Soviet photo, 1926

Eighty-five years ago, in April 1926 appeared the first issue of the journal Советское Фото – Soviet Photo which, according to its subtitle, was “dedicated to the problems of amateur photography and photo-reportage”. As the anonymous author of the introduction entitled “For Soviet photography” explains, “photography recently took its place in every field of life, from technology and industry through education, voluntary societies, propaganda and agitation to national geography and sport”, and “has raised the attention of ten or rather hundred thousands of actual and future amateur Soviet photographers”. This monthly – and soon semimonthly – journal undertook their technical and visual education, and performed this function for seventy years, until its end in 1996.

A suburb in Moscow and the Kremlin from the first issue of the journal
(the rest of the photos are also from there)

The first edition begins with an editorial by the cultural politician and Lenin’s old comrade-in-arms Anatoly Lunacharsky, which announces that photography should become a part of the basic education. “The time is not far when photography, which many now consider as a mere entertainment, will belong – as technical, scientific and artistic photography – to the basic skills of every citizen of our country.”

Moscow photographers

“At that moment a cry was heard: Menshov, the photographer fell from the top of the baggage-cart. He had climbed up there to take a snapshot of the departure. Menshov laid for a few seconds on the platform, keeping his camera above his head, then he got on his feet, anxiously checked the lock, and then he climbed to the top of the cart again.
– Did you fall down? – asked Uhudshansky, leaning from the train’s window with a newspaper in his hand.
– It’s nothing – the photographer said contemptuously. – You should have seen when I fell from the tower of the roller coaster in the Park of Culture.”

(Ilf-Petrov: The Golden Calf, 1931)

The majority of the journal’s articles serve to this goal. The readers are offered practical guidance on creating their own home photo laboratory, on acquiring equipment, lamps and chemicals, on development and retouching. Already the first issue has an editorial on “The tasks of our photographic industry” which was obviously not only an information to the readers, but also a demand to those responsible for the field.



Every issue dedicated about one page to the most recent foreign photographic products. A peculiar album of the history of photo technology could be compiled just from these pages.


Several articles give guidance to the opportunities of photography in the study of nature, industrial work, the army, in hospitals, in provincial towns and villages, and even in the anti-alcohol campaign.

A modern reinforced concrete building under construction. Its atmosphere is strangely akin
to those industrial ruin photos, published nowadays on Russian sites, which
represent the same structures after their decay in the 90s.

Although Lenin was no longer alive, nevertheless such a pioneering undertaking could not start without his blessing. After Lunacharsky’s article, L. Leonidov, the Kremlin’s photographer publishes a string of anecdotes entitled “How we photographed Lenin”:

“In 1919 in the Kremlin’s Mitrofan Room V. Ilyich recorded a speech with a phonograph. He spoke about the Hungarian revolution [of March 21, 1919]. V. Ilyich began his speech like this:
“When I talked by radio with Comrade Radio”, and he repeated: “with Comrade Radio Kun” (instead of the correct Béla Kun)… – and in that moment he broke out in laughter. The wax cylinder recorded both “Radio Kun” and the laughter of V. Ilyich.
Comrade Bronshtein, the leader of the recording stopped the phonograph and asked him:
– Vladimir Ilyich, do you want to hear you have just said? – And he switched on the membrane. The wax cylinder accurately reproduced both the sound, and the laughter as well as “Radio Kun”.
– That’s amazing! – V. Ilyich said. – This is the first time I hear my own voice. And how peculiar that it is no Frenchman or Jew who is talking. – It is indeed well known that V. Ilyich spoke with a strong burr.”

The journal lays particular stress on the use of the photo in the press. Already the first issue makes a detailed presentation of the factory wall-newspaper made with amateur photos, and also provides two in-depth articles: “How to take pictures for newspapers and journals” and, from the other side, “The photo from the editor’s perspective: which photos to take for a newspaper.” In addition, in each issue one or more photographers speak about their work done for the press.

Model for a factory wall-newspaper

The last pages publish the results of the monthly photo contests announced among the readers. And even the contemporary Photoshop techniques had a page of their own.

