monastery Association (formerly the Kappelerhof Association) is the owner of the Kappel Monastery domain (real estate, land, forest).
The 14 association members are the 13 parishes of the Affoltern district and the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Zürich.
The church and rectory belong to the Canton of Zürich.
Above: Kappel Monastery
As personalities go, Zwingli is not the sole person to get recognized when one speaks of Kappel am Albis.
Above: Coat of arms of Kappel am Albis
Josias Simler (1530 – 1576), Swiss Reformed theologian and historian, known among other things for his works on Swiss regional studies and history, was born in Kappel am Albis.
In 1544 Josias Simler went to Zürich to study under his godfather and sponsor Heinrich Bullinger.
In 1546 he continued his studies in theology, languages and natural sciences in Basel, and from 1547 to 1549 in arithmetic and geometry in Strasbourg.
He then completed his theology studies in Zürich, worked as a pastor and occasionally as a mathematics teacher for Swiss physician/polymath/encyclopedist Conrad Gessner (1516 – 1565).
Above: Conrad Gesner
In 1552 he became professor at the Carolinum for instruction in the New Testament in Zürich and in 1560 for theology.
In that year he temporarily took over the chair of the dismissed Theodor Bibliander (1505 – 1564), who represented the views of Erasmus of Rotterdam and not those of the Reformed Church.
Above: Theodor BiblianderAbove: Desiderius Erasmus (1466 – 1536)
From 1555 he began to re-publish Conrad Gessner’s Bibliotheca universalis.
Above: Bibliotheca Universalis
In his work De Alpibus Commentarius (Commentary of the Alps)(1574), the first work that dealt extensively with the Alps, he collected all information about the mountains from the works of various other authors with comments from his own experience.
In the process, he developed new insights into the nature of avalanches, the difference between firn and ice, the low temperature at high altitudes and the plant endism in the Alps, in this the oldest description of the Alps in Latin.
In his childhood and youth in Kappel am Albis, Simler had the panorama of the Glarus, Uri and Bernese Alps on his doorstep.
Above: Kappel Monastery and the Alps
Later he was unable to travel because of his gout.
He had to draw his information from literary sources.
The “Commentary of theAlps” is a first attempt to give an overview of the natural and cultural history of the Alps and their individual mountain ranges.
It is a collection of experiences from Swiss scientists that they personally gained in the Alps.
An abundance of quotes from the classical tradition underlines the humanistic orientation of the text.
Above: De Alpibus Commentarius (1574)
Simler also wrote other works on Swiss cultural studies, such as De Republica Helvetiorum (1548) (abstract of the Chronicle by Johannes Stumpf: 1500 – 1578) or Vallesiae Descriptio.
Above: Swiss historian Johannes Stumpf
He also advised Ulrich Campell (1510 – 1582) in formulating his Raetiae alpestris descriptioTopographica (Topographical Description of Alpine Raetia) (1573).
The Simler Snowfield in Antarctica is named in his honour.
Above: Location of the Simler Snowfield, Antarctica
I tour the Monastery of Kappel am Albis, sit in its cafeteria and dine on soup and salad and cola, and I make notes as I try to assess my feelings at this, the final end of this unreligious pilgrim’s progress.
Above: Descent into the cloister cafeteria
I have followed the life of one man, from his birthplace to the spot where he fell, and now I feel I must take stock of this man and decide for myself what is my opinion of this man who has garnered so much respect for his role in the Reformation in Switzerland.
I cannot claim to be wise in the understanding of Christianity, for it seems to be too often that they who profess to be Christian fail too often to act in a manner which Christ would have.
Above: Crucifixion of Christ, by Diego Velázquez
In fairness, I suspect that there are Buddhists who do not live in the way Buddha intended or Muslims who do not practice the teachings of Muhammad.
Above: The Buddha teaching the Four Noble Truths, Sanskrit manuscript, Nalanda, Bihar, IndiaAbove: The Kaaba, Mecca, Saudi Arabia – the direction of prayer and destination of pilgrimage for Muslims
Religious affiliation checked on a census poll does not mean religious practice.
If that were so then Trump would not have been the candidate of choice for American evangelical Christians.
Above: Donald Trump
Trump went to Sunday school and was confirmed in 1959 at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, New York City.
In the 1970s, his parents joined the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.
In 2015, the Church stated Trump “is not an active member“.
Above: Marble Collegiate Church, Manhattan, New York City
In 2019, he appointed his personal pastor, televangelist Paula White, to the White House Office of Public Liaison.
Above: Paula White
In 2020, he said he identified as a non-denominational Christian.
Above: The cross symbol of Christianity
On 1 June 2020, federal law enforcement officials used batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray projectiles, stun grenades, and smoke to remove a largely peaceful crowd of protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House.
Trump then walked to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where protesters had set a small fire the night before.
Above: St. John’s Episcopal Church, Washington DC
He posed for photographs holding a Bible upside down, with senior administration officials later joining him in photos.
Above: The “Christian” Donald Trump
Trump said on 3 June that the protesters were cleared because “they tried to burn down the church on 31 May and almost succeeded“, describing the Church as “badly hurt“.
Above: George Floyd protest, Washington DC, 31 May 2020
Religious leaders condemned the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself.
Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned Trump’s proposal to use the US military against anti-police brutality protesters.
Above: George Floyd protest, Washington DC, 1 June 2020
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, later apologized for accompanying Trump on the walk and thereby “creating the perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
Above: The walk from the White House to St. John’s, 1 June 2020 – Milley is in military uniform
As a candidate and as President, Trump frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks to an extent unprecedented in American politics.
His falsehoods became a distinctive part of his political identity.
Trump’s false and misleading statements were documented by fact checkers, including at the WashingtonPost, which tallied a total of 30,573 false or misleading statements made by Trump over his four-year term.
Trump’s falsehoods increased in frequency over time, rising from about 6 false or misleading claims per day in his first year as president to 16 per day in his second year to 22 per day in his third year to 39 per day in his final year.
He reached 10,000 false or misleading claims 27 months into his term, 20,000 false or misleading claims 14 months later, and 30,000 false or misleading claims five months later.
Many of Trump’s comments and actions have been considered racist.
He has repeatedly denied this, asserting:
“I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.“
In national polling, about half of respondents say that Trump is racist.
A greater proportion believe that he has emboldened racists.
Several studies and surveys have found that racist attitudes fueled Trump’s political ascent and have been more important than economic factors in determining the allegiance of Trump voters.
Racist and Islamophobic attitudes are a strong indicator of support for Trump.
Trump’s comment on the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — that there were “veryfine people on both sides” — was widely criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the white supremacist demonstrators and the counter-protesters at the rally.
Above: Donald Trump
In a January 2018 Oval Office meeting to discuss immigration legislation, Trump reportedly referred to El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and African nations as “shithole countries“.
His remarks were condemned as racist.
Above: Flag of El SalvadorAbove: Flag of HaitiAbove: Flag of HondurasAbove: Africa (in green)
In July 2019, Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen — all minorities, three of whom are native-born Americans — should “go back” to the countries they “came from“.
He was referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
“So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation on Earth, how our government is to be run.
Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?
Then come back and show us how it is done.
These places need your help badly.
You can’t leave fast enough.
I’m sure that (Speaker of the House) Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump on Twitter, 14 July 2019)
Above: Logo for Twitter
Two days later the House of Representatives voted 240–187, mostly along party lines, to condemn his “racist comments“.
Above: House of Representatives Speaker Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi
White nationalist publications and social media sites praised his remarks, which continued over the following days.
Trump continued to make similar remarks during his 2020 campaign.
Trump has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to media and on social media.
He made lewd comments, demeaned women’s looks, and called them names like ‘dog‘, ‘crazed‘, ‘cryinglowlife‘, ‘face of a pig‘, or ‘horseface‘.
In October 2016, two days before the second presidential debate, a 2005 “hot mike” Access Hollywood recording surfaced in which Trump was heard bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent, saying:
“When you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything… grab ’em by the pussy.”
The incident’s widespread media exposure led to Trump’s first public apology during the campaign and caused outrage across the political spectrum.
At least 26 women have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct as of September 2020, including his then-wife Ivana.
Above: Ivana Marie Trump (née Zelníčková)Above: Jill HarthAbove: E. Jean CarrollAbove: Summer ZervosAbove: Alva JohnsonAbove: Jessica LeedsAbove: Kristin AndersonAbove: Lisa BoyneAbove: Cathy HellerAbove: Temple Taggart McDowellAbove: Amy DorrisAbove: Karena VirginiaAbove: Karen JohnsonAbove: Mindy McGillivrayAbove: Rachel CrooksAbove: Natasha StoynoffAbove: Juliet HuddyAbove: Jessica DrakeAbove: Ninni LaaksonenAbove: Cassandra SearlesAbove: Faith Daniels
There were allegations of rape, violence, being kissed and groped without consent, looking under women’s skirts, and walking in on naked women.
Above: Logo of the Miss Universe beauty pagents
In 2016, he denied all accusations, calling them “false smears” and alleged there was a conspiracy against him.
There is very little that is Christ-like about this so-called “Christian”.
I am in no way suggesting that Zwingli resembled in any way the former US President, save in one respect.
Acting in a very un-Christ-like manner unbecoming to a Christian…..
Certainly Zwingli was an educated man and scholarship is something I deeply respect.
His studies led him to see the need for reform in the Catholic Church and this impulse to improve current systems is a wise and necessary impulse anywhere at all times.
Above: St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City – the largest church in the world and a symbol of the Catholic Church
There is room for improvement in all things, though that being said I do not believe in simply progress for the sake of progress.
Changes should be considered not just for their potential profit but as well soberly assessed as to the cost of their consequences.
And it is here that the Reformation erred.
Certainly the Church was at this time truly a corrupt institution that the faithful found difficult to swear fealty towards.
But in freeing themselves from the rule of Rome they allowed the powerful within their groups to dominate them with the same sort of abuse from which they had fought to free themselves.
Voltaire wrote about Calvin, Luther and Zwingli:
“If they condemned celibacy in the priests and opened the gates of the convents, it was only to turn all society into a convent.
Shows and entertainments were expressly forbidden by their religion, and for more than two hundred years there was not a single musical instrument allowed in the city of Geneva.
They condemned auricular confession, but they enjoined a public one.
And in Switzerland, Scotland and Geneva, it was performed the same as penance.“
Above: French writer François-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire) (1694 – 1778)
The Church dictated when a man should eat and when he should restrain himself from eating.
Ulrich Zwingli was a pastor in Zurich and was dedicated to the Reformation ideology of Martin Luther.
His first rift with the established religious authorities in Switzerland occurred during the Lenten fast of 1522, when he was present during the eating of sausages at the house of Christoph Froschauer, a printer in the city who later published Zwingli’s translation of the Bible.
Above: Christoph Froschauer (1490 – 1564)Above: The Zwingli Bible
According to William Roscoe Estep, Zwingli already held Reformation-oriented convictions for some time before the incident now known as the Affair of the Sausages.
In March 1522, he was invited to partake in a sausage supper that Froschauer served to his workers – who, Froschauer later claimed, were exhausted from putting out the new edition of The Epistles of St. Paul – and to various dignitaries and priests.
Leo Jud, Klaus Hottinger and Lorenz Hochrütiner were present at the supper and later gained notoriety for their part in the Swiss Reformation.
Above: Klaus Hottinger (d. 1524)
The meal involved Swiss Fasnachtskiechli and some slices of sharp smoked hard sausage, which had been stored for more than a year.
Because the eating of meat during Lent was prohibited, the event caused public outcry and led to Froschauer being arrested.
Though he himself did not eat the sausages, Zwingli was quick to defend Froschauer from allegations of heresy.
In a sermon titled Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen (Regarding the Choice and Freedom of Foods), Zwingli argued that fasting should be entirely voluntary, not mandatory.
According to Michael Reeves, Zwingli was advancing the Reformation position that Lent was subject to individual rule, rather than the discipline which was upheld at the time by the Catholic Church.
The Zürich Sausage Affair was interpreted as a demonstration of Christian liberty and is considered to be of similar importance for Switzerland as Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in Wittenberg for the German Reformation.
Above: Smoked sausages
The Catholic Church historically observes the disciplines of fasting and abstinence at various times each year.
For Catholics, fasting is the reduction of one’s intake of food, while abstinence refers to refraining from something that is good, and not inherently sinful, such as meat.
The Catholic Church teaches that all people are obliged by God to perform some penance for their sins, and that these acts of penance are both personal and corporeal.
Bodily fasting is meaningless unless it is joined with a spiritual avoidance of sin.
Basil of Caesarea gives the following exhortation regarding fasting:
Let us fast an acceptable and very pleasing fast to the Lord.
True fasting is the estrangement from evil, temperance of tongue, abstinence from anger, separation from desires, slander, falsehood and perjury.
Privation of these is true fasting.
Above: Basil of Caesarea (330 – 379)
As a man who struggles with self discipline when it comes to his diet I can see a certain wisdom in dietary directives while I simultaneously differ with the notion of someone telling me when and what I should eat.
The Church demanded that the clergy remain single and celibate, which is not natural for all men despite their religious inclinations.
Certainly women and sex distract a man from his devotion to God, but wasn’t the point of Christ that we live our lives to the fullest if we do no harm to others?
In the Old Testament it is suggested that God is a jealous god insisting on total allegiance to Him, but I doubt that the intention of allegiance was the total denial of our biological imperatives.
Certainly there is a kind of freedom for a man to remove himself from the imperatives of woman.
Certainly sex is often not practiced in the life-affirming and mutually satisfactory and freely consented manner in which I believe it was intended.
But whether Zwingli was as chaste a man as he should have been and whether he acted responsibly towards women has come into question when his life prior to Zürich is examined.
On the topic of religious imagery I find myself ambivalent.
Images are representations of reality, but they were never meant to replace reality.
Though faith is, to a certain degree, an abandonment of reason to religion, I think the confusion of image with the intended recipient of devotion is a phenomenon too rare to be relatable a worry.
I think an image of the divine makes it easier to believe in the existence of that which is intangible and invisible to the human senses.
Imagery makes the voyeur more easily accept the existence of God whose sole proof of existence is our inability to prove His non-existence.
Imagery makes the unexplainable more palatable and acceptable to the incredulous.
Above: Destruction of icons in Zürich, 1524
As much as I respect the Islamic prohibition of images being made of Muhammad, I sincerely doubt whether viewing Muhammad as a man could ever possibly detract the Islamic faithful from fealty to his teachings.
Above: Logo of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo – The magazine has been the target of three terrorist attacks: in 2011, 2015, and 2020. All of them were presumed to be in response to a number of cartoons that it published controversially depicting Muhammad. On 7 January 2015, in the second of these attacks, 12 people were killed.
Let me repeat myself:
Murderers and terrorists are not true followers of faith.
Above: Commemorative plaque, Paris
Someone once said:
“Don’t try to be a ‘great’ man.
Just be a man and let history make its own judgments.”
Letting our moral leaders be visible human beings, does this diminish the value of what it is they had to teach?
I am uncertain.
Above: The Vitruvian Man, by Leonardo da Vinci (1490)
Zwingli’s notion of Bible study as opposed to simply a routine of rituals is a practice I approve of.
Our faith should be examined, should be questioned.
If a faith is true it can stand up to examination and questioning.
We are not only impulse and emotion.
We are also capable of reason and rationale.
An infallible and all-powerful God need never fear the legitimate desire for understanding that makes worship more possible.
Where I truly find myself at odds with the man who was Zwingli was in his persecution of those who disagreed with him.
Many in the radical wing of the Reformation became convinced that Zwingli was making too many concessions to the Zürich Council.
They rejected the role of civil government and demanded the immediate establishment of a congregation of the faithful.
Above: Coat of arms, Zürich City Hall
Konrad Grebel (1498 – 1526), the leader of the radicals and the emerging Anabaptist movement, spoke disparagingly of Zwingli in private.
On 15 August 1524 the Council insisted on the obligation to baptise all newborn infants.
Zwingli secretly conferred with Grebel’s group and late in 1524, the Council called for official discussions.
When talks were broken off, Zwingli published Wer Ursache gebe zu Aufruhr (Whoever Causes Unrest) clarifying the opposing points-of-view.
On 17 January 1525 a public debate was held and the Council decided in favour of Zwingli.
Anyone refusing to have their children baptised was required to leave Zürich.
Above: Commemoration of Konrad Grebel’s home, Zürich
The radicals ignored these measures and on 21 January, they met at the house of the mother of another radical leader, Felix Manz (1498 – 1527).
Above: Felix Manz
Grebel and a third leader, George Blaurock (1491 – 1529), performed the first recorded Anabaptist adult baptisms.
On 2 February, the Council repeated the requirement on the baptism of all babies and some who failed to comply were arrested and fined, Manz and Blaurock among them.
Zwingli and Jud interviewed them and more debates were held before the Zürich council.
Meanwhile, the new teachings continued to spread to other parts of the Swiss Confederation as well as a number of Swabian towns in southwestern Germany.
On 6 – 8 November, the last debate on the subject of baptism took place in the Grossmünster.
Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock defended their cause before Zwingli, Leo Jud and other reformers.
Above: Swiss reformer Leo Jud (1482 – 1542)
There was no serious exchange of views as each side would not move from their positions and the debates degenerated into an uproar, each side shouting abuse at the other.
The Zürich council decided that no compromise was possible.
On 7 March 1526 it released the notorious mandate that no one shall re-baptise another under the penalty of death.
Although Zwingli, technically, had nothing to do with the mandate, there is no indication that he disapproved.
Felix Manz, who had sworn to leave Zürich and not to baptise any more, had deliberately returned and continued the practice.
After he was arrested and tried, he was executed on 5 January 1527 by being drowned in the Limmat River.
He was the first Anabaptist martyr.
Three more were to follow, after which all others either fled or were expelled from Zürich.
Above: Memorial plate on the river wall opposite 43 Schipfe, Zürich, in remembrance of Manz and other Anabaptists executed in the early 16th century by the Zürich city government
Historians have debated whether or not Zwingli turned Zürich into a theocracy.
Certainly it seems that he did not discourage the tendency.
Above: Zwingli statue, Wasserkirche, Zürich
The problem I have with religion is not with the faith itself but with the so-called practitioners of religion, for they divide the world into Us and Them camps, then turn upon their own to dispute the details of that faith causing further division amongst themselves.
The Reformation spread to other parts of the Swiss Confederation, but several cantons resisted, preferring to remain Catholic.
Zwingli formed an alliance of Reformed cantons which divided the Swiss Confederation along religious lines.
In 1529, a war was averted at the last moment between the two sides.
Above: The Swiss Confederation, 1530
Meanwhile, Zwingli’s ideas came to the attention of Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) and other reformers.
They met at the Marburg Colloquy (1 – 4 October 1529) and agreed on many points of doctrine, but they could not reach an accord on the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (holy communion wherein wine and bread are symbolically consumed to represent the body and blood of Christ).
Above: Woodcut illustration of the Marburg Colloquy
The leading Protestant reformers of the time attended at the behest of Philip I of Hesse (1504 – 1567).
Philip’s primary motivation for this conference was political.
He wished to unite the Protestant states in political alliance, and to this end, religious harmony was an important consideration.
Philip I felt the need to reconcile the diverging views of Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli in order to develop a unified Protestant theology.
If Philip wanted the meeting to be a symbol of Protestant unity he was disappointed.
Above: Philip I of Hesse
Both Luther and Zwingli fell out over the sacrament of the Eucharist.
Above: Stained glass illustration of the Eucharist, St. Michael the Archangel Church, Findlay, Ohio
Luther believed that the human body of Christ was ubiquitous (present in all places) and so present in the bread and wine.
This was possible because the attributes of God infused Christ’s human nature.
Luther emphasized the oneness of Christ’s person.
Above: Martin Luther
Zwingli, who emphasized the distinction of the natures, believed that while Christ in his deity was omnipresent, Christ’s human body could only be present in one place, that is, at the right hand of the Father.
Above: Huldrych Zwingli
The executive editor for Christianity Today magazine carefully detailed the two views that would forever divide the Lutheran and Reformed view of the Last Supper:
“Luther claimed that the Body of Christ was not eaten in a gross, material way but rather in some mysterious way, which is beyond human understanding.
Yet, Zwingli replied, if the words were taken in their literal sense, the Body had to be eaten in the most grossly material way.
“For this is the meaning they carry:
This bread is that Body of Mine which is given for you.
It was given for us in grossly material form, subject to wounds, blows and death.
As such, therefore, it must be the material of the Last Supper.”
Indeed, to press the literal meaning of the text even farther, it follows that Christ would have again to suffer pain, as his Body was broken again — this time by the teeth of communicants.
Even more absurdly, Christ’s Body would have to be swallowed, digested, even eliminated through the bowels!
Such thoughts were repulsive to Zwingli.
They smacked of cannibalism on the one hand and of the pagan mystery religions on the other.
The main issue for Zwingli, however, was not the irrationality or exegetical fallacy of Luther’s views.
It was rather that Luther put “the chief point of salvation in physically eating the body of Christ,” for he connected it with the forgiveness of sins.
The same motive that had moved Zwingli so strongly to oppose images, the invocation of saints, and baptismal regeneration was present also in the struggle over the Supper: the fear of idolatry.
Salvation was by Christ alone, through faith alone, not through faith and bread.
The object of faith was that which is not seen (Hebrews 11:1) and which therefore cannot be eaten except, again, in a nonliteral, figurative sense.
“Credere est edere,” said Zwingli:
“To believe is to eat.”
To eat the Body and to drink the Blood of Christ in the Supper, then, simply meant to have the Body and Blood of Christ present in the mind.
Near the end of the Colloquy when it was clear an agreement would not be reached, Philipp asked Luther to draft a list of doctrines all that both sides agreed upon.
The Marburg Articles had 15 points and every person at the Colloquy could agree on the first fourteen.
The 15th article of the Marburg Articles reads:
Fifteenth, regarding the Last Supper of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, we believe and hold that one should practice the use of both species as Christ Himself did, and that the Sacrament at the Altar is a Sacrament of the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ and the spiritual enjoyment of this very Body and Blood is proper and necessary for every Christian.
Furthermore, that the practice of the Sacrament is given and ordered by God the Almighty like the Word, so that our weak conscience might be moved to faith through the Holy Spirit.
And although we have not been able to agree at this time, whether the true Body and Blood of Christ are corporally present in the bread and wine of Communion, each party should display towards the other Christian love, as far as each respective conscience allows, and both should persistently ask God the Almighty for guidance so that through His Spirit He might bring us to a proper understanding.
The failure to find agreement resulted in strong emotions on both sides.
Above: Marburg Castle, Marburg, Germany
When the two sides departed, Zwingli cried out in tears:
“There are no people on Earth with whom I would rather be at one than the Lutheran Wittenbergers.”
Because of the differences, Luther initially refused to acknowledge Zwingli and his followers as Christians, though following the Colloquy the two Reformers showed relatively more mutual respect in their writings.
Luther and Zwingli were more concerned with being “right” than being united in a common cause.
Above: Coat of arms of Marburg
In 1531, Zwingli’s alliance applied an unsuccessful food blockade on the Catholic cantons.
Starve or comply.
On 9 October 1531, in a surprise move, the Five States declared war on Zürich.
Zürich’s mobilisation was slow due to internal squabbling.
On 11 October, 3,500 poorly deployed men encountered a Five States force nearly double their size near Kappel.
Many pastors, including Zwingli, were among the soldiers.
The battle lasted less than one hour and Zwingli was among the 500 casualties in the Zürich army.
Zwingli had considered himself first and foremost a soldier of Christ, second a defender of his country, the Swiss Confederation, and third a leader of his city, Zürich, where he had lived for the previous twelve years.
Ironically, he died at the age of 47, not for Christ nor for the Confederation, but for Zürich.
Above: The death of Zwingli, Kappel am Albis, Switzerland, 11 October 1531
In Table Talk, Luther is recorded saying:
“They say that Zwingli recently died thus.
If his error had prevailed, we would have perished, and our church with us.
It was a judgment of God.
That was always a proud people.
The others, the Papists, will probably also be dealt with by our Lord God.”
Above: Martin Luther’s grave, Schlosskirche, Wittenberg, Germany
Erasmus (1466 – 1536) wrote:
“We are freed from great fear by the death of the two preachers, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, whose fate has wrought an incredible change in the mind of many.
This is the wonderful hand of God on high.”
Johannes Oecolampadius (1482 – 1531) had died on 24 November.
Erasmus also wrote:
“If Bellona (Roman goddess of war) had favoured them, it would have been all over with us.“
Above: Basel Minster, Basel, Switzerland, where Erasmus is buried
Such arrogance!
Such lack of sympathy!
Religious division seems to me as pointless as two bald men fighting over a comb.
If there is indeed a God and each of us has been given an individual mind then I believe that faith must be individual choice.
I believe that religion has its place in teaching us morality and in giving significance through rituals to the various stages of our lives.
It is here where I draw the distinction between individual faith and communal religion.
Above: Praying Hands, by Albrecht Dürer (1508)
I desire in no way, shape or form for anyone to follow my example on faith or lack thereof.
That being said, I equally resist anyone trying to force me to follow the rules of a religion which I myself do not practice.
Simply put, I live and let live.
I presently live in a predominantly Muslim nation.
Above: Reşadiye Camii (mosque), Eskişehir, Turkey
I was raised in a predominantly Christian country.
Above: Église de St-Philippe, Brownsburg-Chatham, Québec, Canada
I would never presume to tell others how to live nor will I willingly submit to others telling me how to live (except where my actions cause harm to others).
In all humility I mourn the loss of anyone past or present, whether I would have agreed with them or not.
Every death diminishes us even if we are unaware of their passing.
I will never celebrate the death of anyone no matter what evils they may have perpetuated, even men as reprehensible as terrorists or tyrants.
That said I will not celebrate the lives of everyone to whom life was given, for we do judge people by the acts that they do.
That a man of religious principle died in battle at the mere age of 47 is cause for sadness.
That a man of religious principle accepted the executions of Anabaptists and a food blockade against Catholic cantons is not cause for commemoration.
My journey, my walk, sought to understand Zwingli and what he represents to the Swiss celebrating his legacy.
I respect his legacy that lives on in the confessions, liturgy, and church orders of the Swiss Reformed churches of today, but I sincerely doubt that had we met that I would have liked him.
In my own way I did get a sense of what his life was like by visiting the places where he once lived.
I do not know in absolute certainty whether I would have acted as he, had my life experience been his.
I do know that Zwingli’s life was remarkable enough to relate it to my readers in the hopes that they might better understand his significance to the Swiss people with whom I lived with for a decade.
I believe that every person is my superior in that I may learn from them.
And the Zwingli walk was certainly…..
Educational.
Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Yvonne and Marcel Steiner, Zwingli-Wege: Zu Füss von Wildhaus nach Kappel am Albis – Ein Wander- und Lesebuch
Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 8 September 2020
It must be difficult for followers of this first of two blogs to remain faithful and patient with the Chronicles of Canada Slim as they are not as often written as those of Building Everest.
To those who are new to the Chronicles, these posts are accounts of travels prior to the calendar year and have followed an alphabetical sequence of:
Alsace
Italy
Lanzarote
London
Porto
Serbia
Switzerland
This post in the sequence is focused on Serbia and is the continuation of my story of a remarkable man and the museum in Belgrade that commemorates his achievements and prolongs the memory of the only Serbian (to date) to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature:
Ivo Andric.
Ivo Andrić (1892 – 1975) was a Yugoslav novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961.
His writings dealt mainly with life in his native Bosnia under Ottoman rule.
Born in Travnik in the Austrian Empire, modern-day Bosnia, Andrić attended high school in Sarajevo, where he became an active member of several South Slav national youth organizations.
Above: The house in which Andric was born
Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Andrić was arrested and imprisoned by the Austro-Hungarian police, who suspected his involvement in the plot.
Above: The first page of the edition of the Domenica del Corriere, an Italian paper, with a drawing of Achille Beltrame depicting Gavrilo Princip killing Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo
As the authorities were unable to build a strong case against him, he spent much of the war under house arrest, only being released following a general amnesty for such cases in July 1917.
After the war, he studied South Slavic history and literature at universities in Zagreb and Graz, eventually attaining his Ph.D. in Graz in 1924.
He worked in the diplomatic service of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1920 to 1923 and again from 1924 to 1941.
In 1939, he became Yugoslavia’s ambassador to Germany, but his tenure ended in April 1941 with the German-led invasion of his country.
Above: Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Shortly after the invasion, Andrić returned to German-occupied Belgrade.
He lived quietly in a friend’s apartment for the duration of World War II, in conditions likened by some biographers to house arrest, and wrote some of his most important works, including Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge on the Drina).
Above: Ivo Andrić monument in Belgrade, Serbia
Following the war, Andrić was named to a number of ceremonial posts in Yugoslavia, which had since come under communist rule.
In 1961, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, selecting him over writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck and E. M. Forster.
The Committee cited “the epic force with which he traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from his country’s history“.
Afterwards, Andrić’s works found an international audience and were translated into a number of languages.
In subsequent years, he received a number of awards in his native country.
Above: Front cover art for The Bridge on the Drina written by Ivo Andrić
Andrić’s health declined substantially in late 1974.
He died in Belgrade the following March.
In the years following Andrić’s death, the Belgrade apartment where he spent much of World War II was converted into a museum and a nearby street corner was named in his honour.
It is this author’s apartment, this Ivo Andric Museum in Belgrade which I visited in the spring of 2018.
Above: Ivо Andric Museum Building, Belgrade, Serbia
A number of other cities in the former Yugoslavia also have streets bearing his name.
In 2012, filmmaker Emir Kusturica began construction of an ethno-town in eastern Bosnia that is named after Andrić.
Above: Main entrance of Andrićgrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina
As Yugoslavia’s only Nobel Prize-winning writer, Andrić was well known and respected in his native country during his lifetime.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, beginning in the 1950s and continuing past the breakup of Yugoslavia, his works have been disparaged by Bosniak literary critics for their supposed anti-Muslim bias.
Above: Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina
In Croatia, his works were long shunned for nationalist reasons, and even briefly blacklisted following Yugoslavia’s dissolution, but were rehabilitated by the literary community at the start of the 21st century.
Above: Flag of Croatia
He is highly regarded in Serbia for his contributions to Serbian literature.
Above: Flag of Serbia
I have aspirations of becoming a published writer and I have always been fascinated by the lives of other writers and how those lives led to the fine literature that these literary legends produced.
In parts one and two of the Author’s Apartment, I wrote of Andric’s life from his birth and childhood to his studies and suffering (1892 -1920).
In 1920, after a time as a civil servant with the Ministry of Religion in Belgrade, Andric was taken into diplomatic service and a new chapter of his life began.
Above: Church of St. Sava, Belgrade
On 20 February 1920, Andrić’s request was granted and he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry’s mission at the Vatican.
Above: Flag of Vatican City
The post of Ambassador was occupied by the famous linguist Lujo Bakotic.
Above: Lujo Bakotic
(Lujo Bakotić (1867 – 1941) was a Serbian writer, publicist, lawyer, lexicographer and diplomat.
Though he was Roman Catholic, Bakotić considered himself Serbian, as had his father.
He completed his high school (gymnasium) education in Split, and jurisprudence in Vienna and Graz.
He was a lawyer by profession who was also politically active, representing the Serbian Party in the Diet of Dalmatia.
Above: Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Dalmatia
Owing to his party’s ideals he had to flee to Serbia in 1913.
With the start of the Great War, he left Belgrade for Niš and then went to Paris and finally Rome, where he was made a secretary in the Vatican to work on a mission, preparing a Concordat between Serbia and the Vatican (which never materialized).
After the war, he was Yugoslavia’s envoy at the Vatican from 1920 until 1923.
Above: St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City
He represented the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at The Hague, and later he was sent by the Serbian government to Moscow.
Above: Kurhaus, The Hague, The Netherlands
He retired as a civil servant in 1935.
Classically educated, Bakotić spoke several languages fluently, including: French, Italian, German, English, Latin and a number of Slavic languages and dialects.)
Above: Lujo Bakotić
Andric enthusiastically read the works of Francesco Guicciardini.
(Francesco Guicciardini (1483 – 1540) was an Italian historian and statesman.
A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance.
Above: Niccolò Macchiavelli (1469 – 1527)
In his masterpiece, The History of Italy, Guicciardini paved the way for a new style in historiography with his use of government sources to support arguments and the realistic analysis of the people and events of his time.
The History of Italy stands apart from all his writings because it was the one work which he wrote not for himself, but for the public.
In his research, Guicciardini drew upon material that he gathered from government records as well as from his own extensive experience in politics.
His many personal encounters with powerful Italian rulers serves to explain his perspective as a historian:
“Francesco Guicciardini might be called a psychological historian—for him the motive power of the huge clockwork of events may be traced down the mainspring of individual behavior.
Not any individual, be it noted, but those in positions of command: emperors, princes and popes who may be counted on to act always in terms of their self-interest—the famous Guicciardinian particolare.”
Above: Villa Ravà, Arcetri, the former home of the Guicciardini family, where Francesco Guicciardini wrote The History of Italy
In the following excerpt, the historian records his observations on the character of Pope Clement VII:
“And although he had a most capable intelligence and marvelous knowledge of world affairs, yet he lacked the corresponding resolution and execution.
For he was impeded not only by his timidity of spirit, which was by no means small, and by a strong reluctance to spend, but also by a certain innate irresolution and perplexity, so that he remained almost always in suspension and ambiguous when he was faced with those deciding those thing which from afar he had many times foreseen, considered, and almost revealed.“
Above: Pope Clement VII (né Giulio di Guiliano de’ Medici)(1478 – 1534)
Moreover, what sets Guicciardini apart from other historians of his time is his understanding of historical context.
His approach was already evident in his early work The History of Florence (1509):
“The young historian was already doubtlessly aware of the meaning of historical perspective; the same facts acquiring different weight in different contexts, a sense of proportion was called for.”
Above: Guicciardini Family Crest
In the words of one of Guicciardini’s severest critics, Francesco de Sanctis:
“If we consider intellectual power, the Storia d’Italia is the most important work that has issued from an Italian mind.“)
Above: Francesco de Sanctis (1817 – 1883)
Andric travelled through Tuscany with Milos Crnjanski.
Above: Miloš Crnjanski, 1914
(Miloš Crnjanski (1893 – 1977) was a Serbian writer and poet of the expressionist wing of Serbian modernism, author, and a diplomat.
Crnjanski was born in Csongrád, Hungary, to an impoverished family which moved in 1896 to Temesvár (today Timișoara, Romania).
He completed elementary school in Pančevo and grammar school in Timișoara.
Above: Images of Timisoara, Romania
Then he started attending the Export Academy in Rijeka in 1912, and in the autumn of the following year he started studying in Vienna.
Above: Harbour, Rijeka, Croatia
At the beginning of World War I, Crnjanski was persecuted as part of the general anti-Serbian retribution of Austria to Princip’s assassination in Sarajevo.
Instead of being sent to jail, he was drafted to the Austro-Hungarian Army and sent to the Galician front to fight against the Russians – where he was wounded in 1915.
Crnjanski convalesced in a Vienna war hospital, although just before the end of the war he was sent to the Italian front.
After the war, he graduated in literary studies from the University of Belgrade.
After graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy in 1922, he taught at the Fourth Belgrade Grammar School and espoused “radical modernism” in articles for periodicals including Ideje,Politika and Vreme – sparking “fierce literary and political debates“.
Above: University of Belgrade logo
He entered the diplomatic corps for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and worked in Germany (1935 – 1938) and Italy (1939 – 1941) before being evacuated during WWII to England.
Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918 – 1941)
He took odd jobs and eventually became the London correspondent of the Argentinian periodical El economist.
During this period he wrote Druga knjiga Seoba (The Second Book on Migration) and Lament nad Beogradom (Lament over Belgrade).
Above. Tower Bridge, London, England
He returned to Belgrade after 20 years of exile in 1965 and shortly after published Sabrana dela u 10 tomova(“Collected works in 10 volumes”).
In 1971, he received the prestigious NIN award for Roman o Londonu.
Above: NIN Award logo
Crnjanski, aged 84, died in Belgrade on 30 November 1977.
He is interred in the Alley of Distinguished Citizens in the Belgrade New Cemetery.
He is considered a classic of Serbian literature by scholars as well as the public.
Crnjanski first books portrayed the futility of war.
He laid the foundations of the early avant-garde movement in Serbian literature, as exemplified by his 1920 Objašnjenje Sumatre (The Explanation of Sumatra):
“The world still hasn’t heard the terrible storm above our heads, while shakings come from beneath, not from political relations, not from literary dogmas, but from life.
Those are the dead reaching out!
They should be avenged.“
The Journal of Carnojevic is a lyrical novel by Miloš Crnjanski, which was first published in 1920.
The narrator of the novel is Petar Rajic, who tells his story in which there is no clearly established narrative flow, nor are events connected by cause and effect.
The protagonist of the book is a young Serbian soldier who lived in Vojvodina, now northern Serbia, which was, at the time, a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
When WW I began, he was, along with thousands of other young Serbs, recruited to the Austro-Hungarian army, and the war completely obliterated his image of the world.
Crnjanski himself had such a destiny, and he wrote the book right after coming back from the war – still as a young man.
The book is a combination of the present, the past and the future, strangely intertwined.
We can’t even say who he is – because of his alter ego, the sailor.
Just like the borders between the periods of life, the borders between persons are blurred and unclear.
“Autumn, and life without meaning.
I drag myself around taverns.
I sit by the window and stare at the mist and the yellow, wet, scarlet trees.
And where is life?”
“All they were doing, he said that somewhere, far away, on some island, was leaving a mark.
And when he would tell her that now, from her passionate smile, a red plant on Ceylon Island is drawing its strength to open, she would gaze at the distance.
She didn’t believe that all our actions could reach that far and that our power is so endless.
And that was the last thing he believed in.
Under the palm trees, in the hotel lobby, he told her that he didn’t believe someone could be killed, nor made unhappy.
He didn’t believe in the future.
He said his fleshly passions depended solely upon the color of the sky, and that life is being lived in vain – no, not in vain, but for the sake of a smile, with which he smiles to both plants and clouds.
He said that all his actions depended on some scarlet trees that he had seen on Ios Island.
She giggled.
Ah, he was funny and young.
So young.”
“I will go past borders and cities and villages and forests and waters and there will be nothing left on me but dust on my feet, silence in my heart and on my face a mild smile meaningless and burning.
So many are the places where something had been left, ripped out of my torn apart soul and my ragged life.“)
Above: Portrait of Milos Crnjanski
Andrić left Belgrade soon after, and reported for duty in late February.
At this time, he published his first short story, Put Alije Đerzeleza (The Journey of Alija Đerzelez).
(Gjergj Elez Alia or Đerzelez Alija is a popular legendary hero in epic poetry and literature in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gora and in northern Albania.
Muslims from Bosnian Krajina modeled the poetic image of Alija Đerzelez after the image of Serbian (Christian) Prince Marko, based on the historic person Ali Bey Mihaloğlu.
Marko Mrnjavčević (1335 – 1395) was the de jure Serbian king from 1371 to 1395, while he was the de facto ruler of territory in western Macedonia centered on the town of Prilep.
He is known as Prince Marko and King Marko in South Slavic oral tradition, in which he has become a major character during the period of Ottoman rule over the Balkans.
Above: Portrait of Prince Marko
Marko’s father, King Vukašin, was co-ruler with Serbian Tsar Stefan Uroš V, whose reign was characterised by weakening central authority and the gradual disintegration of the Serbian Empire.
Vukašin’s holdings included lands in western Macedonia and Kosovo.
Above: King Vukasin
In 1370, he crowned Marko “young king“:
This title included the possibility that Marko would succeed the childless Uroš on the Serbian throne.
Above: Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Serbia
On 26 September 1371, Vukašin was killed and his forces defeated in the Battle of Maritsa.
About two months later, Tsar Uroš died.
This formally made Marko King of Serbia.
Above: Maritsa Valley
However, Serbian noblemen, who had become effectively independent from the central authority, did not even consider to recognise him as their supreme ruler.
Sometime after 1371, he became an Ottoman vassal.
Above: Ottoman Empire logo
By 1377, significant portions of the territory he inherited from Vukašin were seized by other noblemen.
King Marko, in reality, came to be a regional lord who ruled over a relatively small territory in western Macedonia.
He funded the construction of the Monastery of Saint Demetrius near Skopje (better known as Marko’s Monastery), which was completed in 1376.
Above: Marko’s Monastery
Marko died on 17 May 1395, fighting for the Ottomans against the Wallachians in the Battle of Rovine.
Above: Battle of Rovine
Although a ruler of modest historical significance, Marko became a major character in South Slavic oral tradition.
He is venerated as a national hero by the Serbs, Macedonians and Bulgarians, remembered in Balkan folklore as a fearless and powerful protector of the weak, who fought against injustice and confronted the Turks during the Ottoman occupation.
Above: A Herzegovinian sings with a gusle in an 1823 drawing.
Serbian epic poems were often sung, accompanied by this traditional instrument.
South Slavic legends about Kraljević Marko or Krali Marko are primarily based on myths much older than the historical Marko Mrnjavčević.
He differs in legend from the folk poems:
In some areas he was imagined as a giant who walked stepping on hilltops, his head touching the clouds.
He was said to have helped God shape the Earth, and created the river gorge in Demir Kapija (“Iron Gate“) with a stroke of his sabre.
This drained the sea covering the regions of Bitola, Mariovo and Tikveš in Macedonia, making them habitable.
Above: Demir Kapija
After the Earth was shaped, Marko arrogantly showed off his strength.
God took it away by leaving a bag as heavy as the Earth on a road.
When Marko tried to lift it, he lost his strength and became an ordinary man.
Legend also has it that Marko acquired his strength after he was suckled by a vila.
