Notes
© 2018 Jan M. Ziolkowski, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0149.07
who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel (London: Secker and Warburg, 1949), pt. 1, chapter 3.
Notes to Chapter 1
It would occur to only the most limited soul. Wilhelm Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, ed. Gustav Hinrichs, 4 vols. (Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmler, 1881–1887), 1:13–14: “Das Mittelalter zu erforschen, um es in der Gegenwart wieder geltend zu machen, wird nur der beschränktesten Seele einfallen; allein es beweist auf der andern Seite gleiche Stumpfheit, wenn man den Einfluss abwehren wollte, den es auf Verständnis und richtige Behandlung der Gegenwart haben muss.”
he might reunite with his closest coevals. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (henceforth EHA), in Henry Adams, Novels, Mont Saint Michel, The Education, ed. Ernest Samuels and Jayne N. Samuels (New York: Library of America, 1983), 1181: “Perhaps some day—say 1938, their centenary—they might be allowed to return together for a holiday, to see the mistakes of their own lives made clear in the light of the mistakes of their successors; and perhaps then, for the first time since man began his education among the carnivores, they would find a world that sensitive and timid natures could regard without a shudder.”
the fateful year. This phrase, translating the German Schicksalsjahr, has long been conventional in discussions of the Holocaust or Shoah. For example, see Avraham Barkai, “The Fateful Year 1938: The Continuation and Acceleration of Plunder,” in November 1938: From “Reichskristallnacht” to Genocide, ed. Walter H. Pehle, trans. William Templer (New York: Berg, 1991), 95–122; Shaul Esh, “Between Discrimination and Extermination: 1938—The Fateful Year,” Yad Washem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance 2 (1958): 79–93.
loathsome anti-Semitism. Many articles and books have dealt in passing with Adams’s anti-Semitism, but the topic awaits definitive treatment.
efforts to obliterate cultural centers. See Nicola Lambourne, War Damage in Western Europe: The Destruction of Historic Monuments during the Second World War (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2001).
The air strike on Coventry. The most recent and thorough coverage of the air attack has been offered by Frederick Taylor, Coventry: Thursday, 14 November 1940 (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).
the Baedeker raids. The alternate name has been “Baedeker Blitz.”
France
renowned tenor. Charles Friant.
Jérôme and Jean Tharaud. Their given names were Ernest and Charles. The writer Charles Péguy gave them the ones by which they are now known.
below the threshold. On the reception (or lack thereof) of the literature produced by the brothers, see Roger Mathe, “Pourquoi les Tharaud?,” Trames: Travaux et mémoires de l’Université de Limoges, Collection Français 5 (1983): 89–98. This was a special issue, “Sur Jérôme et Jean Tharaud.”
unwanted munitions. It should be conceded that in French, selected tales of the Virgin by the Tharaud brothers live on in recorded form on audio compact disc: “Les contes de la Vierge, d’après Jérome et Jean Tharaud,” narrated by Pascal Nowak and Jean-Marie Frecon, with instrumental accompaniment by Gisela Melo (Versailles, France: Rejoyce, 2004).
on the wrong side. Mathe, “Pourquoi les Tharaud?,” 91.
Wendelin Foerster. Jacques Monfrin, Honoré Champion, 1874–1978 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1978), 54, 57.
As habitués of this shop. Yvonne Foubert-Daudet, La règle du je: Les frères Jérôme et Jean Tharaud, témoins et chroniqueurs d’un demi-siècle mouvementé (Toulouse, France: Erès, 1982).
exhibition catalogue. Louis Gillet et al., Les primitifs français: Contes de la Vierge, Cahiers de la quinzaine, 6th series, vol. 7 (Paris: Cahiers de la quinzaine, 1904), 131–70. The heart of the volume comprises thirty black-and-white plates that reproduce artworks in the show.
reworking of Our Lady’s Tumbler. Tharaud and Jean Tharaud, “Le Tombeor de Notre-Dame,” in Aux quatre coins de chez nous (Paris: Journées du livre, 1931), 144–48.
Tales of the Virgin. Tharaud and Jean Tharaud, Les contes de la Vierge (Paris: Plon, 1940, repr. 1942, 1943, 1944, 1946, 1949, 1954, 1960). A selection with illustrations that does not include Our Lady’s Tumbler was published in Spain (Barcelona: Ediciones Mediterráneas, 1942). Another illustrated version that does have it was brought out in Catalan forty years later: Leyendas de la Virgen, trans. Marià Manent, illus. Carles Planell, Panchatantra, vol. 2 (Barcelona, Spain: Casals, 1983), 57–61. A sampling from the tales was revised in textbooks for the use of students learning French as a foreign language: for Flemings, Les contes de la vierge, ed. L. Mees, Les bons auteurs, vol. 2 (Malines, Belgium: S. François, n.d.), and for Germans, Contes de la Vierge: Devoirs pratiques, ed. Arnold Leonhardi (Dortmund, Germany: Lensing, 1952).
Tales of Our Lady. Tharaud and Jean Tharaud, Contes de Notre Dame (Paris: Plon, 1943, repr. 1944, 1945, 1946, 1950, 1959).
Le jongleur de Notre-Dame. “Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame,” in Tharaud and Tharaud, Les contes de la Vierge (Paris: Plon, 1944), 83–94 and iv–v.
Marianne. Marianne 7, no. 339, April 19, 1939, 1, 3.
their views on Judaism. On the Tharaud brothers, see Foubert-Daudet, La règle du je, 168–69. On early philo-Semitism, see Seth L. Wolitz, “Imagining the Jew in France: From 1945 to the Present,” Yale French Studies 85 (1994): 119–34, at 121. On the range of their views, including anti-Semitism, in the 1920s, see Michel Leymarie, “Les frères Tharaud: De l’ambiguïté du ‘filon juif’ dans les années 1920,” Archives juives 39.1 (2006): 89–109; Paul A. Moylan, “Jérôme and Jean Tharaud’s Romantic Representation of Judaism,” French Review 39.1 (1965): 69–77. On later anti-Semitism, see Herman Schnurer, “The Intellectual Sources of French Fascism,” Antioch Review 1 (1941): 35–49, at 41.
admiration for Zionism. On the Tharauds’ simultaneous anti-Semitism and Zionism, see Leymarie, “Les frères Tharaud”; Farouk Mardam Bey, “French Intellectuals and the Palestine Question,” Journal of Palestine Studies 43.3 (2014): 26–39, at 27.
other undoctored forms of pious stories. Another was a version of “La Vénus d’Ille” (The Venus of Ille) by Mérimée; and a third was their retelling of the same story that lay behind Maeterlinck’s “Sœur Béatrice.”
anthologies of Marian miracles. See the French historian of medieval literature, Myrrha Lot-Borodine, trans., Vingt miracles de Notre-Dame, Poèmes et récits de la vieille France, vol. 14 (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1929); Gautier de Coinci, Les plus beaux miracles de la Vierge, trans. Gonzague Truc (Paris: Lanore, 1932). Truc was a French literary critic.
Acts of the Saints. In Latin, Acta sanctorum (Antwerp: apud Joannem Mevrsium, 1643–). The team effort has been overseen by the association of scholars, originally all Jesuits, known as the Bollandists.
a certain Guinehochet. In Latin, Guinehocatus quidam.
Go, peasant. John of Garland, Parisiana Poetria, ed. and trans. Traugott Lawler, Yale Studies in English, vol. 182 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), 78–79 (lines 422–31, Latin and English), 248 (note, with citation of one other version).
other medieval texts. For example, the name may have been lifted from a canon regular, active in the early thirteenth century, who left a plethora of Latin sermons and historical writings, as well as letters written during his years in the Mideast: see Jacques de Vitry, The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones vulgares of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Thomas Frederick Crane, Publications of the Folk-Lore Society, vol. 26 (London: D. Nutt, 1890), 97, no. 123. Another possible source is Robert Bossuat, ed., Bérinus, roman en prose du XIVe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: Société des anciens textes français, 1931–1933), 1:90, §103 (spelled in different manuscripts Guinehochés, Guinehochet, and Guignehochet).
Catholic theater of his day. Henry Phillips, Le théâtre catholique en France au XXe siècle, Littérature de notre siècle, vol. 37 (Paris: Champion, 2007).
Companions of Our Lady. In French, “Compagnons de Notre-Dame.” See Jacques Cotnam, “Henri Brochet et le R. P. Émile Legault, c.s.c.: Rencontre et correspondance,” Tangence 78 (2005): 45–89, at 48.
plays on Sister Beatrice. Henri Brochet, “Béatrice: Miracle de Notre-Dame, en trois actes,” Jeux, Tréteaux et Personnages (May 1939): 143–78; (June 1939): 179–96; Marie, reine de France et dame de Pontmain: Mystère en trois parties (Paris: A. Blot, 1938).
Brochet’s piece on the jongleur. The 33-page typescript, dated February 9–10, 1942, is entitled “Cadet Roussel, jongleur de Notre Dame: Un prologue et 3 actes par H. Brochet.” The first character listed in the dramatis personae is “Notre Dame des Vertus, un statue.” The scene involving the Madonna runs from the bottom of p. 28 to the bottom of p. 31.
Companions of Roger Good-Times. In French, “Compagnons de Roger Bontemps.”
Guillaume Joseph Roussel. For information, see Louis-Marcel Raymond, “Un canadien à Paris,” Les cahiers des compagnons: Bulletin d’art dramatique 3 (1947): 1–32, at 13; Cotnam, “Henri Brochet,” 74, 83. From Henri Brochet, we also have a book that was published in 1952, apparently in Auxerre, under the title Cadet Roussel danse sur les nuages: Un prologue et trois actes.
Barber at the Fontaine des innocents. Cotnam, “Henri Brochet,” 74n86: Joseph Aude, Cadet Roussel, barbier à la Fontaine des Innocents: Folie en un acte (Paris: Chez Barba, 1799). The mid-sixteenth-century Fontaine des Innocents is the oldest monumental fountain in Paris.
Brother Clown. Léon Chancerel, Frère Clown, ou Le jongleur de Notre-Dame: Monologue par Léon Chancerel, d’après le miracle du ménestrel Pierre de Sygelar (Lyon, France: La Hutte, 1943; 2nd ed., Paris: Librarie Théâtrale, 1956).
Léon Chancerel. For a broad backdrop to the productions of medieval theater by Chancerel and Ghéon, see Lynette Muir, “Résurrection des Mystères: Medieval Drama in Modern France,” Leeds Studies in English 29 (1998): 235–48.
a version in French verse. “Mis en vers français par le Révérendissme Père Gautier de Coincy.”
naïve, pious, and tender. Chancerel, Frère Clown, 4.
frequented the same theatrical circles. Chancerel, Frère Clown. From what Raymond indicates (“Un canadien à Paris,” 12), Brochet and Chancerel belonged to the same social set. Many more details are forthcoming in Henry Phillips, “Jacques Copeau et le théâtre catholique: Une correspondance inédite avec Henri Brochet,” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 104.2 (April–June 2004): 439–58. For an assessment of Chancerel, see Maryline Romain, Léon Chancerel: Portrait d’un réformateur du théâtre français, Collection Théâtre, vol. 20 (Lausanne, Switzerland: L’Âge d’Homme, 2005).
spiritual letters. Antoine-Marie Falaize, Lettres spirituelles (Paris: Cerf, 1945).
the Theophilians. Gustave Cohen, “Les Théophiliens,” The French Review 12.6 (1939): 453–58; idem, “The ‘Théophiliens’: The Resurrection of the Medieval Theater,” Books Abroad 25 (1951): 7–10.
Miracle of Theophilus. Rutebeuf, Le miracle de Théophile, transposed by Gustave Cohen (Paris: Delagrave, 1934).
restore its marvelous stained-glass colors. Cohen, “‘Théophiliens’: The Resurrection,” 7.
came into print first in 1934. (Paris: Delagrave, 1934, 1935, 1938).
the professor’s dulcet words of hope. Gustave Cohen, “Expériences théophiliennes,” Mercure de France 48.927, vol. 273 (February 1, 1937): 453–77.
medieval literature had a share in both movements. The present chapter provides at least an amuse-bouche of information that gives an idea of how appetizing the results of an investigation could be into the roles of medieval literature in the French Underground. For other inquiries, see Roy Rosenstein, “A Medieval Troubadour Mobilized in the French Resistance,” Journal of the History of Ideas 59.3 (1998): 499–520, and (on the Theophilians specifically) Helen Solterer, Medieval Roles for Modern Times: Theater and the Battle for the French Republic (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).
The legend of Theophilus. The oldest Greek renderings of the legend are preserved in two manuscripts of the tenth century. One of these texts takes the form of a supposed eyewitness account by a servant of Theophilus’s. The most influential Latin translation of the legend is by a Neapolitan deacon of the ninth century, Paulus. In it, the priest is at the outset moved by piety and modesty to decline being elevated to bishop. The man chosen in his place then libels him and strips him of his priesthood. The pact with the devil is mediated by a Jew, and hinges on written repudiation of Christ and Mary.
the favorite Marian legend of the Middle Ages. Karl Plenzat, Die Theophiluslegende in den Dichtungen des Mittelalters, Germanische Studien, vol. 43 (Berlin: E. Ebering, 1926); Albert Gier, Der Sünder als Beispiel: Zu Gestalt und Funktion hagiographischer Gebrauchstexte anhand der Theophiluslegende, Bonner romanistische Arbeiten, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: P. Lang, 1977); Jerry Root, The Theophilus Legend in Medieval Text and Image (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017).
Miracles of Our Lady. Gautier de Coinci, Les miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. V. Frédéric Koenig, 4 vols., Textes littéraires français, vols. 64, 95, 131, 176 (Geneva: Droz, 1955–1970), 1:50–176 (1.10, “Comment Theophilus vint a penitance”).
the whole stage is shown. The full mise en scène is shown in an original drawing by Raoul-Roger Ballet, which serves as the frontispiece to the volume.
Golden Virgin. In French, Vierge dorée. The sculpture stands on a pillar, known technically as a trumeau, that divides the south transept portal of the cathedral. Rutebeuf, Le miracle de Théophile, 60.
Mystery of the Passion of the Theophilians. Mystère de la Passion des théophiliens: Adaptation littéraire de Gustave Cohen, … d’après Arnoul Greban et Jean Michel (Paris: Richard-Masse, 1950), 9–10 (poem), 10 (In memoriam). The dedication opens with a verse in memoriam of “Louis Laurent [1918–1940], president of the Theophilians, senior officer cadet, killed as a volunteer, at the defense of the bridges of the Loire, June 20, 1940.”
would serve again later as its director. On Chancerel as director of the Theophilians, see Solterer, Medieval Roles, 75, 96, 107n49. On the Comédiens-Routiers, see Jean Cusson, Un réformateur du théâtre, Léon Chancerel: L’expérience Comédiens-Routiers, 1929–1939 (Paris: LaHutte, 1945).
Chancerel was drawn to God and religion. For instance, he jotted in his journal in 1927: “Longing to set up our life there at the foot of the cathedral, beneath its blessing, beneath its protection, and to work according to the discipline and the spirit that it enlarges.” See Hubert Gignoux, Histoire d’une famille théâtrale: Jacques Copeau, Léon Chancerel, les Comédiens-Routiers, la décentralisation dramatique (Lausanne, Switzerland: Editions de l’Aire, 1984), 109.
only after 1940. Gignoux, Histoire, 167.
he wrote it in November of 1942. In Colomiers, a town near Toulouse where he had moved in October.
The dramatic group he oversaw unraveled. Romain, Léon Chancerel, 319–23.
entertainment programs. Chancerel, Frère Clown, 3.
Let’s sing. Chancerel, Frère Clown, 5.
Nina Gourfinkel. Anne Grynberg, Les camps de la honte: Les internés juifs des camps français, 1939–1944 (Paris: La Découverte, 1991), 183–86, at 185n; Lucien Lazare, L’Abbé Glasberg (Paris: Cerf, 1990), 41; Ruth Schatzman, “Nina Gourfinkel (1898–1984),” Revue des études slaves 63 (1991): 705–10, at 707–8, 708–9.
earned his sobriquet. Lazare, L’Abbé Glasberg, 41, 45.
allegedly also called him so. Countless references to this litter the Internet, but unfortunately none of them provides a source.
he was soon extolled. Lesley A. Wright, “La mort de Massenet: Réactions des contemporains,” in Massenet aujourd’hui: Héritage et postérité. Actes du colloque de la XIe biennale Massenet des 25 et 26 octobre 2012, ed. Jean-Christophe Branger and Vincent Giroud, Centre interdisciplinaire d’études et de recherches sur l’expression contemporaine: Travaux, vol. 166 / Collection musique et musicology: Les cahiers de l’opéra théâtre, vol. 1 (Saint-Étienne, France: Publications de l’université de Saint-Étienne, 2014), 21–38, at 27.
curriculum of musical education. “Cours et conférences,” Revue de musicologie 21 (1942): 10.
it played in the summer season. Giroud, “Le centenaire de la naissance: Massenet en 1942,” in Massenet aujourd’hui: Héritage et postérité. Actes du colloque de la XIe biennale Massenet des 25 et 26 octobre 2012, ed. Jean-Christophe Branger and Vincent Giroud, Centre interdisciplinaire d’études et de recherches sur l’expression contemporaine: Travaux, vol. 166 / Collection musique et musicology: Les cahiers de l’opéra théâtre, vol. 1 (Saint-Étienne, France: Publications de l’université de Saint-Étienne, 2014), 65–94, at 87.
Saint-Étienne, France. See Blandine Devun, La vie culturelle à Saint-Étienne pendant la deuxiéme guerre mondiale (1939–1944) (Saint-Etienne, France: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2005); Giroud, “Le centenaire de la naissance.”
commemorative stamp. The four-franc stamp in bluish green, measuring 18 × 22 mm, was designed by Paul-Pierre Lemagny and engraved by Antonin Delzers. It was issued on June 22, 1942, and ceased being sold on October 24.
Bastille Day. In French, la fête nationale and le quatorze juillet.
Holiday of the Federation. In French, Fête de la fédération.
Massenet was invoked. A postcard depicting Massenet highlights the caption (in French): “Families, take pride: thanks to you, France will live.”
Henri Perrin. Henri Perrin, Priest-Workman in Germany, trans. Rosemary Sheed (London: Sheed and Ward, 1947).
a perfect sabotage. Henri Perrin, Le capitaine Darreberg, héraut de Notre-Dame: Récit d’évasion, missions secrètes … à la R. A. F. (Lyon, France: Emmanuel Vitte, 1956), 58–59.
His other pseudonyms. Jacques Baumel, La liberté guidait nos pas (Paris: Plon, 2004), 177.
Brotherhood of Our Lady. In French, Confrérie Notre-Dame.
Star of the Sea. Gilbert Renault, On m’appelait Rémy, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie académique Perrin, 1966), 1:263–64, 278, 280, image between 288–89.
the cult of Fátima. Gilbert Renault, Fatima: Espérance du monde (Paris: Plon, 1957).
Cross of Lorraine. On the history of the cross of Lorraine, see François Le Tacon, La croix de Lorraine: Du Golgotha à la France libre (Woippy, France: Serpenoise, 2012), esp. 123–43 on the use of the cross during World War II.
organized in 1949. Les Jongleurs de Notre-Dame, Compagnie de Théâtre, Dole, founded by Monseigneur Boillon, curate of Notre-Dame.
staged in Paris. Forrest C. Pogue, Pogue’s War: Diaries of a WWII Combat Historian (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 234.
a children’s book. Anatole France, Le jongleur de Notre-Dame (Paris: Éditions de l’Amitié, 1944, repr. 1946).
in his mid-twenties. Eventually, Watrin would become a film animator.
