We’re counting down to the beginning of the UNC symposium “13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012,” which kicks off on Thursday. There will be a reception and viewing of the exhibit Ancient and Living Maya in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Archaeological Discovery, Literary Voice, and Political Struggle at Wilson Library at 5 p.m.
Maudslay, A Glimpse at Guatemala (London, 1899) / Stuart F1464 .M44
After the reception at 5:30 p.m., poet, novelist, scholar, and human rights activist Victor Montejo will deliver the symposium’s keynote lecture, addressing the role of native scholars and activists in the renewal of the Maya world by exploring Maya cycles of time through a native exegesis of the sacred K’iche’ text the Popol Vuh.
We look forward to welcoming Prof. Montejo back to North Carolina and to an important and meaningful program.
Some of us have been traveling of late, and we thought you might enjoy a few pictures from our journeys.
This blogger ended up at the easternmost end of Turkey. There she visited the amazing Ishak Pasha Palace on the Silk Road, below Mt. Ararat. Built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and currently being restored, the extensive complex included a grand dining hall, a mosque, and a harem. I, of course, was particularly taken with its library rooms (yes, if I understood correctly, those recesses are for books).
The Ishak Pasha Palace follows a plan related to that of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. There, at the opposite end of Turkey, I saw the serene library pavilion of Sultan Ahmed III. Again, it was without books, the manuscripts having been moved to the new Topkapi Palace Library in 1966.
One can only imagine what wondrous spaces these libraries were centuries ago, when animated by both books and readers.
Library of Sultan Ahmed III, Topkapi Palace, IstanbulView of a corner of the Library pavilion, Topkapi Palace
On this, my final day of work as a temporary research assistant in the RBC, I’m sharing one of my favorite books encountered this summer: the 1583 Paris edition of the De Emendatione Temporum of Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609). A synthesis of new astronomical discoveries and philological interpretations of ancient holy books, it is also a typographic tour de force, printed by Mamert Pattison for Sébastien Nivelle.
Estienne CE10 .S2 1583 c.2
In this work, Scaliger sought to formalize the science of chronology. To this end, he drew on Persian, Arab, Greek, Roman, and other ancient traditions, identifying and correcting the errors of his predecessors to synchronize various cultures’ accounts of history.
Anthony Grafton, an assiduous chronicler of this assiduous chronologer, offers one of the many conundra that perplexed Scaliger: what to make of a twelfth-century Arabic manuscript of the gospel of John, the colophon of which indicates that the scribe completed his work “on the 31st day of the month Tamuz, on Tuesday, the twelfth indiction, the year 6687 from Creation”? This question might not keep most of us awake at night. For Scaliger, who claimed to sleep three hours out of every twenty-four, it did. (Note the obsession with computation—even in observing his own sleep patterns!)
Scaliger’s book, thrilling in its breadth of ambition, is also a landmark in the history of typography: here, we find adjacent, dual-color composition of Ethiopic (from wood blocks), Hebrew, transliterated Arabic, and Latin, elegantly printed by Patisson.
In an elegy for Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon called him the Ornamentum Unicum Europae—an epithet which requires no translation. We are pleased to consider the 1583 De Emendatione Temporum an Ornamentum Notabile Bibliothecae Wilsoniensis.
The Rare Book Collection is excited to be co-sponsoring “13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012,” a symposium on Maya civilization in recognition of the end of the current great cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar.
Find out about the full program of exhibitions and events by going to our elegant url: maya2012.unc.edu
Registration is not required, but recommended, and it will help us plan. We look forward to seeing you at Chapel Hill on October 25 and 26!
This past Wednesday, students from the Yucatec Maya Summer Institute visited Wilson Library to learn about the rich resources of the Stuart Collection in the Rare Book Collection.
Stuart Folio-2 F1435.1.P2 B73 1866 superv'd / Brasseur de Bourbourg, Monuments anciens du Mexique (Paris, 1866)
Sponsored by the UNC-Duke Consortium, the Institute offers beginning, intermediate, and advanced level instruction of modern Yucatec Maya. The RBC’s Stuart Collection, gift of George Stuart (UNC Ph.D. 1975) and Melinda Stuart, supports the study of Maya archaeology, culture, and language, and the extensive Maya-related curriculum of UNC Chapel Hill.
Following the viewing of Stuart rarities, students had the chance to look at artists’ books made by the Taller Leñateros of Chiapas, Mexico – collected for UNC by Teresa Chapa, Librarian for Latin America, Iberia, Latina/o Studies.
The Rare Book Collection is excited about all things Maya in 2012. It looks forward to partnering with UNC colleagues to present “13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012,” October 25-26, a symposium on Maya civilization in recognition of the end of the current great cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar. Noted scholar Víctor Montejo will give the keynote address; there will be open classrooms, poetry readings, exhibitions, and more. Follow our web site for details to come in the next weeks.
Last week, a congenial group gathered for Russian tea (and American coffee) in the Friends of the Library room in Wilson to hear visiting researcher Ekaterina Turta speak about the Russian writer A. M. Remizov.
As Ms. Turta explained, “Remizov was a writer who belonged to the generation of Russian emigrants leaving Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. He lived first in Berlin, then in Paris, where he died in 1957. His works were not published in Russia for a long time and in just the last ten years his personality and creative works have become a subject for Russian scholars. Most of the first editions and other related primary source documents are not available in Russia, but rather in the United States: The André Savine Collection (Rare Book Collection, Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill), Remizov Papers (Amherst Center for Russian Culture), The Bakhmeteff Archive (Columbia University Libraries).”
