Zaraza

Bucureştiul interbelic este locul unde s-a întâmplat totul, pre-war Bucharest was the place where everything happened, announces the phrase by Ioana Pârvulescu that has became a proverb from her Întoarcere în Bucureştiul interbelic, “Return to pre-war Bucharest” (2002), a pioneering work of the recent Bucharest revival.

Pre-war Bucharest was micul Paris, a small Paris, the capital of a suddenly rounded out country promising unlimited chances, with an elit educated in France and with palaces built on French model, with clean streets and tramways, cafés and places of entertainment where the greatest stars, Jean Moscopol, Cristian Vasile, Titi Botez, Dorel Livianu, Maria Tanase, Zavaidoc, Petre Alexandru sang the most fashionable and most characteristic genre of contemporary Central Europe, the one expressing both the desperate will to live and the tragic atmosphere of the age: the tango.

The Oteleseanu House, once the place of the most celebrated balls and receptions. Its café was the center of the bohemian life of Bucharest. Now its place is occupied by the central post office.

After the war all that came to an end. As Budapest was cleared of its cafés by the new regime, so was Bucharest cleared of its places of entertainment. Jean Moscopol became a concierge in New York, Cristian Vasile died in indigence in Brăila. Bucharest sank into poverty and was denuded, so that its modern inhabitants look with incredulity at the old photos. And then the megalomaniac building activity of Ceauşescu wiped off a great part of the old city forever. The extent of this destruction is well demonstrated in the recent post of Dumneazu (it looks like in this month we keep writing about the same topics). When walking about in the Bucharest of the ’80s, we watched in bewilderment the destroyed city while our local friend enumerated with melancholy the splendid buildings once standing here and there. The majority of great tango singers still were alive in the early ’80s, but in contrast to the Buena Vista Social Club nobody discovered them. There remained only some vinyl disks left behind by them as well as some old people who still remembered their songs.

The palace of Regal Cinema, Café Corso and Columbia Records was built by Leonida Negrescu in 1900. It was demolished during the enlargement of Calea Victoriei.

It was these two sources that the Romanian singer of Berlin Oana Cătălina Chiţu drew on when at a distance of sixty years she revived this forgotten world on her CD Bucharest Tango published in the last year. She has complemented the songs heard from her father with the old 78 rpm records of their Bucharest relatives to create in 2007 together with Romanian and German musicians the show “Bukarester Tango”. This CD displays the most popular tangos and chansons of pre-war Bucharest. Right the second one is the most famous Romanian song of all times: the Zaraza.

Când apari seniorita în parc pe-nserat Curg în juru-ţi petale de crin Ai în ochi patimi dulci şi luciri de păcat Şi ai trupul de şarpe felin Gura ta e-un poem de nebune dorinţi Sânii tăi un tezaur sublim Eşti un demon din vis care tulburi şi minţi Dar ai zâmbetul de heruvim Vreau să-mi spui frumoasă Zaraza Cine te-a iubit Câţi au plâns nebuni pentru tine Şi câţi au murit Vreau să-mi dai gura-ţi dulce Zaraza Să mă-mbete mereu De a ta sărutare Zaraza vreau sa mor şi eu.

When you appear in the park at sunset, señorita, lily petals are falling around you, sweet desire and sinful lights burn in your eyes and your body is a curling serpent. Your mouth is an ode to mad desires, your breast a sublime treasure. You’re a demon of dreams that stir up and lie but your smile is that of a cherub. Tell me, beautiful Zaraza: who has already loved you? How many have crazily cried and how many have died for you? Give me your sweet lips, Zaraza, poison me continuously! From your kiss, Zaraza I want to die, too.

Zaraza was the most famous song of Cristian Vasile called “the last troubadour”, and Vasile was the most famous performer of this song. Their names have become inseparable in the memory of the golden years of Bucharest, so much that the writer Stelian Tănase could call with reason the pre-war city “the Bucharest of Zaraza”.

The song has created its myth. Mircea Cărtărescu, the apocryphal chronicler of the Bucharest revival first published the story of Cristian Vasile and his lover, the beautiful Gypsy girl Zaraza in his volume of short stories De ce iubim femeile (Why we love women) of 2004, the most successful book of post-1990 Romania. Of the two great singers Cristian Vasile and Zavaidoc, competing in the early ’40s for the favors of the dancer of the bar “Vulpea Roşie”/Red Fox, the former won, but the latter revenged himself. Zaraza died, and Vasile disappeared from the theatre of Bucharest. Only the song continued to be sung

“all over the city: Zaraza became the Lili Marlene of Bucharest. It was sung in the bars, in the air raid shelters, in the trenches. The enchanting Gypsy girl became just as renowned as her famous lover.”

Although this touching story, as the author confesses it in a footnote, is entirely the product of his imagination, nevertheless the public has received it with pleasure, and today it is already spreading over the web as a true story. A popular audio book version has just been published, and in 2008 even a Hollywood-style film was released of it. One of the most memorable scenes of this latter is exactly the one where Vasile sings Zaraza to the public of the Red Fox bar.

Although the name of the beautiful Gypsy girl sounds strange to Romanian ears, nevertheless Cărtărescu has his explanation at hand, further developed by the review of his book in an almost philological thoroughness: “Zaraza, or more exactly Zarada is a traditional Gypsy name, whose original Spanish meaning is «beautiful» or «shining».”

Although the Spanish language knows no such word, nevertheless the reference to the Spanish origin is quite revealing. In fact, this most Romanian tango is simply an adoption of a South American tango. The original song was written by the Argentine Benjamín Tagle Lara (1892-1932) likewise with the title Zaraza, and in 1929 it won the second price of the authoritative Concurso del Disco Nacional of Montevideo, organized by Max Glücksmann. In the same year it was recorded with three great singers: José Razzano, Ignacio Corsini and Charlo with the Canaro Francisco band. However, in the original song Zaraza is the name not of a beautiful Gypsy woman, but of another attractive being with a similarly black, deep and melancholic look. Of an ox.

Blanca huella que, todos los dias, clavado en el yugo, me ves picanear; compañera del largo camino las horas enteras te veo blanquear. Mientras que, bajo el peso del trigo, los ejes cansados los siento quejar, yo, anudando mi pena a esa queja, con cantos y silbos te sé acompañar. ¡A la huella, huella, zaraza, huella, huella, guay! Volverá la ingrata a su casa andará por ahí… Que si yo la viera, zaraza, la hablaré, velay… ¡A la huella, huella, zaraza, huella, huella, guay! Buey zaraza, tus ojos tristones mirando la huella parecen buscar el milagro de aquellos pasitos que al irse la ingrata no supo dejar. Compañero que, unido conmigo a un mismo destino, tenemos que andar, seguiremos rastreando la huella, la misma que siempre la vemos blanquear.

White path that see me every day at the yoke, while pricking the ox: my companion in the long walk, I watch your white color for long hours. And while I see the tired eyes complaining under the weight of the wheat, I join my pain to their complaint and accompany you with singing and whistling. Go ahead, go, zaraza, go ahead, go, hey! Will the ungrateful one come home or is she rather wandering far away… If I will see her, zaraza, I will speak to her for sure… Go ahead, go, zaraza, go ahead, go, hey! Zaraza ox, your sorrowful eyes watching the path seem to look for those wonderful small footsteps that the ungrateful one has failed to leave. My companion, in union with me and sharing the same fate, we have to go, always following the path, always the same that lays white ahead of us.

This song was made popular in Paris by the greatest tango singer Carlos Gardel, the already mentioned “Creole Thrush”. Glücksmann tried to convince him to record this song too, but Gardel declined this honor by saying that he found it dishonest to compete with the record by Razzano. He recorded instead El carretero, “The coachman”, which is an earlier version of the same song. One had to wait eleven years to the energetic record by Rodolfo Biagi which was probably the one to get to Bucharest.


Rodolfo Biagi: Zaraza (1940). From the album Campo Afuera y su Orquesta Típica 1939-1942.

Others say that this song was made popular in Europe by the film Rive gauche (1931) of the British producer of Hungarian origin Sir Alexander Korda, in which it was sung by Sofía Bozán who had performed in Paris together with Gardel. This film also inspired the Polish version of the song, performed by Wiera Gran and Albert Harris with the title Gdy gitara gra piosenkę, “When the guitar is playing a song” (1939). The change of the title was motivated by the fact that in Polish zaraza means – pestilence.

Anyway, in Bucharest the song became popular in the performance of Cristian Vasile and with the text of Nicolae Kiriţescu which preserved the call word zaraza! of the Spanish refrain, endowing it with a new meaning.

The exact meaning of this word in the original Spanish text which apparently uses it as the name of the ox but writes it in minuscule, is not that easy to clarify. According to the dictionary it means “calico” or “printed textile”, but this does not seem to have any sense here. In the opinion of Río Wang’s fellow Argentine author Julia nowadays it is used in the sense of “mumbo jumbo” (written sometimes “sarasa” and pronounced in the same way). Her mother even recalls that it might have been used for oxen of a certain color, and even as an ox name, as Gardel uses it in the above quoted El carretero.

Finally Julia has come across Malena’s tango blog, whose Argentine author had faced the same problem in Zaraza, and her investigations had led to Isidra Solati’s article Un lenguaje de púrpuras y zarazas. According to this essay, the zarazas were the occasional village feasts organized at the arrival of a wandering musician, where the only decoration was a hastily stretched out piece of textile: a zaraza. This word full of desires and festive atmosphere has later become the refrain of coachmen singing and urging their ox, and finally also a name for the ox.

View from the Kretzulescu Inn. Since then both the inn and the street has been demolished.

