Problem: How to construct a vehicle with which one can transport oneself where one likes, without a horse

As part of an ongoing scholarly discussion, a colleague sent me the following image:

Now, the image, which depicts a vintage Frejus, does not at first appear to have a rare book or manuscript connection; however, RBML’s collections have great diversity and can provide scholarly content across many disciplines–here’s how. If we consider Jacques Ozanam’s (1640-1717) Recreations mathematiques et physiques, qui contiennent plusieurs problêmes d’arithmetique, de geometrie, d’optique, de gnomonique, de cosmographie, de mecanique, de pyrotechnie, & de physique (Paris, 1694–RBML call no.: SMITH 511.9 1694 Oz1), we can find the starting point for my colleague’s Frejus. Recreations mathematiques et physiques sets out to solve various mathematical problems, among them,

how to “construire un carosse, dans lequel on se puisse conduire soy-même là où l’on voudra, sans aucuns Chevaux“–or, roughly translated, How to construct a carriage with which one can transport oneself where one likes, without out a horse.

Here is Ozanam’s solution:

To this blogger’s eye, I see the foundations of the bicycle (full disclosure, I am far from the first person to make this connection, see especially David Herlihy’s Bicycle , page 15-6 (Yale UP, 2006). But note the pedal powered drive train and the turning cogs, which closely resemble the chain rings on modern bicycles.

RBML holds several editions of Ozanam’s work as part of the David Eugene Smith Collection on the history of mathematics. Here’s the title page and frontispiece of the 1696 edition (which bears Smith’s ex libris stamp in the upper right corner):

Here the plate has found its way to the front of the book, a sign of its perceived importance. Ozanam’s vehicle or carosse, doesn’t look much like my colleague’s Frejus, but it does reach back to the bicycle’s roots, and emphasizes just how much ground RBML’s collections can cover.

Le Festin Nu [that's French for Naked Lunch]

In 1964 the French publisher Gallimard brought out the first French translation of William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch under the title Le Festin Nu. Ironically, the book first appeared in Paris in its original English form in 1959, in the Olympia Press Traveller's Companion series (see RBML's copy here). France traditionally had been a friendly place for many controversial English language writers of the twentieth century: James Joyce (Ulysses, 1922), Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer, 1934), and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita, 1959) all published books that were either banned or considered unprintable in Great Britain or the United States.


In recognition of the French contribution to English language letters, and in the interest of fully documenting Naked Lunch's reception and the history of its publication, RBML recently acquired this copy of Le Festin Nu, copy number 1196 of 3,750 copies printed on vélin bouffant des papeteries de Téka. The text was translated by Eric Kahane, the brother of Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias (Kahane also translated Nabokov's Loilta into French in 1959).

What's curious is the letter to booksellers that Gallimard issued with the book, an example of which is included in the RBML copy, seen to the right.



For those who do not follow the French, the publisher warns booksellers that unsuspecting readers might be disoriented by the book's particular characters and risk shocking misunderstandings over the sometimes brutal descriptions made by the author on certain aspects of modern society. Booksellers are further advised not to expose the book to public view and under no circumstances to sell the book to minors. One might ask, is this conservationism necessary in a country with a such a strong track record for literary tolerance? About a year before Le Festin Nu appeared in France, a Boston bookseller was arrested in January 1963, and charged with obscenity for selling the first American edition of Naked Lunch (Grove Press, 1962)--the book would not be cleared of that charge until July 1966, so perhaps Gallimard's caution over this particular text was warranted. Also, the fact that the controversial text was printed in French made the brutalité of the text more accessible to Gallimard's French readers. The author of this blog entry was able to find no recorded cases of casualties among French readers after indulging in Le Festin Nu. Gallimard continues to publish the book today .

A New Medieval Manuscript, or rather, an old one in a new home

Good news here: we have just bought a new manuscript--new
for us, of course. And it has just been delivered today, our new baby.

It's a copy of Hugh of St. Cher's Postils on the Apocalypse, dated 24 November 1468, and produced in the lower Rhineland, probably Cologne. It's a beautiful book of 151 parchment leaves, over a foot tall, in a lovely strong hybrida script with an opening initial in gold. It's in original binding--somewhat damaged, but even so, quite untouched. Look at its picture; you'll be impressed.

And you'll be intrigued by its provenance: we know where this book has been virtually all of its life, from a 15th century donation note by a known person to the Carthusians of St. Barbara's in Cologne (remember, their library went up in flames in 1451, so they were still actively rebuilding), through 17th and 18th century catalogues of that library, to Leander van Ess at the suppression of monasteries, to Sir Thomas Phillipps, through sale rooms, to a collector in Virginia (it's listed in Bond and Faye, publ. 1962), to Barney Rosenthal (bookseller par excellence), and now it's ours.

Our students will read it as an example of the 13th century mendicants' new style of biblical commentary; they'll see the Parisian Dominicans at work building tools to study the bible (even though the work circulates under the name of Hugh of St. Cher, it seems that he was the leader of the team, rather than the sole author); they'll see the Parisian tools still in use 200 years later. And they can compare this manuscript to the most recent printed version of the text: in Venice in 1754--that publication occupies eight folio volumes for the entire series of Hugh's postils. And Columbia is fortunate to also own that edition.

The purchase was made by combining funds from Columbia University's P. O. Kristeller Endowment together with a generous grant from the B. H. Breslauser Foundation. We are very grateful to these two manuscript scholars, who left behind them the means for others to build collections of manuscripts--the first impetus to study.

The new baby's name is Western MS 92; come visit it sometime!

