Atomic Bomb Dome

Following the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in the Second World War, the city was left in ruins. Among those ruins close to the hypocentre only one structure was left standing - a domed exhibition hall designed by a Czech architect, Jan Letzel, born 140 years ago today. Following the end of the war, there was much debate over what to do with the ruined building, and it remained neglected for many years, until the early 1960s. Only then did the local authorities accept that it should be preserved as a peace monument. Decades later, it gained acknowledgement by Unesco as a World Heritage Site. But where is the diary connection? According to the Hiroshima Peace Media Center, the movement to preserve the ruined dome was inspired by a diary kept by a young student - a 15 year old girl who died of leukaemia having been exposed to the nuclear bomb fall when only one year old.

Letzel was born on 9 April 1880 in Náchod (Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic) to a couple who ran a hotel. After being trained in civil engineering, he won a scholarship to study architecture, under Jan Kotěra (one of the founders of modern Czech architecture), at the School of Applied Arts in Prague. He undertook various study tours in 1902-1903, and was then employed by an architectural firm in Prague. He designed and built a sanatorium and a pavilion in the Art Nouveau style in Mšené-lázně. Further travels in Europe followed, and a stay in Cairo where he also worked for a while. 

By mid-1908, though, Letzel had landed in Tokyo, where he joined a firm of French architects. In 1910, Letzel and his friend Karel Hora founded their own architectural firm. Over the next few years, he designed some 40 buildings, many of them significant, including the Jesuit College, the German embassy, and a domed exhibition hall in Hiroshima. The start of World War I interrupted his practice, but, in 1919, after Czechoslovakia had become an independent country, he was appointed its commercial attaché to Japan. Many of his buildings were destroyed in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. Deeply disappointed, he returned to Prague in 1923 and died in 1925 still only 45. Some further information about Letzel can be found at Wikipedia, at Radio Prague International, and at this website.

Letzel is best remembered today for the Hiroshima exhibition hall, with its distinctive dome at the highest part of the building. The building underwent several name changes, before being known as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall from 1933. It became famous after surviving the atomic attack of 6 August 1945 - indeed it was the only structure left standing near the bomb’s hypocentre. It was scheduled to be demolished with the rest of the ruins, but because the majority of the building was intact some wanted to preserve it. Thus, it remained neglected for many years. 

According to the Hiroshima Peace Centre, one factor that led to the structure’s preservation was a diary kept by a high school student, Hiroko Kajiyama. Having being exposed at the age of one, she died some 15 years later, from leukaemia. Significantly, she had noted in her diary: ‘Only the tragic Industrial Promotion Hall will forever continue to tell future generations of the catastrophic atomic bombing.’ This inspired other students to launch a campaign which, eventually led to the Hiroshima City Council passing a resolution requiring the dome to be preserved. In 1996, Unesco acknowledged the building as a World Heritage Site under the name Hiroshima Peace Memorial - though it is more generally known as the Atomic Bomb Dome. See also the Commemorative Exhibition for the 50th Anniversary of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and HuffPost.

Nijinsky going mad

One of the most famous dancers that ever lived, Vaslav Nijinsky, died 70 years ago today, three weeks after his 60th birthday. But the dance in him had died 30 years before that, leaving him to spend half his lifetime in and out of mental institutions. Astonishingly, at the very point in his life that he was going mad, when, in fact, the dance was leaving him, he started to write a diary, and kept on writing for six weeks. A sanitised version was first published between the wars, but the full and unbowdlerised text only emerged in the 1990s.

Wacław Niżyński, or Vaslav Nijinsky, was born in 1890 to Polish parents, both dancers, in Kiev, Ukraine. Aged nine, he was entered into the Imperial Ballet School, and by 1907 began to star as a soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1908, he embarked on a relationship with Sergei Diaghilev - although sexual at first, it was their partnership in dance that would lead them both to fame. In 1909, Diaghilev took a company of Russian opera and ballet stars - including Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova - to Paris for a highly successful season; and thereafter he formed Les Ballets Russes which would become an artistic and social sensation, setting trends in art, dance, music and fashion for the next decade.