In spite of this meandering story, my favorite song on Oana Cătălina Chiţu’s album is not Zaraza, but the once successful romance by Titi Botez: Sub balcon eu ţi-am cântat o serenadă, “I have serenaded under your balcon”.


Titi Botez: Sub balcon eu ţi-am cântat o serenadă, original recording.

Its melody and especially its refrain suggests of having been also adopted from a foreign original, but the identity of this original is still a mystery even to our Argentine sources. The investigation is in process. As soon as we’ll have some result, we will get in touch again.

The Athénée Palace. The source of the images of old Bucharest is Tudor Octavian: Bucureştiul interbelic: Calea Victoriei, Bucharest 2009.

Capriccio

Venice is one of those cities whose name – Venetia, and later Venezia, that is the land of the Veneti – was adjusted by most people to their own languages: Venice, Venecia, Veneza, Venecija, Wenecja, Venetië, ونیز Venīz, Venedig, Venedik, Benetke, Benátky, البندقية Al-Bunduqiyya, or in Hungarian Velence. Most versions are simply more or less approximative local transcriptions of the original pronounciation. However, several speakers prefer to reveal some kind of local etymology behind their own version, just as we saw in the case of demijohn. The Arabic version is thus often derived from bunduqiyya, rifle, while the Slovenian/Czech Benetke/Benátky from an alleged benátky meaning “swampy” and referring to the situation of Venice, similarly to the name Venezuola, little Venice, which was given by Amerigo Vespucci to the shores of later Venezuela because of their Indian pile-dwellings built on the water.


Whether the name of the Hungarian fishing (and lately resort) village of Velence, some thirty kilometers to SW from Budapest is in any connection with its Italian namesake, is debatable even in Hungary. According to King Matthias’ court historian Antonio Bonfini (†1503) it was founded by Italian colonists coming from “Venetia”, and thus it got its name after Venice just like Northern Czech Benátky nad Jizerou. But he does not say when it all happened, and Bonfini, who had all the antiquity at his fingertips, may well have intended here the Veneti of the antiquity, just as he considered the Romanians to be direct offsprings of the inhabitants of Rome and King Matthias himself a member of the ancient Roman Corvinus family. The Hungarian Dictionary of Etymology derives the name from the wind vane of local fishermen called velence, which perhaps can be reduced to an original Slavic velenice, the diminutive form of velenie, direction, guide. Finally, renowned Medieval historians György Györffy and György Székely date the foundation of the village to the great Northern Italian wave of immigration to Hungary between 1000 and 1300, similarly to a number of other (since then extinct, that is, destroyed by the Turks) Medieval villages called Venece, Venence, Velence etc., and an even larger number of still existing villages having the Medieval Hungarian term for “Italian” olasz in their names: Olaszliszka, Bodrogolaszi and the rest. One thing is sure that in 1516 it was mentioned as “Welencze aka Venecia”, and in the first map of Hungary of 1522/28 it figures as Veneze.


Whatever the etymological connection between the two place names is, the ice cream parlour on the lake-shore has created a kinship between the two Venices with a generous gesture. The two prospettive and the bilingual sign-board bridge distances and cultures, and the role of the gondola is performed by the canoe transformed into flower-stand. And immediately beyond the garden there opens a live panorama of the lagoons of Velence.

Cemetery visit

The second of November is the day of the dead in Hungary, perfectly described by fellow blogger Dumneazu. Here in the village everyone gets up and starts out to the cemetery, puts the graves in order, lights candles, lives social life, and observes which grave is not put in order and has no candle lit on it. That it was like this already seventy years ago is well attested by the photo below. I received it of one of the girls on it, now an eighty years old lady and the only one who still lives of the three. She gave it so that I publish it on the site of the local civil organization that I edit in voluntary work.


I had also planned a similar time travel for the day of the dead. Not to the village, however, but some sixty kilometers to here, to Velence, a fishing village on the shore of the lake of the same name. To a grave we had never seen.




We were also worrying a bit whether we would find the grave, but it was unnecessary. When entering the cemetery through the back gate, it was right there, isolated from the rest of the graves, and covered with fresh flowers, in spite of the fact that the deceased has never had any relative in Hungary.


We put the flowers aside for a moment to spell out the inscription of the gravestone.

ITT NYUGSZIK MOLLA SZADIK ázsiai török szerzetes sz. 1836 megh. 1892. május 22. Áldás és béke hamvaira

HERE LIES MOLLAH SADIK Asian Turkic monk born 1836 died 22 May 1892. Blessing and peace on him

Who was this Muslim “monk” who, at the end of the 19th century when Hungary had no Muslim inhabitants, was buried under a Turkish gravepost in a Christian cemetery, and whose grave is always covered with fresh flowers?

In the past hundred years only one or two articles referred to this tomb, and even they mostly in local newspapers. It was only in 2001 that literary historian Iván Sándor Kovács published his splendid summary and collection of documents on Mollah Sadik and on the other “dervish”, the orientalist Ármin Vámbéry who had invited him to Hungary: Batu kán pesti rokonai, Vámbéry Ármin és tatárja, Csagatai Izsák (The relatives of Batu Khan in Budapest: Ármin Vámbéry and “his Tatarman” Izsák Csagatai).


Ármin Vámbéry, one of the greatest Hungarian Orientalists – whom we have also remembered among the great Hungarian scholars of Oriental studies on the site dedicated to Aurel Stein – arrived to Istanbul in 1857, at the age of twenty-five. There with the support of the émigré officers of the recently lost Hungarian war of independence (1848-49) he was employed as a teacher of French in the houses of the Turkish aristocracy. With his incredible talent for languages he quickly and perfectly mastered Turkish and Persian, and also established a lot of valuable connections. In 1861 he set on his famous travel, during which he, disguised as a wise dervish, arrived to Central Asia, to the emirates of Khiva and Bokhara before all other European researchers. There he studied local Turkic dialects and collected manuscripts. He incurred danger of death several times, but his extraordinary proficiency in the religion, scholarship and even calligraphy of Islam saved him on each occasion. He returned to Europe in 1864, where the descriptions of his travels published both in English and in Hungarian immediately made him famous all over the world.


Don’t be fooled like the emir of Bokhara was by the aspect of this poor dervish. This photo was not taken in some caravanserai of Turkestan by some traveling French photographer, an adventurous colleague of Sébah and Jouillier, Jules Richard, Blocqueville and Sevruguin working in the Turkish and Persian courts. No, the photo was taken in a London studio, and then Vámbéry immediately changed his dervish’s clothes for an evening dress to visit Lord Palmerston of whom he was a confident advisor in Oriental matters.

Besides experiences, knowledge of languages and manuscripts Vámbéry also brought something or rather someone else from Central Asia: a young mullah of Khiva named Ishak, or in Hungarian Izsák. They had travelled together from Khiva as far as Istanbul. It was only there that Vámbéry exposed himself, telling that he intended to go home to the infidel Frengistan instead of Mecca. Izsák, who by that time considered Vámbéry as his master and teacher, did not want to part him, but in spite of all his fears he decided to follow him.




Izsák remained in Hungary and within a short time he perfectly mastered Hungarian. He was Vámbéry’s servant, librarian of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and even the “Tatar teacher” of Vámbéry’s friends József Budenz and Áron Szilády. For at that time he was the only one in Europe to speak Turkic languages, including his Uzbek mother tongue as well as Chagatay, the literary language of Central Asian Turks, and the Turkic scholars of Hungary were enthusiastic to draw on this never-hoped-for source.

Contemporary science of languages still professed the Turkic origin of Hungarian language. One had to wait some twenty years until the outbreak of the so-called “Ugrian-Turkic war”, the passionate scholarly debate in which Vámbéry was opposed by his former friend Budenz, and which made the theory of the exclusive Finno-Ugrian origin official for a century. Only recent scholarship has rehabilitated Vámbéry to a certain extent by saying that the Finno-Ugrian substratum of Hungarian language was enriched during the centuries of nomadic life in the steppe by such a great amount of Turkic elements both in its vocabulary and its grammar that it brought fundamental changes to the language.

“Vámbéry’s Tatarman was a great sensation”, writes Iván Sándor Kovács. “As if the young Veinemöinen came to visit Professor Elias Lönrot and his colleagues while compiling the Kalevala, or as if one of Ulysses’ sailors held a presentation of knotting at the Dutch Naval Academy.”




The “Vámbéry circle” even convinced Izsák to translate and publish folk tales from various Central Asian languages under the pen name “Izsák Csagatai”. But the highlight of his literary work is a never published manuscript, now preserved in the Manuscript Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which is the Chagatay language translation of the great poet János Arany’s ballad Legend of the Wonder Stag, in Chagatay Adshdib suygunnun hikayeti, that is, The story of the wonderful antelope.

This beautiful archaic ballad of Arany is the paraphrase of the nomadic myth of origin of the Hungarian people as it was preserved in the 13th-century Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum by Simon of Kéza. It was published on 20 March 1864. Vámbéry arrived to Budapest two months later, presenting Izsák to Budenz and Szilády, who immediately had the idea to surprise Arany with the “retranslation” of the ballad into an ancient Turkic dialect as it should have sounded centuries earlier in their belief. With their help Izsák completed the translation within some months, creating a poem whose rhythm, rhymes and alliterations perfectly matched the Hungarian ones:

Hungarian: Száll a madár ágrul ágra Száll az ének szájrul szájra Fű kizöldül ó sírhanton Bajnok ébred hősi lanton	(The bird flies from branch to branch the song flies from mouth to mouth: the grass grows green on ancient graves the warrior revives on the heroic lute)
Chagatay: Shakhadin shakhaga uchadi kushlar Aghizdin aghizda baradi sözler: Görlerning üstüne chikadi otlar Turar söz ishittip jirinnen pahlvanlar	(Birds fly from tree to tree words go from mouth to mouth: warriors have left this world long ago but beautiful words have remained of their deeds)

I have sent a copy of the manuscript with its modern Turkish transcription to my Uzbek translator friend Timur, asking him to prepare a modern – and possibly commented – transliteration of his compatriot’s poem. Of course Timur, in a good Oriental habit, does not work in haste. As soon as he will be ready, we will publish his version here.