The Revolt of the Angels. Anatole France, La révolte des anges (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1946).
English translation. France, The Revolt of the Angels, trans. Wilfrid Jackson, illus. Pierre Watrin (New York: For the members of the Limited Editions Club, 1953).
luxury edition for connoisseurs. Jérôme Tharaud and Jean Tharaud, Les contes de la Vierge, illus. Pio Santini (Paris: Société d’éditions littéraires françaises, 1946).
his art for the book. Nineteen miniatures supplement the dropped initial capital letters that embellish each chapter.
1941 biography. Images du Maréchal Pétain (Paris: Sequana, 1941).
Charles Maurras. Samuel M. Osgood, French Royalism under the Third and Fourth Republics (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1960), 155–56.
forget what has preceded. In fact, amnestia in Greek means literally “forgetfulness.”
A Pathway to Heaven. A Pathway to Heaven, trans. Antonia White (New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1952); originally published as idem, Le fil de la Vierge (Paris: Plon, 1951).
gossamer. Pathway to Heaven, 37 (on Our Lady’s threads).
recapitulation of the medieval tale. Pathway to Heaven, 7–21, at 7: “You probably know the story of Our Lady’s tumbler. In case you do not know it or have forgotten it, it runs like this. A tumbler became a monk and observed with humble admiration how his brothers in religion consecrated their talents to the glory of the Mother of God. Finding himself too ignorant to produce such work as theirs, he shut himself in the chapel and, as an offering in Our Lady’s honour, performed the acrobatics which had once ensorceled the crowds in the fair-ground in front of her statue. The prior, spying through a keyhole or a crack in the door, saw him turning his somersaults and thought his novice must suddenly have gone mad. He was about to intervene and put an end to this scandal when he saw the Virgin’s statue come to life, descend the altar steps and wipe away the sweat from the tumbler’s forehead with a fold of her blue cloak. This golden legend has inspired poets, novelists and musicians. It has even invaded the realms of Comic Opera. In the seminary at Bellerive it had provided the clerical students with a nickname for one of their colleagues, Calixte Merval.”
Golden Legend. Besides the collection of hagiographies, Bordeaux evidences awareness of the little story of the monk and the bird: idem, Pathway to Heaven, 15, 16, 68.
tumbler of light. Bordeaux, Pathway to Heaven, 54, 81.
connoisseur of Madonnas. Bordeaux, Pathway to Heaven, 36, 117, 119.
God be praised! Bordeaux, Pathway to Heaven, 237, 239.
portrayed him as ugly. Compare Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends, 6 vols., 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955–1958), D 1639.2.
the exact countercurrent. In 1924, an interpreter of it took to task his contemporaries who failed to appreciate literature and other arts as expressions of religion: “They need to apply that lovely old fable of Our Lady’s Tumbler, and to remember that the artist normally honors God, not by preaching or teaching, but by practising his art!” See R. Ellis Roberts, “Arthur Machen,” Sewanee Review 32 (1924): 353–56, at 354.
François Mauriac. For detailed insights into the similarities and differences between Bordeaux and Mauriac, see Gisèle Sapiro, “Salut littéraire et littérature du salut: Deux trajectoires de romanciers catholiques: François Mauriac et Henry Bordeaux,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 111.1 (1996): 36–58. She incorporated this material into her later book, The French Writers’ War, 1940–1953, trans. Vanessa Doriott Anderson and Dorrit Cohn (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 158–89. Sapiro’s book is a tour de force of situating writers and their institutions within their broader social and political contexts.
defeated along with the Nazis. Sapiro, French Writers’ War, 184.
Great Britain
the work of Irene Wellington. Wellington also handled minor features of the art. At that stage, she had not even reached the midpoint in her long and flourishing trajectory as a calligrapher and instructor of others in the craft. Her life and work are chronicled in Heather Child et al., More than Fine Writing: The Life and Calligraphy of Irene Wellington (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1987); this manuscript is listed, with the dates 1939–1942, on p. 136, with the alternative title Del tumbeor Nostre Dame.
William Morris. In due course, he established himself through his aptitude in stained glass and tapestry. See Lynne Curran, “Sax Shaw: His Contribution to the World of Tapestry,” Journal of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers 200 (December 2001): 10–12.
new tradition of penmanship. In his handwriting, Johnston revived the use of the traditional broad-edged nib. His “foundational hand” influenced a generation of modern typographers.
a well-written codex. Peter Holliday, Edward Johnston: Master Calligrapher (London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2007).
manuscripts from the Middle Ages and medieval-like texts. Already in 1925, Wellington lettered an illuminated manuscript of Morris’s The Defence of Guinevere. In the second half of the same decade, she undertook, without concluding the effort, trial drafts for the medieval English Chester Pageant miracle play, The Deluge. In around 1943, she designed a manuscript form of Saint Francis’s Song of the Creatures and another of poems from the major medieval songbook, the Carmina Burana, both in English translation. See Child et al., More than Fine Writing, 56–59, 68–69, 76–77, 86–87.
more convincing reality. She takes as her exemplar the earliest recension in Romania without naming its editor but instead only Gaston Paris, she singles out for praise the English translation by Eugene Mason, and she quotes with tacit approval the sentence “If it is stunning testimony to faith, it is also still a true poetic gem.” See Wendelin (or Wihelm) Foerster, “Del tumbeor Nostre-Dame,” Romania 2 (1873): 315–25, at 316: “Si c’est un témoignage éclatant de foi, c’est plus encore un vrai joyau poétique.”
United States
all the help they could get. From many examples, I pick one that is close to home for me. Robert Woods Bliss was a retired career diplomat and, in a studiously unflashy fashion, a remarkable philanthropist. In an address to the Harvard Club of Washington, DC in 1943 (seventy-five years ago), he envisioned that the center for Byzantine studies that his wife and he had endowed would shed the light of learning: “Now that dark nights have descended over Europe and eclipsed the great centres of mediaeval study in Prague, Budapest, Vienna, and other cities, it is our hope that Dumbarton Oaks will carry the lighted torch in the Western World.” Dumbarton Oaks Archives, Administrative files, John S. Thacher correspondence, 1940–1949, April 8, 1943.
The Greatest Gift. MGM Miniatures, released September 5, 1942, directed by Harold Daniels, written by Karl Kamb, starring Edmund Gwenn as Bartholomew (the juggler), with Hans Conried as Father Fabian, Lumsden Hare as Father Cyprian, and Robert Emmett O’Connor as Brother Xavier. An English theater and film actor, Edmund Gwenn remains best known for having later delivered an Academy Award-winning performance as Kris Kringle in the 1947 Miracle on 34th Street. Kris Kringle has been a by-word for Santa Claus in the United States. The short was aired much later on television: in 1955, the American George Murphy, host of the variety show MGM Parade, included it in the December 14 episode (1.14).
married couple. Robert A. and Jarrett Wells Schmid, both originally from Montclair, New Jersey.
published our story. Unpaginated booklet, “Printed for the friends of Jarrett and Robert Schmid, Christmas 1944.” Original French with English translation by Frederic Chapman. The pamphlet comprises a mere six bifolios, placed within a quarto that is folded over rather than cut to produce the cover.
Princeton University as an undergraduate. After taking his A.B. degree, he became an advertising executive in the media business.
Arnold Robert Verduin. Arnold R. Verduin, “Handsprings and Somersaults,” Journal of the National Education Association 34.7 (November 1945): 151. The byline identifies him as resident at the time in Wichita, Kansas, and as former head of the history department at State Teaching College, New Paltz, New York. His most noteworthy accomplishment as an author may have been a piece about a beachcomber that appeared in The New Yorker in 1944; see idem, “High Wind at Coney,” March 25, 1944: 61–62.
Notes to Chapter 2
The world becomes more amusing every year. Henry Adams, to Mabel Hooper La Farge, December 22, 1902, in Harold Dean Cater, Henry Adams and His Friends: A Collection of His Unpublished Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), 532–33, at 533. Compare letter to John Hay, November 7, 1900, in Henry Adams, The Letters of Henry Adams (henceforth LHA), ed. J. C. Levenson et al., 6 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982–1988), 5:167–69, at 169.
the one-lira denomination. See Chester L. Krause and Clifford Mishler, 1994 Standard Catalog of World Coins, ed. Colin R. Bruce II, 21st ed. (Iola, WI: Krause, 1993), 2038. The coins were first in nickel and later in stainless steel.
the area for signifying the date was enlarged. The usual format, in which the four digits of a year would be split with the first two on one side and the last two on the other, was expanded to allow for signaling both 1933 and 1934.
Ezquioga. William A. Christian Jr., “Tapping and Defining New Power: The First Month of Visions at Ezquioga, July 1931,” American Ethnologist 14 (1987): 140–66.
referendum. Plebiscites are not always the best vehicles for successful democracy.
apparitions of Our Lady. Also called the Virgin of the Golden Heart, and Our Lady in the Hawthorn Tree. The five young visionaries were Fernande, Gilberte, and Albert Voisin, and Andrée and Gilberte Degeimbre. For the most reliable sources, see René Laurentin and Patrick Sbalchiero, Dizionario delle “apparizioni” della vergine Maria (Rome: ART, 2010), 111–12; Don Sharkey, “The Virgin with the Golden Heart: Beauraing, 1932–33,” in A Woman Clothed with the Sun: Eight Great Appearances of Our Lady in Modern Times, ed. John J. Delaney (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1960), 213–38; John Beevers, The Sun Her Mantle (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1953), 182–89; Don Sharkey and Joseph Debergh, Our Lady of Beauraing (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1958), which is the only entire book devoted to “the complete story of Our Lady’s appearances at Beauraing”; Fernand Toussaint and Camille Joset, Notre-Dame de Beauraing: Histoire des apparitions (Paris: Desclée De Brouwer, 1981); Herbert Thurston, Beauraing and Other Apparitions: An Account of Some Borderland Cases in the Psychology of Mysticism (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1934), 1–24.
convent school. The Sisters of Christian Doctrine Academy.
More than thirty times. Thurston, Beauraing and Other Apparitions, 4.
1,700,000. Thurston, Beauraing and Other Apparitions, 1.
Tilman Côme. The first name is sometimes written Tilmant. For information, see Thurston, Beauraing and Other Apparitions, 25–32.
Banneux. In the Belgian Ardennes, fifty miles northeast of Beauraing.
an eleven-year-old girl. She was named Mariette Beco. For a photograph, see Giuseppe Delabays, La Madonna dei Poveri di Banneux-Notre-Dame, trans. Ester Brinis (Balsamo, Italy: Paoline, 1949), between 32–33.
radiant with light. For the most reliable sources, see Laurentin and Sbalchiero, Dizionario, 104–6; Robert M. Maloy, “The Virgin of the Poor: Banneux, 1933,” in Woman Clothed with the Sun, ed. Delaney, 239–67; Beevers, The Sun Her Mantle, 190–95; Léon Wuillaume, Banneux, boodschap voor onze tijd: Verslag van de verschijningen, verklaring van de boodschap (Banneux, Belgium: Voncken, 1983); Thurston, Beauraing and Other Apparitions, 33–40.
Onkerzele. In the diocese of Ghent.
many predictions. Thurston, Beauraing and Other Apparitions, 42: “She prophesies war and other calamities which threaten her country, and which can only be averted by prayer and the conversion of the people from infidelity. It was rumoured that she had foretold that there would be war within two years, but she denies this and declares that she has not been told when the blow will fall and what its exact nature may be.”
the Church rejected. Laurentin and Sbalchiero, Dizionario, 556. Another instance would be the apparitions that Berthonia Holtkamp and Henri Kempenaers were supposed to have witnessed in 1933. The authenticity of these last-mentioned episodes was judged negatively by ecclesiastical authorities within the year. See ibid., 448.
throughout Belgium. At Chaineux, Etikhove, Lokeren, Melen, Rotselaer, and Tubise.
crisis in Flemish and Dutch literature. J. H. M. Anten, “De crisistijd van de jaren dertig: Gouden jaren voor de neerlandistiek,” Nederlandse letterkunde 15.3 (2010): 262–72; Koen Rymenants et al., eds., Literatuur en crisis: De Vlaamse en Nederlandse letteren in de jaren dertig, AMVC-Publicaties, vol. 12 (Antwerp, Belgium: AMVC, 2010).
Our Lady’s Dancer: A Little Miracle Play. F. J. Weinrich, De danser van Onze Lieve Vrouw: Een klein mirakelspel, trans. Wies Moens (Antwerp, Belgium: De Sikkel, 1930).
Wies Moens. All sources regarding his biography of Wies Moens, especially on the topic of Nazi activities, are to be parsed with close care. The fullest treatment of him to date is a case in point, since the family name of the first coauthor does not appear to be coincidental: Olaf Moens and Yves T’Sjoen, “Een historische en literaire inleiding,” in Wies Moens, Memoires (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1996), 9–77. See also Jan d’Haese, “Wies Moens,” In Oostvlaamse literaire monografieën, vol. 4, Kultureel jaarboek voor de provincie Oost-Vlaanderen, Bijdragen, Nieuwe reeks, vol. 14 (Ghent, Belgium: 1981), 163–93.
College of the Holy Virgin. In Dutch, Heilige Maagdcollege, in Dendermonde.
Flemish Union. In Dutch, Vlaamsche Bond. Moens and T’Sjoen, “Een historische en literaire inleiding,” 10.
Ghent remained the central locus. Bruno De Wever, “Vlaams-nationalisme in de Gentse regio, 1914–1945,” Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent 49.1 (1995): 265–81.
the so-called Flemish question. Camille Huysmanns, “The Flemish Question,” Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 9 (1930): 680–90, at 680.
Great Netherlands. In Dutch, Groot-Nederland. See Bruno De Wever, “Groot-Nederland als utopie en mythe,” Bijdragen tot de eigentijdse geschiedenis / Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent 3 (1998): 91–108.
Afrikaans-speaking portion of South Africa. Yves T’Sjoen, “Achter de trommels: Het Afrikaner nationalisme als bouwsteen voor het ideologische discours van de Vlaamse Beweging (ca. 1875–1921),” Werkwinkel 2 (2007): 51–76.
avant-gardism. Artists of the period who pushed the boundaries of the status quo through innovation and experiment are labeled “avant-garde.” See Geert Buelens, “Een avantgardist is (g)een groep: Over de wankele avantgardestatus van de flaminganten tijdens het interbellum,” in Avantgarde! Voorhoede? Vernieuwingsbewegingen in Noord en Zuid opnieuw beschouwd, ed. Hubert F. van den Berg and Gillis J. Dorleijn (Nijmegen, Netherlands: Vantilt, 2002), 92–102, 223–24.
claim to literary-historical significance. Moens and T’Sjoen, “Een historische en literaire inleiding,” 46.
expressionist poetry. Wies Moens, De boodschap (The message) (Antwerp, Belgium: De Sikkel, 1920).
school and amateur groups. In these observations, I am indebted to Staf Vos, Dans in België 1890–1940 (Leuven, Belgium: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2012), 279–80, who provides information on productions in 1930, 1931, and 1948.
other collaborative projects. Moens and T’Sjoen, “Een historische en literaire inleiding,” 51.
Moens viewed his generation. Wies Moens, “Een katholiek-modern toneelrépertoire,” De Beiaard 2 (1925): 27–48.
Play of Saint Bernard. In Dutch, Sint Bernardus-spel.
Companions of Our Lady. In French, Compagnons de Notre Dame.
German “legend play.” Dietzenschmidt (pseudonym of a dramatist, born Anton Franz Schmid, who was also known as Anton Franz Schmidt and Peter Thomas Bundtschuch), Compostella (Die St.-Jacobsfahrt): Legendespel in drie bedrijven, trans. Wies Moens, Wederlandsch Keurtooneel, vol. 1 (Ghent, Belgium: “’t Spyker,” 1923). This play was later taken as the basis for the opera Die Jakobsfahrt (1936) by Fidelio Friedrich (Fritz) Finke.
The original-language edition from 1920. Dietzenschmidt, Die Sanct Jacobsfahrt: Eyn Legendenspiel in drey Aufzügen (Berlin: Oesterheld, 1920). The woodcut was by Johannes Othmar from Augsburg. At the corners of the illustrations are the signs of the four Gospel writers.
G. K. Chesterton’s St. Francis. G. K. Chesterton, S. Franciscus van Assisi, trans. Wies Moens (Ghent, Belgium: Cultura, 1924).
an English volume on Saint Francis. This time Moens translated a drama by the English playwright and illustrator Laurence Housman: Van Sint Franciscus: Negen taferelen uit het leven van de poverello, trans. Wies Moens (Utrecht, Netherlands: De Gemeenschap, 1929–1930).
Flemish Popular Theater. In Dutch, Het Vlaamsche Volkstooneel, abbreviated as VVT. The group existed from 1924 to 1932. A comprehensive inventory of the archive for the group is available: see Jos Verhoogen and Geert Opsomer, Inventaris van het archief van Het Vlaamsche Volkstooneel, Reeks inventarissen en repertoria, vol. 24 (Leuven, Belgium: Kadoc, 1989).
Catholic theater producers. Frank Peeters, “Faam en waan van het modernistische theater in Vlaanderen: 1920–1929,” in Historische avant-garde en het theater in het Interbellum, ed. Jaak Van Schoor and Peter Benoy (Brussels: ASP, 2011), 91–98, at 94.
intellectual elite. Evelin Vanfraussen, “‘Ontbonden in dien stroom de puurste pracht!’ Moens’ veelvuldige volk en de Duitse bezetter,” Spiegel der letteren 47.4 (2005): 355–76.
folk-connected. Vanfraussen, “‘Ontbonden in dien stroom,’” 355, 356, 357, 360, 375, with additional references.
Dutch Literature Viewed from a Folk Perspective. In Dutch, Nederlandsche letterkunde van volksch standpunt gezien (Rotterdam, Netherlands: Dietsche Boekhandel, 1939, 2nd edition, Bruges, Belgium: Wiek op, 1941).
National Socialist party of Belgium. The organization was called Verdinaso, short for Verbond van Dietse Nationaal Solidaristen (Union of Diets National Solidarists).
unremarked and uncompensated later by the invaders. Vanfraussen, “‘Ontbonden in dien stroom.’”
Flemish radio broadcasting. It was known in Dutch as Zender Brussel, in German as Sender Brüssel. The name can be translated with clunky literalism as “Transmitter Brussels” or less slavishly as “Brussels Station.”
German translation. Das flämische Kampfgedicht, trans. Adolf von Hatzfeld (Jena, Germany: E. Diederich, 1942).
Carmelite college in Limburg. Els Van Damme, “‘Met u of zònder u, altijd voor u’: De ‘volksverbonden’ lyriek van Wies Moens,” in Verbrande schrijvers: ‘Culturele’ collaboratie in Vlaanderen (1933–1953), ed. Lukas De Vos et al. (Ghent, Belgium: Academia Press, 2009), 71–91 (with biographical and bibliographical details at pp. 86–91).
Germany above all. In German, Deutschland über alles.
Dutchland above all. In Dutch, “Dietsland over al.”
The Pointed Arch. Wies Moens, De spitsboog (Bruges, Belgium: Wiek op, 1943).
