Bella ciao

Margueriteclark has recently published an exciting video which, by playing two songs after each other seems to suggest that the popular Italian partisan song Bella ciao is virtually of Yiddish origin. The video is worth to watch not only because of the music, but also because of the several archive photos of Klezmer musicians and partisans collected in the background.

Una mattina Mi son’ alzato O bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao, ciao, ciao Una mattina Mi son’ alzato E ho trovato l’invasor. O partigiano Porta mi via O bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao, ciao, ciao O partigiano Porta mi via Che mi sento di morir. Se io muoio Da partigiano O bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao, ciao, ciao Se io muoio Da partigiano Tu mi devi seppellir. Seppellire Lassù in montagna O bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao, ciao, ciao Seppellire Lassù in montagna Sotto l’ombra di un bel fiore E le genti Che passeranno O bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao, ciao, ciao E le genti Che passeranno Ti diranno: „Che bel fior”. Quest’ è il fiore Del partigiano O bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao, ciao, ciao Quest’ è il fiore Del partigiano Morto per la libertà

In a morning I woke up o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao, ciao, ciao in a morning I woke up and I found the invader. Oh partisan take me away o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao, ciao, ciao oh partisan take me away because I feel that I will die. If I die as a partisan o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao, ciao, ciao If I die as a partisan you will have to bury me. Bury me up on the mountain o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao, ciao, ciao bury me up on the mountain in the shadow of a beautiful flower. And the people passing by o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao, ciao, ciao and the people passing by will say: “What a beautiful flower.” This is the flower of the partisan o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao, ciao, ciao this is the flower of the partisan who died for the freedom.

This discovery, writes Jenner Melletti in the April 12, 2008 edition of Repubblica Online, is the merit of Fausto Giovannardi, an engineer from Borgo San Lorenzo who, while driving his car, found himself singing the Bella ciao with one of the songs of the CD “Klezmer – Yiddish swing music” purchased some weeks earlier, in June 2006 in Paris. He stopped the car. Took out the CD cover and checked the name of the performer. It was the Odessan Gypsy musician Mishka Tziganoff, and the piece was a Klezmer dance entitled “Koilen” (Carbon) registered with him in 1919 in New York. On the family of the musician – or rather on the obscure and enigmatic life of New York’s Gypsy quarter around them at the beginning of the 20th century – also a film was made in 1983 by Robert Duvall with the title „Angelo my love”. Judging from American Gypsy commentaries, it is considered just as much a cult film over there as the Latcho drom in Europe. Some details of it can be watched on youtube as well. If you have the complete film, let me know about it!


The article of Jenner Melletti was replied by Carlo Loiodice in the edition of May 6 of the Carmilla Online by pointing out in how many ways musical motifs can be transmitted and simultaneously used, and by forewarning: if there is any connection between Tziganoff’s Klezmer melody and the Bella ciao, then it must be probably traced back in more than one step and via complex transmissions, and we must not short-circuit the question like Giovannardi does by supposing that the song was certainly brought home by Italian guest workers from America.


The arguments of Loiodice also have precedents. Giovanna Daffini, a peasant woman of Gualtieri, one of the greatest Italian folk singers, who had been working on the rice fields along the Po river since she was thirteen, in 1962, at the age of 49 sang for the recorder of ethnomusicologists Gianni Bosio and Roberto Leydi the song “In the morning, as soon as I wake up, I have to go on the rice fields”, the working song of the peasant women along the Po. “In the songs of Daffini,” writes Gianni Bosio, “there were all the women of her generation, all the courage of a life fought out hard, the lives of the five children educated at whatever effort, the fight done with optimism and courage for everyday existence.” Giovanna and his husband accompanying her on violin, Vittorio Carpi were admitted by the intervention of Bosio to the formation “Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano,” which meant a somewhat easier living to them and some of the most beautiful registrations of authentic Italian folk music to us.


Even after the first few bars it is obvious that the melody and the text of the Bella ciao derives from this song.


Giovanna Daffini: Alla mattina appena alzata (In the morning, as soon as I wake up), from the CD: Giovanna Daffini: L’amata genitrice (1991)

Alla mattina appena alzata o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao alla mattina appena alzata in risaia mi tocca andar. E fra gli insetti e le zanzare o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao e fra gli insetti e le zanzare un dur lavor mi tocca far. Il capo in piedi col suo bastone o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao il capo in piedi col suo bastone e noi curve a lavorar. O mamma mia, o che tormento! o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao o mamma mia o che tormento io t’invoco ogni doman. Ed ogni ora, che qui passiamo o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao Ed ogni ora, che qui passiamo Noi perdiam la gioventù Ma verrà un giorno che tutte quante o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao ma verrà un giorno che tutte quante lavoreremo in libertà.

In the morning, as soon as I wake up o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao in the morning, as soon as I wake up I have to go on the rice fields. And among the insects and mosquitos o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao and among the insects and mosquitos a hard toil is waiting for me. The capo is standing there with his stick o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao the capo is standing there with his stick and bends us to work. Oh my mother, what a pain! o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao oh my mother, what a pain, I call you every day. And with every hour we pass here o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao and with every hour we pass here our youth passes away. But there will come a day when all of us o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao but there will come a day when all of us will work in freedom.

The situation is made even more complicated by the fact that in May 1965, after the first public performances of the “In the morning, as soon as I wake up,” a certain Vasco Scansani from the village of Giovanna Daffini wrote a letter to the Communist diary Unità, affirming in it that this song was written by him in 1951 on the melody of Bella ciao. Giovanna and her husband readily acknowledged that they in fact performed the version of Scansani, but it was only one of the several versions of the song. The case made a certain stir, says Cesare Bermani in his volume of essays Guerra guerra ai palazzi e alle chiese (“War, war against the palaces and churches” – a quotation from an 1874 version of the Internationale adjusted to the melody of the Marseillaise) written on the Italian “canto sociale” and primarily on the Bella ciao, and its main result was that the researchers of Italian folk music realized “how much more complex is the world of folk singers, from how many sources it is nurtured, and to what a large extent it takes into consideration the repertoire of the surrounding world, the taste of the public, or even the expectations of the researchers of folk music.” In 1974 also another “author” presented himself, the ex-carabiniere Rinaldo Salvadore, who even published a version of the working song already in 1934 (!)


