Whitsuntide, 1915

Whitsun trip of the Association for Socializing and Excursions ninety-nine years ago. From the Berlin flea market

The fertile point

If you set out through the mountain towards Vișeu de Jos/Alsóvisó from Izakonyha in Maramureș – in Yiddish קעכניא, in Romanian Cuhea until 1973, when Ceaușescu gave to it the name of the legendary medieval voivode Bogdan, and the post-Ceaușescu regime in 2008 also his bronze sculpture group –, after about six kilometers, shortly before reaching the village of Bocicoel/Kisbocskó, you look back once more from the ridge, a stunning view will unfold before your eyes. With a thousand warm tints, the golden hour paints the hillsides, rugged with mountain streams, which gradually descend to the valley of the Iza river floating in mist, and from there they increase again to the not so distant mountain range of the Țibleș, interspersed at almost regular intervals by the peaks of Țibleș/Cibles (1839 m), Hudin/Hunyad (1615 m), Secului/Székelykő (1311) and, to the far right, the just recently mentioned Gutâi/Gutin (1443 m). The basin of Iza is just one of the four great river valleys – Vișeu/Visó, Iza, Mara/Mára, Sapânța/Szaplonca – constituting Maramureș, but this view still seems to sum up the whole region in an unique way. It was no accident that this photo, taken last May, introduced the announcement of our first Maramureș-Bukovina tour.


The narrow road winding up from the Iza valley to the ridge, and from there down to the Vișeu/Visó valley, is not known to many people, is not recommended by the guidebooks, and even Google route planner proposes a detour instead of it. Nevertheless, just as we found it last May, so many others have also found this hidden, magic lookout point, and the photos taken from here, just like in our blog, have played an iconic role in various Maramureș publications.


The fundamental work on the traditional Maramureș architecture, written by Dan Dinescu and Ana Bârcă, entitled The Wooden Architecture of Maramureș (1997) – from which we have already quoted the similarly iconic photo of the church if Ieud/Jód, and we will also write about the whole book – begins its chapter on the villages of Maramureș with this photo (click on it). Rather than May, here we are already in late summer, the silvery leaves of the poplars are already thick, and in the foreground there rises the typical Maramureș haystack.


Perhaps that very haystack is strewn in the beautiful album recently published by Florin Andreescu from Bucharest: Maramureș, țară veche (Maramureș, ancient land, 2011), about which we will also write soon. And in the same album, a few pages later, the right side of the landscape also opens up, with the Gutâi/Gutin in the background.


And the left side of the landscape introduces the chapter covering the region’s geography in the excellent 500-page Maramureș guide of the Finnish Metaneira publisher (2007) (click on it). The photo may have been taken some ten years ago: the lonely poplar tree, as our May photo shows, has a whole bunch of young rivals, but the little apple tree two terraces higher has not grown much since then.


The preparation of further iconic photos will be the task of our readers, especially of those joining us on our Maramureș tour at the end of June, or – as it is more and more certain – at its repetition between 20 and 24 August.

The Three Graces

Today I went to the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin to see the First World War exhibition, heralded with great fanfare. It is vain to waste many words on the exhibition, when a single one describes it: boring. In the basement, in one large room, a turbulent installation tries to present the entire history of WWI. The attempt is a complete failure. Anyone who does not already know the progress of the war in detail will not be able to assemble into one coherent picture the objects exhibited in separate stalls, which are labeled with the names of various theatres of operation, and presented in an “ach, wie schrecklich, der Krieg!” way to maximize the emotional effect. And anyone who knows it will clearly see the random and commonplace character of the selections. I would have not even written about it, if, just before the exit, in the stall dedicated to the post-war developments, I had not caught sight of one last exhibition object.


The more or less one meter wide bronze plaque once adorned the building of the Croatian Parliament in Zagreb, while today it is preserved in the Croatian Historical Museum. According to its inscription – “narodno vijeće na spomen proglašenja slobodne nezavisne države slovenaca hrvata i srba u hrvatskome saboru, XXIX. X. MCMXVIII.” – it was raised by the national council to commemorate the proclamation of the free and independent state of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on 29 October 1918. The three female figures in classical dress, personifying the three peoples, hold hands. The figures on the left and right hold in their free hands the coats of arms of Greater Croatia and Greater Serbia, assembled from a wide variety of regions. The figure in the middle has both hands full, yet she is not left without a coat of arms either. She has it under her foot.