Masson recalled. Marcel Lobet, Arthur Masson, ou La richesse du cœur (Gilly, France: Institut Jules Destrée pour la défense et l’illustration de la Wallonie, 1971), 53–56 (chapter 7, “Jongleur de la Wallonie”), at 52: “So it was that I became acquainted with fabliaux, tales to make us laugh, born apparently out of our Walloon region, and in which Gallic brio unleashes itself often into vast savagery, but sometimes grows tender too to the point of being no more than a fresh and stirring smile like an April posy. And so I learned the fabliau of Our Lady’s Tumbler. You know how the poor jongleur, received in an abbey of monks, turns despondent at seeing that he is the only one unable to offer to the Madonna of the monastery a beautiful statue, a beautiful painting, the magnificent stained glass, or the elegant canticle that his fellow monks carve, paint, or compose with all their faith and their talents. He, the poor fellow, is not good for anything. All the same, he does what he can. Shutting himself off in the chapel, he performs before the Virgin the moves in his routine. He juggles, does acrobatics, sings, recites. He is discovered, and that is going to cause a scandal. But the good Virgin comes down from her pedestal and, before the stunned eyes of the brethren, comes to wipe the sweat that trickles from the face of the poor, exhausted trouvère.
“I cannot lay down at the feet of the Virgin of the ‘Alma Mater’ either learned works or noteworthy discoveries. I have only my tales, the naïve song of the clogs of Toine, the smile of his girls, and the stormy laugh of T. Déome. But I offer thus the best of what I have. An affectionate observer of our folk who, taken together, are good folk, simple, brave, colorful, and great lovers of droll and sly comedies, I have endeavored to make likable these worthy folk while writing stories in which, obviously, one would seek in vain a kindred spirit to that of the Prince of Ligne—stories that have not enriched the national patrimony but stories that have all the same cheered up decent folk.”
T. Déome is the cousin of Toine, in Masson’s fictitious world. The reference to the Prince of Ligne refers specifically to Charles-Joseph, the seventh Prince de Ligne, a field marshal known for his prowess, and a prolific writer renowned for his courtly elegance of style (in living as well as in writing).
jongleur of the Walloon region. In French, Jongleur de Wallonie.
Wintze, or Our Lady’s Tumbler. E. H. Blondeel, Wintze, of De Tuimelaar van O. L. Vrouw: Legendeverhaal (Torhout, Belgium: Becelaere, 1933). The title page contains a reduced version of an illustration that is repeated as a full page later in the volume (p. 48); both display the main character with the Madonna and Child.
Wintze wins you over. Blondeel, Wintze, 59.
E. H. Blondeel. Born in the little town of Beveren (Roeselare), E. H. (Georges) Blondeel became a priest in 1942 and served later as a teacher at Sint-Lodewijkscollege in Bruges for nearly two decades. An article about Blondeel was published in the college’s alumni magazine by J. Mûelenaere, “E. H. Georges Blondeel,” Haec olim 12 (1961): 5–9.
resided in Mont-Saint-Guibert. Subsequently, he was appointed as spiritual leader to communities of nuns, first in Ypres and later in Bruges. The book itself was published in Torhout, in West Flanders.
not far from both Beauraing and Banneux. To be precise, slightly less than forty miles (63 km) from Beauraing and a little less than seventy miles (117 km) from Banneux.
a practicing Catholic. His Catholicism is clear not only from the Church’s nihil obstat and imprimatur, but also from the inscription in one surviving volume to “his former pupil, Brother Elias-Victor” (“zijn oud leerling Broeder Elias-Victor”).
The Netherlands
the writer directed dramatic performances of Our Lady’s Tumbler. “St-Vincent’s College,” Het Ypersche, January 26, 1929, 9; February 16, 1929, 16.
various other towns in Flanders. The newspaper accounts refer to Bruges, Roeselaere, and other unnamed towns and villages.
The Pious Minstrel. In Dutch, De vrome speelman (Amsterdam: “De Gulden Ster,” 1933).
Reynard the Fox. August Defresne, De psychologie van “Van den Vos Reynaerde” (Amsterdam: Boonacker, 1920).
expressionism. August Defresne, “Het expressionisme in de huidige Duitse toneelschrijfkunst,” Groot Nederland 22 (1925): 293–312, 406–29, 513–30, 625–42 (final page mispaginated).
any other Dutch-language author. In fact, the index of personal names in the biography includes no one mentioned in this study apart from Franz Werfel and Defresne’s wife. For a study of Defresne’s theatrical career, see Willy Philip Pos, De toneelkunstenaar August Defresne: Toneelschrijver, regisseur, toneelleider (Amsterdam: Moussault, 1971). His wife was Charlotte Köhler.
one or another theatrical company. His adaptation appeared during a spell from 1932 to 1938 when he was with the Amsterdam Stage Union (Amsterdamse Toneelvereniging).
Chamber of Culture. In Dutch, Kultuurkamer.
the photographic image. The photograph was taken by Godfried de Groot.
Charlotte Köhler. She is known to have performed the text in 1932, and to have resorted to it subsequently in school presentations. See Ferdinand Sterneberg, Charlotte Köhler: “Klank en weerklank” (Zutphen, Netherlands: Walburg Pers, 1977), 44, 129.
the mysticism of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The preceding two quotations are plucked from De vrome speelman, 8, 9, respectively.
Broken Light. Anthonie Donker, Gebroken licht (Arnhem, Netherlands: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1934), 59. This and the citations of Donker in the following note expatiate upon information furnished in the postscript to Peter J. A. Nissen, “Jongleren voor de Moeder Gods: De voorgeschiedenis van een verhaal van Gerard Reve,” Maatstaf 31 (1983): 45–50.
The fourteen-line poem. Anthonie Donker, Grenzen (Arnhem, Netherlands: Hijman, Stenfert Kroese & Van der Zande, 1928), 95, repr. in idem, De einder: Verzamelde gedichten (Arnhem, Netherlands: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1947), 152.
Dutch man of letters. Victor Emanuel van Vriesland, trans., De potsenmaker van Onze Lieve Vrouwe, illus. Bob Buys, De Uilenreeks, vol. 44 (Amsterdam: Bigot en Van Rossum, 1941), repr. in idem, Gouden legenden: Verhalen van God en heiligen, vromen en zondaars, ed. Antoon Coolen, illus. Karel Thole (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1951; 2nd ed., 1953), 29–38. The text of the Dutch Our Lady’s Tumbler is embellished with one full-page illustration (on p. 35), which depicts the tumbler in the middle of a backward handspring alongside an altar. A Madonna has descended and is approaching with a large towel.
Years ago, when seeking details about Vriesland’s version through the Anglophone version of the search engine Google, I was amused to learn that keyboarding the Dutch word potsenmaker would induce the interrogative “Did you mean: potsmoker?” For general autobiographical information relating to this author, see Victor Emanuel van Vriesland, Herinneringen verteld aan Alfred Kossmann (Amsterdam: Em. Querido, 1969).
The Restaurant. August Defresne, Het eethuis (Maastricht, Netherlands: Leiter-Nypels, 1931), 9–17.
Vriesland’s version. It appeared as a small clothbound book. If the title page is figured into the count, the volume contains six three-tone images by the artist and occasional book illustrator Bob Buys.
artists had played a role in the Resistance. “Hij beklemtoonde na de bevrijding steeds de belangrijke rol die kunstenaars in het verzet hadden gespeeld” (“After the liberation, he always emphasized the important role that artists had played in the Resistance”), http://www.historici.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn3/vriesland
self-declared Zionist. Jaap Meijer, Victor Emanuel van Vriesland als zionist: Een vergeten hoofdstuk uit de geschiedenis van het Joods nationalisme in Nederland, Diasporade, vol. 2 (Heemstede, Netherlands: Jaap Meijer, 1976).
Vriesland sunk into despondency. One of his letters acknowledges that he “suffered from depression in the stark lazaretto of his isolation” (“In de barre leproserie van mijn isolement lijd ik aan depressies”), http://www.historici.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn3/vriesland
to go under water. The Dutch duiken is cognate with the English verb duck. On awareness during the War of the word’s metaphoric connotations, see Jeroen Dewulf, Spirit of Resistance: Dutch Clandestine Literature during the Nazi Occupation (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010), 86.
fled his homeland. Werfel did not return until thirty years posthumously, when his body was exhumed in Los Angeles for reburial in Vienna. He has been claimed ex post facto for honor by both Austria and Germany.
Whether he would have wanted or even accepted kudos from either nation is disputable.
The Song of Bernadette. Franz Werfel, Das Lied von Bernadette, Roman (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1941). The book was translated into English for publication in 1942, and a movie was made of it already in 1943. The promotion for the film featured a painting made for the occasion by the archetypically American artist Norman Rockwell.
ultimate values of our mortal lot. Franz Werfel, The Song of Bernadette, trans. Ludwig Lewisohn (New York: Viking, 1942), 7.
preeminence. Among other things, he held for two decades, from 1945 to 1965, the presidency of the Pen Club, the association of writers.
in 1902. On October 5.
Anatole France Society. In French, Société Anatole France. Held in The Hague, Nederlands Letterkundig Museum.
an undated publication. Gabriël Smit, trans., De danser van Onze Lieve Vrouw (Bussum, Netherlands: Ons Leekenspel, [1941?]).
seven miracles of the Virgin. The typography and printing of the miracles was the work of the publisher Charles Nypels. This presentation was reprinted in due course in Gabriël Smit, Zeven Marialegenden, illus. Cuno van den Steene (Utrecht, Netherlands: Het Spectrum, 1941, repr. 1944), 80–105.
a very Old French legend. Smit, Zeven Marialegenden, 108.
he also underscores. Smit, Zeven Marialegenden, 108: “Dat de hier geboden verzen de oorspronkelijke teksten niet op den voet volgen, spreekt welhaast vanzelf. Er werd—met behoud van den algemeenen opzet van het verhaal—voornamelijk naar gestreefd den geest dezer kostelijke vertelling voor den hedendaagschen lezer te doen herleven in een hem vertrouwde vorm.”
Cuno van den Steene. He was associated with the progressive Catholic periodical De Gemeenschap (The community), published from 1925 to 1941.
a printer. For information, see Marianne van Laar and Karel van Laar, Charles Nypels: Meester-drukker, Goodwill, vol. 22 (Maastricht, Netherlands: Charles Nypels Stichting, 1986). The press was Het Spectrum; the printer, Charles Nypels.
In the Light. In Dutch, In ’t Licht.
Smit’s circumstances. See http://www.nederlandsepoezie.org/dichters/s/smit_gabriel.html
Netherlands Broadcasting. In Dutch, Nederlandsche Omroep.
Netherlands Chamber of Culture. In Dutch, Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer.
the opportunism of taking both sides. The evidence is presented fairly and concisely by Dewulf, Spirit of Resistance, 202–3.
addressed himself to religious topics. For instance, he wrote a “Requiem in Memory of His Mother,” to honor a parent who had died when he was still a young man.
Psalms. In Dutch, Psalmen (1952).
In Wartime. The original title was the Latin Tempore belli, 1944 and 1946.
Praise of Mary and Other Poems. In Dutch, Maria-lof en andere gedichten.
A French Legend from the Twelfth Century. In Dutch, De tuimelaar … een franse legende uit de twaalfde eeuw. The book contains no indication of the printer.
far more for the size of the country. This point is made by Dewulf, Spirit of Resistance, 3.
Major Seminary. In Dutch, Grootseminarie.
Camp Haaren. Known in Dutch as Kamp Haaren, this “hostage camp” was located in the province of North Brabant.
prison and interrogation unit. In German, Polizeigefängnis und Untersuchungsgefängnis.
SS. In full, Schutzstaffel, “defense squadron.”
Anton Mussert. On Mussert, see Dewulf, Spirit of Resistance, 41–42, 46–47.
Brabantia Nostra. On Brabantia Nostra, see J. (Jan) L. G. van Oudheusden, Brabantia Nostra: Een gewestelijke beweging voor fierheid en “schoner” leven 1935–1951, PhD diss., Katholieke Universiteit, Nijmegen, 1990 (Tilburg, Netherlands: Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 1990), and, more accessibly, idem, “Brabantia Nostra: Rooms en romantisch regionalisme, 1935–1951,” in Constructie van het eigene: Culturele vormen van regionale identiteit in Nederland, ed. Carlo van der Borgt et al., ANNO-historische reeks, vol. 8, Publicaties van het P. J. Meertens-Instituut voor Dialectologie, Volkskunde en Naamkunde van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, vol. 25 (Amsterdam: P. J. Meertens-Instituut, 1996), 123–39.
poet of the cultural and political reawakening. In Dutch, “Dichter van het Brabants Reveil.”
the herald of Brabant. J. C. Bedaux, “Franciscus Josephus Henricus Maria van der Ven, Tilburg 2 september 1907–Tilburg 10 december 1999,” Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (2000): 129–31. After the war, Van der Ven set aside verse for his specialty of labor law and published prolifically in his new professional field. After retirement, he produced in rapid succession collections of poetry, once again under his pseudonym, with the publisher Brandon Pers in Tilburg: see http://www.cubra.nl/brandonpers/welcome.htm
Toward a Catholic Order. To give the full bibliography, Étienne Gilson, Pour un ordre catholique (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1934). See Van Oudheusden, “Brabantia Nostra: Rooms en romantisch regionalisme,” 128.
Étienne Gilson. For instance, in 1932, Étienne Gilson, L’esprit de la philosophie médiévale (The spirit of medieval philosophy) (Paris: J. Vrin, 1932) and, two years later, idem, La théologie mystique de saint Bernard (The mystic theology of Saint Bernard) (Paris: J. Vrin, 1934).
student guild of Our Dear Lady. This point was made by Van Oudheusden, “Brabantia Nostra: Rooms en romantisch regionalisme,” 125–26. On the guild, see B. J. M. van Raaij, “Het Brabants Studentengilde van Onze Lieve Vrouw: Een regionale katholieke studentenbeweging tussen antimodernisme en modernisme, 1926–1970,” Nordbrabants historisch jaarboek 6 (1989): 155–206.
the core of the Netherlands. Cees van Raak, “En het strovuur brandt voort … Frank Valkenier en de verdere geschiedenis van de Brandon Pers,” Tilburg: Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, monumenten en cultuur 19.3 (2001): 97–105, at 98: “Brabant wordt zienderogen weer de kern der Nederlanden.”
ready to invent them. Oudheusden, “Brabantia Nostra: Rooms en romantisch regionalisme,” 130–33.
As a token of appreciation. This copy is in my possession.
Brabantia Mariana. Augustinus Wichmans, Brabantia Mariana tripartita (Antwerp, Belgium: apud Ioannem Cnobbaert, 1632).
the Duchess of Brabant. In Dutch, “De Hertogin van Brabant.”
a little Marian chapel. Oudheusden, “Brabantia Nostra: Rooms en romantisch regionalisme,” 133–34. The structure was sanctified in 1939.
the Lady of Moerdijk. In Dutch, “De Vrouwe van de Moerdijk.”
boundary between the Netherlands and Belgium. With some distortion, it stands for what the Mason-Dixon line represents between the North and South in the United States. In this case, the line is a wide river and estuary called Hollands Diep. To the north of the water lies South Holland; to the south, North Brabant.
university teacher of medieval literature. Gryt Anne van der Toorn-Piebenga, Middeleeuwse Marialegenden in modern Nederlands weergegeven, en van oorspronkelijke illustraties voorzien (Baarn, Netherlands: Gooi, 1994), 61–64, with note on p. 92.
a prose version of the tale. Felix Rutten, Novellen (Sittards dialekt) (Sittard, Netherlands: Alberts, 1959), 7–15 (“Broeder Balderik”). The author had earlier published it as “Broeder Balderik,” Veldeke 33.184 (December 1958): 49–52.
a short prose printed first in 1972. The short piece was published first in December of 1972 and again in the Christmas issue of 1974 in staff newsletters of a company where the housemate of the writer was employed. This “Guus van Bladel” was designated in Reve’s works consistently as “the giver of the small picture of Notre Dame of Lourdes, ‘shoe size 38.’” Full bibliographic details on the prose tale are available in Gerard Reve, Archief Reve, ed. Pierre H. Dubois, annot. Sjaak Hubregtse, 2 vols. (Baarn, Netherlands: de Prom, 1981–1982), 2 (“1961–1980”): 21–23 (text), 219–20 (annotation). For analysis, see Peter J. A. Nissen, “Jongleren voor de Moeder Gods: De voorgeschiedenis van een verhaal van Gerard Reve,” Maatstaf 31 (1983): 45–50.
discomfort with modernity. For context, see Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Das Mittelalter und das Unbehagen an der Moderne: Mittelalterbeschwörungen in der Weimarer Republik und danach,” in Spannungen und Widersprüche: Gedenkschrift fiir František Graus, ed. Susanna Burghartz et al. (Sigmaringen, Germany: J. Thorbecke, 1992), 125–53.
pure Germanness. The term Völkischkeit (from the word Volk, “folk” or “people”) means literally “folk-ishness.”
This condemnation. Frank-Rutger Hausmann, “English and Romance Studies in Germany’s Third Reich,” in Nazi Germany and the Humanities, ed. Wolfgang Bialas and Anson Rabinbach (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), 341–64, at 341, 345, 349.
German fairy tales. Christa Kamenetsky, Children’s Literature in Hitler’s Germany (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984), 139–41.
His famous dictum. Anatole France, in L’Humanité, no. 6823, November 30, 1922, 1: “Il est beau qu’un soldat désobéisse à des ordres criminels.”
Wilhelm Fraenger. Wilhelm Fraenger, Die Masken von Rheims und der Legend “Der Tänzer unserer Lieben Frau” ins Deutsche übertragen von Curt Sigmar Gutkind (Erlenbach, Switzerland: Eugen Rentsch, 1922).
he dismissed as failures. In Fraenger, Die Masken von Rheims, 40–42.
Religious Art in France. Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France, the Thirteenth Century: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources, Bollingen Series, vol. 90.2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Romanesque Sculpture: Apostles and Jongleurs. Focillon, “Sculpture romane: Apôtres et jongleurs (études de mouvement),” Revue de l’art ancien et moderne 55 (1929): 13–28.
Previous research. Cahn, “Focillon’s Jongleur,” Art History 18.3 (1995): 345–62, at 355.
Curt Sigmar Gutkind
Curt Sigmar Gutkind. A thumbnail sketch of Gutkind can be found in Hans Reiss, “Geisteswissenschaften in the Third Reich: Some Reflections,” German History 21 (2003): 86–103, at 98. For the fullest biographical background, see above all Frank-Rutger Hausmann, “Vom Strudel der Ereignisse verschlungen”: Deutsche Romanistik im “Dritten Reich,” 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: V. Klostermann, 2008), 244–51; Andreas F. Kelletat, “Auf der Suche nach einem Verschollenen: Dossier zu Leben und Werk des Romanisten und Übersetzers Curt Sigmar Gutkind (1896–1940),” in Übersetzerforschung: Neue Beiträge zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte des Übersetzens, ed. idem et al., TRANSÜD: Arbeiten zur Theorie und Praxis des Übersetzens und Dolmetschens, vol. 85 (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2016), 13–70. Other resources are Joseph Walk, ed., Kurzbiographien zur Geschichte der Juden 1918–1945, Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem (Munich, Germany: De Gruyter Saur, 1988), 132; Lexikon deutsch-jüdischer Autoren, 21 vols. (Munich, Germany: De Gruyter Saur, 1992–2013), 10:76–80.