King Vukašin threw him into a river because he did not resemble him, but the boy was saved by a cowherd (who adopted him, and a vila suckled him).
Above: Serbian epic heroes Prince Marko and Miloš Obilić, and the vila Ravijojla
In other accounts, Marko was a shepherd (or cowherd) who found a vila‘s children lost in a mountain and shaded them against the sun (or gave them water).
As a reward the vila suckled him three times, and he could lift and throw a large boulder.
An Istrian version has Marko making a shade for two snakes, instead of the children.
In a Bulgarian version, each of the three draughts of milk he suckled from the vila‘s breast became a snake.
Marko was associated with large, solitary boulders and indentations in rocks:
The boulders were said to be thrown by him from a hill, and the indentations were his footprints (or the hoofprints of his horse).
He was also connected with geographic features such as hills, glens, cliffs, caves, rivers, brooks and groves, which he created or at which he did something memorable.
They were often named after him, and there are many toponyms (place names) — from Istria in the west to Bulgaria in the east — derived from his name.
In Bulgarian and Macedonian stories, Marko had an equally strong sister who competed with him in throwing boulders.
In some legends, Marko’s wonder horse was a gift from a vila (a mountain nymph).
A Serbian story says that he was looking for a horse who could bear him.
To test a steed, he would grab him by the tail and sling him over his shoulder.
Seeing a diseased piebald foal owned by some carters, Marko grabbed him by the tail but could not move him.
He bought (and cured) the foal, naming him Šarac.
He became an enormously powerful horse and Marko’s inseparable companion.
Macedonian legend has it that Marko, following a vila‘s advice, captured a sick horse on a mountain and cured him.
Crusted patches on the horse’s skin grew white hairs, and he became a piebald.
According to folk tradition Marko never died:
He lives on in a cave, in a moss-covered den or in an unknown land.
A Serbian legend recounts that Marko once fought a battle in which so many men were killed that the soldiers (and their horses) swam in blood.
He lifted his hands towards heaven and said:
“Oh God, what am I going to do now?”
God took pity on Marko, transporting him and Šarac to a cave (where Marko stuck his sabre into a rock and fell asleep).
There is moss in the cave.
Šarac eats it bit by bit, while the sabre slowly emerges from the rock.
When it falls on the ground and Šarac finishes the moss, Marko will awaken and reenter the world.
Some allegedly saw him after descending into a deep pit, where he lived in a large house in front of which Šarac was seen.
Others saw him in a faraway land, living in a cave.
According to Macedonian tradition Marko drank “eagle’s water“, which made him immortal.
He is with Elijah in heaven.
Mihaloğlu Ali Bey or Gazı Alauddin Mihaloğlu Ali Bey, (1425—1507) was an Ottoman military commander in the 15th century and the first sanjakbey (provincial governor) of the Sanjak of Smederevo (the territory of Belgrade).
He was one of the descendants of Köse Mihal, a Byzantine governor of Chirmenkia and battle companion of Osman Gazi.
I am not certain of why Ali Bey is so honoured, for it seems he was continuously defeated in almost every military campaign he was involved in.
Songs about Đerzelez Alija were transmitted by bilingual singers from South Slavic milieu to northern Albanian milieu, where he is known as Gjergj Elez Alia.)
The year 1920 was a year of great changes:
the First Red Scare, a widespread fear of far left extremism in the United States, continues, as do the Palmer (after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer) Raids: on one day alone (2 January) 4,025 people were arrested in several cities across the country – mostly Italian and Jewish immigrants were targeted.
the Russian Civil War still raged
the League of Nations began sessions in Paris before moving to Geneva
the Netherlands refused to extradite exiled German Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859 – 1941)
Prohibition in the United States began
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded and women’s suffragism realized in the US
the victorious Allies carved up the former Ottoman Empire and Hungary lost 72% of its pre-WW1 territory
Above: The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, by Sir William Orpen
the German Workers Party renamed itself the Nazi Party
Estonia, Lithuania and Syria all gain their independence this year
Above: Flag of Estonia
the world’s first peaceful establishment of a social democratic government took place in Sweden
the US Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles claiming that it was too harsh on the defeated participants of WW1
the Summer Olympics opened in Antwerp, Belgium
the Mexican Revolution ended
the Polish – Russian War ended in a Polish victory
Above: Five stages of the Polish-Soviet War
Albanian PM Essad Pasha Toptani (1863 – 1920) was assassinated in Paris
the US Postal Service ruled that children cannot be mailed
three African American circus workers were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota
Arthur Meighen (1874 – 1960) became the 9th Prime Minister of Canada
the Irish War of Independence still raged, including “Bloody Sunday“
the HIV / AIDS pandemic began in Léopoldville (today’s Kinshasa)
With the end of World War I and the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires the conditions were met for proclaiming the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in December 1918.
The Yugoslav ideal had long been cultivated by the intellectual circles of the three nations that gave the name to the country, but the international constellation of political forces and interests did not permit its implementation until then.
However, after the war, idealist intellectuals gave way to politicians, and the most influential Croatian politicians opposed the new state right from the start.
It was not certain through much of 1920 whether the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) would survive its own internal divisions.
Above: Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
As for the Vatican, the Roman Question was still unresolved.
On 9 February 1849, the Roman Republic took over the government of the Papal States.
In the following July, an intervention by French troops restored Pope Pius IX to power, making the Roman Question a hotly debated one even in the internal politics of France.
In July 1859, after France and Austria made an agreement that ended the short Second Italian War of Independence, an article headed “The Roman Question” in the Westminster Review expressed the opinion that the Papal States should be deprived of the Adriatic provinces and be restricted to the territory around Rome.
This became a reality in the following year, when most of the Papal States were annexed by what became the Kingdom of Italy.
Above: the Italian peninsula, 1796
The Vatican is the religious centre of Catholicism, but the question raged as to whether it should also continue to have its own territory.
This question was not resolved until 1929.
Above: Coat of arms of the Bishop of Rome (aka the Pope)
In the midst of all this, Andric began his diplomatic career.
Andric complained that the consulate was understaffed and that he did not have enough time to write.
All evidence suggests he had a strong distaste for the ceremony and pomp that accompanied his work in the diplomatic service, but according to Hawkesworth, he endured it with “dignified good grace“.
Around this time, he began writing in the Ekavian dialect used in Serbia, and ceased writing in the Ijekavian dialect used in his native Bosnia.
Andrić soon requested another assignment.
In November, he was transferred to Bucharest.
Once again, his health deteriorated.
Nevertheless, Andrić found his consular duties there did not require much effort, so he focused on writing, contributed articles to a Romanian journal and even had time to visit his family in Bosnia.
Above: Flag of Romania
The Treaty of Bucharest was signed between Romania and the Entente Powers on 17 August 1916 in Bucharest.
The treaty stipulated the conditions under which Romania agreed to join the war on the side of the Entente, particularly territorial promises in Austria-Hungary.
The signatories bound themselves to keep secret the contents of the treaty until a general peace was concluded.
Above: Treaty of Bucharest
Romanians!
The war which for the last two years has been encircling our frontiers more and more closely has shaken the ancient foundations of Europe to their depths.
It has brought the day which has been awaited for centuries by the national conscience, by the founders of the Romanian State, by those who united the principalities in the war of independence, by those responsible for the national renaissance.
It is the day of the union of all branches of our nation.
Today we are able to complete the task of our forefathers and to establish forever that which Michael the Great was only able to establish for a moment, namely, a Romanian union on both slopes of the Carpathians.
For us the mountains and plains of Bukowina, where Stephen the Great has slept for centuries.
In our moral energy and our valour lie the means of giving him back his birthright of a great and free Rumania from the Tisza to the Black Sea, and to prosper in peace in accordance with our customs and our hopes and dreams.
Part of the proclamation by King Ferdinand, 28 August 1916
Above: King Ferdinand I of Romania (1865 – 1927)
The concept of “Greater Romania“ materialized as a geopolitical reality after the First World War.
Romania gained control over Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania.
As a result, most regions with clear Romanian majorities were merged into a single state.
It also led to the inclusion of sizable minorities, including Magyars (ethnic Hungarians), Germans, Jews, Ukrainians and Bulgarians — about 28% of the country’s population.
The borders established by the treaties concluding the war did not change until 1940.
The resulting state, often referred to as “România Mare” or România Întregită (roughly translated in English as “Romania Made Whole“), was seen as the ‘true’, whole Romanian state, or, as Tom Gallagher states, the “Holy Grail of Romanian nationalism“.
The Romanian ideology changed due to the demographic, cultural and social alterations, however the nationalist desire for a homogeneous Romanian state conflicted with the multiethnic, multicultural truth of Greater Romania.
From 1918 to 1938, Romania was a monarchy whose liberal Constitution was seldom respected in practice.
Above: Greater Romania (1920 – 1940)
In 1922, Andrić requested another reassignment.
He was transferred to the consulate in Trieste, where he arrived on 9 December 1922.
Above: Flag of Trieste
At the beginning of the 20th century, Trieste was a bustling cosmopolitan city frequented by artists and philosophers such as James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Sigmund Freud, Zofka Kveder, Dragotin Kette, Ivan Cankar, Scipio Slataper, and Umberto Saba.
The city was the major port on the Austrian Riviera, and perhaps the only real enclave of Mitteleuropa (i.e., Central Europe) on the Mediterranean.
Viennese architecture and coffeehouses dominate the streets of Trieste to this day.
Above: Images of Trieste
Italy, in return for entering World War I on the side of the Allied Powers, had been promised substantial territorial gains, which included the former Austrian Littoral and western Inner Carniola.
Italy therefore annexed the city of Trieste at the end of the war, in accordance with the provisions of the 1915 Treaty of London and the Italian-Yugoslav 1920 Treaty of Rapallo.
Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Italy (1861 – 1946)
The Treaty of Rapallo was a treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929), signed to solve the dispute over some territories in the former Austrian Littoral in the upper Adriatic and in Dalmatia.
The treaty was signed on 12 November 1920 in Rapallo, near Genoa, Italy.
Above: Rapallo
Tension between Italy and Yugoslavia arose at the end of World War I, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved and Italy claimed the territories assigned to it by the secret Treaty of London of 1915.
According to the treaty signed in London on 26 April 1915 by the Kingdom of Italy and the Triple Entente, in case of victory at the end of World War I, Italy was to obtain several territorial gains including former Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia and notably Zadar, Šibenik, and most of the Dalmatian islands (except Krk and Rab).
These territories had an ethnically mixed population, with Slovenes and Croats composing over the half of the population of the region.
The treaty was therefore nullified with the Treaty of Versailles under pressure of President Woodrow Wilson, making void Italian claims on northern Dalmatia.
The objective of the Treaty of Rapallo was to find a compromise following the void created by the non-application of the Treaty of London of 1915.
While only a few thousands Italians remained in the newly established South Slavic state, a population of half a million Slavs, including the annexed Slovenes, were cut off from the remaining three-quarters of total Slovene population at the time and were subjected to forced Italianization.
Trieste had a large Italian majority, but it had more ethnic Slovene inhabitants than even Slovenia’s capital of Ljubljana at the end of 19th century.
Andric’s Trieste assignment meant he was representing Slovenes in a predominantly Slovene-populated territory now under Italian control.
Above: Peter Kozler’s map of the Slovene Lands, designed during the Spring of Nations in 1848, became the symbol of the quest for a United Slovenia.
The Italian lower middle class—who felt most threatened by the city’s Slovene middle class—sought to make Trieste a città italianissima, committing a series of attacks led by the Black Shirts against Slovene-owned shops, libraries, and lawyers’ offices, even burning down the Trieste National Hall, a central building to the Slovene community.
On 13 July 1920, the building was burned by the Fascist Blackshirts, led by Francesco Giunta.
The act was praised by Benito Mussolini, who had not yet assumed power, as a “masterpiece of the Triestine Fascism“.
It was part of a wider pogrom against the Slovenes and other Slavs in the very centre of Trieste and the harbinger of the ensuing violence against Slovenes and Croats.
Above: Fascist logo
By the mid-1930s several thousand Slovenes, especially members of the middle class and the intelligentsia from Trieste, emigrated to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia or to South America.
Among the notable Slovene émigrés from Trieste were the author Vladimir Bartol, the legal theorist Boris Furlan and the Argentine architect Viktor Sulčič.
The political leadership of the around 70,000 émigrés from the Julian March in Yugoslavia was mostly composed of Trieste Slovenes: Lavo Čermelj, Josip Vilfan and Ivan Marija Čok.
Above: Flag of modern Slovenia
In 1926, claiming that it was restoring surnames to their original Italian form, the Italian government announced the Italianization of German, Slovene and Croatian surnames.
In the Province of Trieste alone, 3,000 surnames were modified and 60,000 people had their surnames amended to an Italian-sounding form.
The psychological trauma, experienced by more than 150,000 people, led to a massive emigration of German and Slavic families from Trieste.
Despite the exodus of the Slovene and German speakers, the city’s population increased because of the migration of Italians from other parts of Italy.
Several thousand ethnic Italians from Dalmatia also moved to Trieste from the newly created Yugoslavia.
The city’s damp climate only caused Andrić’s health to deteriorate further.
On his doctor’s advice, he transferred to Graz in January 1923.
Above: Hauptplatz, Graz, Austria
Graz is the capital city of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna.
Above: Graz
Emerging from the war, Austria had two main political parties on the right and one on the left.
Above: Flag of Austria
The right was split between clericalism and nationalism.
The Christian Social Party, (Christlichsoziale Partei, CS), had been founded in 1891 and achieved plurality from 1907–1911 before losing it to the socialists.
Their influence had been waning in the capital, even before 1914, but became the dominant party of the First Republic, and the party of government from 1920 onwards.
The CS had close ties to the Roman Catholic Church and was headed by a Catholic priest named Ignaz Seipel (1876–1932), who served twice as Chancellor (1922–1924 / 1926–1929).
While in power, Seipel was working for an alliance between wealthy industrialists and the Roman Catholic Church.
The CS drew its political support from conservative rural Catholics.
In 1920 the Greater German People’s Party (Großdeutsche Volkspartei, GDVP) was founded from the bulk of liberal and national groups and became the junior partner of the CS.
On the left the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs, SDAPÖ) founded in 1898, which pursued a fairly left-wing course known as Austromarxism at that time, could count on a secure majority in “Red Vienna” (as the capital was known from 1918 to 1934), while right-wing parties controlled all other states.
The SDAPÖ were the strongest voting bloc from 1911 to 1918.
Between 1918 and 1920, there was a grand coalition government including both left and right-wing parties, the CS and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs, SDAPÖ).
This gave the Social Democrats their first opportunity to influence Austrian politics.
The coalition enacted progressive socio-economic and labour legislation, such as the vote for women on 27 November 1918, but collapsed on 22 October 1920.
In 1920, the modern Constitution of Austria was enacted, but from 1920 onwards Austrian politics were characterized by intense and sometimes violent conflict between left and right.
The bourgeois parties maintained their dominance but formed unstable governments while socialists remained the largest elected party numerically.
Both right-wing and left-wing paramilitary forces were created during the 20s.
The Heimwehr (Home Resistance) first appeared on 12 May 1920 and became progressively organised over the next three years and the Republikanischer Schutzbund was formed in response to this on 19 February 1923.
From 2 April 1923 to 30 September there were violent clashes between Socialists and Nazis in Vienna.
On 2 April, referred to as Schlacht auf dem Exelberg (Battle of Exelberg) involved 300 Nazis against 90 Socialists.
Further episodes occurred on 4 May and 30 September 1923.
A clash between those groups in Schattendorf, Burgenland, on 30 January 1927, led to the death of a man and a child.
Above: Schattendorf
Right-wing veterans were indicted at a court in Vienna, but acquitted in a jury trial.
This led to massive protests and a fire at the Justizpalast (Palace of Justice) in Vienna.
In the July Revolt of 1927, 89 protesters were killed by the Austrian police forces.
Political conflict escalated until the early 1930s.
Above: the Palace of Justice, Vienna, before the fire
Whether the violence that Vienna viewed was reflected in Graz was never recorded by Andric during his time there as both vice-consul and student.
Andric arrived in the city on 23 January 1923 and was appointed vice-consul.
Andrić soon enrolled at the University of Graz, resumed his schooling and began working on his doctoral dissertation in Slavic studies.
Above: University of Graz logo
In August 1923, Andrić experienced an unexpected career setback.
A law had been passed stipulating that all civil servants had to have a doctoral degree.
As Andrić had not completed his dissertation, he was informed that his employment would be terminated.
Andrić’s well-connected friends intervened on his behalf and appealed to Foreign Minister Momčilo Ninčić, citing Andrić’s diplomatic and linguistic abilities.
Above: Momčilo Ninčić (1876 – 1949), Serbian politician and economist, and president of the League of Nations (1926 – 1927)
In February 1924, the Foreign Ministry decided to retain Andrić as a day worker with the salary of a vice-consul.
This gave him the opportunity to complete his Ph.D.
Three months later, on 24 May, Andrić submitted his dissertation to a committee of examiners at the University of Graz, who gave it their approval.
This allowed Andrić to take the examinations necessary for his Ph.D to be confirmed.
He passed both his exams, and on 13 July, received his Ph.D.
The committee of examiners recommended that Andrić’s dissertation be published.
Andrić chose the title Die Entwicklung des geistigen Lebens in Bosnien unter der Einwirkung der türkischen Herrschaft (The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule).
In it, he characterized the Ottoman occupation as a yoke that still loomed over Bosnia.
“The effect of Turkish rule was absolutely negative,” he wrote.
“The Turks could bring no cultural content or sense of higher mission, even to those South Slavs who accepted Islam.“
Several days after receiving his Ph.D, Andrić wrote the Foreign Minister asking to be reinstated and submitted a copy of his dissertation, university documents and a medical certification that deemed him to be in good health.
In September, the Foreign Ministry granted his request.
Above: Bust of Ivo Andric, Graz
Andrić stayed in Graz until 31 October 1924, when he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry’s Belgrade headquarters.
During the two years he was in Belgrade, Andrić spent much of his time writing.
His first collection of short stories was published in 1924, and he received a prize from the Serbian Royal Academy (of which he became a full-fledged member in February 1926).
Above: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts plaque
The reader who takes the collected works of one writer, reads them as a connected whole, despite all the contradictions and breaks that the work of one writer carries within itself.
He passes through that work as through a well-arranged street in which the facades of houses are interconnected, and everything comes to him as one more or less planned and well-connected whole.
Because such a reader stands at the end point of the writer’s work, looks in the opposite direction from the one in which those works were created, observes them as a whole and continuity that they could not have when, one by one, they were slowly and difficultly created in long and restless periods of life.
Ivo Andrić Signs by the Roadside
And what is, basically, a story?
How, in the shortest outline, could a story be described rather than precisely defined?
One of the most important features of the story is its size, ie the measure of its conciseness.
It depends on the extent of the compression of the form how the writer will arrange his material, how he will construct the plot and how to introduce his theme into it or network more motives, how he will explain his linguistic potential.
There is no doubt that the narrative is based on the categories of selection and summarization, on giving a restrictive, reduced form to the process of narration.
The concentration of attention, conciseness and interestingness of the narration must be in the foreground in order to achieve the impression of a unique whole.
That is why the story relies on a “limited world“, on a clearly emphasized detail, a motivated situation or an emphasized character.
But, the core, the essence, the justification of the existence of every story cannot be reduced only to its formal characteristics, because the most important thing is the story, the process of telling, the narration.
It gives meaning to human existence and its torment to reach the meaning and reason for the existence of the world.
From time immemorial, humanity has been telling stories, stories about heroism, love, suffering, betrayal, loyalty and friendship, the story is inherent in man, an integral part of his position in an interactive relationship with the world.
And it is no coincidence that Andrić put the words of his “uncle“, the late Fr. Rafa, into the mouth of his hero, Fr. Petar, who always joked:
“I could still do without bread, but without talking I can’t.“
In a thousand different languages, in various living conditions, from century to century, from ancient patriarchal stories in huts, by the fire, to modern narrators who are coming out of publishing houses in major world centers at the moment, the story of human destiny is being told, which people tell people without end and interruption.
The way and forms of that story change over time and circumstances, but the need for storytelling and storytelling remains, and the story flows on and the storytelling has no end.
So sometimes it seems to us that humanity, from the first flash of consciousness, through the centuries, tells itself, in a million variants, along with the breath of its lungs and the rhythm of its being, constantly the same story.
And that story seems to want, like the story of the legendary Scheherazade, to deceive the executioner, to postpone the inevitability of the tragic accident that threatens us, and to prolong the illusion of life and duration.
Above: Scheherazade, painted in the 19th century by Sophie Anderson
Perhaps the goal of that story is to light up, at least a little, the dark paths that life often throws us on, and to tell us something more about that life, which we live but which we do not always see and understand, than we, in our weakness, can know and understand.
Often only from the words of a good narrator do we learn what we have done and what we have missed, what we should do and what we should not.
Perhaps these stories, oral and written, also contain the true history of mankind, and perhaps one could at least sense, if not find out, the meaning of that history.
And that regardless of whether they are dealing with the past or the present.
Perhaps one could at least infer from them, if not find out, the meaning of that history.
Above: History by Frederick Dielman (1896)
Andrić in his imaginary “Conversation with Goya” in 1935, Andrić’s hero Goja, the narrator’s interlocutor, sees life and story as creatively intertwined.
Because without a story there is no real life.
And how to get to the story, that key to everything that “happened and is happening“, which is repeated in countless different forms?
Legends should be listened to:
“Those traces of collective human efforts through the centuries and the meaning of our destiny should be deciphered from them as much as possible”, says Andrićev Goja in one place, and further adds that the meaning should be sought “in those layers of humanity. ”
In 1924, the same year when he defended his doctoral dissertation in Graz, The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia under the Influence of Turkish Rule, Andrić published his first collection of stories under the simple title Pripovetke (Tales) in the Belgrade Serbian Literary Association.
In his dissertation, Andrić himself points out that “in its content and in its basic idea, this discussion is related to other works” that he prepared “in another form and on other occasions.”
We cannot help but wonder what that connection is.
What works does Andrić’s statement refer to?
How much did the research of the history of Bosnia in connection with the dissertation help Andrić to see the nature of life in the Bosnian backwater during the Turkish occupation?
Apparently, the research undertaken by the young doctoral student, and the insights he gained, became an inexhaustible source and raw material for his short stories, and not only for those printed in 1924.
“These tales about the Turks and about ours are only a part of one work, which began with the tale ‘The Way of Alija Đerzelez’,” Andrić wrote in the introductory note for Tales.
From the moment he went to study in Zagreb and then Vienna and Krakow, Andrić traveled frequently.
Working as a diplomatic official in the Yugoslav embassies in some European cities, the writer got to know the people and regions of the countries in which he resided well.
Andrić published his first travelogue in 1914 under the title “Letter from Krakow” in the Croatian Movement, during his studies at the Jagiellonian University.
Above: Jagiellonian University logo
Living and studying in Graz, in 1923, Andrić translated his impressions of life and the country in the form of “notes from the road” into the text Through Austria.
Living in many capitals of interwar Europe inspired Andrić to write down his impressions.
However, he did not rely only on his own senses and observations, but carefully prepared for each trip and wrote in notebooks data from books on the history, culture and traditions of the country.
In his travelogues, Andrić primarily states what makes a country and its way of life specific.
Above: Europe, 1923
This is how I seek to write my travelogues.
In October 1926, he was assigned to the consulate in Marseille and again appointed vice-consul.
Above: Vieux Port, Marseille, France
On 9 December 1926, he was transferred to the Yugoslav embassy in Paris.
France suffered heavily during World War I in terms of lives lost, disabled veterans and ruined agricultural and industrial areas occupied by Germany as well as heavy borrowing from the United States, Britain, and the French people.
However, postwar reconstruction was rapid, and the long history of political warfare along religious lines was finally ended.
Parisian culture was world-famous in the 1920s, with expatriate artists, musicians and writers from across the globe contributing their cosmopolitanism, such as jazz music, and the French empire was in flourishing condition, especially in North Africa, and in Subsaharan Africa.
Above: Josephine Baker dances the Charleston at the Folies Bergère (1926)
Although the official goal was complete assimilation, few colonial subjects were actually assimilated.
Major concerns were forcing Germany to pay for the war damage by reparations payments and guaranteeing that Germany, with its much larger population, would never be a military threat in the future.
Efforts to set up military alliances worked poorly.
Relations remained very tense with Germany until 1924, when they stabilized thanks to large American bank loans.
Above: Germany (1919 – 1937)
France was part of the Allied force that occupied the Rhineland following the armistice.
Ferdinand Foch supported Poland in the Greater Poland Uprising and in the Polish–Soviet War and France also joined Spain during the Rif War.
Above: Ferdinand Foch
From 1925 until his death in 1932, Aristide Briand, as prime minister during five short intervals, directed French foreign policy by using his diplomatic skills and sense of timing to forge friendly relations with Weimar Germany as the basis of a genuine peace within the framework of the League of Nations.
He realised France could not contain the much larger Germany by itself or secure effective support from Britain or the League.
Above: Aristide Briand (1862 – 1932)
In January 1923, after Germany refused to ship enough coal as part of its reparations, France and Belgium occupied the industrial region of the Ruhr.
Germany responded with passive resistance, which included printing vast amounts of marks to pay for the occupation, which caused runaway inflation.
That heavily damaged the German middle class, whose savings became worthless, but also damaged the French franc.
The intervention was a failure, and in the summer of 1924, France accepted the American solution to the reparations issues, as expressed in the Dawes Plan.
It had American banks make long-term loans to Germany, which used the money to pay reparations.
The United States demanded repayment of the war loans although the terms were slightly softened in 1926.
All loans, payments and reparations were suspended in 1931, and everything was finally resolved in 1951.
In the 1920s, France built the Maginot Line, an elaborate system of static border defences that was designed to stop any German invasion.
However, it did not extend into Belgium, and Germany attacked there in 1940 and went around the French defenses.
Military alliances were signed with weak powers in 1920–21, called the “Little Entente“.
Domestic politics in the 1920s were a product of unresolved problems left by the war and peace, especially the economics of reconstruction and how to make Germany pay for it all.
The great planners were Raymond Poincaré, Alexandre Millerand and Aristide Briand.
France had paid for the war with very heavy borrowing at home and from Britain and the United States.
Heavy inflation resulted, and in 1922, Poincaré became Prime Minister.
He justified his strong anti-German policies:
Germany’s population was increasing, her industries were intact, she had no factories to reconstruct, she had no flooded mines.
Her resources were intact, above and below ground.
In fifteen or twenty years Germany would be mistress of Europe.
In front of her would be France with a population scarcely increased.
Poincaré used German reparations to maintain the franc at a tenth of its prewar value and to pay for the reconstruction of the devastated areas.
Above: Raymond Poincaré (1860 – 1934)
Since Germany refused to pay nearly as much as Paris demanded, Poincaré reluctantly sent the French army to occupy the Ruhr industrial area (1922) to force a showdown.
The British strongly objected, arguing that it “would only impair German recovery, topple the German government, and lead to internal anarchy and Bolshevism, without achieving the financial goals of the French.“
The Germans practiced passive resistance by flooding the economy with paper money that damaged both the German and French economies.
The standoff was solved by American dollars in the Dawes Plan.
New York banks lent money to Germany for reparations to France, which then used the same dollars to repay the Americans.
Above: Wall Street, New York City
Throughout the early postwar period, Poincaré’s political base was the conservative nationalist parliament elected in 1920.
However, at the next election (1924), a coalition of Radical Socialists and Socialists called the “Cartel des gauches” (“Cartel of the Left“) won a majority, and Herriot of the Radical Socialist Party became prime minister.
He was disillusioned by the imperialist thrust of the Versailles Treaty, and sought a stable international peace in rapprochement with the Soviet Union to block the rising German revanchist movement.
Above: Édouard Herriot (1872 – 1957)
Andrić’s time in France was marked by increasing loneliness and isolation.
His uncle had died in 1924, his mother the following year, and upon arriving in France, he was informed that his aunt had died as well.
“Apart from official contacts,” he wrote Alaupović, “I have no company whatever.“
Andrić spent much of his time in the Paris archives poring over the reports of the French consulate in Travnik between 1809 and 1814, material he would use in Travnička hronika (TheTravnik Chronicle), one of his future novels.
(The Travnik Chronicle (1945) is a historical novel written during the Second World War, based on the model of a European realistic novel.
It covers the period from 1807 until 1814 and therefore represents a classic novel more than any other Andrić’s novel.
The novel is narrated in the 3rd person and consists of a prologue, epilogue and 28 chapters.
Chronicle of Travnik is a seven-year fiction chronicle that deals with the stay of foreign consuls in that vizier’s city.
It begins with the arrival of the French consul, and ends with the departure of the second-appointed Austrian consul.
The novel is turned to history.
In the process of creating the Travnik Chronicle, Andrić used rich documentary material from the field of the history of civilization, ethnology and authentic writings about historical figures that are presented in the novel.)
Above: Travnik Fort
In April 1928, Andrić was posted to Madrid as vice-consul.
Above: Gran Via, Madrid, Spain
Spain’s neutrality in World War I spared the country from carnage, yet the conflict caused massive economic disruption, with the country experiencing at the same time an economic boom (the increasing foreign demand of products and the drop of imports brought hefty profits) and widespread social distress (with mounting inflation, shortage of basic goods and extreme income inequality).
Above: Flag of Spain
A major revolutionary strike was called for August 1917, supported by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the UGT and the CNT, seeking to overthrow the government by means of a general strike.
The Dato government deployed the army against the workers to brutally quell any threat to social order, sealing in turn the demise of the cabinet and undermining the constitutional order.
The strike was one of the three simultaneous developments of a wider three-headed crisis in 1917 that cracked the Restoration regime, that also included a military crisis induced by the cleavage in the Armed Forces between Mainland and Africa-based ranks vis-à-vis the military promotion (and ensuing formation of juntas of officers that refused to dissolve upon request from the government), and a political crisis brought by the challenge posed by Catalan nationalism, whose bourgeois was emboldened by the economic upswing caused by the profits from exports to Entente powers during World War I.
During the Rif War, the crushing defeat of the Spanish Army in the so-called “Disaster of Annual” in the summer of 1921 brought in a matter of days the catastrophic loss of the lives of about 9,000 Spanish soldiers and the loss of all occupied territory in Morocco that had been gained since 1912.
This entailed the greatest defeat suffered by an European power in an African colonial war in the 20th century.
Above: Images of the Rif War
Spanish King Alfonso XIII tacitly endorsed the September 1923 coup by General Miguel Primo de Rivera that installed a dictatorship led by the latter.
Above: Spanish Alfonso XIII (1886 – 1941)
The regime enforced the State of War all over the country from September 1923 to May 1925 and, in permanent violation of the 1876 Constitution, wrecked with the legal-rational component of the constitutional compromise.
Attempts to institutionalise the regime (initially a Military Directory) were taken, in the form of a single official party (the Patriotic Union) and a consultative chamber (the National Assembly).
Preceded by a partial retreat from vulnerable posts in the interior of the protectorate in Morocco, Spain (in joint action with France) turned the tides in Morocco in 1925, and the Abd el-Krim-led Republic of the Rif started to see the beginning of its end after the Alhucemas landing and ensuing seizure of Ajdir, the heart of the Riffian rebellion.
The war had dragged on since 1917 and cost Spain $800 million.
The late 1920s were prosperous until the worldwide Great Depression hit in 1929.
Above: Miguel Primo de Riviera (1870 – 1930)
While in Madrid, Andric wrote (though did not then publish) essays on Simón Bolívar and Francisco Goya.
Above: Simón Bolívar (1783 – 1830)
Above: Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828)
That year he published the stories “Olujaci”, “Ispovijed” (Confession) and Most na Žepi (Bridge on the Žepa).
Bridge on the Zepa describes the construction of the bridge on Žepa, a river that often swells, and which the inhabitants have not yet managed to tame with the bridge.
So far, the river has taken away several wooden bridges (a similar theme, 20 years later, is dealt with in the Nobel Prize-winning novel On the Drina Bridge, so the story on the Bridge on the Žepa is considered an overture to the novel.
The narrator tells us the whole story in clear sentences.
The different segments of the story are firmly connected, although the vizier, as a narrator, often returns to the past and recalls his childhood in retrospect.
In Most na Žepi, Ivo Andrić describes many values, but also universal truths.
He emphasizes the efforts of man to adapt the world to himself and to fight against the forces of nature that sometimes destroy everything in front of him.
In a story such as The Bridge on Zepa, the symbolism of the bridge is reflected in the emphasized human urge to subdue the world and nature around it, but also to bring order to oneself – which the Grand Vizier Yusuf failed to do.
In the story, we can also see how art outlives the man who creates it, so it seems to overcome death itself.
On the other side of the story, we have a builder who does not seek friendship, praise or help from anyone.
He does not even crave material things, but lives for his work.
He did not ask for much, but with his work he provided a lot and made life easier for many people.
The story describes a number of difficulties encountered by the builder in the construction of the bridge, but in the end the successful outcome is successful.
The bridge was built, but the two characters end tragically.
Neymar dies of the plague, and the vizier suffers from the traumas experienced during his captivity, which lead him on a path of self-destruction.
In a figurative sense, the narrative is about man’s search for meaning.
Even after the goal was achieved (the construction of the bridge was completed), the characters did not achieve a sense of life satisfaction.
The story is written in the 3rd person.
Andric began work on the novel Prokleta avlija (The Cursed Court).
In Andrić’s novel, The Cursed Court is the name of the famous Constantinople dungeon, which Fr. Petar from Bosnia came to for unjustified reasons, when they sent him to Istanbul to do some monastic work.
It happened that the Turkish authorities caught a letter addressed to the Austrian internment in Constantinople, in which the persecution of the faithful by the Turkish authorities was described and the suspicion fell on Fr. Peter.
He was arrested and imprisoned in the pre-trial prison – “theCursed Court“, where he remained for two months until he was sent on.
In The Cursed Court, Fra-Petar meets several people, who in this novel turn into a gallery of interesting characters.
There is the warden of the “Cursed Court” of Latifaga called Karadjoz , a prisoner of Chaim, a Jew from Smyrna, and then the central character from this novel is the prisoner Ćamil-effendi, a rich young Turk from Smyrna.
Fra-Petar learns from Haim, a young man’s fellow citizen, that he was imprisoned on suspicion that his study of consciousness was aimed at a rebellious plot against the sultan’s court, which was completely untrue.
Young Camil, the son of a rich Turk and a Greek woman, devoted himself to science and the solitary and ascetic way of life from an early age, which was especially emphasized by an unhappy and unhealthy love.
Namely, Camil fell in love with the daughter of a young Greek merchant, but for nationalistic and religious reasons, he did not want to give her to a Turk for a wife, but forcibly married her to a Greek outside Smyrna.
After that event, Ćamil completely closed himself in and became a kind of individual.
He surrounds himself with books and throws himself into science, showing a special interest in the consciousness of the Turkish Empire, of which he is particularly interested in one particular period – the time of Bayezid II and Jam-Sultan, his brother, whom Bayezid defeated twice in battle for the throne.
Then Jam sought refuge on the island of Rhodes, where Christian knights ruled.
From then on, the odyssey of Cem begins, who as a prisoner passes from the hands of various European rulers, and even the Pope himself, and they all use him as a trump card against the Turkish Empire, that is they threaten Bayazit that he will release him if he does not satisfy their various demands.
Ćamil is suspected of studying precisely that historical period, because it has similarities with the current situation at the court, where the sultan also has a rival brother, whom he declared insane and holds him captive. Jamil was sent to the Cursed Court, where he met Fr. Peter and told him about the life of Jam-Sultan, claiming that his life was identical with Jamil’s and that their destinies were the same.
After a while, they took him to a special prison, and one night during the interrogation, a fight broke out between him and the police.
It is not known whether the camels are taken out – alive or dead.
Fra-Peter never saw him again.
In June 1929, Andric was named secretary of the Yugoslav legation to Belgium and Luxembourg in Brussels.
Above: Images of Brussels, Belgium
Belgian King Albert returned from exile as a war hero, leading the victorious army and acclaimed by the population.
Above: King Albert I of Belgium (1875 – 1934)
In contrast, the government and other exiles came back discreetly.
Belgium had been devastated—not so much by combat, but rather by German seizure of valuable machinery.
Only 81 operable locomotives remained, out of the 3,470 available in 1914.
46 of 51 steel mills were damaged, with 26 destroyed totally.
More than 100,000 houses had been destroyed, as well as more than 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres) of farmland.
Above: Flag of Belgium
Waves of popular violence accompanied liberation in November and December 1918 and the government responded through the judicial punishment of collaboration with the enemy conducted between 1919 and 1921.
Shop windows were broken and houses sacked, men were harassed, and women’s heads were shaved.
Manufacturers who had closed their businesses sought the severe repression of those who had pursued their activities.
Journalists who had boycotted and stopped writing called for harsh treatment of the newspapers that submitted to German censorship.
Many people stigmatized profiteers and demanded justice.
Thus in 1918, Belgium was already confronted with the problems associated with occupation that most European countries only discovered at the end of World War II.
However, despite the status quo, Belgium recovered surprisingly quickly.
The first postwar Olympic Games were held in Antwerp in 1920.
In 1921, Luxembourg formed a customs union with Belgium.
German reparations to Belgium for damage incurred during the First World War was set at £12.5 billion pounds sterling.
In 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles the area of Eupen-Malmedy, along with Moresnet was transferred to Belgium.
“Neutral Moresnet” was transferred to Belgium, as well as the Vennbahn railway.
Above: Map of the route of the Vennbahn
An opportunity was given to the population to “oppose” against the transfer by signing a petition, which gathered few signatures, in large part thanks to intimidation by local authorities, and all regions remain part of Belgium today.
Belgian requests to annex territory considered as historically theirs, from the Dutch, who were perceived as collaborators, was denied.
Between 1923 and 1926, Belgian and French soldiers were sent to the Ruhr in Germany to force the German government to agree to continue reparation payments.
The Occupation of the Ruhr led the Dawes Plan which allowed the German government more leniency in paying reparations.
The League of Nations in 1925 made Belgium the trustee for the former German East Africa which bordered the Belgian Congo to the east.
It became Rwanda-Urundi (or “Ruanda-Urundi“) (modern day Rwanda and Burundi).
Above: Coat of arms of Ruanda-Urundi
Although promising the League it would promote education, Belgium left the task to subsidised Catholic missions and unsubsidised Protestant missions.
As late as 1962, when independence arrived, fewer than 100 natives had gone beyond secondary school.
Above: The Cathedral of Our Lady of Wisdom at Butare (formally Astrida) in Ruanda
The policy was one of low-cost paternalism, as explained by Belgium’s special representative to the Trusteeship Council:
“The real work is to change the African in his essence, to transform his soul, and to do that one must love him and enjoy having daily contact with him.
He must be cured of his thoughtlessness, he must accustom himself to living in society, he must overcome his inertia.”
On 1 January 1930, Andric was sent to Switzerland as part of Yugoslavia’s permanent delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva, and was named deputy delegate the following year.
Above: Geneva, Switzerland
The League of Nations, abbreviated as LON (French: Société des Nations, abbreviated as SDN or SdN), was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.
It was founded on 10 January 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War.
In 1919 US President Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.
The organisation’s primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.
Other issues in this and related treaties included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.
The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920.
The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920.
The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years.
The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious First World War Allies (France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan were the permanent members of the Executive Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed.
The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so.
Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them.
Following accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation.
The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the League, the United States, and Liberia.
In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence of slavery and forced labour.
The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and his vice-president.
The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for American help in social reforms.
Above: Flag of Liberia
The Mukden Incident, also known as the “Manchurian Incident“, was a decisive setback that weakened the League because its major members refused to tackle Japanese aggression.
Japan itself withdrew.
Under the agreed terms of the Twenty-One Demands with China, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between the two countries, in the Chinese region of Manchuria.
In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria.
The Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to orders from Tokyo) occupied all of Manchuria.
They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 Japan set up a puppet government, with Pu Yi, the former emperor of China, as its executive head.
This new entity was recognised only by the governments of Italy, Spain and Nazi Germany.
The rest of the world still considered Manchuria legally part of China.
The League of Nations sent observers.
The Lytton Report appeared a year later (October 1932).
It declared Japan to be the aggressor and demanded Manchuria be returned to China.
Above: Chinese delegate addresses the League of Nations after the Mukden Incident in 1932
The report passed 42–1 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League.
In the end, as British historian Charles Mowat argued, collective security was dead:
The League and the ideas of collective security and the rule of law were defeated; partly because of indifference and of sympathy with the aggressor, but partly because the League powers were unprepared, preoccupied with other matters, and too slow to perceive the scale of Japanese ambitions.
Above: The Mukden Incident Museum (literally, “September 18th History Museum“) in Shenyang, China
The League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region.
Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River, which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum.
Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio López at Lake Pitiantuta.
Paraguay appealed to the League of Nations, but the League did not take action when the Pan-American Conference offered to mediate instead.
The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million.
It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster.
By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by the 1938 truce.
Above: Paraguayan soldiers at Alihuatá, 1932
In 1933, Andrić returned to Belgrade.
Two years later, he was named head of the political department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On 5 November 1937, Andrić became assistant to Milan Stojadinović, Yugoslavia’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.
Above: National Assembly, Belgrade
Yugoslavia was a country in Southeast Europe and Central Europe for most of the 20th century.
It came into existence after World War I in 1918 under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (it was formed from territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire) with the Kingdom of Serbia, and constituted the first union of the South Slavic people as a sovereign state, following centuries in which the region had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary.
Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign.
The kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris.
The official name of the state was changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929.
On 20 June 1928, Serb deputy Puniša Račić shot at five members of the opposition Croatian Peasant Party in the National Assembly, resulting in the death of two deputies on the spot and that of leader Stjepan Radić a few weeks later.