Medieval MSS in Action

Columbia students have the fortune this term to work actively with RBML's medieval and renaissance manuscripts in two very different classes. Professor Christopher Baswell's class, although termed "English vernacular paleography" in fact introduces his students to a vast array of issues pertinent to the study of manuscripts; he interprets the word "paleography" as we generally do in the English-speaking world, to include an examination of the manuscript world broadly speaking. In his introductory lecture, he quoted the famous phrase of Jean Mabillon, from the De re diplomatica (Paris 1681) pp. 241-242:

Non ex sola scriptura, neque ex uno solo characterismo sed ex omnibus simul de vetustis chartis pronuntiandum. Neque enim unum est in uno saeculo, unave provincia scripturae genus, sed varia, ut de nostro experiri licet: nec possunt omnes unius saeculi scripturae ad amussim repraesentari.

So although Mabillon wasn't quite thinking of pricking, ruling, format, hierarchies of decoration and so on when he warned us against judgements based on script alone, his lapidary phrase remains actively in our minds. And Professor Baswell's students have seen the real McCoy, issue by issue, and script by script, in many RBML manuscripts as the term moves forward.






Plimpton MS 261, f. 1.
Brut Chronicle, copied by Ricardus Rede
England, third quarter of the fifteenth century












Professor Susan Boynton's class in medieval musicology has taken a very different approach: one huge choir book is the center of class attention as each student takes responsibility for identifying the texts and the music of each piece: antiphons, responsories, versicles, canticles, hymns are sorted by function, by liturgical hour and by feast. The modes and the tones are identified, and the differentiae recorded. Did I mention that the book is huge? It is. It's almost two feet tall and 16 inches wide; I weighed it in the mailroom once, and it racks up nearly forty pounds. Imagine a book that opens up to about the size of the New York Times, and that weighs as much as a four-year old child.

So here's the good news. Columbia's digital imaging people worked on the book most of last year, and produced a complete digital copy; they put it on a website with a bit of navigation, and the students do the bulk of their work on the manuscript at home. We have the book out during class sessions, but the long slow work of transcription and inventory takes place at the students' convenience and in the quiet of their own study spaces.

Why on earth did they make such a big book? The standard answer is so that a number of choristers could sing from it at the same time, and indeed miniatures of the day usually depict five or six monks standing about the tall book stand, looking up to the book as they sing.






Plimpton MS 041, f. 16.
Antiphonal
Perugia, Italy, third quarter of the fifteenth century




More images of both mss are visible on the Digital Scriptorium website: http://www.digital-scriptorium.org

Target Margin Theater

On Tuesday, February 16, Target Margin Theater presented readings and discussion of their new work-in-progress The Really Big Once here in Butler Library. This play explores the complex relationship between Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan in the period between 1948 and the early 1950s as they worked on the first production of Camino Real, Williams's "experimental" play that opened on Broadway in 1953 and quickly closed after receiving mostly scathing reviews.

The Really Big Once explores their shared sense of outsider status, for Williams a life-long journey, for Kazan the fallout from his 1952 testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. It has been developed by Target Margin's founder and Artistic Director David Herskovits and his creative team using letters, drafts of Camino Real, and other materials found in Williams and Kazan archives in various libraries around the country, including Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Shown here is one of the letters used in the play, found in the RBML Tennessee Williams Papers. Written by Elia Kazan (Gadg) to Tennessee Williams (Tenn), it is here shown for the first time with permission of the Kazan Estate.

The Really Big Once will run from April 13 to May 8, 2010 at The Ontological Theater, St. Mark's Church, New York City.
Please see Target Margin Theater's web site for more details:
http://www.targetmargin.org/index.htm

Bomb The making of a Gregory Corso poem.

One of the great perks of working in the RBML is not merely being surrounded by the fabulous rare and unique books and manuscripts we care for, but also having colleagues who share their own discoveries. Today was just such a day: while conferring with Carrie Hintz, one of RBML's manuscript processors, about our Beat Collections, Carrie pulled out a letter from City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti to poet Gregory Corso. And not just any letter: this is the one in which Ferlinghetti accepted the poem "BOMB" for publication and included a little sketch of the proposed mise-en-page.


Gregory Corso's poem "BOMB"-- first published by City Lights in San Francisco, 1958--was printed as a calligram, that is, a poem whose typographical characters are spatially arranged in a manner that corresponds to the poem's theme or topic. The letter comes from RBML's Allen Ginsberg Papers.

Ferlinghetti's enthusiastic response also mentions his plan to print the poem as a broadside, or as a single sheet. The format is particularly appropriate for BOMB, graphically reinforcing the impact of Corso's theme. Columbia's copy of the printed poem is shown at left, and can be seen up close in the RBML reading rooms. RBML Call number: B812C818 O5 1958

RBML also has a Gregory Corso collection with correspondence, art works, and the poet's notebooks.

Three's a Charm: “Writing About Coffee, Reading In Cafés: Literature and Coffeehouses in Early Modern France” :03/03/2010

New date! This talk has been rescheduled for March 3, 2010.

The Book History Colloquium at Columbia welcomes Thierry Rigogne from Fordham University's History Department.

His talk, “Writing About Coffee, Reading In Cafés: Literature and Coffeehouses in Early Modern France” will be held March 3, Butler Library room 523, 6PM.

Well before Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Parisian cafés have shared a strong affinity with literature. In the seventeenth century, it was books, from travel accounts to medical treatises, that introduced the French to what was then a new, exotic, Oriental beverage. Writers immediately patronized the first coffeehouses, where they could discuss literature and much else, while regular patrons went to cafés to read newspapers or pamphlets. In this talk, Thierry Rigogne will explore the connections between cafés and literature in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France, a time during which they shaped each other’s development and created the figure of the literary café.

The Colloquium is open to all... for our full schedule, see:

Book History Colloquium at Columbia