Mussolini and His Fascism. The book was published in both Italian and German: Curt Sigmar Gutkind, Mussolini und sein Fascismus, with an introduction by Benito Mussolini (Heidelberg, Germany: Merlinverlag, 1928); Mussolini e il suo fascismo (Heidelberg, Germany: Merlinverlag, 1927).
labor and union issues. Wolfgang Schieder, Mythos Mussolini: Deutsche in Audienz beim Duce (Munich, Germany: Oldenbourg, 2013), 107–9.
personal audience. On March 1, 1927: see Schieder, Mythos Mussolini, 107.
dissertation director. In German, Doktorvater (literally, “doctor-father”).
translation institute. In German, Dolmetscherinstitut, at the Städtische Handelshochschule Mannheim (later the Dolmetscherinstitut in Heidelberg).
Her husband directed the translation institute. On the internal politics within the translation institute and on the consequences of the national politics of the times, see Reinhard Bollmus, Handelshochschule und Nationalsozialismus: Das Ende der Handelshochschule Mannheim und die Vorgeschichte der Errichtung einer Staats- und Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät an der Universität Heidelberg 1933–34, Mannheimer sozialwissenschaftliche Studien, vol. 8 (Meisenheim am Glan, Germany: Hain, 1973), 121–23.
business school. In German, Handelshochschule.
Romance philologists. They included Erich Auerbach, Helmut Hatzfeld, Victor Klemperer, Ulrich Leo, Leonardo Olschki, and Leo Spitzer.
interned in Canada. The action was legal under the royal prerogative of Regulation 18B.
lost their lives. For an account of the vessel and its sinking, see Des Hickey and Gus Smith, Star of Shame: The Secret Voyage of the Arandora Star (Dublin, Ireland: Madison Pub., 1989); Maria Serena Balestracci, Arandora Star: Dall’oblio alla memoria, Belle Storie, Saggi, vol. 6 (Parma, Italy: MUP, 2008), 152 (on Limentani), 370n227 (on Gutkind). The tallies of deaths that have been published vary considerably. For clarification of the variations, see Peter and Leni Gillman, “Collar the Lot!”: How Britain Interned and Expelled Its Wartime Refugees (London: Quartet Books, 1980), 209. For a more recent book on the interning, see Richard Dove, ed. “Totally Un-English?”: Britain’s Internment of “Enemy Aliens” in Two World Wars (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005).
Hans Hömberg
Cherries for Rome. In German, Kirschen für Rom.
contemporaneous book. Jud Süß: Roman (Berlin: Ufa-Buchverlag, 1941).
Jew Süss. The German title of the film is “Jud Süß,” directed by Veit Harlan, who wrote the screenplay with Eberhard Wolfgang Möller and Ludwig Metzger. For context, see David Culbert, “The Impact of Anti-Semitic Film Propaganda on German Audiences: Jew Süss and The Wandering Jew (1940),” in Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, ed. Richard A. Etlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 139–57; Susan Tegel, Jew Süss / Jud Süss (Germany, 1940) (Trowbridge, UK: Flicks Books, 1996).
Popular Observer. In the full German, Völkischer Beobachter: Kampfblatt der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung Groβdeutschlands. See Ernst Klee, Das Kulturlexikon zum dritten Reich: Wer war was vor und nach 1945 (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: S. Fischer, 2007), 255–56.
The Juggler of Our Lady. In German, Der Gaukler unserer lieben Frau, illus. Ernst von Dombrowski (Vienna: Eduard Wancura, 1961).
three tales. “Der Gaukler unserer lieben Frau,” 7–32, “Das eigentümliche Fräulein” (The peculiar young lady), 33–82, and “Die zwei Pasteten” (The two pies), 83–104.
additional remarks. Hömberg, Der Gaukler unserer lieben Frau, 108.
modern-day features. Despite the modern features, the story was taken as authentically medieval by Karl-Heinz Ziethen, Virtuosos of Juggling: From the Ming Dynasty to Cirque de Soleil (Santa Cruz, CA: Renegade Juggling, 2003), 6.
Here lies Mary’s jongleur. Hömberg, Der Gaukler unserer lieben Frau, 32: “Hic iacet ioculator Mariae / artifex candidus / Vapor Ioannes.”
collections of German art. Klee, Kulturlexikon, 118.
extreme rightist organizations. For example, consider the Deutsches Kulturwerk europäischen Geistes (German Cultural Society of the European Spirit) (1950–1996).
dissolved in 1998. In German, Verein Dichterstein Offenhausen (1963–1998).
After the War
writers and artists of any nation. See, for example, Anatole France, Quatre nouvelles, ed. Josef Longerich (Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany: L. Bielefeld, 1947), 13–20; idem, Le petit soldat de plomb: Le jongleur de Notre-Dame, ed. Georg Ahting and H. Richters-Franceschi, Neusprachliche Texte, vol. 124 (Dortmund, Germany: Lamberg Lensing, 1954).
a casualty of the Second World War. On the war and its effect on German medievalism, see Valentin Groebner, Das Mittelalter hört nicht auf: Über historisches Erzählen (Munich, Germany: C. H. Beck, 2008), 106–22, esp. at 117.
destroy the Gothic domes. Heinrich Heine, On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany and Other Writings, ed. Terry Pinkard, trans. Howard Pollack-Milgate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 116. The original was first published as Henri Heine, “L’Allemagne depuis Luther,” Revue des deux mondes, 3e ser., vols. 1, 4 (March, November, December 1834), repr. Heinrich Heine, “Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland,” Der Salon 2 (1835).
Church of the Augustinians. In German, Augustinerkirche.
Church of the Minorites. In German, Minoritenkirche. The Minorites are the Franciscans.
the renovating architect. Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf von Hohenberg.
Votive Church. In German, Votivkirche, constructed between 1856 and 1878 by Heinrich Freiherr von Ferstel.
Mary of the Victory. In German, Maria vom Siege, built between 1868 and 1875 after a design by Friedrich von Schmidt.
Town Hall. Rathaus, built between 1872 and 1883 with Friedrich von Schmidt as architect.
The playwright. Joseph August Lux, Das Gauklerspiel vor Unserer Lieben Frau, or Gauklerlegende. For a listing of this unpublished play, see Wilhelm Kosch and Ingrid Bigler-Marschall, Deutsches Theater-Lexikon: Biographisches und bibliographisches Handbuch, 4 vols. (Klagenfurt, Germany: F. Kleimayr, 1953–1998), 2:1315. The typescript is Vienna, Austria, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Ser. N. 34081–34082 Han. The playwright’s first name is frequently recorded with the alternate spelling Josef.
The Vision of the Blessed Lady. Joseph August Lux, Die Vision der lieben Frau (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1911).
The Play of Satan’s World Judgment. In German, Das Spiel von Satans Weltgericht oder Der Affe Gottes und der Gerechte: Ein zeitgemäßes Mysterium (Vienna and Salzburg-Anif: Weiße Hefte, 1930).
God’s Minstrel. In German, Der Spielmann Gottes (Spiel) (1930).
Play of a Holy Fool. In German, Ein heilig Narrenspiel (Vienna and Salzburg-Anif: Weiβe Hefte, 1930).
From Death into Life. In German, Vom Tod ins Leben: Ein Buch von Liebe, Tod und Jenseits (Hammelburg, Germany: Drei Eichen, 1962).
earlier hymns. In German, Vom Tod ins Leben: Ein Hymnus, twelve pages published under the name of Rudolf Elmayer von Vestenbrugg (Zurich, Switzerland: Graphia, 1951), and six pages (ten sides of verse) under that of Elmar Brugg (Munich: Josef Gäßler, 1958).
The Jongleur of Our Beloved Lady. In German, “Der Spielmann Unserer Lieben Frau.” In the novel, the key pages relating to our story are 254–71, 285–89, and 293.
construction engineer. The birth year of 1881 and death year of 1970 are attested in Werner Schuder, Kürschners Deutscher Literatur-Kalender: Nekrolog 1936–1970 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973), 871. The alternative birth year of 1888 is also sometimes mentioned. He was born in 1881, in what is now the Croatian city of Pula, and died in 1970, in the Austrian metropolis of Graz, where he had lived much of the time until the spring of 1932. The fullest and most reliable information is available is Karin Gradwohl-Schlacher and Sabine Fuchs, “Rudolf von Elmayer-Vestenbrugg,” in Literatur in Österreich 1938–1945: Handbuch eines literarischen Systems, vol. 1, Steiermark, ed. Uwe Baur and Karin Gradwohl-Schlacher, 3 vols. (Vienna: Böhlau, 2008–), 101–5; Karin Gradwohl-Schlacher, “Elmayer von Vestenbrugg (Elmayer-Vestenbrugg), Rudolf von; Ps. Elmar Vinibert von Rudolf, Elmar Brugg, Schriftsteller und Journalist,” in Österreichisches biographisches Lexikon (ÖBL) Online-Edition 3 (Nov. 15, 2014).
his brother Willy. Willibald (Willy) Elmayer von Vestenbrugg, as had been his father Ludwig, was formerly a cavalry captain in the Austrian Imperial Army. The school is the Tanzschule Elmayer. On the brother and the school, see Thomas Schäfer-Elmayer, Vom Sattel zum Tanzparkett: Die Lebensgeschichte meines Großvaters Willy Elmayer (Vienna: Kremayr & Scheriau, 2014).
a host of different names. Such as von Elmayer-Vestenbrugg, Rudolf Elmar von Vinibert, Elmar Vinibert von Rudolph, Elmar Brugg, and Rudolph von Elmayer-Vestenbrugg: see Richard Bamberger and Franz Maier-Bruck, eds., Österreich Lexikon, 2 vols. (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1966), 1:274.
lieutenant colonel. Obersturmführer (literally, “senior assault leader”) in the Sturmabteilung-Wehrmannschaften (“Garrison of the Assault Division”). He is identified as having this rank in Rudolf von Elmayer-Vestenbrugg, ed., SA.-Männer im feldgrauen Rock: Taten und Erlebnisse von SA.-Männern in den Kriegsjahren 1939–1940 (Leipzig, Germany: Hase & Koehler, 1941).
the brigade in Slovenia. Tone Ferenc, “The Austrians and Slovenia during the Second World War,” in Conquering the Past: Austrian Nazism Yesterday and Today, ed. F. Parkinson (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 207–23, at 211–13.
Gravediggers of World Culture. Rudolf von Elmayer-Vestenbrugg, Totengräber der Weltkultur: Der Weg des jüdischen Untermenschentums zur Weltherrschaft, Kampfschriften der Obersten SA-Führung, vol. 2 (Munich, Germany: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937).
Without Judah, without Rome. Rudolf von Elmayer-Vestenbrugg, Georg Ritter von Schönerer, der Vater des politischen Antisemitismus, von einem, der ihn selbst erlebt hat (Munich, Germany: F. Eher nachfolger, 1936, 2nd ed., 1942), 87: “Ohne Juda, ohne Rom / Wird gebaut Germaniens Dom!”
World Ice theory. In German, Welteislehre.
Hörbiger’s system of deranged ideas. Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man, 2nd ed. (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2010), 225–27, 431–32; Peter Levenda, Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult, 2nd ed. (New York: Continuum, 2002), 197–200. Such half-baked (or -frozen) thinking is a throwback, in an intellectually disordered and disheveled way, to the explanations for natural phenomena that Presocratic philosophers posited.
Heinrich Himmler. Others within the party opposed it strongly.
Storm Trooper training handbook. See Robert Bowen, Universal Ice: Science and Ideology in the Nazi State (London: Bellhaven, 1993); Edward P. Rich, The Pazyryk Agenda: A Police Procedural (self-published, Xlibris, 2004), 130–32. Not all this scholarship is readily verifiable, and the book by Bowen has been faulted: see the review by Mitchell G. Ash, in German Studies Review 18 (1995): 174–76. The German phrase translated here is “volksnah und volkswichtig.”
his 1958 dissertation. “Studien zum Darstellungsbereich und Wortschatz des Beowulf-Epos.”
Armanen Futhark. Futhark is a term to designate runic writing systems, while the modifier Armanen refers to a supposed class of priestly kings that held sway over the ancient Aryan-Germanic nation.
Guido von List. He wrote Das Geheimnis der Runen (The secret of the runes) to study the Armanen runes.
reviving Germanic paganism. Guido von List, Deutsch-mythologische Landschaftsbilder, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Vienna: Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft, 1912), 2:592–93.
The Resurrection of the Dead. 367–471, with subsections “In the Catacombs” (410–62) and “Resurrection” (462–71).
another book of fiction. Elmar Brugg, Sankt Stephan zwischen Staub und Sternen: Die Schicksalssymphonie eines Domes (Hamburg, Germany: P. Zsolnay, 1956).
everything-in-one. In German, das All-Eine.
the unity of God and man. Angelika Pagel, “Jugendstil and Racism: An Unexpected Alliance,” RACAR: Revue d’art canadienne / Canadian Art Review 19.1–2 (1992): 97–111, at 100–1, 103.
the infamous SS. From German Schutzstaffel (Defense Corps).
folkloristic journal. Die Kunde, “Tidings.”
as an emblem. For example, the 6th SS-Gebirgs-Division “Nord” (Mountain Division North) used it.
SS Honor Ring. In German, SS-Ehrenring.
death’s-head ring. Craig Gottlieb, The SS Totenkopf Ring: An Illustrated History from Munich to Nuremberg (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 2008), 19, 27, 31, 33, 47, 57.
Himmler. An avid Wagnerian, Himmler was predisposed to play at being a knight by his shallow and unsteady knowledge of supposed medieval heroic narratives and symbols. These accessories of knighthood included swords, daggers, and rings. See Gottlieb, SS Totenkopf Ring, 12.
The swastika and the Hagal-rune. The corresponding German reads: “Hakenkreuz und Hagall-Rune sollen uns den nicht zu erschütternden Glauben an den Sieg unserer Weltanschauung vor Augen halten.” It appears in a letter signed by H. Himmler, dated June 6, 1939, to accompany bestowal of the SS death’s-head ring upon SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich.
in the SA and not the SS. That is, in the Storm Troopers and not in the Schutzstaffel.
Now it will also be evident. Vom Tod ins Leben, 474.
without recalling beliefs associated with them. At the same time, to a broader German and Austrian public at the time when he wrote, the Armanen futhark had become better known than any conventional medieval one, and nowadays many individual readers would not be aware of the Nazi associations from nearly seventy-five years ago.
Drei-Eichen-Verlag (“Three Oaks Press”) published Vestenbrugg’s novel. The firm had existed since before the war. It specialized in esoterica quite different from the occultism and pseudoscience promulgated by the Nazis, especially by Himmler’s institute for archaeological and cultural history (Ahnenerbe, meaning “forefathers’ inheritance”). Consequently, it has been reported that the publishers were persecuted. They may have deemed the esotericism of the novel appropriate to the general profile of the books they printed, without paying close attention to undercurrents of a very unpleasant past in Von Tod ins Leben (From death into life).
traveling folk. In German, the two main operative phrases are fahrendes Volk and fahrende Leute.
the same systematic persecution. Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
common-law wife. No effort is made to preserve the emphasis in all other versions on the monasticism, or at least chastity, of the jongleur.
a character called Hanns. The name may be subsumed among the various German equivalents of the French Jean.
In the late twelfth century. The precise date was May 30, 1187.
a second miracle. See Johannes Agnellus, monk of Déols, Liber miraculorum Beatae Mariae Dolensis, in Jean Hubert, “Le miracle de Déols et la trêve conclue en 1187 entre les rois de France et d’Angleterre,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 96 (1935): 285–300, at 296–300 (edition of Latin), and 292–93, 298–99 (analysis).
Saint George himself. Vom Tod ins Leben, 310.
Notes to Chapter 3
The cathedrals belong to France. Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals Were White (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947), xxii.
right or proper reason. The phrase derives from what would be called in Latin recta ratio, which is modeled in turn upon the Greek expression orthos logos. On the origins of the heavily Aristotelian phrase, see J. M. Rist, “An Early Dispute about ‘Right Reason,’” The Monist 66 (1983): 39–48. On the development of the concept over time, see Karl Bärthlein, “Zur Lehre von der recta ratio in der Geschichte der Ethik von der Stoa bis Christian Wolff,” Kant-Studien 56.2 (1965): 125–55. On the Renaissance use of the idea, see Robert Hoopes, Right Reason in the English Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); Lotte Mulligan, “‘Reason,’ ‘Right Reason,’ and ‘Revelation’ in Mid-Seventeenth-Century England,” in Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. Brian Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 375–401.
art for art’s sake. The French slogan from which the English derives is l’art pour l’art. The topic has been examined at length in Albert Cassagne, La théorie de l’art pour l’art: En France chez les derniers romantiques et les premiers réalistes (Paris: L. Dorbon, 1959); John Wilcox, “The Beginnings of l’art pour l’art,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 11.4 (1953): 360–77. For earlier observations that trace the expression further back chronologically, see Joel E. Spingarn, “L’Art pour l’Art,” Modern Language Notes 25 (1910): 95; F. Baldensperger, “L’Art pour l’Art,” Modern Language Notes 27 (1912): 91.
a 1948 study by Wallace Fowlie. Wallace Fowlie, The Clown’s Grail: A Study of Love in Its Literary Expression (Denver, CO: Alan Swallow, 1948), repr. as Love in Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965). I cite from the reprint.
voyou. A French word meaning something like “street urchin, hooligan.”
This brother. Fowlie, Love in Literature, 80.
speechless. Fowlie, Love in Literature, 80: “The clown performs mute rites, as poetry always celebrates something silent, some wilfully silenced voice.”
founder of a long race. Fowlie, Love in Literature, 81.
Richard Sullivan, Notre Dame Professor
practicing his art. Roberts, “Arthur Machen,” 354.
The Juggler. The magazine was discussed in chapter 25, above.
cult of the Virgin. Thomas A. Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983), 16–18, 198–200.
Sorin’s own commitment. Marvin R. O’Connell, Edward Sorin (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 144 (on the sermon), 507–9 (on Ave Maria).
University of Our Lady of the Lake. In French, “L’Université de Notre Dame du Lac.”
vowed to build a chapel. O’Connell, Edward Sorin, 143–44.
a copy of the Chapel of Loreto. It stands immediately behind the present Church of Loreto.
Our Lady of the Angels. In Italian, Santa Maria degli Angeli.
It imitated a church. In fact, its name is the Latin version of Italian Porziuncola, the small church protected inside the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) from Assisi proper, and the place where the Franciscan movement started.
Portiuncula indulgence. The grant of remission was reputedly granted by Pope Honorius III in 1216, in response to reports of a private revelation to Saint Francis. Originally the indulgence, which became an entrenched practice before the end of the thirteenth century, was limited to the original Portiuncula chapel in Italy.
out of place and out of time. The technical terms would be anatopical and anachronistic, although only the second is commonly used.
Two of these hilltops. One was the Sacro Monte or “Sacred Mountain” of the Blessed Virgin in Oropa, province of Biella, constructed in 1617. The other was the Sacred Mountain of the Blessed Virgin of Succor in Ossuccio, province of Como (1635).
ready proximity of long-established pilgrimage sites. Michael P. Carroll, Madonnas That Maim: Popular Catholicism in Italy since the Fifteenth Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 3–4.
traveled several times. O’Connell, Edward Sorin, 618.
with a first stop in Lourdes. O’Connell, Edward Sorin, 641.
theme park for Marianism. The characterization of the Notre Dame campus in this way is meant neither irreverently nor disrespectfully.