A huge lion sleeping on the Strastnaya square in Moscow, on April 1st, Thursday afternoon

Russian press photography was of a very high standard since the end of the 19th century – we will write about it later – so the magazine had no difficulty in publishing several good pictures from professionals in every issue, to encourage its readers, as it were.

P. Grokhovsky (photographer of Rabochaya Gazeta): The Bolshoy Teatr

S. Fridlyand: Washerwomen on the bank of the river Moscow

S. Fridlyand: In the nursery

Recently we came across a few dozens of the early numbers of the journal. From time to time we will publish a bunch of pictures from them.

G. Tkachenko: Bazaar in the inner city of Samarkand

“They sat into an open cab. Meanwhile, their amiable guide at every moment forced them to look out from under the parasol, by showing the completed or half-finished buildings and the lots where soon they will build others. Koreyko looked angrily on Bender. Ostap turned away and cried out:
– What a wonderful Asian bazaar! Just like in Baghdad!
– On the seventeenth we will start to sweep it off – their guide said. – A hospital and the Cooperative Center will be built on its place.
– And do you not regret to disrupt this attractive and exotic picture? This is a veritable Baghdad!
– Extremely picturesque… – Koreyko sighed.
The young man got angry.
– For you, strangers, it might seem picturesque, but we have to live here!
– And how are we here… with that kind of… Asian-style little pubs? You know, where they play lute and flute? – the great combinator asked impatiently.
– We have burned them out – the young man replied nonchalantly. – It should have been eradicated long ago, this leprosy, these centers of infection. We have just liquidated the last nest of vice, the Moonlight Inn.”

(Ilf-Petrov: The Golden Calf, 1931)

Manitou's Gift

Viera Bombová (1932-2005) was a master of the dreamlike Slovak book illustrations of the 60s and 70s. Of this poetic surrealism assimilating many elements of archaic and folk art, a main source was Vincent Hložník who in the 1950s educated at the Bratislava art school a great generation of young illustrators – we will also publish from their graphics. This trend certainly appeared at that time also in the Slovak art life, at exhibitions and galleries, in albums and on the walls of the homes of intellectuals, but we know little about it. What reached out to us were mostly the book illustrations, thanks to the publishing industry of the period which supported ex officio the mutual translation of the products of the brotherly Socialist countries.


Bombová’s most richly illustrated work is the collection of Slovak folk tales Janko Gondášik (Swine herdsman Janko) compiled at the turn of the century by Samo Czambel, whose pictures – we will also publish them soon – often remind you of the paintings of Lajos Vajda or Endre Bálint working at the same time on the other, Hungarian side of the Danube. The elements of Slovak folk art appear naturally on these images, and later, curiously, they mix just as naturally in the American Native or Pacific motifs in the folk tale books of the respective people.

Manitou ajándéka. Indián mesék (Manitou’s Gift. Native American folk tales),
Bratislava-Budapest, 1968

Joseph Bruchac: Ellis Island Beyond the red bricks of Ellis Island where the two Slovak children who became my grandparents waited the long days of quarantine, after leaving the sickness, the old Empires of Europe, a Circle Line ship slips easily on its way to the island of the tall woman, green as dreams of forests and meadows waiting for those who’d worked a thousand years yet never owned their own

Like millions of others, I too come to this island, nine decades the answerer of dreams Yet only one part of my blood loves that memory. Another voice speaks of native lands within this nation. Lands invaded when the earth became owned. Lands of those who followed the changing Moon, knowledge of seasons in their veins.

(The Remembered Land. An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1993)

Three generations

from a Russian family album.

Casual writings

Just some days ago I finished the Hungarian translation of Umberto Eco’s collected conference papers – or, as he calls them, “casual writings”: Costruire il nemico, “Constructing the enemy”. The source of the title was that personal experience of Eco when the Pakistani taxi driver in New York tried to place on his mental map the unfamiliar land of Italy by asking him who their traditional enemies are.

