Columbia Curators' Choices

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

2010-08-13T10:32:00.009-04:00

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]

2010-06-04T15:19:00.040-04:00

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

2010-05-26T21:25:00.007-04:00

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

2010-04-13T11:17:00.008-04:00

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

2010-02-24T09:52:00.002-05:00

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.

2010-02-19T13:11:00.021-05:00

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

2010-02-19T11:24:00.004-05:00

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

2010-02-16T12:44:00.004-05:00

On December 18, 2009, the four member Russian delegation led by Aleksandr Pavlovich Vershinin, General Director of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, has visited the Columbia University libraries. This visit was initiated by the Russian side of the team representing the Joint Project between the Library of Congress and the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, the first Presidential Library in Russia.

Russian delegation represents one of five Joint Project Implementation Teams created within the framework of the Russian-American Working Group on Library Cooperation. The focus of these five groups is 1)Technology and Best Practices; 2) Content and Exchange of Materials; 3)Audio-Visual Collections; 4) Copyright and Related Rights; and 5)Specific Joint Digital Projects.

The Russian delegation met with Jim Neal, who introduced them with Columbia Libraries system in general. Then they were hosted by Columbia University Slavic bibliographer, Rob Davies, who made a Powerpoint presentation on the historical background of Columbia’s library, in a national context, 1903-1946.

Tanya Chebotarev, Bakhmeteff Curator, set up a small exhibit of Russian and East European materials which emphasized the vast variety of the Bakhmeteff Archive collecting activities. She also talked about the history and collection development policies of the second largest repository of Russian émigré materials in the United States. See photos.

Patricia Renfro and representatives from RBML, LDPD, Columbia's Center for New Media Teaching & Research, and the Center for Digital Research & Scholarship gave an overview of Columbia's digitization program, special online teaching and learning projects, Courseworks, and other digital initiatives.

The group then had lunch at Faculty House with Jim Neal, Patricia Renfro, and former chair of the Baltic and Slavic Division at the NYPL, Edward Kasinec, who is now a fellow at the Harriman Institute.

Snowing in NYC (and in Flanders)

2010-02-10T17:25:00.006-05:00

They closed Columbia this afternoon at 3:00 because of the snow storm. It feels like a sudden gift, a wild moment, normalcy is abandoned. Columbia students threw snow balls in the fields in front of Butler Library, and me, I came home and played with the Digital Scriptorium website. Snow in the Middle Ages? You bet. I went looking at calendar images for the months of January and February. To look at a series of them in a row makes you realize how peculiar, for example, the usual image for January is: a rich man eating dinner. You mean that he doesn't eat dinner in May? or September? Why should that scene be emblematic of January? I don't get it.

But two variations on the scene grabbed my attention, both Flemish, the first dating from the end of the 15th century, the second produced some 15-20 years later: the first is from San Marino, Huntington Library, HM 1157, f. 1: the gentleman is about to sit down to his dinner, but he pauses to warm his little tushie at the fire first. Now that makes sense to me: who can enjoy their dinner if their bottom is cold?

The second image (from the Spencer Collection at New York Public Library) is breathtakingly wonderful in its outdoor details of a snowy, cold day, some January in the early years of the 16th century, in the countryside near Bruges. As he ventures forth from his warm house, where family members are chatting around the fire, this gentleman leaves footprints in the snow; icicles hang from the edge of the thatched roof, the trees are snow-laden, birds soar in the chilly grey-blue sky and another traveller braves the wind, grabbing his hat to keep it from blowing away. Wow.

Both images reproduced here with permission from the holding libraries. If you'd like to see more images from these manuscripts, go to http://www.digital-scriptorium.org, choose Search, and type in their respective shelfmarks: HM 01157 or NYPL Spencer 036.

Frances Perkins

2010-01-08T10:37:00.003-05:00

The exhibition "Frances Perkins: The Woman Behind the New Deal," currently on display here in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University, has been extended through March 26, 2010.

Please join the Frances Perkins Center at an event on Thursday, January 14, at the Harvard Club. Perkins biographer Kirstin Downey will be joined by other speakers, including former president of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, Christopher Breiseth. The evening will conclude with the premiere of "Lighting the Way: Frances Perkins," a short documentary by Karenna Gore Schiff and Catherine Corman.