Within a couple of years, Nijinsky himself was choreographing the troupe’s ballets, notably those based on Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. The Diaghilev-Nijinsky relationship took a turn for the worse in 1912, when Les Ballets Russes toured South America without Diaghilev. Romola Pulszky, a Hungarian countess who had been pursuing Nijinsky, finally won him over onboard the ship to South America and they were married in Buenos Aires. But on returning to Europe, Diaghilev - angered by the turn of events - dismissed Nijinsky, who then tried, unsuccessfully, to set up his own company.

During the First World War, Nijinsky was interned in Hungary but Diaghilev succeeded in getting him released for a North American tour in 1916. Thereafter, though, the dancer succumbed increasingly to mental illness, and was taken by Romola for treatment to Switzerland. There he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1919, and spent the rest of his life in and out of psychiatric institutions. He died on 8 April 1950. For further biographical information see Wikipedia or the American Ballet Theatre website.

In 1919, in Switzerland and on the edge of his breakdown, Nijinsky began writing a diary and he continued to do so for six weeks, filling four notebooks (although one is just letters). A version of this diary was first edited by Romola and published in English in 1936. In 1953, Editions Gallimard came out with another heavily edited version, this time in French. Even after Romola died in 1978, her daughters, Kyra and Tamara, refused to release the full text, and it was not until 1995 that a full unexpurgated text was first published in France (by Editions Actes Sud).

In a review of the French edition, The New York Times said: ‘Much of the text reads like a stream of consciousness dominated by a series of fixations, including Nijinsky’s identification with God and Jesus Christ, his love of humanity, his concern for feelings, his distaste for eating meat, his disdain for money, his wife’s curiosity about his writing and his need to confess his sexual habits.’

Four years on, in 1999, an English version translated by Kyril Fitzlyon and edited by the American dance critic, Joan Acocella, was published in New York (by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) and London (by Allen Lane).  The publishers say The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky is ‘the only sustained, on-the-spot written account we have by a major artist of the experience of entering psychosis’. The full text can be borrowed online freely from Internet Archive (though log-in is required).

In Acocella’s introduction, she explains with precision how extensively Romola bowdlerised her husband’s diary for the 1936 edition. But Acocella also acknowledges that ‘a large part’ of Nijinsky’s reputation actually rests on the diary as it was first published - an edition which is still in print today (as part of the Penguin Modern Classics collection).

Various reviews of the unexpurgated diary can be found on the internet. Peter Kurth at Salon is not very impressed: ‘Unfortunately, the diary provides no special insight into the qualities that made Nijinsky one of the greatest dancers of all time. Dance is impossible to recapture on paper. And Nijinsky’s case is doubly problematic, since his total output was small, and only one of the dances that he choreographed for himself, L’Apres-midi d’un faune, still survives in performance. Acocella thinks it entirely possible that in writing the diary Nijinsky hoped to create a work of literature, but she offers it, wisely, for what it is: a footnote to genius, the last, sad record of a legend.’

The New York Times (again, this time about the English edition) concludes with this thought: ‘The diary’s final lines are not, as the old edition had it, ‘God seeks me and therefore we will find each other,’ but a mundane thought that never gets finished. How ironic that in erasing the real ugliness of his insanity, the old version silenced not only Nijinsky’s true voice but the magnificently gifted body from which it came. And how fortunate we are to have them both restored.’ A few pages of the book and other reviews can be read at Amazon.

It is worth noting that although this text of Nijinsky’s is referred to by everyone as a ‘diary’, it does not look like a diary, for there are no dates at all, and nor, with some exceptions such as when he writes about his meals, does it read much like a diary. Also worth noting is the fact that the Australia-based film director Paul Cox made a film, released in 2001, called The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky - see IMDB.

Finally, here are some extracts from The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky - unexpurgated edition: 1) the first in the book; 2) one about Diaghilev; 3) and the diary’s very last entry.