I have found three versions out of the several ones of the original rice workers’ song. The first one, written down already in 1906 (!), was published in the volume Riseri dal me coeur (It springs from my heart) of D. Massa, R. Palazzi and S. Vittone. The second and third version are published on the excellent site of Riccardo Venturi dedicated to the story of Bella ciao. The “thick fog resisting to every attempt of interpretation” mentioned by Margueriteclark in relation to the song probably comes from the fact that the text of the partisan song known to us is the result of the paraphrases and contaminations of several versions like the above ones – similarly to the song of the Mexican revolution “La cucaracha” known in a thousand versions, of which we have written earlier. To us these fragments combined into one Bella ciao already appear incoherent, but the participants of the Resistenza who knew the original songs exactly knew which original piece is paraphrased in each strophe.

Alla mattina appena alzata o bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao alla mattina appena alzata, devo andare a lavorar! A lavorare laggiù in risaia o bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao! A lavorare laggiù in risaia Sotto il sol che picchia giù! E tra gli insetti e le zanzare o bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao e tra gli insetti e le zanzare, duro lavoro mi tocca far! Il capo in piedi col suo bastone o bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao il capo in piedi col suo bastone E noi curve a lavorar! Lavoro infame, per pochi soldi o bella ciao bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao lavoro infame per pochi soldi E la tua vita a consumar! Ma verrà il giorno che tutte quante o bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao ma verrà il giorno che tutte quante Lavoreremo in libertàaaaaaa!	In the morning, as soon as I wake up o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao in the morning, as soon as I wake up I have to go to work. To work there down on the rice fields o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao! to work there down on the rice fields under the scorching sun. And among the insects and mosquitos o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao and among the insects and mosquitos I have to do hard labour. The capo is standing there with his stick o bella ciao, bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao the capo is standing there with his stick and bends us to work. A miserable work for few money o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao a miserable work for few money and it consumes your life. But there will come a day when all of us o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao but there will come a day when all of us will work in freedom!
Stamattina mi sono alzata, stamattina mi sono alzata, sono alzata - iolì sono alzata - iolà sono alzata prima del sol. Sono andata alla finestra e ho visto il mio primo amor che parlava a un’altra ragazza, discorreva di far l’amor. Sono andata a confessarmi e l’ho detto al confessor. Penitenza che lui m’ha dato: di lasciare il mio primo amor. Ma piuttosto che lasciarlo son contenta mì a morir. Farem fare la cassa fonda e andremo dentro in tri: prima il padre e poi la madre e il mio amore in braccio a mi, e il mio amore in braccio a mi.	This morning I woke up this morning I woke up woke up – iolì woke up – iolà woke up before the dawn. I went to the window and I have seen my first lover as he was speaking to another girl about how to make love together. I went to confession and I told about it to the confessor. He gave me the penitence to leave my first lover. But rather than of leaving him I’m ready to die. I will have a coffin made and we will lay in it all the tree: first my father then my mother and then my lover in my arms and then my lover in my arms.
E picchia picchia la porticella dicendo: „Oi bella, mi vieni a aprir”. E picchia picchia la porticella dicendo: „Oi bella, mi vieni a aprir”. Con una mano aprì la porta e con la bocca la gli dà un bacin. La gh’ha dato un bacio così tanto forte che la suoi mamma la l’ha sentì. Ma cos’hai fatto, figliola mia, che tutto il mondo parla mal di te? Ma lascia pure che il mondo ’l diga: io voglio amare chi mi ama me. Io voglio amare quel giovanotto ch’l'ha fatt sett’anni di prigion per me. L’ha fatt sett’anni e sette mesi e sette giorni di prigion per me. E la prigione l’è tanto scura, mi fa paura, la mi fa morir.	He knocks, knocks on the door and he says: “Oh my fair, come, open it!” He knocks, knocks on the door and he says: “Oh my fair, come, open it!” She opened the door with one hand she gave him a kiss with her mouth. She gave her such a loud kiss that even her mother heard it. But what did you do, my daughter, all the world will gossip about you! Let the world tell what they want, I want to love him who loves me. I want to love this boy who made seven years of prison for me Seven years and seven months and seven days of prison, forme. And the prison is so dar, that it shocks me, that it makes me die.

Thus the Bella ciao was born on the rice fields along the Po, back in the second half of the 19th century, writes Bermani, according to whom even the burden “bella ciao” is a kind of a farewell to the youth that passed in the work. But then where does the undeniable connection with Tziganoff’s Klezmer melody come from?

I would risk the hypothesis that this connection was of the opposite direction. It is possible that the Klezmer song came from the Bella ciao, or more exactly, from the working song of the rice field workers.


Some ten years ago, as I got on the night express going from the Romanian Alba Iulia to Budapest, I found myself in an illustrious company. In the compartment there sat two persons: a Romanian Greco-Catholic seminarist returning to his university studies to Rome and the Hungarian Catholic Archbishop of Transylvania György Jakubinyi. This latter contradicted to all the stereotypes of the Catholic priest. He was an exceptionally manly figure, with fascinating Jewish humour, attentiveness and enormous education. He converted the twelve hours long journey into a fantastic one-man-show, and even if he made us to talk a lot, it is his stories that I remember the best. In order none of us three should have any “advantage,” neither he and me spoke in Hungarian with each other, nor he and the seminarist in Romanian, but from time to time, as Jakubinyi proposed, we changed language, from Italian to French, from French to Latin, German, Russian, Greek, Hebrew, altough at Modern Hebrew – in which, told Jakubinyi, he does his correspondence with Elie Wiesel, as their families were neighbors in Sighetu Marmaţiei, and since then they have remained in good connection with each other – we both failed. Then we returned to some language easier to understand, also promoted by a bottle of archiepiscopal wine for the mass that was pulled out in the meantime.