Ms. Turta, who was engaged in postgraduate study at Tyumen State University in Russia, has spent the past year at Chapel Hill as a Fulbright Visiting Student Researcher, exploring the rich modern Russian holdings of the Savine Collection. UNC-Chapel Hill acquired the more than 10,000 volumes of books, serials and newspapers, rare manuscripts, and photographs collected by André Savine (1946-1999) – proprietor of the Parisian bookstore, Le Bibliophile Russe – in 2002, enabled by a generous donation from Van and Kay Weatherspoon of Charlotte, North Carolina.
“The Savine Collection contains the first foreign editions of Remizov’s novels, criticism on them, and other rare materials related to him,” notes Ms. Turta. “The most exciting experience for me was to read the thin Remizov books based on Breton, Polish, and Druid legends, and on Old-Russian novels, all of which came out of the Paris publishing house “Opleshnik” in the 1950s: Круг счастья: легенды о царе Соломоне (Savine PG3470.R4 K84 1957), Повесть о двух зверях: Ихнелат (Savine PG3470.R4 P55 1950), Мелюзина. Брунцвик (Savine PG3470.R4 M45 1952), etc. The first editions of these books are available only at a few libraries throughout the world: Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne, The British Library, National Library of Israel. Here at Wilson Library you can find them all together!”
On display were a number of the works that Ms. Turta consulted. She spoke eloquently to the group about the importance and power of first editions and praised the strong supporting and allied holdings in UNC’s Davis Library and the Rare Book Collection, which made thorough research possible, since her studies concentrate on the problem of translating Remizov, the perception of his works in England and America, and the influence of English Literature on his writings.
BX605 A8 A3 1924 / Remizov is acknowledged for his assistance in the translation of this famous Russian work, published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press
The connections between Remizov and Western modernists, such as the Bloomsbury Circle and James Joyce, prompted much discussion in the question and answer session. Ms. Turta acknowledged how convenient this was to explore at Wilson, given the RBC’s fine holdings of Joyce and early twentieth-century British literature.
In conclusion Ms. Turta reiterated “that it is a great pleasure to have access to such marvelous resources as Davis and Wilson Libraries” and expressed her gratitude to “the wonderful, always-ready-to-help, patient, and enthusiastic librarians who work there. Thank you for providing me with unlimited access to such amazing materials!”
On June 7, the Rare Book Collection was pleased to host five librarians from Portugal who were visiting UNC Chapel Hill under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. They were here to learn about U.S. library management and collection development, and special collections at Wilson was part of the tour.
NA5831 B27 S68 / Plans, Elevations, Sections and Views of the Church of Batalha
Their visit gave the RBC the opportunity to pull some of its Portuguese-related rarities, including plays from its vast Iberian drama holdings, as well as Richard Fanshaw’s translation of Luís de Camões’ The Lusiad, or, Portugals Historicall Poem (London, 1655). The greatest exclamations were elicited, however, by the large plate book Plans, Elevations, Sections and Views of the Church of Batalha: in the Province of Estremadura in Portugal (London, 1795), a classic work on the great Gothic monastery complex.
That is, until they were shown the RBC’s most recent acquisition, The Canticle of Jack Kerouac: Lowell Notebook, March 21, 1987 (Accession 129008), a sketchbook with early versions of the poem and original drawings by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (UNC A.B., 1941). They delighted in this beautiful object and were fascinated to learn of the UNC connection to the Beat Movement.
The range of taste and appreciation that our international colleagues demonstrated made the afternoon a true pleasure. The RBC – All Worlds, All Time
Last weekend was graduation. Students and their families and friends celebrated on campus. And more than a few wandered into Wilson to experience its amazing architecture in the Grand Reading Room, as well as some of the amazing books RBC holds. Among the treasures from UNC alumni on view were the Hanes Book of Hours (Bruges, mid-15th century), bequest of Dr. Frederic Hanes (B.A. 1903); James Joyce’s Ulysses (Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922), gift of Mary M. Patton and James R. Pattton (A.B. 1948); and Washington Irving’s notebooks of his Tour in Scotland, 1817, gift of Preston Davie (L.L.D., 1946), a collateral descendant of UNC founder William Richardson Davie.
The display underscored our wishes for our graduates. May they experience good fortune and beautiful books in their odysseys to come!
The Rare Book Collection partnered with our friends in the Department of English and Comparative Literature to bring Prof. Adrian Johns to speak on Tuesday April 10. Johns, one of the most provocative thinkers and writers on the history of the book, delivered a lecture in the English Department’s Critical Speaker Series, “The Invention of Scientific Reading.”
It was a fascinating and nuanced presentation that looked at three scientific revolutions and specific moments in which an act of reading “made” a critical piece of knowledge or unmade forms of knowledge. Johns discussed Galileo and the Copernican revolution; Isaac Newton and rational mechanics; James Clerk Maxwell and modern field theory; and concluded with remarks on contemporary efforts to automate reading, “an altogether terrifying prospect.” But don’t let us muddle all the details, access the podcast. Well worth the listening!
The exhibition, curated by RBC research assistant and UNC Ph.D. candidate Jennifer Park, is a rich exploration of early modern understandings of nature and the unnatural in Shakespeare’s time. Its fascinating selection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English and Continental books connects astronomy, alchemy, animal husbandry, agricultural practice, and more to the language and themes of Shakespeare’s plays. Also included in the show are the RBC’s copies of the second, third, and fourth Shakespeare folios.
In her splendid lecture Prof. Floyd-Wilson conjured up a world of customs and concerns which translated into the Bard’s perennially popular play in wondrous and inventive ways. Few present will forget her discussion of the cunning woman/man, a fixture of English village life, or, for that matter, the sale of human fat by the local apothecary.
The well-attended lecture was a fine start to the graduate student conference, Shakespeare and the Natural World, jointly sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and King’s College London.