1)
‘I have had a good lunch, for I ate two soft-boiled eggs and fried potatoes and beans. I like beans, only they are dry. I do not like dry beans, because there is no life in them. Switzerland is sick because it is full of mountains. In Switzerland people are dry because there is no life in them. I have a dry maid because she does not feel. She thinks a lot because she has been dried out in another job that she had for a long time. I do not like Zurich, because it is a dry town. It has a lot of factories and many business people. I do not like dry people, and therefore I do not like business people.

The maid was serving lunch to my wife, to my first cousin (this, if I am not mistaken, is how someone related to me by being my wife’s sister is called), and to Kyra, together with the Red Cross nurse. She wears crosses, but she does not realize their significance. A cross is something that Christ bore. Christ bore a large cross, but the nurse wears a small cross on a little ribbon that is attached to her headdress, and the headdress has been moved back so as to show the hair. Red Cross nurses think that it is prettier this way and have therefore abandoned the practice that doctors wanted to in-still in them. The nurses do not obey doctors, because they do not understand the instructions they have to carry out. The nurse does not understand the purpose she is here for, because when the little one was eating, she wanted to tear her away from her food, thinking that the little one wanted dessert. I told her that “she would get dessert when she had eaten what was on the plate.” The little one was not offended, because she knew I loved her, but the nurse felt otherwise. She thought that I was correcting her. She is not getting any better, because she likes eating meat. I have said many times that it is bad to eat meat. They don’t understand me. They think that meat is an essential thing. They want a lot of meat. After eating lunch they laugh. I am heavy and stale after eating, because I feel my stomach. They do not feel their stomachs, but feel blood playing up. They get excited after eating. Children also get excited. They are put to bed because people think they are weak creatures. Children are strong and do not need help. I cannot write, my wife disturbs me. She is always thinking about the things I have to do. I am not bothering about them. She is afraid I will not be ready. I am ready, only my digestion is still working. I do not want to dance on a full stomach and therefore will not go and dance while my stomach is full. I will dance when it all calms down and when everything has dropped out of my bowels. I am not afraid of ridicule, and therefore I write frankly. I want to dance because I feel and not because people are waiting for me. I do not like people waiting for me and will therefore go and get dressed. I will put on a city suit because the audience will be composed of city folk. I do not want to quarrel and will therefore do whatever I am ordered to do. I will now go upstairs to my dressing room, for I have many suits and expensive underwear. I will go and dress in expensive clothes so that everyone will think I am rich. I will not let people wait for me and will therefore go upstairs now.’