It was then that Jakubinyi related that his family is actually Giacomini, and that his grand-grandfather had come as an ice cream seller – gelati! gelati! – to Sighetu Marmaţiei. Italian confectioners, he told, had ruled the market of sweets since the beginning of the 20th century in the eastern part of the Monarchy just like Albanians did in the former Yugoslavia, Hemshins (Muslim Armenians) in Turkey, or Azeris in Iran.


The Hungarian folk group “Muzsikás” (The Musicians) published their CD “Szól a kakas már” (The rooster is crowing) in 1992. Accidentally, its cover displays a gobelin version by Zsuzsa Péreli of the same archive photo of a Transylvanian Jewish Klezmer band that you can see in the background of the Koilen/Bella ciao video linked by Margueriteclark. On this CD they reconstructed the music of the Northern Transylvanian Maramureş Jews who were almost completely annihilated in the first half of the 1940s. This reconstruction of a music that has never been written down or registered, was made forty years later, with relatively great precision. On the basis of what?

The Muzsikás visited those old Gypsy musicians who before WWII played at the feasts of the Jews. They have exactly known and have conserved until the 90s the various melodies they had to play on the various events. Gheorghe Covaci, Árpád Toni and the others, when the Muzsikás presented them a tune they had not played for forty years, immediately recognized its style. “Where is this from?” they asked. “It is sure, thousand percent sure that this is Jewish music.” And they immediately repeated it on their violin with all those nuances and ornaments as they used to play it on the Jewish feasts.


In the 90s the folk music center Fonó in Budapest organized a series of musical events with the title “Utolsó óra” (Last hour). They invited from week to week another old folk musician from Slovakia, Ukraine or Transylvania to perform in the music center and to register on CD whatever they knew. We participated at the evening of a since then deceased famous Gypsy violinist from Huszt, from the same Maramureş region where the Muzsikás collected their melodies and where Jakubinyi was born. One of the highlights of the evening was when he presented how he would play the same melody for a traditional Hungarian, Ukrainian, Jewish or Romanian public in the region, for the Russian party committee, for their family, on a public evening in the House of Culture. It was a tremendous experience. Like Archbishop Jakubinyi on the train. An exact illustration of the saying: “so many languages you speak, so many persons you are.”


And in that region, where Jews, Romanians, Rusyns, Gypsies, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Italians, Russians, Slovakians, Polish, Czech, Armenians, Tatars lived together, the melodies did not remain the exclusive property of only one ethnic group. For example, the Hungarian folk song “The rooster is crowing,” which gave the title of the CD of the Muzsikás, and which also displays a remarkable influence of Turkish-Arabic folk music, was a favorite song of the famous Transylvanian prince Gábor Bethlen in the 17th century as the great Hungarian novelist Zsigmond Móricz relates it in his “Transylvania.” Nevertheless the renowned musicologist Bence Szabolcsi notes the following story about the same song: “The Hassidic rabbi Eizik Taub came around 1780 to Nagykálló [in the same region] as a melamed (teacher) of the children of the local rashekol, and later he became the rabbi of the same town. A great lover of the nature and of poetical spirit, while once walking in the fields, he heard the song of a little shepherd, and he felt an irresistible urge to learn it. So he bought the song for two forints. As soon as they made the bargain, the rabbi learned the song and the shepherd boy forgot it. Since then the Jews of Northern Hungary feel their own this song, and they sing it in all their religious feasts, because they interpret its text as allegorically speaking about the coming of the Messiah.”


The Muzsikás and Márta Sebestyén: The rooster is crowing, from the CD Magyar zsidó népzene (Hungarian Jewish folk music, 1991)

The Muzsikás has pointed out a large number of Hungarian, Romanian, Rusyn and other influences in the Jewish music played from the Tisza to the Black Sea. All these influences were mediated between the various ethnic groups by the musical professionists of the region, the professional Gypsy bands. Is it not possible that together with the Italian gelateristi, the Giacomini, Valentini and Giuliano ruling the market of the sweets from the Hungarian Nagykálló to the Ukrainian Odessa, also the songs of the rice workers arrived from the Po to Mishka Tziganoff, who – as Katalin Dorogi points it out in her resume of Jenner Melletti’s article in the 168 óra – knew very well also the Jewish musical repertoire of Romania?


And to compensate for the loss of a dream, in the next post we will show how it looks like when a Jewish melody really becomes a movement song.

(Archive photos of Tullo from the Po lowlands)

Hieroglyphs in Philo…

Julia from Borges’ country has sent us an observation together with the consequent considerations worthy of her renowned compatriot.


The eye, symbol of vigilance, confronted me with force as I was going down a side stairway at the Department of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires. This strange inscription on the wall said nothing and explained nothing and it appeared very different from the images of political groups that cluttered the walls in my times as a student.

It’s not that I no longer set foot on this building of my Department, but nowadays I go there once a week and only for a couple of hours in order to give my class and then hurry away. So it’s been years since I wandered along the corridors of the building with the insouciance and the ease of an undergraduate – who is unconscious of this ease as long as he is an undergraduate. But last month I again found myself to be a student in the building of the Department where I had been an undergraduate and, all the better to submerge myself and concentrate on the experience, I was there for five hours every afternoon during a whole week. All this excursus is aimed at the attempt of transmitting my spiritual state of reminiscent discovery at the moment when I was confronted with the image of which we speak: an eye and a bird.