ALSO announcing the online version of the exhibition, now available through:
https://ldpd.lamp.columbia.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/perkins

More on the Perkins front soon.

Holiday wishes to All!

2009-12-12T09:30:00.005-05:00

Against my own deeply held principles, I've monkied with an image of a medieval manuscript this morning, and it was fun, I do confess.

New York, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Plimpton MS 050, f. 2v, detail (and changed).

Thomas Carlyle's photograph album

2009-12-08T13:25:00.016-05:00

Among the many rich sources of visual material in RBML are Thomas Carlyle's photograph albums. The seven albums in RBML's collection are typical of the 19th century and include primarily carte-de-visite, or photographic calling cards, that were popular at the time. These cards were used by individuals similarly to contemporary business cards, but cards with images of actors, writers, or other celebrities were available for purchase.

As a historian and prominent member of British intellectual culture, Carlyle's album includes images of many well know 19th century figures, such as John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Giuseppe Mazzini and others. The sample page on the right shows Manzzini (lower right), an unidentified figure (lower left), and two perhaps more familiar figures in the upper row, Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth [click the image to see an enlargement].

Carlyle's juxtaposition of the assassinated President and his assassin suggests that even while adding cartes-de-visite to his personal photo album, he was ever the working historian. The Carlyle photograph albums are available to today's scholars and historians in the RBML reading rooms.

Paleography of Spanish Manuscripts

2009-12-06T20:36:00.021-05:00

Once upon a time there was a Spanish chaplain …
Capellanus quidam hyspanus …
Which seems a good place to remember a trip to Spain about a month ago. I spent a week at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, looking at thirteenth-century Spanish manuscripts, most of them dated, no less! Here I am, trying to apply to a manuscript at Columbia —also Spanish, also thirteenth century— the lessons learned there. The trick is to distinguish these from Italian manuscripts of the same date. Take that line "Capellanus quidam hyspanus"; the decorative letter C is enclosed in a completely filled-in frame, more rectangular than square; that looks Spanish to me. The dotted y, oh yes, that's Spanish. And the h here and in "adhibuit" in the top line: a spike at the top of the bowl, whose right arm hangs just a tad below the line. More easily noticeable is the shape of the tironian seven with its completely flat nose sticking out at a right angle from the supporting minim: Spanish? well, yes, but in the south of France, too.

Odd, 3-shaped Spanish z. The trouble is that a z doesn't come up very often, so it's not a great letter to use as part of your criteria. Surprisingly, I found three on one page (f. 45): canonizatum; amonizatus [sic, one "m"]; intronizatum.

A bunch of interesting letter forms here: two shapes for the letter a, one of which is entirely teardrop (in a blue circle), the second, though, has a tiny little line as if to close the top bowl, but with no courage at all (so, appropriately, it is designated with a yellow circle). Violet circles help the eye find the letter d which always occurs in the present uncial form (never the straight half-uncial d). Teal blue-green circles show the slippery s at the end of a word (but the straight s does put in an occasional appearance).

The best ever marker, though, for the non-Italian-ness of this manuscript (that being my main risk of confusion, I'd say), is the northern European qui abbreviation mark! Can we blame Cluny for this intrusion into Spain? Anyway, enclosed in red frames here, are the words "quidam" and "quid." Perfect. No Italian would write them like this, no way.

Columbia's manuscript —it's Western MS 68— almost didn't make it to today's world. It was saved from destruction by a bookseller for the price of four silver coins by Brother Gonzalez de la Peña in 1510, as he tells us on the front page: "Frater Gundisalvus de la peña emit libellum hunc quattuor argenteis nummis a quodam bibliopola qui [qui abbreviation that looks one whole lot more Italian than Spanish!] volebat eum destruere Anno domini M. D. X."

To close, I'll repeat a kindly colophon seen in a manuscript in Spain (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 871, f. 142v):
"Sit pax scribenti, Sit vita salusque legenti."
"May there be peace for the scribe, May there be life and health for the reader."

Well, it's not coffee . . .

2009-10-19T10:43:00.007-04:00

OK, so the Parisian intellectuals drank coffee; what was a poor English couple in the 1500s to choose? Beer, obviously. Word problem here; the booklet consists entirely of word problems. It's a wonderful little object, only measuring about four inches wide and not quite three inches tall. It turns out that the souse is the husband: left to his own devices, he clears out the family supply in 20 days, whereas the good lady takes 30 days to do the job. (We don't give our school kids problems about beer, do we?)