2)
‘I know the tricks of impresarios. Diaghilev is also an impresario, because he has a troupe. Diaghilev has learned to cheat from other impresarios. He does not like being told that he is an impresario. He understands what being an impresario means. All impresarios are considered thieves. Diaghilev does not want to be a thief and therefore does not want to be called an impresario. Diaghilev wants to be called a Maecenas. Diaghilev wants to become part of history. Diaghilev cheats people, thinking that no one knows what he is aiming at. Diaghilev dyes his hair so as not to be old. Diaghilev’s hair is gray. Diaghilev buys black hair creams and rubs them in. I noticed this cream on Diaghilev’s pillows, which have black pillowcases. I do not like dirty pillowcases and therefore felt disgusted when I saw them. Diaghilev has two false front teeth. I noticed this because when he is nervous he touches them with his tongue. They move, and I can see them. Diaghilev reminds me of a wicked old woman when he moves his two front teeth. Diaghilev has a lock of hair dyed white at the front of his head. Diaghilev wants to be noticed. His lock of hair has become yellow because he bought a bad white dye. In Russia his lock was better, because I never noticed it. I noticed it much later, for I did not like paying attention to people’s hairstyles. My own hairstyle bothered me. I constantly changed it. People said to me, “What are you doing with your hair? You always change your hairstyle,” and then I said that I liked changing my hairstyle because I did not want to be always the same. Diaghilev liked to be talked about and therefore wore a monocle in one eye. I asked him why he wore a monocle, for I noticed that he saw well without a monocle. Then Diaghilev told me that one of his eyes saw badly. I realized then that Diaghilev had told me a lie. I felt deeply hurt. I realized that Diaghilev was deceiving me. I trusted him in nothing and began to develop by myself, pretending that I was his pupil. Diaghilev felt my pretense and did not like me, but he knew that he too was pretending, and therefore he left me alone. I began to hate him quite openly, and once I pushed him on a street in Paris. I pushed him because I wanted to show him that I was not afraid of him. Diaghilev hit me with his cane because I wanted to leave him. He felt that I wanted to go away, and therefore he ran after me. I half ran, half walked. I was afraid of being noticed. I noticed that people were looking. I felt a pain in my leg and pushed Diaghilev. I pushed him only slightly because I felt not anger against Diaghilev but tears. I wept. Diaghilev scolded me. Diaghilev was gnashing his teeth, and I felt sad and dejected. I could no longer control myself and began to walk slowly. Diaghilev too began to walk slowly. We both walked slowly. I do not remember where we were going. I was walking. He was walking. We went, and we arrived. We lived together for a long time. I had a dull life. I grieved alone. I wept alone. I loved my mother and wrote letters to her every day. I wept in those letters. I spoke of my future life. I did not know what to do. I cannot remember what I wrote, but I have a feeling that I wept bitterly. My mother felt this because she wrote me letters in reply. She could not reply to me about my aspirations, because they were my aspirations. She was waiting for my intentions. I was afraid of life because I was very young. I have been married for over five years. I lived with Diaghilev also for five years. I cannot count. I am now twenty-nine years old. I know that I was nineteen when I met Diaghilev. I loved him sincerely, and when he used to tell me that love for women was a terrible thing, I believed him. If I had not believed him, I would not have been able to do what I did. Massine does not know life, because his parents were rich. They lacked for nothing. We did not have bread. My mother did not know what to give us to live on. My mother joined the Ciniselli Circus in order to earn a little money. My mother was ashamed of such work because she was a well-known artiste in Russia. I understood it all, even though I was a child. I wept in my heart. My mother also wept. One day I could bear it no longer and ran to Bourman, a friend of mine, he was called Anatole. He is now married to Klementovich.’

3) ‘I had a good dinner, but I felt that I should not eat soup. It was canned soup . . . I wanted to run and get some money, for I thought it was necessary, but God proved to me that I should not. I took a checkbook. I want to take a checkbook and not money, because I want to show on the Stock Exchange that I have credit. The stockbrokers will believe me and will lend me money. I will win without money. I know that everyone will be frightened, and therefore I will go to the Stock Exchange by myself. I will put on a bad suit because I want to see the whole life on the Stock Exchange. I will deceive the stockbrokers. I will take my good suit and pretend to be a rich foreigner, and I will visit the Stock Exchange. I am afraid of the Stock Exchange because I do not know it. I went there once with Diaghilev, who knew a man who was a stockbroker. Diaghilev gambled for low stakes and therefore won. I will gamble for low stakes because I too want to win. I know that little people lose because they get very nervous and do silly things. I will observe everyone with complete detachment, and I will understand everything. I do not like knowing everything in advance, but God wants to show me the way people live and therefore is warning me. I will go to the railway station on foot and not in a cab. If everyone is going in a cab, I will too. God wants to show people that I am the same kind of person as they are ...................
I will go now..............
I am waiting..............
I do not want.............
I will go to my wife’s mother and talk to her because I do not want her to think that I like Oscar more than her. I am checking her feelings. She is not dead yet, because she is envious.................’

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 8 April 2010.

Poindexter, Reagan and Bush

Thirty years ago today, John Poindexter, a US national security adviser, was convicted of conspiracy and other charges pertaining to the infamous Iran-Contra Affair. Though the convictions were overturned the following year, Poindexter’s defence might have been assisted had access to the diaries of President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H W Bush not been quashed under the guise of ‘executive privilege’.