Above: Punisa Racic (1886 – 1944)
On 6 January 1929, King Alexander I got rid of the constitution, banned national political parties and assumed executive power and renamed the country Yugoslavia.
He hoped to curb separatist tendencies and mitigate nationalist passions.
He imposed a new constitution and relinquished his dictatorship in 1931.
However, Alexander’s policies later encountered opposition from other European powers stemming from developments in Italy and Germany, where Fascists and Nazis rose to power, and the Soviet Union, where Joseph Stalin became absolute ruler.
None of these three regimes favored the policy pursued by Alexander I.
In fact, Italy and Germany wanted to revise the international treaties signed after World War I, and the Soviets were determined to regain their positions in Europe and pursue a more active international policy.
Alexander attempted to create a centralised Yugoslavia.
He decided to abolish Yugoslavia’s historic regions, and new internal boundaries were drawn for provinces or banovinas.
The banovinas were named after rivers.
Many politicians were jailed or kept under police surveillance.
The effect of Alexander’s dictatorship was to further alienate the non-Serbs from the idea of unity.
During his reign the flags of Yugoslav nations were banned.
Communist ideas were banned also.
Above: King Alexander I (1888 – 1934)
The king was assassinated in Marseille during an official visit to France in 1934 by Vlado Chernozemski, an experienced marksman from Ivan Mihailov’s Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization with the cooperation of the Ustaše, a Croatian fascist revolutionary organisation.
Alexander was succeeded by his eleven-year-old son Peter II and a regency council headed by his cousin, Prince Paul.
Above: The funeral of King Alexander at Belgrade
The international political scene in the late 1930s was marked by growing intolerance between the principal figures, by the aggressive attitude of the totalitarian regimes and by the certainty that the order set up after World War I was losing its strongholds and its sponsors were losing their strength.
Supported and pressured by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Croatian leader Vladko Maček and his party managed the creation of the Banovina of Croatia (Autonomous Region with significant internal self-government) in 1939.
The agreement specified that Croatia was to remain part of Yugoslavia, but it was hurriedly building an independent political identity in international relations.
The entire kingdom was to be federalised, but World War II stopped the fulfillment of those plans.
Above: Vladko Macek (1879 – 1964)
On 1 April 1939, Andrić was appointed Yugoslavia’s ambassador to Germany, presenting his credentials of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler on 19 April.
This appointment, Hawkesworth writes, shows that he was highly regarded by his country’s leadership.
Above: Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)
As previously mentioned, Yugoslavia’s King Alexander had been assassinated in Marseille in 1934.
He was succeeded by his ten-year-old son Peter, and a regency council led by Peter’s uncle Paul was established to rule in his place until he turned 18.
Paul’s government established closer economic and political ties with Germany.
Above: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (1893 – 1976)
In March 1941, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact, pledging support for Germany and Italy.
Though the negotiations had occurred behind Andrić’s back, in his capacity as ambassador he was obliged to attend the document’s signing in Berlin.
Andrić had previously been instructed to delay agreeing to the Axis powers’ demands for as long as possible.
He was highly critical of the move, and on 17 March, wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking to be relieved of his duties.
Above: Signing ceremony for the Axis Powers Tripartite Pact
Seated at front left (left to right) are Japan’s Ambassador Saburō Kurusu, Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Galeazzo Ciano and Germany’s Führer Adolf Hitler.
Ten days later, a group of pro-Western Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers overthrew the regency and proclaimed Peter of age.
This led to a breakdown in relations with Germany and prompted Adolf Hitler to order Yugoslavia’s invasion.
Above: King Peter II of Yugoslavia (1923 – 1970)
Given these circumstances, Andrić’s position was an extremely difficult one.
Nevertheless, he used the little influence he had and attempted unsuccessfully to assist Polish prisoners following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939.
Above: Images of the German invasion of Poland
Prior to their invasion of his country, the Germans had offered Andrić the opportunity to evacuate to neutral Switzerland.
He declined on the basis that his staff would not be allowed to go with him.
Above: Ivo Andric
On 6 April 1941, the Germans and their allies invaded Yugoslavia.
The country capitulated on 17 April and was subsequently partitioned between the Axis powers.
Above: The invasion of Yugoslavia
In early June, Andrić and his staff were taken back to German-occupied Belgrade, where some were jailed.
Andrić was retired from the diplomatic service, but refused to receive his pension or cooperate in any way with the puppet government that the Germans had installed in Serbia…..
The greatest part of the interwar period, Andric had spent abroad.
Living in Europe’s capital cities broadened his views and offered him the opportunity to improve his language skills, to meet men of letters and have an immediate access to literature of the countries in which he served as a diplomat, as well as to gather materials for his future novels and stories.
Inside the Ivo Andric Museum, the years of the writer’s diplomatic service are documented by original archival material – appointment and government decrees, certificates, acts of the Ministries of Religion and Foreign Affairs, issued to Andric as a civil servant and a chargé d’affaires.
The exhibited archival materials are arranged so as to illustrate, year by year, his advancement in the civil service, transfers and appointments, vacation and sick leaves.
Photos taken of him in Bucharest in 1922, Marseilles in 1927, Geneva in 1931, and Belgrade in 1937, capture visitors’ attention because they show not only an officer in the diplomatic service of the Kingdom, but also a rising writer and a newly elected member of the Serbian Royal Academy.
Andric’s diplomatic passport, issued for 1939 to 1941, is particularly interesting both as an exhibition item and a historic document.
The same applies to the photos of Andric taken in Berlin in 1939, because they remind us of times and events in the eve of World War II fateful for the Kingdom – the Tripartite Pact and demonstrations in Belgrade on 27 March 1941.
Andric’s career as a diplomat ended prematurely in the Third Reich Germany and was accompanied with his unsuccessful attempts to help prominent Polish intellectuals exiled from Krakow after the occupation of Poland in 1939 using his position as an ambassador and diplomatic channels.
Ivo Andric’s diplomatic uniform with gold embroidery, a feathered hat and a sword in an elaborately decorated scabbard, as well as his travel case with leather and wooden reinforcements – a witness to the diplomat’s journeys to Europe’s capitals and back to Belgrade – occupy the central, open area of the Museum’s exhibition room.
It is very important to point out that throughout this period of life and diplomatic service Andric was involved in literary work, gathering historical evidence in foreign archives, intensive cooperation with Yugoslav literary reviews and publishers, and correspondence with writers and friends from Zagreb, Sarajevo and Belgrade, including Zdenko Markovic, Julije Benesic, Tugomir Alaupovic, Borivoje Jevtic, Isak Samokovlija, Isidora Sekulic, Jovan Ducic, Milos Crnjanski and Dr. Miodrag Iborvac.
Above: Bust of Ivo Andric, Ivo Andric Museum, Belgrade
(Tugomir Marko Alaupović (1870 – 1958) was a Yugoslav professor at First Grammar School ,Sarajevo, as well as a poet, storyteller and politician.
In addition to his rich political biography, he was also Minister of Religion in the government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
He has written several literary works that have been translated into French, German, Czech and Italian.
He was one of the initiators of the Croatian Society for the “Setting up of Children in Crafts and Trade” in Sarajevo and later initiated the change of the society name to Napredak.
He was a member of the Main Board of the Serbian St. Sava Society in Belgrade.
On 16 January 1934, after a serious operation, in a letter to Tihomir Djordjevic, a prominent Serbian ethnologist, he said:
“Unfortunately, my hopes have not been fulfilled and I will have to stay long or maybe even definitely in Zagreb.
It hurts and I’m sorry that for these reasons, I have to resign as a member of the Main Board of the St. Sava Society.
But rest assured that for the rest of my life, I will remain faithful to that beautiful and noble saying:
‘Everyone is my dear brother, be he any religion’“.)
Above: Tugomir Alaupovic
(Isak Samokovlija (1889 – 1955) was a prominent Bosnian Jewish writer.
By profession he was a physician.
His stories describe the life of the Bosnian Sephardic Jews.
Above: Isak Samokovlija
Samokovlija was born into a Sephardi Jewish family in Goražde, Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time of the Austro-Hungarian occupation.
While one side of his family came from Spain after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, “his great-grandfather moved to Bosnia from the town of Samokov in Bulgaria“, which led to the surname Los Samokovlis in Ladino or Samokovlija in Bosnian.
Above: Samokov Historical Museum with the statue of Zahari Zograf
After completing primary school Samokovlija went to Sarajevo.
He attended high school with Ivo Andric, the first Yugoslav to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Above: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina
After graduating high school in 1910, he receive a scholarship from local Jewish charity La Benevolencija to study medicine in Vienna.
Later he worked as a doctor in the towns Goražde and Fojnica (1921–1925) before beginning a regular job at Sarajevo’s Koševo hospital in 1925.
At the beginning of the Second World War, he was a department head at the Koševo hospital.
In April 1941 he was discharged from service as well as other Jews, but soon he was mobilized as a medical doctor fights against a typhus epidemic.
It was not until 1945, he managed to escape Yugoslavia and hide until the country was liberated.
After the end of World War II, he held various positions in the Bosnian and Yugoslav literary circles.
From 1948 to 1951 he edited the magazine Brazda, and then, until his death he was an editor at the publishing company Svjetlost.
His first short story Rafina avlija was published in 1927 and two years later his first collection of stories, Od proljeća do proljeća, came out.
Several of his stories were made into television films and his book Hanka was made into a film of the same name directed by Slavko Vorkapić in 1955.
He did not live to see the film, dying at age 65 in January 1955.
He was buried in the old Jewish cemetery on the slopes of Trebević mountain, near Sarajevo.)
(Isidora Sekulić (1877 – 1958) was a Serbian writer, novelist, essayist, polyglot and art critic.
She was “the first woman academic in the history of Serbia“.
Sekulić was born in Mošorin, a village of Bács-Bodrog County, which is now in the Vojvodina.
Apart from her studies in literature, Sekulić was also well versed in natural sciences as well as philosophy.
She graduated from the pedagogical school in Budapest in 1892, and obtained her doctorate in 1922 in Germany.
Above: View of Baudapest, Hungary
Her travels included extended stays in England, France and Norway.
Her travels from Oslo through Bergen to Finnmark resulted in Pisma iz Norveške (Letters from Norway) meditative travelogue in 1914.
Above: Flag of Norway
Her collection of short stories, Saputnici, are unusually detailed and penetrating accomplishment in self-analysis and a brave stylistic experiment.
She also spoke several classical as well as nine modern languages.
Sekulić’s lyrical, meditative, introspective and analytical writings come at the dawn of Serbian prose writing.
Sekulić is concerned with the human condition of man in his new, thoroughly modern sensibility.
Above: Isidora Sekulić
In her main novel, The Chronicle of a Small Town Cemetery (Кроника паланачког гробља), she writes in opposition to the usual chronological development of events.
Instead, each part of the book begins in the cemetery, eventually returning to the time of bustling life, with all its joys and tragedies.
Characters such as Gospa Nola, are the first strong female characters in Serbian literature, painted in detail in all their courage, pride and determination.
Isidora Sekulić also wrote critical writings in the areas of music, theatre, art, architecture and literature and philosophy.
She wrote major studies of Yugoslav, Russian, English, German, French, Italian, Norwegian and other literature.)
Above: The Chronicles of a Small Town Cemetery (Serbian original)
(Jovan Dučić (1871 – 1943) was a Herzegovinian Serb poet-diplomat.
He is one of the most influential Serbian lyricists and modernist poets.
Dučić published his first collection of poetry in Mostar in 1901 and his second in Belgrade in 1908.
He also wrote often in prose, writing a number of literary essays, studies on writers, letters by poets from Switzerland, Greece and Spain and the book Blago cara Radovana for which he is most remembered when it comes to his writing.
Dučić was also one of the founders of the Narodna Odbrana, a nationalist non-governmental organization in the Kingdom of Serbia and he was a member of the Serbian Royal Academy.
Above: Jovan Ducic
Jovan Dučić was born in Trebinje, at the time part of Bosnia Vilayet within the Ottoman Empire.
In Trebinje he attended primary school.
Above: Jovan Ducic Monument, Trebinje, Bosnia and Hercegovina
He moved on to a high school in Mostar and trained to become a teacher in Sombor.
He worked as a teacher in several towns before returning to Mostar, where he founded (with writer Svetozar Ćorović and poet Aleksa Šantić) a literary magazine called Zora (Dawn).
Above: Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina
Dučić’s openly expressed Serbian patriotism caused difficulties with the authorities – at that time Bosnia and Herzegovina was de facto incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire – and he moved abroad to pursue higher studies, mostly in Geneva and Paris.
He was awarded a law degree by the University of Geneva and, following his return from abroad, entered Serbian diplomatic service in 1907.
Although he had previously expressed opposition to the idea of creating a Yugoslavia, he became the new country’s first ambassador to Romania (in 1937).
He had a distinguished diplomatic career in this capacity, serving in Istanbul, Sofia, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Madrid and Lisbon.
Dučić spoke several foreign languages and is remembered as a distinguished diplomat.
Above: Images of Lisbon, Portugal
It was as a poet that Dučić gained his greatest distinctions.
He published his first book of poetry in Mostar in 1901 and his second in Belgrade, 1908.
He wrote prose as well: several essays and studies about writers, Blago cara Radovana (Tsar Radovan’s treasure) and poetry letters from Switzerland, Greece, Spain and other countries.
Above: Tsar Radovan’s Treasure by Jovan Ducic (Serbian original)
Dučić’s work was initially heavily influenced by that of Vojislav Ilić, the leading Serbian poet of the late 19th century.
Above: Vojislav Ilic (1860 – 1894)
Ducic’s travels abroad helped him to develop his own individual style, in which the Symbolist movement was perhaps the greatest single influence.
In his poetry he explored quite new territory that was previously unknown in Serbian poetry.
He restricted himself to only two verse styles, the symmetrical dodecasyllable (the Alexandrine) and hendecasyllable—both French in origin—in order to focus on the symbolic meaning of his work.
He expressed a double fear, of vulgarity of thought and vulgarity of expression.
Above: Death and the Grave Digger(La Mort et le Fossoyeur) (c. 1895) by Carlos Schwabe is a visual compendium of symbolist motifs.
The angel of Death, pristine snow, and the dramatic poses of the characters all express symbolist longings for transfiguration “anywhere, out of the world“.
In the autumn of 1893, during the party in the newly built Hotel Drina in Bijeljina, a young and ambitious teacher Dučić met recent School of Commerce graduate Magdalena Živanović.
Above: Assembly Building, Bijeljina, Bosnia and Hercegovina
They got engaged with on 5 November 1893, and their correspondence continued even Dučić’s departure from Bijeljina to Mostar to teach from 1895 to 1899.
A part of the correspondence is kept safe up to this day, as well as the letter which Dučić’s friend and poet Aleksa Šantić redirected to Magdalena on 6 April 1901, asking for help in collecting a subscription for his songs.
Above: Aleksa Santic (1868 – 1924)
Ljiljana Lukić, a retired professor, keeps a personal copy of the correspondence between Dučić and Magdalena.
Professor Ljiljana Lukić states that Dučić lived for a short time in the house of Magdalena Nikolić who lived with her sister.
After her break up with Dučić, Magdalena shouted that she would never leave home again.
Above: Zivanovic and Ducic
“Like a novel heroine, she lived by her memories and the only happy moments she had was in reading the letters and songs of the man she loved“, as Professor Lukić concludes.
Dučić’s secret fiancé left the following words to be written after her death on her monument, which can still be read today on the Bijeljina graveyard:
Maga Nikolić-Živanović, 1874–1957,
the poet herself and first inspiration of poet Jovan Dučić.
Twenty years before Magdalena’s death, while Dučić was the authorized minister of Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a request was received that testifies of the deep trace which Dučić left in Bijeljina.
Singing society Srbadija asked the minister to help in building a home for the needs of the society.
Above: Museum of Semberija, Bijeljina
The Embassy of Serbia in Hungary is in the house which Jovan Dučić received from a Hungarian woman, and then donated it to the state.
Above: Embassy of Serbia in Hungary, Budapest
Dučić went into exile in the United States in 1941 following the German invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia, where he joined his relative Mihajlo (Michael) in Gary, Indiana.
From then until his death two years later, he led a Chicago-based organization, the Serbian National Defense Council (founded by Mihailo Pupin in 1914) which represented the Serbian diaspora in the US.
During these two years, he wrote many poems, historical books and newspaper articles espousing Serbian nationalist causes and protesting the mass murder of Serbs by the pro-Nazi Ustaše regime of Croatia.
In Yugoslav school anthologies immediately after WWII he had been declared persona non grata and widely viewed as a Serbian chauvinist.
He died on 7 April 1943.
His funeral took place at the Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Gary, Indiana and he was buried in the Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Monastery cemetery in Libertyville, Illinois.
He expressed a wish in his will to be buried in his home town of Trebinje, a goal which was finally realized when he was reburied there on 22 October 2000 in the newly built Hercegovačka Gračanica monastery.
His Acta Diplomatica (Diplomatic Letters) was published posthumously in the United States and in the former Yugoslavia. )
Above: Dučić’s grave site in the Hercegovačka Gračanica monastery in Trebinje
(Miodrag Ibrovac (1885 – 1973) was a Serbian and Yugoslav literary historian, novelist, academic and professor at the University of Belgrade.
He graduated from college in 1907, and from 1911 he taught at the Belgrade Lyceum.
From 1924 to 1958, Ibrovac was a full professor at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade in the Department of French Language and Literature where he succeeded Bogdan Popović.
He was a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1968 and a full professor in 1970.
He was a member of the Serbian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference that brought an end to the Great War with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
The delegation from Serbia consisted of Nikola Pašić, Slobodan Jovanović, Milenko Radomar Vesnić, Miodrag Ibrovac and others.
He is one of the founders of the Serbian PEN Center.
He was president of the Society for Cultural Co-operation Yugoslavia-France.)
Above: Miodrag Ibrovac
Andric’s years-long correspondence with Svetislav B. Cvijanovic, a Belgrade publisher, bookseller, writers’ great patron and Andric’s first publisher in Belgrade, is of particular significance.
There is much I learned from my visit to the Ivo Andric Museum, especially from his years as a diplomat:
the importance of travel
the importance of networking
the importance of lifelong learning
the importance of maintaining writing ambitions despite the demands of gainful employment
the significance of the individual, especially in positions of persuasion
Above: Ivo Andric in his study in Belgrade
Andric, from penniless origins to highly educated academic, from obscure contributor to vice-consul to Nobel prize winner, is an inspiration.
Truly the record of a man is worthy of note.
Above: Ivo Andric
Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Belgrade Memorial Museum of Ivo Andric / Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside
Above from the top left corner clockwise: Clérigos Church and Tower; Avenida dos Aliados; Casa da Música concert hall; Ribeira district; Avenida da Boavista business hub; Luiz I bridge and Porto from Vila Nova de Gaia
“The facades of the colourful houses line the streets, displaying their elegance in full sight of the sweet and beloved River Douro.
It is the tale of a platonic love with no end in sight and so each house adopts its own adornment with clothes on the balcony or flowerpots in the windows, impressing those who pass.
These facades, accompanied by their beloved River, the narrow lanes bearing the marks of time, the majestic Clérigos Tower and the rabelo boats are part of this unique place, captured by the lenses of tourists.
I know of what I speak, for I have often witnessed admiring glances being exchanged and heard flattering phrases in many languages of the world.
I myself feel special to be part of this space, belonging to mankind.
I know also that one day it will be my turn to leave and by then my duty will be done, for I will take with me a piece of this city, made of mists and smiles.
Ever since I was brought here, every single morning I am placed outside, within view of visitors.
During the night I rest in a dark shop surrounded by objects that show the city photographed, illustrated, magnetized, embroidered, carved and even spiritualized.
Whilst I repose, I think how much I will miss the authentic warmth of the population, who welcome people with smiles of gold and gruff voices.
Even so, I am prepared to be removed quite soon from the postcard display and be sent, with a message, to a distant place, where I will continue to display the facades of my colourful and aligned houses, eternally in love with a golden river.”
(Susana Fonseca)
It is true.
It is hard to hate Porto.
Yes, it is a large city, but it is also a beguiling one, with a lengthy history and a constant Catholicism, but where Coimbra is Saint Augustine, Braga the Virgin Mary and Lisbon Mary Magdelene, Porto is Martha.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus visits the home of two sisters named Mary and Martha.
The two sisters are contrasted:
Martha was “encumbered about many things” while Jesus was their guest, while Mary had chosen “the better part“, that of listening to the master’s discourse.
Above: Jesus at the house of Mary and Martha, Harold Copping, 1927
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.
She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.
But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.
She came to Him and asked,
“Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?
Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered,“you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.
Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.”
Above: Christ with Martha and Maria, by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1886
Perhaps it is my manual labour background, but I find myself more sympathetic towards Martha than I do towards Mary, and, by extension in this city-to-Biblical-personality analogy, more sympathetic towards Porto than Lisbon.
For me, this wee Biblical passage sums up Porto’s attitude towards the rest of Portugal.
Above: Flag of Portugal
Porto may never feel it is properly rewarded for all the hard work it provides, because Porto is more than just another prettified tourist destination, it is a busy commercial city whose fascination lies in its riverside setting and day-to-day life.
Porto is cramped streets and ancient alleys and antiquated shops.
During our week’s sojourn in this northern Portuguese metropolis, my wife and I did all the touristy things that tourists are advised to do.
And of Porto I have described much already in this blog:
Canada Slim and the War of the Oranges (6 August 2018)
Canada Slim and the Station Sanctuary (19 January 2019)
Canada Slim and the Voices without Echo (3 June 2019)
Canada Slim and the Harry Potter Fado (11 October 2019)
As well, there is much more to be said about Porto in the months and years to come.
(My wife and I have already spent time on the Algarve and in Lisboa, but as these visits occurred prior to the commencement of this blog I have not described my two previous visits to Portugal – a land I love with a passion fierce.)
Above: Coat of arms of Portugal
In my last Porto post I described the sites within the city that Harry Potter fans flock to and some to where we followed the flock of Potterheads.
I mention this Potter post, for the sole reason that the bookshop (Livraria Lello) that Ms. Rowling once haunted and wherein her books are perpetually offered for sale, therein I discovered a Portuguese poet’s work.
And as French author Jacques Salomé so wisely wrote:
“Un livre à toujours deux auteurs: celui dui l’écrit et celui qui le lit.”
(A book always has two authors: he who writes it and he who reads it.)
Above: Jacques Salomé
Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935) was a Portuguese poet and writer born in Lisbon, but whom I did not discover until this trip to Porto.
Pessoa is considered one of the greatest poets to have ever written in the Portuguese language and a giant of world literature.
Above: Fernando Pessoa, 1914
At the age of six, Pessoa moved to Durban, South Africa where for nine years he learned to read and write English perfectly.
Of the four books he published in his lifetime, three were written in English.
Above: Modern Durban, South Africa
On leaving South Africa Pessoa returned to Lisbon, wherein he spent much of the rest of his life.
Above: Images of Lisbon
During his life, Pessoa worked in various places as an English and French language correspondent.
He also worked as a businessman, editor, literary critic, journalist, political commentator, translator, inventor, astrologer and advertiser while producing his works in verse and prose.
And yet, despite this, during his life, Pessoa was virtually unknown, avoiding society and the literary world.
As a poet, Pessoa was known for his multiple pseudonyms, what came to be known as “heteronyms“, which were and still are today the subject of many of the studies produced on his life and work.
On 29 November 1935, Pessoa was taken to Lisbon’s Hospital de Sao Luis, suffering from abdominal pain and a high fever.
There he wrote, in English, his last words:
“I know not what tomorrow will bring.”
He died the next day, 30 November 1935, around 8 pm, aged 47.
Above: Pessoa’s tomb in Lisbon, at the cloister of the Hieronymites Monastery since 1985.
In his lifetime, he published four books in English and one in Portuguese.
However, he left a lifetime of unpublished, unfinished or simply sketchy work in a domed, wooden truck (25,574 manuscript and typed pages, which have been housed in the Portuguese National Library since 1988).
To get a grasp on this unusual man, one diary entry stands out:
“8 March 1914
I found myself standing before a tall chest of drawers, took up a piece of paper, began to write, remaining upright all the while since I always stand when I can.
I wrote some 30 poems in a row, all in a kind of ecstasy, the nature of which I shall never fathom.
It was the triumphant day of my life and I shall never have another like it.
I began with a title, “The Keeper of Sheep”, and what followed was the appearance of someone within me to whom I promptly assigned the name of Alberto Caeiro.
Please excuse the absurdity of what I am about to say, but there had appeared within me, then and there, my own master.
It was my immediate sensation.
So much so that, with those 30 odd poems written, I immediately took up another sheet of paper and wrote as well, in a row, the six poems that make up “Oblique Rain” by Fernando Pessoa.
Immediately and totally….
It was the return from Fernando Pessoa / Alberto Caeiro to Fernando Pessoa alone.
Or better still, it was Fernando Pessoa’s reaction to his own inexistence as Alberto Caeiro.”
In a sense this duality – (or in Pessoa’s case, multiplicity) – is something I can identify with.
Sometimes I write as purely and simply myself.
Within these blogposts I am both Canada Slim and myself, for the censor and critic that is the latter persona, the pseudonym persona liberates from myself the self-expression I need.
Just six hours from the moment I began this post (4 July 2020) I posted this on Facebook:
In preparation to write my much-interrupted, long-intervalled “Chronicles of Canada Slim”, I found again, like the passion one possesses for someone who is loved, some collected works purchased the last time I was in Portugal.
A Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, speaks to me in sonnets that sing and poems that praise and persuade a person of the majesty of existence.
He writes:
“I have in me all the dreams of the world.”
And to dream seems to be lacking within the soul of too many in Deutschschweiz and Deutschland.
“Sad is he who dwells in pleasure,
Content with his abode,
Without a dream, as it ruffles a feather,
Fanning the glow of the embers
In the fire as it doth erode.
Sad is he who lives contented!
He lives because life doth endure.
Nothing in his soul ever suggested,
More than the basic truth imparted,
That of only one’s grave can one be sure.“
And this it seems to be the be-all and end-all of those I have known in the lands where German (or variations thereof) is spoken.
Make one’s fortune, secure one’s comfort, do the practical and know one’s limits.
But I say with Pessoa, that I am misjudged and misunderstood in these lands (where I followed my passion for a woman far wiser in the ways of her language-linked companions than I could ever be)….
“Because I am the size of what I see and not the size of my height“.
I am as I see, not as I am seen.
It saddens me that we judge one another by standards that mean so little: the size of a bank account, the coziness of one’s castle, the reputation that precedes and follows a fellow far beyond his reach, the illusion of beauty, the prejudices of one’s age.
We see only the green of our sofas not the blue of jazz in the ether.
We hear only chaos from without and fear the calm from within, for the former we comprehend, the latter is a land too quiet and thus disquieting.
The wisdom and power of words are the worlds I see and they fill a universe that defines me far beyond how I am seen.“
Such is how Pessoa inspires me.
This maverick, this undefinable, undeniable spirit wrapped up in a carapace of conformity has been described by Mexican poet Octavio Paz (1914 – 1998) as a “solemn investigator of futile things“, the epitome of an empty man who, in his helplessness, creates a world in order to discover his true identity.
Above: Octavio Paz
In a sense I see myself as a funhouse mirror of Pessoa, not so much an echo of his disquiet about life and the world we occupy, but rather I see the world as an echo of myself.
The world I see in the places I describe is less a reality of what is, but rather is more a reflection of who I am.
A regular follower of my writing responded almost immediately to the aforementioned Facebook post:
“If I may be allowed to offer an uninvited opinion as a sincere reader, writing teacher, professional editor and translator, your secret mentor, and increasingly your appreciative, possibly infatuated fan girl.
You have really found your voice and your writing has become effortless, more honest and less contrived and therefore so much more relatable.
There are fewer experimental verbal arabesques and palpably more consolidated content and purified emotion.“
High praise indeed, from a woman for whom I have nothing but a universe’s worth of respect.
But praise I am uncertain of whether I am worthy to be given.
There is still so much I have to learn.
There is still so much I have yet to say without the expertise and experience so critical for expression.
How I long to be able to capture the beating of a heart, the symphony of a soul that Pessoa so eloquently elucidates!
Oh, to write as Anthony Trollope, whom Henry James describes as:
“He felt all daily and immediate things as well as saw them.
He felt them in a simple, direct salubrious way, with their sadness, their gladness, their charm, their comedy, all their obvious and measureable meanings.“
Above: Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1882)
I am reminded of another writing hero of mine, Hermann Hesse (1877 – 1962) and the manner in which he describes himself and how he is described:
“He does not want to follow the path trodden by many, but to resolutely plow his own furrow.
He is not made for the collective life.“
“I have been, and still am, a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books.
I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.
My story is not a pleasant one.
It is neither sweet nor harmonious as invented stories are.
It has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams, like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.“
“What torments Hesse is the difficulty of being authentic – of staying true to who you really are, despite the enormous pressures of alienation and conformity.“
“If I search retrospectively for a common thread of meaning, then I can indeed find one.
A defense of (sometimes even a desperate plea on behalf of) human personality, the individual.“
“Hesse was forced to confront the entire weight of the institutions ranged against him – family, church, school, society – and to do battle with them in the name of defending his individuality.“
“The only way I can conceive of writing is an act of confession.“
When I describe a place I am not describing what it is, but rather how I see it.
I am not describing a place, as much as I am describing how that place makes me feel.
Of who I am rather than where I am.
I am, in some ways, very Portuguese, at least when I try to write.
I am reserved.
I leave gesticulating exuberance to others.
I am mild-mannered, gentle and homely, and yet my vision seeks to encompass the world.
I seem placid and harmless and it takes much to provoke me, but much lies beneath the surface, where there is a temperament one would expect from a land of mist and bogs.
I am not one for golden descriptions of sandy beaches, but instead I possess like my Portuguese brethren an eternal saudade, a feeling of longing for what could have been, a nostalgia for what has gone, when I sit at my keyboard and try to inadequately capture a sense of what a place really is (or at least myreality through which I see it).
Above: Saudade (1899), by Almeida Júnior
Oh, to write as one born Portuguese!
To write in a manner akin to how a Portuguese farmer farms, with a knack of conjuring a harvest even from the most barren of ground.
And so I stare at my screen seeking seeds of expression from the blank face of an unsympathetic computer.
Sometimes I think I will never leave Schulstrasse here in Landschlacht, that my mind like my body remains a prisoner of the choices I have made.
Once written down, words captured for eternity, are forever frozen in paralytic prose.
Above: Landschlacht, Switzerland, as seen on a clear day from the German shore of Lake Constance
When I consider much that is travel writing….
When I consider how Pessoa viewed life….
When I consider how I have on occasion viewed life….
Above: Saudades de Nápoles (Missing Naples), 1895, by Bertha Worms
I think about “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty“.
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1939) is a short story by James Thurber.
The most famous of Thurber’s stories, it first appeared in The New Yorker on 18 March 1939, and was first collected in his book My World and Welcome to It (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942).
It has since been reprinted in James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (The Library of America, 1996, ISBN 1-883011-22-1), is available on-line on the New Yorker website and is one of the most anthologized short stories in American literature.
The story is considered one of Thurber’s “acknowledged masterpieces“.
Above: James Thurber (1894 – 1961)
It was made into a 1947 movie of the same name, with Danny Kaye in the title role, though the movie is very different from the original story.
It was also adapted into a 2013 film, which is again very different from the original.
The name Walter Mitty and the derivative word “Mittyesque“have entered the English language, denoting an ineffectual person who spends more time in heroic daydreams than paying attention to the real world, or more seriously, one who intentionally attempts to mislead or convince others that he is something that he is not.
The short story deals with a vague and mild-mannered man who drives into Waterbury, Connecticut, with his wife for their regular weekly shopping and his wife’s visit to the beauty parlor.
During this time he has five heroic daydream episodes.
The first is as a pilot of a US Navy flying boat in a storm, then he is a magnificent surgeon performing a one-of-a-kind surgery, then as a deadly assassin testifying in a courtroom, and then as a Royal Air Force pilot volunteering for a daring, secret suicide mission to bomb an ammunition dump.
As the story ends, Mitty imagines himself facing a firing squad, “inscrutable to the last.”
Each of the fantasies is inspired by some detail of Mitty’s mundane surroundings.
In a way, it is like inventing a clear day from a dark reality, a hero out of an ordinary human, a Paradise out of Purgatory.
Above: Expulsion from Paradise, painting by James Tissot (1902)
From Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet:
“The journey in my head
In the plausible intimacy of approaching evening, as I stand waiting for the stars to begin at the window of this 4th floor room that looks out on the infinite, my dreams move to the rhythm required by long journeys to countries as yet unknown, or to countries that are simply hypothetical or impossible.
Above: Pessoa’s birthplace: a large flat at São Carlos Square, just in front of Lisbon’s opera
Today, during one of those periods of daydreaming which, though devoid of either purpose or dignity, still constitute the greater part of the spiritual substance of my life, I imagined myself free forever of Rua dos Douradores, of my boss Vasques, of Moreira the bookkeeper, of all the other employees, the errand boy, the post boy, even the cat.
Above: Pessoa’s last home, from 1920 till his death, in 1935, currently the Fernando Pessoa Museum
In dreams, that freedom felt to me as if the South Seas had proferred up a gift of marvellous islands as yet undiscovered.
Freedom would mean rest, artistic achievement, the intellectual fulfillment of my being.
But suddenly, even as I imagined this (during the brief holiday afforded by my lunch break), a feeling of displeasure erupted into the dream:
I would be sad.
Yes, I say it quite seriously:
I would be sad.
For my boss Vasques, Moreira the bookkeeper, Borges the cashier, all the lads, the cheery boy who takes the letters to the post office, the errand boy, the friendly cat….
They have all become part of my life.
I could never leave all that behind without weeping, without realizing, however displeasing the thought, that part of me would remain with them and that losing them would be akin to death.
Moreover, if I left them all tomorrow and discarded this Rua dos Douradores suit of clothes I wear, what else would I do?
Because I would have to do something.
And what suit would I wear?
Because I would have to wear another suit.
We all have a Senhor Vasques.
Sometimes he is a tangible human being, sometimes not.
In my case he really is called Vasques and he is a pleasant, healthy chap, a bit brusque at times but he is no doubledealer.
He is selfish but basically fair, much fairer than many of the great geniuses and many of the human marvels of civilization on both left and right.
For many people Vasques takes the form of vanity, a desire for greater wealth, for glory or immortality….
Personally I prefer to have Vasques as my real life boss since, in times of difficulty, he is easier to deal with than any abstraction the world has to offer….
Above: Actor Steve Carell, Emmy Awards 2010, for his role as boss Michael Scott, in US series The Office
And I return to an other’s house, to the spacious office in the Rua dos Douradores, the way some return to their homes.
I approach my desk as if it were a bulwark against life.
I feel such an overwhelming sense of tenderness that my eyes fill with tears for my books that are in reality the books of other people whose accounts I keep, for the inkwell I use, for Sergio’s stooped shoulders as, not far from me, he sits writing out bills of lading.
I feel love for all of this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love or perhaps too, because even though nothing truly merits the love of any soul, if, out of sentiment, we must give it, I might just as well lavish it on the smallness of an inkwell as on the grand indifference of the stars….
With the soul’s equivalent of a wry smile, I calmly confront the prospect that my life will consist of nothing more than being shut up for ever in Rua dos Douradores, in this office, surrounded by these people.
I have enough money tp buy food and drink, I have somewhere to live and enough free time in which to dream, write – and sleep – what more can I ask of the gods or hope for from Fate?
I had great ambitions and extravagant dreams, but so did the errand boy and the seamstress, for everyone has dreams.
The only thing that distinguishes me from them is that I can write.
Yes, that is an activity, a real fact about myseof that distinguishes me from them.
But in my soul I am just the same.
I know that there are islands in the South and grand cosmopolitan passions and….
I am sure that even if I held the world in my hand, I would exchange it all for a tram ticket back to Rua dos Douradores.
Perhaps it is my destiny to remain a bookkeeper forever and for poetry and literature to remain simply butterflies that alight on my head and merely underline my own ridiculousness by their very beauty.”
Above: Crimson Assurance, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
Porto, Portugal, Wednesday 25 July 2018
The morning has begun, poorly.
Somehow, in all our running around the day previously, our one city-specific, Porto-focused guidebook, specially ordered for this trip, the book has vanished.
We stumble across a bookshop (Leya) that sells English language materials and we fortuitously find a copy of the lost travel guide.
The Swabian soul of my wife, as thrifty as a Scot, is displeased with this development and thus the tone of the day is set, with much of the morning lost.
After a visit to the Sé (Cathedral) we discover that though not quite all roads lead to the city centre’s Avenida dos Aliados, ours do.
At the foot of the Avenida – in the area known as Praca da Liberdade – are a couple of sidewalk cafés and an equestrian statue of Dom Pedro IV.
Dom Pedro I (1798 – 1834), nicknamed “the Liberator“, was the founder and first ruler of the Empire of Brazil.
As King Dom Pedro IV, he reigned briefly over Portugal, where he also became known as “the Liberator” as well as “the Soldier King“.
Born in Lisbon, Pedro I was the fourth child of King Dom João VI of Portugal and Queen Carlota Joaquina, and thus a member of the House of Braganza.
When the country was invaded by French troops in 1807, he and his family fled to Portugal’s largest and wealthiest colony, Brazil.
The outbreak of the Liberal Revolution of 1820 in Lisbon compelled Pedro I’s father to return to Portugal in April 1821, leaving him to rule Brazil as regent.
He had to deal with threats from revolutionaries and insubordination by Portuguese troops, all of which he subdued.
The Portuguese government’s threat to revoke the political autonomy that Brazil had enjoyed since 1808 was met with widespread discontent in Brazil.
Pedro I chose the Brazilian side and declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal on 7 September 1822.
On 12 October, he was acclaimed Brazilian Emperor and by March 1824 had defeated all armies loyal to Portugal.
A few months later, Pedro I crushed the short-lived Confederation of the Equator, a failed secession attempt by provincial rebels in Brazil’s northeast.
A secessionist rebellion in the southern province of Cisplatina in early 1825, and the subsequent attempt by the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata to annex it, led the Empire into the Cisplatine War.
In March 1826, Pedro I briefly became king of Portugal before abdicating in favor of his eldest daughter, Dona Maria II (1819 – 1853).
The situation worsened in 1828 when the war in the south resulted in Brazil’s loss of Cisplatina.
During the same year in Lisbon, Maria II’s throne was usurped by Prince Dom Miguel (1802 – 1866), Pedro I’s younger brother.
The Emperor’s concurrent and scandalous sexual affair with a female courtier tarnished his reputation.
Other difficulties arose in the Brazilian parliament, where a struggle over whether the government would be chosen by the monarch or by the legislature dominated political debates from 1826 to 1831.
Unable to deal with problems in both Brazil and Portugal simultaneously, on 7 April 1831 Pedro I abdicated in favor of his son Dom Pedro II, and sailed for Europe.
Pedro I invaded Portugal at the head of an army in July 1832.
Faced at first with what seemed a national civil war, he soon became involved in a wider conflict that enveloped the Iberian Peninsula in a struggle between proponents of liberalism and those seeking a return to absolutism.
Pedro I died of tuberculosis on 24 September 1834, just a few months after he and the liberals had emerged victorious.
He was hailed by both contemporaries and posterity as a key figure who helped spread the liberal ideals that allowed Brazil and Portugal to move from absolutist regimes to representative forms of government.
Above. Monument to the Independence of Brazil where Pedro I and his two wives are buried
I am told, by the sheer fact that a statue stands here to honour him, that we should regard Pedro as a hero, but I find myself wondering….
How much blood was spilled to realize his goals?
At the head of the Avenida dos Aliados stands another statue of another man we are meant to honour and this one is of less difficulty.
João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida Garrett, 1st Viscount of Almeida Garrett (1799 – 1854) was a Portuguese poet, orator, playwright, novelist, journalist, politician and a peer of the realm.
A major promoter of theatre in Portugal he is considered the greatest figure of Portuguese Romanticism and a true revolutionary and humanist.
He proposed the construction of the Dona Maria II National Theatre and the creation of the Conservatory of Dramatic Art.
Garrett was born in Porto, the son of António Bernardo da Silva Garrett (1739–1834), a fidalgo of the Royal Household and Knight of the Order of Christ, and his wife (they were married in 1796) Ana Augusta de Almeida Leitão (b. 1770), the daughter of an Irish father born in exile in France and an Italian mother born in Spain.
At an early age, Garrett changed his name to João Baptista da Silva Leitão, adding a name from his godfather and altering the order of his surnames.
In 1809, his family fled the second French invasion carried out by Soult’s troops, seeking refuge in Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira Island, Azores.
While in the Azores, Garrett was taught by his uncle, Dom Frei Alexandre da Sagrada Família (1737 – 1818), the Bishop of Angra.
In childhood, his mulatto Brazilian nanny Rosa de Lima taught him some traditional stories that later influenced his work.
In 1818, Garrett moved to Coimbra to study at the University law school.
In 1818, he published O Retrato de Vénus, a work for which was soon to be prosecuted, as it was considered “materialist, atheist and immoral“.
It was during this period that he adopted his pen name Almeida Garrett, seen as more aristocratic.
Although Garrett did not take active part in the Liberal Revolution that broke out in Porto in 1820, he contributed with two patriotic verses, the Hymno Constitucional and the Hymno Patriótico, which his friends copied and distributed in the streets of Porto.
After the “Vilafrancada“, a reactionary coup d’état led by the Infante Dom Miguel in 1823, he was forced to seek exile in England.