Believe or not, the same was asked of me two weeks ago by the taxi driver in Azerbaijan. It seems that besides the classical example of anthropology – when two New Guinean natives from two different tribes meet by chance, they must find at least one common ancestor, even if mythical, lest they should kill each other – a common enemy is also able to create harmony and patting on the back between strangers. For this truth we certainly do not have to go far, but the Caucasus has such long-established traditions of constructing the enemy that if Eco had been aware of them, he should have not reused his well known examples taken from Ginzburg, Wagner or Céline.


But this reuse is also part of the conference paper genre. The audience does not expect something radically new, they love if the evening is made homely by evoking what they have already read, and this is not against the will of Eco either. As he points it out in the introduction: “one of the virtues of a casual writing is that it does not force you to be original at any cost, but simply wants to entertain both him who speaks and who listens to him”. The themes and texts well known from the books of the previous years reemerge one after the other in the essays – probably also indicating on which book the master was just working –, such as the inventories of medieval church treasuries from On Beauty, the topoi of the enemy’s deformity from On Ugliness, Victor Hugo’s never ending lists and Gargantua’s games from The Infinity of Lists, the imaginary worlds and lost islands from Baudolino and The Island of the Day Before.


But Eco is also capable of new stunts with the old texts. In the lengthiest writing of this volume, which received the suggestive title Hugo, alas! he shows with quotations flowing over long pages how many rhetorical devices are used by Victor Hugo to create exaggeration and increase it beyond all imaginable borders, so that finally it becomes epic and sublime for the baffled and crushed reader. And in the following essay “I am Edmond Dantès!” Eco also tries to achieve something similar. After a detailed and delightful analysis on the most important rhetorical tool of the feuilletons, the unexpected recognition of the actors and its subclasses, he composes a collage from the big scenes of recognition in the works of Dumas, Hugo, Ponson du Terrail and others, running incessantly over ten pages. And this endless firework has a perfect effect also without any knowledge of the persons and the context: we read it with excitement, no matter how long it is.


The essay Velinas and silence, on the other hand, is only six pages long, nevertheless it makes the translator work hard, as he has to provide with a multitude of footnotes the memes referring to the Italian domestic affairs of 2009, beginning with the velinas featured in the title. This word, which originally meant the fine paper used for multiplication by typewriting – does it exist any more? – first changed its meaning during the years of Fascism when the “Ministry of People’s Culture” (MinCulPop) informed through such messages the editorials on what may and what may not be published. Henceforth, velina also meant such instructions from a higher place and in a figurative sense the very censorship as well. Later, from 1988 the TV show Striscia la notizia – which has by now grown into one of the most watched programs in Italy – set on the stage beautiful girls who, running on skates, delivered typewritten messages to the two comic-presenters, and consequently they were also called velinas. The meaning of the word was further expanded – and even the version velinismo created – in 2009, when Berlusconi’s party, quite cynically, nominated exclusively erotic actresses, singers, TV presenters and even reality show participants for the European parliamentary elections. Eco points out a deep relationship between the apparently disparate meanings of the word:

The velina once became in the journalist jargon a symbol of censorship, silence and disappearance. However, the velinas of today, as it is well known, are just the opposite of that: the icons of appearance and visibility, and even the symbols of fame achieved by mere visibility which are made prominent only by their appearance. So we have two forms of velinismo, which correspond to two forms of censorship. The first is censorship by silence, while the second by noise, the means of the latter being TV shows, media and so on. If the velinas of the past said: “To prevent deviant behavior, you must not talk about it”, modern velinismo says: “In order not to talk about deviant behavior, one must speak a lot about other things”. The noise that covers up reality.

But Eco would not be Eco if he had no surprise in store for the translator. The night before the completion of the translation two absolutely recent writings – one about the Wikileaks affair – came as an addition, thus increasing the timeliness of the volume. But I would have been surprised if it did not happen so. As I mentioned, the Italian publisher is editing the original text of Eco’s works while the translators work on the international versions, in order to publish it in all languages at the same time, and the master actively takes part in the process of the edition. So throughout the translation you can expect casual e-mails containing changes and additions which lends a specially Ecoesque meaning to the word velina.