Even if Izsák changed his Turkic clothes for European ones, and also mastered German and French besides Hungarian, nevertheless he did not change his faith, although even the Archbishop of Hungary tried to convert him when receiving him on audience. In 1889, when Nasreddin, Shah of Persia on his European tour arrived to Hungary – his visit was described in detail in Chapter 15 of Küzdelmeim by Vámbéry himself – it was Vámbéry to give the welcoming speech in Persian, but immediately after that Izsák also hurried to assure the Shah that he had not betrayed his Muslim faith even after so many years spent among the giaours. This episode was even remembered by the Shah in his travel diary, translated to Hungarian by the great Iranologist Sándor Kégl in the 1895 edition of Budapesti Szemle.

Izsák’s flawlessly preserved faith is also attested by his gravepost with the Turkish crescent moon. Vámbéry obtained a special permission of the Ministry of the Interior to have a place given to him in the Christian cemetery of Velence and to have the hodsha of the Bosnian battalion in Budapest – this is the period of the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina – come and celebrate the funerals according to Islamic rite.

But why was he buried just in Velence? The beautiful obituary of Mihály Balla in the 23 May 1892 edition of Budapesti Hírlap, which begins like “An unique person died yesterday in the village of Velence: Mollah Izsák, «the Tatarman of Vámbéry», the first Central Asian «true believer» to come to Europe since Dshingiz Khan”, gives a simple reason: “He died in cardiac dilatation after having spent so long time in the clinic of Professor Korányi. To Velence, where he died, he had gone to recover his health.” Nevertheless, the “Turkish grave” was soon encircled by legends in the village, and a common element of all was that Izsák married a local girl who now sleeps her eternal dream somewhere in the Catholic cemetery.


The most beautiful among the several legends is the one collected by József Reményi from 71 years old fisherman Márton Malmos and published in the 4 September 1965 issue of Élet és Irodalom.

That man was called Árpád Mollah Sadik. He adopted the name Árpád [the name of the leader of the Hungarian tribes conquering the Carpathian Basin in 895] when he came here, because he liked to stay here and remained here. To tell the truth, he was a treasure-hunter.

To begin it at the beginning, when the Turks left these parts [in 1686, after the reconquest of Hungary], they buried incredible amounts of gold and silver. Whole barrels full of gold, pearls and all kind of precious things were hidden in the ground and in the cellars. Later some Turks came back to search for the treasures. Old people say that they even found a lot of them.

Once there came three Turks. They told that there had to be a stone dog here, where was it? Nobody knew. Later some old people recalled that when the Turks left these parts, they indeed left a stone dog here. It was a big sitting dog with an inscription on the forefront: “Twist me, you won’t regret.” People only laughed at it, who has ever heard of such a thing, twisting a dog? They urged each other, but nobody did it. The stone dog was just thrown about, from one furrow to the other, and later it was forgotten by everyone.

However, the three Turks were looking for exactly this stone dog. They did not resign themselves to its lack, they were seeking it day and night. And after a long time they found it one morning under the Warm Mountain. It was fully covered by the weed. The three Turks threw themselves on the earth, this is how they pray at home. And then one of them twisted the tail of the dog, and lo, a great amount of gold poured out of it. Three baskets were filled with it.

I do not know what they did with that much of gold, but one of the Turks told that he liked to stay here so much that he would remain here forever. Even if he had so much money that he could have wandered all over the world, but no. And he began to call himself Árpád. Because, you know, Hungarians and Turks had been one and the same people some time ago, but later they quarreled on the possession of the castle of Buda. Well, this is how Árpád Mollah Sadik came here. He married a girl in Velence, and lived happily until his death. This is how I heard it from my father himself.

One of the beauties of this legend is that the “stone dog” – similarly to the “stone sheep” keeping treasures in other Hungarian folk tales – almost certainly keeps the memory of the typical ram-shaped graveposts like those seen in the cemetery of Julfa. Similar ones must have been there also in the Muslim cemeteries of Hungary during the Ottoman occupation (1526-1686). By the time of Izsák’s funerals these cemeteries had been destroyed since long, but folk memory preserved their peculiar shape and the appearance of the “Turk” in Velence reactivated their memory. To them it has recalled an episode of the common Hungarian-Turkish history, even if not such an ancient one like the ballad of the wonderful antelope translated into Chagatay.

There is a city

Assa – Асса (1987) – was one of the most impressive cult films of the last years of the Soviet Union and it has remained popular ever since. Not only because the film, featuring a band playing for the Soviet upper crust in the Yalta pleasure resort, included the songs of such contemporary underground cult bands like the already mentioned Akvarium, Bravo or Kino. But also because this film was an open revolt against the lying and dreary regime. And not in a destructive way, but simply by placing side by side the sincerity of its young protagonists seeking their own way, truth and beauty, and the cynicism of the all-devastating regime and its beneficiaries.

(The director of the film, Sergey Solovev has just published, after twenty-two years, the continuation of the film with the title Assa 2, likewise with Tatyana Drubich in the main role. I am very curious whether he has managed to continue and actualize his former criticism.)

This spirit pervaded the closing song of the film Перемен! – Change! – performed personally by the greatest rocker of the age, Corean-Russian Viktor Tsoi. The first two minutes of the detail below display how the pianist of the band takes Tsoi to the head of the personnel department of the restaurant who requires of him his – non-existent – documents, certificates and permanent address, while rattling off the regulations of the restaurant in a monotonous voice. Almost as a reaction to it, a song is started in the restaurant (1'55") which by the end of the film enlarges into a live concert with several ten thousand participants, giving news about such an uproar in the heart of the empire of which we, in its Hungarian border province sunken into peaceful compromises, had not much idea at that time.

Вместо тепла зелень стекла, Вместо огня - дым. Из сетки календаря выхвачен день. Красное солнце сгорает дотла, День догорает с ним, На пылающий город падает тень. Перемен требуют наши сердца, Перемен требуют наши глаза. В нашем смехе и в наших слезах И в пульсации вен… Перемен, мы ждем перемен. Электрический свет продолжает наш день И коробка от спичек пуста, Но на кухне, синим цветком, горит газ. Сигареты в руках, чай на столе,- Эта схема проста. И больше нет ничего - все находится в нас. Перемен требуют наши сердца, Перемен требуют наши глаза. В нашем смехе и в наших слезах И в пульсации вен… Перемен, мы ждем перемен. Мы не можем похвастаться мудростью глаз И умелыми жестами рук. Нам не нужно все это, чтобы друг друга понять. Сигареты в руках, чай на столе,- Так замыкается круг. И вдруг нам становится страшно что-то менять. Перемен требуют наши сердца, Перемен требуют наши глаза. В нашем смехе и в наших слезах И в пульсации вен... Перемен, мы ждем перемен.

Instead of warmth, just the green glass, instead of fire – just smoke. A day ticked off in the calendar. Red sun shines destructively burning out our days. Darkness falls on the smoldering city. Change, our hearts require change our eyes require change. With our laughter and tears, with the beating of our veins… Change, we look forward to change. Electric light continues our day and the matchbox is empty, but the blue flower of the gas burns in the kitchen. Cigarette in hand, tea on the table – it’s a simple scheme. And nothing more – all the rest is within. Change, our hearts require change our eyes require change. With our laughter and tears, with the beating of our veins… Change, we look forward to change. We can’t boast with a wise look neither with skillful gestures. We don’t need it to understand each other. Cigarette in hand, tea on the table – the circle is closed and we manage to change something. Change, our hearts require change our eyes require change. With our laughter and tears, with the beating of our veins… Change, we look forward to change.

However, the most memorable song of the film was not this one, but the Город – City, or Город золотой – Golden city by Akvarium. The English translation below is by Mikhail Morozov.

Под небом голубым есть город золотой С прозрачными воротами и яркою звездой, А в городе том сад, все травы да цветы, Гуляют там животные невиданной красы: Одно, как желтый огнегривый лев, Другое вол, исполненный очей, С ними золотой орел небесный, Чей так светел взор незабываемый. А в небе голубом горит одна звезда. Она твоя, о ангел мой, она твоя всегда. Кто любит, тот любим, кто светел, тот и свят, Пускай ведет звезда тебя дорогой в дивный сад Тебя там встретит огнегривый лев, И синий вол, исполненный очей, С ними золотой орел небесный, Чей так светел взор незабываемый.

Beneath the sky of blue The golden city stands With crystal-clear lucent gates And with a star ablaze A garden lies within It blossoms far and wide And beasts of stunning beauty Are roaming inside The lion with a fiery-yellow mane And the blue calf with eyes so deep and bright And the golden eagle from the heavens Whose eternal gaze’s so unforgettable And from that sky of blue The star is shining through This star is yours, oh angel mine It always shined for you Who loveth is beloved Who giveth light is blessed So chase the light of guiding star Into this awesome land The fiery lion will meet you at the gate And the blue calf with eyes so deep and bright And the golden eagle from the heavens Whose eternal gaze’s so unforgettable.