Above: Prince Miguel saluting soldiers on arrival at Vila Franca
Garrett had just married the beautiful Luísa Cândida Midosi who was only 12 or 13 years old at the time and was the sister of his friend Luís Frederico Midosi.
While in England, in Edgbaston, Warwickshire, he began his association with Romanticism, being subject to the first-hand influences of William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) and Walter Scott (1771 – 1832), as well as to that of Gothic aesthetics.
Above: House on Farquhar Road, typical of the Edgbaston area, demonstrating the affluence
In the beginning of 1825, Garrett left for France where he wrote Camões (1825) and Dona Branca (1826), poems that are usually considered the first Romantic works in Portuguese literature.
In 1826, he returned to Portugal, where he settled for two years and founded the newspapers O Portuguez and O Chronista.
In 1828, under the rule of King Miguel of Portugal, he was again forced to settle in England, publishing Adozinda and performing his tragedy Catão at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth.
Together with Alexandre Herculano (1810 – 1877) and Joaquim António de Aguiar (1792 – 1884), Garrett took part in the Landing of Mindelo, carried out during the Liberal Wars (1828 – 1834).
Above: Landing of the liberal forces in Porto on 8 July 1832
When a constitutional monarchy was established, he briefly served as its Consul General to Brussels.
Upon his return, he was acclaimed as one of the major orators of Liberalism, and took the initiative in the creation of a new Portuguese theatre (during the period, he wrote his historical plays Gil Vicente, Dona Filipa de Vilhena, andO Alfageme de Santarém).
In 1843, Garrett published Romanceiro e Cancioneiro Geral, a collection of folklore.
Two years later, he wrote the first volume of his historical novel O Arco de Santana (fully published in 1850, it took inspiration from Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame).
O Arco de Santana signified a change in Garrett’s style, leading to a more complex and subjective prose with which he experimented at length in Viagens na Minha Terra (Travels in My Homeland, 1846).
His innovative manner was also felt in his poem collections Flores sem Fruto (Flowers without Fruit, 1844) and Folhas Caídas (Fallen Leaves, 1853).
Nobled by Dona Maria II of Portugal in 1852 with the title of 1st Viscount of Almeida Garrett, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs for only a few days in the same year (in the cabinet of the Duke of Saldanha).
Almeida Garrett ended his relationship with Luísa Midosi and divorced in 1835 to join 17-year-old Adelaide Deville Pastor in 1836.
She was to remain his partner until her early death in 1839, leaving a daughter named Maria Adelaide, whose early life tragedy and illegitimacy inspired her father to write the play Frei Luís de Sousa.
Later in his life he became the lover of Rosa de Montúfar y Infante, whom he celebrated at his last and probably best poetry book Folhas Caídas.
Garrett died of cancer in Lisbon at 6:30 in the afternoon of 9 December 1854.
He was buried at the Cemetery of Prazeres and, on 3 May 1903, his remains were transferred to the national pantheon in Lisbon’s Jerónimos Monastery.
I find myself more forgiving of those that write over those that rule.
Behind Garrett stands Porto’s city hall, the Câmara Municipal.
(The metropolitan area is governed by the Junta Metropolitana do Porto (JMP), headquartered in Avenida dos Aliados, in downtown Porto under the presidency of Hermínio Loureiro, also the mayor of Oliveira de Azeméis municipality, since the Municipal Elections held in 2013, when he succeeded Rui Rio, mayor of Porto.
The Assembleia Metropolitana do Porto (Porto Metropolitan Assembly) is composed of 43 MPs, the PSD (Social Democratic Party) party has 20 seats, the PS (Socialist Party) 16, the CDS (the People’s Party) three, CDU (Unitarian Democratic Coalition) three, and the BE (Left Bloc), one.
Although the government has halted the intention of creating new metropolitan areas and urban communities, it is keen to ensure greater autonomy to Porto and Lisbon metropolitan areas.
Greater Porto is the second largest metropolitan area of Portugal, with about 1.7 million people.
It groups the larger Porto Urban Area, the second largest in the country, assembled by the municipalities of Porto, Matosinhos, Vila Nova de Gaia, Gondomar, Valongo and Maia.
A smaller urban area of Póvoa de Varzim and Vila do Conde, which ranks as the six largest in continental Portugal.
The new regional spatial planning program (PROT-Norte) recognizes both urban areas and engages in their development.
There are some intentions to merge the municipalities of Porto with Gaia and Matosinhos into a single and greater municipality, and there is an ongoing civil requisition for that objective.
The government also started to discuss the merging of some municipalities due to conurbations, but gave up.
There is a similar idea for the conurbation of Póvoa de Varzim and Vila do Conde, and both municipalities have decided to work as if both are the same city, cooperating in health, education, transports and other areas.
Several municipalities of the metropolitan area also moved closer, thus becoming a cohesive group.
The urban-metropolitan agglomeration known as the Northwestern Urban-Metropolitan Agglomeration or Porto Metropolitan Arch is a regional urban system of polycentric nature that stretches far beyond the metropolitan borders, and includes circa 3 million people, which takes in other main urban areas such as Braga and Guimarães, the 3rd and 8th largest cities (as defined by urban areas) of Portugal.
One should also note that the entire region of Northwestern Portugal is, in fact, a single agglomeration, linking Porto and Braga to Vigo in Galicia, Spain.)
“I went up towards the Town Hall.
The sky rumbled and opened onto Porto, unleashing laments that included steady rainfall.
One could barely distinguish the white pedestrian crossings under the downpour that shook my poor umbrella, already twisted by other storms.
As soon as I reached the door of Guarany Café, I walked in on an impulse, leaving trails of water wherever I passed.
Thus I remained for a few moments, drenched and momentarily wretched.
As if by magic a cup of hot coffee eased my discomfort.
I watched the storm and the dark morning.
I remembered the story a friend had told me about an Englishman (John Whitehead: 1726 – 1802) who had lived at Porto (1756 – 1802) in the 18th century.
He is believed to have been responsible for supervising and executing several urban works in the city, but people also considered that he had made a pact with the devil, for he was able to attract the grey lightning-bearing clouds to his gardens.
No doubt, today would have been a perfect day for his experiments with the lightning conductor, which certainly involved science rather than witchcraft.
What would he think of this avenue he never knew?
This avenue which welcomes the rain and the sun with the same generosity?
All these cars, which pass by taking people to their destinations, or these buses which carry tourists to the Palácio da Bolsa, to the Church of Sao Francisco and to the Torre dos Clérigos?
All these imposing buildings which stretch granitically upwards to the sky?
This set paving?
Would he call us witches?
Eccentrics?
I looked at my watch and I let out a scream that crashed against its face.
I was late!
Outside, the sky calmed its fury, making the pedestrian crossings visible….”
(Susana Fonseca)
It seems on every street corner, the defeated, but undaunted, People-Animals-Nature Party (one sole MP) has young people standing with clipboard petitions that seek support to continue their battle against bullfighting, a bid beaten in Parliament on 6 July.
From the Câmara to the Mercado to the Torre dos Clérigos to the Café Majestic, the morning and much of the afternoon pass quickly.
West of the Torre we find ourselves threading our way between the faculty Buildings of the Universidade do Porto.
Below the main University building spreads the Jardim da Cordoaria (garden of the ropemakers), also known as the Jardim de Joao Chagas, sheltering impromptu card and chess schools beneath giant plane trees.
It is a small, historic urban park with a serene vibe featuring a variety of trees, plants & sculptures.
The garden was founded by the Viscount of Vilar d’Allen in 1865 and was designed by the German landscaper Émile David (1839 – 1873).
In 1941, a cyclone altered the appearance of this romantic garden.
In preparation for the celebrations of Porto as the 2001 European Capital of Culture, the garden was the target of an intervention by the architect Camilo Cortesao.
His work was highly contested by some celebrities and associations in Porto, because it implied a major change in the space in question.
In the garden space are the sculptures:
Rapto de Ganimedes (the rapture of Ganimedes)(1898) by Fernandes de Sá (1874 – 1959)
Flora (1904) by Antonio Teixeria Lopes (1866 – 1942)
Ramalho Ortigao (1909) by Leopoldo Almeida (1898 – 1975)
Antonio Nobre (1926) by Tómas Costa
Thirteen to laugh at each other (2001) by Juan Munoz (1953 – 2001)
The garden’s namesake João Pinheiro Chagas (1863 – 1925) was a Portuguese journalist and politician.
He was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, of Portuguese parents who soon moved back to Portugal.
He was an editor at the newspapers O Primeiro de Janeiro, Correio do Norte, O Tempo and O Dia.
After becoming a republican, he also founded the República Portuguesa and was the director of O País(1898).
The monarchist government’s reaction to the British Ultimatum of January 1890 (that forced Portugal to renounce its extravagant claims to the territories that lay between Portuguese Angola and Portuguese Mozambique), made him a fierce republican and one of Portugal’s most fervent anti-monarchy journalists and propagandists.
After the proclamation of the republic, on 5 October 1910, he was appointed minister in Paris, and, the following year, after the end of the term of the provisional government, he was chosen to lead the first constitutional government of the Portuguese First Republic.
It was in power for only two months, from 4 September to 13 November 1911.
This was a sad prelude to the political instability of the First Republic.
On 17 May 1915, he was again appointed President of the Ministry (Prime Minister), but he didn’t take office.
He remained a diplomat until his retirement in 1923.
He died in Estoril, aged 60.
Above: Joao Chagas
Two of the garden’s statues are of Portuguese literature, the writer Ortigao and the poet Nobre….
If there is one art form the Portuguese are proud of, it is literature.
You cannot be Portuguese unless you have read The Lusiads, Luis de Camoes‘ (1524 – 1580) epic poem narrating Vasco da Gama’s sea voyage to India, complete with tales of sea monsters.
Portugal’s Jane Austin is Eca de Queirós (1845 – 1900), whose studied portraits of life in 19th century Lisbon are every bit as witty.
Then came Fernando Pessoa, despite a multiple personality disorder, who with his musings on the meaning of life is remembered as a Modernist genius.
José Saramago (1922 – 2010) carried the torch of experimentalism, writing whole books without punctuation, and one, Blindness, without naming a single character.
The current golden boy of Portuguese literature is José Luís Peixoto who writes fractured mosaics of books that are like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.
Portugal’s greatest writers are glorified wherever you go in the country.
Statues commemorate their places of birth and death.
Even the town of Barcelos’ football team is named after a writer, Gil Vicente (1465 – 1536).
The garden’s Ramalho Ortigão (1836 – 1915) spent his early years with his maternal grandmother in Porto.
He studied law in the University of Coimbra, but he did not complete his studies.
After returning to his home town, he taught French at a college run by his father.
Among his students was Eça de Queiros.
In 1862 he dedicated himself to journalism and became a literary critic at the Diário do Porto and contributed to several literary magazines.
At this period, romanticism was the dominant trend in Portuguese literature, led by several major writers, including Camilo Castelo Branco (1825 – 1890) and António Augusto Soares de Passos (1826 – 1860), who influenced Ortigão.
Above: Camilo Castelo Branco
Above: António Augusto Soares de Passos
In the 1870s, a group of students from Coimbra began to promote new ideas in a reaction against romanticism.
This group, eventually called the 70s Generation, was to have a major influence on Portuguese literature.
As a supporter of romanticism, Ortigão became involved in a struggle against them and even fought a duel with Antero de Quental (1842 – 1891).
Above: Antero de Quental
In spite of this early opposition, Ortigão afterwards became friendly with some members of the group.
It was at this period that he wrote The Mystery of the Sintra Road and created the satirical journal As Farpas, both in collaboration with Eça de Queiros.
When Queiros became a diplomat, initially in Cuba, Ortigão continued As Farpasalone.
Ortigão also worked as a translator.
In 1874 he produced a Portuguese translation of the English satirical novel Ginx’s Baby by Edward Jenkins (1838 – 1910).
Above: “Ginx’s Baby” Jenkins as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, August 1878
Ramalho Ortigão died in Lisbon on 27 September 1915.
The second literary person honoured by a statue in the garden, António Nobre (1867 – 1900) was a member of a wealthy family.
He was born in Porto, and spent his childhood in Trás-os-Montes and in Póvoa de Varzim.
Above: Images of modern Póvoa de Varzim
He studied law unsuccessfully at the University of Coimbra from 1888 to 1890 when he dropped out.
As a student in Coimbra, and according to his own words, he only felt at ease in his “tower” (referring to the Torre de Anto – Anto Tower, in upper Coimbra, where he lived) during the “sinister period” he spent studying law at the University of Coimbra.
An unknown fiancée more fictitious than concrete, his friend Alberto de Oliveira, and a brief intervention in the literary life, through some magazines, did not conciliate him with the academic city of Coimbra where this predestined poet flunked twice.
He went to Paris where he earned a degree in political science at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques.
There, he came in contact with the French coeval poetry, where he met Paul Verlaine (1844 – 1896) and Jean Moréas (1856 – 1910), among others.
Above: Paul Verlaine
Above: Jean Moréas
He also met the famous Portuguese writer Eça de Queiros in Paris, who was a Portuguese diplomat in the city.
It was from 1890 to 1895, that Nobre studied political science in Paris, where he was influenced by the French Symbolist poets and it was there that he wrote the greater part of the only book he published.
The Paris exile, sad by his own words (poor Lusitanian, the wretched, lost in the crowd that does not know him), was not a time for happiness.
The aristocratic shutting up caused nausea or indifference.
Frustrated and always marginal experiences made him bitter.
He was far from the sweat and from all sorts of fraternity, from desire and hate, and from the wailing of the breed, a childlike, lost, instinctive and princely life, a souvenir of the sweet old landscape that memory seems to encourage.
In his tender but never rhetorical mourning Nobre manifests himself and mourns over himself as a doomed poet, with a hard soul and a maiden’s heart, which carried the sponge of gall in former processions.
His verse marked a departure from objective realism and social commitment to subjective lyricism and an aesthetic point of view, walking more towards symbolism – one of the various modernist literary currents.
The lack of means, aggravated by his father’s death, made him morbidly reject the present and the future, following a pessimistic romantic attitude that led him to denounce his tedium.
However excessive, this is a controlled attitude, due to a clear aesthetic mind and a real sense of ridicule.
He learned the colloquial tone from Almeida Garrett and Júlio Dinis (1839 – 1871), and also from Jules Laforgue (1860 – 1887), but he exceeded them all in the peculiar compromise between irony and a refined puerility, a fountain of happiness because it represents a return to his happiest of times — a kingdom of his own from where he resuscitates characters and enchanted places, manipulating, as a virtuoso of nostalgia, the picturesque of popular festivals and of fishermen, the simple magic of toponyms and the language of the people.
Above: Jules Laforgue
In his prescience of pain, in his spiritual anticipation of disease and of agony, in his taste for sadness, in his unmeasured pride of isolation, António (from Torre de Anto, at the centre of old Coimbra where the poet lived an enchanted life, everywhere writing his mythical and literary name: Anto) keeps an artist’s composure, always expressing the cult of the aesthetic life and of the elegant personality.
In his courtship of death (to whose imminent threat he would later answer with dignity), he takes his spiritual dandyism to extremes, like in the “Balada do Caixão” (The Coffin Ballad).
His poetry translates the lack of a total maturation, an adolescent “angelism” present in fabulous confirmations:
He is “the moon”, “the saint”, “the snake”, “the sorcerer”, “the afflicted”, “the inspired”, “the unprecedented”, “the medium”, “the bizarre”, “the fool”, “the nauseated”, “the tortured”, “D. Enguiço”, “a supernatural poet.”
Above: The Divine Comedy, Paradise, illustration by Gustave Doré
Narcissus in permanent soliloquy, whether he writes nostalgic verses to Manuel or speaks to his own pipe….
Above: “La Trahison des Images” (“The Treachery of Images”) (1928-9) or “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”) by René Magritte, 1898-1967.
António Nobre (A. N.) makes poetry out of the real.
He covers what is prosaic with a soft mantle of legend (“My neighbour is a carpenter/he is a second-hand trader of Mrs. Death”) and creates, with a rare balance between intuition and critique, his familiar “fantastic” (“When the Moon, a beautiful milkmaid / goes deliver milk at the houses of Infinity”).
His catholic imaginary world is the same as in a fairy tale, a crib of simple words, but with an imaginative audacity in the scheming of those words that separate him from the consecrated lyrical language.
His power of “invention” comes forth in the inspired, yet conscious, use of the verbal material (“Moons of Summer! Black moons of velvet!” or “The Abbey of my past”).
Between the Garrettian and the symbolic aesthetic, the most personal and revealing feature of his vocabulary is naturally — even for his longing for the childhood aesthetical retrieval – the diminutive.
A man of sensibility rather than of reflection, he took from French symbolism, whose mystery and deep sense he could never penetrate, the repelling of oratory and of formal procedures, original imagery (“Trás-os-Montes of water”, “slaughter house of the planets”), the cult of synaesthesia, rhythmic freedom and musical research.
Above: In the slaughterhouse, Lovis Corinth, 1893
A. N. had a very thick ear.
All his poetry is rigorously written to be heard, full of parallelisms, melodic repetitions, and onomatopoeias, and is extremely malleable.
Its syllabic division depends on the rhythm that obeys feeling.
However, the images or the words of his sentences rarely have the precious touch of symbolic jewelry.
Evidently, in “Poentes de França”, the planets drink in silver chalices in the “tavern of sunset”.
However, his transfiguration of reality almost always obeys not a purpose of sumptuous embellishment, like in Eugénio de Castro, but an essentially affectionate eager desire of an intimism of things (“the skinny and hunchbacked poplars”).
António Nobre died of tuberculosis in Foz do Douro, Porto, on 18 March 1900, after trying to recover from the disease in Switzerland, Madeira and New York City.
Other than Só (Paris, 1892), two other posthumous works were published: Despedidas (1st edition, 1902), with a fragment from O Desejado, and Primeiros Versos (1st edition, 1921).
António Nobre’s correspondence is compiled in several volumes:
Cartas Inéditas a A.N., with an introduction and notes by A. Casais Monteiro
Cartas e Bilhetes-Postais a Justino de Montalvão with a foreword and notes by Alberto de Serpa, Porto, 1956
Correspondência, with an introduction and notes by Guilherme de Castilho, Lisbon, 1967 (a compilation of 244 letters, 56 of which were unpublished).
“When he (Nobre) was born, we all were born.
The sadness that each one of us brings with him, even in the sense of his joy, still is him, and his life, never perfectly real and certainly not lived, is, after all, the summary of the life we live – fatherless and motherless, lost from God, in the middle of the forest, and weeping, weeping uselessly, with no other consolation than this, childish, knowing that it is uselessly weeping.”
Fernando Pessoa, February 1915
The artist that made Nobre’s garden statue has been called “the most significant of the first generation of artists to achieve maturity in post-Franco Spain, and one of the most complex and individual artists working today.”
Juan Muñoz (1953– 2001) was a Spanish sculptor, working primarily in paper maché, resin and bronze.
He was also interested in the auditory arts and created compositions for the radio.
He was a self-described “storyteller“.
In 2000, Muñoz was awarded Spain’s major Premio Nacional de Bellas Artes in recognition of his work.
He died shortly after, in 2001.
His works are displayed in such galleries as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum New York, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tate Modern in London.
In one unpublished radio program (Third Ear, 1992), Juan Muñoz proposed that there are two things which are impossible to represent:
The present and death.
The only way to arrive at them was by their absence.
Above: Created by Juan Munoz in 1999, this work celebrates the Tyne Salmon. The 2008 Tyne Bluetooth Salmon Trail Cubes are seen with the 22 bronze life-size figures that command a view of South Shields Harbour and the Tyne Piers.
The ropemakers’ garden, this garden in memory of Joao Chagas, is close to the Torre dos Clérigos, the General Hospital of Santo António and the Portuguese Centre of Photography.
The Portuguese Centre of Photography was founded in 1997.
The first exhibitions were held in December of that same year on the ground floor of the building until 2000.
The building was temporarily closed for renovation and reopened in 2001.
Following the advice of the working group established by the Minister Manuel Maria Carrilho, in 1996, the then Ministry of Culture created the Portuguese Centre of Photography.
The photographic culture began then to revive by the appearance of photography schools, festivals and galleries attracting photographers that were exiled during the Salazar regime, publishing internationally relevant work.
The exhibition rooms of the ground floor were used that year, starting in December, but the building would only be occupied entirely by the CPF in 2001.
I do not know why the Centre in 2018 (6 July – 4 November) decided to focus on her photographs, but I do know why my wife needed to visit the Centre:
My wife has always been a huge fan of Mexican artiste Frida Kahlo.
The attraction for me, besides keeping my significant other happy, is Kahlo’s ability to invent herself.
Frida Kahlo (née Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón) (1907 – 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico.
Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society.
Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy.
In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist.
Born to a German father and a mestiza mother, Kahlo spent most of her childhood and adult life at La Casa Azul, her family home in Coyoacán—now publicly accessible as the Frida Kahlo Museum.
Although she was disabled by polio as a child, Kahlo had been a promising student headed for medical school until she suffered a bus accident at the age of eighteen, which caused her lifelong pain and medical problems.
During her recovery she returned to her childhood hobby of art with the idea of becoming an artist.
Kahlo’s interests in politics and art led her to join the Mexican Communist Party in 1927, through which she met fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886 – 1957).
The couple married in 1929, and spent the late 1920s and early 1930s travelling in Mexico and the United States together.
During this time, she developed her artistic style, drawing her main inspiration from Mexican folk culture, and painted mostly small self-portraits which mixed elements from pre-Columbian and Catholic beliefs.
Her paintings raised the interest of Surrealist artist André Breton, who arranged for Kahlo’s first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938.
Above: André Breton (1896 – 1966)
The exhibition was a success and was followed by another in Paris in 1939.
While the French exhibition was less successful, the Louvre (pictured above) purchased a painting from Kahlo, The Frame, making her the first Mexican artist to be featured in their collection.
Throughout the 1940s, Kahlo participated in exhibitions in Mexico and the United States and worked as an art teacher.
She taught at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda” and was a founding member of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana.
Kahlo’s always-fragile health began to decline in the same decade.
She had her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, shortly before her death in 1954 at the age of 47.
Above: Kahlo’s death mask on her bed in La Casa Azul
Kahlo’s work as an artist remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists.
By the early 1990s, she had become not only a recognized figure in art history, but also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the feminism movement and the LGBTQ+ movement.
Kahlo’s work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.
Above: Frieda and Diego Rivera by Frieda Khalo (1931)
Frida is a 2002 American biographical drama film, directed by Julie Taymor, which depicts the professional and private life of the surrealist Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.
(In an interview, Taynor said this about Kahlo:
“She painted what she painted because she had to, because she was passionate about it.
She didn’t care at all if people bought her paintings.
As she said, she painted her reality.“)
Above: Julie Taymor
Frida begins just before the traumatic accident Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) suffered at the age of 18 when the wooden-bodied bus she was riding in collided with a streetcar.
She is impaled by a metal pole and the injuries she sustains plague her for the rest of her life.
To help her through convalescence, her father brings her a canvas upon which to start painting.
Throughout the film, a scene starts as a painting, then slowly dissolves into a live action scene with actors.
Frida also details the artist’s dysfunctional relationship with the muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina).
When Rivera proposes to Kahlo, she tells him she expects from him loyalty if not fidelity.
Diego’s appraisal of her painting ability is one of the reasons that she continues to paint.
Throughout the marriage, Rivera has affairs with a wide array of women, while the bisexual Kahlo takes on male and female lovers, including in one case having an affair with the same woman as Rivera.
The two travel to New York City so that he may paint the mural Man at the Crossroads at the Rockefeller Center.
While in the United States, Kahlo suffers a miscarriage, and her mother dies in Mexico.
Rivera refuses to compromise his communist vision of the work to the needs of the patron, Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton).
As a result, the mural is destroyed.
The pair return to Mexico, with Rivera the more reluctant of the two.
Kahlo’s sister Cristina (Mia Maestro) moves in with the two at their San Ángel studio home to work as Rivera’s assistant.
Soon afterward, Kahlo discovers that Rivera and Cristina are having an affair.
She leaves him and subsequently sinks into alcoholism.
The couple reunite when he asks her to welcome and house Leon Trotsky(Geoffrey Rush), who has been granted political asylum in Mexico.
She and Trotsky begin an affair, which forces the married Trotsky to leave the safety of his Coyoacán home.
Kahlo leaves for Paris after Diego realizes she was unfaithful to him with Trotsky.
Although Rivera had little problem with Kahlo’s other affairs, Trotsky was too important to Rivera to be intimately involved with his wife.
When she returns to Mexico, he asks for a divorce.
Soon afterwards, Trotsky is murdered in Mexico City.
Rivera is temporarily a suspect and Kahlo is incarcerated in his place when he is not found.
Rivera helps get her released.
Kahlo has her toes removed when they become gangrenous.
Rivera asks her to remarry him and she agrees.
Her health continues to worsen, including the amputation of a leg, and she ultimately dies after finally having a solo exhibition of her paintings in Mexico.
Being a photography museum, the focus of the Kahlo exhibition was not so much upon her paintings as it was on photos she took or were taken of her.
(Later, across the Douro River, we would stumble across a small gallery where her art was displayed and duplicated.)
And, though Kahlo wasn’t Portuguese and possibly never set foot on Portuguese soil, her life story somehow fits into our Porto experience seamlessly.
Art is open to individual perception, but words offer individual definition in far starker forms.
Some of what Kahlo wrote in preserved letters and diaries strikes me closer to the core of who she was far more powerfully than the visual impact of her vibrant paintings or expressive photographs.
“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t.
I never painted dreams.
I painted my own reality.”
“I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.”
“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”
“His (Diego Rivera’s) supposed mythomania is in direct relation to his tremendous imagination.
That is to say, he is as much of a liar as the poets or as the children who have not yet been turned into idiots by school or mothers.
I have heard him tell all kinds of lies: from the most innocent, to the most complicated stories about people whom his imagination combined in a fantastic situation or actions, always with a great sense of humour and a marvelous critical sense.
But I have never heard him say a single stupid thing or banal lie.
Lying, or playing at lying, he unmasks many people.
He learns the interior mechanism of others who are much more ingenuously liars than he.
And the most curious thing about the supposed lies of Diego is that in the long and short of it, those who are involved in the imaginary combination become angry, not because of the lie, but because of the truth contained in the lie that always comes to the surface.”
The overall message that this day taught me is the solitude of individuality.
We may be within the crowd of a famous bookstore (Livraria Lello) or walking together in the intimacy of a married couple’s strolling through a park.
And yet each of us is alone.
Above: René and Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war
We live alone and we die alone, for we are prisoners within our bodies and exiles within our minds.
Above: Thomas Wolfe (1900 – 1938) who in an often quoted passage stated: “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”
I may know my wife better than any other person in my life, and yet is there any man who can truly say that a woman cannot still continually surprise him?
My wife is convinced to her core that she knows exactly who I am, but how can she, when I am continually discovering myself as I evolve within the passages of life and time?
Perception is the expression of that solitude of individuality.
The Porto I see and feel is a universe removed from the Porto that my wife sees and feels.
Though we share the same experience, we see and feel that experience through the prism of our own individual selves.
As we wind our way through some of Porto’s oldest and most atmospheric streets, ascending from the Baixa (lower town) to the Sé (cathedral) that looms high above the city like a guardian god, then down to the Ribiera (riverside) where we are magnetically drawn to the historic heart of the harbour hub….
We are together, hand-in-hand.
We are apart, mind from mind, emotions unspoken as words fail miserably to adequately express the thoughts that flood our souls unbidden.
We descend with the setting sun, down to the chaos of hotch-potch houses that breathe in the vibrancy of cafés and restaurants replete with tired tourists and working waiters, bustling buskers and enthusiastic entertainers.
We dine beside the river on a shore between bridges.
We share a bottle of port wine, for this is what is done in the birthplace of this beverage.
The waiter defines what we are drinking as one would explain electricity to an infant.
Words like ruby and reserve, LBV and colheita fill the air and cross our consciousness, all to no avail.
We are no gourmets, no vintners nor clever connaisseurs.
We have seen so much and learned so much and felt so much, in this our first full day in Porto, and yet have understood so little.
Husband and wife share a meal and a bottle, unable or unwilling to share souls.
How can she politely express her annoyance with some of her husband’s boorish bumbling behaviours without causing a beastly reaction by expressing this?
How can I lovingly criticize her impatience while simultaneously admiring her imagination in the usurped planning of our days, without a contradiction that confuses more than it cooperates?
We are together.
We are apart.
How very human.
How ironic it is that the individuality of Each binds the Every together.
We are united by our separateness.
The Douro defines the night.
A river shared by two shores, binding and blessing while dividing and differentiating.
The river rushes beside us and through us.
There is wisdom in wine and knowledge at night.
(Update: Sunday 5 July 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
Above: Corona Virus cases in Portugal (the darker the area, the more cases therein)
On 2 March 2020, the virus was confirmed to have reached Portugal, when it was reported that two men, a 60 year-old doctor who travelled to the north of Italy on vacation and a 33 year-old man working in Spain, tested positive for COVID-19.
March 12: The Portuguese government declared the highest level of alert because of COVID-19 and said it would be maintained until 9 April.
Portugal entered a mitigation phase as community transmission was detected.
Above: São Bento Palace, Lisbon, is the seat of the Portuguese Legislature.
March 18: The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, declared the entirety of the Portuguese territory in a State of Emergency for the following 15 days, with the possibility of renewal, the first since the Carnation Revolution in 1974.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa declares that a national state of emergency will take effect from the next day, with Finance Minister Mário Centeno unveiling €9.2 billion in economic assistance to households and companies.
As of this day there have been 642 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with two deaths.
March 24: The Portuguese government admitted that the country could not contain the virus any longer.
March 26: The country entered the “mitigation stage”.
The health care sites dedicated to fighting the disease started.
The Bank of Portugal estimates that the economy will contract by between 3.7% and 5.7% of GDP in 2020 in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, with unemployment rising to between 10.1% and 11.7%.
April 2: Parliament approved the extension of the State of Emergency, as requested by the President.
The State of Emergency will remain until 17 April, subject to further extensions of similar duration.
Under the new regulations, for the Easter celebrations, from 9 April (Maundy Thursday) to 13 April (Easter Monday) the Portuguese government decreed special measures in restricting people movements between municipalities with very few exceptions, closing all airports to civil transportation and increased control in the national borders.
Above: Letter from the Portuguese President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to the Speaker of the Assembly of the Republic, Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, requesting Parliament for authorisation under the terms of the Constitution, for a declaration of the state of emergency in the context of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
4 April – Government figures indicate that more than 500,000 workers are in danger of temporarily losing their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, after almost 32,000 businesses apply to the government to furlough employees.
The day also sees the total number of COVID-19 cases surpass 10,000, with 10,524 cases and 266 deaths reported.
12 April – Reuters reports that one in eight of Portugal’s 504 deaths from COVID-19 to date have occurred in care homes, with officials concerned about the spread of the corona virus among the elderly residents.
As of this day there have been 16,585 recorded cases in the country.
14 April – The International Monetary Fund forecasts an 8.0% drop in Portuguese GDP for 2020 as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, with unemployment predicted to rise to 13.9%.
The economy is forecast to recover in 2021 with unemployment falling to 8.7%.
16 April – MPs vote to further extend the national state of emergency until the beginning of May.
The vote comes amid a declining growth in infections, prompting the Health Secretary Antonio Sales to praise the “excellent behaviour and civic-mindedness of the Portuguese people“.
The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 to date stands at 18,841 with 629 deaths.
28 April – President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announces that the national state of emergency in place since 18 March will begin to be lifted from 3 May.
April 30: The Portuguese Ministers’ Council approved a plan to start releasing the country from the COVID-19 container measures and cancelling the State of Emergency.
The Automóvel Club de Portugal confirms the cancellation of the 2020 Rally de Portugal due to the COVID-19 pandemic, abandoning plans to reschedule the event’s planned 21–24 May date to October.
1 May – The Directorate-General of Health confirms that the number of fatalities from COVID-19 in Portugal has surpassed 1,000, with eighteen deaths in the preceding 24 hours bringing the country’s total to 1,007.
As of this date there have been 25,531 recorded cases and 1,647 recoveries.
2 May – The State of Emergency was cancelled.
3 May – The national state of emergency is lifted after six weeks, with the country downgraded to the lesser state of “calamity“.
4 May – A three-phase re-opening plan for the country begins, with small retail businesses allowed to open and the Lisbon and Porto Metro systems resuming at a reduced capacity.
The use of face masks is made compulsory for those using public transport and visiting enclosed public premises such as supermarkets.
9 May – Organisers of the Vuelta a Espana announce that the two stages of the 2020 bicycle race set to take place in Portugal will not go ahead.
May 18: Portugal entered the second phase in easing restrictions.
Nurseries and the last two years of the secondary school reopened, along with restaurants, cafés, medium-sized street stores and some museums, all with mandatory usage of mask and distance rules.
20 May – Data from the Institute for Employment and Vocational Training reveals that the number of people registering as unemployed across the country increased by 48,500 in April, a rise of 22% compared to April 2019.
The total number of people out of work now stands at approximately 392,000.
1 June – The government reveals a four-fold increase to €108 million to the total funds made available to companies shifting production towards tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Above: Portuguese €1.00 coin
As of this date there have been 32,700 cases and 1,424 deaths from COVID-19 recorded in the country.
3 June– The Primeira Liga resumes competition with all remaining matches of the 2019–20 season set to take place without spectators.
6 June – Thousands attend anti-racism protests in Lisbon and Porto in response to the death of George Floyd in the United States on 25 May.
As of 6 June 2020, there have been:
43,156 confirmed Covid-19 cases
20,475 active cases
386,926 suspected cases
6,500 critical cases
39,500 hospitalized cases
28,424 recovered cases
1,598 deaths
9 June – Finance Minister Mario Centeno announces his resignation from the government for reasons undisclosed.
Joao Leao, the current Budget Minister, is confirmed by Prime Minister António Costa as Centeno’s replacement beginning on 15 June.
The Assembly officially recognises diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885 – 1954), who in his capacity as consul to France in June 1940 issued thousands of visas to Jewish refugees in Bordeaux, allowing them to escape the advancing German army by crossing south into neutral Spain.
In recognition of his actions, a monument dedicated to him within the National Pantheon is also planned.
Above: Aristides de Sousa Mendes
10 June – The European Commission approves a €1.2 billion loan from the government to TAP Air, the nation’s flag carrier airline, whose debt at the end of 2019 amounted to €800 million.
25 June – A rise in the recorded number of cases of COVID-19 in Lisbon prompts the government to re-impose certain restrictions in 19 of the capital’s parishes to stem transmissions.
From 1 July, measures such as restrictions on travel, an 8 pm curfew for businesses, and limiting the size of social gatherings to five people will be enforced.
1 July – After being shut for more than three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Spanish-Portuguese border is formally re-opened in a ceremony attended by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Prime Minister António Costa, King Felipe VI, and the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.)
I find myself wondering if I will ever return to Portugal, ever return to Porto.
Perhaps I don’t need to, for in the attempt to capture what they mean to me, within me they live.
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then I contradict myself.
I am large.
I contain multitudes.” (Walt Whitman)
Sources: Wikipedia / Google/ Susana Fonseca, Porto and Northern Portugal: Journeys and Stories / Matthew Hancock and Amanda Tomlin, Pocket Rough Guide Porto / Lonely Planet Portugal / Rough Guide Portugal/ Jürgen Strohmeyer, Nordportugal (Müller Verlag) / Matthew Hancock, Xenophobe’s Guide to the Portuguese / Fernando Pessoa, Message / Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Portugal’s most famous musical form, fado (Portuguese for “fate“) is urban music, of night and bars, of a yearning that is beautiful and melancholic, accompanied by guitarra and viola.
Above: Fado, José Malhoa (1910)
To the south, fado is feminine.
But in the north, fado is a man’s music, full of lusty lyrics and soaring vocals, and usually the most memorable fado of all is performed by the least advertised, the most anonymous, performer of all, where one’s identity is overwhelmed by one’s soul.
Fado is to the Portuguese soul as rich, deep and satisfying as a cup of Portuguese coffee or a glass of Porto port.
Fado is played on the radio, on buses, in taxis, cafés and restaurants, on TV and drifting down darkened streets from shadowy clubs.
Fado is fate and how fate has foiled the lover in love and in life.
Fado is the homeland that is missed or the longing for a lover that has left.
To sing fado, the singer must become fadista with an attitude that cries out:
“I am a pessimist, a nihilist and everything that fado demands from me is me.”
It is the mourning of a devil cast out of heaven, a broken heart beyond repair, a spirit beyond redemption….
What the hell was she thinking?
This is a question that American Catholic theologians are asking J.K. Rowling the creator of the Harry Potter franchise….
Above: Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington DC – the largest enclosed church building in the world
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series of books by J. K. Rowling are based on claims that the novels contain occult or Satanic subtexts.
A number of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians have argued against the series, as have some Shia and Sunni Muslims.
Above: The Kaaba, Mecca, Saudi Arabia – the Muslim destination of pilgrimage
Supporters of the series have said that the magic in Harry Potter bears little resemblance to occultism, being more in the vein of fairy tales such as Cinderella and Snow White, or to the works of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, both of whom are known for writing fantasy novels with Christian subtexts.
Far from promoting a particular religion, some argue, the Harry Potter novels go out of their way to avoid discussing religion at all.
However, the author of the series, J. K. Rowling, describes herself as a practising Christian, and many have noted the Christian references which she includes in the final novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
In the United States, calls for the books to be banned from schools have led to legal challenges often on the grounds that witchcraft is a government-recognised religion and that to allow the books to be held in public schools violates the separation of church and state.
The Orthodox church of Bulgaria and a diocese of the Orthodox Church of Greece have also campaigned against the series, and some Catholic writers and officials have voiced a critical stance.
Above: Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George, Istanbul (Constantinople)
The books have been banned from all schools in the United Arab Emirates.
Above: Flag of the United Arab Emirates
Religious responses to Harry Potter have not all been negative.
Rowling notes:
“At least as much as they’ve been attacked from a theological point of view the books have been lauded and taken into pulpit, and most interesting and satisfying for me, it’s been by several different faiths.“
Above: J.K. Rowling, 2010
From The Times, 3 December 2018
The Harry Potter books gave birth to a global franchise, provided steady work to grateful British actors and created millions of new readers, convinced of the magical properties of a good book.
Above: Crowd outside a bookshop awaiting the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
They also created a generation of Americans who are more likely to believe that they are possessed by the Devil, with Catholic priests reporting that they are overwhelmed with requests to perform exorcisms.
“When I was appointed 13 years ago, I probably received maybe 100 inquiries a year.“, said Vincent Lampert, the official exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
“Now I receive about 1,700 inquiries a year.”
He thinks the Harry Potter books and films, which spurred a broad interest in magic, are partly to blame.
“Magic is the focus on the individual, rather than having to deal with God.“, he said.
It encouraged “the belief that somehow the power is within them.
Even within the world of exorcism, the premise would be that God is not a bystander.
God is the main actor.”
Priests who conduct exorcisms say occult practices and symbols can serve as doorways for a demon.
The Harry Potter books “disarmed Americans from thinking that all magic is darkness“, one unnamed exorcist recently told The Atlanticmagazine.
Above: St. Francis Borgia performing an exorcism, Goya
Adam Jortner, a historian of religion in American life at Auburn University, Alabama, said it was not the first time that members of the church had feared the influence of children’s books.
“The church had a go at C.S. Lewis for the Narnia books, a powerful allegory of Christianity itself.“, he said.
Jortner agreed that interest in the occult had grown.
“Harry Potter is responsible for mainstreaming magic.“, he said.
Exorcism had a clear history within the church and it sought to treat magic with respect.
He added:
“The Catholic church has some of the most stringent rules about exorcism in the world.
Most Catholic exorcists are required to go through this long list of things to ensure that it is not a neurological problem.”
Father Lampert said that all who sought his help were required to undergo an assessment by a medical professional, which ended most applications….
Above: St. Francis exorcising the demons of Arezzo, Giotto
When I read an article like this I am shocked to find that this sort of folly is taken seriously.
Putting aside for the moment the question of the existence of God, for which the largest defence is that God’s non-existence cannot be proven, and grasping with the notion that God possesses a team (angels) to battle another team (demons) led by His most bitter opponent (the Devil), then to further suggest that demons possess people….
This pushes rational credibility.
But then to blame the author of a series of children’s books for the rise in exorcism applications is utter poppycock in my opinion.
To play the Catholic advocate for a moment it can certainly be argued that children are gullible, easily influenced and misled.
But it insults the intelligence of our young people to suggest that they cannot discern the difference between a clever storyline and reality.
Could they believe in magic?
Sure, for there is much about existence that is difficult to explain.
But it stretches my incredulity that children, those poor deluded Muggles, would assume from a story that they too possess magical powers as the alumni and staff of Hogwarts do.
Above: Model of Hogwarts, Warner Bros. Studio, Leavesden, England
Nonetheless, let us humour these men of the cloth for a moment….
Let us imagine (if that is even possible) that Harry Potter leads to the need for exorcism.
Over the years, some religious people, particularly Christians, have decried Rowling’s books for supposedly promoting witchcraft.
Rowling identifies as a Christian.
She once said:
“I believe in God, not magic.”
Early on, she felt that if readers knew of her Christian beliefs they would be able to predict plot lines of characters in her books.
In 2007, Rowling said she was the only one in her family who went regularly to church.
She was an adherent of the Church of England.
As a student she became annoyed at the “smugness of religious people” and attended less often.
Later, she started to attend a Church of Scotland congregation at the time she was writing Harry Potter.
Her eldest daughter, Jessica, was baptised there.
Above: Logo of the Church of Scotland
In a 2006 interview with Tatler magazine, Rowling noted:
“Like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes about if my faith will return.
It’s important to me.”