Main Building. The edifice was constructed, starting in 1879, in a style that was designated at the time as “modern Gothic,” although domes are not at all typical of architecture in that style.
the heart of the campus. Damaine Vonada, Notre Dame: The Official Campus Guide (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 75.
gilded image. The replica that tops off the Golden Dome was a gift from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame’s sister institution. It measures 16 feet tall and 2 long tons in weight. It brings the overall height of the building to 187 feet. Made of buffed bronze, it has been gilded and regilded a half dozen times with 23-karat gold. See Vonada, Notre Dame, 22; Richard Sullivan, Notre Dame: Reminiscences of an Era (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1951), 141. Understood loosely, the gilding of Madonnas is a logical extension of the chrysography, the technique of golden highlighting, that was used on the Virgin and Child in medieval painting.
electric lighting. Thomas J. Schlereth, A Dome of Learning: The University of Notre Dame’s Main Building (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Alumni Association, 1991), 40.
crescent moon. The lunar shape echoes the base of the statue, which depicts the Virgin’s feet trampling a serpent, with the horns of a crescent moon flanking them. The reptile alludes to her role in overcoming the consequences of Eve’s part in the Fall, which involved a snaky seduction. See Genesis 3:13–15, Apocalypse (Revelation) 12:9. The moon and crown of twelve stars identify the Mother of God with the Woman of the Apocalypse described elsewhere in the Book of Revelation. See Apocalypse (Revelation) 12:1: “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” The Vulgate Bible: Douay-Rheims Translation, vol. 6, The New Testament, ed. Angela M. Kinney, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, vol. 21 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 1360–61. All these elements were second nature in Christian iconography. Particularly pertinent is the type of statue known as the Marianum, which was beloved in northern German village churches from the mid-fifteenth century through the first half of the sixteenth: see Justin E. A. Kroesen and Regnerus Steensma, The Interior of the Medieval Village Church, 2nd ed. (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2012), 347.
in Rome. In the Piazza di Spagna.
wended his way back to his former college. Sullivan, Notre Dame, 8. On Sullivan, see Harry Redcay Warfel, American Novelists of Today (New York: American Book Co., 1951), 417; see also Thomas Stritch, My Notre Dame: Memories and Reflections of Sixty Years (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 61, 161–62, on Sullivan and the relative paucity of writers from Notre Dame.
his early ambitions. Una M. Cadegan, “How Realistic Can a Catholic Writer Be? Richard Sullivan and American Catholic Literature,” Religion and American Catholic Literature: A Journal of Interpretation 6 (1996): 35–61.
Virgin on the Dome. Sullivan, Notre Dame, 142–44: “Today the golden figure of Mary, tiny against the sky, with the great curve of the Dome rounding away golden beneath it, is a kind of symbol of all this University means. … The Dome and the statue on top of it in some kind of way which I do not clearly understand, and so cannot clearly explain, represent Notre Dame … I am inclined to feel that there is more than silly school spirit in this selection of the Main Building for general attention. … it is the fact that on the Dome there is a statue of Mary Immaculate—Notre Dame, Our Lady. … It merely seems necessary to indicate certain reasons why the statue on top of the Dome—which is reverenced as a reminder of a woman who at one moment in time did something permanently important—stands in a way as the center, or core, of this masculine University.”
under the title Inscripts. Samuel John Hazo, Inscripts (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), 49–98, quotation at p. 71.
Our Lady’s Tumbler. Richard Sullivan, Our Lady’s Tumbler (Chicago: Dramatic Publishing Co., 1940).
the grey drapes. Our Lady’s Tumbler, 5.
dressed in the brown of Franciscans. Consequently, the actors in his play should properly be attired in robes of black and white, in lieu of the brown he proposes, which is associated today with Franciscan and, to a lesser extent, Carmelite friars.
Brother Wat. The name of Brother Wat is left unexplained. The form is attested, from the Middle Ages on, particularly as a shortening of Walter.
I do not earn my bread. Our Lady’s Tumbler, 9.
offered his tumbling to Mary. Our Lady’s Tumbler, 9: “Daily have I set before thee what trifling art I have.” Brother Wat’s insufficiency as a breadwinner is mentioned three more times, with the final instance occurring after he has fallen dead.
an exchange. Our Lady’s Tumbler, 19: “Young Monk [timidly]. My lord—can tumbling please the Mother of God? Abbot. She is pleased with love, monsieur. [He speaks softly.] He has earned his bread.”
A 1953 production. In this year, the script was duplicated for a production performed as part of a special Christmas program by a Catholic academy that had been founded in 1946 by the Brothers of Holy Cross. The duplication was accomplished using a mimeograph machine, which worked by forcing ink through stencils onto paper. The performance was reported in “Our Lady’s Tumbler,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 19, 1953, 28. Gilmour Academy was located in Gates Mills, an eastern suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. A connection to the playwright came through the fact that the Brothers were affiliated with the University of Notre Dame. If any other special explanations must be found for why the play would have been staged, at least two come to mind. One is that the theatrical work would have naturally been known to an order of brothers affiliated with a university dedicated to the name of Our Lady. Another is that local affection for the story could have lingered in the region of Ohio where the academy is situated, since it lies within the same diocese as Oberlin, where pageants on the theme had been performed.
No information is forthcoming. The Richard Sullivan papers (1873–1981, mostly 1930–1981) are in the University of Notre Dame Archives.
a modern musical version. Hannah Blue Heron, That Strange Intimacy (Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2005), 82–85. Following quotations are from pp. 85 and 83 respectively.
encyclical. “Fulgens Corona,” September 8, 1953.
the decade of Mary. Una M. Cadegan, “Images of Mary in American Periodicals, 1900–1960,” Marian Studies 46 (1995): 89–107, at 95.
R. O. Blechman, Cartoon Juggler
published in 1953. R. O. Blechman, The Juggler of Our Lady: A Medieval Legend Adapted (New York: Holt, 1953). The story of the conception and composition is recounted in R. O. Blechman, Behind the Lines (New York: Hudson Hills, 1980).
knew little about the holiday. Blechman, Behind the Lines, 23: “Preferably Christmas! If only he had said Halloween or New Year’s Eve, I might have been happier, but Christmas! My mind was awash in Christmas notions all year round, and asking me to do something with this holiday was like asking me to dam a piece of the ocean.”
would have been familiar with the tale. An enthusiastic reviewer took as a given that the story would be a known quantity: “Of course every one knows the legend of the juggler who entertained Our Lady with his art because he was a simple man who loved her and his art was all he knew.” See Gouverneur Paulding, “An Old Legend in New, Charming Guise,” New York Herald Tribune, December 6, 1953, A52.
the author reminisced. Blechman, Behind the Lines, 23.
any campus production before or since. This assertion is more or less verbatim what Conna Bell Shaw made in her reminiscences of the three stagings of the pageant: http://www.oberlin.edu/alummag/oampast/oam_winter/iwas.html
seemed to be instituting itself. The note concludes: “So the literary seed, after lying dormant 700 years, has flowered excitingly, until now ‘The Juggler’ has become one of the most pleasing tales of Christmastime.” Thomas J. McCabe, An Adaptation of the Story of Our Lady’s Juggler, illus. Raymond Lufkin (Tenafly, NJ: Private printing for the friends of Raymond Lufkin, 1951), endnote.
Rex Knight’s Our Lady’s Jester: A One-Act Play. London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1952.
Master Punchinello. Our Lady’s Jester, 5.
commedia dell’arte. In this form of theater actors wore the masks of specific character types. One is Pulcinella.
the beatitude of his playmate. Our Lady’s Jester, 10.
a glory round his head. Our Lady’s Jester, 10.
archaizing style. The stilted language bulges with words such as nay and naught and forms like thou and thee, ’tis, shalt, and the like.
the parable of my own life. Blechman, Behind the Lines, 23.
The Age of Faith. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950.
the author and his wife, Ariel Durant. The effort was not singlehanded, since after a long while Durant acknowledged the partnership of his wife Ariel.
spiritual bankruptcy of their own times. Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History: The Life and Death of a Civilization (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), xiv; John Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91.3 (1986): 519–52, at 520–21.
publication of The Juggler of Our Lady. His first publication, it has been reprinted twice in English, both in his autobiographical dossier (introduced by Maurice Sendak) and by itself (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1997). A few years ago, it was translated into French, in an edition that includes a small sampling of his other works: R. O. Blechman, Le jongleur de Notre-Dame: Une légende médiévale réadaptée, trans. Anne Krief ([Paris]: Gallimard Jeunesse, 2002).
eclipsed by the medievalism. “Religion: Cantalbert the Juggler,” Time, Monday, October 5, 1953.
Franciscan who reviewed the volume. Eligius M. Buytaert, “Review of R. O. Blechman, The Juggler of Our Lady,” Franciscan Studies 13.4 (1953): 138: “The drawings, partly in color, give quite an original, though modern, interpretation of the medieval version.”
one-hit wonder. Blechman, Behind the Lines, 23: “When The Juggler of Our Lady was published and met with great acclaim, I associated success with the book but not with me, whom I considered undeserving. Convinced that success lay in producing other Jugglers, I set out to do more of them. Son of the Juggler, Grandson of the Juggler, Grand Nieces and Nephews of the Juggler—I turned them out with Catholic fervor, but to no effect. In the meantime the years went by, and, still desperately trying to produce offspring—Cousin of the Juggler, Bastard of the Juggler—I would not stop; I could not stop.”
affinity for Christmas themes. His yuletide work has ranged from a lovely interstitial “Season’s Greetings” on the CBS television network that aired in 1966, through an eleven-minute cartoon short on the Nativity in 1978 called No Room at the Inn, to The Life of Saint Nicholas, as Transcribed in Pictures and Text (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1996).
seeking out foreign folktales. Most notably in a fifty-one-minute animated version of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” in 1983. Beyond these bits of continuity, he innovated constantly afterward. In the fullness of time he became and has remained applauded for his creativity and wit as a cartoonist, animator, and illustrator. A culminating irony would be that nowadays many more would recognize his hand from major newspapers, magazines, and television than would have heard of the title that launched his career. He has had artwork in such venues as the op-ed page of The New York Times, the front cover of The New Yorker, and the pages of such magazines as Esquire, Fortune, Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone, and Spin; animations in television shows such as Sesame Street, series such as the PBS mystery show Ghostwriter, and commercials in many advertising campaigns. Eventually, he founded his own animation studio, The Ink Tank, in 1977.
animated short. By Terrytoons in Technicolor, produced by Gene Deitch, directed by Al Kouzel, based on the book by R. O. Blechman, with original music by Philip A. Scheib.
I am the Woolworth’s. Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, 2nd ed. (New York: New American Library, 1987), 125.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas. New York: Random House, 1957. The television special of 1966 was directed by Chuck Jones for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Named Cantalbert. Could his supposed incompetency, since he is preoccupied by all that he cannot do, account even subconsciously for the first syllable in his anomalous name?
rose without thorns. George Wells Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 37.
the rosary. For consideration of the origins of the rosary, see Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 13–30. For the Cistercian connection, see Andreas Heinz, Louange des mystères du Christ: Histoire du rosaire, méditation de la vie de Jésus, compte tenu en particulier de ses racines cisterciennes (Paris: Téqui, 1990).
I hope people won’t be fooled. Time, October 5, 1953, 71–72, at 72.
Korean War. The war began on June 25, 1950, and it reached a close of sorts with a cease-fire on July 27, 1953.
Joseph R. McCarthy. McCarthyism has become synonymous with witch-hunt, thanks in no small part to The Crucible, a 1952 play written by the American playwright Arthur Miller in response to the sinister efforts of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee to root out supposed communist sympathizers.
Janu-ary. As god of beginnings and transitions, he has dominion over gates and doorways: Janus is a divine janitor or “doorkeeper,” from the noun ianua or “door.”
sound recordings. Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, ’Twas the Night before Christmas, 1953, Decca Records 45 rpm.
the relationship between the two. Bretel, “Le jongleur de Notre-Dame, un miracle pour enfants?,” in Grands textes du Moyen Âge à l’usage des petits, ed. Caroline Cazanave and Yvon Houssais, Annales littéraires de l’Université de Franche-Comté, vol. 869 (Besançon, France: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2010), 277–97, at 285–86.
Blechman’s development. For his subsequent development, see R. O. Blechman, The Graphic Stories of R. O. Blechman: Talking Lines (Montreal, Canada: Drawn and Quarterly, 2009).
Maurice Sendak observed. He offered the insight first in the introduction to Blechman’s 1980 artistic biography, Behind the Lines, and adapted it in his preface to the 1997 reedition, fourth unnumbered side.
United Productions of America. Often designated UPA for short.
deliberate artistic experiment. Michael J. Barrier, Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 548–51.
various short narratives. Through his art he brought to life fables by the Russian fabulist Ivan Andreevich Krylov and the fairy tale of the false prince by the German writer Wilhelm Hauff. He also illustrated a few books by the author of German children’s books, Heinz Sponsel. See Ivan Andreevic Krylov, Sämtliche Fabeln, trans. Rudolf Bächtold (Zurich, Switzerland: Die Waage, 1960); Wilhelm Hauff, Das Märchen von dem falschen Prinzen (Dassel, Germany: Büttenpapierfabrik Hahnemühle, 1962); Heinz Sponsel, Sango und die Inkagötter (Stuttgart, Germany: Schwab, 1951); and other children’s books with Sponsel on Christopher Columbus and Copernicus.
puppet plays. https://preetorius.lauteren.eu/lp.html
The Dancer of Our Lady. Wilhelm Preetorius, Der Tänzer unserer lieben Frau (Zurich, Switzerland: Die Waage, 1964).The unnumbered pages with art are printed in three colors, with handwritten text in black, and scissor cutouts in brown and gray. As in Blechmann’s work, the graphic style is immediately recognizable as belonging to the second half of the twentieth century.
Life of the Fathers. For the reference to the Vie des pères, see Preetorius, Der Tänzer, first page of text (unnumbered): “the original of this legend derives from a collection of pious tales entitled Vie des pères written in thirteenth-century French.”
scissor cuts. For an overview, see Ernst Biesalski, Scherenschnitt und Schattenriß: Kleine Geschichte der Silhouettenkunst, 2nd ed. (Munich, Germany: Callwey, 1978).
Emil Preetorius. Biesalski, Scherenschnitt und Schattenriß, 118–20, with illustrations.
At least one reviewer. For the first view, see the Motion Picture Herald, December 14, 1957, Product Digest Section 642: “With a deft, almost impressionistic use of line and color, and the deeply pleasant voice of Boris Karloff for narration, is told how eventually, in the monastery, the juggler’s gift wields its influence. An unusual and novel effect is achieved by the use of small figures on the big CinemaScope screen.” For the second, B. W. in Kinematograph Weekly, December 19, 1957, 14: “An unusual Terrytoon Cartoon in which is told a medieval folk tale. Although imaginatively handled, the treatment is too mannered and unusual to have as wide an appeal as its artistic qualities merit. Thus it must rate as Average.”
Gene Deitch. For his recollections, see https://web.archive.org/web/20061102104316/http://genedeitch.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=chapter&chapter=14&page=4
wide-screen movies. The anamorphic lens series known as CinemaScope, created in 1953 and in use through 1967, permitted the creation of images up to a 2.66:1 aspect ratio, nearly twice as wide as the 1.37:1 ratio enabled previously by the Academy format.
highest achievement at Terrytoons. https://web.archive.org/web/20061102103731/http://genedeitch.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=chapter&chapter=15A&page=9
head of the studio. William M. Weiss.
the music. The composer was the American Philip A. Scheib.
the heading “Religion.” In the category “Among the Other Books of the Week” (September 29, 1953).
ample justification. In speaking of miracles in 1888, Gaston Paris had already elevated Our Lady’s Tumbler as “perhaps the masterpiece of the genre, thanks to its delightful and childlike simplicity.” See Gaston Paris, La Littérature française au Moyen Âge (Paris: Hachette, 1888, 2nd rev. ed. 1890), 208: “l’histoire (chef-d’œuvre peut-être du genre par sa délicieuse et enfantine simplicité).”
graphic novels. R. O. Blechman, The Juggler of Our Lady: The Classic Christmas Story, foreword Jules Feiffer, introduction Maurice Sendak (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2015). In the “Foreword to the Dover Edition,” Jules Feiffer points out that the term “graphic novel” was coined by Will Eisner for his experimental comic entitled A Contract with God (published in 1978). Other information suggests that the expression was first used in 1964.
Robert Lax, Poet among Acrobats
the being who leaves himself. Fowlie, Love in Literature, 83.
editors of The Jester. James Harford, Merton & Friends: A Joint Biography of Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, and Edward Rice (New York: Continuum, 2006), 9–12.
Cristiani Family Circus. Harford, Merton & Friends, 73–75; Michael N. McGregor, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 146–54; on the circus and conversion, see pp. 125–37 (chapter 8, “Aquinas and the Circus Beckon”).
wandering minstrel. Robert Lax, Circus Days & Nights, ed. Paul J. Spaeth (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000), 12: “Sometimes I layed [sic] down in the track … singling out a beautiful lady in the grandstands, or the fair flower she wore at her shoulder, looking at her wistfully, thinking, and not thinking, of all the dreams of romance. Lady, I am a beggar at the door of your castle. Your beauty has smitten me through the eyes and to the heart. You are Eleanor of Navarre and I am a troubadour.”
Circus of the Sun. Journeyman Books, 1959.
circumstances in which he devised his book. Lax, Circus Days & Nights, 13.
want to make a movie ballet. Letter 49.2, in When Prophecy Still Had a Voice: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Robert Lax, ed. Arthur W. Biddle (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 108–9, at 108.
Acrobat’s Song. Lax, Circus Days & Nights, 39 (“Acrobat’s Song”): “Lady, / we are Thy acrobats; / jugglers; / tumblers / walking on wire, / dancing on air, / swinging on the high trapeze: / we are Thy children, / flying in the air / of that smile: / rejoicing in light.”
the medieval lay brother. Lax, Circus Days & Nights, 90 (“Mogador’s Book”): “It is not acrobatics on horseback. / It is ballet. / It is not comic ballet. / It is appropriately dignified praise. / An ancient / and very pure form / of religious devotion. / It is easy to compare it / to the childlike devotion / of the jongleur de Notre Dame; / But it is more mature, / more knowing.”
videotape for children. Father Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., Children’s Stories (West Covina, CA: Saint Joseph Communications, 2008).
The Juggler of Notre Dame. The film was produced jointly by Walt Disney and the Paulist Brothers. The script and original score were the work of Lan O’Kun. The film was directed by Michael Ray Rhodes, and shot at San Juan Capistrano, a mission established by Franciscan friars in the late eighteenth century in southern California. The name of the location is not given within the film, since the claim is made that the church is named after Notre-Dame in Paris.
character of the juggler. In this case the performer is played by a career juggler, Carl Carlsson in real life.
a sculptor. Jonas is acted by a former professional football player, Merlin Olson.
Tony Curtis, Prime-Time Juggler
The Young Juggler. Tony Curtis and Barry Paris, Tony Curtis: The Autobiography (New York: Morrow, 1993), 178, 341. The Young Juggler, produced by William Frye, written by Joseph Stefano, directed by Ted Post, and coproduced by Curtleigh, had Tony Curtis playing the juggler (and serving as executive producer), with Nehemiah Persoff, Patricia Medina, Bert Freed, and Elisha Cook Jr. (Trick). It was originally to be entitled The Juggler, but a Kirk Douglas film by the same title (although on a different theme) already existed.