It belongs to the subtle allusions of the film that this song starts to play when the to-be-lovers enter the cableway (whose large iron cabins are marked with huge numbers, thus materializing and therefore legitimizing, as it were, the lightness of this former bourgeois entertainment). The cableway elevates them above the former resort area of Yalta, and the camera slowly glances over the eroded buildings, witnesses to a former, more civilized and livable world. The director also pays attention to such subtleties like the expression “awesome garden” being sung exactly (2'39") when the camera arrives to the miserable vegetable-bed knocked together of some broken roofing slates.

But the purpose of the sharp contrast between the “golden city” of the song and the real city is not just mere criticism. The film, in a beautiful way which also elevates us, viewers above the reality, projects the song onto the devastated city, thus letting us see * the surviving fragments of beauty in the houses, the inner courtyards, the few ornamental trees still existing. The fragments that still make the city livable and that we were also seeking so zealously in our Budapest of the 80’s.

For about twenty years this song was attributed to the band Akvarium. It was only in 2005 that Zeev Geizel managed to track down the real authors through a brilliantly executed detective inquiry, and to publish his results on the site of the Israelian Russian bards Israbard. They say that the melody comes from a Canzone attributed to the great papal lutenist Francesco da Milano (1497-1543) which was made popular across the Soviet Union by the disk “16-17th century lute music” of 1972. Geizel has also published the sheet music of this song, and I was already about to register it for the blog in my performance on the lute when I found by chance the original recording: *


“Francesco da Milano”: Канзона. From the album Лютневая музыка XVI-XVII веков (16-17th-century lute music, 1972), performed by Vladimir Vavilov

This melody became so popular that it even found its way into Soviet solfeggio manuals. But when Geizel tried to find out its exact title, he saw with surprise that his search only gave results in Russian language. This piece was completely unknown in the West. It did not even figure in the collection The Lute Music of Francesco Canova da Milano (1497-1543) of Cambridge, compiled in 1970 by Arthur J. Ness. And when Geizel asked the advice of the greatest Israeli historian of the lute Levi Septovitsky, he declared that this melody was neither Italian nor Renaissance, but rather some Russian folk tune.

The great Ukrainian lutenist Roman Turovsky, living in New York and participating in all imaginable lute forums, also informed Geizel that serious lutenists consider the album “16-17th-century lute music” a complete fake. His opinion was also confirmed by Professor Sándor Kallós from the Conservatory of Moscow. He told that the whole album included only one real lute piece, the Greensleeves, while the rest had nothing to do with the lute: they were all modern compositions. Perhaps the performer of this piece Vladimir Vavilov could have declared the truth, but he died just one year after the publication of the disk. In any case, since the publication of Geizel’s article Vavilov has been regularly indicated as the composer of the music of the Golden city.

The identity of the author of the lyrics was somewhat easier to establish. Although various sites have equally attributed it to Boris Grebenschikov, director of Akvarium, to Nikolai Gumilev, the husband of the great poet Anna Akhmatova who was executed in 1921, to the Decembrist revolutionary Mihail Volkonsky and even to Rabindranath Tagore, nevertheless on the site of Akvarium one can unequivocally read: “слова А. Волохонского и А. Хвостенко” – text by A. Volokhonsky and A. Khvostenko.

The names of the great Leningrad authors of lyrics Anri Volokhonsky and Aleksei Khvostenko, says Geizel, have become just as inseparable as those of Kamenev and Zinovev. The texts of Khvostenko who died in 2004 were also published later by his friends, but Geizel browsed it unsuccessfully in search of the Golden city. Finally he decided to call Volokhonsky who lives in Tübingen and who recounted him the story of this text exactly as he told it in a later interview. Of course this text had no place among Khvostenko’s collected poems, he says, because it was written in the short period of late 1972 when Khvostenko had already left the Soviet Union, but Volokhonski not yet. He sadly walked the streets, thinking about how to continue without his friend and co-author. It was then that he heard the album “16-17th-century lute music” at his fried, the painter Boris Akselrod who was just working on his mosaic panel “Heaven”. He was touched both by the music of “Francesco da Milano” and the picture of Akselrod, and under their influence he immediately wrote the text – alone.

However, the original poem and the text of Akvarium show a number of small differences. The most important among them is that Volokhonsky’s original title was not Golden city, but Рай – “Paradise” or “Heaven”. Consequently the first verse was “Над небом голубым”, that is “above the sky of blue” and not “Под небом голубым”, that is “beneath the sky of blue” as Grebenschikov modified it for fear of anticlerical censorship. This frame also helps to understand a number of details of the text. The Russian term “ангел мой”, “my angel” is usually used not for one’s lover but for one’s Guardian Angel in the daily prayer. And the three animals are those serving in front of God’s throne both in Ezekiel’s vision and in the Book of Revelations as it is so often depicted in the frescoes of Orthodox churches. “Grebenschikov made no mistake” says Volokhonsky “to give the title City to this poem. In fact, I wrote this poem about the City. The heavenly Jerusalem.”

One can thus understand the reason why the Hebrew version of this song, sung by Anuar Budagov, is attributed in Israel – as Geizel writes – to the 11th-century mystical Spanish Jewish poet Judah Halevi, although it is a faithful translation of the original Russian poem. And this background also provides with a deeper meaning the contrast between the desired city and the actual reality in the above scene of Assa.

Jan van Eyck: Gent Altarpiece. Central panel with the Adoration of the Lamb, representing
All Saints and the heavenly Jerusalem (detail). I was about to finish this post
when I realized that both have their feast exactly today.

Imperial crown

These photos were found on a since then extinct Persian blog. The gorgeous lily is Fritillaria imperialis, in European languages “Imperial crown” (in modern English also “fritillary”), in Persian لاله واژگون lâle-ye vazhgun, that is “inverted lily/tulip” as Persian lâle means both flowers. It grows naturally in the Zagros mountain of Western Iran.










It is a magnificent view when the carpet of flaming red bells sitting on the top of a meter high stem cover the barren hillsides within a couple of days, giving a totally new dimension to the biblical saying: “Consider the lilies of the fields how they grow… not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.” This saying, unexpectedly, also justifies the European name of the flower.


This flower, suitably to its name, came to the European ornamental gardens through the mediation of two real emperors and two uncrowned kings of Renaissance botany. One of the emperors was Great Suleiman, il Magnifico, as Italian historians and al-Qanuni, the Legislator, as Turkish and Persian chroniclers called him. He complemented and stabilized the conquests of his father and grandfather, and his long reign was the golden age of Ottoman culture. Persian literature and art, including garden art, played a great role in this revival. Bread feeds the body, but flowers feed the soul, goes the saying attributed to Mohamed, and in this spirit Suleyman established in Istanbul the Flower Market which still functions on its original site, in the neighborhood of the Spice Bazaar, not far from those wonderful fish friers. This market offered for the first time all the flowers of the empire from the Plain of Kosovo to the Armenian highlands and from the shores of Pontus to the deserts of Syria. A dream of all botanists.

Sultan Suleiman after the Battle of Mohács, Hungary (1526) which opened him the way to Europe (Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı)

And the dream found its botanist. The Flemish Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, special envoy of Emperor Ferdinand I had negotiations in Istanbul on the Transylvanian border question both in 1554 and 1556. The delicate negotiations dragged on so that Busbecq had enough time not only to compose his Turkish letters that for the first time described life in Istanbul, but also to collect plants unknown in Europe on the Flower Market. He was the first to send home a number of plants which we already consider as ancient natives of Europe: tulip, horse chestnut, lilac, Syrian rose, mock orange, and of course imperial crown, thus opening the “Oriental period” of European ornamental gardens which lasted until the 1620s.

The Great Mosque of Istanbul, 1570

The addressee of Busbecq’s parcels was another Flemish botanist, the greatest of his age, Carolus Clusius, invited to Vienna in 1573 by the other emperor, Maximilian II precisely on the proposal of Busbecq. Clusius created the first exotic garden of Europe in the imperial court which also gave name to the Imperial crown. Clusius was a great collector of plants himself, the first one to describe the alpine flora of Austria and Western Hungary. He was a friend of Count Boldizsár Batthyány, a mysterious figure of Hungarian Renaissance, who also had exotic flowers, including a “thirty-six-petalled double daffodil” sent from Istanbul through his high-ranking Turkish captives, and whose ornamental garden in the castle of Németújvár (today Güssing) was planned and later often referred to by Clusius himself. The first, lavishly illustrated large manuscript encyclopedia of the mushrooms of Pannonia, published in print only in the 1990s, was compiled by Clusius on Count Batthyány’s estates.

Pieter van Kouwernhoorn: Imperial crown, detail of a florilegium, ca. 1620

But the specialty of Clusius was the exotic flora coming from Istanbul, primarily tulips, naturalized by him in Europe. Returning to Leiden, he founded the Hortus Academicus, the first European nursery of ornamental plants where he sold the bulbs of his collection for outrageous prices. Embittered local gardeners finally broke into his garden, sampling all his specimens in a professional way. This is how the fashion of tulips began in the Netherlands, leading to the infamous tulip frenzy and the famous tulip still lifes of the next generation. These still lifes are often crowned, indeed, by the Imperial crown, whose impressive dimensions made it a much liked decorative flower of large Baroque spaces. Its Baroque appearance also made it popular in late 19th-century painting.

Id. Jan Brueghel: Great bouquet, 1603

Van Gogh: Imperial crowns in a brass vase, 1886

This flower is also called in Persian لاله اشک lâle-ye ashk, weeping lily. Tradition has it that it was witness to the killing of pre-Islamic Iranian hero Siavush, and it has wept for him ever since with its head turned down. But in the much more popular version of the legend the flower sprouted from the blood of Siavush which had been poured on the barren rocks by command of the tyrant. This is how it is recounted by Ferdowsi in The Book of Kings.