Above: Graham Greene (1904 – 1991)
She has said that she has struggled with doubt, that she believes in an afterlife and that her faith plays a part in her books.
In a 2012 radio interview, she said that she was a member of the Scottish Episcopal Church, a province of the Anglican Communion.
In 2015, following the referendum on same-sex marriage in Ireland, Rowling joked that if Ireland legalised same-sex marriage, Dumbledore (Headmaster of Hogwarts) and Gandalf (of the Lord of the Rings series) could get married there.
Above: Flag of the Republic of Ireland
The Westboro Baptist Church, in response, stated that if the two got married, they would picket.
Rowling responded:
“Alas, the sheer awesomeness of such a union in such a place would blow your tiny bigoted minds out of your thick sloping skulls.“
Above: Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, Kansas
Is Rowling then guilty of intellectual or spiritual manslaughter by unintentionally killing children’s beliefs in God?
Or taking the concept to its ultimate crazy extreme….
Was this death of the divine within our children pre-meditated by Ms. Rowling?
Is she guilty of spiritual murder?
To answer this question with any certainty we must ask ourselves how and why did Rowling write the Harry Potter series.
To answer this question, come with me, back in time, both in Rowling’s past and my own….
Joanne Rowling (born 31 July 1965), better known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author, film producer, television producer, screenwriter, and philanthropist.
Above: J.K. Rowling, 1999
She is best known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series, which has won multiple awards and sold more than 500 million copies, becoming the best-selling book series in history.
The books are the basis of a popular film series, over which Rowling had overall approval on the scripts and was a producer on the final films.
She also writes crime fiction under the name Robert Galbraith.
Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series while on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990.
The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published in 1997.
There were six sequels, of which the last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released in 2007.
Since then, Rowling has written five books for adult readers: The Casual Vacancy (2012) and—under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith—the crime fiction Cormoran Strike series, which consists of The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014), Career of Evil (2015), and Lethal White (2018).
Rowling has lived a “rags to riches” life in which she progressed from living on benefits to being the world’s first billionaire author.
She lost her billionaire status after giving away much of her earnings to charity but remains one of the wealthiest people in the world.
She is the UK’s best-selling living author, with sales in excess of £238 million.
The 2016 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling’s fortune at £600 million, ranking her as the joint 197th richest person in the UK.
Time named her a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral and political inspiration she has given her fans.
In October 2010, Rowling was named the “Most Influential Woman in Britain” by leading magazine editors.
She has supported multiple charities, including Comic Relief, One Parent Families, and Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, as well as launching her own charity, Lumos.
Joanne Rowling was born in Yate, Gloucestershire, the daughter of science technician Anne (née Volant) and Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer Peter James Rowling.
Above: View of Yate, Gloucestershire, England
Her parents first met on a train departing from King’s Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964.
They married on 14 March 1965.
One of Rowling’s maternal great-grandfathers, Dugald Campbell, was a Scottish man from Lamlash.
Her mother’s French paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the War Cross for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during World War I.
Rowling originally believed Volant had won the Legion of Honour during the war, as she said when she received it herself in 2009.
She later discovered the truth when featured in an episode of the UK genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? in which she found out it was a different Louis Volant who won the Legion of Honour.
When she heard her grandfather’s story of bravery and discovered that the War Cross was for “ordinary” soldiers like her grandfather, who had been a waiter, she stated the War Cross was “better” to her than the Legion of Honour.
Rowling’s sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old.
The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories which she frequently read to her sister.
Above: Duck pond, Winterbourne, Gloucestershire
Aged nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales.
Above: Church Cottage, Tutshill, Gloucestershire
When she was a young teenager, her great-aunt gave her a copy of Jessica Mitford’s autobiography, Hons and Rebels.
Mitford became Rowling’s heroine and Rowling read all of her books.
Rowling has said that her teenage years were unhappy.
Her home life was complicated by her mother’s diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and a strained relationship with her father, with whom she is not on speaking terms.
Rowling later said that she based the character of Hermione Granger on herself when she was eleven.
Above: Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, poster for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth, owned a turquoise Ford Anglia which she says inspired a flying version that appeared in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Like many teenagers, she became interested in rock music, listening to the Clash, the Smiths and Siouxsie Sioux, adopting the look of the latter with back-combed hair and black eyeliner, a look that she would still sport when beginning university.
Above: Siouxsie Sioux, 1980
As a child, Rowling attended St Michael’s Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More.
Her headmaster at St Michael’s, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
Above: Richard Harris (1930 – 2002) as Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother worked in the science department.
Steve Eddy, her first secondary school English teacher, remembers her as “not exceptional” but “one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English“.
Rowling took A-levels in English, French and German, achieving two As and a B, and was Head Girl.
Above: Logo of Wyeburn School, Sedbury, Gloucestershire
In 1982, Rowling took the entrance exams for Oxford University but was not accepted and earned a BA in French and Classics at the University of Exeter.
Martin Sorrell, a French professor at Exeter, remembers “a quietly competent student, with a denim jacket and dark hair, who, in academic terms, gave the appearance of doing what was necessary“.
Rowling recalls doing little work, preferring to read Dickens and Tolkien.
After a year of study in Paris, Rowling graduated from Exeter in 1986.
In 1988, Rowling wrote a short essay about her time studying Classics titled “What was the Name of that Nymph Again? or Greek and Roman Studies Recalled“.
It was published by the University of Exeter’s journal Pegasus.
After working as a researcher and bilingual secretary in London for Amnesty International, Rowling moved with her then boyfriend to Manchester, where she worked at the Chamber of Commerce.
In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry “came fully formed” into her mind.
When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately.
Above: Clapham Junction Railway Station
In December, Rowling’s mother, Anne, died after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis.
Rowling was writing Harry Potter at the time and had never told her mother about it.
Her mother’s death heavily affected Rowling’s writing and she channelled her own feelings of loss by writing about Harry’s own feelings of loss in greater detail in the first book.
An advertisement in The Guardian led Rowling to move to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language.
JK Rowling moved to Porto in 1991.
Above: Porto
This was a difficult time in her life, as her mother had recently passed away after a long battle with multiple sclerosis.
And to rub salt in the wound, her house in Manchester had been burgled, and everything her mother had left her was stolen.
Eager for a change of scenery, she accepted a job teaching English as a second language in Porto at a private language school on Avenida de Fernão de Magalhães called Encounter English.
Rowling spent her evenings teaching English to young teenagers, business people and housewives and spent her days working on the manuscript of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
The time Rowling spent in Portugal was in many ways a dark and painful period of her life, and one that she rarely talks about.
For this reason, it’s hard to know for sure exactly which elements of the Harry Potter saga were inspired by her experiences in Porto.
Nevertheless, the influence is clearly there.
Many people have speculated that Rowling took inspiration from certain Porto landmarks, shops and cafés.
Some of these supposed inspiration locations almost certainly did inspire her, while others require a stretch of the imagination.
Rowling may have been subconsciously influenced by them, even if she didn’t recognize it at the time.
She taught English-as-a-foreign language at the Encounter English School at night and began writing in the day while listening to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.
Above: Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)
After 18 months in Porto, she met Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes at a café and found they shared an interest in Jane Austen.
Arantes would later tell London’s Daily Express newspaper the story of his whirlwind romance and doomed marriage to the then-unknown Joanne Rowling.
Above: Jorge Arrantes
It was a sexually passionate relationship that ended in violence and bitterness.
She was a 25-year-old teacher, he was a 23-year-old journalism student.
He spotted her drinking with some friends in a café, was drawn to her piercing, aquamarine eyes and tried to pick her up.
“Immediately there was a connection between us.“, Arrantes said.
“Joanne could not speak any Portuguese, but my English was good.
We both realized we had a great deal in common with our love of books.
I remember her saying she was re-reading Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, which I had also read.”
Arrantes said she told him about an affair she had had with another Portuguese man and about a love affair with a man in England.
When the night ended, they exchanged telephone numbers – and a kiss.
Two days later, he said, they had their first date – and ended up in bed.
“Before we knew what was happening, she was back at my flat and we spent the night together.
There was nothing sordid about it.
We were simply two young, independent people enjoying life.
After that night, Joanne and I saw each other two or three times a week.
It was an intense and passionate relationship.”
It was also tempestous.
Their frenetic lovemaking was punctuated with furious arguments.
“We were always either in Heaven or in Hell.”
They moved into his mother’s apartment, a shabby two-bedroom flat with a tiny kitchen, on Rua do Duque de Saldanha.
Above: Entry to Arantes flat, Rua do Duque de Saldanha, Porto
Arantes later claimed he had helped her come up with ideas for the Harry Potter novels, though she denies this.
Among the belongings she brought to their home, according to Arantes, was a well-thumbed copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic The Lord of the Rings.
Several months later, Joanne discovered she was pregnant.
It was unplanned and both were afraid of the responsibilities parenthood might bring.
According to Arantes, Rowling began writing her first Harry Potter book during this pregnancy.
She kept her writing secret for a time, then showed her work in progress to Arantes.
“I am proud to say that I was the first person to read about Harry Potter.
It was obvious to me straight away that this was the work of a genius.
I can still remember telling Joanne:
‘Whoa! I am in love with a great, great writer.’
Even in those days, Joanne had a great talent for structure.
I never doubted it would be a success.”
Arantes says they discussed the stories, which Rowling found helpful.
“We studied each other’s work and made suggestions.
When I told Joanne to change something, she would usually make an alteration.”
He claims she had planned the full series of seven books, because she believed the number 7 has magical associations.
But just as they had begun to look forward to the birth of their child, tragedy struck.
Joanne miscarried.
They married on 16 October 1992 and their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal.
Above: Joanne and Jorge Arantes with baby Jessica
Two months after Jessica’s birth, Arantes admits, he ordered Joanne out of their apartment.
“She refused to go without Jessica and, despite my saying she could come back for her in the morning, there was a violent struggle.
I had to drag her out of the house at 5 in the morning and I admit I slapped her very hard in the street.”
The couple separated on 17 November 1993.
Biographers have suggested that Rowling suffered domestic abuse during her marriage, although the extent is unknown.
In December 1993, Rowling and her then infant daughter moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near Rowling’s sister with three chapters of what would become Harry Potter in her suitcase.
Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as a failure.
Her marriage had failed and she was jobless with a dependent child, but she described her failure as liberating and allowing her to focus on writing.
During this period, Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression and contemplated suicide.
Her illness inspired the characters known as Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book.
Rowling signed up for welfare benefits, describing her economic status as being “poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.”
Rowling was left in despair after her estranged husband arrived in Scotland, seeking both her and her daughter.
She obtained an Order of Restraint and Arantes returned to Portugal, with Rowling filing for divorce in August 1994.
She began a teacher training course in August 1995 at the Moray House School of Education, at Edinburgh University, after completing her first novel while living on state benefits.
She wrote in many cafés, especially Nicolson’s Café (owned by her brother-in-law) and the Elephant House, wherever she could get Jessica to fall asleep.
Meanwhile Arantes’ life was falling apart.
He lost his job as a television journalist and descended into a nightmare of drug addiction.
His 70-year-old mother, Marilia Rodrigues, told the London Daily Mailthat Arantes stole family heirlooms and jewellery to feed his drug habit.
“He still loved her very much and was heartbroken when they parted.“, Rodrigues said.
“He still believes they could get together again and he would take her back at the drop of a hat.
He just wants her and his daughter.”
Arantes says he has recovered from his drug addiction and lives in a small apartment in the Paris suburb of Clichy with his brother Justino, a travel agent.
Rowling rarely talks about her first marriage, but once told the Times of London:
“I married on 16 October 1992.
I left on 17 November 1993.
So that was the duration of what I considered to be the marriage.
Obviously, you do not leave a marriage after that very short period of time unless there are serious problems.
I’m not the kind of person who bales out without there being serious problems.
My relationship before that lasted seven years.
I’m a long-term girl.
And I had a baby with this man.
But it didn’t work.
And it was clear to me that it was time to go, and so I went.
I never regretted it.”
In a 2001 BBC interview, Rowling denied the rumour that she wrote in local cafés to escape from her unheated flat, pointing out that it had heating.
One of the reasons she wrote in cafés was that taking her baby out for a walk was the best way to make her fall asleep.
In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stonewhich was typed on an old manual typewriter.
Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evens, a reader who had been asked to review the book’s first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agency agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher.
The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript.
A year later she was finally given the green light by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London.
The decision to publish Rowling’s book owes much to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury’s chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately demanded the next.
Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children’s books.
Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated US$15 billion and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history.
The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages.
The Harry Potter books have also gained recognition for sparking an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abandoning books for computers and television, although it is reported that despite the huge uptake of the books, adolescent reading has continued to decline.
On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Murray (born 1971), a Scottish doctor, in a private ceremony at her home, Killiechassie House in Scotland.
Their son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on 24 March 2003.
Above: Joanne and Neil Murray
Shortly after Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she ceased working on the novel to care for David in his early infancy.
Rowling’s youngest child, daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was born on 23 January 2005.
Regarding Jessica’s career, she can best be described as an Instagram model who posts beautiful photos of herself as well as videos with her family and friends.
Jessica started her Instagram account in 2013 and instantly started sharing photos.
She has now managed to gather almost 7,000 followers.
Apart from that, Jessica owns a clothing line called Jc.closefit.
She also loves travelling and taking photos while on her exotic tours.
Above: Jessica Arantes
Rowling’s life in Portugal clearly influenced aspects of the books:
Many of Potter’s spells can be easily understood by Portuguese speakers:
aguamenti (bring out water)
duro (make things hard)
protego (protect people)
silencio (to silence people)
One of Hogwart’s founding professors was Salazar Slytherin.
Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar was Portugal’s notorious dictator for much of the 20th century.
Above: António de Oliveira Salazar (1889 – 1970)
There are also many similarities between Porto’s most colourful buildings and elements of Hogwarts, and as my wife (Ute) and I explored the city of Porto, I found myself trying to imagine Joanne Rowling’s life pre-Harry Potter fame and fortune.
I also found myself marvelling at her choice of a dictator’s name for one of the school’s founders.
Was her deciding to take the name of Salazar suggesting that despite his nature he was partially responsible for making the place possible?
Without a Salazar could it have become what it eventually became?
Rowling’s relationship with Arantes did not end well though their union resulted in Jessica’s birth.
Perhaps Arantes was Rowling’s Salazar?
Perhaps the rumours of domestic violence are true, but perhaps Arantes’s claims of inspiring Rowling’s ideas are also credible.
What would Porto, through a Rowling lens, tell me about writing and inspiration?
What would it tell me about myself?
Above: Images of Porto
Porto, Portugal, Thursday 26 July 2018
There are a number of sites in Porto frequently mentioned on Potterhead blogs that my mentioning will surprise no one.
The only difference I can offer is my perspective of them.
I shall briefly list them here and then offer my perspective:
Livraria Lello
Escovaria de Belomonte
Universidade do Porto
Café Majestic
Fonte dos Leones
Torre dos Clerigos
The Livraria Lello, Porto’s famous galleried Art Nouveau bookshop, with its neo-Gothic exterior and inner staircase just begging for a grand entrance, is a visual delight beyond words.
It was founded by the well-to-do Lello intellectual brothers in 1906 and specialized in limited edition books – many of which are still here.
The brothers now appear as bas-reliefs on the walls, alongside busts of great writers, including Eca de Queiroz and Miguel Cervantes.
The Lellos commissioned an engineer and fellow bibliophile Francisco Xavier Esteves to design the interior, which is simply stunning.
The ground level even has rails set into the floor for transporting book “carriages“.
The impressive double, freestanding staircase (actually made of concrete) lures people upstairs where you can admire the extraordinary plasterwork ceiling, which resembles ornately carved wood.
Columns and a stained glass roof light add to the air of something far grander than a bookshop, the whole design having an almost organic feel, as if the walls and ceiling are the ribs and bones of a living creature.
The first floor was the traditional meeting point of artists and intellectuals and was frequented by Rowling during her time in Porto in the 1990s.
It is this, and the similiarity of the shop’s decor to some of Hogwarts’ more outlandish design characteristics, that has put the bookshop firmly on the tourist circuit, with up to 4,000 people visiting daily.
There are often queues to get in, but if you come first thing in the morning or in the evening shortly before closing time, you may be able to experience the place more as a bookshop than a tourist site.
Porto’s famous galleried Art Nouveau shop has become a tourist site in its own right, but behind the crowds this still remains one of the city’s best bookshops.
There’s general fiction on the ground floor (including the Harry Potter stories in many languages), much of it in English, with reference and non-fiction (including travel) on the upper floor.
You can also find rare editions of Portuguese books.
Look out for the original till, made in 1881, the first in Portugal to issue paper receipts and with prices in reis (the currency before the escudo and the euro).
You get your €5.00 entry fee back on any purchase.
In 1869, the Livraria Internacional de Ernesto Chardron was founded, from a shop on Rua dos Clérigos by the Frenchman Ernesto Chardron.
Following its founder’s death, at the age of 45, the firm was sold to Lugan & Genelioux Sucessores.
Alternately, in 1881, José Lello along with his brother-in-law created the firm David Pereira & Lello.
But, the following year, after the death of David Lourenço Pereira, the establishment began to be operated as José Pinto de Sousa Lello & Irmão, when he partnered with his younger brother (António Lello).
The brothers both became prominent members of Porto’s intellectual bourgeoisie by the turn of the century.
The brothers hired engineer Francisco Xavier Esteves (1864-1944) to construct the new bookstore on Rua das Carmelitas.
In 1906, the Livraria Lello was inaugurated.
By 1919, the bookstore was simply designated as the Lello & Irmão, Lda.
With the 1930 addition of José Pereira da Costa, the bookstore began to be known simply as Livraria Lello.
But, between 1930 and 1940, it once again became designated Lello & Irmão.
Beginning in July 2015, the bookstore began requesting entrance fees for visitors.
On 21 April 2016, an artistic mural was erected to conceal the scaffolding placed on the facade of the building, during its restoration, by graffiti writer Dheo and colleague Pariz One.
Dheo painted the central area of the mural with a pile of old books, a lit candle and a bottle of Port wine, while the rest was painted by Pariz One with geometric shapes, referring to the stained glass inside the bookstore.
The work took two months to produce.
On 31 July, following the restoration, the main facade of the building was uncovered, showing the laboratory-tested recovered primitive gray.
There is no denying that the woodwork and the glass art and the red winding staircase do make the Livraria Lello a beautiful place to visit and certainly there is a good case to argue that Hogwarts’ moving staircases and the interior of the Diagon Alley bookstore Flourish and Blogs were inspired by the Livraria.
Above: Hogwarts’ moving staircases
But therein lies the problem.
It attracts too many tourists and it knows it.
As a passionate bibliophile I certainly admire the architecture, but for me a bookshop should in some ways resemble a library, a sanctuary of literature, a temple of tomes, rather than a marketplace for mobs.
A person cannot linger in any one spot too long before some impatient patron will jostle and push you about the place.
One could make a grand entrance if the store were a little less crowded, but one loses one’s regal bearing very quickly after enduring long queues to get in, for the indignity of paying an entrance fee just to view the shop, down each and every aisle, up and down the staircase, and at the cash register….
This is not the place for those who dislike crowds in enclosed spaces.
And though the Livraria does offer rare Portuguese books I am not so certain the Lello brothers would have liked the changes that time and fame have wrought, for as wonderful as it is to see people eagerly seeking books to read in this awkward age of automation and animation, a sense of intellectualism no longer pervades this establishment.
The place feels like a souvenir shop at one of Walt Disney’s magic kingdoms of artificiality than it does a sacred reminder of Portugal’s literary past.
Above: Disney World, Orlando, Florida
I doubt the American tourists who came to or left the Livraria had any conception of, or compassion for, the existence of a Portuguese literary history.
For the place is populated with Potterheads and nothing else seems to matter.
But suggesting such sacrilege to these Rowling fanatics is akin to being Cervantes’ Don Quixote tilting at thick stone windmills.
Pointlessly defending an honour long gone.
The Livrario made me think of St. Gallen’s Stiftbibliothek (Abbey Library) with its hefty admission fee and cramped interior when crowds congregate.
It is my hope that Rowling (or those of her ilk) never visit the Abbey Library and over-popularize the place with their writing, for the Library at least still maintains an aura of the sacred which the Livrario has long ago lost.
Above: The Abbey Library of St. Gallen
I was seeking a Porto version of Paris’ Shakespeare & Co., but got instead an amusement park souvenir shop.
It was worth a visit for the heart but at a cost to the mind and soul.
The Escovaria de Belomonte (Brushes of Belomonte), founded by Antonio da Silva on 29 January 1927, is not, at present, part of guidebook description, but it is most definitively part of Potter lore and appears on every blog where Rowling and Porto are mentioned in the same breath.
Though the Escovaria de Belomonte has only existed for 82 years, they excel in the manufacture and restoration of industrial brushes.
Why buy new brushes when you can have your old ones renewed?
The Escovaria de Belomonte replenishes and renews any type of brush.
They create brushes for every kind of customized applications for all types of industries, including industrial factories, textile production, footwear producers, jewelry stores, cast moulding manufacturers, grinding establishments, water treatment plants, car washes, typographical firms, gastronomy, and the list goes on….
They make any and every kind of brush and broom.
Whatever your needs, Escovaria de Belomonte will help you find a solution.
The handsome Belomonte brooms with their rustic luxurious look, many of them hanging from the store ceiling, handmade with high-quality wood and natural fibres, bear a striking resemblance to Harry Potter’s flying broom, the Nimbus 2000.
It has also been suggested that the name of Harry Potter that graces the front cover of every Potter novel bears a striking resemblance to the lettering and design of Escovaria de Belomonte‘s street sign.
Visually it is a great store to visit, but I wonder whether Potterheads actually make a purchase here.
There is no entrance fee and I am certain the place is much photographed by Potterheads, but whether the Escovaria is pleased with being a tourist attraction more than a serious business establishment is debatable.
It has been suggested by Potterhead blogs that the outfit worn by Universidade do Porto (University of Porto) students was the inspiration for the outfits that Hogwarts students were required to wear during academic hours.
The wife and I were not able to fit in a visit to the University, saw no one on the streets dressed in such attire and found very few photos of students dressed in this manner.
What can be said about the University:
Founded on 22 March 1911, it is the 2nd largest Portuguese university by enrolled students (after the University of Lisbon) and has one of the most noted research outputs in Portugal.
It is ranked among the best Portuguese universities, is among the 100 universities in Europe and ranked 328th of the best 400 universities in the world.
Today, about 28,000 students (11,000 postgraduates) attend the programmes and courses provided by the University of Porto’s 15 schools (13 faculties, a biomedical sciences institute and a business school) each with a considerable degree of autonomy.
It offers 63 graduate degree courses, over 160 master courses and several doctoral degree courses and other specialization courses, supported by 2,300 lecturers and a technical and administrative staff of over 1,600 people.
Of those who can call themselves alumni or staff of the University are:
Richard Zimler (journalist / writer / professor)
Julio Dinis (1839 – 1871)(writer)
Jorge de Sena (1919 – 1978)(doctor / writer)
José Neves (billionaire businessman / founder of Farfetch)
Marisa Ferreira (artist)
Camilo Castelo Bianco (1825 – 1890)(writer)
Agostinho da Silva (1906 – 1994)(writer)
(This last mentioned I find inspirational:
“What you need, above all, is to not remember what I said.
Never think for me.
Think always for yourself.
Be sure that all your mistakes that you commit are, according to your own thinking and deciding, all more valuable than all your correct actions made according to my thinking, not yours.
If the Creator wanted to put us together we perhaps couldn’t have two different bodies and two different heads.
My counselling should serve you to confront it.
It is possible that, after this confrontation, you come to think like me, but, at this time, your thought is yours.
My disciples, if I have any, are the ones who oppose me, because in their deep soul they guard what truly animates and what I most want to transmit to them.
The wish is to not conform.“)
Above: Agostinho da Silva
It is more likely that Rowling was inspired not by the University of Porto, but rather by the University of Coimbra – 1.5 hours south of Porto – whose students do indeed wear academic robes similiar to those of Hogwarts students.
We did not get to Coimbra.
We did not need to.
Above: University of Coimbra students in ceremonial robes
There are hundreds of places to eat and drink in Porto, from old town tascas and Art Nouveau cafés to riverfront designer restaurants.
Of these, the one place that attracts the Potterhead is the Café Majestic.
In 1916, Rua de Santa Catarina 12 was built on a paved shopping street.
Opened in 1921, the Café Elite was designed in Art Nouveau style.
The then Bohemian quarter of the city did not think the name “Elite” was appropriate as it was not part of the Zeitgeist that was the post-1910 revolutionary Portuguese Republic.
The coffee house was subsequently given the name it is still known by.
The Majestic became over time a place frequented by intellectuals and literary legends, including Gago Coutinho, Beatriz Costa, Júlio Resende, José Régio and Teixeira de Pascoaes.
(Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho, generally known simply as Gago Coutinho (1869 – 1959) was a Portuguese geographer, cartographer, naval officer, historian and aviator.
An aviation pioneer, Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral were the first to cross the South Atlantic Ocean by air, from March to June 1922, from Lisbon, Portugal, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.)
Above: Coutinho (right) and Cabral (left) on the Lusitánia
(Beatriz Costa (born Beatriz da Conceição; 1907 – 1996) was a Portuguese actress, the best-known actress of the golden age of Portuguese cinema.)
Above: Beatriz Costa
(Júlio Resende is a Portuguese pianist and composer.
He is active as a jazz musician (both as a bandleader and as a sideman for other artists) and is also involved in the Fado scene, having recorded a solo piano tribute to Amália Rodrigues and collaborating with singers like António Zambujo, Ana Moura and Aldina Duarte.
He is also the leader of Alexander Search, a rock band fronted by Eurovision Song Contest 2017 winner Salvador Sobral and inspired by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.)
(José Maria dos Reis Pereira, better known by the pen name José Régio (1901 – 1969), was a Portuguese writer.
José Régio was the author of novels, plays, poetry and essays.
His works are strongly focused on the theme of conflict between man and God and between the individual and society, a critical analysis of solitude and human relations.)
Above: José Régio
(Joaquim Pereira Teixeira de Vasconcelos (1877 – 1952), better known by his pen name Teixeira de Pascoaes, was a Portuguese poet.
He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.)
Above: Painting of Teixeira de Pascoaes
In the 1960s, the Café experienced a decline, parallel to the increasingly repressive social situation of Portugal under the authoritarian regime of António de Oliveria Salazar’s Estado Novo (“New State“).
In 1992 the Barrias family decided to extensively restore the Majestic.
Using old photographs as their guide, the restoration was completed, a new floor laid and the Café reopened in 1994.
In the year prior to the commencement of the Majestic’s renovations, Rowling often visited the Café, writing her thoughts for her first Harry Potternovel on Majestic napkins.
The Majestic today is the best known of Porto’s belle époque cafés, with a perfectly preserved decor of celestial cherubs, bevelled mirrors, carved chairs and wood panelling.
Waiters float to the strains of The Blue Danube.
Come for coffee or afternoon tea as we did.
The Fountain of the Lions (Portuguese: Fonte dos Leões), is a 19th-century fountain built by French company Compagnie Générale des Eaux pour l’Etranger.
Cast by the Val d’Osne foundry in France, it is a copy, in most part, of the fountain in the Town Hall Square of Leicester, England.
The fountain is located in an urban, isolated location, within the gardened Praça de Gomes Teixeira.
The central fountain has a cruciform layout with a group of sculptures at the base supported by four seated lions on the extremes.
Between each lion, the axis of the source has a column with base, shaft and capital.
To top, two central, circular cups superimposed and staggered, with a pine cone surmounting all.
The octagonal shaped granite tank has rounded edges.
The outer profile of the tank walls is corrugated.
The edge of the lower plane bowl is outlined in relief by a frieze with plant elements interrupted only by four cornets from which water flows.
It is thought by Potterheads that this fountain inspired Rowling’s choice of logo for the House of Gryffindor at Hogwarts.
The Clérigos Church (Portuguese: Igreja dos Clérigos,”Church of the Clergymen“) is a Baroque church with its tall bell tower, the Torre dos Clérigos, seen from various points of the city and is one of Porto’s most characteristic symbols.
The main façade of the church is heavily decorated with baroque motifs (such as garlands and shells) and an indented broken pediment.
This was based on an early 17th-century Roman scheme.
The central frieze above the windows present symbols of worship and an incense boat.
The lateral façades reveal the almost elliptic floorplan of the church nave.
The Clérigos Church was one of the first baroque churches in Portugal to adopt a typical baroque elliptic floor plan.
The monumental tower of the church, located at the back of the building, was only built between 1754 and 1763.
The baroque decoration here also shows influence from the Roman Baroque, while the whole design was inspired by Tuscan campaniles.
The tower is 75.6 metres high, dominating the city.
There are 240 steps to be climbed to reach the top of its six floors.
This great structure has become the symbol of the city.
Did the Torre dos Clerigos inspire Hogwarts’ Astronomy Tower?
Potterheads like to think so.
At all of these sites, especially atop the Torre dos Clerigos, the visitor, headphones on, fado playing, can ponder how fado, Arantes, Rowling and yours truly all interconnect.
We have learned that Arantes probably abused Rowling as possibly did her father.
Fans who re-read Harry Potter as adults quickly realize that the behaviour of the Dursleys reads like child abuse: starvation, forced labour and confinement.
Starvation has been a stranger to me, but forced labour and confinement I did know.
In the Harry Potter series, more explicit abuse is described when Harry learns through a Pensieve memory that Severus Snape’s father beat his son and wife.
Porto is a Pensieve for me….
And then there is Rowling’s post-Potter writing….
In her novel The Casual Vacancy, Andrew is a restless teen who lives with his abusive, degrading father.
Rowling once told The New Yorker that Andrew represented her mindset as a teen, and although Andrew was not exactly based on her father, she said:
“I did not have an easy relationship with my father.”
Above: Andrew Price, The Casual Vacancy
Abuse also finds its way into Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Credence has an adopted mother who hits him with a belt.
That resentment from his mother’s frequent beatings turns him into an Obscurial, a repressed being that the evil Gellert Grindelwald wants to use for dark magic.
Often, but certainly not always, children who were abused by their parents often abuse their children when they become parents.
Perhaps this was the case in the behaviour of Arantes.
And, lest we forget, why Rowling chose António de Oliveira Salazar as the inspiration for the repressive Hogwarts co-founder Salazar Slitherin….
One overriding criticism of Salazar’s regime is that stability was bought and maintained at the expense of suppression of human rights and liberties.
Abuse on a national level.
Under Salazar’s authoritarian rule, he brought stability and prosperity to Portugal, but at enormous cost: censorship, imprisonment and torture.
Above: Salazar, 1939
Arantes was born in 1967.
Salazar’s Estado Nova lasted from 1932 to 1974.
Arantes’ father knew abuse and repression and so would Arantes.
It is hard to sympathize with those that abuse unless we realize that they were probably a product of abuse themselves.
Arantes lost the mother of his child and his daughter as well.
In the quiet of night as Arantes lies in his solitary bed in his brother’s Clichy apartment fado music plays inside his head.
Arantes is a pessimist, a nihilist, alone, and forever known for his greatest failure:
Losing the world’s most famous novelist as his lover and the child they made together.
We quietly walk through the wonders of Porto.
Fado fills the streets.
Sadness of memory fills my soul.
And sits upon my shoulders like an invisibility cloak.
Above: Porto, night
Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Facebook / Pocket Rough Guide Porto / Lonely Planet Portugal / Rough Guide Portugal / Matthew Hancock, Xenophobe’s Guide to the Portuguese / A.H. de Oliveira Marques, A Very Short History of Portugal
Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 17 September 2019
Damn that man!
One man’s writings has had and continue to have a major effect on my life and this has been reflected in my travels and I have already spoken of the man previously in this blog.
Above: Charles Dickens, New York, 1867
(Please see Canada Slim and the Dickensian Moment – first published as “Goodbye, Charles” on 9 June 2015.)
(As one of the shortest and woefully inadequate posts I have ever written, expect to see an updated version of “Goodbye, Charles” as soon as possible and the addition of another post that continues the chronicle of my first travels in Europe last described in Canada Slim and the Promised Land – first published as “That which survives 3: The promised land“.)
It was he who made me decide to first enter Britain via Broadstairs.
Above: Dickens House Museum, Broadstairs
It was he who compelled me to convince my good friends Samantha and Iain to visit his birthplace in Portsmouth.
Above: Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum, Portsmouth
It was he who inspired me to first find the courage to write.
It was he whose footsteps I was determined to trace during my visit to London in the last week of October 2017.
My wife had purchased for us two London Passes, offering free entry to over 60 attractions, as well as free public transport on buses, on the Tube, and on trains.
She strongly suggested I use mine as much as possible during the time when she was attending her medical conference.
26 October was the first day that I would have a chance to view London on my own.
I had, following the Passbook alphabetically, already visited the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Manhir that morning, so my next goal was the Charles Dickens Museum in the Bloomsbury district.
Above: BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir
(For previous posts on London, please see….
Canada Slim….
and the Paddington Arrival
and the Street Walked Too Often
Underground
and the Outcast
and the Wonders on the Wall
and the Calculated Cathedral
and the Right Man
and the Queen’s Horsemen
and the Royal Peculiar
and the Lamp Ladies
and the Uncertainty Principle
and the Museum of Many
and the Breviary of Bartholew
and the Body Snatchers
and the Freudian Slippers
and the Mandir of Nose Hill )
London, England, 26 October 2017
Few cities are as closely associated with one writer as London is with Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870).
The recurrent motifs in his novels have become the clichés of Victorian London (though Dickens was active and successful before Queen Victoria came to the throne) – the fog, the slums and alleys, the prisons and workhouses and the stinking river.
Drawing on his own personal experience, Dickens was able to describe the workings of the law and the conditions of the poor with an unrivalled accuracy.
Above: Charles Dickens, 1850
Born in Portsmouth (Please see Canada Slim and the Dickensian Moment.), Dickens was the second of eight children.
His father, John Dickens, was a clerk who worked for the Navy and had set up home in Portsmouth with his wife Elizabeth.
Above: Old Portsmouth
In 1817 John was posted to the dockyard in Chatham.
John and his family took a full part in the life of the community.
They were friendly with neighbours and with the family of a local landlord.
Charles and his sister Fanny were frequently set up by their father atop a table in the Mitre Inn to entertain the tavern with songs and ballads of the day.
It was in Chatham that Charles began his education.
Above: Chatham Dockyard
His widowed aunt Mary Allen married for a second time while the Dickens family were in Chatham.
This was to a widowed doctor, Matthew Lambert, who had a son Matthew, a little older than Charles and became a great influence upon this early part of Charles’ life, for it was Matthew who introduced Charles to the wonders of the theatre.
This was the beginning of a lifelong passion.
“I tried to recollect whether I had ever been in any theatre in my life from which I had not brought away some pleasant association, however poor the theatre, and I protest, I could not remember even one.”
In fact, Charles always had a great relish for bad theatre.
“Allow me to introduce myself—first negatively.
No landlord is my friend and brother.
No chambermaid loves me.
No waiter worships me.
No boots admires and envies me.
No round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me.
No pigeon pie is especially made for me.
No hotel advertisement is personally addressed to me.
No hotel room tapestried with great coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me.
No house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry.
When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill.
When I come home from my journeys, I never get any commission.
I know nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn’t want.
As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers.
As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.
And yet—proceeding now, to introduce myself positively—I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road.
Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way.
Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent Garden, London—now about the city streets: now, about the country by-roads—seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others.
These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.”
In The Uncommercial Traveller, he revisited Rochester where he enjoyed the somewhat shaky productions he saw there.
He does not spare the company:
“Many wondrous secrets of Nature had I come to the knowledge of in that sanctuary:
Of which not the least terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth bore an awful resemblance to the Thanes and other proper inhabitants of Scotland, and that the good King Duncan could not rest in his grave, but was constantly coming out of it and calling himself somebody else.”
Above: High Street, Rochester
John Dickens’ job entitled him and his family to regard themselves as middle class, but the middle classes had little money behind them if things went wrong or if they couldn’t support their large families in seizing the opportunities they had anticipated.
Prosperity could unravel very quickly.
By the time John was recalled to London in 1822, the debts were considerable and his new post meant a drop in salary.
Above: John Dickens (1785 – 1851)
Such was the family situation in 1823 that the young Charles, age 11, had to go out to work, finding employment in a boot-blacking factory, Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, on the north bank of the Thames, near the site of the modern Charing Cross Station.
Charles and his colleagues had to cover pots of boot polish (blacking) and paste on to them paper labels.
He was paid six shillings a week.
Great numbers of children in early 19th century England would have done similar work – and many, much, much worse.
“It was a crazy, tumbledown old house, abutting, of course, on the river, and literally overrun with rats.
Its wainscotted rooms and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and the decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again.
The counting house was on the first floor, looking over the coal barges and the river.
There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work.”
This episode affected Charles profoundly.
He thought his parents had given up on him.
“It is amazing to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age.
It is amazing to me, that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough for me … to suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school ….
No one made any sign.
My father and mother were quite satisfied.
They could hardly have been more so, if I had been 20 years of age, distinguished at a Grammar School and going to Cambridge.”
Above: Cambridge University coat-of-arms
On 20 February 1824 John Dickens was arrested and imprisoned in Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison.
Above: Marshalsea Prison Gate
Charles was deeply ashamed of his family’s circumstances and hurt further when his mother forced him to keep his blacking job even after his father’s release.
Above: Elizabeth Dickens (1789 – 1863)
This influenced Dickens’s view that a father should rule the family, and a mother find her proper sphere inside the home:
“I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back.”
His mother’s requesting his return was a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women.
Righteous indignation stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, and it was this unhappy period in his youth to which he alluded in his favourite, and most autobiographical, novel, David Copperfield:
“I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to Heaven!“
In the end, a number of circumstances brought an opportunity for change.
John inherited some money, began receiving a pension from the Navy and started working as a journalist, thus enabling the family to dispense with the few shillings Charles was adding to the family income.
Dickens got to school eventually.
He spent two years at Wellington House, which he remembered with little affection.
He did not consider it to be a good school:
“Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor discipline punctuated by the headmaster’s sadistic brutality, the seedy ushers and general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr Creakle’s Establishment in David Copperfield.”
When he left, at age 15, he was ready for work.
An acquaintance of the family found Charles work as a lawyer’s clerk with the firm of Ellis and Blackmore, which lasted 18 months.
Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, Gray’s Inn, as a junior clerk from May 1827 to November 1828.
Above: Gray’s Inn Square, London
Charles was a gifted mimic and impersonated those around him: clients, lawyers, and clerks.
He went to theatres obsessively—he claimed that for at least three years he went to the theatre every single day.
His favourite actor was Charles Mathews and Dickens learnt his monopolylogues (farces in which Mathews played every character) by heart.
Above: Charles Matthews (1776 – 1835)
Then, having learned Gurney’s system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter.
Above: Example of Thomas Gurney (1705 – 1770) shorthand
A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors’ Commons and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years.
Above: Doctors’ Commons in the early 19th century
This education was to inform works such as Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, and especially Bleak House—whose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much to enlighten the general public and served as a vehicle for dissemination of Dickens’s own views regarding, particularly, the heavy burden on the poor who were forced by circumstances to “go to law“.
Charles had family in journalism.
His father wrote occasional pieces, but Charles also had a maternal uncle, John Henry Barrow, who in 1828 launched The Mirror of Parliament.
It was not long before Charles was part of Barrow’s parliamentary reporting team and was soon striking out writing for other publications, including the radical newspaper The True Sun.
Sometime before 1830, Dickens fell in love with a young woman called Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker.
The relationship between them flashed on and off for around four years, despite hostility from her parents, interference from friends and Maria’s own capricious nature.
The letters that survive show how thoroughly Dickens was absorbed in pursuing her.
Maria’s parents disapproved of the courtship and ended the relationship by sending her to school in Paris.
When the end finally came, he wrote to her, claiming:
“I have never loved and I can never love any human creature breathing but yourself.”
Above: Maria Beadnell (1810 – 1886)
She is thought to be the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield.
Above: David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow
Many years later, Dickens got a letter from Maria out of the blue and a short correspondence between them began in which he proclaimed the intensity of his original feelings for her.
The tone of these letters soon changed after he arranged to see her and she turned out to be “toothless, fat, old and ugly” (her words).
Above: Miriam Margoyles as Maria Beadnell Winter
The Maria romance is interesting because of the marked contrast it makes with Dickens’ engagement and marriage.
Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of his boss at the Evening Chronicle, could hardly have been a more different young woman.
At least Dickens looked at her in a completely different way.
His letters to her are affectionate but occasionally overbearing, as if he was asserting himself to ensure that no more nonsense got in the way of his own ambition.
He was particularly careful to outline the primacy of his work and its demands.
His commitments at this time were extremely heavy.
Catherine and Charles married on 2 April 1836 and went for a week’s honeymoon to Chalk in Kent (during which, true to form, Dickens was busy with The Pickwick Papers).
Above: Catherine Hogarth Dickens (1816 – 1879)
In August 1834 Charles was given a permanent position on The Morning Chronicle, a liberal paper, to report on all parliamentary matters.
This included elections (there were two in 1835) and political meetings – all around the country, before there were railroads.
Deadlines were nevertheless overwhelmingly important and Dickens experienced many freezing, wet stagecoach journeys, bouncing about, writing on his knees, racing back to London to get his account in before the rival reporters on The Times.
Dickens’ first published piece of creative work appeared in the Monthly Magazine in 1833.
It was called “A Dinner at Poplar Walk“.
The publication had a circulation of 600 and the young author wasn’t paid, but he knew what it all meant.
Above: Monthly Magazine (1796 – 1843) issue, 1 February 1810
In the preface of the cheap edition of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens tells us that he practically smuggled the piece into the magazine’s offices:
“It was dropped stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street.”