France and the United States. For the French, see Bernard Lesquilbet, “Christiane Lasquin,” Télé 60, no. 795, January 17–23, 1960, 2. For the American, see J. P. Shanley, “Television,” America 101.8, May 23, 1959, 378, on “Le Jongleur de Notre Dame.” Aired on Sunday afternoon in May in The Catholic Hour by the National Broadcasting Company, this last one was an opera, directed by Richard J. Walsh, that had a cast drawn almost exclusively from Catholic University; the libretto was by Jean Anne Lustberg and the score by William Graves.
French press photo. Dated November 19, 1967. Conducting the Mass of “Le Jongleur de Notre Dame” is Father Mansot. The ceremony took place in Paris at the Cirque d’hiver (“Winter circus”).
female juggler. Gipsy Bouglione.
fairground and traveling people. In French, Aumônier des forains et des gens du voyage.
during Lent. It was aired on March 29, 1960; Easter fell on April 17.
Feast of Fools. Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). It was associated closely with Holy Innocents Day, the Feast of Asses, and other such celebrations.
January 6. The date is inaccurate, since the festival was customarily held on or about January 1.
W. H. Auden, The Ballad of Barnaby
We who must die. W. H. Auden, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, “Advent,” III, in idem, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York: Modern Library, 2007), 347–400, at 353.
Germanic literature. On his attraction to Old English and Old Norse literature, see Michael Alexander, Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 252–57; Chris Jones, Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 68–121 (chapter 2, “Anglo-Saxon Anxieties: Auden and ‘the Barbaric Poetry of the North’”).
Old English poems. These poems were included in W. H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (New York: Viking Press, 1970); Deor is on pp. 23–24.
translations from Old Norse poetry. The scholar was Paul Beekman Taylor. See Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor, eds., Völuspá, The Song of the Sybil: With the Icelandic Text, trans. Paul B. Taylor and W. H. Auden (Iowa City: Windhover Press, University of Iowa, 1968); Paul B. Taylor and W. H. Auden, trans., The Elder Edda: A Selection, introduction Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor, notes Peter H. Salus (London: Faber, 1969); W. H. Auden and Paul B. Taylor, trans., Norse Poems (London: Athlone, 1981). On the place of Iceland and its language in Auden’s imaginative universe, see Paul Beekman Taylor, “Auden’s Icelandic Myth of Exile,” Journal of Modern Literature 24.2 (2000): 213–34.
Second Shepherds’ Play. See Alexander, Medievalism, 255–56.
Ode to the Medieval Poets. W. H. Auden, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York: Modern Library, 2007), 864.
girls’ school in Connecticut. It was performed on May 23–24, 1969, at the now-defunct Wykeham Rise School for Girls in Washington, Connecticut. Harry Gilroy, “Auden Writes Opera Narrative for a Girls’ School,” New York Times, May 7, 1969, 36. The standard edition bears the dedication “for Chuck Turner”: see Auden, Collected Poems, 824–27, where it is dated December 1968. For enlightenment about the text (which has only fourteen inconsequential differences among the various versions), see W. D. Quesenbery, Auden’s Revisions (2008), http://audensociety.org/Audens_Revisions_by_WD_Quesenbery.pdf, 411.
longtime friend. Charles Turner is counted among the few students of the American composer Samuel Barber. See Peter Dickinson, “Charles Turner: Interview with Peter Dickinson, New York City, May 13, 1981,” in Samuel Barber Remembered: A Centenary Tribute, ed. idem (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010), 73–79. The original score is held at the Gunn Memorial Library & Museum, in the Wykeham Rise Collection (cat. no. 1994.001.006).
sheet music. W. H. Auden, The Ballad of Barnaby, music by students of Wykeham Rise School in Washington, CT, realization Charles Turner (New York: G. Schirmer, 1969).
Epistle to a Godson. W. H. Auden, Epistle to a Godson and Other Poems (New York: Random House, 1972), 42–46.
a Christmas issue. The New York Review of Books, “Christmas Issue: 2,” 13.11, December 18, 1969, cover.
cultivated a style. Steven Heller, Edward Gorey: His Book Cover Art & Design (Portland, OR: Pomegranate, 2015).
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955.
The Perfect Joy of St. Francis. Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1955.
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959. The latter was by Felix Timmermans. For reproductions of the covers, see Heller, Edward Gorey, 32, 40.
memorized the poet’s whole canon. Alexander Theroux, The Strange Case of Edward Gorey, 2nd ed. (Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2011), 104 (for this particular assertion), 108–16 (on broader connections between Auden and Gorey).
conventional definition. Auden holds to the usual verse form for ballads, iambic heptameters in sets of four. In this case, all twenty-four stanzas rhyme aabb.
rounded. In this usage the adjective means stanzaic.
relying heavily on dialogue. More than a quarter of the lines, twenty-six of the ninety-six, contain direct speech.
lack of Latin and illiteracy. “Now Barnaby had never learned to read, / Not Paternoster knew nor Creed.” Auden, Collected Poems, 825.
faux-naïf. Lucy McDiarmid, Auden’s Apologies for Poetry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 4.
“Lady,” cried Barnaby. Auden, Collected Poems, 827.
Glory to God in the highest. In Latin, “Gloria in excelsis Deo.”
memorial service. See Iona and Peter Opie, eds., The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 401. The broadside is mentioned in neither the printed program (Wednesday, October 3, 1973, 8:00 p.m.) nor by the report on the memorial service (a requiem Eucharist in the cathedral of Saint John the Divine) that was published in The New York Times, October 4, 1973, 48. But the broadside survives, with the text of the poem, together with the decorations by Gorey, on a single sheet of blue-gray paper, 30 × 26 cm. (10 ¼″ × 11 ½″) (New York: n.p., [1973], copyright 1972). It was listed in the Gotham Book Mart, Edward Gorey booklist (spring / summer 1975), no. 184.
universally loved or respected. For one of the more appreciative interpretations, see McDiarmid, Auden’s Apologies, 4–7.
One critic. Mark Jarman, “Storytelling Verse from Oxford,” The Hudson Review (1984): 491–95, at 495 (a review of The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse).
Another scholar. Damian Grant, “Verbal Events,” Critical Quarterly 16.1 (1974): 81–86.
nothing more than fluff. For a brief defense of the “long and lovely” ballad against such denigration, see Alan Levy, W. H. Auden: In the Autumn of the Age of Anxiety (Sag Harbor, NY: Permanent Press, 1983), 80–81.
Alla Borzova. Alla Borzova, The Ballad of Barnaby for Mixed Chorus a Cappella Poem by W. H. Auden ([New York]: Euterpe Press, ASCAP, 2000).
Play of Robin and Marian. In French, Jeu de Robin et de Marion.
Lay of Our Lady. In French, Lai de Notre Dame.
Day of Wrath. In Latin, Dies irae.
The composer was won over to the poem. In the program notes to the premiere she stated: “Auden obviously liked his hero, and his poem has a strong appeal to the artistic profession. Barnaby was ‘the finest tumbler of his day’ and remained true to his talent, continuing to serve God with it until, literally, his last breath. ‘Tumbling is all I have learnt to do,’ he cries in front of the Virgin’s statue, ‘Mother of God, let me tumble for you.’”
blended the essences. Gilroy, “Auden Writes Opera Narrative,” 36, quotes Auden as saying: “I consulted Anatole France, of course, but worked mostly from a medieval version of the story.” On the signals of Auden’s indebtedness to Wicksteed’s translation, see Edward Mendelson, “Our Lady’s Tumbler and ‘The Ballad of Barnaby,’” The W. H. Auden Society Newsletter 27 (September 2006): 16–17.
posed as a historian. W. H. Auden, “The Art of Poetry No. 17,” interviewed by Michael Newman, Paris Review 57 (1974), https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3970/w-h-auden-the-art-of-poetry-no-17-w-h-auden: “I’ve told people I’m a medieval historian when asked what I do. It freezes conversation. If one tells them one’s a poet, one gets these odd looks which seem to say, ‘Well, what’s he living off?’ In the old days a man was proud to have in his passport, Occupation: Gentleman. Lord Antrim’s passport simply said, Occupation: Peer—which I felt was correct. I’ve had a lucky life. I had a happy home, and my parents provided me with a good education. And my father was both a physician and a scholar, so I never got the idea that art and science were opposing cultures—both were entertained equally in my home.”
suggest an acquaintance. Nicholas Jenkins, “Auden in America,” in The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden, ed. Stan Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 39–54, at 45.
worshipped no / Virgin before the Dynamo. Auden, “New Year Letter (January 1, 1940),” in idem, Collected Poems, 195–241, at 235 (Part 3).
The Virgin & the Dynamo. W. H. Auden, “The Virgin & the Dynamo,” in Auden, The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1962), 61–71.
The subject matter of a poem. “The Virgin & the Dynamo,” 67.
Every beautiful poem. “The Virgin & the Dynamo,” 71.
the Wicksteed translation. He received on loan from the Wykeham Rise School a copy of it which still survives. See Mendelson, “Our Lady’s Tumbler,” 16, on the exemplar held in the Danowski Poetry Collection at Emory University.
Auden’s influence on the Irish poet. See Douglas Houston, “Landscapes of the Heart: Parallels in the Poetry of Kavanagh and Auden,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 77.308 (Winter 1988): 445–59; John Redmond, “The Influence of Auden on Kavanagh’s Poetic Development,” New Hibernia Review 8 (2004): 21–34.
Vault of Champagne. The terminology in the second instance points clearly to the poet’s reliance on the Wicksteed translation, where the movements are named in exactly these words, as opposed to the Butler, which refers to tricks rather than vaults, or the Kemp-Welch, which has somersaults rather than vaults.
deeply Christian. On the poet’s religious views, see Arthur Kirsch, Auden and Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 141–66.
remains true to the last gasp. At the point of death, he professes before the statue of Mary that “Tumbling is all I have learnt to do.”
the most famous poem by François Villon. In French, the poem is known variously as Ballade des pendus (Ballad of the hanged), Epitaphe Villon (Villon’s epitaph), and, after its incipit, Frères humains (Human brothers), respectively.
The late-medieval poet’s stock. Glen Omans, “The Villon Cult in England,” Comparative Literature 18 (1966): 16–35; Robert E. Morsberger, “Villon and the Victorians: The Influence and the Legend,” Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 23 (1969): 189–96.
an 1877 essay. First published in The Cornhill Magazine 36 (August 1877): 215–34. It was followed in rapid order by a short story, printed in Temple Bar 51 (October 1877): 197–212, under the title “A Lodging for the Night: A Story of Francis Villon,” which purports to recount the events of a night in Villon’s life.
Rabelais and His World. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968).
Work, Carnival and Prayer. The undated nineteen-page typescript draft of this lecture, with Auden’s manuscript corrections, is held in the New York Public Library, Archives & Manuscripts, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, Berg Coll MSS Auden.
the primary task of the schoolteacher. The sentence is often quoted as an aphorism, always attributed to Auden, but not otherwise sourced.
much like a teacher. John Ciardi, “The Form is the Experience,” Art Education 14.7 (October 1961): 16–22, at 21: “To show his heart was in the right place he took to sweeping out the chapel—that is a little like teaching school. It is not the essential process, but it is an act of devotion, but while he was at it he took to doing something I suspect teachers might do at times—when he was all alone he would sneak his rug and equipment in and juggle in front of the Virgin. He wanted to offer the one thing he knew how to do well.”
poet’s shaping of a poem. “The point I want to make is very simple. Any well-made thing is a praise. Anything joyously accomplished and roundly made is a praise. The offering was acceptable, you see, and any praise is acceptable, any supreme act of language, I don’t care what it is, whether it is about a fish’s eye, about the size of the universe—any superb language structure will endure because we need superb language structures. They are a kind of enzyme without which the human mind cannot function up to its best potential.
“As a matter of fact, they survive even the languages in which they are written. Many people walk today with high moments of Greek and Latin poetry and oratory in their heads simply because when a great language structure that really grows out of its medium and becomes the thing written and enters experience. Language is one of the profoundest things that human beings do, and anything that heightens that sense of language is meaningful and full and part of the total experience.” Ciardi, “Form is the Experience,” 22.
an introduction to poetry and to the criticism of it. John Ciardi, How Does A Poem Mean? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959).
an anxiety of influence. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry is a book (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) by the American literary critic Harold Bloom. It makes many professors of literature nervous.
better lives ahead. The Letters of Robert Lowell, ed. Saskia Hamilton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 400–1, at 40: (no. 407, “To John Berryman, March 18, [1962]”).
Nina Nyhart. Nina Nyhart, “Our Lady’s Tumbler,” Virginia Quarterly Review 49.4 (1973): 555–57. Her attraction as a poet to the medieval performer would seem loosely related to the interest in clowning that she shows in “Captive Pierrot.” This later poem is an ekphrasis on Paul Klee’s painting by the same name that depicts this specific type of clown. But “Captive Pierrot” explores the inner life of a child costumed as a Pierrot, rather than the nature of the entertainer himself. See Nina Nyhart, “Two Poems after Paul Klee,” Poetry 152.3 (1988): 141–42, analyzed by Carl R. V. Brown, “Contemporary Poetry about Painting,” English Journal 81 (1992): 41–45, at 43–44.
contours. The six-line stanzas are rhymed with the mirror-image structure of abccba, in which the two c-rhymes carry the special weight of centrality, while those at the end are indispensable for sealing the metrical units.
Turner Cassity. Turner Cassity, “Our Lady’s Juggler,” Poetry 127 (1976): 343. The poem was reprinted in idem, Hurricane Lamp (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 57.
Peter Porter. Peter Porter, Max is Missing (London: Picador, 2001), “Scrawled on Auden’s Napkin,” 48–49, at 49.
Music from Massenet to Peter Maxwell Davies
Young Folks’ Picture History of Music. James Francis Cooke, Young Folks’ Picture History of Music (Bryn Mawr, PA: Theodore Presser, 1925).
the picture to illustrate it. Cooke, Young Folks’ Picture History, 11.
The Dancer of Our Dear Lady. Der Tänzer unserer lieben Frau: Legendenspiel in 2 Akten für Soli, Chor und Orchester.
two cases. The earlier of these is Friedrich Hedler, Der Tänzer unserer lieben Frau: Ein Spiel nach altfranzösischen und altdeutschen Motiven (Munich, Germany: Buchner, 1950). Hedler was a German dramatist and writer who had to his credit one play, Floh im Ohr, filmed in 1943. All of this is well and fine, but it must be stressed that the tale told by Hedler actually approximates that of the jongleur and the Holy Face of Christ in Lucca. For the later example, see below.
The Dancer of Our Blessed Lady. Konrad Karkosch and Ludwig Holzleitner, Der Tänzer unserer lieben Frau: Ein Ballett-Libretto in 2 Akten nach der altfranzösischen Legende “Del Tumbeor Nostre-Dame” für Bühne, Film und Fernsehen (Munich, Germany: Self-published, 1965). As the subtitle clarifies, the Karkosch and Holzleitner libretto deals with Our Lady’s Tumbler.
true Volk education. See David B. Dennis, Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 172, 192–93.
music hall session. The French for the venue is séance music hall. The title is given alternately as Jongleur (without the definite article) and Jongleurs (in the plural). For letters connected with the composition, see Francis Poulenc, Selected Correspondence 1915–1963, trans. and ed. Sidney Buckland (London: Victor Gollancz, 1991), 26 (letter 9, Jean Cocteau to Francis Poulenc, September 2, 1918), 28 (letter 11). For catalogue information, see Carl B. Schmidt, The Music of Francis Poulenc (1899–1963): A Catalogue (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 25–27 (FP 10). For discussion, see Carl B. Schmidt, Entrancing Muse: A Documented Biography of Francis Poulenc, Lives in Music, vol. 3 (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2001), 58–66.
in 1921. To be precise, June 21, 1921.
costume. The costume can be seen in a photograph of Caryathis in the 1921 premiere of La belle excentrique: see Ornella Volta, L’Ymagier d’Erik Satie (Paris: Francis Van de Velde, 1979), 74. For the program of the show, see Paul Collaer, Correspondance avec des amis musiciens, ed. Robert Wangermée (Liège, Belgium: P. Mardaga, 1996), 82n1.
Litanies to the Black Virgin. In French, Litanies à la Vierge Noire: see Wilfrid Mellers, Francis Poulenc (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 75–79.
Dialogues of the Carmelites. In French, Dialogues des Carmélites, an opera with a libretto by the French author Georges Bernanos (1888–1948).
pray for his recovery. His hope was that if their prayers were answered, he might be able “to glorify God and the blessed martyrs of Compiègne with [his] music.” Letter, dated July 10, 1954, quoted by John Howard Griffin, Prison of Culture: Beyond Black Like Me, ed. Robert Bonazzi (San Antonio, TX: Wings Press, 2011), 86.
a leitmotif in his writings. For instance, he asked: “Will God take into account my poor efforts—the Mass, the religious motets? Will He at least see them and me kindly, as another bungler, a jongleur de Notre Dame?” See John Griffin, “The Poulenc behind the Mask,” in The John Howard Griffin Reader, ed. Bradford Daniel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), 538–43, at 538. In a letter, he rambled, fusing two topics relating intimately to the Virgin Mary: “Perhaps Father Carré is right and I will always be the Jongleur de Notre-Dame. Did I tell you how overcome I was by Lourdes the other day? I had never seen a pilgrimage before. It was at once atrocious and sublime.” See Francis Poulenc, Correspondance, 1915–1963, ed. Hélène de Wendel (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967), 226; idem, Selected Correspondence, 220, letter 250. The composer’s identification with the leading character of Massenet’s opera inspired the title of a chapter partly about Poulenc in a musicological study: see Wilfrid Mellers, “Un saint sensuel and ‘Le Jongleur de Notre Dame,’” in idem, Celestial Music?: Some Masterpieces of European Religious Music (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002), 230–43.
other scholastic contexts. A case in point would be a forty-page production of Vivian Merrill Young, The Miracle of Jean the Juggler: A Musical Play in Three Scenes, Based on a French Folktale (Chicago: H. T. FitzSimons, 1950), with music by Ruth Bampton. A version that shows clear debts to the libretto by Léna (although billed as being “based on a medieval legend”) is by Sister Marcella M. Holloway, The Little Juggler: A Miracle Play with Music (New York: S. French, 1966), with music by Sister John Joseph Bezdek. Even so, the scope and nature of innovations and expansions made by Sister Marcella can be gauged by the list of characters: vegetable lady, fortune teller, balloon man, blue guitar man, Barnaby, children (Renee and five others), Brother Boniface the cook, Henri the donkey, the Virgin Mary, and four monks (Brother Piccolo, Brother Scribleus, Brother Da Vinci, and Father Abbot). The lead character is named Barnaby (an acknowledgment of Anatole France, of course), who early in the proceedings is befriended at a fair by the Man with the Blue Guitar. The events within the monastery culminate in Mary’s bestowing upon the juggler a kiss. After this miracle, the performer returns to his itinerant life with the Man with the Blue Guitar and the donkey, but thanks to the miraculous token of affection from the Mother of God he is now accepted. For additional guidance, see Sister John Joseph Bezdek, A Production Book for the Little Juggler (performed in Macgowan Hall Playhouse, April 15, 16, 22, 23, 1967), in the library of the University of California, Los Angeles.