An eye, which, although drafted with spray paint and in very elemental traces, reminded me of the eyes that appeared in the Egyptian-like hieroglyphs which were so popular in the Renaissance, or those that used to be shown in various emblematic compositions (which the master of this blog will be able to illustrate better than myself.)

All right, to answer Julia’s challenge, here you are as an example the well known Emblem 16 of Andrea Alciato: Ne credas (Don’t be an easy-believer), from the 1591 Leiden edition by Plantin.

With in this Renaissance frame of mind, I pictured the bird that accompanied the eye – perhaps without paying much attention to its form – like some kind of a hawk, a street imitation of the Egyptian Horus.

I continued my way down the stairs wondering what it was doing there and what its meaning might be. And the answer appeared accompanying my way down (katabasis). On the following landing of those side stairs, the same black paint, but especially the same bird, made with a stencil that now was accompanied by its anchorage “Breed Crows.”


Of course! It was a crow! And what do crows do when you breed them (according to the Spanish proverb)? “they will pick out your eyes”… (“Cría cuervos, y te comerán los ojos.”)

I found charming the construction of the message by discontinuous fragments of images and texts and, of course, I couldn’t avoid thinking about the many contacts that it had with the symbolic and emblematic practices of the Renaissance and the Baroque.

The image of the eye and the (now we know) crow was, then, a proclamation that implied a warning and, in fact, it was an accusation. The cautious and vigilant eye of the emblems and hieroglyphs, plays a double role here: to be the sentinel, and, at the same time, the possible victim, of the black crows that prowl about. And, in that passionate tension, it looks at us, transmitting its message with profound power.

In any case, it might be pointed out that the difference of proportions is eloquent. The enormous eye leaves the traitorous crow in an inferior situation. Thus the vigilant role of that prudent eye acquires a greater importance which cautions us.

But these graffiti weren’t the only interesting ones in this my touristic visit to my own Department. The following image completely entrapped me and made me think of the refined symbolic representation that was arising among the students.


I read it as an anti-imperialist proclamation (in a very wide sense: the union of the little ones that are able to stand up to the mighty), but undoubtedly many interpretations can be given to it. What is doubtless is that the old and well known aphorism (“The big fish eats the small one”) is reversed thanks to the power afforded by union (we all know that “Union is power.”)

Unlike the up to now mysterious image of the crow and the eye, with no explicit attribution, we know that this other is the logo adopted by a student political group, La Juntada.

The condensation and expression of concept is very well achieved and, though I was told that the image was not created by them (maybe this logo can be found in other parts of the Planet, and it would be interesting to find out in what specific function), I thought that they had achieved a perfect fulfillment. (This is where they got the idea, they told me when I contacted them; and these / these / these are other places in the Internet where I found the motif.)

Thus, modern conception counterproposes an attitude which transforms reality (by acting on what is given by nature, we could say) to the traditional, conservative position such as this emblem of Sebastián de Covarrubias (Centuria I, emblema 88 de sus Emblemas morales, Madrid, 1610)

The water is so fertile that if there were / peace among the fishes inhabiting it / then it would pour them on the earth / in a great abundance every day. / But as they are all incited by gluttony / each of them makes great effort / to eat the other: and the bigger ones / usually swallow the minor ones alive.

The Latin proverb quoted by Erasmus in his Chiliades [the Adagia] says thus: Magni pisces, parvos comedunt. The big fishes eat the small ones. And taken in a moral sense, it is the rich who fatten on the sustenance of the poor and of those less powerful. The emblem is clear, and the motto MAIORA MINORIBVS OBSVNT (The bigger ones block the road of the smaller ones) is taken from Book 9 of the Eclogues of Battista Mantovano.

It is true that Covarrubias employs a certain sorrowful tone on verifying such a harsh truth and we are aware of the denouncement of the rich “that fatten on the sustenance of the poor”. But in any case there is no doubt that this example of the fish is shown as something impossible to modify. Moreover, I cannot completely decide whether what the epigram expresses about the abundance of fish that we would have on land if the fact that the fish eat each other did not exist, is something positive – there would be more food for men – or negative – fish would invade us and take over power!)

How many transformations have taken place so that if formerly, nature was used as an allegory of human society, now nature is transformed ironically and allegorically with the advances of social organization. Man imposes his cosmos on the world and no longer sees himself as a microcosmos.

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Jeroglíficos en Filo…

Julia from Borges’ country has sent us an observation together with the consequent considerations worthy of her renowned compatriot.


El ojo, símbolo de la vigilancia, se me apareció con fuerza al bajar por una escalera lateral de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Nada decía, ni nada explicaba esta pintada extraña en la pared, que resultaba muy diferente de las imágenes de agrupaciones políticas que surcaban las paredes en mis tiempos de estudiante.

No es que ya no pise más ese edificio de mi facultad, pero ahora voy una vez por semana y sólo dos horas para dar mi clase y volverme a las apuradas. Así es que hacía años que no recorría los pasillos del edificio con el diletantismo y la tranquilidad del estudiante —que no sabe de su tranquilidad mientras lo es—. Pero el mes pasado volví a ser estudiante en el edificio de la facultad donde cursé el grado y, para mejor inmersión y concentración de la experiencia, fui cinco horas todas las tardes durante una semana entera. Todo este excursus, para intentar transmitir mi ánimo de descubrimiento reminiscente cuando me topé con la imagen de marras: un ojo con un ave.

Un ojo que, aunque hecho con aerosol y trazos muy básicos, me hizo pensar en los ojos que aparecían en los jeroglíficos de aire egipcio que tanto gustaban en el Renacimiento o los que solían representarse en diversas composiciones emblemáticas (que el dueño de este blog sabrá ilustrar y ejemplificar mejor que yo).

All right, to answer Julia’s challenge, here you are as an example the well known Emblem 16 of Andrea Alciato: Ne credas (Don’t be an easy-believer), from the 1591 Leiden edition by Plantin.