Siavush, the murdered innocent hero – whose figure preserved the traits of the killed Tammuz and prepared the way to the cult of the greatest Shia martyr Husein – is one of the most important Iranian symbols of freedom suppressed but reborn from the blood of the martyrs. The mujaheds rebelling against the Shah sang about Siavush’s blood, and Siavush’s name figures in the title of a key novel of modern Iran, Simin Daneshvar’s Siavushun whose plot takes place during the British occupation of 1941, but it has been read with unaltered actuality ever since. The main figure of the novel, Yusof, the young head of an important landowner family in Shiraz is caused to be killed by the British, because he as the organizer of the city’s passive resistance prevents their army from buying up food in the region which would cause famine among peasants. The last phrase of the novel is the message sent to Zari, Yusof’s widow by Yusof’s friend, an Irish poet serving in the British army as an interpreter:

Don’t cry, my sister. In your home a tree will grow, and other trees in your city, and many more ones in the whole country. And the wind will bring messages from tree to tree, and the trees will ask of the wind: “Have you met the dawn on your way?”

And this same lily, the symbol of freedom sprouting from the blood of the martyrs is also sung on the album Lâle-ye bahâr, Spring Lily, recently published in Iran by one of the greatest Iranian singers, Shahram Nazeri.


Shahram Nazeri: Lâle-ye bahâr (Spring Lily), from the album Lâle-ye bahâr (2009). The poem is by the same Malek o-Sho‘arâ Bahâr who is also the author of Dawn bird performed by Shajarian. The music was written and played by the greatest santoor player Parviz Meshkatian who died just a month ago, on September 21 in Tehran.

لاله خونین کفن از خاک سر آورده برون خاک مستوره قلب بشر آورده برون دل ماتم زده مادر زاری است که مرگ از زمین همره داغ پسر آورده برون	.....	lâle khunin kafan az khâk sar âvarde borun khâk masture-ye ghalb-e bashar âvarde borun del-e mâtamzade-ye mâdar-e zâri’st ke merg az zamin hamreh-e dagh-e pesar âvarde borun
آتشین آه فرو مرده مدفون شده است که زمین از دل خود شعله ور آورده برون راست گویی که زبانهای وطن خواهان است که جفای فلک از پشت سر آورده برون		âtashin âh-e foru morde-ye madfun shode ast ke zamin az del-e khod sho‘le var âvarde borun r’ast guyi ke zabânhâ-ye vatan khâhân ast ke jafâ-ye falak az posht-e sar âvarde borun
یا به تقلید شهیدان ره آزادی طوطی سبز قبا سرخ پر آورده برون یا که بر لوح وطن خامه خونبار بهار نقشی از خون دل رنج بر آورده برون		yâ be taghlid-e shahidân-e rah-e âzâdi tuti-ye sabz ghabâ sorgh par âvarde borun yâ ke bar loh-e vatan khâme-ye khunbâr-e bahâr naghshi az khun-e del-e ranj bar âvarde borun

the lily brings forth a blood-colored shroud from the earth
the earth uncovers the hidden soul of mankind
the mother’s mournful heart is weeping for the dead
son whose burning heart sprouts from the earth

the buried dead became fire, the blood
of his heart sets ablaze the earth
as if a thousand tongues of the country
announced that the tyranny of fate will be over

as if, similarly to the martyrs of freedom,
he wore a red feather on its parrot-green mantle
as if the burning spring covered the country’s tombstone
with the silk of the blood of tortured hearts

One Buenos Aires for Wang Wei

Things that mustn’t be left without doing in MY Buenos Aires

(a totally disordered and purely subjective enunciation: others may have different Buenos Aireses)

Eating

• Alfajores of chocolate and dulce de leche (brands: Havanna and now Cachafaz, made by the former pastry makers of the firm “Havanna” which was sold).
  
• Bonafide bocaditos (morsels), or Cabsha which are smaller.
  
• Revuelto Gramajo (Gramajo scramble), a typical porteño dish not suitable for low colesterol diets: very fine fried potatoes and ham, scrambled with eggs and the possible addition of leek and green peas.
  
• asado, of course: all kinds of meat barbecued on coal and firewood: beef: asado de tira (short ribs), vacío (flank steak), colita de cuadril (rump steak) , lomo (tenderloin), matambre (outer flank steak), not forgetting the achuras, various viscera (you might prefer not going into what each one is), mollejas (sweetbread), riñoncitos (kidney), chinchulines (beef chitterlings) etc. But also pork and chicken.
  
• Empanadas (individual semicircular pies with different fillings) are also typical. The more traditional are those with meat and cheese fillings, but in Buenos Aires there are an infinity of varied fillings that purists refuse to recognize as “empanadas”. Each province – especially those of North-Western Argentina – has its own way of preparing them.
• milanesas! (slender meat slices covered with a batter of grated bread and egg and fried in oil.) In Europe they are known as “schnitzels”.
• drinking mate (an infusion of mate herb). It can be in the traditional way, which is sipping it trough a metal straw out of a hollow gourd or as what is called ‘mate cocido’ or ‘boiled mate’ which means making it like any other infusion (there are mate bags).
• wines, of course (but I am totally ignorant in the matter – and not because of any religious reasons. I would even say that I am unworthy of my family because of this unforgivable lacking…)

Outings

• Libertador Avenue, in the zone of the Bosques de Palermo (Palermo Woods), up to the area of the Recoleta. Rather a series of parks than ‘woods’. Here used to be the residence of Juan Manuel de Rozas, Governor of Buenos Aires and important caudillo in the mid-eighteenth century.
  
• The Recoleta Cemetery and the elegant neighbourhood that surrounds it (Alvear Avenue, Quintana Avenue).
  
• The Botanical Gardens, somewhat unkempt for some years now, but getting better (it’s a childhood space for me, so it will always maintain its charm – albeit as a testimony of tempus fugit – so that the more deteriorated it is, the more evident its message!)
• The area of Callao Avenue and Santa Fe Avenue (enter the book store, bar and concert café space “Clásica y Moderna”)
• 9 de Julio Avenue, a block wide (to construct it whole blocks were torn down for its entire length), with the emblematic “Obelisco” in its crossing with Corrientes Avenue.
• Corrientes Avenue with its book stores and theatres, somewhat run down now, but still keeping something of its personality ( you must eat pizza at “Los Inmortales”).
• Plaza San Martín (visit the Plaza Hotel, first luxury hotel in Latin America).
  
• Barrio de Palermo, formerly a neighbourhood of malevos (urban toughies), today of modern designers. Borges must be recalled, fascinated as he was by the aura of slummish peril that this area had when he was a child. Then, a small distance away, you can visit the museum-house of Geogie’s friend, polifacetic Xul Solar.
  
• San Telmo and Plaza Dorrego with its Fair of Antiquarians on weekends.
  
• The neighbourhood of Barracas and Lezama Park (where some scenes of Sábato’s On Heroes and Tombs were set).
  
• La Boca and Caminito. As well as the typical tango alley, nowadays the Proa Foundation is a must.
  
• My neighbourhood: Belgrano. Avoid the hours when classes finish at schools: traffic goes mad. Walk through 11 de Septiembre or 3 de Febrero streets between the streets of Federico Lacroze and Juramento. Reach Plaza General Belgrano where “La Redonda” Church is. Look over Belgrano R, one of the finest residential areas in Buenos Aires
  
• Go to the outskirts of Buenos Aires, especially San Isidro. (I can’t invite everyone, but to me, my club, the Náutico San Isidro, is something that shouldn’t be missed. See the Rio de la Plata Delta, visiting the city of Tigre and its Port of Produce (Puerto de frutos)
  

1. Obelisco (Corrientes & 9 de Julio Avenues) • 2. Plaza San Martín • 3. San Telmo Quartier • 4. Lezama Park • 5. La Boca • 6. Santa Fe & Callao Avenues • 7. Libertador Avenue through the Palermo “Woods” • 8. Botanical Gardens • 9. Palermo Quartier • 10. Recoleta Cemetery • B. My quartier: Belgrano (out of the map) • x. This is where Wang Wei will reside during his sojourn in Buenos Aires

Nevertheless, let us not be so idealistic… As something that can’t be absent in the spirit of a porteño who always has criticism on hand and complaints on the tip of his tongue, let us remember that our visitors will surely not be able to avoid running into streets that need more cleaning, traffic jams caused by an infinity of reasons, ill tempered and aggressive people. In short, the daily charm of living in Buenos Aires!

Mate


Bocaditos of chocolate and dulce de leche



Revuelto gramajo


Empanadas


The church “La Redonda” in Belgrano


Recoleta Cemetery


Corrientes Avenue with the Obelisco


San Telmo


Belgrano R, Melián Street


Plaza de Mayo


Círculo Militar in the zone of Plaza San Martín


Santa Fe Avenue in front of Plaza San Martín

© 2005 Fotogalería Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires

Un Buenos Aires para Wang Wei

Lo que no debe dejarse de hacer en MI Buenos Aires

(enumeración totalmente desordenada y puramente subjetiva: otros tendrán diferentes Buenos Aires)

Comer

• alfajores de chocolate y dulce de leche (marca Havanna y ahora marca Cachafaz hechos por los antiguos pasteleros de la empresa Havanna que fue vendida).
• bocaditos Bonafide de dulce de leche o los Cabsha, más pequeños.
  