Saul Wahl, king for a night

Alter Kacyzne: “Siddurim for sale (The Siddur is the daily prayer book)”

We have already published a plentiful selection from the photos made by Alter Kacyzne (1885-1941) in pre-WWII Poland. One-way, the source of the photos has now published two more photos with the note that these were the last ones she had. Both pictures have survived in the New York journal Forwerts, just as all those photos of Kacyzne which were not destroyed together with his Warsaw photo studio in 1942. The captions are also from the journal, although they were probably written by Kacyzne, just as Menachem Kipnis published his photos with his own captions in the same journal. The first photo represents a prayer book seller in Warsaw, while the second a man praying from an already purchased prayer book in Lublin, in the Saul Wahl Synagogue, shortly before the advent of the Sabbath.

Alter Kacyzne: “Lublin, 1924. The Saul Wahl Synagogue, the oldest in the city. Legend has that Saul Wahl, a Jew, was made king of Poland for twenty-four hours”

As a compensation for the few images, in the short time before the advent of the Sabbath let me tell you who was Saul Wahl, the wealthy Jew of Brest, who was elected king of Poland for a night.

Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł, the Polish-Lithuanian Grand Marshall and Prince Imperial in 1582 – exactly a hundred years after our Konrad Beck –, notwithstanding being a Calvinist, went on a two years long pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and in 1601 he published the story of his travels in Latin and Polish, which was also quoted in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. In this he relates that on the way home he also visited Rome where the Polish Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius and the Polish Jesuit Piotr Skarga successfully converted him to Catholicism. On the way heading north, around Padua he was attacked by bandits who completely looted him: so he had to find someone to ask for a loan for the remainder of the road.

Statue of Prince Mikołaj Radziwiłł in Keidan, from here (the photographer is a far away offspring of Saul Wahl!)

However, rabbi Pinchas of Anspach, a great-grandson of Saul Wahl described the circumstances of this episode slightly differently in the introduction of his Gedulath Shaul of 1734, also cited by the great raconteur Gustav Karpeles in his study of 1895 on the one-night reign:

So this prince journeyed in great state from land to land, until his purse was empty. Now, he chanced to be in Padua, and he resolved to unbosom himself to the rabbi, tell him that he was a great noble of the Polish land, and borrow somewhat to relieve his pressing need. Such is the manner of Polish noblemen. They permit shrewd and sensible Jews to become intimate with them that they may borrow from them, rabbis being held in particularly high esteem and favor by the princes and lords of Poland.

Well, shortly, Prince Radziwiłł requested a significant loan of the famous Rabbi Samuel Katzenellenbogen of Padua, who in turn asked him to visit his son Saul, who went to Brest to Talmud studies, from which it immediately becomes apparent how great the reputation of the Polish-Lithuanian Talmud schools was. When Prince Radziwiłł arrived to Brest, he summoned the young Katzenellenbogen,

and found him so wise and clever that he in every possible way attached the Jew to his own person, gave him many proofs of his favor, sounded his praises in the ears of all the nobles, and raised him to a high position.

In 1587, after the death of Stephen Báthory, Prince of Transylvania and King of Poland, the Polish nobility could not agree on the person of the new king. Besides the two large parties, the Zamoyski and the Zborowski families a number of minor candidates also went in the ring with the support of the Czar, Austria and Sweden. The electors appeared armed to the teeth in the castle of the Radziwiłłs on 18 August for the elections, but until late night they could not come to an agreement. However, the law required that the king should be chosen on the same day. Prince Radziwiłł therefore proposed to choose Saul for a night and to continue the debate the next day, which was done by acclamation: this is how Saul got his name Wahl (election). According to the legend, King Saul did not spend the night idle. As Rabbi Pinchas writes:

I heard from my father that they gave into his keeping all the documents in the royal archives, to which every king may add what commands he lists, and Wahl inscribed many laws and decrees of import favorable to Jews. One was that the murderer of a Jew like the murderer of a nobleman, was to suffer the death penalty.