The National Security Archive, located at The George Washington University, gives this summary of the Iran-Contra affair: ‘On November 25, 1986, the biggest political and constitutional scandal since Watergate exploded in Washington when President Ronald Reagan told a packed White House news conference that funds derived from covert arms deals with the Islamic Republic of Iran had been diverted to buy weapons for the US-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua. In the weeks leading up to this shocking admission, news reports had exposed the US role in both the Iran deals and the secret support for the Contras, but Reagan’s announcement, in which he named two subordinates - National Security Advisor John M Poindexter and NSC staffer Oliver L North - as the responsible parties, was the first to link the two operations.’

More than three years later, on 7 April 1990, Poindexter was convicted for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury, defrauding the government, and the alteration and destruction of evidence pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair. On appeal, these convictions were reversed in 1991. (North had been convicted on lesser charges the previous year, and his convictions were reversed in 1990.)

Poindexter, born in 1936, studied at the United States Naval Academy and the California Institute of Technology. He had a distinguished career in the navy (battleship command and high-ranking Pentagon posts) before serving in the Reagan administration, first as a military assistant then, from 1983 to 1985, as Deputy National Security Advisor. In 1985-1986, he was National Security Advisor providing recommendations to the President on national security, foreign policy and defense policy. He reached the navy rank of Vice Admiral, but was retired, because of the Iran-Contra Affair, as a Rear Admiral in 1987. After that and until retirement he worked in the hi-tech private sector, apart from a few months as Director of the DARPA Information Awareness Office - see Wikipedia for more biographical information.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) website has the text of the Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, and Chapter Three deals with United States v. John M Poindexter. It provides a full background to his indictment in March 1988, and gives a run down of the trial and outcomes. More specifically it also mentions how, in September 1989, Poindexter’s attorneys informed the court that ‘the defendant is willing to seek access to the personal diaries and notes of former President Reagan and former Vice President Bush pursuant to a . . . subpoena.’

The judge in the case subsequently ordered President Reagan to make diary entries available for the court’s in-camera review; and, after the review, it ordered him to produce the relevant diary entries for Poindexter - in the absence of a claim of executive privilege. This was headline news at the time - see the Google archived Associated Press report. But then, the Report explains, President Reagan, joined by the Bush Administration, claimed executive privilege and this was granted by the court, thus allowing the Reagan-Bush motions to quash the subpoena for the diary entries.

Executive privilege, according to Wikipedia, is the power claimed by the President of the United States and other members of the executive branch to resist certain subpoenas and other interventions by the legislative and judicial branches of government. The Supreme Court has confirmed the legitimacy of this doctrine but only to the extent of confirming that there is a qualified privilege: ‘Once invoked, a presumption of privilege is established, requiring the Prosecutor to make a ‘sufficient showing’ that the ‘Presidential material’ is ‘essential to the justice of the case’.

Here is more from the National Security Archive on Reagan and Bush.

On Reagan: ‘The scandal was almost the undoing of the Teflon President. Of all the revelations that emerged, the most galling for the American public was the president’s abandonment of the long-standing policy against dealing with terrorists, which Reagan repeatedly denied doing in spite of overwhelming evidence that made it appear he was simply lying to cover up the story. Despite the damage to his image, the president arguably got off easy, escaping the ultimate political sanction of impeachment. From what is now known from documents and testimony - but perhaps not widely appreciated - while Reagan may not have known about the diversion or certain other details of the operations being carried out in his name, he directed that both support for the Contras (whom he ordered to be kept together ‘body and soul’) and the arms-for-hostages deals go forward, and was at least privy to other actions that were no less significant.’

On Bush: ‘Then-Vice President George H W Bush became entangled in controversy over his knowledge of Iran-Contra. Although he asserted publicly that he was ‘out of the loop - no operational role,’ he was well informed of events, particularly the Iran deals, as evidenced in part by this diary excerpt just after the Iran operation was exposed: ‘I’m one of the few people that know fully the details . . .’ [see below also]. The problem for Bush was greatly magnified because he was preparing to run for president just as the scandal burst. He managed to escape significant blame - ultimately winning the 1988 election - but he came under fire later for repeatedly failing to disclose the existence of his diary to investigators and then for pardoning several Iran-Contra figures, including former Defense Secretary Weinberger just days before his trial was set to begin. As a result of the pardons, the independent counsel’s final report pointedly noted: ‘The criminal investigation of Bush was regrettably incomplete.’