In 1967, Anatole France’s story was refashioned in a musical play for language learning in both French as Le petit jongleur and Spanish as El pequeño Bérnabe: see Alan Garfinkel, “Notes and News,” Modern Language Journal 62.3 (March 1978): 113–31, at 122–23.
one-act opera. Ulysses Kay, The Juggler of Our Lady: A One-Act Opera, libretto Alex King (New York: Pembroke Music, 1978) (Carl Fischer repr).
Alexander King. Born Alexander Koenig in Vienna. See Constance Tibbs Hobson and Deborra A. Richardson, Ulysses Kay: A Bio-Bibliography, Bio-Bibliographies in Music, vol. 53 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 14, W60.
premiering in New Orleans. February 23, 1962, in the Xavier University Opera Workshop.
opera is not the medium for our time. Quoted in Hobson and Richardson, Ulysses Kay, 20.
a melodic triumph. “Kay’s Opera a Melodic Triumph,” The Xavier Herald 38 (February 1962): 1.
melodic affair. Frank Cagnard, “One-Act Opera Melodic Affair: Xavier Production Seems Popular Success,” (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, February 25, 1962.
African-American press. The Pittsburgh Courier, February 17, 1962, 14.
modest national fanfare. The performance in Opera/South, in a double bill with William Grant Still’s Highway 1, U.S.A., was reported upon by Hamilton Bims, “An All-Black Opera Raises Its Voice,” Ebony 28.4 (February 1973): 54–56. Both operas were broadcast internationally on the Voice of America.
Juan Orrego-Salas. Juan Orrego-Salas, The Tumbler’s Prayer = El saltimbanqui: A Ballet (Opus 48) Based on the Twelfth-Century Legend of “Our Lady’s Tumbler,” 1959, 35-page score.
sojourn in the United States. At the time he held his second Guggenheim Fellowship for Musical Composition.
an executive. William H. Johnstone was a vice president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation.
a translation of Our Lady’s Tumbler. The copy was of the version by Philip H. Wicksteed, as published by Thomas Bird Mosher.
the wife’s younger son. The wife was Mildred (“Milly”) C. Thomas Johnstone. Her first husband, whom she married in 1920, was Oliver Holton. Their son Tommy was killed in Middletown, NJ, in 1927. Juan Orrego-Salas reports that Milly Johnstone’s immediate reaction to his idea was, “It’s our commission, for Carmen’s, your wife, coming to join us from Chile and in memory of Tommy, my son”: personal communication, Juan Orrego-Salas, August 31, 2015. Other information is available in Juan Orrego-Salas, Encuentros, visiones y repasos: Capítulos en el camino de mi música y mi vida (Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 2005), 188–89, 202.
leapt upon the two-year-old. United Press, The Independent (St. Petersburg, FL) Saturday, July 23, 1927, 1, 18; Time, August 1, 1927.
commune in silence. The tumbler’s style of worship resembles the collective monologue that the psychologist Jean Piaget sees as typifying preschoolers at play. In such togetherness, children speak, but to themselves. To what degree the shared silence is to be considered autistic or egocentric is for others to untangle.
In performance. The result was performed in 1960 as a concert and in 1961 as a ballet in Santiago, Chile.
tumbler or acrobat. The specific word is saltimbanqui. Shortly thereafter, the composer was invited to take up a position at Indiana University. Specifically, he was brought in to establish a Latin American Music Center and as a professor of composition. Not long after his installation in Bloomington, the local ballet performed the piece as The Tumbler’s Prayer.
Another version is by the Swiss Rudolf Moser, “Der Gaukler unserer lieben Frau: Ein Legendenspiel für Bariton-Solo, Frauenchor, Männerchor, gemischten Chor, Orgel und Orchester: op. 68.” Thus the title page. On the page on which the score begins, the heading reads “Der Gaukler unsrer lieben Frau nach der mittelalterlichen Legende zu einem Tanzspiel gestaltet von Senta Maria, Musik von Rudolf Moser, op. 68.” The music is copyrighted 1991 by Gertrud Moser, but the index of his works indicates 1939 as the year of composition: see http://www.moser-stiftung.ch/index.php/werksverzeichnis.html. The composition, approximately ninety minutes in performance, contains a section (10–11) labeled bourrée, presumably a nod to Massenet. It has verbal notations and rubrication (37–39) to signal where acrobatic leaps may make sense.
Still farther afield, a major Australian composer of the twentieth century, Miriam Hyde, composed in 1956 for the combination of flute and piano “The Little Juggler,” which may also be on our theme: National Library of Australia, Papers of Miriam Hyde, Box 2, MS 5260.
Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. Peter Maxwell Davies, Le Jongleur de Notre Dame, a Masque for Mime, Baritone, Chamber Ensemble and Children’s Band (London: Chester Music, 1978).
chamber ensemble. The instrumentalists not only contribute to the drama by participating in the action, but also effectively speak in the performance. At points the sounds of the instruments imitate the voices of monks: the abbot, the baritone, is the only vocalist. For information on the masque, see Carolyn J. Smith, Peter Maxwell Davies: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), 39 (item W115).
plainsong. See Peter Maxwell Davies Studies, ed. Kenneth Gloag and Nicholas Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 242. Plainsong, commonly known as Gregorian chant, is the body of traditional monophonic chants used in the liturgies of the Latin rite in the Western Church.
material relating to the Virgin. In 1966, he composed a work of musical theater in French, entitled Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre Dame des fleurs). In the masque, the statue of the Virgin is in general a far more active presence than in most other versions of the story. In 1967, the composer cofounded a new-music group called the Pierrot Players, after the stock character of commedia dell’arte. In 1972, he made a jester a salient character in his Blind Man’s Buff, to which he had likewise attached the label “masque.” This piece reaches a more optimistic, or at least less antimonastic, outcome than that of his Jongleur de Notre Dame.
made the Virgin Mary smile. Jane Birkhead, “Dramatic Music by P. Maxwell Davies,” Notes, 2nd ser., 36.2 (December 1979): 484.
Mark. Since he was played by the English-born mime artist named Mark Furneaux.
enters a cloister. This setting harks back to an earlier work by the composer, since the 1965–1966 Revelation and Fall had as protagonist a woman vested in a blood-red habit as a nun.
a charming music theater piece. Birkhead, “Dramatic Music,” 484.
chancel drama. Mark Schweizer, The Clown of God: A Christmas Chancel Drama for Children’s Choir (Hopkinsville, KY: St. James Music Press, 1996). This version, set in twelfth-century England, is based loosely on Massenet’s opera. The central character is an aging clown. Special emphasis is laid upon the legend of the sagebrush, a plant familiar from American cowboy westerns, which substitutes for the sage in Massenet. The miracle takes place at a life-sized creche, which is associated with the nativity scene staged by Saint Francis.
An adaptation for performance in church by children, entitled Le jongleur de Notre-Dame (hyphenated thus), has been created and recorded by the composer Jean Humenry and the librettist Jean Louis Winkopp: see http://www.chantonseneglise.fr/chant.php?chant=13046
three poems. Naji Hakim, “Our Lady’s Minstrel for Clarinet and Organ,” http://www.najihakim.com/works/organ-and-other-instruments/our-lady-s-minstrel-for-clarinet-and-organ/. The composer uses verses from the 1898 translation into English by Isabel Butler. The text was suggested to him by his daughter, Katia-Sofia Hakim.
a one-hour musical. Entitled The Juggler of Notre Dame: The Musical, written and recorded by Stephen DeCesare: see http://www.musicaneo.com/sheetmusic/sm-159801_the_juggler_of_notre_dame_musical.html#159801
Notes to Chapter 4
What’s past is prologue. The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1.
Misremembering and Remembering
Prince. Prince Rogers Nelson (1958–2016) was a popular American musician. “Vicki Waiting” is the fifth track on his eleventh album, the soundtrack to the movie Batman.
imitations in other genres. The television series Orange is the New Black, which premiered in 2013, comes close to performing the story in one episode when it highlights a juggling act among the skits proposed by female prison convicts for a Christmas pageant: Orange is the New Black, season 1, episode 13 (season finale). But the notion of a juggler at Christmastide does not necessarily allude to the medieval tale and its afterlife. It could be mere coincidence.
It is possible to love the Middle Ages. Sheldon Christian, Our Lady’s Tumbler: A Modern Miracle Play (Portland, ME: Anthoensen Press, 1948), v.
Maurice Vloberg. Maurice Vloberg, La légende dorée de Notre Dame (Paris: D. A. Longuet, 1921), 234.
more people should notice. John R. Dorsey, Look Again in Baltimore, photography James DuSel (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 86. The building is located at 43000 Roland Avenue.
physicists. For one example, see Philippe Nozières, “Some Comments on Bose-Einstein Condensation,” in Bose-Einstein Condensation, ed. A. Griffin et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 15–30, at 29 (in the acknowledgements): “This lecture was not given at the Trento workshop, but at a meeting held in Paris at the École Normale Supérieure on 9 June 1993 in honour of Claude Cohen-Tannoudji on his sixtieth birthday. I would like to take this occasion to renew my congratulations to Claude: Bose-Einstein condensation is far from his usual worries, but I am acting as ‘le jongleur de Notre Dame.’” For another, see Anatole Abragam, “The Physicist Erwin Hahn,” in Pulsed Magnetic Resonance: A Recognition of E. L. Hahn, ed. D. M. S. Bagguley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 1–4, at 1, who likens the convention of offering a Festschrift to the gesture of Anatole France’s Le jongleur de Notre Dame and concludes: “The message is clear: you may honour your fellow being by performing for him whatever you do best. It is the intent that counts.”
a reviewer. W. W. Howells, review of Evolution after Darwin, vol. 2, The Evolution of Man: Mind, Culture, and Society, ed. Sol Tax, Science, n.s. 131.3413, May 27, 1960, 1601–2: “many authors make their offering by doing what they do best, like the juggler of Notre Dame, instead of feeling bound to stretch connections with Darwin himself.”
comparability of the juggler and a judge. John Ladd, “The Place of Practical Reason in Judicial Decision,” in Rational Decision, ed. Carl Joachim Friedrich, Nomos, vol. 7 (New York: Atherton Press, 1964), 126–44, at 138, quoting Karl N. Llewellyn, Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 90–91: “In a disparaging way, it has been said that all that lawyers and judges do is manipulate concepts. The judge, says Llewellyn, is a juggler, but, he adds, he should do it like Our Lady’s Tumbler in the medieval tale: ‘Let him tumble and juggle reverently; let him turn upon his juggling all that is best in him and all his skill.’”
If a physician would spell as follows. Paul P. Kies, A Writer’s Manual and Workbook, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1964), 187.
modern languages studied in high school. Sam Dillon, “Foreign Languages Fade in Class—Except Chinese,” New York Times, January 20, 2010; more specifically, Bertram M. Gordon, “The Decline of a Cultural Icon: France in American Perspective,” French Historical Studies 22.4 (1999): 625–51.
poring over literature. Claire Kramsch and Olivier Kramsch, “The Avatars of Literature in Language Study,” Modern Language Journal 84.4 (2000): 553–73.
Parisian circus-type entertainer. Chagall’s oil on canvas from 1943 is in a private collection.
Czesław Miłosz. Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, 2nd ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 411. The first edition in English appeared in 1969.
an argument has been advanced. Prócoro Hernández Oropeza, “Inspiración o fusil el cuento de un anónimo árabe: Las fuentes de El alquimista, de Paulo Coelho,” Revista Inter-Forum, 79, year 3 of publication (May 20, 2002).
original Portuguese edition. O alquimista (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Rocco, 1988), 7–11 (“Prefácio”).
Getting a Rise from the Male Member
contains only male parts. Musical Times and Singing Class Circular 43.710 (April 1, 1902): 267.
Gothic crowns. See advertisement from Esquire, December 1941, for Dobbs Homburg “Gothic Crown.”
girdled in similar architecture. A Canadian print advertisement from 1952 plugs a “Gothic girdle” for women.
one modern reader. David Adams Leeming, ed., Storytelling Encyclopedia: Historical, Cultural, and Multiethnic Approaches to Oral Traditions around the World (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1997), 348–49, at 348 (“Deep in a crypt, he somersaults and dances naked for the Virgin every day”).
The essence of religion. John P. Le Coq, Vignettes littéraires: French Life and Ideals (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1957), 58.
Treasures of the Kingdom. Ed. T. Everett Harré (New York: Rinehart, 1947), 351–56 (trans. Frederic Chapman), at 351: “In outstanding contrast to the cynical irony and skepticism of most of his writings, Our Lady’s Juggler—also rendered into an opera—is unique for its tenderness and spiritual symbolism.”
Love Never Ceases. In German, “Die Liebe höret nimmer auf” (pp. 125–28, Anatole France): Erika Horn, ed., Es gibt noch Wunder …: Die schönsten Legenden (Graz, Austria: Styria Steirische Verlagsanstalt, 1949).
A Century of Love Stories. Gilbert Frankau, ed. A Century of Love Stories (London: Hutchinson [1935?]), 993–97.
broad stereotypes. Take, for example, the string of generalizations about the typical traits of people from France that the author of a 1915 study of Anatole France adduced, without any temporization: “It is not enough to understand Anatole France; one also has to understand the French, the gay, sensual, garrulous French of the Middle Ages, the gay, sensual, courteous French of the seventeenth century, the gay, sensual, cynical French of Voltairian times, and the sensual, cynical French of to-day.” See Walter Lionel George, Anatole France (New York: H. Holt, [1915]), 12–13.
The Yellow Book. From 1894 to 1896.
his many photographs. F. Holland Day, Suffering the Ideal, with an essay by James Crump (Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms, 1995).
wine, women, and song. Day, Suffering the Ideal, 14–16.
Monk in Cell. Day, Suffering the Ideal, pl. 38 and 125; F. Holland Day, ed. Pam Roberts (Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 2000), 127n44. Vita Mystica ca. 1900, platinum, 240 × 170 mm, The Royal Photographic Society, Bath, acquired from Mrs. Walter Benington, 1937 RPS 3585/2.
I’m not saying I am, either. Richard Corliss, “Radley Metzger: Aristocrat of the Erotic,” Film Comment 9 (1973): 19–29, at 27. The film in question is The Dirty Girls, Audubon Films, 1964, screenplay by Peter Fernandez, directed by Radley Metzger.
Metzger’s films. Elena Gorfinkel, “Radley Metzger’s ‘Elegant Arousal’: Taste, Aesthetic Distinction, and Sexploitation,” in Underground USA: Filmmaking beyond the Hollywood Canon, ed. Xavier Mendik and Steven Jay Schneider (London: Wallflower, 2002), 26–39; Eric Schaefer, “Dirty Little Secrets: Scholars, Archivists, and Dirty Movies,” The Moving Image 5.2 (2005): 79–105
erotic kitsch. Bart Testa, “Soft-Shaft Opportunism: Radley Metzger’s Erotic Kitsch,” Spectator 19.2 (1999): 41–55; http://cinema.usc.edu/assets/099/15905.pdf
glamorous European-accented romances. Richard Corliss, “That Old Feeling: When Porno Was Chic,” Time, Tuesday, March 29, 2005, 5.
apologized. Alex Dobuzinskis, “Nude Virgin Mary Cover Prompts Playboy Apology,” Reuters, US edition, December 12, 2008.
we adore you, Mary. “Te adoramos, María.”
chockablock with Marianism. The Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception falls on December 8, the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12, and Christmas Day on December 25.
Playboy’s Not So Virgin Mary. Kate Childs Graham, “Playboy’s Not So Virgin Mary,” Religion Dispatches, December 21, 2008, http://religiondispatches.org/playboys-not-so-virgin-mary
Until this juggling of proper nouns. René Étiemble, Savoir et goût, Hygiène des Lettres, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), 28–29.
Barnes privileges the penis. Jane Marcus, “Laughing at Leviticus: Nightwood as Woman’s Circus Epic,” in Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes, ed. Mary Lynn Broe (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 221–50, at 228. She is discussing Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937), 26. Her interpretation is contested by Georgette Fleischer, “Djuna Barnes and T. S. Eliot: The Politics and Poetics of Nightwood,” Studies in the Novel 30 (1998): 405–37, at 429n9.
Our Lady of the Limp. See Chapter 4.
Arman. His full name at birth was Armand Pierre Fernandez, while his full adult name was Armand P. Arman.
transculpture. In an interview recorded May 29, 1989, at the Mayor Gallery in London, in Interviews-Artists, vol. 4, Patterns of Experience: Recordings 1988–2011, ed. Nicholas Philip James (London: Cv Publications, 2011), 25.
this sculptural composition. The dimensions of the sculpture in inches are 90.9 height × 35.4 width × 32.3 deep (231 × 90 × 82 cm). It was produced at the Bonvicini foundry of Verona, Italy.
The Holy Virgin Mary. Paper collage, oil paint, glitter, polyester resin, map pins, and elephant dung on linen, 243.8 × 182.9 cm. The mixed-media piece attained notoriety in an exhibition called Sensation that traveled to London, Berlin, and New York.
raised in the Catholic Church. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/global-culture/identity-body/identity-body-europe/a/chris-ofili-the-holy-virgin-mary: “As an altar boy, I was confused by the idea of a holy Virgin Mary giving birth to a young boy. Now when I go to the National Gallery and see paintings of the Virgin Mary, I see how sexually charged they are. Mine is simply a hip hop version.”
a scholarly article. Elizabeth Legge, “Reinventing Derivation: Roles, Stereotypes, and ‘Young British Art,’” Representations 71 (Summer 2000): 1–23 (closing paragraph).
Jung’s Jongleur
John Cowper Powys. John Cowper Powys, Visions and Revisions: A Book of Literary Devotions (Hamilton, NY: Colgate University Press, 1955), 117–27 (“Matthew Arnold”), at 127, where the quotation is preceded by the passage: “For it is the nature of poetry to heighten and to throw into relief those eternal things in our common destiny which too soon get overlaid. And some things only poetry can reach. Religion may have small comfort for us when in the secret depths of our hearts we endure a craving of which we may not speak, a sickening aching longing for ‘the lips so sweetly forsworn.’ But poetry is waiting for us, there also, with her rosemary and rue.”
This collection of essays was first published in 1915. He draws the phrase “the lips…so sweetly forsworn” from a song in the section of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure about Mariana. Tennyson made this young woman the central figure of the poem he named after her, and we saw the same character captured in Millais’s painting. Powys held that poetry offers two odorifous herbs, associated with remembrance and regret, respectively, to help cope with thwarted longing.
Powys mentioned the “jongleur of Paris” also in A Glastonbury Romance (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1932), 624; 2nd ed. (London: Macdonald, 1955; Picador, 1975), 600.
His conception of the unconscious mind. C. G. Jung, “Aion: Phenomenology of the Self,” in The Portable Jung, ed. Joseph Campbell, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Viking Portable Library, vol. 70 (New York: Viking, 1971), 148–62.
since the Reformation. C. G. Jung, “Answer to Job,” in idem, Psychology and Religion: West and East, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series, vol. 20, Collected Works, vol. 11 (New York: Pantheon, 1958), 461–62 (on the Assumption), 464 (for the specific quotation). Pope Pius XII proclaimed the doctrine of the Assumption in the encyclical Munificentissumus Deus on November 1, 1950.
Josef Elias. Josef Elias, Der Tänzer unserer lieben Frau: Ein altes Legendenspiel für die Bühne (Belp, Switzerland: Volksverlag Elgg, 1959). The Swiss pedagogue took as his point of departure the German translation that Wilhelm Hertz had published in 1886. Hertz’s adaptation had been given a new lease on life by being reprinted, at the end of the Marian year of 1954, in the cultural journal Atlantis, which had been moved back to Germany from Switzerland only in 1950: Wilhelm Hertz, “Der Tänzer unsrer lieben Frau,” Atlantis (December 1954): 565–66.