Saul Wahl, the Jewish King. A card from a Polish historical deck of cards

The Polish historiographical tradition, however, does not know about the case, and the first reliable data on Saul Katzenellenbogen were reported only in the study of the Russian historian Bershadsky Еврей король польский (Восход 1889). Accordingly, already King Stephen Báthory delegated to him the salt monopoly in 1578, handed to him the famous Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow, and made him chief farmer of taxes in Poland. He was also confirmed in this office by Sigismund III in 1588. In 1589 he was raised to the high rank of sługa królewski, which made him and all his house exempt from any ordinary jurisdiction, and only the king could judge in his case. He also achieved that in the affairs of the Jews of Poland, instead of the Polish law, the much more favorable Magdeburg Law had to be applied.

Saul Wahl spent all his life in Brest, where he made a number of charitable foundations, schools and a synagogue that bore his name until its destruction in 1838. The other synagogue bearing his name in Lublin, which we see on Kacyzne’s photo, along the Podzamcze street in the old Jewish quarter under the castle was demolished by the Nazis together with the whole Jewish quarter through the prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp.

German patrols in the Jewish quarter of Lublin, May 1941 (Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-019-1229-31)

In 2006 a book by Neil Rosenstein was published on the genealogy of the most prominent 15th to 20th century Jewish families, devoting a large space to the descendants of Samuel Katzenellenbogen. This shows that although Saul Wahl was elected king for only one night, nevertheless among his offspring there have been several uncrowned kings such as the composer Félix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the cosmetic queen Helena Rubinstein as well as Karl Marx.

Lublin, the Saul Wahl Synagogue. Detail of an aerial photograph of 1930, from here

De Deir el-Bahari a Medinet Habu / From Deir el-Bahari to Medinet Habu

«Solo sobrevivirán fábulas»
“Only tales will survive”

Templo de Hatshepsut, en Deir el-Bahari • Temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari

“This tree was brought from Punt by Hatshepsut’s expedition which is depicted on the temple walls”

«¿Acaso ignoras, Asclepio, que Egipto es la imagen del cielo, o lo que es más exacto, la proyección y descenso aquí abajo de todo lo que es gobernado y puesto en movimiento en el cielo? De hecho, si hemos de decir la verdad, nuestra tierra es el templo del cosmos entero. Pero, como es conveniente que los hombres prudentes conozcan de antemano el porvenir, no es lícito que ignoréis esto: un tiempo ha de venir en que parecerá que los egipcios han sido fieles en vano a la divinidad, que su piadosa mente, su atenta devoción y toda su santa veneración se revele como ineficaz y estéril. Un tiempo ha de venir en que los dioses regresen con premura de la tierra al cielo y dejen abandonado a Egipto; un país que fue sede de prácticas religiosas se verá despojado de los dioses y ya nunca gozará de su presencia; pues los extranjeros asolarán este país y esta tierra mostrando desprecio por la religión y, lo que es más grave, prohibiendo con presuntas leyes y bajo penas prescritas, toda práctica religiosa, devoción o culto a los dioses, esta sagrada tierra, sede de sanuarios y de templos, se cubrirá entonces de tumbas y de cadáveres.»

“Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or, to speak more exactly, in Egypt all the operations of the powers which rule and work in heaven have been transferred to earth below? Nay, it should rather be said that the whole Kosmos dwells in this our land as in its sanctuary. And yet, since it is fitting that wise men should have knowledge of all events before they come to pass, you must not be left in ignorance of this: there will come a time when it will be seen that in vain have the Egyptians honoured the deity with heartfelt piety and assiduous service; and all our holy worship will be found bootless and ineffectual. For the gods will return from earth to heaven. Egypt will be forsaken, and the land which was once the home of religion will be left desolate, bereft of the presence of its deities. This land and region will be filled with foreigners; not only will men neglect the service of the gods, but, what is worse, they will prohibit with laws and under punishment all religious practice, devotion or cult of the gods. In that day will our most holy land, this land of shrines and temples, be filled with funerals and corpses.”

«¡Ay Egipto, Egipto!, de tu religión solo sobrevivirán fábulas y éstas increíbles para tus descendientes, las palabras que cuentan tus piadosos hechos solo permanecerán grabadas en las piedras; tu tierra se verá invadida por el escita, el indio o cualquier otro vecino bárbaro. Los dioses volverán al cielo, los hombres, abandonados, morirán en su totalidad y entonces, oh Egipto, privado de dioses y de hombres, te convertirás en un desierto.»