The piece’s emergence into print was an occasion of some emotion:
“I walked down to Westminster Hall and turned into it for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could not bear the street and were not fit to be seen there.”
More pieces for the Monthly Magazine followed.
These were comic stories, which owed a lot to the theatrical farces so common on the London stage.
It was at the end of one of these pieces, published in May 1834, that he signed his name as “Boz“, the nom de plume by which he first began to establish his reputation and indeed his brand.
Boz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some years.
Dickens apparently adopted it from the nickname “Moses“, which he had given to his youngest brother Augustus Dickens, after a character in Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield.
Above: Augustus Dickens (1827 – 1866)
When pronounced by anyone with a head cold, “Moses” became “Boses“—later shortened to Boz.
As “Boz“, Dickens began to collect readers.
He was given further opportunities to please them.
Dickens began to write occasional pieces for the Morning Chronicle in addition to his reporting.
These were his “sketches” – informal surveys of parts of London, London themes or observations of London people, held together by a conversational tone rather than a narrative: a Londoner talking to Londoners.
When an evening sister paper to the Morning Chronicle was launched, Dickens obtained a salary to continue his writing explorations in the same vein.
Above: London, 1886
The increasing exposure brought Dickens to the attention of Harrison Ainsworth, a writer not much read today, but a real star of the literary scene at this time.
Ainsworth admired Boz‘s work and introduced Dickens to his own publisher John Macrone.
Above: William Harrison Ainsworth (1805 – 1882)
Soon a collected volume of the newspaper and magazine pieces with drawings of George Cruikshank, the leading illustrator of the day, was published in February 1836.
Sketches by Boz sold so well that a second edition was needed that year and two more in 1837.
As the first edition of Sketches by Boz emerged in 1836, Dickens was approached by the publishers Chapman and Hall.
They came with an idea that had been proposed to them in turn by a well-known illustrator, Robert Seymour.
The plan went like this:
Seymour would produce a series of engravings depicting the amusing mishaps attending a club of Cockney sportsmen – men from the new middle classes, with money to spend on the aristocratic pursuits of previous generations: hunting, shooting and fishing.
These illustrations would be published as a monthly serial.
Would Dickens care to write some text to help string the images together?
Fourteen pounds a month might be possible.
No one really knows what or how much Dickens saw in this offer at the time.
He liked the money.
He was told that serials were a “low, cheap form of publication” that would ruin him.
The fact that he kept all his other irons in the fire suggests that he did not count too much on the new venture establishing his reputation.
But that is exactly what it did.
He claims, in the preface to The Pickwick Papers, that he recognized that the idea wouldn’t do:
“I objected, on consideration, that although born and partly bred in the country I was no great sportsman, that the idea was not novel, and had already been much used, that it would infinitely better for the plates to arise naturally out of the text, and that I should like to take my own way….”
At first sales were disappointing, but by the end of its run in November 1837, The Pickwick Papers was selling 40,000 copies per month, it had been adapted for the stage many times over and the words of its characters seemed to be on everyone’s lips – as was the name of its young author.
After their 1836 wedding, Charles took Catherine to a set of chambers he was renting in Furnival’s Inn, one of the inns of court, the traditional home of English law practice and accommodation for many non-lawyers too.
As The Pickwick Papers started bringing in a more secure income, Charles set his sights on more substantial living quarters.
These turned out to be at 48 Doughty Street, into which Catherine and Charles moved with their son Charley in March 1837.
Above: 48 Doughty Street, London
They took in Catherine’s younger sister Mary Hogarth, who had supported Catherine during her first pregnancy.
It was not unusual for a woman’s unwed sister to live with and help a married couple.
Dickens became very attached to Mary.
She inspired characters in many of his books.
Mary is seen as the inspiration for Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist.
She is also seen as the inspiration for Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop.
Nell had many traits that Dickens associated to Howarth, including describing Nell as “young, beautiful and good“.
Other characters believed to have been inspired by Mary include:
Kate Nickleby, the 17-year-old sister of the hero of the novel Nicholas Nickleby
Agnes Wickfield, the heroine in David Copperfield
Ruth Pinch from Martin Chuzzlewit
Lilian, the child who appears in Trotty Veck’s visions in The Chimes
Dot Peerybingle, the sister in The Cricket on the Hearth.
Above: Mary Hogarth (1819 – 1837)
Unlike Mary, Dickens’ wife Catherine does not appear to have been the inspiration for any of his characters.
Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, famed as a fashionable residential area and as the home of numerous prestigious cultural, intellectual and educational institutions.
It is bounded by Fitzrovia to the west, Covent Garden to the south, Regent’s Park and St. Pancras to the north, and Clerkenwell to the east.
Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest museum in the United Kingdom, and numerous educational institutions, including the University College London, the University of London, the New College of the Humanities, the University of Law, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and many others.
Above: The British Museum, London
Bloomsbury is an intellectual and literary hub for London, as home of world-known Bloomsbury Publishing, publishers of the Harry Potter series, and namesake of the Bloomsbury Set, a group of famous British intellectuals, including author Virginia Woolf and economist John Maynard Keynes, among others.
Above: Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941)
Bloomsbury began to be developed in the 17th century under the Earls of Southampton, but it was primarily in the 19th century, under the Duke of Bedford, which the district was planned and built as an affluent Regency era residential area by famed developer James Burton.
The district is known for its numerous garden squares, including Bloomsbury Square, Russell Square and Tavistock Square, among others.
Notable residents of Bloomsbury have included J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan), Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Ricky Gervais, Vladimir Lenin, Bob Marley, Catherine Tate (Donna Noble, Doctor Who) and William Butler Yeats.
Above: Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924)
Despite a plethora of blue plaques, Bloomsbury boasts just one literary museum, the Charles Dickens Museum, the only one of the writer’s fifteen London addresses to survive intact.
Doughty Street was a well-to-do gated Georgian street when Dickens – flush with the success of his first two published works – moved here in 1837.
The family lived in this light and airy house for two years, during which he completed Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby and worked on Barnaby Rudge.
Catherine gave birth to two children in the bedroom here.
On Saturday, 6 May 1837, Charles took Catherine and Mary to the theatre.
They returned home in good spirits, enjoyed some supper and a drink together and went to bed at one in the morning.
A few moments later Charles heard a cry from Mary’s bedroom and hurried in to find her still in her day clothes and visibly ill.
Catherine came to see what was wrong.
Charles said afterwards that they had no idea there was anything seriously the matter with Mary, but that they sent for medical assistance to be on the safe side.
Whatever Dr. Pickthorn did had no effect, yet still there seemed no cause for alarm.
Mary was, after all, only 17 years old and until then had been in perfect health.
Fourteen hours went by before Mary sank under the attack and died – died in such a calm and gentle sleep, that although Charles had held her in his arms for some time before, when she was certainly living (for she swallowed a little brandy from his hand) Charles continued to support her lifeless form, long after her soul had fled to Heaven.
This was about 3 o’clock on Sunday afternoon.
“Thank God she died in my arms and the very last words she whispered were of me.“, Charles told fellow reporter and friend Tom Beard.
Before Charles laid Mary’s body down he was able to remove a ring from her finger and put it on one of his own.
And there it stayed for the rest of his life.
Above: Mary’s bedroom, Charles Dickens Museum
Mary’s death is fictionalized as the death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop.
The building at 48 Doughty Street was threatened with demolition in 1923, but was saved by the Dickens Fellowship, founded in 1902, who raised the mortgage and bought the property.
The house was renovated and the Dickens House Museum was opened in 1925, under the direction of an independent trust, now a registered charity.
Above: Study, Charles Dickens Museum
48 Doughty Street is presented as far as possible in its inhabited state, the idea being to give the impression that the Dickens family is still resident.
Much of the house’s furniture belonged, at one time or another, to Dickens, and the house also owns the earliest known portrait of the writer (a miniature painted by his aunt Mary Allen in 1830).
Above: Charles Dickens
Perhaps the best-known exhibit is the portrait of Dickens known as Dickens’s Dream by R. W. Buss, an original illustrator of The Pickwick Papers.
This unfinished portrait shows Dickens in his study at Gads Hill Place surrounded by many of the characters he had created.
The painting was begun in 1870 after Dickens’s death.
Above: Dickens’ Dream, Robert William Buss
(Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place and Gad’s Hill Place, was the country home of Charles Dickens.
Today the building is the independent Gad’s Hill School.
The house was built in 1780 for a former Mayor of Rochester, Thomas Stephens, opposite the present Sir John Falstaff Public House.
Gad’s Hill is where Falstaff commits the robbery that begins Shakespeare’s Henriad trilogy (Henry IV: Part 1, Henry IV: Part 2 and Henry V). )
Above: Gad’s Hill Place, Rochester
Other notable artefacts in the Museum include numerous first editions and original manuscripts as well as original letters by Dickens, and many personal items owned by Dickens and his family.
The only known item of clothing worn by Dickens still in existence is also displayed at the Museum.
This is his Court suit and sword, worn when Dickens was presented to the Prince of Wales in 1870.
The Charles Dickens Museum also owns the adjacent house, #49, where they stage special exhibitions, house the bookshop and have a lovely café with free Wifi.
There runs within both London and Rochester (where Charles spent the last years of his life) a Dickens Trail.
On London’s Dickens Trail, there is:
the Old Curiosity Shop (currently a shoe shop) on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the inspiration of Dickens’ novel of the same name
the atmospheric Inns of Court (once the headquarters of the Knights Templar) which feature in several Dickens novels
Nancy’s Steps, where Nancy tells Rose Maylie Oliver’s story in Oliver Twist
the evocative dockland area east of Shad Thames where Bill Sykes (also of Oliver Twist) had his hide-out.
(This dockland area, known as China Wharf – today very photogenic with its stack of semicircular windows picked out in red – was once dubbed “the very capital of cholera“.
In 1849, the Morning Chronicle described it thus:
“Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the very raff and refuse of the river, the visitor makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and sounds from the narrow alleys which branch off.”
This was the location of Dickens’ fictional Jacob’s Island, a place with “every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect“, where Bill Sykes met his end in Oliver Twist.)
Above: China Wharf, London
Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic.
He created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.
His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius.
His novels and short stories are still widely read today.
Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer and campaigned vigorously for children’s rights, education and other social reforms.
Above: Charles Dickens, 1842
Dickens’s literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers.
Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire and keen observation of character and society.
His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.
Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense.
The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience’s reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback.
For example, when his wife’s chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features.
His plots were carefully constructed and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives.
Above: Charles Dickens, 1850
Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha’pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.
His 1843 novella A Christmas Carol remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre.
Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London.
His 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities (set in London and Paris) is his best-known work of historical fiction.
The most famous celebrity of his era, public demand saw him undertake a series of public reading tours in the later part of his career.
Dickens has been praised by many of his fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell, G. K. Chesterton and Tom Wolfe—for hisrealism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations and social criticism.
However, Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing and a vein of sentimentalism.
Above: Dickens’ chair, Charles Dickens Museum
The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
There is much in Charles Dickens’ life before and up to his residency at 48 Doughty Street that I can relate with.
Charles came from a large family, as did I, but like the titular hero of Oliver Twist it was not until later in my life did I come to realize that I was neither an orphan (nor an only child) as far as my biological heritage went.
My first work during my school years was labour intensive like Charles’ was.
While his was labouring in a blacking factory, mine was summer employment as a farmhand.
(A position I occasionally returned to when financing my travels.)
Like Charles, I spent much of the early years of my life outdoors when I wasn’t reading voraciously.
The boy Charles read Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding and The Arabian Nights.
I read Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stephenson and the adventures of the Hardy Boys.
Charles was separated from his family by mounting debts and living beyond one’s means.
It is said that these were the cause of my biological parents’ break-up and it was the prevention of these to my foster parents that led to my being taken in for the provincial support the government provided for my care.
Unlike Charles, I was never small for my age and I would by the age of 14 surpass Charles’ adult height of 5’9″ to reach my current height of 6’4″, but, like Charles, I had felt that I was a “not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy“.
After my secondary and post-secondary studies, I, like Charles, worked as a clerk, but what for him would be a brief two years would be for me always a position to return to between my travels.
I have worked as a clerk for a customs broker, federal government departments and for a registered charity.
More akin to George Orwell, I would later work as a teacher and a restaurant worker, but in a Dickensian vein, I have written (sometimes for money, sometimes for exposure) for local newspapers and school publications.
I have never achieved great fame, but then neither have I greatly sought it to the extent that Dickens did.
What I have always admired about Dickens and his works are:
his humour, satire and keen observation of character and society.
his carefully constructed plots wherein he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives.
his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations and social criticism.
his walking which led to his descriptions of the neglected and forgotten corners of London.
“Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.“, wrote the poet Rupert Brooke.
London’s own Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, William Blake and Thomas De Quincey were all night time perambulators, but of those who walk the streets at night the supreme nightwalker was Charles Dickens.
In Great Expectations (1861), Pip at one point visits Miss Haversham in her home in Kent in order to inform her and her ward Estella, with whom he is still madly in love, that he has finally discovered the identity of his benefactor, the convict Magwitch.
Pip confirms that, because he knows Miss Haversham was not responsible for his transformation into a gentleman, he realizes that she and Estella have all along treated him not as their protegé but “as a kind of servant, to gratify a want or whim“.
It is on this occasion, too, that Estella admits she is to be married, as Pip feared, to the odious and oafish aristocrat Bentley Drummle.
Thus discarded, and in a deeply disconsolate state of mind, Pip escapes from Satis House and, as the afternoon light thickens, hides himself for a time “among some lanes and bypaths“.
Then, in a moment of decision, he strikes off “to walk all the way to London“.
“I could do nothing half so good for myself as tire myself out.”, he decides.
It is “past midnight” when he eventually crosses London Bridge.
Four years later, Dickens made roughly the same journey on foot, in reverse.
One night in October 1857, when he was in his mid-forties, Dickens retired to bed in the family home in Bloomsbury, but found himself completely unable to get to sleep.
He had suffered from intermittent insomnia throughout his adult life, but on this occasion he felt particularly agitated.
He did not feel at home at home.
So at 0200 Dickens climbed out of bed, dressed in warm clothes and set off through the gaslit streets of the city.
Dickens had written more than two decades earlier:
“The streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky winter’s night.
When the heavy, lazy mist, which hangs over every object, makes the gas lamps look brighter.”
In the damp silence of the autumn night, beneath the scuffing sound of his boots on the stone pavements, Dickens would have heard the gas whispering its secrets in the softly rasping pipes.
Heading south in the direction of the Thames, Dickens walked through London directly to Gad’s Hill Place, his country residence in Kent.
Like Pip’s journey through the night, it was a distance of some 30 miles.
Catherine and Charles had been….prolific – ten children – “the largest family ever known with the smallest disposition to do anything for themselves” as Dickens later described them – and 15 novels, each published in monthly (or weekly) installments, which were awaited with baited breath by the public.
Then in 1857, at the peak of his career, Dickens fell in love with the actress, Ellen Ternan.
Charles was 45, Ellen just 18.
Above: Ellen Ternan (1839 – 1914)
On the evening of his nightwalk, Catherine and Charles quarrelled.
They were becoming inrcreasingly estranged, partly because of his relationship with Ellen.
For this reason, Charles visited Tavistock House, their home at this time, only rarely.
Above: Tavistock House, London
Charles spent most of the autumn of 1857 at Gad’s Hill Place.
When he needed to be in central London, he tended to stay in a bachelor flat at the offices of his periodical, Household Words.
It was shortly after Charles insisted on partitioning the bedroom he shared with Catherine so that they could sleep separately.
The nighttime journey on foot to Gad’s Hill Place, driven by an acute sense of anguish and guilt, took Dickens little more than seven hours.
(According to present day Google Maps, the same journey normally takes 9.5 hours.)
Above: Google Maps logo
Dickens was a fast walker, who took pride in the fact that he could sustain a pace of at least four miles an hour across long distances.
(In my walking days my average pace was 3 mph and on a descent 5 mph.)
Above: Canada Slim, The Dutton Advance, 6 March 1991
His friends frequently complained of the speed and impatience with which he walked.
Above: Charles Dickens
Edward Johnson, one of his biographers, wrote:
“Sometimes his perspiring companions gave way to blisters and breathlessness.”
Charles himself was boastful of his feats as a pedestrian.
He professed in 1860:
“So much of my travelling is done on foot that if I cherished betting propensities, I should probably be found registered in sporting newspapers as the Elastic Novice, challenging all 11-stone mankind to competition in walking.”
No doubt he secretly harboured dreams of bettering Captain Barclay, a celebrated athlete who, in 1809, when pedestrianism first became a sporting activity, walked a thousand miles in a thousand hours for a thousand guineas.
Above: Captain Robert Barclay-Allardyce (1779 – 1854), the celebrated pedestrian
In the late 1850s, Dickens remained a fit man precisely because he insisted on walking, both in London and in the countryside, whenever he could find the opportunity.
Even so, he was increasingly afflicted with ill health at this time.
His symptoms included neuralgic and rheumatic pains.
His feet also troubled him.
According to biographer Claire Tomalin:
“First his left foot, and then his right, took to swelling intermittedly, becoming so painful that during each attack he became unable to take himself on the great walks that were essential part and pleasure of his life.”
Dickens had gout, though he was reluctant to accept the idea, claiming instead that he contracted the pain because he had incautiously walked in snowy conditions.
This did not deter him from walking in all conditions, clement or inclement.
G.K. Chesterton, identifiying a “streak of sickness” in Dickens, which he detected in the novelist’s “fervid” intelligence, nonetheless confirmed that “he suffered from no formidable malady and could always through life endure a great deal of exertion, even if it was only the exertion of walking violently all night.”
Above: Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 – 1936)
For John Hollingshead, who had been apprenticed to Dickens on Household Words, and who therefore saw a good deal of him in the 1850s, this proclivity for “violent walking” was itself a malady.
Hollingshead recalled in retrospect that “when Dickens lived in Tavistock House he developed a mania for walking long distances, which almost assumed the form of a disease.”
“When he was restless, his brain excited by struggling with incidents or characters in the novel he was writing, he would frequently get up and walk through the night over Waterloo Bridge, along the London, New Kent and Old Kent Roads, past all the towns on the old Dover High Road, until he came to his roadside dwelling (Gad’s Hill Place).
His dogs barked when they heard his key in the wicket-gate.
His behaviour must have seemed madness to the ghost of Sir John Falstaff.”
(Gad’s Hill Place stood opposite the Falstaff Inn, formerly a notorious haunt of robbers and highwaymen.)
Above: John Hollingshead (1827 – 1904)
It is likely, then, that Dickens conducted his 30-mile nightwalk to Kent on more than one occasion.
But Dickens’ celebrated feat on that night in October 1857 was less about overcoming physical afflictions than capitulating to his psychological ones.
This was a flight both from his everyday life and from his self.
From an early age Charles had been running away from something, or walking “fast and far” from something.
“Going astray“, he called it.
In an article entitled “Going Astray“, printed in Household Words in 1853, Dickens described how he had “got lost one day in the City of London” as an 8-year-old child and roamed and strayed and strolled through London’s precincts all day and into the night, until he found a watchman.
“I have gone astray since, many times, and farther afield.“, Dickens concludes with a certain sad pride.
Chesterton argued that Dicken’s originality and genius resided in the fact that he possessed, “in the most sacred and serious sense of the term, the key of the street.”
“Few of us understand the street.
Even we step into it, as into a house or a room of strangers.
Few of us see through the shining riddle of the street, the strange folk that belong to the street only – the street-walker or the street Arab, the nomads, who generation after generation, have kept their ancient secrets in the full blaze of the sun.
Of the street at night many of us know even less.
The street at night is a great house locked up.
But Dickens had, if ever man had, the key of the street.
His stars were the lamps of the street.
His hero was the man in the street.
He could open the inmost door of his house – the door that leads into that secret passage which is lined with houses and roofed with stars.”
Night Walks, first published in All the Year Round in 1860 and then reprinted in The Uncommercial Traveller in 1861, was Dickens’ finest, most haunting piece of non-fictional prose.
At once impressionistic and replete with intensely related detail, it relates his experiences on the streets of the capital between half past midnight (0030) and the moment when “the conscious gas begins to grow pale with the knowledge that daylight is coming.”
A sense of solitude echoes through his sentences, empty and hollow as the midnight streets through which he walks.
“When a church clock strikes, on homeless ears in the dead of the night, it may be at first be mistaken for company, but as the spreading circles of vibration echo out into eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of loneliness is profounder.”
Dickens confesses to have discovered a lonely sense of community in the cold depths of the London night, among men defined by “a tendency to lurk and lounge, to be at street corners without intelligible reason“.
“My principal object being to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every night of the year.”
These are the everyday casualities of life in the capitalist metropolis – the victims of unemployment, addiction and other symptoms of social and spiritual alienation.
The homeless must conquer time and defend themselves against its blank emptiness, from minute to minute, moment by moment, the shame, desertion, wretchedness and exposure of the great capital, the wet, the cold, the slow hours and the swift clouds of the dismal night.
For the police, the proof of a home, a legal nocturnal place to stay, is the precondition for the recognition of existence.
So the situation of homelessness, roaming the night without aim, without rest, represents exclusion from society.
It is a form of non-existence, non-being, the outer limits of society’s psychological and sociological borderland, the hinterland of humanity, the dark hollow interior of human nature.
London is a city where 55% of people are not ethnically white British, nearly 40% were born abroad, and 5% are living illegally in the shadows.
Every week 2,000 migrants unload at Victoria Coach Station, tens of thousands of migrants arriving here every year.
But who can trust statistics?
You will never understand what it means to be a beggar until you have slept on the streets.
They sleep in front of the glare of shop windows, for the light lends a sense of safety.
Crackheads and Roma, street life, disorientation, a jumble of faces, an eternal rumble of traffic, where working girls sell their bodies and throw in their souls for free, the rhythm of the streets, a never sated drumbeat.
Ute (my wife) and I on London evenings are one of many after-dinner couples strolling along.
I hear others with their contempt and disgust regard the beggars who congregate upon the concrete like lost church mice, like mangy parasites, cosmopolitan cockroaches, best belittled than assisted.
They are the invisible, because we choose to ignore them.
They are painful reminders of our privileged life that they cannot imagine having or, if once had, reacquiring.
They are the old and the prematurely aged, shuffling and stumbling, snuffling and sniffing, pleading for pennies from those whose hearts are void of compassion.
Washed-up soiled souls marooned, listless and almost lifeless, easy prey to those who would use them for cruel sport, they lie beneath walls smeared in blood and feces upon flattened cardboard boxes that soften the sidewalk.
Human rubbish amidst human refuse, they are gaunt faces with sunken eyes, needing to beg to survive, to live, to exist, but to beg is to break the law.
What is earned is confiscated.
Law and order trumps love and outreach.
They see the beggar as an offense not as a fellow human being.
Those without homes are an invisible city deliberately unseen by the lucky with lodgings.
Charles Dickens’ home is remembered as I hold my wife’s hand tightly to lend ourselves courage to encounter what we do not comprehend.
Charles feared poverty, was obsessed with money, felt that unease that only those who have raised themselves out from poverty can truly understand.
But his talent, hard work, perseverance and good fortune never required a return to a hand-to-mouth, payment-to-payment survival.
He encountered the homeless and destitute during his night walks but was never reduced to joining their ranks.
Above: Charles Dickens
My wife and I have London lodgings during our sojourn here and a warm comfortable flat awaiting our return to Switzerland.
I too have known a poverty of sorts, though my begging was limited to government assistance and hitching rides and seeking emergency overnight shelter in the places where rides left me.
In my long-distance walking days I slept wherever I could and rarely needed the tent I carried upon my backpack.
Like those migrants of London for whom hope remains despite their desperate circumstances, I worked where and when I could, sometimes in the safety of the law, sometimes not.
Though I have never been much of an evening perambulator I have nonetheless encountered the homeless in more than a few cities I have visited.
I see it regularly amongst the Roma in Konstanz and I give as prudently as I can when I encounter the beggar Bruno in St. Gallen.
I remember the helpless and hapless of London and Paris, Seoul and Istanbul, Naples and New York.
Above: The Old Beggar of Bordeaux, Louis Dewis, 1916
I think of Oliver Twist.
“Advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
“Please, sir, I want some more.” ”
Above: Mark Lester as Oliver Twist, Oliver!, 1968
Everyone’s hungry for something.
Sources: The Rough Guide to London / Matthew Beaumont, Night Walking: A Nocturnal History of London / Jeremy Clarke, The Charles Dickens Miscellany / Charles Dickens, Night Walks / Ben Judah, This Is London / Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life
In everyone’s life there are marker moments that separate who you were from who you are, as significant to the individual as BC and AD are to the Western calendar.
I have had my share of such moments in my own life.
Some are as obvious as scar tissue from accidents and operations.
Others are so subtle, so intimate, that they are as soft as a lover’s whisper in the night, and are no less important, nay, sometimes are far more important, than moments that clearly marked and marred you in the eyes of others.
Who we were, who we are and who we will become are often determined by what happens where we happen to be.
Certainly there are those who argue that we make our own destiny, that we create our own karma, but it is usually those who have known little hardship who wax poetically upon how they would have acted differently had they been in situations alien to their experience and understanding.
Their songs of self-praise usually play to the tune of “had I been there I would have….“.
“If I had been living in Germany during the Second World War I would have sheltered Jews.”
“If my country suffered a famine I would not remain.”
“If I lived in North Korea I would rise in revolt against the Kim dynasty.”
Truth be told, we may have the potential to freely make such brave decisions, but in the harsh chill of grim reality whether we would actually possess the needed courage and have the opportunity to successfully act is highly debatable.
If the consequence of helping others might lead to your death and the death of your loved ones, would you really risk everything to shelter those whom your government deems enemies of the state?
Would you be able to abandon your family to famine to save yourself?
Would you really defy your entire country’s military might to speak truth to power and say that what is being done in the name of nationalism is wrong for the nation?
It is easy to condemn the Germans of the National Socialist nightmare, the starving masses in Africa and India, the North Koreans under the Kims, and suggest that they were weak to allow themselves to be dominated by circumstances.
The self-righteous will argue with such platitudes like “Evil can only triumph when the good stay silent.“, but martyrdom’s recklessness is not easily embraced by everyone.
I was born in an age and have lived in places where I have never personally experienced the ravages of war firsthand.
I have known hunger and thirst but have never been hungry or thirsty to the brink of my own demise.
I have been fortunate to live in places where democracy, though imperfectly applied at times, dominated society rather than being sacrificed for security.
As a Canadian born in the 60s, who has never been in a military conflict, it is not easy for me to fully appreciate the difficulties of others that I myself have never experienced.
I count former refugees among my circle of friends, but I cannot claim to fully comprehend what they have endured or what they continue to quietly endure.
I have known those who chose not to be part of a military machine, despite the accusation of treason and disloyalty to their nation this suggests, because they chose not to act in the name of a nation that does not respect a person’s rights to choose not to kill their fellow human beings.
I love my homeland of Canada but I have never been called to defend her, have never had to choose between patriotism and humanity.
Canada’s leaders I have known may not have been great statesmen, but neither have they been as reprehensible as the leadership of other nations.
Can it be easy to be a true believer in Turkey under a tyrant like Erdogan?
Can it be easy to be a patriotic American with an amateur like Trump?
Can it be easy to call yourself a native of a nation whose government does things that disgust the conscience and stain the soil?
I grew up in Québec as an Anglophone Canadian and fortunately I have never been forced to choose between the province and the nation.
I now live in a nation that certainly isn’t a paradise for everyone within its boundaries, but its nationalism has not tested my resolve nor has it required the surrender of my conscience.
Oh, what a lucky man I have been!
Others have not been so fortunate.
I have visited places that have reminded me of my good fortune because of their contrast to that good fortune.
I have seen the ruins of the Berlin Wall and the grim reality of Cyprus’s Green Wall.
I have stood inside an underground tunnel between the two nations of South and North Korea, where two soldiers stand back-to-back 100 meters apart, and though they share the same language and the same culture, they are ordered to kill the other should the other speak.
I have seen cemeteries of fallen soldiers and the ravaged ruins that wars past have left behind.
I have seen the settings of holocaust and have witnessed racism firsthand.
I have heard the condemnation of others for the crime of being different.
How dare they love who they choose!
How dare they believe differently than we!
How dare they look not as we do!
How dare they exist!
Some places are scar marks on the conscience, wounds on the world.
Some places whisper the intimate injury of injustice and barely breathe the breeze of silent bravery against insurmountable obstacles.
I have not lived in a nation torn against itself where bully bastards hide their cruelty behind an ideological -ism that is a thinly disguised mask for their sadism.
What follows is the tale of one man who did, a man who lived in Belgrade, Serbia’s eternal city, and gave the world an image of the place’s perpetuity, the mirage of immortality….
A man’s whose life has made me consider my own….
Above: Belgrade
“Some folk tales have such universal appeal that we forget when and where we heard or read them, and they live on in our minds as memories of our personal experiences.
Such is, for example, the story of a young man who, wandering the Earth in pursuit of happiness, strayed onto a dangerous road, which led into an unknown direction.
To avoid losing his way, the young man marked the trees along the road with his hatchet, to help him find his way home.
That young man is the personification of general, eternal human destiny on one hand, there is a dangerous and uncertain road, and on the other, a great human need to not lose one’s way, to survive and to leave behind a legacy.
The signs we leave behind us might not avoid the fate of everything that is human: transience and oblivion.
Perhaps they will be passed by completely unnoticed?
Perhaps nobody will understand them?
And yet, they are necessary, just as it is natural and necessary for us humans to convey and reveal our thoughts to one another.
Even if those brief and unclear signs fail to spare us all wandering and temptation, they can alleviate them and, at least, be of help by convincing us that we are not alone in anything we experience, nor are we the first and only ones who have ever been in that position.”
(Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside)
Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, 5 April 2018
The weather was worsening but my spirits were high.
I was on a mini-vacation, a separate holiday without my spouse, in a nation completely alien to me.
My good friend Nesha had graciously offered me the use of his apartment while he was away on business in Tara National Park, and so I was at liberty to come and go as I pleased without any obligations to anyone else but myself.
Above: Flag of Serbia
The day had started well.
I had visited Saint Sava Cathedral, the Nikola Tesla Museum and had serendipitiously stumbled upon a second-hand music store that sold Serbian music that my guidebooks had recommended I discover.
Above: Saint Sava Cathedral
Above: Nikola Tesla Museum
(For details of these, please see Canada Slim and….
the Land of Long Life
the Holy Field of Sparrows
the Visionary
the Current War
the Man Who Invented the Future)
I was happy and so I would remain in the glorious week I spent in Belgrade and Nis.
I was learning so much!
(I still am.)
This journey I was making reminded me once again of just how ignorant I was (and am) of the world beyond my experience.
Before I began travelling the existence of life outside my senses remained naught more than rumours.
For example, I remember distinctly reading of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but it was far removed from my life until I moved to Germany and later visited Berlin before I began to understand why this had been a significant event, a big deal.
I partially blame my ignorance on the circumstances of my life in Canada.
Canadian news dominates Canadian media, which isn’t surprising as we are more interested in that which is closest to our experience.
English-language literature remains more accessible in Anglophone parts of Canada than other languages and so that is mostly what we know.
Too few Canadians speak more than their native tongues of either English or French.
Only 10% of Canadians are truly bilingual and not necessarily in the other official Canadian language.
How sad it is that so many North Americans know so little of the outside world unless there is a military conflict or diplomatic gesture in which they are involved.
Send a Canadian soldier or the Canadian Prime Minister to Serbia then a few Canadians might make a curious effort to find Serbia on a world map.
Part of the problem and the reason why world peace and true unity eludes humanity is nationalism.
Why care about those who are not us?
If “us” is defined and limited by our national boundaries then how can we include “them” in our vision of fellow human beings?
Only the truly exceptional of that which is foreign grabs our momentary attention.
How can we understand one another if that which has shaped us is unknown by others and that which has shaped them is alien to us?
Can a Serbian truly understand a Canadian without knowing of Terry Fox and Wayne Gretzky, Robert W. Service and Margaret Atwood, Just for Laughs and Stephan Leacock, the Stanley Cup and the CBC, Sergeant Renfrew and Constable Benton Fraser?
Can a Canadian truly understand a Serbian without knowing of Novak Djokovic and Nemanja Vidic, the Turija sausage fest and the Novi Sad Exit, the Drina Regatta and the Nisville Jazz Festival, Emir Kusturica and Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac and Ivo Andric?
Above: Ivo Andric (1892 – 1975)
Possibly not.
I often think that it would be a good idea for the young to not only read what is / was written in their own tongue but as well to read Nobel Prize winning books translated from other languages.
It might even be a step towards world unity.
In my school years I was exposed to the writing of Nobel Prize winners Kipling, O’Neill, Buck, Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck and Bellow.
I had to travel to discover other Nobel laureates like Pamuk, Jelinek, Saramango, Neruda, Sartre, Camus, Marquez, Solzhenitsyn, Gidé, Mann and Andric by accident.
How much we miss when we stick to only our own!
How can we possibly have world peace when we are so ignorant of the world’s music, art and literature?
The street that runs beside Belgrade’s New Palace, now the seat of the President of Serbia, is named Andrićev venac (Andrić’s Crescent) in his honour.
It includes a life-sized statue of the writer.
The flat in which Andrić spent his final years has been turned into a museum.
Several of Serbia’s other major cities, such as Novi Sad and Kragujevac, have streets named after Andrić.
Streets in a number of cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Tuzla, and Višegrad, also carry his name.
Andrić remains the only writer from the former Yugoslavia to have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
Given his use of the Ekavian dialect, and the fact that most of his novels and short stories were written in Belgrade, his works have become associated almost exclusively with Serbian literature.
(I asked my good friend Nesha whether Serbians can communicate with Bosnians and Croatians in a similar language, whether there was a Slavic tongue that unites the three.
He responded that it is all one Serbo-Croatian language with a difference in dialects that changes from region to region and divided by three different accents: Ekavica, Jekavic and Ijekavica
Even though Slovenians and Macedonians speak a little differently, they all understand and speak a Serbian-type speech.)
The Slavonic studies professor Bojan Aleksov characterizes Andrić as one of Serbian literature’s two central pillars, the other being Njegoš.
“The plasticity of his narrative,” Moravcevich writes, “the depth of his psychological insight, and the universality of his symbolism remain unsurpassed in all of Serbian literature.“
Though it has been said that the Serbian novel did not begin with Ivo Andric – (that honour lies with Borisav Stankovic (1867 – 1927) who explored the contradictions of man’s spiritual and sensory life in his 1910 work Bad Blood, the first Serbian novel to receive praise in its foreign translations) – it was Andric who took Serbian literature’s oral traditions and epic poetry and developed and perfected its narrative form.
To this day, Andric remains probably the most famous writer from former Yugoslavia.
And, sadly, I had never heard of him prior to this day.
A visit to the Memorial Museum of Ivo Andric (to give its official title) this day helped correct this imbalance….
By a decision of the Belgrade City Assembly, the property of Ivo Andric was heritage-listed and entrusted to the Belgrade City Museum immediately following Andric’s death on 13 March 1975.
It was an act meant to express the city’s deep respect for Andric as a writer and as a person.
In accordance with the practice common all over the world, Belgrade wished to preserve the original appearance of the writer’s apartment, surrounded by the Belgrade Old and New Courts and Pionirski Park, in its picturesque environment, to honour its famous citizen.
The establishment of this Memorial Museum also throws light on a very remarkable period in history encompassing the two world wars, as well as the post-war years, on which Andric left a strong personal and creative impact.
The holdings of Ivo Andric’s legacy chiefly consist of items found and inventoried at his apartment after his death – the underlying idea being to reflect the spirit and atmosphere of privacy and nobility surrounding him.
Andric’s personal library contains 3,373 items, along with archival materials, manuscripts, works of fine and applied arts, diplomas and decorations, 1,070 personal belongings and 803 photographs.
The apartment covers an area of 144 square metres (somewhat larger than my own apartment) and is divided into three units:
the authentic interior, encompassing an entrance hall, a drawing room and Andric’s study
the exhibition rooms, created by the adaptation of two bedrooms
the curators’ and guides offices and the museum storerooms, occupying the former kitchen, the maid’s room, the bathroom and the lobby
It is both an unusual and a subtle combination of ambiguously private and unabasedly public, presenting an overview of Andric’s private life while depicting his vivid diplomatic, national, cultural and educational activities.
Ivo Andric was an unusual man who lived in unusual times, a life captured by a small apartment museum that like Andric himself is deceptively normal in appearance….
The original appearance and the function of the entrance hall have been preserved to a great extent.
The showcase with publications and souvenirs of the Belgrade City Museum is the only sign indicating that a visitor, though in residential premises, is actually in a Museum.
Already at the entrance to the Museum, an open bookshelf populated with thick volumes of Serbo-Croatian and foreign language dictionaries and encyclopedias and literary works in French, German and English, symbolizes Andric’s communication with European and world literature, history and philosophy as well as his own creative endeavours.
This is where the story of the writer begins to unfold….
Ivan Andrić was born in the village of Dolac, near Travnik, on 10 October 1892, while his mother, Katarina (née Pejić), was in the town visiting relatives.
Above: The house in which Andric was born, now a museum
(Travnik has a strong culture, mostly dating back to its time as the center of local government in the Ottoman Empire.
Travnik has a popular old town district however, which dates back to the period of Bosnian independence during the first half of the 15th century.
Numerous mosques and churches exist in the region, as do tombs of important historical figures and excellent examples of Ottoman architecture.
The city museum, built in 1950, is one of the more impressive cultural institutions in the region.
Travnik became famous by important persons who were born or lived in the city.
The most important of which are Ivo Andrić, Miroslav Ćiro Blažević (football coach of the Croatian national team, won third place 1998 in France), Josip Pejaković (actor), Seid Memić (pop singer) and Davor Džalto (artist and art historian, the youngest PhD in Germany and in the South-East European region).
Above: Images of Travnik
One of the main works of Ivo Andrić is the Bosnian Chronicle, depicting life in Travnik during the Napoleonic Wars and written during World War II.
In this work Travnik and its people – with their variety of ethnic and religious communities – are described with a mixture of affection and exasperation.
The Bosnian Tornjak, one of Bosnia’s two major dog breeds and national symbol, originated in the area, found around Mount Vlašić.)
Andrić’s parents were both Catholic Croats.
He was his parents’ only child.
(I too was raised as an only child.)
His father, Antun, was a struggling silversmith who resorted to working as a school janitor in Sarajevo, where he lived with his wife and infant son.
(The Museum disagrees with Wikipedia, describing Antun as a court attendant.)
At the age of 32, Antun died of tuberculosis, like most of his siblings.
Andrić was only two years old at the time.
(My mother died, of cancer, when I was three.)
Widowed and penniless, Andrić’s mother took him to Višegrad and placed him in the care of her sister-in-law Ana and brother-in-law Ivan Matković, a police officer at the border military police station.
The couple were financially stable but childless, so they agreed to look after the infant and brought him up as their own in their house on the bank of the Drina River.
Meanwhile, Andrić’s mother returned to Sarajevo seeking employment.
Andrić was raised in a country that had changed little since the Ottoman period despite being mandated to Austria-Hungary at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.
Eastern and Western culture intermingled in Bosnia to a far greater extent than anywhere else in the Balkan peninsula.
Having lived there from an early age, Andrić came to cherish Višegrad, calling it “my real home“.
Though it was a small provincial town (or kasaba), Višegrad proved to be an enduring source of inspiration.
It was a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional town, the predominant groups being Serbs (Orthodox Christians) and Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks).
Above: Images of Visegrad
(Like Andric, I was born elsewhere than the place I think of as home, though to Andric’s credit he lovingly wrote about his birthplace in The Travnik Chronicle.
I could imagine writing about St. Philippe, my childhood hometown, but I feel no intimate connection to St. Eustache, my birthplace, whatsoever, despite the latter having a larger claim to fame than the “blink-or-you’ll-miss-it” village of my youth.)
Above: St. Eustache City Hall
(My imagination plays with the notion of St. Philippe as “St. Jerusalem” and St. Eustache described during the Rebellion of 1837.)
Above: The Battle of St. Eustache, 14 December 1837
From an early age, Andrić closely observed the customs of the local people.
These customs, and the particularities of life in eastern Bosnia, would later be detailed in his works.
Andrić made his first friends in Višegrad, playing with them along the Drina River and the town’s famous Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge.
(The area was part of the medieval Serbian state of the Nemanjić dynasty.
It was part of the Grand Principality of Serbia under Stefan Nemanja (r. 1166–96).
In the Middle Ages, Dobrun was a place within the border area with Bosnia, on the road towards Višegrad.
After the death of Emperor Stefan Dušan (r. 1331–55), the region came under the rule of magnate Vojislav Vojinović, and then his nephew, župan (count) Nikola Altomanović.
The Dobrun Monastery was founded by župan Pribil and his family, some time before the 1370s.
Above: Dobrun Monastery
The area then came under the rule of the Kingdom of Bosnia, part of the estate of the Pavlović noble family.
The settlement of Višegrad is mentioned in 1407, but is starting to be more often mentioned after 1427.
In the period of 1433–37, a relatively short period, caravans crossed the settlement many times.
Many people from Višegrad worked for the Republic of Ragusa.
Srebrenica and Višegrad and its surroundings were again in Serbian hands in 1448 after Despot Đurađ Branković defeated Bosnian forces.
Above: Durad Brankovic (1377 – 1456)
According to Turkish sources, in 1454, Višegrad was conquered by the Ottoman Empire led by Osman Pasha.
It remained under the Ottoman rule until the Berlin Congress (1878), when Austria-Hungary took control of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge was built by the Ottoman architect and engineer Mimar Sinan for Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha.
Construction of the bridge took place between 1571 and 1577.