Plimpton MS 237, f. 1

A book lost and found; a friend retained; a sonnet to say it all

2009-08-28T04:23:00.016-04:00

The past days witnessed a tussle with a friend who had borrowed a book of mine, and was quite convinced that she had given it back to me; I surely did not think so, was getting a bit irritated with her: “she does this sort of thing all the time”—accusatory thoughts running through my mind. And then I remembered a sonnet by the Florentine barber and poet, Burchiello (ca. 1404-1449) scribbled in a fifteenth-century hand on a flyleaf of one of our manuscripts; this is the situation, all right!

Sempre se dice ch’un fa danno a cento;
Ben ch’el mi para fuor del dovuto,
Per un inghanno ch’io ho ricevuto,
Seguire intendo tal ordinamento.
Prestai un simil libro ond’io mi pento
Che quando l’ebbi ben asai tenuto
El me provo che me l’avea renduto
E a mi convene rimaner contempto.
E questo nesun m’el chieza in prestanza
Ch’el non m’intravenga como far sole
Ch’io perda el libro e anche l’amistanza.
Ma pur s’alchun sforzar in cio mi vole
Presto m’arechi una tal recordanza
A mantener fazza in pie le su parole.

Plimpton MS 195, f. i verso; another poem in the manuscript is signed and dated by the owner/copyist, Giovanni Battista di S. Eufemia of Faenza on 7 July 1478. Same sonnet in an incunable held by this library, Goff B-1289, printed in Venice in 1483/84.

But unlike the sonnet, in the end, I did not loose both the book and the friend; she found my book, she gave it back, we’re cheerful again (and I’ll continue to lend out my books; I never learn).

So new we don't even have a picture

2009-06-07T16:00:00.007-04:00

I left last Thursday afternoon for Philadelphia to attend "The Hybrid Book: Intersection and Intermedia," a book fair and conference about "the book as a hybrid art form and book arts as multi-disciplinary." It was pretty intense; particularly, for me, two dense afternoons working through over seventy tables of artist's books. In many ways, this kind of rampage through a room full of books is the easiest way to add to the Book Arts collection -- you have to see the book to know whether it's successful, and a good fit for the collection; and you can see an awful lot of books in 10 hours of fair time. (I've also developed coping strategies to deal with the overstimulation, such as a hotel room to myself and some bibliotherapy in the form, this time, of Anthony Trollope's travel book North America.)

The organizers had asked a number of institutions to award "Purchase Prizes," a new concept for me. Essentially, I made a public announcement that Columbia would buy a particular book, and the winner got a certificate to display the last few hours of the fair. It was so hard to pick just one for the announcement; there were many wonderful books, many young artists, many old friends.

I selected a book called pink story, a set of two volumes, each telling the story of women's lives in a different way. The books aren't bound as codices, but rather fold out into spirals, one right-turning, and one left. pink story: dextral started out as a piece in an art exhibit by Barb Hunt using pink paint chips and their evocative names to chart a woman's life, and some of the stereotypes and preconceptions she faces, from newborn pink through sweet sixteen to bed of roses. Marlene MacCallum worked with her to turn it into a book, then made the sister volume pink story: sinister, which traces a similar story using beautiful photogravures of interior spaces. The book is carefully conceived, beautifully executed, and a little quirky.

For months, I've been trying out this line with artists and dealers: "I buy books, not art." pink story pushes that envelope in many very interesting ways. But it clearly has narrative, a (curly) linearity, content worth engaging in, and perfect craftsmanship, so I'm pretty comfortable with it as an appropriate and wonderful addition to the Book Arts collection.

pink story hasn't even arrived at the Library yet, and I can't pay for it until the new fiscal year starts in July; then it will be cataloged and made ready for the shelf. With luck, it will be ready to be read in the new semester, come September. Until then, you can get a sneak preview at the link above, or ask me to recommend other interesting books in the collection.

Congratulations, graduates!