“O Egypt, Egypt, of thy religion nothing will remain but an empty tale, which thine own children in time to come will not believe; nothing will be left but graven words, and only the stones will tell of thy piety. Your land will be occupied by Scythians or Indians or by some such race from the barbarian countries thereabout. The gods will return to heaven, the people, left alone, will all die, and then, o Egypt, deprived of gods and people, you will become a desert.”

«A ti me dirijo, santísimo río, a ti te anuncio los hechos futuros. Una avenida de sangre te llenará hasta las orillas y te desbordará, y no solo tus divinas aguas, sino todas se verán profanadas por la sangre y desbordadas. El número de muertos superará en mucho al de vivos, y al superviviente solo por su idioma se le reconocerá como egipcio, porque por sus actos parecerá diferente.»

“To thee, most holy Nile, I cry, to thee I foretell that which shall be; swollen with torrents of blood, thou wilt rise to the level of thy banks, and thy sacred waves will be not only stained, but utterly fouled with gore. The dead will far outnumber the living; and the survivors will be known for Egyptians by their tongue alone, but in their actions they will seem to be men of another race.”

«¿Por qué lloras, Asclepio? Egipto ha de verse sometido a algo más grave y mucho peor que estas cosas, peores calamidades han de mancillarlo todavía. Egipto, el en otro tiempo santo y bien amado de la divinidad, la única fundación de los dioses sobre la tierra por su piedad, maestra de santidad y devoción, se convertirá en modelo de la impiedad más extremada. Y entonces, el cosmos, ya no será algo digno de admiración ni de reverencia para unos hombres hastiados de todo. Este cosmos que es bueno, nada mejor que él puede imaginarse que hubo, hay o habrá, correrá un grave peligro y se convertirá en una carga difícil de soportar para los hombres, que despreciarán y llegarán a odiar al cosmos entero —esta obra inimitable de Dios, gloriosa construcción ordenadamente dispuesta por la múltiple diversidad de las formas, instrumento de la voluntad divina que dispensa, sin envidia, todos los dones a su obra, ensamblaje, uno y diverso a la vez, en un solo conjunto, de todo lo que puede ser considerado digno de admiración, alabanza y amor—. Los hombres preferirán las tinieblas a la luz y juzgarán más útil la muerte que la vida. »

“Do you weep at this, Asclepius? There is worse to come; Egypt herself will have yet more to suffer; she will fall into a far more piteous plight; and this land, which once was holy, a land which loved the gods, and wherein alone, in reward for her devotion, the gods deigned to sojourn upon earth, a land which was the teacher of mankind in holiness and piety, this land will go beyond all in cruel deeds. And in that day men will be weary of life, and they will cease to think the universe worthy of reverent wonder and of worship. And so religion, the greatest of all blessings, for there is nothing, nor has been, nor ever shall be, that can be deemed a greater good, will be threatened with destruction; men will think it a burden, and will come to scorn it. They will no longer love this world around us, this incomparable work of God, this glorious structure which he has built, this sum of good made up of things of many diverse forms, this instrument whereby the will of God operates in that which be has made, ungrudgingly favouring man’s welfare, this combination and accumulation of all the manifold things that can call forth the veneration, praise, and love of the beholder. Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life.”

«Nadie alzará sus ojos al cielo. Al hombre piadoso se le considerará demente, al impío sabio, el loco furioso será tenido por valiente y el más malvado por hobre de bien. El alma y su doctrina de que es inmortal por naturaleza o que según se tiene por cierto que ha de alcanzar la inmortalidad, según yo os he enseñado, no solo dará risa sino que será considerada una fantasía de la soberbia. Quien se consagre a la religión de la mente, creedme, será reo de pena capital. Se instituirán unos nuevos derechos y una nueva ley. Ya no volverá a oírse, ni albergará la mente humana, nada santo ni piadoso, ni nada digno del cielo y de los seres celestes.»