• probar los helados de Freddo, Chungo y Persicco (entrar en la competencia sobre cuáles se prefieren).
• revuelto Gramajo (un plato típico porteño no apto para regímenes de bajo colesterol: papas fritas bien finitas y jamón, mezclados con huevo revuelto y con el posible agregado de puerro y arvejas)
  
• desde ya asado de todo tipo de carnes. De vaca: tira de asado, vacío, colita de cuadril, lomo, matambre, etc.; sin olvidar las «achuras»: distintas vísceras (se puede preferir no indagar qué es cada cosa), mollejas, riñoncitos, chinchulines, etc. Pero también cerdo y pollo.
  
• también son típicas las empanadas (pasteles con forma de semicírculo con diferentes rellenos). Las más tradicionales son las de carne y las de queso, pero hay en Buenos Aires una infinidad de rellenos variados, que los más puristas se niegan a llamar «empanadas». Cada provincia –especialmente las del noroeste de Argentina– tiene su forma típica de prepararlas.
  
• ¡milanesas! (tajadas finitas de carne vacuna rebozadas con una mezcla de pan rallado y huevo) fritas en aceite.
  
• tomar mate (infusión de yerba mate). Puede ser en la forma más típica y tradicional, en una calabaza y con bombilla, o como en lo que se llama “mate cocido”, haciendo una infusión tipo té (hay saquitos de «mate cocido»)
  
• por supuesto, vinos (pero desconozco absolutamente el asunto –y no por cuestiones religiosas, incluso diría que soy indigna de mi familia por esta imperdonable falla…)

Pasear

• Avenida del Libertador en la zona de los bosques de Palermo (una serie de parques más que un «bosque» donde estaba la residencia de Juan Martín de Rozas, gobernador de Buenos Aires e importante caudillo de mediados del siglo XIX) y hasta la zona de Recoleta.
  
• El cementerio de Recoleta y el elegante barrio que la rodea (Av. Quintana, Av. Alvear).
  
• El Botánico, algo descuidado desde hace ya años, pero mejorando (para mí es el espacio de mí infancia, así que siempre conservará su encanto aunque sea como testimonio del tempus fugit –así que cuanto más destruido, más patente su mensaje!)
  
• La zona de Avenida Callao y Avenida Santa Fe (entrar a la librería, bar y sala de café concert «Clásica y Moderna»)
  
• Avenida 9 de Julio, ancha como una manzana (para hacerla se derribaron manzanas enteras a lo largo de su traza), con el emblemático obelisco en el medio, en el cruce de Av. Corrientes
  
• La Avenida Corrientes, con sus librerías y teatros, algo decadente ya, pero sigue manteniendo algo de su personalidad (hay que comer pizza en «Los Inmortales»)
  
• Plaza San Martín (visitar el Plaza Hotel, el primer hotel de lujo de Latinoamérica).
  
• Barrio de Palermo, antes barrio de malevos, ahora de modernos diseñadores. Se recordará a Borges, fascinado por el aura orillera que tenía esa zona cuando él era pequeño. Luego alejándose un poco, se podrá visitar la casa museo del gran amigo de Geogie, el polifacético Xul Solar.
  
• San Telmo y la Plaza Dorrego con su feria de anticuarios los fines de semana.
  
• El barrio de Barracas y el parque Lezama (donde se sitúan algunas escenas de Sobre héroes y tumbas de Sábato)
  
• La Boca y Caminito además del pasaje típico tanguero, ahora hay que visitar la Fundación Proa.
  
• Mi barrio: Belgrano (evitar horarios de salida de colegios: una locura de tránsito) recorrer las calles 11 de Septiembre o 3 de Febrero. Llegar a la plaza General Belgrano, donde está la iglesia «La Redonda». Recorrer Belgrano R, de las mejores zonas residenciales de Buenos Aires.
  
• Ir a las afueras de Buenos Aires, especialmente San Isidro (no podré invitar a todos, pero para mí es imperdible mi club, el Náutico San Isidro). Conocer el Delta del Río de la Plata, visitando el Tigre y el Puerto de Frutos.

1. Obelisco (Av. Corrientes & 9 de Julio) • 2. Plaza San Martín • 3. Barrio de San Telmo • 4. Parque Lezama • 5. La Boca • 6. Av. Santa Fe & Av. Callao • 7. Av. del Libertador por los Bosques de Palermo • 8. Jardín Botánico • 9. Barrio de Palermo • 10. Cementerio de la Recoleta • B. Mi barrio: Belgrano (no entra) • x. En la cruz indiqué donde será la residencia porteña de Wang Wei

Pero tampoco seamos tan idealistas… como no podía faltar en el espíritu porteño, que tiene siempre a flor de piel la crítica y en la punta de la lengua una queja, recordemos que quien nos visite seguramente tampoco dejará de toparse con calles que necesitan más limpieza, embotellamientos de tránsito causados por infinidad de razones, gente malhumorada & agresiva. En fin, el encanto diario de vivir en Buenos Aires!

Mate


Bocaditos de chocolate y dulce de leche



Revuelto gramajo


Empanadas


Iglesia «La Redonda» en Belgrano


Cementerio de la Recoleta


Avenida Corrientes con vista al Obelisco


San Telmo


Belgrano R, calle Melián


Plaza de Mayo


Círculo Militar, zona de Plaza San Martín


Av. Santa Fe frente a Plaza San Martín

© 2005 Fotogalería Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires

in English

Cacti

They grow between two and three centimeters per year. The little girl near to it was just 1.25 meter high when the photo was taken. For how many centuries has it guarded the fortress of the Tilcara Indians, built at a strategic pass of the Humahuaca Canyon?

Cardones

Crecen entre dos y tres centímetros por año. La niña fotografiada junto al cardón mide aproximadamente 1,25 m. ¿Cuántos años hará que aquel ejemplar custodia el Pucará de Tilcara, un paso estratégico de la quebrada de Humahuaca?

Mercedes Sosa

Lyrics by Violeta Parra Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro, Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado Y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me ha dado el sonido y el abecedario, Con las palabras que pienso y declaro: Madre, amigo, hermano y luz alumbrando, La ruta del alma del que estoy amando. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados; Con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos, Playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos Y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me dio el corazón que agita su marco, Cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano; Cuando miro el bueno, tan lejos del malo Cuando miro el fondo de tu ojos claros. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto. Así yo distingo dicha de quebranto Los dos materiales que forman el canto Y el canto de todos que es el mismo canto. Gracias a la vida.

Thanks to life that has given me so much: it gave me two eyes to perfectly see the black from white if I open them well and the high heaven with its starry background and in the multitude the man I love. Thanks to life that has given me so much: it has given me the voice and the alphabet and the words that I think and utter, mother, friend, brother and shining light, the path of the soul with which I love. Thanks to life that has given me so much: it has given marching to my tired feet, with them I walked to cities and puddles, beaches and deserts, mountains and plains and to your house, your street and courtyard. Thanks to life that has given me so much: it has given me the heart which throbbes when I look at the fruits of human mind when I look at the good, so far from evil when I look at the bottom of your eyes. Thanks to life that has given me so much: it has given me laughter and tears, so I distinguish happiness from pain, the two materials shaping the song the song of all which is the same song. Thanks to life.

On Sunday, October 4 died here in Buenos Aires Mercedes Sosa, the great Arrgentine singer or “cantora” as she preferred to call herself. We had already presented a little bit of her special talent in a previous post.

Now, apart from a humble tribute to his memory, I would like to tell you about the enormous impact her funerals had throughout the country. The government declared three days of mourning. Her body was laid in state in the National Congress, and her compatriots waited in endless rows for their turn to say her a final goodbye.

At a time when we Argentines seem to be divided by so many urgent or fictitious issues, it is very comforting to discover that we are united in the love of a great artist and in the appreciation of the memory of a person with firm and consistent ideals.

Much is written these days about Mercedes Sosa. Among so many words, I find particularly moving the letter that the family of Mercedes sent to the press, an accurate description of how many of us feel towards her.

We are the grandchildren, brothers, nephews and son of her who was more to us than just a great and popular artist. We have shared in her life’s private joys and sorrows. Because this great artist was also our grandmother, sister, aunt and mother. That’s why we want to reach you from this intimate place, far from the formality and severity of the official statements: because we know that you have also loved and will love her much more than just a singer and an artist. She has accompanied you so many times and she has become part of your family even without any ties of blood.

It is from this place that we want to tell you that Mercedes – our mother, aunt, grandmother and sister – left this world today. But we also want to tell you that she was always accompanied – even when she was already not aware of it – by the endless attention of friends and great artists, and through each of them, by that of you. And despite the sadness of every agony and of the hard battle she had fought against the menacing death, she spent her last moments in peace.

We are naturally shocked and want to share this sadness with you. Even if at the same time we have the reassurance that everyone – including our beloved “Black” – did their best so that she could stay a little longer with us.

Mercedes was the happiest while singing. And surely she would have liked to sing even in this finale. So that’s how we want to remember her and we invite you to do the same with us.

Thank you so much for your solidarity that we have never ceased to feel.

The family of Mercedes.

And the desire has come true. Her catafalque was encircled by a multitude of visitors singing her songs without cease.

Mercedes Sosa

Texto de Violeta Parra Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro, Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado Y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me ha dado el sonido y el abecedario, Con las palabras que pienso y declaro: Madre, amigo, hermano y luz alumbrando, La ruta del alma del que estoy amando. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados;

Con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos, Playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos Y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me dio el corazón que agita su marco, Cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano; Cuando miro el bueno, tan lejos del malo Cuando miro el fondo de tu ojos claros. Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto. Así yo distingo dicha de quebranto Los dos materiales que forman el canto Y el canto de todos que es el mismo canto. Gracias a la vida.