2009-05-19T14:16:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow is graduation day here at Columbia; floors are polished in the library, flowers are planted outdoors, and already the proud participants in light blue caps and gowns (with yet prouder parents) are thronging the campus. All very festive and fancy. The soon-to-be-delivered diplomas, though, don't hold a candle to those of Renaissance Italy. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library holds three of them; they're small booklets of twelve pages, on parchment, hand-lettered (of course!) and with sumptuous bindings. Here are a couple of images of one of them, offered in salute to Columbia's new grads!

Text and picture are signed by their maker, Johannes Boninus, for the graduation in 1599 of George Calona (get it? St. George and the Dragon? and the name on the binding?) from the university of Padua as Doctor of Law. Come on up and see it sometime; it's Smith Western MS 25.

Harry Lawrence Freeman

2009-05-15T18:46:00.013-04:00

Thanks to the great work of Mellon Project Archival Processor Anne Holt, Columbia GSAS 2013, the papers of Harry Lawrence Freeman have now been processed and are available for use by researchers. The collection provides a wide range of materials related to American opera and to the artistic performance and social history of African-Americans from about 1890-1950.

Freeman is credited as being the first African-American to write an opera that was successfully produced. This was his Epthelia, that premiered at the Deutsches Theater in Denver on February 9, 1893 with a cast of 60. His second opera, The Martyr premiered there on August 16, 1893, and was performed with an inter-racial cast at Carnegie Hall in 1947, the composer conducting.

As part of the Carnegie Hall Festival Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy this spring, curated by Jessye Norman, the piano/vocal score of The Martyr from the Freeman Papers is on display in Carnegie Hall's Rose Museum.

Freeman's entry in Wikipedia states "Although many of his works were successful during his lifetime, they are not played today." The reason for this is that his works were performed from the manuscripts, now at Columbia, and only a very few have been published. We hope to change this by finding sponsors to fund transfer of the manuscripts to performance copies.

The Dream Machine part II

2009-05-14T12:19:00.010-04:00

Early in this blog, I wrote about the Dream Machine, and now, with the expert assistance of Alan Govenar and Doumentary Arts, I can show you how our Dream Machine works:

You'll all be able to see our Dream Machine in person this October when we'll exhibit it along with the original manuscript for Naked Lunch. It's all part of a 3 day conference:

October 8: New York University, Fales Library
Panel discussion on the influence of Naked Lunch: “The Children of William S. Burroughs”

October 9: Columbia University, Rare Book & Manuscript Library

“Fifty Years of Naked Lunch: from the Interzone to the Archive… and back.”

All sessions at the Columbia University Faculty House
1:00PM: Keynote “From Dr Mabuse to Doc Benway: The Myths and Manuscripts of Naked Lunch”
Oliver Harris, Professor of American Literature, American Studies, Keele University

2:30PM: Short papers
Isaac Gewirtz, Curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library
“William S. Burroughs: The Writer as Avant-Garde Archivist”

Brian E. C. Schottlaender, Audrey Geisel University Librarian, University of California, San Diego
“Manifestations, Multiple Versions, and Showstoppers: Collecting the Various Guises of Naked Lunch”

Regina Weinreich, Professor in Humanities & Sciences, School of Visual Arts, New York City
“Honing the Word Hoard: Kerouac, Tangier and Naked Lunch”

4:30PM
Panel Discussion: “From the Bunker and Beyond: firsthand encounters with William S. Burroughs & Naked Lunch”
Moderator: Ann Douglas, Parr Professor of Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Speakers: Barry Miles, Author; Visiting Fellow, Liverpool School of Art and Design, John Moores University
Bradford Morrow, Novelist; Editor, Conjunctions; Professor of Literature, Bard College; and
Barney Rosset, Publisher, Evergreen Review and founding publisher, Grove Press

6:00pm
Reception and viewing of the exhibition: Naked Lunch: the First Fifty Years in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 6th floor Butler Library
October 10, the School of Visual Arts
SVA will host an evening of film and performances, including a screening of The Beat Hotel, a new documentary by Alan Govenar. Poet Anne Waldman and others (to be announced) will read from Naked Lunch.