Al estar en ese ánimo renacentista, imaginé el ave que lo acompañaba —sin prestar mucha atención a su forma tal vez— como algún tipo de halcón, un remedo callejero del Horus egipcio.

Bajé las escaleras preguntándome qué haría eso ahí y cuál era su sentido. Y la respuesta llegó acompañándome en el descenso (¿catábasis?). En el siguiente descanso de aquella escalera lateral la misma pintura negra, pero especialmente la misma ave hecha con esténcil que ahora venía con su anclaje “Cría cuervos”.


¡Claro, era un cuervo! y ¿qué hacen los cuervos cuando uno los cría (según el refrán español)?: “…te sacarán los ojos” .

La construcción del mensaje mediante fragmentos discontinuos de imágenes y textos me pareció encantadora y por supuesto no pude dejar de pensar en los muchos contactos que tenía con las prácticas simbólicas o emblemáticas del Renacimiento y el Barroco.

La imagen del ojo y el (ahora sabemos) cuervo era entonces una proclama que llamaba a la advertencia y se trataba en definitiva de una denuncia. El ojo cauteloso y prudente de los emblemas y jeroglíficos, aquí cumple una doble función: ser el vigía y al mismo tiempo la víctima posible de los negros cuervos que andan por ahí. Y en esa tensión patética nos mira transmitiéndonos su mensaje con una fuerza profunda.

De todas formas, habría que notar también que las diferentes proporciones son elocuentes. El ojo enorme deja en inferioridad de condiciones al cuervo traidor. Con lo cual cobra mayor peso el papel vigilante de ese ojo prudente que nos advierte.

Pero esos graffiti no fueron los únicos interesantes en mi visita turística a la propia facultad. Esta otra imagen me atrapó totalmente y me hizo pensar en la refinada representación simbólica que se estaba dando entre los estudiantes.


Yo lo leí como un alegato anti-imperialista (en sentido bien amplio: la unión de los menores que puede enfrentar al poderoso), pero sin duda se le pueden dar muchas interpretaciones. De lo que no cabe duda es de que la sentencia conocida y de larga tradición (“El pez grande se come al chico”) se utiliza invertida gracias al poder que da la unión (todos sabemos que “La unión hace la fuerza”).

A diferencia de la hasta ahora misteriosa imagen del cuervo y el ojo, sin atribución explícita, sabemos de esta otra que es el logo que adoptó una agrupación política estudiantil, La Juntada.

La condensación y expresión del concepto es muy lograda y, si bien me han dicho que la imagen no fue creada por ellos (quizás alguien encuentre este logo en otras partes del planeta, y sería interesante ver con qué función específica), me pareció que alcanzaron una realización perfecta. (De aquí sacaron ellos la idea, me dijeron cuando los contacté para consultarlos; y éstos / éstos / éstos son otros lugares de Internet donde encontré el motivo.)

De esta forma, la concepción moderna contrapone una toma de posición transformadora de la realidad (de acción sobre lo dado por la naturaleza, diríamos) que responde a la posición tradicional y conservadora, como puede ser la de este emblema de Sebastián de Covarrubias (Centuria I, emblema 88 de sus Emblemas morales, Madrid, 1610)



Es verdad que Covarrubias tiene un cierto tono de pesar por la comprobación de una verdad tan dura y no se nos escapa la denuncia a los ricos “que engordan con la sustancia de los pobres”. Pero de todos modos no hay duda de que este ejemplo de los peces se muestra como algo imposible de cambiar (incluso no me termino de decidir si lo expresado en el epigrama sobre la abundancia de peces sobre la tierra que tendríamos si no se diera esta situación de comerse unos a otros, es algo positivo —habría más alimento para los hombres— o negativo —¡los peces nos invadirían y tomarían el poder!).

Cuántas transformaciones se han dado para que si antes se usaba la naturaleza como alegoría de la sociedad humana, ahora la naturaleza se transforma irónica y alegóricamente con los avances de la organización social. El hombre impone su cosmos al mundo y ya no se ve a sí mismo como un microcosmos.

•

Merry Christmas

“Merry Christmas! – We love you! – I’m waiting for you. – Only you and me.”
Budapest, Kőbánya, on the side of the street visible from the windows of the prison.

“He has sent me
to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind
to set free those who are oppressed
to announce the year of the Lord’s favor…

Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

(Isaiah 61:1 and Luke 4:18)

Night of the bards

Twenty-second of december, the longest night, the darkest day of the year. In Russia they traditionally organize on this day the Международный Праздник бардовской песни, the International feast of the bards. Of the bards, who in the dark days of the last decades kept alive hope, individuality and poetry with their songs.

бард • bard, poet-singer. In the 1960-80s some poets achieved an unparalleled popularity. They, accompanied by themselves on guitar (=> гитара) recited their songs, originally not intended for the stage, whose text with its individual, philosophical and often satirical tone differed in a good sense from contemporary “official” literature (cf. => авторская песня), and thus their public was inclined to see some dissidence even between the “harmless” lines. Their songs, which were often forbidden, spread on worn out cassettes and in handwritten or stenciled copies (=> самиздат), and as they were musically not too complicated, thus they were often sung on parties and at the camp-fire. The three most renowned bards were => Высоцкий В. С., => Окуджава Б. Ш. and Галич А. А. (András Soproni: Orosz kulturális szótár [Russian cultural dictionary], Budapest 2008, 35.)


On the infinitely wide Russian web you can find an infinite number of sites about the bards and their “author’s songs.” We can name some of them almost by chance: the song archive of bards.ru, the text collection of lib.ru, or the increasing discography of nnm.ru.