El domingo 4 de octubre murió aquí en Buenos Aires Mercedes Sosa, grandiosa cantante argentina, o «cantora» como ella prefería llamarse. Ya habíamos mostrado algo de su especial talento en una entrada anterior.

Ahora, además de un humilde tributo a su memoria, quisiera contarles la enorme repercusión que tuvieron sus honras fúnebres en todo el país. El gobierno decretó tres días de duelo, fue velada en el Congreso de la Nación e interminables filas de compatriotas desfilaron en su velatorio para darle un último adiós.

En tiempos en que los argentinos parecemos divididos por tantas disputas urgentes o legendarias, descubrir que podemos seguir unidos ante el cariño a una gran artista y el aprecio a la memoria de una persona con ideales firmes y consecuentes resulta muy reconfortante.

Mucho se ha escrito en estos días sobre Mercedes Sosa. Entre tantas palabras, la carta que la familia de Mercedes envío a la prensa me pareció especialmente conmovedora y precisa en la descripción del sentimiento de tantos de nosotros hacia ella.

Somos los nietos, los hermanos, los sobrinos, el hijo de quien fue para nosotros algo más y distinto que una gran artista popular. Con ella compartimos la vida, las alegrías y las angustias privadas. Porque esa gran artista fue además nuestra abuela, nuestra hermana, nuestra tía, nuestra mamá. Es por eso que queremos llegar a ustedes desde ese lugar íntimo, lejos de la severidad y la dureza de los comunicados oficiales: porque sabemos que también la quisieron y la siguen queriendo aún mucho más allá de la cantante y de la artista que los acompañó tantas veces, a la que han hecho parte de su familia aún sin tener lazos de sangre.

Es desde este lugar que queremos contarles que Mercedes —la mamá, la tía, la abuela, la hermana— abandonó este mundo el día de hoy. Pero también queremos decirles que estuvo siempre acompañada —inclusive cuando ya no podía saberlo— por un desfile interminable de amigos y artistas populares, y en cada uno de ellos: Ustedes. Y que a pesar de lo triste de cualquier agonía, pasó esos últimos momentos en paz, peleando aguerridamente contra una muerte que terminó ganándole la pulseada.

Por cierto estamos conmovidos y queremos compartir con ustedes esta tristeza. Aunque, al mismo tiempo, nos queda la tranquilidad de que todos hicieron lo posible —incluida nuestra Negra— para quedarse un ratito más entre nosotros.

Lo que más feliz la hacía a Mercedes era cantar. Y seguramente ella hubiera querido cantarles también en este final. De modo que así queremos recordarla y así los invitamos a hacerlo con nosotros.

Infinitas gracias por ese acompañamiento que jamás dejó de estar presente.

La familia de Mercedes.

El deseo de canto se cumplió. Su velatorio estuvo repleto de visitantes cantando.

Wang Wei looks out of his studio

Iglesia de San Francisco

Roofs

Town hall bells

Wang Wei (699-761): 書事 輕陰閣小雨 深院晝庸開 坐看蒼苔色 欲上人衣來 shū shì qīng yīn gé xiăo yŭ shēn yuàn zhòu yōng kāi zuò kàn cāng tái sè yù shàng rén yī lái

Studiolum Light cloud. Rain drizzling around the studio. Grew tired. Opening the window to the deep courtyard. Sitting. Watching the green of the moss. It’s getting cold. I should put on some clothes.

Sunrise

Wang Wei mira afuera de su estudio

Iglesia de San Francisco

Tejados

Campanas del Ayuntamiento

Wang Wei (699-761): 書事 輕陰閣小雨 深院晝庸開 坐看蒼苔色 欲上人衣來 shū shì qīng yīn gé xiăo yŭ shēn yuàn zhòu yōng kāi zuò kàn cāng tái sè yù shàng rén yī lái

Studiolum Leve niebla. Llovizna alrededor del estudio. Cansancio. Abrir la ventana al patio profundo. Sentarse. Mirar el verde del musgo. Viene frío. Debería ponerme ropa.

Sale el sol

Whose is this song?

We have already written a couple of times about wandering melodies, the Chechen girl of Istanbul, the Hungarian-Hasidic The rooster is crowing, the internationalist Lenin Song, the Bella ciao arching from the Po to the Black Sea, the heroic songs of the Balkans, the waltz of Leonard Cohen linking Spain with Hungary. But never about the most wandering melody, the king of all wandering melodies. To play this tune on the guitar or on the oud is the best passport from Sarajevo to Southern India: the eyes sparkle, you are offered a coffee, you’ve got home. This melody had spread all over the Ottoman Empire, every nation adopted it, and the long story of its meanderings and transformations is intertwined with that rich, complex and forceful musical and cultural world that the late Ottoman Empire was and about which we have already written a bit. Now in this post that intends to fill this gap we cannot undertake more than to simply flash this richness of the melody, hoping that in a later post we will return to it.


The perhaps best known version of this melody is the Turkish Üsküdar'a gider iken – When going to Üsküdar, aka Katibim – My scribe. Tradition has it that the beautiful scribe to whom this love song alludes was a real person and women were crazy for him. He is the main figure of the great classic Turkish movie Katip (The scribe, 1968), played by the famous singer and actor Zeki Müren. The soundtrack of the film is of course this song. The film, set in 19th-century Istanbul, can be seen here in several parts. In Turkish only, of course, but in this charming naive folk play style, so characteristic of Turkish movie, you can understand everything without it as well. You should watch at least the first few moments of it. The second version of the song below is sung by Zeki Müren himself, while the first one by one of the brightest stars of old Turkish urban music, Safiye Ayla.

Üsküdar'a gider iken aldı da bir yağmur Kâtibimin setresi uzun, eteği çamur Kâtip uykudan uyanmış, gözleri mahmur Kâtip benim, ben kâtibin, el ne karışır? Kâtibime kolalı da gömlek ne güzel yaraşır Üsküdar'a gider iken bir mendil buldum Mendilimin içine lokum doldurdum Ben yarimi arar iken yanımda buldum Kâtip benim, ben kâtibin, el ne karışır? Kâtibime kolalı da gömlek ne güzel yaraşır

When going to Üsküdar, it began to rain long is the coat of my scribe, its sleeves get muddy. The scribe woke up, his eyes are still sleepy. I am of my scribe and my scribe is mine, it’s nobody’s business. How well the stiff shirt collar suits my scribe! When going to Üsküdar, I found a kerchief I filled it with lokum (Turkish sweet) When looking for my helper, I found him on my side. I am of my scribe and my scribe is mine, it’s nobody’s business. How well the stiff shirt collar suits my scribe!

In Greek the song has several versions. Today the best known is Apo xeno topo – “From a foreign place”, as it is sung below by Eustathia Grendjelou.

Aπό ξένο τόπο κι απ' αλαργινό ήρθ' ένα κορίτσι, φως μου, δώδεκα χρονώ Ούτε στην πόρτα βγαίνει ούτε στο στενό ούτε στο παραθύρι φως μου, δυο λόγια να της πω Έχει μαύρα μάτια και σγουρά μαλλιά και στο μάγουλό του, φως μου, έχει μιαν ελιά Δε μου τη δανείζεις δεν μου την πουλάς την ελίτσα που 'χεις, φως μου, και με τυραννάς Δε σου τη δανείζω, δεν σου την πουλώ μόν' να τη χαρίσω θέλω σε κείνον π' αγαπώ

From a foreign place, a far away land came a girl, my delight, twelve years old. She does not come to the door, near to me or to the window, to tell me a word or two. Her eyes are black, her hair is curly, and on the face she has a mole. Won’t you give it away, won’t you sell to me that mole, you’re only tormenting me? I don’t give it away, I don’t sell it, I want to give it to him whom I love.

But the earlier text is Ehasa mantili – I’ve lost my kerchief. This is how Roza Eskenazi from Istanbul, the queen of rebetiko used to sing it. Unfortunately I don’t have this recording with her. Here you are instead a nice version with Anastasia Eden, from a tavern. I think this one was the Minor Asian Greek version of the song, in most recordings enriched with recitative solos.

Έχασα μαντήλι μ' εκατό φλουριά; κι έμαθα πως το 'χει η κόρη του παπά. Δωσ' μου το μαντήλι, κράτα τα φλουριά μην το μάθει η αγάπη μου και δεν με θέλει πια....

I’ve lost my kerchief with a hundred florins they say the daughter of the priest has it Give me back the kerchief and keep the florins let my lover not see it and leave me.

One can also find a Greek Gypsy instrumental version with the Giorgos Koros band, whose title is the Sephardic equivalent of Apo xeno topo: En un lugar extrangero – In a foreign place. However, the Sephardic version of the song as we know it today has a completely different text which sets the love story in the formerly largest Sephardic town, Thessaloniki: Selanik entero yo lo caminí – I’ve rambled over all Saloniki for you.


But the tune is also known all over the Balkans. The Serbian text is Dva goluba (Two doves) or Ruse kose (Black hair). This is the earliest recording of Dva goluba from 1910:

Poletela dva bijela, aman goluba pa su pali na turbeta cara Murata. Jedan nosi britku sablju cara Murata, drugi nosi amajliju cara Hamida. Pitala ga (ih) vjerna ljuba cara Murata: Oj, Boga vi, dva bijela, aman goluba, otkud vama britka sablja cara Murata, I zlacena amajlija cara Hamida? Sablju dade mila majka cara Murata. seja dade (...) naseg cara Hamida mila seja, amajliju cara Hamida.