It still stands, and it is now a tourist attraction, after being inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.
The Bosnian Eastern Railway from Sarajevo to Uvac and Vardište was built through Višegrad during the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Construction of the line started in 1903.
It was completed in 1906, using the 760 mm (2 ft 515⁄16 in) track gauge.
With the cost of 75 million gold crowns, which approximately translates to 450 thousand gold crowns per kilometer, it was one of the most expensive railways in the world built by that time.
This part of the line was eventually extended to Belgrade in 1928.
Višegrad is today part of the narrow-gauge heritage railway Šargan Eight.
The area was a site of Partisan–German battles during World War II.
Višegrad is one of several towns along the River Drina in close proximity to the Serbian border.
The town was strategically important during the Bosnian War conflict.
A nearby hydroelectric dam provided electricity and also controlled the level of the River Drina, preventing flooding downstream areas.
The town is situated on the main road connecting Belgrade and Užice in Serbia with Goražde and Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a vital link for the Užice Corps of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) with the Uzamnica camp as well as other strategic locations implicated in the conflict.
On 6 April 1992, JNA artillery bombarded the town, in particular Bosniak-inhabited neighbourhoods and nearby villages.
Murat Šabanović and a group of Bosniak men took several local Serbs hostage and seized control of the hydroelectric dam, threatening to blow it up.
Water was released from the dam causing flooding to some houses and streets.
Eventually on 12 April, JNA commandos seized the dam.
The next day the JNA’s Užice Corps took control of Višegrad, positioning tanks and heavy artillery around the town.
The population that had fled the town during the crisis returned and the climate in the town remained relatively calm and stable during the later part of April and the first two weeks of May.
On 19 May 1992 the Užice Corps officially withdrew from the town and local Serb leaders established control over Višegrad and all municipal government offices.
Soon after, local Serbs, police and paramilitaries began one of the most notorious campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the conflict.
There was widespread looting and destruction of houses, and terrorizing of Bosniak civilians, with instances of rape, with a large number of Bosniaks killed in the town, with many bodies were dumped in the River Drina.
Men were detained at the barracks at Uzamnica, the Vilina Vlas Hotel and other sites in the area.
Vilina Vlas also served as a “brothel“, in which Bosniak women and girls (some not yet 14 years old), were brought to by police officers and paramilitary members (White Eagles and Arkan’s Tigers).
Above: Vilina Vlas Hotel today
Bosniaks detained at Uzamnica were subjected to inhumane conditions, including regular beatings, torture and strenuous forced labour.
Both of the town’s mosques were razed.
According to victims’ reports some 3,000 Bosniaks were murdered in Višegrad and its surroundings, including some 600 women and 119 children.
According to the Research and Documentation Center, at least 1,661 Bosniaks were killed/missing in Višegrad.
With the Dayton Agreement, which put an end to the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina was divided into two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, the latter which Višegrad became part of.
Above: Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Before the war, 63% of the town residents were Bosniak.
In 2009, only a handful of survivors had returned to what is now a predominantly Serb town.
On 5 August 2001, survivors of the massacre returned to Višegrad for the burial of 180 bodies exhumed from mass graves.
The exhumation lasted for two years and the bodies were found in 19 different mass graves.
The charges of mass rape were unapproved as the prosecutors failed to request them in time.
Cousins Milan Lukić and Sredoje Lukić were convicted on 20 July 2009, to life in prison and 30 years, respectively, for a 1992 killing spree of Muslims.
Above: Milan Lukic
The Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic Bridge was popularized by Andric in his novel The Bridge on the Drina.
A tourist site called Andricgrad (Andric Town) dedicated to Andric, is located near the Bridge.
Construction of Andrićgrad, also known as Kamengrad (Каменград, “Stonetown“) started on 28 June 2011, and was officially opened on 28 June 2014, on Vidovdan.)
Above: Main Street, Andricgrad
Throughout his life Andric was tied to Visegrad by pleasant reminiscences and bright memories of childhood.
Above: First edition of The Bridge on the Drina (Serbian)
At the age of ten, he received a three-year scholarship from a Croat cultural group called Napredak (Progress) to study in Sarajevo.
In the autumn of 1902, he was registered at the Great Sarajevo Gymnasium (Serbo-Croatian: Velika Sarajevska gimnazija), the oldest secondary school in Bosnia.
While in Sarajevo, Andrić lived with his mother, who worked in a rug factory as a weaver.
(Today Sarajevo is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population of 275,524 in its administrative limits.
The Sarajevo metropolitan area, is home to 555,210 inhabitants.
Nestled within the greater Sarajevo valley of Bosnia, it is surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of the Balkans.
Sarajevo is the political, financial, social and cultural center of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a prominent center of culture in the Balkans, with its region-wide influence in entertainment, media, fashion, and the arts.
Due to its long and rich history of religious and cultural diversity, Sarajevo is sometimes called the “Jerusalem of Europe” or “Jerusalem of the Balkans“.
It is one of only a few major European cities which have a mosque, Catholic church, Orthodox church and synagogue in the same neighborhood.
A regional center in education, the city is home to the Balkans first institution of tertiary education in the form of an Islamic polytechnic called the Saraybosna Osmanlı Medrese, today part of the University of Sarajevo.
Although settlement in the area stretches back to prehistoric times, the modern city arose as an Ottoman stronghold in the 15th century.
Sarajevo has attracted international attention several times throughout its history.
In 1885, Sarajevo was the first city in Europe and the second city in the world to have a full-time electric tram network running through the city, following San Francisco….)
At the time, the city was overflowing with civil servants from all parts of Austria-Hungary, and thus many languages could be heard in its restaurants, cafés and on its streets.
Culturally, the city boasted a strong Germanic element, and the curriculum in educational institutions was designed to reflect this.
From a total of 83 teachers that worked at Andrić’s school over a twenty-year period, only three were natives of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“The teaching program,” biographer Celia Hawkesworth notes, “was devoted to producing dedicated supporters of the Habsburg Monarchy.”
Andrić disapproved.
“All that came at secondary school and university,” he wrote, “was rough, crude, automatic, without concern, faith, humanity, warmth or love.“
Andrić experienced difficulty in his studies, finding mathematics particularly challenging, and had to repeat the sixth grade.
For a time, he lost his scholarship due to poor grades.
Hawkesworth attributes Andrić’s initial lack of academic success at least partly to his alienation from most of his teachers.
Nonetheless, he excelled in languages, particularly Latin, Greek and German.
Although he initially showed substantial interest in natural sciences, he later began focusing on literature, likely under the influence of his two Croat instructors, writer and politician Đuro Šurmin and poet Tugomir Alaupović.
Of all his teachers in Sarajevo, Andrić liked Alaupović best and the two became lifelong friends.
Above: Tugomir Alaupovic (1870 – 1958)
Andrić felt he was destined to become a writer.
He began writing in secondary school, but received little encouragement from his mother.
He recalled that when he showed her one of his first works, she replied:
“Did you write this? What did you do that for?”
Andrić published his first poem “U sumrak” (At dusk) in 1911 in a journal called Bosanska vila (Bosnian Fairy), which promoted Serbo-Croat unity.
At the time, he was still a secondary school student.
His poems, essays, reviews, and translations appeared in journals such as Vihor (Whirlwind), Savremenik (The Contemporary), Hrvatski pokret (The Croatian Movement), and Književne novine (Literary News).
One of Andrić’s favorite literary forms was lyrical reflective prose, and many of his essays and shorter pieces are prose poems.
The historian Wayne S. Vucinich describes Andrić’s poetry from this period as “subjective and mostly melancholic“.
Andrić’s translations of August Strindberg’s novel Black Flag, Walt Whitman, and a number of Slovene authors also appeared around this time.
Above: Swedish writer August Strindberg (1849 – 1912)
In 1908, Austria-Hungary officially annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, to the chagrin of South Slav nationalists like Andrić.
In late 1911, Andrić was elected the first president of the Serbo-Croat Progressive Movement (Serbo-Croatian: Srpsko-Hrvatska Napredna Organizacija; SHNO), a Sarajevo-based secret society that promoted unity and friendship between Serb and Croat youth and opposed the Austro-Hungarian occupation.
Its members were vehemently criticized by both Serb and Croat nationalists, who dismissed them as “traitors to their nations“.
Unfazed, Andrić continued agitating against the Austro-Hungarians.
On 28 February 1912, he spoke before a crowd of 100 student protesters at Sarajevo’s railway station, urging them to continue their demonstrations.
The Austro-Hungarian police later began harassing and prosecuting SHNO members.
Ten were expelled from their schools or penalized in some other way, though Andrić himself escaped punishment.
Andrić also joined the South Slav student movement known as Young Bosnia, becoming one of its most prominent members.
In 1912, Andrić registered at the University of Zagreb, having received a scholarship from an educational foundation in Sarajevo.
He enrolled in the department of mathematics and natural sciences because these were the only fields for which scholarships were offered, but was able to take some courses in Croatian literature.
(Today Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of Croatia.
It is located in the northwest of the country, along the Sava River, at the southern slopes of Mount Medvednica.
The climate of Zagreb is classified as an oceanic climate, but with significant continental influences and very closely bordering on a humid Continental climate as well as a humid subtropical climate.
Zagreb has four separate seasons.
Summers are warm, at the end of May the temperatures start rising and it is often pleasant with occasional thunderstorms.
Heatwaves can occur but are short-lived.
Temperatures rise above 30 °C (86 °F) on an average 14.6 days each summer.
Rainfall is abundant in the summertime and it continues to be in autumn as well.
Zagreb is Europe’s 9th wettest capital, behind Luxembourg and ahead of Brussels, Belgium.
Autumn in its early stages is mild with an increase of rainy days and precipitation as well as a steady temperature fall towards its end.
Morning fog is common from mid-October to January with northern city districts at the foothills of the Medvednica mountain as well as those along the Sava river being more prone to all-day fog accumulation.
Winters are cold with a precipitation decrease pattern.
Even though there is no discernible dry season, February is the driest month with 39 mm of precipitation.
On average there are 29 days with snowfall with first snow falling in early November.
Springs are generally mild and pleasant with frequent weather changes and are windier than other seasons.
Sometimes cold spells can occur, mostly in its early stages.
The average daily mean temperature in the winter is around 1 °C (34 °F) (from December to February) and the average temperature in the summer is 22.0 °C (71.6 °F).
Zagreb is a city with a rich history dating from the Roman times to the present day.
The oldest settlement located in the vicinity of the city was the Roman Andautonia, in today’s Ščitarjevo.
The name “Zagreb” is recorded in 1134, in reference to the foundation of the settlement at Kaptol in 1094.
Zagreb became a free royal town in 1242.
In 1851 Zagreb had its first mayor, Janko Kamauf.
After the 1880 Zagreb earthquake, up to the 1914 outbreak of World War I, development flourished and the town received the characteristic layout which it has today.
Zagreb still occasionally experiences earthquakes, due to the proximity of Žumberak-Medvednica fault zone.
It’s classified as an area of high seismic activity.
The area around Medvednica was the epicentre of the 1880 Zagreb earthquake (magnitude 6.3), and the area is known for occasional landslide threatening houses in the area.
The proximity of strong seismic sources presents a real danger of strong earthquakes.
Croatian Chief of Office of Emergency Management Pavle Kalinić stated Zagreb experiences around 400 earthquakes a year, most of them being imperceptible.
However, in case of a strong earthquake, it’s expected that 3,000 people would die and up to 15,000 would be wounded.
Above: Damage done to Zagreb Cathedral, 9 November 1880
The first horse-drawn tram was used in 1891.
The construction of the railway lines enabled the old suburbs to merge gradually into Donji Grad, characterised by a regular block pattern that prevails in Central European cities.
This bustling core hosts many imposing buildings, monuments, and parks as well as a multitude of museums, theatres and cinemas.
An electric power plant was built in 1907.
Since 1 January 1877, the Grič cannon is fired daily from the Lotrščak Tower on Grič to mark midday.
The first half of the 20th century saw a considerable expansion of Zagreb.
Before World War I, the city expanded and neighbourhoods like Stara Peščenica in the east and Črnomerec in the west were created.
The transport connections, concentration of industry, scientific, and research institutions and industrial tradition underlie its leading economic position in Croatia.
Zagreb is the seat of the central government, administrative bodies, and almost all government ministries.
Almost all of the largest Croatian companies, media, and scientific institutions have their headquarters in the city.
Zagreb is the most important transport hub in Croatia where Central Europe, the Mediterranean and Southeast Europe meet, making the Zagreb area the centre of the road, rail and air networks of Croatia.
It is a city known for its diverse economy, high quality of living, museums, sporting and entertainment events.
Its main branches of economy are high-tech industries and the service sector.
Zagreb is an important tourist centre, not only in terms of passengers travelling from the rest of Europe to the Adriatic Sea, but also as a travel destination itself.
It attracts close to a million visitors annually, mainly from Austria, Germany and Italy, and in recent years many tourists from the Far East (South Korea, Japan, China and India).
It has become an important tourist destination, not only in Croatia, but considering the whole region of southeastern Europe.
There are many interesting sights and happenings for tourists to attend in Zagreb, for example, the two statues of Saint George, one at the Republic of Croatia Square, the other at Kamenita vrata, where the image of Virgin Mary is said to be only thing that hasn’t burned in the 17th-century fire.
Also, there is an art installation starting in Bogovićeva street, called Nine Views.
Most people don’t know what the statue “Prizemljeno Sunce” (The Grounded Sun) is for, and just scrawl graffiti or signatures on it, but it’s actually the Sun scaled down, with many planets situated all over Zagreb in scale with the Sun.
There are also many festivals and events throughout the year, making Zagreb a year-round tourist destination.
The historical part of the city to the north of Ban Jelačić Square is composed of the Gornji Grad and Kaptol, a medieval urban complex of churches, palaces, museums, galleries and government buildings that are popular with tourists on sightseeing tours.
The historic district can be reached on foot, starting from Jelačić Square, the centre of Zagreb, or by a funicular on nearby Tomićeva Street.
Each Saturday, (April – September), on St. Mark’s Square in the Upper town, tourists can meet members of the Order of The Silver Dragon (Red Srebrnog Zmaja), who reenact famous historical conflicts between Gradec and Kaptol.
It’s a great opportunity for all visitors to take photographs of authentic and fully functional historical replicas of medieval armour.
Numerous shops, boutiques, store houses and shopping centres offer a variety of quality clothing.
There are about fourteen big shopping centres in Zagreb.
Zagreb’s offerings include crystal, china and ceramics, wicker or straw baskets, and top-quality Croatian wines and gastronomic products.
Notable Zagreb souvenirs are the tie or cravat, an accessory named after Croats who wore characteristic scarves around their necks in the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century and the ball-point pen, a tool developed from the inventions by Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, an inventor and a citizen of Zagreb.
Many Zagreb restaurants offer various specialties of national and international cuisine.
Domestic products which deserve to be tasted include turkey, duck or goose with mlinci (a kind of pasta), štrukli (cottage cheese strudel), sir i vrhnje (cottage cheese with cream), kremšnite (custard slices in flaky pastry) and orehnjača (traditional walnut roll). )
Andrić was well received by South Slav nationalists in Zagreb and regularly participated in on-campus demonstrations.
This led to his being reprimanded by the university.
In 1913, after completing two semesters in Zagreb, Andrić transferred to the University of Vienna, where he resumed his studies.
(Vienna is the federal capital, largest city and one of nine states of Austria.
Vienna is Austria’s principal city, with a population of about 1.9 million (2.6 million within the metropolitan area, nearly one third of the country’s population), and its cultural, economic and political centre.
It is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the city had 2 million inhabitants.
Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin.
Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC.
The city is located in the eastern part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
These regions work together in a European Centrope border region.
Along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants.
In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In July 2017 it was moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger.
Apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be “The City of Dreams” because it was home to the world’s first psychoanalyst – Sigmund Freud.
The city’s roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city, and then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
It is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century.
The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, and the late-19th-century Ringstraße lined with grand buildings, monuments and parks.
Vienna is known for its high quality of life.
In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first (in a tie with Vancouver and San Francisco) for the world’s most liveable cities.
Between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne.
In 2018, it replaced Melbourne as the number one spot.
For ten consecutive years (2009–2019), the human-resource-consulting firm Mercer ranked Vienna first in its annual “Quality of Living” survey of hundreds of cities around the world.
Monocle’s 2015 “Quality of Life Survey” ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world “to make a base within.”
The UN-Habitat classified Vienna as the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013.
The city was ranked 1st globally for its culture of innovation in 2007 and 2008, and sixth globally (out of 256 cities) in the 2014 Innovation Cities Index, which analyzed 162 indicators in covering three areas: culture, infrastructure, and markets.
Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is often used as a case study by urban planners.
Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the world’s number-one destination for international congresses and conventions.
It attracts over 6.8 million tourists a year.)
Above: Images of Vienna (Wien)
While in Vienna, Andric joined South Slav students in promoting the cause of Yugoslav unity and worked closely with two Yugoslav student societies, the Serbian cultural society Zora (Dawn) and the Croatian student club Zvonimir, which shared his views on “integral Yugoslavism” (the eventual assimilation of all South Slav cultures into one).
Andric became acquainted with Soren Kierkegaard’s book Either / Or, which would have a lasting influence on him.
Above: Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)
Despite finding like-minded students in Vienna, the city’s climate took a toll on Andrić’s health.
He contracted tuberculosis and became seriously ill, then asked to leave Vienna on medical grounds and continue his studies elsewhere, though Hawkesworth believes he may actually have been taking part in a protest of South Slav students that were boycotting German-speaking universities and transferring to Slavic ones.
For a time, Andrić had considered transferring to a school in Russia but ultimately decided to complete his fourth semester at Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
Above: Logo of Jagiellonian University
(Kraków is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland.
Situated on the Vistula River, the city dates back to the 7th century.
Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 and has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, economic, cultural and artistic life.
Cited as one of Europe’s most beautiful cities, its Old Town was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The city has grown from a Stone Age settlement to Poland’s second most important city.
It began as a hamlet on Wawel Hill and was already being reported as a busy trading centre of Central Europe in 965.
With the establishment of new universities and cultural venues at the emergence of the Second Polish Republic in 1918 and throughout the 20th century, Kraków reaffirmed its role as a major national academic and artistic centre.
The city has a population of about 770,000, with approximately 8 million additional people living within a 100 km (62 mi) radius of its main square.
After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany at the start of World War II, the newly defined Distrikt Krakau (Kraków District) became the capital of Germany’s General Government.
The Jewish population of the city was forced into a walled zone known as the Kraków Ghetto, from which they were sent to German extermination camps such as the nearby Auschwitz never to return, and the Nazi concentration camps like Płaszów.
In 1978, Karol Wojtyła, archbishop of Kraków, was elevated to the papacy as Pope John Paul II—the first Slavic pope ever and the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.
Above: Pope John Paul II (1920 – 2005)
Also that year, UNESCO approved the first ever sites for its new World Heritage List, including the entire Old Town in inscribing Kraków’s Historic Centre.
Kraków is classified as a global city with the ranking of high sufficiency by GaWC.
Its extensive cultural heritage across the epochs of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture includes the Wawel Cathedral and the Royal Castle on the banks of the Vistula, the St. Mary’s Basilica, Saints Peter and Paul Church and the largest medieval market square in Europe, the Rynek Główny.
Kraków is home to Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest universities in the world and traditionally Poland’s most reputable institution of higher learning.
In 2000, Kraków was named European Capital of Culture.
In 2013 Kraków was officially approved as a UNESCO City of Literature.
The city hosted the World Youth Day in July 2016.)
Throughout his life Andric would feel that he owed much to the Polish excursion.
Andric met and mingled with painters Jovan Bijelic, Roman Petrovic and Peter Tijesic.
He transferred in early 1914 and continued to publish translations, poems and reviews.
Six poems written by Andric were included in the anthology Hrvatska Mlada Linka (Young Christian Lyricists).
In the words of literary critics:
“As unhappy as any artist. Ambitious. Sensitive. Briefly speaking, he has a future.”
Above: Flag of Poland
(This perspective has always made me wonder….
Must a man suffer before he can call himselfan artist?)
Certainly, Andric lost his father and was separated from his mother in his childhood and the domination of his homeland by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire clearly bothered him, nonetheless Andric had had the distinct privilege of living and studying in four of the most beautiful and cultural cities that Eastern Europe offers.
Certainly, Andric would be plagued with ill health often during the course of his lifetime, but it would not be until the outbreak of war in 1914 that his, and Europe’s, suffering would truly begin….
(To be continued….)
Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Lonely Planet Eastern Europe / Belgrade City Museum, Memorial Museum of Ivo Andric Guide / Komshe Travel Guides, Serbia in Your Hands / Top Travel Guides, Belgrade / Bradt Guides, Serbia / Aleksandar Diklic, Belgrade: The Eternal City / Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina / Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside
(Continued from Canada Slim and the Visionary & Canada Slim and the Current War)
“Imagine a man a century ago, bold enough to design and actually build a huge tower with which to transmit the human voice, music, pictures, press news and even power, through the Earth to any distance whatever without wires!
He probably would have been hung or burnt at the stake.”
(Hugo Gernsback, Preface to Nikola Tesla’s My Inventions: 5. The Magnifying Transmitter, Electrical Experimenter, June 1919)
Such was the high regard that Gernsback, Tesla’s greatest admirer, had for the Serbian inventor.
Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943) was one of the greatest scientists and innovators during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
The Serbian genius went to America in 1884 and would be followed by his Luxemburger admirer Hugo Gernsback (1884 – 1967) twenty years later.
Both men would come to America to bring realization to their visionary ideas.
Tesla is the creative genius behind many great inventions which are today utilized in radio, industrial and nuclear technology.
Gernsback’s contributions as a publisher were so significant that, along with the novelists H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, that he is sometimes called the Father of Science Fiction, and it is in his honour that the annual awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention are named the Hugos.
For me there is an irony that Tesla was discovered by the world through Gernsback while I discovered Gernsback through the world of Tesla.
Belgrade, Serbia, 5 April 2018
A week’s vacation where boys will be boys in a part of the world far removed from our respective spouses found me visiting my Serbian friend Nesha in his home city of Belgrade.
Sadly, Nesha had more obligations in Serbia than just playing host to this Canadian blogger so half my stay involved me on my own.
I had arrived the previous day, travelling with Nesha from his home in Herisau, Switzerland, to his childhood house in the Serbian capital.
After breakfast the following morning, the dateline above, I set out to explore the city.
Krunska Street runs parallel to the Bulevar (King Aleksander Boulevard, one of the longest streets in Belgrade) and, in contrast, is a relatively quiet street and makes for a very pleasant stroll.
At Krunska 51, the Raska style villa of politician Dorde (George) Gencic, built in 1929, the Nikola Tesla Museum is engaged in educating and informing the public about the life and inventions of this Serbian scientist who died in Manhattan in 1943.
(Gernsback would die in the same city twenty-four years later.)
The Museum was founded when Sava Kosanovic, Tesla’s heir….
(Tesla never married.
He explained that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities.
He once said in earlier years that he felt that he could never be worthy enough for a woman, considering women superior in every way.
His opinion started to sway in later years when he felt that women were trying to outdo men and make themselves more dominant.
(I know how he feels!)
This “new woman” was met with much indignation from Tesla, who felt that women were losing their feminity by trying to be in power.
In an interview with The Galveston Daily News on 10 August 1924, he stated:
“In place of the soft voiced, gentle woman of my reverant worship, has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies in making herself as much as possible like man – in dress, voice and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind.
The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me.”
(Clearly his confusion has carried on into the modern age where the ongoing internal struggle between a woman defining herself and letting herself be defined by others still remains.)
Although he told a reporter in later years that he sometimes felt that by not marrying, he had made too great a sacrifice to his work, Tesla chose to never pursue or engage in any known relationships, instead finding all the stimulation he needed in his work.)
(Unlike Tesla, Gernsback would marry three times.)
Kosanovic brought Tesla’s effects and legacy to Belgrade.
These mainly consist of sketches of his unrealized works, his scientific journal, personal notes and also an urn containing his ashes.
Also at the Museum are thematic rooms, categorized according to different periods of his life.
The most interesting area is certainly that containing models which explain the functioning principles behind his inventions.
Above: Tesla two-phase induction motor
Though quite small the Museum has several interesting items on display and an interactive exposition that will capture your attention.
It holds more than 160,000 original documents, over 2,000 books and journals, over 1,200 historical technical exhibits, over 1,500 photographs and photo plates of original, technical objects, instruments and apparatus, and over 1,000 plans and drawings.
Above: Nikola Tesla’s baptismal certificate (24 July 1856)
The Museum is also of interest to researchers since it keeps almost all belongings left by the eccentric scientist.
Due to the importance that Tesla’s writings still have for science, the archive of the Museum has been added to the UNESCO Memory of the World list.
The Museum is divided into two parts.
The historical part is where one can see many of Tesla’s personal belongings, exhibits illustrating his life, awards and decorations bestowed.
The second presents the path of Tesla’s discoveries with models of his inventions in fields of electricity and engineering.
Guided tours in English and Serbian with fascinating demonstrations on how Tesla’s inventions work take place every hour on the hour.
Though Tesla never had great financial success, he nonetheless registered over 700 patents worldwide – examples of his best known discoveries being rotating magnetic fields, wireless communication (the foundation of remote control and radio) and rotary transformers.
During his life Tesla was recognized as a striking but sometimes eccentric genius.
Today he is praised for his great achievements:
In 1895 he designed the first hydroelectric power plant at the Niagara Falls.
Above: Schoellkopf Stations 3, 3B and 3C, Niagara Falls
His alternating current (AC) induction motor is considered one of the greatest discoveries of all time.
Tesla’s name has been honoured with the International Unit of Magnetic Flux Density, the Tesla (T).
Nevertheless I cannot help but wonder whether Tesla’s genius would be as well-known to the average man had it not been for Gernsback or whether he would have gone down in history as simply a clever eccentric without the additional fame Gernsback provided him.
And, to be fair, I wonder whether Gernsback would have found the inspiration for founding “scientifiction” had it not been for the scientific wonders that Tesla invented.
To bring these two men together I need to continue with Tesla’s story first.
From the 1890s through 1906, Tesla spent a great deal of time and fortune on a series of projects trying to develop the transmission of electrical power without wires.
It was an expansion of his idea of using coils to transmit power that he had been demonstrating in wireless lighting.
He saw this as not only a way to transmit large amounts of power around the world but also, as he had pointed out in his earlier lectures, a way to transmit worldwide communications.
At the time Tesla was formulating his ideas, there was no feasible way to wirelessly transmit communication signals over long distances, let alone large amounts of power.
By the mid 1890s, Tesla was working on the idea that he might be able to conduct electricity long distance through the Earth or the atmosphere, and began working on experiments to test this idea including setting up a large resonance transformer magnifying transmitter in his East Houston Street lab.
Above: Tesla’s East Houston Street lab, New York City
Seeming to borrow from a common idea at the time that the Earth’s atmosphere was conductive, he proposed a system composed of balloons suspending, transmitting, and receiving, electrodes in the air above 30,000 feet (9,100 m) in altitude, where he thought the lower pressure would allow him to send high voltages (millions of volts) long distances.
To further study the conductive nature of low pressure air, Tesla set up an experimental station at high altitude in Colorado Springs during 1899.
The Experimental Station was located on empty land on the highest local point (Knob Hill) between the 1876 Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind and the Union Printers Home, where Tesla conducted the research described in the Colorado Springs Notes, 1899-1900.
A few papers of the times listed Tesla’s lab as about 200 feet east of the Deaf and Blind School and 200 feet north of Pikes Peak Ave.
This put it on top of the hill at E. Kiowa St. and N. Foote Ave (facing west); as documented by Pikes Peak Library District.
There he could safely operate much larger coils than in the cramped confines of his New York lab, and an associate had made an arrangement for the El Paso Power Company to supply alternating current free of charge.
Tesla was focused in his research for the practical development of a system for wireless transmission of power and a utilization system.
Tesla said, in “On electricity“, Electrical Review (27 January 1897):
“In fact, progress in this field has given me fresh hope that I shall see the fulfillment of one of my fondest dreams; namely, the transmission of power from station to station without the employment of any connecting wires.“
Tesla went to Colorado Springs in mid-May 1899 with the intent to research:
Transmitters of great power.
Individualization and isolating the energy transmission means.
Laws of propagation of currents through the earth and the atmosphere.
Tesla spent more than half his time researching transmitters.
Tesla spent less than a quarter of his time researching delicate receivers and about a tenth of his time measuring the capacity of the vertical antenna.
Also, Tesla spent a tenth of his time researching miscellaneous subjects.
J. R. Wait’s commented on Tesla activity:
“From an historical standpoint, it is significant that the genius Nikola Tesla envisaged a world wide communication system using a huge spark gap transmitter located in Colorado Springs in 1899.
A few years later he built a large facility in Long Island that he hoped would transmit signals to the Cornish coast of England.
In addition, he proposed to use a modified version of the system to distribute power to all points of the globe”.
To fund his experiments he convinced John Jacob Astor IV to invest $100,000 to become a majority share holder in the Nikola Tesla Company.
Above: John Jacob Astor IV (1864 – 1912)(died on the Titanic)
Astor thought he was primarily investing in the new wireless lighting system.
Instead, Tesla used the money to fund his Colorado Springs experiments.
Upon his arrival, he told reporters that he planned to conduct wireless telegraphy experiments, transmitting signals from Pikes Peak to Paris.
Above: Pike’s Peak, 12 miles / 19 km west of Colorado Springs
The lab possessed the largest Tesla coil ever built, 49.25 feet (15 m) in diameter, which was a preliminary version of the magnifying transmitter planned for installation in the Wardenclyffe Tower.
He produced artificial lightning, with discharges consisting of millions of volts and up to 135 feet (41 m) long.
Thunder from the released energy was heard 15 miles (24 km) away in Cripple Creek, Colorado.
People walking along the street observed sparks jumping between their feet and the ground.
Sparks sprang from water line taps when touched.
Light bulbs within 100 feet (30 m) of the lab glowed even when turned off.
Horses in a livery stable bolted from their stalls after receiving shocks through their metal shoes.
Butterflies were electrified, swirling in circles with blue halos of St. Elmo’s fire around their wings.
While experimenting, Tesla inadvertently faulted a power station generator, causing a power outage.
In August 1917, Tesla explained what had happened in The Electrical Experimenter:
“As an example of what has been done with several hundred kilowatts of high frequency energy liberated, it was found that the dynamos in a power house 6 miles (10 km) away were repeatedly burned out, due to the powerful high frequency currents set up in them, and which caused heavy sparks to jump through the windings and destroy the insulation!“
There he conducted experiments with a large coil operating in the megavolts range, producing artificial lightning (and thunder) consisting of millions of volts and up to 135 feet (41 m) long discharges and, at one point, inadvertently burned out the generator in El Paso, causing a power outage.
The observations he made of the electronic noise of lightning strikes, led him to (incorrectly) conclude that he could use the entire globe of the Earth to conduct electrical energy.
During his time at his laboratory, Tesla observed unusual signals from his receiver which he speculated to be communications from another planet.
He mentioned them in a letter to a reporter in December 1899 and to the Red Cross Society in December 1900.
Reporters treated it as a sensational story and jumped to the conclusion Tesla was hearing signals from Mars.
Above: Mars
He expanded on the signals he heard in a 9 February 1901 Collier’s Weeklyarticle “Talking With Planets” where he said it had not been immediately apparent to him that he was hearing “intelligently controlled signals” and that the signals could come from Mars, Venus, or other planets.
It has been hypothesized that he may have intercepted Guglielmo Marconi’s European experiments in July 1899—Marconi may have transmitted the letter S (dot/dot/dot) in a naval demonstration, the same three impulses that Tesla hinted at hearing in Colorado—or signals from another experimenter in wireless transmission.
Above: Guglielmo Marconi (1874 – 1937)
Tesla had an agreement with the editor of The Century Magazine to produce an article on his findings.
The magazine sent a photographer to Colorado to photograph the work being done there.
The article, titled “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy“, appeared in the June 1900 edition of the magazine.
He explained the superiority of the wireless system he envisioned but the article was more of a lengthy philosophical treatise than an understandable scientific description of his work, illustrated with what were to become iconic images of Tesla and his Colorado Springs experiments.
Tesla made the rounds in New York trying to find investors for what he thought would be a viable system of wireless transmission, wining and dining them at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Palm Garden (the hotel where he was living at the time), The Players Club and Delmonico’s.
On 7 January 1900 Tesla made his final entry in his journal while in Colorado Springs.
In 1900 Tesla was granted patents for a “system of transmitting electrical energy” and “an electrical transmitter.”
When Guglielmo Marconi made his famous first-ever transatlantic radio transmission in 1901, Tesla quipped that it was done with 17 Tesla patents, though there is little to support this claim.
Above: Marconi watching his associates raising the kite used to lift the antenna, St. John’s, Newfoundland, 12 December 1901
In 1904, Tesla was sued for unpaid debts in Colorado Springs.
His lab was torn down and its contents were sold two years later at auction at the court house to satisfy his debts.
In March 1901, Tesla obtained $150,000 ($4,517,400 in today’s dollars) from J. Pierpont Morgan in return for a 51% share of any generated wireless patents and began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility to be built in Shoreham, New York, 100 miles (161 km) east of the city on the North Shore of Long Island.
Tesla’s design for Wardenclyffe grew out of his experiments beginning in the early 1890s.
His primary goal in these experiments was to develop a new wireless power transmission system.
He discarded the idea of using the newly discovered Hertzian (radio) waves, detected in 1888 by German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz since Tesla doubted they existed and basic physics told him, and most other scientists from that period, that they would only travel in straight lines the way visible light did, meaning they would travel straight out into space becoming “hopelessly lost“.
Above: Heinrich Hertz (1857 – 1894)
In laboratory work and later large scale experiments at Colorado Springs in 1899, Tesla developed his own ideas on how a worldwide wireless system would work.
He theorized from these experiments that if he injected electric current into the Earth at just the right frequency he could harness what he believed was the planet’s own electrical charge and cause it to resonate at a frequency that would be amplified in “standing waves” that could be tapped anywhere on the planet to run devices or, through modulation, carry a signal.
His system was based more on 19th century ideas of electrical conduction and telegraphy instead of the newer theories of air-borne electromagnetic waves, with an electrical charge being conducted through the ground and being returned through the air.
Tesla’s design used a concept of a charged conductive upper layer in the atmosphere, a theory dating back to an 1872 idea for a proposed wireless power system by Mahlon Loomis.
Above: Mahlon Loomis (1826 – 1886)
Tesla not only believed that he could use this layer as his return path in his electrical conduction system, but that the power flowing through it would make it glow, providing night time lighting for cities and shipping lanes.
In a February 1901 Collier’s Weekly article titled “Talking With Planets” Tesla described his “system of energy transmission and of telegraphy without the use of wires” as “using the Earth itself as the medium for conducting the currents, thus dispensing with wires and all other artificial conductors … a machine which, to explain its operation in plain language, resembled a pump in its action, drawing electricity from the Earth and driving it back into the same at an enormous rate, thus creating ripples or disturbances which, spreading through the Earth as through a wire, could be detected at great distances by carefully attuned receiving circuits.
In this manner I was able to transmit to a distance, not only feeble effects for the purposes of signaling, but considerable amounts of energy, and later discoveries I made convinced me that I shall ultimately succeed in conveying power without wires, for industrial purposes, with high economy, and to any distance, however great.”
Although Tesla demonstrated wireless power transmission at Colorado Springs, lighting electric lights mounted outside the building where he had his large experimental coil, he did not scientifically test his theories.
He believed he had achieved Earth resonance which, according to his theory, would work at any distance.
Tesla began working on his wireless station immediately.
As soon as the contract was signed with Morgan in March 1901 he placed an order for generators and transformers with the Westinghouse Electric Company.
Tesla’s plans changed radically after he read a June 1901 Electrical Review article by Marconi entitled SYNTONIC WIRELESS TELEGRAPH.
At this point Marconi was transmitting radio signals beyond the range most physicists thought possible (over the horizon) and the description of the Italian inventor’s use of a “Tesla coil” “connected to the Earth” led Tesla to believe Marconi was copying his earth resonance system to do it.
Tesla, believing a small pilot system capable of sending Morse code yacht race results to Morgan in Europe would not be able to capture the attention of potential investors, decided to scale up his designs with a much more powerful transmitter, incorporating his ideas of advanced telephone and Image transmission as well as his ideas of wireless power delivery.
Above: J.P. Morgan (1837 – 1913)
In July 1901 Tesla informed Morgan of his planned changes to the project and the need for much more money to build it.
He explained the more grandiose plan as a way to leap ahead of competitors and secure much larger profits on the investment.
With Tesla basically proposing a breach of contract, Morgan refused to lend additional funds and demanded an account of money already spent.
Tesla would claim a few years later that funds were also running short because of Morgan’s role in triggering the stock market panic of 1901, making everything Tesla had to buy much more expensive.
Despite Morgan stating no additional funds would be supplied, Tesla continued on with the project.
He explored the idea of building several small towers or a tower 300 feet and even 600 feet tall in order to transmit the type of low-frequency long waves that Tesla thought were needed to resonate the Earth.
His friend, architect Stanford White, who was working on designing structures for the project, calculated that a 600-foot tower would cost $450,000 and the idea had to be scrapped.
Above: Stanford White (1853 – 1906)
By July 1901, Tesla had expanded his plans to build a more powerful transmitter to leap ahead of Marconi’s radio based system, which Tesla thought was a copy of his own system.
He approached Morgan to ask for more money to build the larger system but Morgan refused to supply any further funds.
A month after Marconi’s success, Tesla tried to get Morgan to back an even larger plan to transmit messages and power by controlling “vibrations throughout the globe“.
Over the next five years, Tesla wrote more than 50 letters to Morgan, pleading for and demanding additional funding to complete the construction of Wardenclyffe.
Tesla continued the project for another nine months into 1902.
The tower was erected to its full 187 feet (57 m).
In June 1902, Tesla moved his lab operations from Houston Street to Wardenclyffe.
In 1906 the financial problems and other events may have led to a nervous breakdown on Tesla’s part.
The mentally unstable multimillionaire Harry Kendall Thaw shot and killed the prominent architect and New York socialite Stanford White in front of hundreds of witnesses at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden on the evening of 25 June 1906, leading to what the press would call the “Trial of the Century“.
During the trial, Nesbit testified that five years earlier, when she was a stage performer at the age of 15 or 16, she had attracted the attention of White, who first gained her and her mother’s trust, then sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious, and then had a subsequent romantic and sexual relationship with her that continued for some period of time
Above: Evelyn Nesbit (1884 – 1967)
In October, long time investor William Rankine died of a heart attack.
Things were so bad by the fall of that year George Scherff, Tesla’s chief manager who had been supervising Wardenclyffe, had to leave to find other employment.
The people living around Wardenclyffe noticed the Tesla plant seemed to have been abandoned without notice.
In 1904 Tesla took out a mortgage on the Wardenclyffe property with George C. Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, to cover Tesla’s living expenses at the hotel.
Above: George Boldt (1851 – 1916)
In 1908 Tesla procured a second mortgage from Boldt to further cover expenses.
The facility was partially abandoned around 1911, and the tower structure deteriorated.
Between 1912 and 1915, Tesla’s finances unraveled, and when the funders wanted to know how they were going to recapture their investments, Tesla was unable to give satisfactory answers.
The 1 March 1916 edition of the publication Export American Industries ran a story titled “Tesla’s Million Dollar Folly” describing the abandoned Wardenclyffe site:
There everything seemed left as for a day — chairs, desks, and papers in businesslike array.
The great wheels seemed only awaiting Monday life.
But the magic word has not been spoken, and the spell still rests on the great plant.
Investors on Wall Street were putting their money into Marconi’s system, and some in the press began turning against Tesla’s project, claiming it was a hoax.
The project came to a halt in 1905.
Tesla mortgaged the Wardenclyffe property to cover his debts at the Waldorf-Astoria, which eventually mounted to $20,000 ($500,300 in today’s dollars).
He lost the property in foreclosure in 1915 and by mid-1917 the facility’s main building was breached and vandalized.
In 1917 the Tower was demolished by the new owner to make the land a more viable real estate asset.
Meanwhile….
Gernsback was an entrepreneur in the electronics industry, importing radio parts from Europe to the United States and helping to popularize amateur “wireless“.
In April 1908, he founded Modern Electrics, the world’s first magazine about both electronics and radio (“wireless“).
While the cover of the magazine itself states it was a catalog, most historians note that it contained articles, features and plotlines, qualifying it as a magazine.
Under its auspices, in January 1909, Gernsback founded the Wireless Association of America, which had 10,000 members within a year.
In 1912, Gernsback said that he estimated 400,000 people in the US were involved in amateur radio.
In 1913, he founded a similiar magazine, The Electrical Experimenter, which became Science and Invention in 1920.
It was in these magazines he began including scientific fiction stories alongside science journalism – including his own novel Ralph 124c 41+ which he ran for 12 months in Modern Electrics.
By playing a key role in the wireless industry, Gernsback secured a position and a significant influence on the adoption of new legal regulations.
At the same time, aware of the low level of education of radio amateurs, he founded several magazines covering radio and later also television.
It is widely believed that the term television appeared for the first time in the December 1909 issue of his Modern Electrics, in the article “Television and the Telephot“.
Gernsback began publishing articles with a futuristic view of scientific and technological developments very early.
When finishing the preparation of an issue of his magazine Modern Electrics in 1911, Gernsback discovered that some free space remained on one of the pages.
Since he was already used to writing his predictions for the future of radio and other technologies, which were well received by the readers, he decided to go one step further.
He wrote a short adventure story, focusing on the application of technology in the year 2660.
It was a spur of the moment thing that he wrote late at night in his office and the text was long enough to fit into the available space into the magazine.