авторская песня • author’s song. A large group of vocal works that have not belonged to “official” works, and in several cases they were born in opposition to that.
They count among their forerunners the student songs, revolutionary marches and prisoners’ songs of the 19th century (cf. => Стело, товарищи, в ногу; => Славное море, священный Байкал), as well as several songs of the => гражд. в. [the civil war of 1918-22] and of the => ВОВ [the Great Patriotic War of 1941-5].
The “proper” author’s song is the product of the => оттепель [the “thaw” of the late 1950s], when the intellectual and physical scope for action grew larger in the country. It was in this period that the poetry of songs, in which the art of the later => барды was rooted, spread among the masses. The authors of these songs – several ten thousand people – wrote for themselves about their innermost feelings, and their public was usually the circle of their confident friends (cf. => кухонные разговоры). This deep personal involvement and sincerity awaked the suspicion of the political power, but the phenomenon was so widespread that there was no chance to control or to prohibit it. Thus the role of the political power was limited to that of the mute observer, and they only made efforts to “filter out” the songs and authors considered by them as the “most dangerous”.
The author’s song is many-coloured both by genre and content, on a wide range from the sentimental works similar to romance (=> романс) to the ironical and satirical pieces also employing motives of country, jazz and blues. They are relatively easy to tell from superficial and stereotypical estrade songs, but hardly different from the songs of such original rock bands like the => Машина времени or => Аквариум.
In spite of the distrustful official reception, already in 1959 six universities organized the first parade of student song authors, and after the middle of the 60s more and more клубы смуденческой песни (КСП) – student song clubs were founded. Later the word студенческий was changed for самодеятельный – amateur, and later for авторский – author’s. The membership of such clubs was rarely above twenty people, but more and more frequently meetings with a large number of participants were organized.
The intimate author’s song even today finds its place, as it were a counterweight of the hubbub of the political scene and TV shows. The new challenge it has to confront is that these songs now enter into TV, radio, studios, and they become wares. It is a great question whether this kind of professionalism will not kill the genre itself. (András Soproni: Orosz kulturális szótár [Russian cultural dictionary], Budapest 2008, 10-11.)


In this festive occasion I want to link the song Prayer (or Prayer of François Villon) by Bulat Okudzhava, the creator of this genre. Although his follower and friend Vladimir Vysocki is much better known, I love the dreamlike songs of Okudzhava which usually sing about a very simple situation with much love, solidarity and absurd metaphors.

Окуджава Булат Шалвович • Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava (1924-1997). A Russian poet of Georgian (=> грузины) origin, => бард and writer. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood on the Arbat (=> Арбат). His parents, both high functionaries of the Communist party, were arrested at the end of the 1930s, his father executed, while his mother sent to a lager. He went to the front in 1942 as a volunteer, he was wounded, and in 1945 disbanded. Between 1945 and 1950 he studied at the faculty of arts of the university of Tbilisi, and then taught in a village school around Калуга until the rehabilitation of his mother, when he was permitted to return to Moscow. His first volume of poems was published in Kaluga. From the 1950s he wrote songs (=> авторская песня) that he himself presented with guitar accompaniment, first in a narrow circle of friends, and later in front of a larger public. This phenomenon was new, and although his songs gained in popularity, the official criticism refused for a long time to acknowledge his talent. In the 1960-70s more and more => барды followed his example, and a veritable movement was formed around him. His novels were remarkable as well: his short novel based on his war memories was followed by several ones focusing on the history of the 19th century.
Official criticism accused him with the lack of “great citizen’s themes,” with pacifism, or with unhistorical attitude, but his public was enthusiastic about him. His simple songs, with melodies easy to remember, but with texts rich in symbols and in mystical-romantical images, whose “heroes” were the passengers of a trolleybus, a trumpeter, a paper soldier, a circus acrobat, an ant of Moscow, had plenty of hidden meanings for the readers and the public of the 70s, but they sound extremely vivid even today, especially in the performance of the author himself.
Okudzhava was a representative and idol of the Russian => интеллигенция of the 1960s and 70s. Although he very rarely declared his opinion in actual questions, his word had an extreme weight and was widely heard. His memory is kept alive, amongst other, by his memorial house (дом-музей) in Peredelkino (Переделкино) near to => Москва. Here they regularly organize feasts on his birthday, the 9th of May. (András Soproni: Orosz kulturális szótár [Russian cultural dictionary], Budapest 2008, 269.)

The first version of the Prayer is the one that you can often hear on CD recordings.


Bulat Okudzhava: Молитва Франсуа Вийона (Prayer / Prayer of François Villon)

The second version was performed by Okudzhava on his Toronto concert, on October 2, 1994, after his 70th birthday, three years before his death. It is good to see how clear and unsophisticated he became by the end.

Пока земля еще вертится, пока еще ярок свет, Господи, дай же ты каждому, чего у него нет. Умному дай голову, трусливому дай коня, дай счастливому денег, и не забудь про меня. Пока земля еще вертится, Господи, твоя власть, дай рвущемуся к власти навластвоваться всласть. Дай передышку щедрому хоть до исхода дня, Каину дай раскаяние, и не забудь про меня. Я знаю, ты все умеешь, я верую в мудрость твою, как верит солдат убитый, что он проживает в раю! Как верит каждое ухо тихим речам твоим, Как веруем и мы сами, не ведая, что творим. Господи мой, Боже, зеленоглазый мой! Пока земля еще вертится, и это ей странно самой, пока ей еще хватает времени и огня, дай же ты всем понемногу, и не забудь про меня!

As long as the earth keeps turning as long as the light is bright My Lord, give to everyone the things he does not have. Give a good head to the wise a good horse to the coward money to the lucky one and don’t forget about me. As long as the earth keeps turning My Lord, my ruler, give that he who wishes to rule might rule his own wishes. Give a break to the generous at least until the end of the day give repentance to Cain and don’t forget about me. I know you know everything and I believe in your wisdom as the soldier killed believes that he would survive in Paradise as every ear believe to your silent words as we ourselves believe not seeing what we’re doing. Lord, my God my green-eyed one! as long as the earth keeps turning not knowing why it does so as long as there is left enough time and fire: give something to everyone and don’t forget about me.