Rudolf Moser. Rudolf Moser, Der Gaukler unserer lieben Frau: Ein Legendenspiel für Bariton-Solo, Frauenchor, Männerchor, gemischten Chor, Orgel und Orchester; Opus 68 (Arlesheim, Germany: Verlag der Werke Rudolf Moser, 1991). In English, the title means Our Lady’s Tumbler: A Legendary Play for Baritone Solo, Female Choir, Male Choir, Mixed Choir, Organ, and Orchestra; Opus 68.
a letter. Letter to Mrs. Carol Jeffrey, July 3, 1954, in C. G. Jung, Briefe, ed. Aniela Jaffé, 3 vols. (Olten, Switzerland: Walter, 1972–1973), 2:405; trans. R. F. C. Hull, Letters, ed. Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffé, 2 vols., Bollingen Series, vol. 95.1–2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973–1975), 2 (“1951–1961”): 179.
create art for their own selves. “As the jongleur de Notre-Dame performs his tricks to honor the Madonna, so you paint for the self.” Jung, Briefe, 2:405; Letters, 2:179.
Notes to Chapter 5
It is a sad old age. Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (London: Sheed & Ward, 1936), 425–26.
The Juggler’s Prospects
many possible interpretations. Polysemy describes this branching out of meaning.
Roland Barthes. Roland Barthes, “The New Citroën,” in idem, Mythologies, trans. Richard Howard and Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 169–71. First published in French in 1957, in English in 1972.
the medieval cathedral as a consumer object. “I believe that the automobile is, today, the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean, a great creation of the period, passionately conceived by unknown artists, and consumed in its image, if not in its use, by an entire population which appropriates in it an entirely magical object.” Barthes, “New Citroën,” 169.
a major German newspaper. Die Zeit, May 27, 1988, reproduced in Magdalena Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik und die expressionistische Kunst: Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie 1911–1925 (Munich, Germany: S. Schreiber, 1990), 16, 248. The citation of the newspaper there has been unverifiable in editions available to me.
“transfer of empire” and “transfer of learning.” From the Latin translatio studii and translatio imperii.
a phantasm. Alice Chandler, A Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth-Century English Literature (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971).
flight from modernity. Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival: An Essay in the History of Taste (London: Constable, 1928).
John Stuart Mill. John Stuart Mill, “The Spirit of the Age (1831),” in idem, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 22,1: 1.
order and innocence. Alice Chandler, “Order and Disorder in the Medieval Revival,” Browning Institute Studies 8 (1980): 1–9.
Gropius vs. the Gothic Ivory Tower
Neither medievalism nor colonialism. Walter A. Gropius, “Not Gothic but Modern for Our Colleges: A Noted Architect Says We Cling Too Blindly to the Past, Though We Build for Tomorrow,” New York Times, October 23, 1949, 16–18, at 16, final paragraph.
withdrawn into ivory towers. William H. Davenport, The One Culture (New York: Pergamon, 1970), 74.
an address in Chicago. He delivered his address in the Crystal Room at the Blackstone Hotel, an incongruously unmodernist landmark of Chicago, April 17, 1950.
The ivory tower man is out. Life, June 7, 1968, 62.
best time of Gothic. Bushart, Der Geist der Gotik, 173–74.
manifesto for Bauhaus. The most ambitious attempt to set the movement within a European tradition from romanticism on is Staffan Källström, Framtidens katedral: Medeltidsdröm och utopisk modernism (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2000). For contextualization of Feininger’s 1919 woodcut within the cultural milieu of the early Weimar Republic, see Alexander Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art out of Time (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2012), 241–47.
Must we take the word of our older alumni. Bainbridge Bunting, Harvard: An Architectural History, ed. Margaret Henderson Floyd (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1985), 228–29.
noun first cropped up. In 1770: see Thomas A. Gaines, The Campus as a Work of Art (New York: Praeger, 1991), 126.
stood up well to time. Arguably, they have endured better than the non-Gropius Allston Burr Lecture Hall, which lingers on in mostly ignored ugliness and functionlessness.
Gropius complex. Gropius, “Not Gothic but Modern.”
Life magazine. The issue is dated April 7.
one of eight headings. The full run of captions is “Out of violence and chaos the Christian mind and spirit created a glowing era when men knew that all things were possible to faith—These saints and kings made the Church great—Daily Religion, it brought excitement and glory to men’s lives—Monk, Abelard, a renowned teacher—Monk, Bacon a versatile scientist—Judgment, it sentenced people to heaven or to hell—The Cult of Mary, the virgin mother was a symbol of love, and heroine of legends like ‘The Juggler’—A medieval map of the world.”
the intense and simple faith of the Middle Ages. Le Coq, Vignettes littéraires, 58.
Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Maynard Mack, ed. World Masterpieces, 2 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1956), 1:477–510 (introduction John C. McGalliard), 592–99 (trans. Kemp-Welch). Six years later this was reprinted as The Continental Edition of World Masterpieces (New York: Norton, 1962), 477–510, 584–91 respectively.
expelled from the compendium. The story was omitted from both the second and third editions: respectively, ed. Sarah Lawall, 6 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001–2002); ed. Martin Puchner (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012).
The Tumbler’s Tumble
lost ground or altitude with dizzying rapidity. In 1974, Murray Sachs detected signs of a turnaround, but I remain unconvinced: see Murray Sachs, Anatole France: The Short Stories (London: Edward Arnold, 1974), 7.
lyrics that parody an aria. Pointed out by Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (New York: Methuen, 1985), xvi; Susan McClary, “This Is Not a Story My People Tell: Musical Time and Space According to Laurie Anderson,” Discourse 12.1 (Fall–Winter 1989–1990): 104–28, at 113–15.
Problems in Prose. Paul Haines, Problems in Prose, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 333. The first edition was in 1938, the second in 1944. At the end of the extract in the textbook, the compiler poses to student readers a half-dozen exacting questions about the selection. The interrogation commences by calling for collation of the taxonomies of Marian miracle legends that Gaston Paris and Henry Adams produced. The quiz concludes, “Comment on the poem about the Tumbler of Our Lady. First decide which lines make it charming, and then try to define the nature of its charm. What does Adams add to the story by his interpolated comments?”
less rewarding essays. Haines, Problems in Prose, 5th ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), ix–x, at x.
The Joy of Reading. Charles Van Doren, The Joy of Reading: A Passionate Guide to 189 of the World’s Best Authors and Their Works (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2008), 99–102.
which devotees have a right to recognition. Marjorie Glicksman Grene, A Philosophical Testament (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 186.
Julie Harris. The account is provided in an undated first-person testimonial in Guideposts, accessed on line at http://www.guideposts.org/faith/stories-of-faith/holding-out-her-hand-in-faith
taken solace in the story. On the way to such responses, “A Note to the Reader” in one hand-sized book of the tale acknowledges: “The story itself has the basic theme, so comforting to us spiritual commoners, that Heaven does not disdain the humble gifts of humble people. Perhaps the same insight, or hope, may account for the popularity of the comparatively modern story of the little drummer boy who had no gift to bring to the Manger except his drumming and was glad to find that this was acceptable.” See Walter Kahoe, The Juggler of Our Lady: An Old Tale Retold, illus. Gus Uhlmann (Moylan, PA: Rose Valley Press, 1977), on the first and second sides following the title page.
world literature. Joseph Remenyi, “The Meaning of World Literature,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 9 (1951): 244–51, at 249–50: “The religious sense of security which Dante’s Divine Comedy offers, the spiritual delight that a medieval conte dévot [pious tale] such as The Tumbler of Our Lady gives, Don Quixote’s wise madness, Hamlet’s tragic hesitation, the fabliau-inspired earthiness of François Rabelais, Gulliver’s sardonic relationship to his fellowmen, Tartuffe’s hypocrisy, Faust’s yearning for an affirmative philosophy, Rodion Raskolnikov’s sense of guilt, Captain Ahab’s tragic struggle with the White Whale, and many other examples taken from world literature, underpin the idea that the creative spirit makes life meaningful, and that world literature, while it does not sanction the formlessness of human existence, establishes a common link between the past and the present, the immediate and the future, the implicit and the intricate, the familiar and the unfamiliar.” The article was reprinted in World Literatures: Arabic, Chinese, Czechoslavak, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russia, Scottish, Swedish [and] Yugoslav, ed. Joseph Remenyi et al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1956), 1–14.
searching for a deeper meaning. Remenyi, “Meaning of World Literature,” 249.
English translations. Already in 1962, the text was “redacted into English prose”: see Wilson Lysle Frescoln, Old French Contes Dévots (Wallingford, PA: Press of the Cheerful Snail, 1962). The title page bills the story in this way as the opening selection in a slim octavo with unnumbered pages. Yet the final line of the colophon reveals how far from the mass market this pint-sized collection of six medieval French pious tales was: “Twenty-six copies were printed, and the type has been distributed.” The concluding past participle means definitively that after printing, the type used in producing the bookling was broken apart and replaced. The reason for the number of books in the printing is probably explained by the letter A that is penciled onto the verso of the title page to “The Tumbler of Our Lady”: the translator and printer made one for each letter in the Roman alphabet as used in English. Whatever motivated this printing, and whoever received it, the little volume has been unknown and nearly impossible to find. In 1979, the tale received its first word-for-word translation into English with a reprint of the original text en face. The venue was a recherché journal: Everett C. Wilkie Jr., trans., “Our Lady’s Tumbler,” Allegorica: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Literature 4.1–2 (Summer–Winter 1979): 81–120.
Outside the Anglophone world, the story was printed in 1981 for the first time with a modern French translation facing the medieval French: Pierre Kunstmann, Vierge et merveille: Les miracles de Notre-Dame narratifs au Moyen Âge (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1981), 142–77. In 2003, a convenient paperback for researchers was published in France. This time it appeared with a fresh translation, a reprinting of the original poem, the text of Anatole France’s version, and many supporting materials: Paul Bretel, Le jongleur de Notre-Dame, Traductions des classiques du Moyen Âge, vol. 64 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003).
reworking the tale. For instance, Mark Shannon wrapped up the prefatory remarks to his version by professing the hope that “this version keeps our acrobat’s spirit as alive and engaging as ever.”
The Juggler of the Mother of God. Galina Nikolaevna Gordeeva, “Zhongler bogomateri,” in her poetry collection Pocherk (Moscow: Privately published, 2001). The poem is dedicated to the memory of Grigoriy Gorin (“pamiati Grigoriia Gorina”).
put into Russian repeatedly. Natalia Nikitina and Natalia Tuliakova, “Translation of Anatole France’s L’Étui de nacre in Russia: Reception and Perception,” Interlitteraria 21.1 (2016): 79–94, at 80 (on the peaks of interest), 89 (on the number of translations), 92 (for the quotation).
at least sixteen times. Titles vary: Akrobat, Zhongler svyatoi dery (Jongleur of the Holy Virgin), Zhongler Bogomateri (Jongleur of the Mother of God), and Prostoe serdtse (Simple heart).
prestige of French in Japanese culture. Mitsuo Nakamura, “The French Influence in Modern Japanese Literature,” Japan Quarterly 7.1 (1960): 57–65, at 61, 63.
no special notice. The reach of such transmission is limited: the Japanese of the tale is buried as only one selection within an extensive compendium. See Niikura Shun’ichi, trans. “Seibo no karuwazashi,” in Niikura Shunʾichi, Kamizawa Eizō, and Amazawa Taijirō yaku, Furansu chūsei bungakushū (Poètes et romanciers du Moyen Âge), 4 vols. (Tokyo: Hakusuisha, 1990–1996), 4:407–26.
Michel Zink Reminds France
sequelae of the French Revolution. Beyond the historical layer to the famous lament, a literary one bears noting: Burke here deliberately echoes the final speech of the title hero in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1773 melodrama, Götz von Berlichingen. Goethe’s play exercised a deep international influence for a time. Walter Scott’s first published work was his 1799 translation of it.
medieval pious tales. Michel Zink, Le jongleur de Notre Dame: Contes chrétiens du Moyen Âge (Paris: Le Seuil, 1999), 48–51, 199 (note).
Once upon a time. The original French reads “Il était une fois un jongleur.”
simplifies the story. Michel Stanesco, “Le bruit de la source: Les contes chrétiens et la resonance d’éternité,” in Translatio litterarum ad penates = Das Mittelalter Übersetzen: Ergebnisse der Tagung von Mai 2004 an der Université de Lausanne = Traduire le Moyen Âge: Actes du colloque de l’Université de Lausanne (mai 2004), ed. Alain Corbellari and Catherine Drittenbass (Lausanne, Switzerland: Centre de traduction littéraire, 2005), 331–44, at 337–38.
unaffected limpidity. Michel Zink, “Anatole France et moi,” in Medioevo e modernità nella letteratura francese: Moyen Âge et modernité dans la littérature française, ed. Giovanna Angeli and Maria Emanuela Raffi (Florence: Alinea, 2013), 229–35, at 234.
not the best of my tales. Zink, “Anatole France et moi,” 235.
quotation from Saint Bernard. Zink, Le jongleur de Notre Dame, 50–51.
Life of the Fathers. Vie des Pères, no. 10, ed. Félix Lecoy, La Vie des Pères (Paris: Société des anciens textes français, 1987), 1:141–75; Jacques Chaurand, ed., Fou: Dixième conte de la Vie des Pères. Conte pieux du XIIIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1971). For discussion, see Zink, Poésie et conversion au Moyen Âge (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2003), 162–63.
without making a secret of his dependence. Zink, “Anatole France et moi,” 229–35.
the Tharauds. The preface to one wartime edition of Les contes de la Vierge (Paris: Société d’éditions littéraires françaises, 1944) refers explicitly to “our friend, Joseph Bédier” (p. v). In addition to the story of the tumbler, the collection includes “Le chevalier au Barizel” and “Le cierge de Rocamadour.” The latter was already paired with Of the Tumbler of Our Lady by Alice Kemp-Welch.
Tales of the Middle Ages. In French, Contes du moyen-âge, illus. Pierre-Olivier Leclerc (Paris: Le Seuil, 2002).
the miracle of the jongleur was omitted. Bretel, “Le jongleur de Notre-Dame, un miracle,” 281.
The book has been translated. Michel Zink, El juglar de Nuestra Señora, trans. Jorge Sans Vila (Salamanca, Spain: Sígueme, 2000); idem, Príbehy a legendy stredoveke Evropy, trans. Alena Lhotová and Hana Prousková (Prague: Portál, 2000); idem, L’innamorato fedele, trans. Costanza Ossola (Rome: Città Nuova, 2000).
We All Need the Middle Ages
R. O. Blechman’s Juggler of Our Lady. Trans. Anne Krief.
I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals. Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon, trans. Barbara Harshav (New York: Grove, 2008), 171.
there is only medievalism. Stephanie Trigg, “Walking through Cathedrals: Scholars, Pilgrims, and Medieval Tourists,” New Medieval Literatures 7 (2004): 9–33, at 33.
invoking his concept of the anima. Todd F. David, “Entering the House of the World: An Interview with Mary Rose O’Reilley,” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory 9.2 (2007): 109–22, at 121: “Women of my generation were trained in indirection and self-effacement, which isn’t entirely a bad thing. You have the ongoing job of learning the difference between humility and the pose of humility. … Poetry is a device of indirection and self-erasure, as I see it, the territory of the anima, to put it in an old-fashioned way. And being a poet is not a very big deal in this business—I mean in the larger business of being human—I think of the Juggler of Notre Dame, or the family of acrobats in The Seventh Seal.”
stories that haven’t finished yet. The character Jane Smith (played by Angelina Jolie), over speakerphone to her husband John (Brad Pitt), in the 2005 action movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
whatever skills they have. See Grene, Philosophical Testament, 186: “The increasing place in school curricula of ‘practical’ subjects might not be a factor of cultural deterioration, if these subjects were not endowed with intrinsic cultural worth but actually treated as purely instrumental for objectively important achievements.”
a sociology book. Florian Znaniecki, “Leadership and Followship in Creative Cooperation,” in idem, What are Sociological Problems?, ed. Zygmunt Dulczewski et al. (Nakom, Poland: Wydawnictwo, 1994), 133.
renaissance. The expression “methodological renaissance” appears within quotation marks in Richard R. Glejzer, “The New Medievalism and the (Im)Possibility of the Middle Ages,” Studies in Medievalism 10 (1998): 104–19, at 104. The earlier study cited is Peter Monaghan, “Medievalists, Romantics No Longer, Take Stock of Their Changing Field.” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 30, 1998, A15–17.
We shall not cease from exploration. T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding.”
Notes to Acknowledgments
not to be examined too critically. Jean Misrahi, review of Sister Paul-Emile, Le renouveau marial dans la littérature française depuis Chateaubriand jusqu’ à nos jours (Paris: Edition Spes, n.d.), in The French Review 15 (1942): 339–40, at 340.
a talk for a workshop. The workshop on “Rhetoric and the Non-Verbal Arts” took place in Villa La Pietra, Florence, from September 2–6, 2004.
an essay in a volume propelled by Mary Carruthers. “Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? The Scope and Role of Pronuntiatio in the Latin Rhetorical Tradition, With Special Reference to the Cistercians,” in Mary Carruthers, ed., Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, vol. 78 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 124–50, at 137–42.
a thumbnail sketch of my research. “Juggling the Middle Ages,” Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences NIAS Newsletter 36 (2006): 18–22. These few pages alone were known to Antonie Hornung, “Durch Zeit und Raum: ‘Del tumbeor Nostre Dame,’” in Antonie Hornung and C. Robustelli, eds., Vivere l’intercultura-gelebte Interkulturalität: studi in onore di Hans Drumbl (Tübingen: Stauffenburg-Verlag, 2008), 347–73.
a couple of sides stimulated by the story. “The Joy of Juggling, Words or Otherwise,” in Kathleen Coleman, ed., Albert’s Anthology, Loeb Classical Monographs (Cambridge, MA: Department of the Classics, 2017), 231–32.
in schematic form as an article. “Juggling the Middle Ages: The Reception of Our Lady’s Tumbler and Le Jongleur de Notre–Dame,” Studies in Medievalism 15 (2006 [printed 2007]): 157–197.
plenty in formal oratory. (1) “Our Lady’s Tumbler: From Medieval Fantasy to Modern Fakelore,” in “Folklore, Fantasy, and Film,” a symposium sponsored by Folklore and Mythology, Harvard University, February 11–12, 2005. (2) “Juggling the Middle Ages: The Reception of Our Lady’s Tumbler and Le Jongleur de Notre Dame,” Yale Lectures in Medieval Studies, Yale University, November 9, 2006; Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame; November 30, 2006; and Dumbarton Oaks, December 13, 2007. (3) “Tumbling into English: The Exemplary Medieval Past of the Jongleur de Notre Dame,” Garnett Sedgewick Memorial Lecture, University of British Vancouver, March 2, 2007. (4) “Giving the Middle Ages a Tumble,” in “Poets, Performers, and Other Mythical Creatures of the Middle Ages,” a conference under the aegis of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, June 4, 2011. (5) “Henry Adams and the Melancholy of Medievalism,” in “Madness, Melancholy, Myth,” a conference under the aegis of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Freshman Cluster Course “Neverending Stories,” May 31, 2014.