“No one will raise his eyes to heaven; the pious will be deemed insane, and the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good. As to the soul, and the belief that it is immortal by nature, or may hope to attain to immortality, as I have taught you, all this they will mock at, and will even persuade themselves that it is false. Whoever will devote his mind to religion, believe me, will be guilty of capital punishment. New rights and new legislation will be instituted. No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven and of the gods of heaven, will be heard or believed.”

«Tras separarse, dolorosamente, los dioses de los hombres, solo quedarán sobre la tierra los ángeles malvados, esos que, unidos a los hombres, los empujan con violencia, infelices de ellos, a todo tipo de osadía malvada, a la guerra, al robo, al engaño y a todo lo que es contrario a la naturaleza del alma. Se desestabilizará la tierra, dejará de ser navegable el mar y el cielo se verá privado del curso de los astros y de la ruta de las estrellas. Enmudecerá, forzada al silencio, toda voz divina, se pudrirán los frutos de la tierra, estéril se volverá el suelo y el mismo aire languidecerá en una siniestra inacción.»

“And so the gods will depart from mankind, a grievous thing!, and only evil angels will remain, who will mingle with men, and drive the poor wretches by main force into all manner of reckless crime, into wars, and robberies, and frauds, and all things hostile to the nature of the soul. Then will the earth no longer stand unshaken, and the sea will bear no ships; heaven will not support the stars in their orbits, nor will the stars pursue their constant course in heaven; all voices of the gods will of necessity be silenced and dumb; the fruits of the earth will rot; the soil will turn barren, and the very air will sicken in sullen stagnation.”

«En esto consistirá la vejez del cosmos: impiedad, desorden y sinrazón de todo lo bueno.» Textos herméticos. Asclepio Madrid: Gredos, 2008, págs. 460-66. Trad. de Xavier Renau Nebot

“After this manner will old age come upon the world. Religion will be no more; all things will be disordered and awry; all good will disappear.” Corpus Hermeticum. Asclepius trad. by Walter Scott

El rostro de la reina Hatshepsut

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries - Epitafio para un ejército de mercenarios

These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth’s foundations fled Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. Their shoulders held the sky suspended; They stood, and earth’s foundations stay; What God abandoned, these defended, And saved the sum of things for pay.

Estos, cuando los cielos se caían y huían los cimientos de la tierra, siguieron su destino mercenario, tomaron su soldada, y ya estan muertos. Acarrearon con el firmamento; aguantaron, y aún la tierra aguanta; cuidaron lo que Dios abandonaba, y lo salvaron todo por dinero.

A. E. Housman - Versión de José Mª Micó

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

Estos, cuando los cielos se caían
y huían los cimientos de la tierra,
siguieron su destino mercenario,
tomaron su soldada, y ya estan muertos.

Acarrearon con el firmamento;
aguantaron, y aún la tierra aguanta;
cuidaron lo que Dios abandonaba,
y lo salvaron todo por dinero.