If others will like these songs too, I will happily translate more of them.

The Casino of Kőbánya

Mert minden, ami elmúlott: egész. És minden, ami itt van: csonka, tört. S az elmúlásnak halvány áldozatja, amelyre bátran azt mondjuk mi: nincs – a végtelenség finom művű szobra, min egy kicsinyke karc sem látható.	For everything that has passed is entire. And all that is here is mutilated and broken. And the pale victim of evanescence of which we boldly say: it does not exist – is a subtle statue of the infinite on which you cannot see a single scratch.
Dezső Kosztolányi, Az árkádok alatt (Under the arcades) 1905

The Hermann Café on the ground floor of the Casino of Kőbánya around 1910

My friend lives in Zugló, the 14th district of Budapest, in front of the metro terminus. From his fourth floor window he can see the panorama of Kőbánya, the 10th district of Budapest with the church of Saint Ladislaus built in “Hungarian Moorish style” around 1890 by Ödön Lechner, the Weapon Factory (in my times it was forbidden to call it by this name, and now as it is permitted, they do not produce weapons any more), the long row of Historicist style breweries along Maglódi street, the wireless tower at Határ street from whose crow-nest Bumbó watches the waves of Telecom. The world of my childhood. “Now I will really talk Eszter into going to that Chinese restaurant at Kőbányai street,” my friend says dreamily, “we only have to find a car to that.” That restaurant is only six tram stops from them.

The Wednesday Table Society of Kőbánya in the early 20th century

My uncle, an engineer in the Iron Works of Miskolc in northern Hungary was a zealous excursionists beside his several other civil pursuits as a stamp collector, violinist, ornithologist and local historian. At a section of the Blue Tour route in the Zemplén mountain where the border stones painted in Hungarian and in Czechoslovakian colors respectively run in chassé at the two sides of the road, he pointed down to the former Hungarian city of Kassa (Košice) encircled by a light fog on the Slovakian side: “I have seen it so many times from here above that it is already time to finally go and visit it.” He did not visit it until his death.

The Male Choir of Kőbánya. “Besides them, we also have to mention the Singing Circle of the
Ganz Waggon Factory, the Steel Voice Singing Society of Kőbánya, the National Song
Circle of Kőbánya, the «Ambition» Singing and Literary Society, as well as
the Choir of the Iron and Steel Workers of Kőbánya founded in 1904
and active even today.” (Buzás Kálmán: Volt egyszer egy
kaszinó. Rekviem egy épületért (There was once
a casino. Requiem for a building),
2005)

This is how most people in Budapest look at the far away 10th district encircled by the black fog of Socialist industry. And this is why I make all efforts to explain what was my city, Kőbánya, which had developed independently of the nine other “ancient” districts of Pest, before… before, similarly to so many historical cities in the Eastern block, its downtown was destroyed and it was transformed into a Socialist industrial zone, so much that the only memory it recalls in most people is:

“I was born in Kőbánya, I was also grown up there…”

A splash-guard with the image of Gyula Deák Bill, a renowned blues and protest song singer of the ’80s and the famous first line from his “Kőbánya Blues”

What a good luck that Kálmán Buzás, with the support of the Pataky Cultural Centre and the Polish Minority Society – an important column of Kőbánya – started to publish the “Kőbánya Fascicles” that give at least some hint to the rest of Budapest what this unknown and already unknowable world once was. The first volume of the Fascicles – There was once a casino: Requiem for a building – was dedicated to the former Casino of Kőbánya, and rightly so.

The center of Kőbánya in 1910 on the map of Budapest

Kőbánya sprouted from several seeds, and each of them is reminded by a historical building today. The most important of them was the Óhegy (Old hill) with its renowned wine-culture about which we will write more in a next post. The local vineyard owners – who counted among them also Lipót Rottenbiller, the most famous Mayor of Budapest – built in 1844 the Romantic style Csősztorony (Vineyard-guard Tower) and the Baroque Conti Chapel (marked on the above map at “Káp[olna] tér,” that is “Chapel Square.” Another important seed of the district was the “Dreher Empire” at the feet of the vineyard hill, with one of the most important breweries of Hungary established in 1862 by Anton Dreher, with its elegant housing estate for workers, and with a number of more breweries set up later along Maglódi street: these are remembered by the gorgeous Neoclassicist Dreher Villa and eleven breweries built in Romantic-Historicist style that are now national monuments.


The third seed was the “entertainment grove” organized at the railway station of Kőbánya. The first railway line was built in 1847, and soon it became a favorite amusement of the burghers of Budapest to go out by train to one of the nearest railway stations where they passed the day in the green. So from the city walls of Pest to the village of Rákospalota in the north (today a district of Budapest) a number of “entertainment groves” were created in front of the railway stations, whose traces still can be discovered here and there. In Kőbánya it was established by the “Pest-Kőbánya Entertainment Grove Share Company.” It is recalled still today by the name of Liget tér (Grove square, today a bus terminus) at the railway station, as well as the Hölgy (Lady) and Úri (Gentleman, from 1875 Füzér, that is Garland) streets at its two sides, whose original German names – Damenpromenade and Herrenpromenade – well attest their original function. The civil center of Kőbánya was born and grew around the entertainment grove. The monuments of this part are the Art Nouveau houses, the wonderful Art Nouveau synagogue in Cserkesz street, and the already mentioned Saint Ladislaus Church. And at that time they also included the beautiful Romantic-Historicist building of the Casino of Kőbánya, “the most elegant building of the district” according to the contemporaries.