More Bookplates

2009-04-15T14:34:00.003-04:00

Inspired by my colleague’s post about bookplates, I thought I’d like to add a medieval example. Not that the Middle Ages produced bookplates, per se; the earliest one, ‘tis commonly said, is the angel holding a shield with an ox——the bookplate of Hilprand Brandenberg, who in 1505 donated his personal library of some 450 books to the Carthusian monastery of Buxheim in Germany. It is printed (if that’s a necessary component in the concept of “bookplate”), and it was applied to the front pastedown of books, and it did point to a specific owner. You can see a colored example of it at:
http://www.modernmicroscopy.com/article_pix/040420_bookplates/figure5.jpg

But the bookplate I’m talking about here would more usually be described as a historiated initial——an initial that contains a “story,” with human figures in it. No more suspense; here it is:

The initial is an N; two saints stand on a doorstep, admonishing a group of kneeling clerics, an angel flies above, the whole in a lovely verdant landscape. The N begins the mass for Sts. Peter and Paul, “Nunc scio vere …,” “Now I truly know ….” But all Columbia owns of what was once a very large choirbook is this single leaf, catalogued as Plimpton MS 040A. Where was it made? For whom was it made? Squawking birds’ heads (there are three in the foliage across the top margin) point to the Veneto; “broccoli” trees in the landscape suggest Lombardy. And the brilliant blue of the clerics’ robes can only mean one religious order: the Canons Regular of S. Giorgio in Alga whose nickname was “Azzurrini” for obvious reasons. Put it all together! The house of the Azzurrini in Brescia, in territory now Venetian and now Lombard, was dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul. Is this historiated initial a bookplate or what?

There’s more. On the edge of one of the steps is a profile face of a man; he looks to me like a real man, as if this is a real portrait. I fondly imagine this man to be the artist who has “signed” his “bookplate."

Bookplates, ex libris

2009-03-23T09:22:00.005-04:00

[f. L. ex librs, lit. ‘out of the books’, i.e. ‘from the library’ (of the person whose name follows); mod. Lat. phrase often used in inscriptions indicating the ownership of books.] from the OED

Like many rare book libraries, RBML has loads of bookplates pasted into its volumes. Bookplates help establish provenance, and they frequently tell us something about how previous owners thought of their books. One of my favorites is Hart Crane's ex libris, shown here in his copy of James Joyce's Exiles (NY, 1918). Crane's vorticist plate was pasted into many of his own books; here he's personalized this volume a little further by adding a portrait of the author (Zurich, 1919) .

Other interesting examples in RBML's collections include this Charles Dickens ex libris, found laid in to our facsimile copy of The Picwick Papers in parts (Picadilly Press, 1931). The plate itself is held inside a glassine envelope, printed with provenance information from the sale of Dickens' library.

RBML is also home to several bookplate collections, spanning from the late 16th through the 20th century. Click here to see the list.

And while we are on the topic, RBML also holds the Rockwell Kent Papers, which includes a file of drawings, sketches, and bookplates Kent designed for many well-known readers. Here's Kent's sketch of Alan Horace Kempner's bookplate alongside the final version--Kempner's rich and important book collection was donated to RBML.

RBML: Angles in Pink

2009-03-15T08:45:00.003-04:00

Just back from a stint at the American Academy in Rome, a community of dedicated, talented, learned people, where you join others at long tables for meals: you chat about cities visited, books read, projects in process, and before you know it, a flash of connection! Jenny Okun! An artist-photographer whose eyes see shapes and colors that the rest of us only see when she shows them to us, whose delight in patterns amazes and delights us. "I work at Columbia," I say to her, and she comments, "I have some pictures of a pink library there"; "Hey, that's the Rare Book & Manuscript Library!," I exclaim.

Here's my favorite, which she kindly allows me to copy here: "Columbia Library Pink," 1985, New York City, New York, USA; J. Okun ©2002.

There's another one of RBML and many other great images of her work on her website at: http://www.jennyokun.com/index.html
To see the RBML images, click on Photographic Image Index, then click on Architecture, then click on New York, and scroll alphabetically to Columbia. You'll be glad you did.

Urban Blue

2009-02-18T17:19:00.005-05:00

In an article in Sunday's New York Times about David Rockwell's designs for this year's Oscar awards ceremony at the Kodak Theater ("The Little Gold Man In a New Blue World," February 15, 2009), Patricia Leigh Brown writes: "This year the dominant color scheme will shift from red to a rich, deep blue, a shade inspired by Joseph Urban, the prolific stage designer of opera and the Ziegfeld Follies."

