In the RBC’s outstanding W. B. Yeats Collection—given by the Hanes Foundation as UNC-Chapel Hill’s five millionth volume—there are extensive materials relating to the Irish playwright J. M. Synge. Among these are first, early, and theater editions of the plays he wrote for Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, including the controversial Playboy of the Western World.
That drama is about one Christy Mahon, a young man who flees home after killing his father with a loy (or shovel). He finds refuge in a Mayo village, where the locals laud him as a romantic hero for the story of his patricide—until his father shows up.
The Yeats Collection is rich in ephemeral items related to The Playboy of the Western World and the riots it inspired. The Abbey Row is one example of a satirical account that features caricatures of Synge, Yeats, and others.
This coming Sunday, June 16th, at 2 p.m, Wilson Library’s own Emily Kader will be speaking about a comedic adaptation of Synge’s acclaimed work, Tennessee Playboy, at the Triad Stage in Greensboro, North Carolina. For more information on the performances, which begin tonight, June 14th, and Ms. Kader’s talk, see the Triad’s website.
Do introduce yourself to Emily if you’ve read this blog post and are at the event!
In 1846, the prolific but now-obscure Victorian writer James Malcolm Rymer introduced the notorious Sweeney Todd in the String of Pearls, or, The Barber of Fleet Street: A Domestic Romance. The story of a London barber who kills and robs his clients, and whose accomplice turns their remains into meat pies, became an immediate bestseller. Originally published serially, it appeared in 1850 as an expanded one-volume edition, which is a book of excessive rarity today.
Rebecca Nesvet, UNC Ph.D. candidate in English and Comparative Literature, had been able to find only one institution holding that illustrated classic, the British Library in London. She became aware, however, of another copy for sale by an antiquarian book dealer and alerted the RBC. Thanks to Ms. Nesvet’s tip and the William A. Whitaker Fund, which provides generous amounts for the purchase of English literature at Chapel Hill, that fine copy of the String of Pearls now sits on a shelf at the Rare Book Collection, next to other rare Rymer novels: Grace Rivers; or, The Merchant’s Daughter (1844) and Paul Clifford; or Hurrah for the Road (1853).
As Rebecca Nesvet notes: “Like Sweeney Todd’s Fleet Street establishment, Rymer’s String of Pearls contains intriguing mysteries. Such as, how did Rymer come up with his outrageous premise?”
On Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Ms. Nesvet answered that question for a full house in the Friends of the Library room in Wilson. She made the new and novel argument that Rymer drew inspiration from a Royal Navy initiation or hazing ritual, the Line-Crossing Ceremony. “Performed at the Equator, Tropics, and Arctic Circle from at least the early nineteenth century through the late twentieth, the Line-Crossing Ceremony features a veteran sailor masquerading as Royal Barber to King Neptune, God of the Sea,” Ms. Nesvet informed the intimate gathering. “Neptune’s Barber shaves first-time crossers of the line, often barbarously.”
Ms. Nesvet, who is writing her dissertation “The Disappearing Explorer, 1818-1900,” directed by Prof. Jeanne Moskal, further elaborated on the ritual in history. “In 1832, as the HMS Beagle approached the Equator, Charles Darwin prepared himself to endure ‘razors sharpened with a file & a lather made of paint & tar, to be used by the gentlest valet de chambre’ during ‘the disagreeable operation of being shaved.’ A certificate awarded to twentieth-century line-crossers depicts Neptune’s Barber as an amphibious monster in a hat attended by a razor-bearing penguin. Close-reading the String of Pearls with attention to this context reveals that by reinventing the Royal Navy’s demon barber as a monstrous human, Rymer created an enduring legend.”
The Sweeney Todd legend was revived in 1979 for Broadway by Stephen Sondheim in his Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: A Musical Thriller. Ms. Nesvet quotes the following verse from it:
Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd
His face was pale and his eye was odd
He shaved the faces of gentlemen
Who never thereafter were heard of again.
The RBC is grateful to Ms. Nesvet for reviving the legend for the UNC community in 2013, by her apt acquisition suggestion and an afternoon of sharing her research.