If the three South Slavic brother nations want to celebrate their union on the wall of the Croatian Parliament, let them do so, although the sincerity of the gesture is seriously questioned by the permanent fratricide against each other they have been committing ever since, both by the pen and the machine gun. But that on this occasion they found it necessary to immortalize, aere perennius, the treading on the (heraldically defective) coat of arms of Hungary, with which Croatia fought on the same side through WWI; which they did not win, but were separated from it by virtue of the treaty of peace; and with which they were for eight hundred years in personal union, and fought together against the Ottoman empire and its Balkan marauders, so that here they also tread on their own coat of arms and eight hundred years of history – this already belongs to the pathology of the newly created Eastern European small states. And it also illustrates, together with thousands of similar gestures, why that treaty of peace, of which today we commemorate the ninety-fourth anniversary, can remain a living psychological and emotional burden, beyond all historical considerations and necessity.

Ivo Kerdić, the sculptor, creator of several patriotic post-WWI sculptures and medals, seems to have thoroughly learned the principles of Roman classicism in his study trips. However, it seems that neither he nor his commissioners had ever heard about the most important principle of classical Rome, with which it could preserve its conquests and under which they would flourish, and which is summed up in four words as the art of government by Virgil in the famous verse 6.853 of Aeneis:

parcere subiectis et debellare superbos

spare the subdued and vanquish the arrogant

To learn the second half of the principle, they had plenty of time between 1991 and 2001. The first half, however, they seem never to have learned.

Vueltos hacia el mar

Pequeños guijarros sobre las tumbas.
Los juguetes de una niña, juguetes de piedra.
Un tren, un avión, un coche. Niza, fin de trayecto. Nice, Nizza, Nica, Nissa, Ніцца, Ηίκαια, Nicea, Nicaea, Nisa, Ницца. Soñaban con la Riviera, y luego un día les entregan el pasaporte, obtienen la visa, ya pueden comprar el billete y, sin más, agarrar a los niños, la niñera, la abuela, las tías solteras, el tío tísico, el perro, el loro, la criada. Se trasladan a Francia, mandan a los niños al colegio, trabajan, trabajan, consiguen la nacionalidad, hacen el servicio militar, mueren por Francia.

Mueren.
El cementerio judío de Niza se extiende desde hace casi un siglo y medio sobre la colina del castillo, justo delante del mar.
Sobre las tumbas, viejas fotos desvaídas por el sol, borrosas, lavadas, caras sonrientes o pensativas o serias u orgullosas.

Nacieron en Kiev, en Varsovia, en Kishinev, Mariupol, Kherson, Odesa o Nikolajev, en Kaunas,  Berlín, San Petersburgo, Leópolis, Radautz en Bucovina, hoy Rădăuți en Rumanía, tambien en Argelia, en Orán o en Costantino, en Taganrog, en Costantinopla y en Londres, también en Rangoon en Birmania, o en El Cairo. En Johannesburg.


Han muerto en Niza, o en Mentone, o más lejos, pero su familia los ha devuelto a su lugar. Al sol sobre el mar.

En los años negros, que aquí fueron menos negros que en otros sitios, algunos murieron muy lejos, en el Este. De ellos no quedan sino unas breves líneas en su memoria.



Algunas lápidas nos sorprenden con su tipografía arcaica. En efecto, se trajeron aquí las antiguas piedras del anterior cementerio judío que estaba al pie de la colina. La lápida más antigua data de 1540. Sobre otras, las letras de bronce verde reflejan la multitud de lenguas en otro tiempo vivas: francés, hebreo, polaco, italiano, ruso con la antigua ortografía previa a 1918, inglés, alemán. Y esculpidas en la piedra, letras borradas, palabras olvidadas.

Poco a poco las piedras desaparecen bajo los pies de los paseantes. Abajo, más allá de los árboles, el azul del mar.