Medinet Habu

Colosos de Memnón • Colossi of Memnon

«Quiero describirte también la maravilla de Memnón, pues su arte era realmente extraordinario y superaba el poder de la mano humana. Había en Etiopía una imagen de Memnón [Calístrato se refiere a la estatua de la derecha de la foto], el hijo de Titono, realizada en mármol. Aun siendo mármol, no permanecía, sin embargo, encerrada en sus límites ni soportaba el silencio de su naturaleza, sino que, sin dejar de ser piedra, tenía la posibilidad de hablar. Saludaba, en efecto, a la Aurora, mostrando con su voz alegría y regocijándose ante la llegada de su madre, y después, al declinar la luz, emitía lastimosos y tristes gemidos ante su partida. No carecía el mármol de lágrimas, sino que las tenía a disposición de su voluntad. Solo en el cuerpo se distinguía, a mi parecer, la imagen de Memnón de un hombre, pues era regida y guiada por una especie de alma y por sentimientos humanos. Se mezclaban en sus ser las penas y las alegrías, adueñándose de él alternativamente unas u otras. Y aunque la naturaleza dispuso que el género de las piedras fuese mudo y sin voz, inmune al sufrimiento e incapaz de gozar, del todo inaccesible a los embates de la fortuna, a esta piedra de Memnón el arte le infundió placer e inyectó dolor en la roca, y solo de esta obra de arte sabemos que tuviese pensamientos y voz. Dédalo fue tan audaz que llegó a comunicar movimiento, y su arte tenía la facultad de trascender los materiales y hacerlos danzar, pero no pudo ni se le pasó jamás por la cabeza, construir obras dotadas de voz. Sin embargo, las manos de los etíopes encontraron el camino hacia lo imposible y vencieron la mudez de la piedra. Cuenta la historia que Eco respondía a Memnón, cuando éste hablaba, contestando con cadencia triste a sus tristes quejas, y devolviéndole, cuando estaba alegre, sus muestras de alegría. Esta estatua calmaba las aflicciones de la Aurora y la interrumpía en la búsqueda de su hijo, como si el arte de los etíopes la compensase de la fatídica pérdida del auténtico Memnón». (Calístrato, Descripciones, Madrid: Siruela, 1993. Trad. de L. A. de Cuenca y M. A. Elvira, p. 187)

“I wish to describe to you the miracle of Memnon also; for the art it displayed was truly incredible and beyond the power of human hand. There was in Ethiopian an image of Memnon [Callistratus refers to the statue to the right on the photo], the son of Tithonus, made of marble; however stone though it was, it did not abide within its proper limits nor endure the silence imposed on it by nature, but stone though it was it had the power of speech. For at one time it saluted the rising Day, by its voice giving token of its joy and expressing delight at the arrival of its mother; and again, as day declined to night, it uttered piteous and mournful groans in grief at her departure. Nor yet was the marble at a loss for tears, but they too were at hand to serve its will. The statue of Memnon, as it seems to me, differed from a human being only in its body, but it was directed and guided by a kind of soul and by a will like that of man. At any rate it both had grief in its composition and again it was possessed by a feeling of pleasure according as it was affected by each emotion. Though nature had made all stones from the beginning voiceless and mute and both unwilling to be under the control of grief and also unaware of the meaning of joy, but rather immune to all the darts of chance, yet to that stone of Memnon art had imparted pleasure and had mingled the sense of pain in the rock; and this is the only work of art of which we know that has implanted in the stone perceptions and a voice. Daedalus did indeed boldly advance as far as motion, and the materials of which they were made and to move in the dance; but it was impossible and absolutely out of the question for him to make statues that could speak. Yet the hands of Aethiopans discovered means to accomplish the impossible, and they overcame the inability of stone to speak. The story runs that Echo answered this Memnon when it spoke, uttering a mournful note in response to its mournful lament and returning a mimicking sound in response to its expressions of joy. The statue in questions both lulled to rest the sorrows of Day and caused her to abandon her search for her son, as though the art of the Aethiopans were compensating her by means of the statue for the Memnon who had been snatched away from her by fate.” (Callistratus: Descriptions, London: Heinemann 1931, translation by Arthur Fairbanks.

Language

The universal character of WWII is shown among others by the fact that this was the first war in which the warring parties saw the need to prepare well in advance a large number of special dictionaries for the conversation with the enemy soldiers and with the civilian population in the territories to be occupied. We have already written about the Estonian-Russian military dictionary of 1940, the Russian-German military dictionaries of 1941 made by the Soviets for the occupation of Germany and by the Germans for the occupation of the Soviet Union, as well as the Russian primer made for German soldiers in 1942, and we will also soon write about the dictionary of the Soviet-Finn war of 1940 and even the Hungarian conversation manual distributed in the American army in 1943.

That the importance of the conversation with the enemy became well ingrained in public awareness, is well shown in this postcard by the leading Soviet cartoonist Genrikh Valk (1918-1998), illustrator of the magazine Krokodil and of the popular books of adventures of little Neznaika. This card probably belonged to a series made in 1955. The discarded munitions attest the proximity of the war, while the facial expressions the strong impact of Soviet war films.

I have caught a “language”, but she is not yet able to talk.