The restaurant of Georg Roith at the end of the 19th century

The Social Club of Kőbánya was founded in 1879 by the industrialists and merchants of Kőbánya in their preferred restaurant of Georg Roith, which still functions as “Torockó Restaurant” at today’s Martinovics Square. They commissioned in 1899 Ferenc Brein (1818-1879) to build the Casino of Kőbánya in Füzér (Garland) street, the former Gentleman street. Brein was a renowned architect, the builder of the above mentioned Vineyard-guard Tower in Kőbánya and the Neogothic-Romantic-Historicist Pekáry House in the downtown of Pest, where, accidentally, Dávid Kaufmann had his flat. So small is the world.

The Pekáry House in Király street

The ground floor of the Casino had at its Füzér street corner the Hermann Casino Café (see the photo at the beginning of this post) which was famous for its biliards competitions and for the long black moustache of its popular headwaiter István Csillag. At the other corner opened the florist shop of Anna Tarnay, and between both the pharmacy of István Fáczányi. The furniture of exceptionally high standard of this latter was made by the same local cabinet-maker Béla Valnicsek who also made the furniture designed by Ödön Lechner for the Saint Ladislaus church.


“The Fáczány pharmacist dynasty: Ármin Fáczányi Ármin (1827, Novály, Nyitra county - 1891, Budapest-Kőbánya) graduates in Viena in 1856 in pharmaceutics, although originally he prepared to become a priest. He takes part in the War of Independence of 1848 as a sub-lieutenant. He opens the first pharmacy of Kőbánya in 1870. An outstanding supporter of Kőbánya. – István (I.) Fáczányi (1866, Budapest-Kőbánya - 1955, Budapest-Kőbánya), the son of Ármin Fáczányi. He studied in the Bánya square school. He graduated in pharmaceutics in Budapest in 1893. He continues the professional and political activity of his father. – Dr. István (II.) Fáczányi, the grandson of Ármin Fáczányi continues their profession from 1936 until July 28, 1950, the “Black Friday” when pharmacies were nationalized in all the country.”

Invitation of the Scientific, Literary and Artistic Commission of the Casino of Kőbánya to the scientific lecture “The foundations and directions of our development” by Dr. Gyula Weisz

The Casino gave home to a theatre, a library and a large number of clubs and associations: the Kőbánya Circle which watched over the pureness of public life, the Kőbánya Male Chorus, the Humanitas Charitable Trust, the Rifle, Health Assurance and Burial Society, the Kőbánya 1848 Independence Circle, the Wednesday Table Society which embraced the most eminent personalities of Kőbánya, the Kőbánya Bowling and Hockey Clubs and many other. Scholarly and literary lectures were regularly held in the Casino by invited guest lecturers.


This is an image that I also remember. Strangely, even the crookedness of the trees. In my childhood the ground floor of the former Casino – at that time the district head office of the Patriotic Popular Front, the mass organization of the Communist Party – gave home to the district library. The first library where I was registered.


They started to eliminate the old downtown of Kőbánya at the beginning of the 1970s. On the place of the destroyed old houses was built the monstrous Socialist housing estate of the recently opened Kőrösi Csoma street which wiped out even the traces of the old street structure.

The block of the casino was left for the last. We played football in front of the already evacuated building, and the ball fell in the cellar window of the adjoining house. We climbed down to bring it out. Through the open door of the cellar we could go out to the courtyard. Every flat was open, the furnitures taken away, but their content, the many old books, letters, photos, glass negatives and others were left there scattered about over the floor, like after a bomb attack. We kept taking them home for weeks in the suitcases found there. I even remember the name of a former tenant, Colonel Vilmos Rajner-Micsinyei. His fin de siècle baedekers of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Riviera, Tuscany, Southern Tirol and the Dolomites, Egypt and Greece in German and French stand here here on the shelf beside me while I’m writing this.


“It used to be a bourgeois casino. Only the privileged was permitted to enter,” wrote about the Casino of Kőbánya the article of the district newspaper in 1973. “Who remembered in 1973,” comments it Kálmán Buzás in his Requiem “that the casino had no aristocratic members and what is more, it was principally visited by the common people. The inhabitants of Kőbánya heard the news about its planned demolition with an immeasurable indignation. They tried to obstacle it with a large number of petitions, but in vain. In the spring of 1976 it was finally blown up.”

Although this was absolutely unnecessary, for the housing estate had been already completed. Even today, after more than thirty years there is only an empty ground on the place of the casino. Only the habitués of the nearby drink shop fill in their time with standing here with a glass of beer in the hand and gazing at the people crossing it to the nearby bus stop. And one of the crooked trees is still standing here too.

In the flat of Zugló, from whose window we are looking at the tower of the Saint Ladislaus church, there are an old cupboard, a table and three chairs carefully grouped in the hall. “This is all that is left from a middle-class flat,” my friend nods toward them.

Gaude felix Hungaria

O beata Ungheria! se non si lascia più malmenare! Oh happy Hungary! if she escapes further abuse! Dante, Paradiso, XIX.142-143.

Percentage of GDP invested in UNIVERSITIES
EU average 1.3%
Danemark 1.7%
Poland 1.6%
…
Hungary 1.1%
…
Italy-Slovakia 0.9%
=> WE ARE THE LAST ONES!

This tacepao requesting more money for Italian universities was photographed by Wang Wei at the university of Torino where he was a guest professor during the student manifestations of the last week. Finally a list where Hungary is not the last item, or: the garden of the neighbor is always greener. And in these days, with the Slovakian economy flying high and with the imminent introduction of the euro in Slovakia it is an especially pleasant balm on the aching Hungarian national pride to see our northern neighbor at the lowest point of the shame board, naši najhorší.

We should better not consider it more closely that the name of Ungheria is probably standing there between twice three dots as a negative rhetoric example, as to indicate the level of absurdity: “we are even deeper than this.”

Wang Wei has also made a great antiquarian bookshop tour in Torino. We hope to see his photoreportage here soon. The picture below he has sent ahead in any case suggests that there are a few things anyway in which Italy does not leg behind us.