The Urban blue! The most wonderful of all shades of blue, presented to the millions watching the Oscar ceremonies this Sunday! We thought it appropriate to present here one of Urban's loveliest uses of his blue, as found in one of the set models held in the outstanding Joseph Urban archive in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, namely for the musical "Flying High" that opened at the Apollo Theater on March 3, 1930.

As Arnold Aronson wrote in his Wallach Gallery, Columbia University, exhibit catalog "Architect of Dreams: The Theatrical Vision of Joseph Urban,"
"Joseph Urban, first and foremost, was a colorist. All of his innovations - on the stage, in architecture, and in decoration - can be tied to his unprecedented use of color, which was virtually unmatched in the twentieth century...Indeed a deep, rich, shimmering blue is his trademark...Only in the work of the Russian designers...for the Ballets Russes - at roughly the same time as Urban was creating his first stage designs - could one find such a brilliant use of color." Stay tuned to this site for a future posting on the RBML's forthcoming exhibit in honor of the centennial of Les Ballets Russes.

Timecapsules

2009-02-16T20:36:00.009-05:00

For an archivist, everyday is a potential journey to the center of the earth. Open a box—any box—and you are instantly transported to another place and time. In most cases the creator of those records did not intend for this to be the case. But every now and then you stumble across a voice from the past who intended for you to hear it.

Such was the case in 2008 when I received a call from the Office of the Treasurer. The office was in the midst of a move when an envelope was found in the vault. “Do not open until October 31, A.D. 2000.” As with ancient curses of all sorts, the staff called the University Archives. “It’s some kind of time capsule. We were kind of afraid to open it.”

The package, I learned, was a 40 page observation on Columbia and its history sealed by one Roger Howson who, in 1948, was the University Librarian. Born in Overton, North Wales, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, Howson came to Columbia in 1922 as assistant librarian. In 1926 he was named University Librarian and by the time he retired in 1948, Columbia was the third largest university library in the country with well over 1,450,000 volumes. He had witnessed plenty and had more than a few words to say about Columbia’s history.

In his treatise, Howson recalls with good humor college spirit and student hi-jinx. Of sports he noted Columbia’s less-than-stellar reputation on the football field describing the school as the “graveyard of football coaches.” He wrote of the expense of the city, how New York “was generally more expensive than had been anticipated” for graduate students. Well, some things don’t change in sixty years.

Howson was critical toward discrimination against Jews, Irish Catholics, Armenians, and “coloreds.” Yet his most critical words were saved for Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia from 1902-1945. “He was an intellectually illiterate man,” wrote Howson. “For him words were things out of which one made sentences, out of sentences one made speeches, and out of one’s speeches one compiled a career and a life.” Indeed, Howson asserted that the last thirty years of Butler’s administration was “one of the tragedies of American educational history.”

Roger Howson was, as Robert McCaughey described in his book Stand, Columbia, one of the least recognized historians of Columbia University history. His desire to capture the essence of time and place was deeply held and was, indeed, issued as a polite challenge in the closing paragraph of his letter to me, the University Archivist. “If I may make a suggestion it would be that you should follow my example and leave something similar for him who will follow you after fifty more years shall have passed.”

I am taking notes, Mr. Howson. I am taking notes.

Susan Hamson
Curator of Manuscripts and University Archivist

2009-02-15T16:08:00.000-05:00

A discussion of early dust wrappers on books on the SHARP discussion list took a side turn when wrappers on playing cards came up as a possibly parallel phenomenon. The recently-publicized Field collection of playing cards -- over 6,000 decks and a good bit of related material -- has a number of these wrappers.

In England, the wrappers were apparently required from the 18th well into the 20th centuries as carriers for duty stamps (in fact, they were supposed to be destroyed when one opened the pack, to prevent re-use). Nevertheless, Mr. Field collected dozens of English examples alone.

I was taken with the example above, both because I hadn't thought of Mudies' (famous as a major circulating library) as a stationer, though it's perfectly sensible combination in the nineteenth century, but more particularly because I find the concept of selling "Genuine Second-Hand" used playing cards at odds with my memory of my English grandparents.