The readers wanted to learn what happened next.
And so the next installment came about – 12 of them in total until the story was completed.
Encouraged by its popularity, Gernsback continued to publish this specific type of texts, which he called scientifiction, later to be known as science fiction.
As the publisher of successful magazines, Gernsback managed to draw the attention of leading scientists, including Tesla, Marconi, Fessenden, Edison and many others….
Above: Hugo Gernsback demonstrating his television goggles in 1963 for Life magazine
After Wardenclyffe closed, Tesla continued to write to Morgan.
After “the great man” died, Tesla wrote to Morgan’s son Jack, trying to get further funding for the project.
In 1906, Tesla opened offices at 165 Broadway in Manhattan, trying to raise further funds by developing and marketing his patents.
Above: City Investing Building, 165 Broadway, Manhattan
On his 50th birthday, in 1906, Tesla demonstrated a 200 horsepower (150 kilowatts) 16,000 rpm bladeless turbine.
During 1910–1911 at the Waterside Power Station in New York, several of his bladeless turbine engines were tested at 100–5,000 hp.
Tesla worked with several companies including the period 1919–1922 working in Milwaukee for Allis-Chalmers.
He spent most of his time trying to perfect the Tesla turbine with Hans Dahlstrand, the head engineer at the company, but engineering difficulties meant it was never made into a practical device.
Tesla did license the idea to a precision instrument company and it found use in the form of luxury car speedometers and other instruments.
Tesla went on to have offices at the Metropolitan Life Tower from 1910 to 1914, rented for a few months at the Woolworth Building, moving out because he could not afford the rent, and then to office space at 8 West 40th Street from 1915 to 1925.
After moving to 8 West 40th Street, he was effectively bankrupt.
Above: Tesla working in his office, 8 W. 40th Street, New York City
Most of his patents had run out and he was having trouble with the new inventions he was trying to develop.
By 1915, Tesla’s accumulated debt at the Waldorf-Astoria was around $20 thousand ($495 thousand in 2018 dollars).
When Tesla was unable to make any further payments on the mortgages, Boldt foreclosed on the Wardenclyffe property.
Boldt failed to find any use for the property and finally decided to demolish the tower for scrap.
On 4 July 1917 the Smiley Steel Company of New York began demolition of the tower by dynamiting it.
The tower was knocked on a tilt by the initial explosion but it took till September to totally demolish it.
The scrap value realized was $1,750.
Since this was during World War I a rumor spread, picked up by newspapers and other publications, that the tower was demolished on orders of the United States government with claims German spies were using it as a radio transmitter or observation post, or that it was being used as a landmark for German submarines.
Tesla was not pleased with what he saw as attacks on his patriotism via the rumors about Wardenclyffe, but since the original mortgages with Boldt as well as the foreclosure had been kept off the public record in order to hide his financial difficulties, Tesla was not able to reveal the real reason for the demolition.
George Boldt decided to make the property available for sale.
When World War I broke out, the British cut the transatlantic telegraph cable linking the US to Germany in order to control the flow of information between the two countries.
They also tried to shut off German wireless communication to and from the US by having the US Marconi Company sue the German radio company Telefunken for patent infringement.
Telefunken brought in the physicists Jonathan Zenneck and Karl Ferdinand Braun for their defense and hired Tesla as a witness for two years for $1,000 a month.
The case stalled and then went moot when the US entered the war against Germany in 1917.
In 1915, Tesla attempted to sue the Marconi Company for infringement of his wireless tuning patents.
Marconi’s initial radio patent had been awarded in the US in 1897, but his 1900 patent submission covering improvements to radio transmission had been rejected several times, before it was finally approved in 1904, on the grounds that it infringed on other existing patents including two 1897 Tesla wireless power tuning patents.
Tesla’s 1915 case went nowhere, but in a related case, where the Marconi Company tried to sue the US government over WWI patent infringements, a Supreme Court of the United States 1943 decision restored the prior patents of Oliver Lodge, John Stone and Tesla.
The court declared that their decision had no bearing on Marconi’s claim as the first to achieve radio transmission, just that since Marconi’s claim to certain patented improvements were questionable, the company could not claim infringement on those same patents.
On 6 November 1915, a Reuters news agency report from London had the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.
However, on 15 November, a Reuters story from Stockholm stated the prize that year was being awarded to Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg “for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays.”
There were unsubstantiated rumors at the time that either Tesla or Edison had refused the prize.
The Nobel Foundation said:
“Any rumor that a person has not been given a Nobel Prize because he has made known his intention to refuse the reward is ridiculous“.
A recipient could decline a Nobel Prize only after he is announced a winner.
There have been subsequent claims by Tesla biographers that Edison and Tesla were the original recipients and that neither was given the award because of their animosity toward each other, that each sought to minimize the other’s achievements and right to win the Award, that both refused ever to accept the award if the other received it first, that both rejected any possibility of sharing it, and even that a wealthy Edison refused it to keep Tesla from getting the $20,000 prize money.
In the years after these rumors, neither Tesla nor Edison won the prize (although Edison did receive one of 38 possible bids in 1915 and Tesla did receive one of 38 possible bids in 1937).
On 20 April 1922, Tesla lost an appeal of judgment on Boldt’s foreclosure of Wardenclyffe.
This effectively locked Tesla out of any future development of the facility.
Tesla attempted to market several devices based on the production of ozone.
These included his 1900 Tesla Ozone Company selling an 1896 patented device based on his Tesla coil, used to bubble ozone through different types of oils to make a therapeutic gel.
He also tried to develop a variation of this a few years later as a room sanitizer for hospitals.
Tesla theorized that the application of electricity to the brain enhanced intelligence.
In 1912, he crafted “a plan to make dull students bright by saturating them unconsciously with electricity,” wiring the walls of a schoolroom and, “saturating the schoolroom with infinitesimal electric waves vibrating at high frequency.
The whole room will thus, Mr. Tesla claims, be converted into a health-giving and stimulating electromagnetic field or ‘bath.'”
The plan was, at least provisionally, approved by then superintendent of New York City schools, William H. Maxwell.
Before World War I, Tesla sought overseas investors.
After the war started, Tesla lost the funding he was receiving from his patents in European countries.
In the August 1917 edition of the magazine Electrical Experimenter, Tesla postulated that electricity could be used to locate submarines via using the reflection of an “electric ray” of “tremendous frequency,” with the signal being viewed on a fluorescent screen (a system that has been noted to have a superficial resemblance to modern radar).
Tesla was incorrect in his assumption that high frequency radio waves would penetrate water.
Émile Girardeau, who helped develop France’s first radar system in the 1930s, noted in 1953 that Tesla’s general speculation that a very strong high-frequency signal would be needed was correct.
Girardeau said:
“Tesla was prophesying or dreaming, since he had at his disposal no means of carrying them out, but one must add that if he was dreaming, at least he was dreaming correctly.”
Above: Émile Girardeau (1882 – 1970)
In 1928, Tesla received U.S. Patent 1,655,114, for a biplane capable of taking off vertically (VTOL aircraft) and then of being “gradually tilted through manipulation of the elevator devices” in flight until it was flying like a conventional plane.
Tesla thought the plane would sell for less than $1,000, although the aircraft has been described as impractical.
Above: VTOL (vertical take-off/landing) Harrier
This would be his last patent and at this time Tesla closed his last office at 350 Madison Avenue, which he had moved into two years earlier.
Above: Borden Building, 350 Madison Avenue, New York City
Since 1900, Tesla had been living at the Waldorf Astoria in New York running up a large bill.
Above: Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
In 1922, he moved to St. Regis Hotel and would follow a pattern from then on of moving to a new hotel every few years leaving behind unpaid bills.
Above: St. Regis New York
Tesla would walk to the park every day to feed the pigeons.
He took to feeding them at the window of his hotel room and bringing the injured ones in to nurse back to health.
He said that he had been visited by a specific injured white pigeon daily.
Tesla spent over $2,000, including building a device that comfortably supported her so her bones could heal, to fix her broken wing and leg.
Tesla stated:
I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years.
But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings.
That one was different.
It was a female.
I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me.
I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me.
As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.
Tesla’s unpaid bills, and complaints about the mess from his pigeon-feeding, forced him to leave the St. Regis in 1923, the Hotel Pennsylvania in 1930 and the Hotel Governor Clinton in 1934.
At one point, he also took rooms at the Hotel Marguery.
In 1934, Tesla moved to the Hotel New Yorker and Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company began paying him $125 per month as well as paying his rent, expenses the company would pay for the rest of Tesla’s life.
Accounts of how this came about vary.
Several sources say Westinghouse was worried (or warned) about potential bad publicity surrounding the impoverished conditions under which their former star inventor was living.
The payment has been described as being couched as a “consulting fee” to get around Tesla’s aversion to accept charity, or according to one biographer as a type of unspecified settlement.
Tesla worked every day from 9:00a.m. until 6:00p.m. or later, with dinner from exactly 8:10 p.m., at Delmonico’s restaurant and later the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Tesla would telephone his dinner order to the headwaiter, who also could be the only one to serve him.
“The meal was required to be ready at eight o’clock …
He dined alone, except on the rare occasions when he would give a dinner to a group to meet his social obligations.
Tesla would then resume his work, often until 3:00a.m.”
For exercise, Tesla walked between 8 and 10 miles (13 and 16 km) per day.
He curled his toes one hundred times for each foot every night, saying that it stimulated his brain cells.
Tesla became a vegetarian in his later years, living on only milk, bread, honey and vegetable juices.
Tesla read many works, memorizing complete books and supposedly possessed a photographic memory.
He was a polyglot, speaking eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.
Tesla claimed never to sleep more than two hours per night.
However, he did admit to “dozing” from time to time “to recharge his batteries.”
On one occasion at his laboratory, Tesla worked for a period of 84 hours without rest.
Kenneth Swezey, a journalist whom Tesla had befriended, confirmed that Tesla rarely slept.
Swezey recalled one morning when Tesla called him at 3 a.m.:
“I was sleeping in my room like one dead …
Suddenly, the telephone ring awakened me …
Tesla spoke animatedly, with pauses, as he worked out a problem, comparing one theory to another, commenting.
And when he felt he had arrived at the solution, he suddenly closed the telephone.”
Tesla was asocial and prone to seclude himself with his work.
However, when he did engage in a social life, many people spoke very positively and admiringly of Tesla.
Writer Robert Underwood Johnson described him as attaining a “distinguished sweetness, sincerity, modesty, refinement, generosity, and force.”
Above: Robert Underwood Johnson (1853 – 1937)
His secretary, Dorothy Skerrit, wrote:
“His genial smile and nobility of bearing always denoted the gentlemanly characteristics that were so ingrained in his soul.”
“Seldom did one meet a scientist or engineer who was also a poet, a philosopher, an appreciator of fine music, a linguist, and a connoisseur of food and drink.”
Above: Julian Hawthorne (1846 – 1934)
Tesla was a good friend of Francis Marion Crawford, Robert Underwood Johnson, Stanford White, Fritz Lowenstein, George Scherff and Kenneth Swezey.
In middle age, Tesla became a close friend of Mark Twain.
They spent a lot of time together in his lab and elsewhere.
Twain notably described Tesla’s induction motor invention as “the most valuable patent since the telephone.”
Above: Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain)(1835 – 1910)
At a party thrown by actress Sarah Bernhardt in 1896, Tesla met Indian Hindu monk Vivekananda and the two talked about how the inventors ideas on energy seemed to match up with Vedantic cosmology.
In the late 1920s, Tesla befriended George Sylvester Viereck, a poet, writer, mystic, and later, unfortunately, a Nazi propagandist.
Tesla occasionally attended dinner parties held by Viereck and his wife.
Above: George Viereck (1884 – 1962)
Tesla could be harsh at times and openly expressed disgust for overweight people, such as when he fired a secretary because of her weight.
He was quick to criticize clothing.
On several occasions, Tesla directed a subordinate to go home and change her dress.
When Thomas Edison (b. 1847) died, in 1931, Tesla contributed the only negative opinion to The New York Times, buried in an extensive coverage of Edison’s life:
He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene …
His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90% of the labor.
But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor’s instinct and practical American sense.
Tesla was 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall and weighed 142 pounds (64 kg), with almost no weight variance from 1888 to about 1926.
His appearance was described by newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane as “almost the tallest, almost the thinnest and certainly the most serious man who goes to Delmonico’s regularly“.
He was an elegant, stylish figure in New York City, meticulous in his grooming, clothing, and regimented in his daily activities, an appearance he maintained as to further his business relationships.
He was also described as having light eyes, “very big hands“, and “remarkably big” thumbs.
Hugo Gernsback was literally spellbound with Tesla and believed that the ideas of the great inventor were the salvation for all of mankind.
This is how Gernsback describes Tesla in the February 1919 issue of Electrical Experimenter:
“The door opens and out steps a tall figure – over six feet high – gaunt but erect.
It approaches slowly, stately.
You become conscious at once that you are face to face with a personality of a high order.
Nikola Tesla advances and shakes your hand with a powerful grip, surprising for a man over 60.
A winning smile from piercing light blue-gray eyes, set in extraordinarily deep sockets, fascinates you and makes you feel at once at home.
You are guided into an office immaculate in its orderliness.
Not a speck of dust is to be seen.
No papers litter the desk.
Everything just so.
It reflects the man himself, immaculate in attire, orderly and precise in his every movement.
Dressed in a dark frock coat, he is entirely devoid of all jewelry.
No ring, stickpin or even watch-chain can be seen.
Tesla speaks – a very high almost falsetto voice.
He speaks quickly and very convincingly.
It is the man’s voice chiefly which fascinates you.
As he speaks you find it difficult to take your eyes off his own.
Only when he speaks to others do you have a chance to study his head, predominant of which is a very high forehead with a bulge between his eyes – the neverfailing sign of an exceptional intelligence.
Then the long, well-shaped nose, proclaiming the scientist….
His only vice is his generosity.
The man who, by the ignorant onlooker has often been called an idle dreamer, has made over a million dollars out of his inventions – and spent them as quickly on new ones.
But Tesla is an idealist of the highest order and to such men money itself means but little.”
I wonder if Tesla felt the same towards Gernsback….
Gernsback was noted for sharp (and sometimes shady) business practices,and for paying his writers extremely low fees or not paying them at all.
H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith referred to him as “Hugo the Rat“.
As Barry Malzberg has said:
Gernsback’s venality and corruption, his sleaziness and his utter disregard for the financial rights of authors, have been well documented and discussed in critical and fan literature
That the founder of genre science fiction who gave his name to the field’s most prestigious award and who was the Guest of Honor at the 1952 Worldcon was pretty much a crook (and a contemptuous crook who stiffed his writers but paid himself $100K a year as President of Gernsback Publications) has been clearly established.
Nonetheless, Gernsback earned Tesla’s sympathy and Gernsback became an important publisher of Tesla’s articles in his many publications.
In the August 1917 Electrical Experimenter, under the title “Tesla’s Views on Electricity and the War“, Tesla made the first technical description of radar.
The author of the article (H. Winfield Secor, the magazine’s Associate Editor) explained to his readers that “Dr. Tesla had invented, among other things, an electric ray to destroy or detect submarines under water at a considerable distance.
Mr. Tesla very courteously granted the writer an interview and some of his ideas on electricity’s possible role in helping to end the Great War.”
Later that year, in addition to Tesla’s autobiographical serial My Inventions, the Electrical Experimenter also published a number of other Tesla-authorized articles with considerable regularity:
The Effect of Statics on Wireless Transmission
Famous Scientific Illusions
Tesla’s Egg of Columbus (or how Tesla performed the feat of Columbus without cracking the Egg)
The Moon’s Rotation
The True Wireless
Tesla’s Bulbs
Electrical Oscillators
Can Radio Ignite Balloons?(or the Opinions of Nikola Tesla and Other Radio Experts)
Tesla and Gernsback started correspondence with one another from the end of 1918 and throughout 1919.
Tesla could not fit himself into the strict deadlines presented to him by the rules of periodical press and wrote to Gernsback at the end of July 1919:
“I think it well on this occasion to notify your readers, as a precaution, that I am not one of those who display the sign ‘Do it now.’ on their desks and office doors.
My motto is: ‘Do not do it now. Think it over.‘ ”
Over the next several years, only a few letters were exchanged between Tesla and Gernsback, in which the famous publisher tried whatever he could to appease his most prominent writer and resume their cooperation, but as a reply received very cold letters, demonstrating Tesla’s injured pride and his objections to the egoism of the publisher.
In one of the last letters, Tesla wrote:
“I appreciate your unusual intelligence and enterprise but the trouble with you seems to be that you are thinking only of H. Gernsback first of all, once more and then again.”
Tesla wrote a number of books and articles for magazines and journals.
Among his books are My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla, The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla and The Tesla Papers.
Many of Tesla’s writings are freely available online, including the article “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy,” published in The Century Magazine in 1900 and the article “Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency” published in his book Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla.
In 1931, Kenneth Swezey, a young writer who had been associated with Tesla for some time, organized a celebration for the inventor’s 75th birthday.
Tesla received congratulatory letters from more than 70 pioneers in science and engineering, including Albert Einstein, and he was also featured on the cover of Time magazine.
The cover caption “All the world’s his power house” noted his contribution to electrical power generation.
The party went so well that Tesla made it an annual event, an occasion where he would put out a large spread of food and drink (featuring dishes of his own creation) and invite the press to see his inventions and hear stories about past exploits, views on current events, or sometimes odd or baffling claims.
(“Tesla is very fussy and particular about his food:
He eats very little, but what he does eat must be of the very best.
And he knows, for outside of being a great Inventor in science he is an accomplished cook who has invented all sorts of savory dishes.“
Hugo Gernsback, Electrical Experimenter, February 1919)
At the 1932 occasion, Tesla claimed he had invented a motor that would run on cosmic rays.
In 1933, at age 77, Tesla told reporters that, after thirty-five years of work, he was on the verge of producing proof of a new form of energy.
He claimed it was a theory of energy that was “violently opposed” to Einsteinian physics and could be tapped with an apparatus that would be cheap to run and last 500 years.
He also told reporters he was working on a way to transmit individualized private radio wavelengths, working on breakthroughs in metallurgy, and developing a way to photograph the retina to record thought.
At the 1934 party, Tesla told reporters he had designed a superweapon he claimed would end all war.
He would call it “teleforce“, but was usually referred to as his death ray.
Tesla described it as a defensive weapon that would be put up along the border of a country to be used against attacking ground-based infantry or aircraft.
Tesla never revealed detailed plans of how the weapon worked during his lifetime, but in 1984, they surfaced at the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade.
The treatise, The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media, described an open-ended vacuum tube with a gas jet seal that allows particles to exit, a method of charging slugs of tungsten or mercury to millions of volts, and directing them in streams (through electrostatic repulsion).
Tesla tried to interest the US War Department, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia in the device.
In 1935, at his 79th birthday party, Tesla covered many topics.
He claimed to have discovered the cosmic ray in 1896 and invented a way to produce direct current by induction, and made many claims about his mechanical oscillator.
Describing the device (which he expected would earn him $100 million within two years) he told reporters that a version of his oscillator had caused an earthquake in his 46 East Houston Street lab and neighboring streets in downtown New York City in 1898.
He went on to tell reporters his oscillator could destroy the Empire State Building with 5 lbs of air pressure.
He also explained a new technique he developed using his oscillators he called “Telegeodynamics“, using it to transmit vibrations into the ground that he claimed would work over any distance to be used for communication or locating underground mineral deposits.
At his 1937 celebration in the Grand Ballroom of Hotel New Yorker, Tesla received the “Order of the White Lion” from the Czechoslovakia ambassador and a medal from the Yugoslavian ambassador.
On questions concerning the death ray, Tesla stated:
“But it is not an experiment …
I have built, demonstrated and used it.
Only a little time will pass before I can give it to the world.”
In the fall of 1937, after midnight one night, Tesla left the Hotel New Yorker to make his regular commute to the cathedral and the library to feed the pigeons.
While crossing a street a couple of blocks from the hotel, Tesla was unable to dodge a moving taxicab and was thrown to the ground.
His back was severely wrenched and three of his ribs were broken in the accident.
The full extent of his injuries were never known.
Tesla refused to consult a doctor, an almost lifelong custom, and never fully recovered.
On 7 January 1943, at the age of 86, Tesla died alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel.
Above: Room 3327, New Yorker Hotel, Present day
His body was later found by maid Alice Monaghan after she had entered Tesla’s room, ignoring the “do not disturb” sign that Tesla had placed on his door two days earlier.
Assistant medical examiner H.W. Wembley examined the body and ruled that the cause of death had been coronary thrombosis.
Two days later the Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered the Alien Property Custodian to seize Tesla’s belongings.
John G. Trump, a professor at MIT and a well-known electrical engineer serving as a technical aide to the National Defense Research Committee, was called in to analyze the Tesla items, which were being held in custody.
Above: John G. Trump (1907 – 1985)(Donald’s paternal uncle)
After a three-day investigation, Trump’s report concluded that there was nothing which would constitute a hazard in unfriendly hands, stating:
Tesla’s thoughts and efforts during at least the past 15 years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power, but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.
In a box purported to contain a part of Tesla’s “death ray“, Trump found a 45-year-old multidecade resistance box.
At the request of Gernsback, on 9 January 1943, two days after Tesla’s death, a death mask of the inventor was made by F. Moynihan.
On 10 January 1943, New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia (1882 – 1947) read a eulogy written by Slovene-American author Louis Adamic live over the WNYC radio while violin pieces “Ave Maria” and “Tamo daleko” were played in the background.
On 12 January, two thousand people attended a state funeral for Tesla at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.
After the funeral, Tesla’s body was taken to the Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, New York, where it was later cremated.
The following day, a second service was conducted by prominent priests in the Trinity Chapel (today’s Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sava) in New York City.
Above: Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sava, New York City
On the occasion of 100 years since Tesla’s birth, on 25 June 1956, the aforementioned death mask was placed on the business premises of Gernsback Publications in New York.
On a marble pedestal, in relief, were presented the symbols of Tesla’s greatest discoveries and ideas – the first induction motor, Tesla’s transformer, and the famous Wardenclyffe Tower at Long Island intended for the “World System” project….
An astonishly accurate prediction of the electronic and wireless world we live in today.
The symbol of Tesla’s great and unfulfilled dream.
In Hugo Gernback’s honour, the Hugo Awards or “Hugos” are the annual achievement awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention, selected in a process that ends with vote by current Convention members.
They originated and acquired the “Hugo” nickname during the 1950s and were formally defined as a convention responsibility under the name “Science Fiction Achievement Awards” early in the 1960s.
The nickname soon became almost universal and its use legally protected; “Hugo Award(s)” replaced the longer name in all official uses after the 1991 cycle.
In 1960 Gernsback received a special Hugo Award as “The Father of Magazine Science Fiction“.
Hugo Gernsback died at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City on 19 August 1967.
In late 2002 Gernsback Publications went out of business.
Tesla’s legacy has endured in books, films, radio, TV, music, live theater, comics and video games.
In Jim Jarmusek’s film Coffee and Cigarettes, Jack shows Meg his Tesla coil!
Tesla features prominently in the movies The Prestige (David Bowie as Tesla) and The Current War, as well as in Family Guy‘s Season 9, Episode 15.
Above: David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, The Prestige
Tesla appears in Ron Horsley’s and Ralph Vaughan’s re-imaginings of the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
In The Big Bang Theory, Tesla is referred to as “a poor man’s Sheldon Cooper“.
In 2011, Sesame Street introduced the world to grumpy Professor “Nikola Messla“.
The impact of the technologies invented or envisioned by Tesla is a recurring theme in several types of science fiction.
In science and engineering Tesla has given his name to the Tesla coil and the singing Tesla coil, Tesla’s Egg of Columbus, the Tesla Experimental Station, Tesla’s oscillator, the Tesla Principle, the Tesla Tower, the Tesla turbine, the Tesla unit and the Tesla valve.
Tesla is a 26-km wide crater on the far side of the Moon as well as a minor planet (2244 Tesla).
There is both the Nikola Tesla Award and the Nikola Tesla Satellite Award.
Tesla was an electrotechnical conglomerate in the former Czechoslovakia.
Tesla is an American electric car manufacturer, the Croatian affliliate of the Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer Ericsson, a bank in Zagreb and two companies in the Serbian cities of Novi Sad and Plandiste.
His birthday (10 July) is celebrated every year in Croatia, in Vojvodina and in Niagara Falls.
Every year the annual Nikola Tesla Electric Vehicle Rally is held in Croatia.
In music, there is Tesla (US), Tesla Boy (Russia) and Tesla Coils (Australia) – all the names of band groups, while “Tesla Girls” is a song by the British pop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) released in 1984.
The groups They Might Be Giants released “Tesla“, The Handsome Family “Tesla’s Hotel Room” and the Polish band Silver Rocket‘s last album was named “Tesla“.
There is a Tesla STEM High School in Redmond, Washington.
Tesla is both an Airport and a Museum in Belgrade.
TPP Nikola Tesla is the largest power plant in Serbia.
And 128 streets in Croatia have been named after Nikola Tesla, making him the 8th most common street name in the country.
It took me a few hours, despite the Museum’s small size, for my eyes to absorb all that was revealed about Tesla here.
It has taken me months for my mind to absorb all that I have learned since my visit.
But of all of this I find myself drawn not to his inventions but to his character.
I walked away from the Museum that day, sat on a bench and watched a pigeon approach.
I thought of Tesla.
The pigeon and I looked at each other.
No words were needed.
Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Nikola Tesla, My Inventions / Vladimir Dulovic, Serbia In Your Hands / Marija Stosic, Belgrade
Of the problems that plague me, one of the biggest is persistence:
The ability to keep on keeping on.
I have to constantly remind and encourage myself that “a professional writer is simply an amateur who didn´t quit”. (Richard Bachman)
With my two blogs – this one and Building Everest – I have to remind myself that I cannot get people interested in what I have to say if I myself am uninterested in what I am saying.
In Building Everest I force myself each day to examine that day and ask myself what was interesting and unique about that day.
With this blog, which has (mostly) evolved into a travel blog in the two years since I´ve started it, I ask myself what was interesting about the places I visited and then I search for the words that will (hopefully) make you interested in (one day) visiting those places I´ve described.
As an English teacher I constantly remind my students that in all communication we must keep in mind one question: WIIFM.
What´s in it for me (the reader or recipient of this communication)?
Some places seem to sell themselves.
How many millions of words have been devoted to places like Paris or Venice?
And rightly so.
Others, especially the less known or least promoted places, need more time and imagination not only to convince you of their merits, gentle reader, but as well to convince me that writing about them is worthy of my time and effort.
Both blogs are practice, a honing process, the necessary training ground for developing the skills to becoming a paid published writer.
But what´s in it for you, gentle reader?
Two things (I hope).
First, I want you to see that you and I are similar in our shared humanity and desire to understand.
In a travel article, one does not burden the reader with prologues such as this one, but immediately hooks the reader into involving him/herself in the middle of the promoted place.
I include these Landschlacht prologues to show the process by which I write this blog and thus hopefully encourage you to share your world and experiences, for I don´t wish to write alone but rather as a voice in a united chorus.
Second, I want you to see what I see.
I not only want you to travel with me on my travels and share my experiences but I want to encourage you to travel and share your experiences and realize that travelling is not only a search to make the exotic seem familiar but as well it is the realization that the everyday familarity that surrounds us where we are is to someone else exotic.
I want to take you now, gentle reader, on a journey both in space and time.
I want you to come with me to a place that has drawn others to it for centuries, a place not so famous in international circles but beloved at least by her countrymen.
And as we travel I want to introduce you to a travel companion on this particular journey, a man confused about who he was and what he wanted – a man much like myself (and perhaps like you yourself) – who possessed a bravery – as uncharacteristic today as it was in his day – to openly express his feelings in a manner so candid that it still continues to shock the reader centuries later.
I want you to imagine him not as buried bones and forgotten words inside dusty tomes but as a living, breathing man walking beside us.
For his thoughts and feelings of yesterday are thoughts and feelings still thought and felt today.
Though time and progress have changed the place he once knew, there is much that remains that he could still relate to.
And much about the place and the man I hope that you can relate to.
Come with us now to Sirmione….
Sirmione, Lago di Garda, Italy, 4 August 2017
Lago di Garda is the largest, cleanest, least scenic, most overdeveloped and most popular of the Italian lakes.
Lying between the Alps and the Po Valley, this 370 square kilometre pool of murky water is firmly on many tour operator schedules.
Garda enjoys mild winters and breezy summers.
The northern sover wind blows down the Lago from midnight through morning.
The southern ova wind breezes up the Lago in the afternoon and evening.
This temperate climate is, these Riviera Bresciana resorts are, invaded by large mobs of package holiday clients and locust-like throngs of Austrians, Germans, Italians and Swiss.
To the north, the Lago is hemmed in by mountain crags and resembles a fjord.
On the most sheltered stretch of the Lago´s western shore lush groves of olives, vines and citrus trees grow, resulting in olive oil, citrus syrups and Bardolino, Soave and Valpolicella wines.
As the Lago broadens towards the south, it takes on the appearance of an inland sea backed by a gentle plain.
The restless winds here have created one of Europe´s best windsurfing sites around Torbole and Malcesine on the eastern shore.
Within easy striking distance of the Milano-Venezia autostrada as well as rail and bus Connections from the main Lombardy towns, the southern shore of Lago di Gardo is particularly well-touristed.
Desenzano del Garda, the Lago´s largest town, is a major rail junction where buses connect with trains and several ferries ply their trade up to the northwest tip of the Lago and the town of Riva del Garda stopping off at other resorts on the way.
Desenzano doesn´t detain the visitor for long, though the lakefront is lined with bars and restaurants, though the castle has spectacular views and the Roman villa preserves some fine mosaics, the busy road running alongside and the constant traffic on the Lago is an everlasting siren call to leave that few can resist.
So, why linger?
Instead….
“Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione, row!
So they rowed and there we landed – O pretty Sirmio!
There to me through all the groves of olive in the summer glow,
There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that “hail and farewell” of the Poet´s hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,
“Brother, hail and farewell” – as we wandered to and fro
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda lake below
The Roman poet Catullus (87 – 54 BC) celebrated Sirmione, this narrow peninsula jutting out from the southern shore of Lago di Garda, as “the jewel of all islands”, thus his name is constantly invoked in connection with the place.
Above: Bust of Catullus, Piazza Carducci, Sirmione
Starting from the 1st century BC, Sirmione became a favourite resort for rich families coming from Verona, then the main Roman city in northeastern Italy.
Catullus praised the beauties of Sirmione and spoke of a villa he had in the area.
Sirmione remains a popular spot in a beautiful setting suffocated by luxury hotels, souvenir stands and tourists.
Go beyond the town battlements, away from the Rocca Scaliagara, that fairytale turreted fortress.
Escape, flee the throngs.
Walk out beyond the town to the peninsula´s triangular hilly head and lie in the shade of cypress and olive groves.
Linger not long, but pass San Pietro, for church frescoes won´t free you from the folks that follow you in search of food, alcohol, cool water and warm rocks.
Boldly march, tracing the path that runs along the edges of the Peninsula.
Ignore the warning signs of slippery rocks and tumbling landslides and continue up to the gate leading to the Grotte di Catullo, where the locals brag was Catullus´ villa.
It wasn´t.
What this was, what this is, is the semblance of a Roman spa, white ruins where Romans came to take the waters from the hot sulphur spring that lies 300 metres under the Lago.
The scattered ruins, ageless and beautiful, bake quietly in the sun amongst ancient olive trees.
Fragments of frescoes and superb views of the Lago await the valiant wanderer.
We know from historical records that Catullus did retire to Sirmione, coming all the way from the Black Sea by boat, hauling it overland (!) when necessary so he could sail upon Lago Garda.
But what of the man Catullus and why do the folks of Sirmione insist he not be forgotten, even if his actual villa´s location remains uncertain?
For he was one of the Roman Republic´s greatest poets rivalling his contemporaries Lucretius and Cicero in the creation of a golden age of Latin literature.
62 BC, Rome
Quintus Valerius Catullus (22) had come to Rome from Verona, where his father was of sufficient financial and social standing to be frequent host to Julius Caesar himself.
Quintus himself owned villas near Tibur and on Lake Garda and had an elegant house in Roma.
Catullus speaks of these properties as choked with mortgages and repeatedly pleads his poverty, but the picture preserved of him by posterity through his poetry is that of a polished man of the world who did not bother to earn a living but enjoyed himself as a bon vivant among the wild set of the capital.
Despite his father´s friendship with Caesar, or because of this, Catullus – a familiar amongst Rome´s keenest wits and cleverest orators and politicians – opposed Caesar with every epigram at his disposal, unaware that his literary revolt reflected the revolutionary times in which he lived.
Catullus had tired of the old forms of Latin literature.
He wanted to sing the sentiments of his youth in new and imaginative ways.
Catullus was resentful of old morals perpetually preached by exhausted elders.
He announced the sanctity of instinct, the innocence of desire and the grandeur of dissipation.
He found life, love and literature revolved around every woman, married or not, who inspired him with comfortably casual love.
Catullus cultivated his friendship with the liveliest woman in his privileged circle, Clodia, whom he named Lesbia in memory of the Greek poetess Sappho of Lesbos whose works he translated, imitated and loved.
Above: Catullus at Lesbia´s, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Quintus was fascinated by Clodia the moment she “set her shining foot on the well-worn threshold”.
She was his “lustrous goddess of the delicate step”.
Her walk, like her voice, was sufficient seduction for any man.
Clodia accepted Quintus graciously as one of her admirers and the enraptured poet, unable to match otherwise the gifts of his rivals, laid at her feet the most beautiful lyrics ever produced in Latin.
A lover´s frenzy raged within him….
“Sparrow, delight of my beloved.
Who plays with you and holds you to her breast?
Who offers her forefinger to your seeking
And tempts your sharp bite?
I know not what dear jest it pleases my shining one
To make of my desire!”
Quintus was consumed with happiness, paid attendance upon her daily, read his poems to her, forgot everything but his infatuation….
History does not record how long this ecstasy lasted, but she who had betrayed her husband for Quintus found it a relief to betray him for another.
Quintus madly envisioned her “embracing at once 300 adulterers.”
In the very heat of his love he came to hate her and rejected her protestations of fidelity:
“A woman´s words to hungry lover said
Should be upon the flowing winds inscribed,
Upon swift streams engraved.”
When sharp doubt became dull certainty his passion turned to bitterness and coarse revenge.
He accused her of yielding to tavern habitués, denounced her new lovers with obscene abandon and meditated suicide, poetically.
But Quintus was capable of more nobler feelings.
He addressed to his friend Manlius a touching wedding song, envying him the wholesome companionship of marriage, the security and stability of a home and the happy tribulations of parentage.
Quintus travelled to Bithyia (Black Sea coastal Turkey) to find the grave of a brother.
Over it he performed reverently the ancestral burial rites and soon afterward he composed tender lines….
“Dear brother, through many states and seas
Have I come to this sorrowful sacrifice,
Bringing you the last gift for the dead.
Accept these offerings wet with fraternal tears,
And forever, brother, hail and farewell.”
His time in Turkey changed and softened Catullus.
The skeptic who had written of death as “the sleep of an eternal night” was moved by the old religions and ceremonies of the East.
In a small yacht bought at Amastria (Amasra), Quintus sailed through the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Adriatic, up the Po Valley to Lago Garda and his villa at Sirmio (Sirmione).
“Oh, what happier way is there to escape the cares of the world than to return to our own homes and altars and rest on our own beloved bed?”
Men begin by seeking happiness and are content at last with peace.
Sirmione, Lago di Garda, Italy, 4 August 2017
Our bed and breakfast accommodation, adequate though not overly attractive – (much as women describe me these days!) – lay three kilometres from the centre of Sirmione.
As the B & B was destined to be beyond bus line access and my wife determined to save costs by our not employing taxis our three-day/two-night sojourn in Sirmione meant one hour´s walk between the B & B and the city centre.
We who had been driving everywhere that past week found ourselves wearily trudging back and forth alongside busy boulevards lined much like North American City access ways with anonymous forgettable shopping malls and restaurants forever ignored by the Michelin Guide.
Concrete under our feet, the lakeshore invisible and unattainable, carbon monoxide replacing sea breeze and breath.
Still we made the best of the Sirmione experience that we could.
We ate expansively, drank copiously, swam gloriously in the Lago and in the pools of the Terme di Sirmione spa and bathed ourselves in the warm Italian sun on unforgiving rocks.
We walked about Roman ruins searching for an ever-elusive emotional link with the ancient past.
One should not go to Sirmione in search of happiness but one can find contentment here.
Other English speakers did.
The Greek American soprano Maria Callas (1923 – 1977) had, like Catullus centuries before, a villa here.
Above: Maria Callas
The English writer Naomi “Micky” Jacob (1884 – 1964) moved to Sirmione because the weather was kinder to her tuberculosis-stricken lungs.
She was well-known in the town and her home was known as Casa Micky.
Micky wrote more than 40 novels and nearly a dozen autobiographies.
Her novels, best described as romantic fiction, tackled the problems of prejudice against Jews, domestic violence and the political consequences of pogroms in the 19th century.
Although not well-known nowadays, in her day Micky was a well-loved and much respected figure.
She, like Catullus´ poetic inspiration Sapphos, had intimate relationships with other women that were an open secret but never publicly disclosed during her lifetime.
She never gave up her home in Sirmione and died there in 1964.
Charles Schulz, the American creator of the famous Peanuts cartoons, on his way to Venice with his family lingered in Sirmione for a week in the 1950s.
He left against his heart describing Sirmione as “extraordinary”.
Above: Charles Schulz (1922 – 2000)
The Pace (pah-chay) Hotel in Sirmione occupies a building with a particularly significant history – the union of an old hotel (Hotel Eden) and the Santa Coruna religious institute for children with heart problems or for persons suffering from nervous complaints.
At a time when medicine wasn´t particularly evolved, the Lago di Garda was believed to infuse tranquillity and aid convalescence and healing.
Of the many visitors the Pace has hosted, including the aforementioned Charles Schulz, Catullus probably would have most connected with the American poet Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972).
Above: Ezra Pound
Like Pound, Catullus loved and hated in equal measures of extreme intensity, was capable of generous feeling, was unpleasantly self-centred, deliberately obscene and merciless to his enemies.
Both men danced poetically between love and lust, kisses and kaka, a mix of primitive coarseness with civilized refinement.
Their lines are salted with dirt to give literature taste.
Time magazine in 1933 described Pound as “a cat that walks by himself, tenaciously unhousebroken and very unsafe for children”.
During the winter of 1913 Ezra Pound was in Sussex (England) with William Butler Yeats, acting as the elder poet´s secretary.
Above: William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)
Temporarily free of the rush of London, each was assessing the other´s work and laying out new directions.
When Pound had almost completed an anthology of new poets, he asked Yeats if there was anyone he had forgotten to include.
Yeats recalled a young Irish writer named James Joyce who had written some polished lyric poems.
Above: James Joyce (1882 – 1941)
One of them had stuck in Yeats´ mind.
Joyce was living in Trieste.
Why not write to him?
Pound wrote Joyce at once.
He explained his literary connections and offered help in getting Joyce published.
A few days later Yeats found Joyce´s “I Hear an Army Charging upon the Land” and Pound wrote again to ask Joyce if he could use the poem in his anthology.
Joyce, who had been on the Continent for nearly ten years, cut off from his nation and his language and so far all but unpublished, was surprised and encouraged.
He gave Pound permission to use the poem and a few days later sent a typescript of his book of short stories Dubliners and a chapter of a new novel called A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, along with news that he would soon have a play ready.
A prolonged correspondence began, which grew into a long-standing friendship.
Because of World War I, the two innovators of modern fiction and poetry would not meet until June 1920, when Pound persuaded Joyce to come to Sirmione.
If seen through Pound´s eyes, one wonders if the men were satisfied with the results of their meeting….
2 June 1920, Sirmione
“In vainest of exasperation
Mr. P passed his vacation.
The cause of his visit
To the Eyetaliann cities
Was blocked, by a wreck, at the station.”
“A bard once in landlocked Sirmione
Lived in peace, eating locusts and honey
Till a son of a bitch
Left him dry on the beach
Without clothes, boots, time, quiet or money.”
Sirmione, Lago di Garda, Italy, 4 August 2017
I think much about Pound and Catullus during our long walks to and fro between B & B and town.
I think about how both men resolved in their lifetimes to know more about poetry than any man living.
I think about how both men were really at heart very boyish fellows and incurable provincials, both driven by a thirst for romance and colour, who stumbled magnificently in their individual follies at great cost to themselves.
I think about how Clodia, Catullus´ lover, epitomizes today´s modern woman in her determination to lead her own life as she chose, free to love and be loved by whomsoever she desired, a woman who lived and loved with irresistable grace and whose greatest sin was not adultery or lechery as it was her underestimation of the effects that lovers wronged could enact upon her.
A woman´s body and soul are hers to decide how they are to be shared.
It is the dimmest of hopes that a mere man is worthy of being her sole obsession throughout her lifetime.
I think of how the love of a woman (19) caused Ezra Pound (58) to walk from Verona to the town of Gais, Switzerland, a distance of over 450 miles.
He was so dirty and tired when he arrived that his girlfriend Mary almost failed to recognize him.
The lengths that love drives a man….
I think of the lengths my own personal Lesbia has driven me over the past two decades, including the three-kilometre concrete trudge twice a day.
Perhaps marriage is a lot like Sirmione.
One might not always be made happy here, but one is usually contented.
Sources: Wikipedia / Will Durant, Caesar and Christ / Reay Tannahill, Sex in History / The Pace Hotel, Sirmione / The Rough Guide to Italy / Lonely Planet Italy
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Chronicles of Canada Slim 