The month of February ended with an opening for the new RBC exhibition The Encyclopedic Impulse. Last Wednesday evening, over one hundred people attended a reception and viewing and a related lecture that followed.
This year marks the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of French philosopher Denis Diderot, co-editor and visionary of the French Encyclopédie. To commemorate the occasion, the RBC decided to display multiple volumes of that work, but as with any encyclopedic endeavor, the project expanded.
The exhibition further illuminates the encyclopedia concept by including other encyclopedias and reference works, as well as significant writings on knowledge. Pliny the Elder, Francis Bacon, Athanasius Kircher, Abraham Ortelius, H. G. Wells, and Jorge Luis Borges are all invoked in the exploration of the human impulse to collect and organize knowledge in a single bibliographic entity.
To celebrate the exhibition, Ken Hillis, professor of media and technology studies, delivered a lecture entitled “From Alexandria to Google: The Mythic Quest for Universal Libraries.” He organized his talk around four ideas/entities: the Tower of Babel; the Library at Alexandria; the art of knowing of medieval mystic Ramón Llull; and H. G. Wells’ conception of a “World Brain.” Co-author of the recent book Google and the Culture of Search (2012), Prof. Hillis ended with a discussion of Google and a reflection on the ways in which its knowledge project coincides with and differs from previous quests.
It was a thought-provoking talk, in sympathy with the Rare Book Collection exhibition, and one entirely appropriate to a university library. The show is up in Wilson Library’s Melba Remig Saltarelli exhibit room through May 26, 2013.
On January 9th, enthusiastic Chapel Hill alumni and friends met at the Grolier Club in New York City to enjoy the marvelous exhibition Rooms of Wonder: From Wunderkammer to Museum, 1599-1899. Curated by our gracious hostess for the evening, Florence Fearrington (UNC A.B. 1958), the show is a wondrous assemblage of books that document the cabinets of curiosities formed mainly by Europeans, as well as their descendant phenomena, which include the first natural history museums in Europe and the U.S.A.
De rigueur for every cabinet of curiosities were a crocodile and a mummy, although cabinets might also include minerals and gems, shells, relics, tools, or other man-made objects. The UNC Rare Book Collection has a “Curiosities Cabinet,” which includes representative non-codex examples in the history of the book, such as these cuneiform tablets.
The show, which continues through February 2, has received much favorable notice in the book world and the press, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Young UNC alumni now resident in N.Y.C. enjoyed the exhibition immensely and bore witness to Chapel Hill’s bibliophilic spirit in their new hometown. It was a grand night, and we are grateful to alumna and collector Florence Fearrington for making it all possible.
The end of the 13 Bak’tun, a period of 144,000 days in the Maya Long Count Calendar is a time for reflection. Listen in to Frank Stasio interviewing UNC Associate Professor Emilio del Valle Escalante and Curator of Rare Books Claudia Funke on the December 21st podcast from “The State of Things.”
Happy 13 Bak’tun!
Happy Holidays!
We’ll be writing again, in the new cycle of the 14th Bak’tun and the new year 2013.
December 21, 2012, is fast approaching. What better way to recognize the shortest day of the year—and the end of the current great cycle in the Maya Long Count Calendar—than to tune in at high noon (yes, 12 p.m.) to Frank Stasio’s radio program “The State of Things” on WUNC 91.5 FM?
Last night noted Maya scholar and writer Victor Montejo delivered the opening address of the “13 Bak’tun: New Maya Perspectives in 2012” symposium to a standing-room-only crowd in Wilson Library.
His reappearance in North Carolina, thirty years after his arrival here as an exile from Guatemala in 1982, was an emotional experience—and an apparent fulfillment of its own calendric cycle, in synchronicity with the 13 Bak’tun.
This was an exciting opportunity for the UNC community to hear from one of the most respected Maya activists writing today. His wide-ranging talk on Maya religion, self-determination, and cycles of time spoke to the renewal of Maya culture at this critical moment as the current Maya Long Count Calendar cycle comes to an end.
It was an honor and a privilege for UNC to host Prof. Montejo’s lecture, which was the perfect beginning to the symposium.
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.
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.
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.
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!”