Eggs and "Art"

2009-02-04T16:21:00.010-05:00

Today, in to look at medieval manuscripts, I had a great group of 7th graders from a local school: enthusiastic kids, smart, engaging, who made the leap from the early materials they were looking at to their own education in a flash. They looked at a 13th century sale receipt for a slave and a papal bull of the same date; they read the opening words of a 15th century English primer, “Fadir owre that art in hevenes . . . “; they admired the alphabets in a 16th century calligraphy manual. In spite of the odd shape of medieval arabic numerals, they recognized a multiplication table in a copy of Boethius.They compared a bookmark image of the spheres of the heavens to the manuscript source of the image, and learned the lesson: the real thing is always the best. But what astonished me was their clear and favorite choice: an ordinary paper manuscript, Italian, 15th century, of word problems, meant for the children in the “abbaco” schools to study commercial arithmetic. Our 7th grade visitors recognized problems, read numbers, and sometimes gave answers! And the hokier the drawing, the more they exclaimed over the book. Top choice? See the picture; it’s about a father who has three sons, and to the oldest he gives 50 eggs, and to the middle son, 30 eggs, and the youngest receives 10 eggs; the sons go to market and sell most of each son’s eggs at the same price, with different pricing on some of their eggs; each son returns home with the same amount of money. What was the shared price of each egg? What was the price that each son put on his leftover eggs? And how much money did they bring home?

A "New" Medieval Manuscript

2008-12-17T12:39:00.004-05:00

Great news: we were the successful bidders at the November auction of medieval manuscripts at Christie's, London! The wonderful new addition to our collection, soon to be known officially as Western MS 88, is a canon law compilation, copied in France, ca. 1240. It's a superb example of the way medieval books usually circulated, with multiple texts of varied origin assembled for the owner's convenience (it's in early medieval binding--beat up, but the real McCoy), and that's something that doesn't show up too often in American collections, since dealers usually split codices up in order to sell them off text by text.

The first text in this composite volume dates from very close to the author's lifetime; it's "secondary literature" for its day. The third and the fourth are closer to "primary source" material, but the fourth is arranged alphabetically, showing an important shift in access-approach to texts.

The second piece, although acephalous and only in four leaves, is the nearest to my heart: it's a paleography manual! --with handy little bits of instruction, such as "S cum est finalis dictionis que semper debet scribi retorta, sic [s] vel [s], [s]" showing the various ways of shaping the letter S when it's at the end of a word.

The book is a perfect fit for our collection that looks at the history of education; it will be yet another building block in helping our students to understand the tools of learning, as they themselves learn.

Here's a quick outline of the texts:
------------------------------------------
1. 'Libellus Rotfredi in iure canonico' [i.e. Roffredus Beneventanus, (c.1170-1244)], ff.1-45
2. Fragment of a handbook for scribes, ff.46-48
3. Decretals on usury, marriage, patronage, rules governing the clergy and other matters, ff.48-59
4. Set of decretals, lettered alphabetically from 'A' to 'Q', ff.60-103.
-------------------------------------------

Anton Seidl

2008-12-16T18:08:00.010-05:00

We were contacted recently by Katherine Syer for permission to publish two images of documents in the papers of Anton Seidl, held by RBML on deposit from the Music Library, in her forthcoming “From Page to Stage: Wagner as Regisseur.” It will be part of the Princeton University Press book Wagner and his World, edited by Tom Grey, published in conjunction with the 20th Bard Music Festival. Each year the BMF explores a single composer’s life, work, and times through concerts, lectures, and panel discussions, and in 2009 the focus of the Festival will be Richard Wagner.

Anton Seidl was born in Pest, Hungary in 1850. After studying at the Leipzig Conservatory, he returned to Pest to study under Hans Richter who had been assisting Richard Wagner in preparing the score of Die Meistersinger. Upon Richter’s recommendation Seidl, was engaged by Wagner in 1872 to help him in his work at Bayreuth, becoming a member of Wagner’s household for six years. During that time he made the first copy of the Nibelungen score and helped to complete the scores of Gotterdammerung and Parsifal.

Seidl came to prominence as Wagner’s principal assistant at the first Beyreuth festival in 1876. After conducting in Europe, Seidl was invited to New York to conduct German opera at the Metropolitan Opera. He made his debut on November 23, 1885, conducting Lohengrin. When German opera at the Met was dropped in 1891, he became the conductor of the Philharmonic Society of New York, returning to the Met in 1897. During this time he became a naturalized American citizen, but died suddenly of ptomaine poisoning at the height of his career in 1898.