Facing the sea

Pebbles on the graves.
The toys of a child, stone toys.
A train, a plane, a car. Nice, terminus. Nice, Nizza, Niza, Nica, Nissa, Ніцца, Ηίκαια, Nicea, Nicaea, Nisa, Ницца. They dreamed of the Riviera, and then, one day, they got their passports, they had their visa, they could buy the tickets, and voilà, you take the children, the nanny, the granny, the unmarried aunts, the consumptive uncle, the dog, the parrot, the maid. You settle in France, you send the children to the school, you work, you work more, you obtain citizenship, you do your military service, you die for France.

You die.
The Jewish cemetery of Nice has extended for nearly a century and a half on the castle hill, just in front of the sea.
On the graves, old photos, browned, erased, faded, of smiling or thoughtful or serious or proud faces.

They were born in Kiev, in Warsaw, in Kishinev, in Mariupol, in Kherson, in Odessa or in Nikolaev, in Kaunas, in Berlin, in St. Petersburg, in Lwów, in Radautz of Bukovina, today Rădăuți in Romania, also in Algeria, in Oran or in Constantine, in Taganrog, in Constantinople or in London, even in Rangoon of Burma, and also in Cairo. In Johannesburg.


They died in Nice, or in Menton, or sometimes even more far off, but their families brought them back here, next to theirs. To the sun above the sea.

In the dark years, which were here still less black than elsewhere, some of them died far away, in the East. Of them remained only a few lines in their memory.



Some stones surprise you with their archaic typography. In fact, they have moved here the ancient tombs of a previous Jewish graveyard, which was once at the bottom of the hill. The oldest stone dates from 1540. On others, copper letters turned in green mirror in the stone the multitude of the languages: French, Hebrew, Polish, Italian, pre-1918 old-spelling Russian, English, German. And, engraved in stone, faded letters, forgotten words.

Gradually, the stones disappear from under the remembering visitors. Down, under the trees, the dazzling blue sea.

Tournés vers la mer

Des petits cailloux sur les tombes.
Les jouets d’un enfant, des jouets de pierre.
Un train, un avion, une voiture. Nice terminus. Nice, Nizza, Niza, Nica, Nissa, Ніцца, Ηίκαια, Nicea, Nicaea, Nisa, Ницца. Ils rêvaient de la Riviera et puis un jour, ils ont obtenu leur passeport, ils ont eu leur visa, ils ont pu acheter les billets et voilà, on emmène les enfants, la nourrice, la grand-mère, les tantes célibataires, l’oncle phtisique, le chien, le perroquet, la bonne. On s’installe en France, on envoie les enfants à l’école, on travaille, on travaille encore, on obtient sa naturalisation, on fait son service militaire, on meurt pour la France.

On meurt.
Le cimetière juif de Nice s’étend depuis près d’un siècle et demi sur la colline du château, juste en face de la mer.
Sur les tombes, de vieilles photos brunies, effacées, délavées, des visages souriants ou pensifs ou graves ou fiers.

Ils sont nés à Kiev, à Varsovie, à Kichinev, à Marioupol, à Kherson, à Odessa ou à Nikolaïev, à Kaunas, à Berlin, à Saint-Pétersbourg, à Lvov, à Ratautz en Bucovine, aujourd’hui Rădăuți en Roumanie, en Algérie aussi, à Oran ou à Constantine, à Taganrog, à Istanbul ou à Londres, à Rangoon en Birmanie même, au Caire également. A Johannesburg.


Ils sont morts à Nice ou à Menton, plus loin aussi parfois mais leurs proches les ont ramenés jusqu’ici, auprès des leurs. Au soleil au-dessus de la mer.

Aux années noires, mais elles furent moins noires ici qu’ailleurs, certains sont morts très loin vers l’Est. D’eux, il ne reste que quelques lignes à leur mémoire.



Certaines pierres frappent par l’archaïsme de leur graphie. En fait, on a déplacé dans ce cimetière les anciennes tombes du cimetière juif précédent qui se trouvait au bas du versant est de la colline. La pierre la plus ancienne remonte à 1540. Sur d’autres, les lettres de cuivre verdi multiplient les langues sur la pierre : français, hébreu, polonais, italien, russe — avec sa vieille orthographe d’avant la réforme de 1918 —, anglais, allemand. Et gravées, il y a toutes ces lettres effacées, ces mots oubliés, aussi.

Peu à peu les pierres disparaissent sous les pieds des passants qui se souviennent. En bas sous les arbres, la mer si bleue.