Two dear white doves flew away they settled on the turban of Murat. One brought a sharp sabre to Murat the other an amulet to Hamid. The true lover of Murat has asked: Oh, for God, you two dear white doves where is this sharp sabre for Murat and the golden amulet for Hamid from? Murat’s dear mother gave the sabre to him and his (???) gave it to our Hamid his sweetheart gave the amulet to Hamid.

In Serbian-speaking but Muslim Bosnia the text of Ruse kose is also preceded by a strophe beginning with Oj devojko Anadolko budi moja ti (Oh Anatolian girl, be mine), or it is sung as an Islamic religious song, Zašto suza u mom oku (Why are my eyes weeping?) Although the text of this latter is a prayer, in the Yugoslav civil war it was an Islamist war anthem. In Bulgaria it also has two texts: the Cherni ochi imash libe (Your eyes are black, my dear) is a love song, while the Yasen mesec vech izgryava nad zelenata gora (A bright moon is rising above the green mountains) was the anthem of late 19th-century anti-Turkish liberation wars. But it is also sung in Albanian in Albania, in Macedonian (if there exists a language like this at all) in Macedonia (Oj devojche – Oh, girl), in Arabic in Iraq and in Lebanon, and the Italian KlezRoym band even made a modern klezmer of it with a mixed Arabic-Sephardic-Hebrew-French-English-Italian text.

Fel shara canet betet masha la signorina aux beaux yeux noirs come la luna etait la sua facia qui eclairait le boulevard Volevo parlar shata metni because her father was a la gare y con su umbrella darabetni en reponse a mon bonsoir Perchè my dear tedrabini kuando yo te amo kitir and if you want tehebini il n’y a pas lieu de nous conquerir Totta la notte alambiki et meme jusqu’au lever du jour and every morning ashtanaki pour le voue de notre amour...

The girl with beautiful black eyes was walking on the street, her face, like the moon suffused the street with light. I wanted to speak to her because her father was at the station but she hit me with her umbrella as a return of my bonsoir. Why do you hit me, my dear when I love you so much? Even if you want to declare love there is no way to conquer me. I will wait for you all the night until the very daybreak and every morning I’ll be there as I’ve taken a vow for our love.

The song’s modern panorama in the Balkans is surveyed in the genial documentary of Bulgarian filmmaker Adela Peeva, Чия е тази песен? – Whose is this song? The film was published in 2003 and won at least five prestigious awards, being even nominated as the best European documentary of the year. Nevertheless, it is almost completely inaccessible, you cannot order or download it from any place. You can only watch it on a Bulgarian site in several parts, or in the Google video below. Although it is one hour long, it is a must to watch it all.



The scenario starts in an Istanbul restaurant where the song is sung by a charming Turkish singer, and the table society coming from various Balkan countries starts to discuss where the song really comes from. Peeva is also there, and she decides to set out to travel across the Balkans to discover how it is sung in each country. We hear a lot of beautiful performances with various texts, and of course we are informed in each country that the song comes from there. Perhaps the only exceptions are the Muslim Bosnian choir director who recognize the Turkish origins of the song, and the Macedonian composer who points out that Macedonian folk music does not have such rhythm.

Under the pretext of the song’s various versions, the film offers an introduction to present day circumstances and tensions of the countries of the Balkans. It shows how the various communities use the song as a symbol of their identity, that some perceive the melody as a link to the others, while others interpret the different text and context as a wall against the others. Peeva herself gets into dangerous situations: the Serbians of Vranje want to beat her when she plays them the Bosnian version with her tape recorder, and in the Bulgarian mountain fiesta she is menaced to be hung up if she dares to say that the melody comes from Turkey.

The film is composed with independent scenes going from country to country. Peeva focuses everywhere on only one detail, one community or musician, but with a deep attention that is able to go beyond stereotypes and to grasp the complexity of every situation, the simultaneous presence of good and evil.

It is especially beautiful how Peeva in every scene emphasizes the personality, humanity and moral strength of her interlocutors. This film is not just an ethnomusicological journey, but a series of attentive and sensitive encounters. With the Istanbul filmmaker of Katip, who recalls with enthusiasm the singers of his youth. With the worker-musicians of Mytilene who are elevated above their everyday life by the common music-making in the pub. With the former opera singer of Tirana whose every gesture represent culture and ideas in a desperately eroded world. With the young Serbian priest of a Gypsy community who plays together with his congregation and who condemns the false Gypsy myth of Bregović and Kušturica. This film, which looks at the Balkans from inside, with love and on equal terms, and which, instead of focusing on the usual comic or tragic Balkan stereotypes exhibits the strength and steadfastness with which these people transcend their often tragic world, stands out high from the recent dumping of Balkan films.


This film and song has even inspired an EU project. The “Everybody’s Song – Music as a tool for the promotion of diversity and intercultural understanding” project supported in 2007 and 2008 with courses, events and concerts the collaboration of young musicians from the Balkans and the discovery of their common cultural roots. On their page they also illustrate the various versions of this song with several recordings, even from so implausible places and bands like Usbekistan, Malaysia and the Boney M.

However, neither the film nor the project offer an answer to the origins of the melody. Perhaps it is too early to do so. There are a number of conflicting theories around. Some Arabic sources attribute it to the 19th-century Iraqi composer Mullah Osman Al-Muselli, whose version is performed by Yousef Omar in the Iraqi video linked above. Others say that it was diffused in Istanbul by the Scottish military bands stationing in the city during the Crimean war of 1853-56. Again others defend its Armenian origins, saying that it was first sung in 1883 the operetta Leblemitzi Horboraga by Dihran Tsohatzian, which became highly popular all over the Ottoman Empire. This theory is perhaps also supported by the fact that the first recording of the melody was made by German musicologists in 1900 with an Armenian boy in the Eastern Anatolian Gaziantep. However, none of these hypotheses can be verified. We can only say with some probability that it is a relatively late, 19th-century urban song. This is also attested by the fact that its versions in the various provinces of the empire are still surprisingly uniform, and it has survived everywhere as an urban song, rather than a peasant folk song.

The Everybody’s Song project offers only one short musicological study on this song, with an interesting title from an interesting book: Dorit Klebe: “Das Überleben eines osmanisch-türkischen städtischen Liebesliedes seit einer frühen Dokumentation von 1902. Metamorphosen eines makam.” In: Marianne Bröcker (ed.): Das 20. Jahrhundert im Spiegel seiner Lieder. Schriften der Universitätsbibliothek Bamberg. Band 12 (2004), pp. 85-116. I have not yet managed to access it, but as soon as I will read it, I will report on it. If you know more, write us by all means.

Üsküdar around 1900. Photo of Sébah and Jouillier

The City

“The City of Mallorca, in ancient times Palma, is blessed with the fertility of its soil, with its healthy air, with the abundance of every kind of fruits, with the enchanting beauty of its buildings, with the situation of its walls and fortifications, with its three Italian miles long ramparts, half of it extremel fortified. It is the capital of the island of Mallorca and of the whole Balearic kingdom. It has an episcopal seat and a royal court presided by a Viceroy in the name of the Catholic Monarch of all Spain. It is situated at the beginning of the fifth northern climate, at 39º 36' of the latitude and 25º 2' of longitude. On the south it is washed by the sea, and its famous harbor is a safe shelter to ships. Designed with great accuracy by Antonio Garau, priest and mathematician, and is published now for the first time. Year of the Lord 1644”.

True, the Romans founded a city called Palma in the island of Mallorca, but in fact no document attests in an incontestable manner that it exactly corresponded with present-day Palma. Of course some remains of walls and some blurred traces of possibly important buildings (like an amphitheatre, for example) give some assurance that the Roman Palma stood at the northern part of the modern city, around the plaza de Cort.

By when the Arabs arrived in 903, apparently not much of those Roman buildings had been left, and the newcomers did not bother to found their own city on them. As a result, the first documented name of the city is the Arabic Medina Mayurqa, as “Palma” is nothing more than an obscure hypothesis based on some Roman ruins.

In 1229, when Jaume I conquered the island, the name of the city was simply translated from Arabic to Catalan, as it had been already in use in mainland Catalonia, and it received the official name “Ciutat de Mallorca”. This is how it was known until the War of the Spanish Succession, when Mallorca was the last territory to surrender before the army of Philip V. Bourbon on July 3, 1715.

Plan of “La Ciutat de Mallorca” of the priest and mathematician Antonio Garau, 1644

Philip V, in one of his Nueva Planta Decrees wanted to create tabula rasa in the structure of the state, and to especially punish Mallorca, so one of his first measures was to change the name of its capital from the proud and ancient “Ciutat de Mallorca” to the perhaps prestigious but absolutely rootless “Palma” (and never “Palma de Mallorca”: this is a recent invention forged exclusively for the foreigners). The Bourbon also prohibited the use of Catalan language in the administration, which also made impossible the use of “Ciutat”. And now, in 2008 “Palma” has been finally and undisputedly fixed as the official name of the city.

Of course the majority of the people of Mallorca has kept calling the city “Ciutat” to this day, a name that resists do disappear from the mouth of the Mallorcans.

Mid-17th century oil painting largely on the basis of the plan of Garau

And it is a pity that “Ciutat” (or “Ciutat de Mallorca”) could not be preserved as an official name, for there are extremely few cities on this earth that dare to simply and proudly call themselves “the City”, as if they referred to the center of the world. Rome, the Urbs, Constantinople, the Polis (in fact, even the name Istanbul comes from the local Greek is tan polin = in the city), or Medina, the city for the first followers of Mohamed… And of course the “Ciutat” – in Mallorca.