Seidl’s papers include correspondence with Cosima and Richard Wagner, Lilli Lehman (the first American Isolde), Edvard Grieg, Antonin Dvorak, violinist Maud Powell, Hans Richter, and many others, chiefly concerning musical performances, composition, and related matters. Included in his manuscripts are essays such as “About Conducting,” and “Wagner in American,” his working collection of orchestral scores, and photographs, programs, clippings and other ephemera relating to his conducting career.

Katherine Syer’s work will, she writes, focus on Seidl as an “outstanding blend of a gifted musician with a very practically-oriented gift in the areas of theatrical sensibility and organization.” We look forward to seeing the book and to attending the 2009 Bard Music Festival.

Photograph of Anton Seidl and his dog Wotan, July 15, 1895, Brighton Beach, Coney Island, where he conducted summer concerts of the Seidl Society in the 1890s.

William S. Burroughs' Dream Machine

2008-11-11T13:47:00.017-05:00

RBML collects more than just books and manuscripts; we also have a lot of what librarians call realia—real life objects. Pictured here is our Dream Machine, which comes from William S. Burroughs, via his collaborator & one time assistant Steven Lowe.

The Dream Machine is a simple device: a slotted cardboard cylinder is mounted on an old phonographic turntable, and sits like a lampshade over a lightbulb. Power it up and the spinning cylinder creates a flickering light that oscillates at a rhythm corresponding to alpha waves in the brain, thus creating a psychedelic effect for the observer.¹

Brion Gysin & Ian Sommerville, two of WSB’s artistic collaborators, are credited as the Dream Machine’s creators. Ted Morgan, author of Literary Outlaw: Life and Times of William S Burroughs, writes that WSB “thought the Dream Machine was terrific, and had strange visions peering at it.”

As many Burroughs readers and scholars know, RBML is home to several significant Burroughs manuscripts—the Junkie typescript is here and so is the “Interzone” typescript, which WSB scholar Oliver Harris calls the largest and most significant Naked Lunch manuscript extant. In Fall 2009 our Dream Machine will exhibited alongside these manuscripts for the fiftieth anniversary of Naked Lunch. Stay tuned for details…

¹ In the name of scholarship, one of our curators tested both the mechanical and visual integrity of this device, and we can report that sitting in front of a spinning Dream Machine, even with eyes closed, produced colorful flashes of dizzying effect.

Saving Printing History

2008-11-10T16:36:00.006-05:00

One of the exhibitions currently on view is "'A Unique Museum': How Henry Lewis Bullen Saved Printing History," which we put on in honor of the American Printing History Association’s conference “Saving the History of Printing,” held at The Grolier Club and Columbia University on October 10-12, 2008, to discuss the preservation of the primary sources of printing history.

The materials on display are objects from the American Type Founders Company Library & Museum, and the labels discuss Henry Lewis Bullen's (1857-1938) role in the formation, growth, and use of the collection. There are a lot of nifty things, including Benjamin Franklin's composing stick, one of the stained glass windows commemorating famous printers commissioned by ATF from J. Francois Kaufman, two cases from one of Bullen's travelling exhibitions, a few ATF type souvenirs (including pieces of two point type), some Bruce Foundry punches from 1832, and a selection of typographic medals and tokens.

Here, I'm including two favorite photographs that didn't make it into the exhibition -- the one above shows Bullen apparently in conversation with busts of printers Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Low DeVinne, and the one to the left shows Bullen with members of ATF's carpentry crew, who had made the display pedestal for the wooden printing press behind them.

The exhibition is up until February, 2009.

Let us begin.

2008-11-09T16:08:00.000-05:00

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML) has huge collections of books, manuscripts, and other materials. Our web page, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/rbml/index.html, has information about the scope of the collection and the finding aids. (Our soon-to-be released new web page will describe it all more thoroughly -- stay tuned.)

This blog is intended to highlight particular items -- new acquisitions or finds in the stacks -- as well as collections being cataloged and processed, and events and exhibits in the department. It should be fun for us and for you, and we'll all learn something.

The picture above is an illustration by Joseph Champion from George Bickham's Universal Penman of 1743.