The Project for the Old American Century is one of the websites that has several pertinent extracts from George Bush’s diary made available in 1993:

5 November 1986
‘On the news at this time is the question of the hostages . . . I’m one of the few people that know fully the details . . . it is not a subject we can talk about . . .’

13 November 1986
‘I remember Watergate. I remember the way things oozed out. It is important to be level, to be honest, to be direct. We are not saying anything.’

25 November 1986
‘The administration in disarray - foreign policy in disarray - cover-up - who knew what when?’

1 January 1987
‘These so-called findings on Iran - I'll be honest - I don’t remember any of them, and I don’t believe that they were even signed by the president, frankly. But sometimes there are meetings over in the White House with Shultz, NSC guy, Casey and Weinberger, and they make some decisions that the president signs off on. . . And the facts are that the Vice President is not in the decision making loop.’

And here is one excerpt from Reagan’s diary, taken from a Vanity Fair preview of The Reagan Diaries edited by Douglas Brinkley and published in 2007.

24 November 1986
‘Big thing of the day was 2 hour meeting in the situation room on the Iran affair. George S. is still stubborn that we shouldn't have sold the arms to Iran - I gave him an argument. All in all we got everything out on the table. After meeting Ed [Meese, attorney general] & Don [Regan] told me of a smoking gun. On one of the arms shipments the Iranians pd. Israel a higher purchase price than we were getting. The Israelis put the difference in a secret bank acct. Then our Col. [Oliver] North (NSC) gave the money to the ‘Contras’. This was a violation of the law against giving the Contras money without an authorization by Congress. North didn't tell me about this. Worst of all John [Poindexter] found out about it & didn’t tell me. This may call for resignations.’

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 7 April 2010.

The father of black history

‘Now about Woodson himself. He is the most arrogant, scornful, and depressing person I have ever been associated with. He has a virulent temper, but does not like to see the same manifested by another. He is puffed up with his own importance and deprecates that of everyone associated closely with him. He possesses a humor which rankles, instead of warms, a wit which makes me wish to strangle him at times.’ This is the damning assessment of Carter G. Woodson, a hero of the early 20th century US black movement, by one of his assistants, Lorenzo Greene. Woodson, who died 70 years ago today, was one of the first scholars to study the history of the African diaspora; he was also the founder of The Journal of Negro History and Black History Week. Greene, a significant scholar in his own right, worked for Woodson in the 1920s/1930s, and kept a detailed diary. This was published posthumously in two volumes, Working with Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History and Selling Black History for Carter G. Woodson.

Woodson was born in New Canton, Virginia, in 1875, the son of former slaves. Both of his parents were illiterate although, after being freed, his father worked as a carpenter and farmer. Aged 17, Woodson followed his brother to Huntington, to attend a new secondary school for blacks, Douglass High School. But, being obliged to work (as a coal miner) he was unable to attend full time, at least until he was 20. He finally received his diploma in 1897, and went to teach in Winona. In 1900, he was selected as the principal of Douglass High School. By studying part-time, he earned a degree in literature from Berea College in Kentucky in 1903. From that year until 1907, he worked for the US government as a school supervisor in the Philippines. On returning to the US he achieved a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and, in 1912, a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.

In 1915, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to encourage scholars to engage in the intensive study of the black past (previously the field had been largely neglected or distorted). The following year, Woodson edited the first issue of the association’s principal scholarly publication, The Journal of Negro History, which, under his direction, remained an important historical periodical for more than 30 years.

Woodson became dean of the College of Liberal Arts and head of the graduate faculty at Howard University (1919-1920), and dean at West Virginia State College (1920-1922). While there, he founded and became president of Associated Publishers focusing on books about black life and culture. He, himself, wrote several important books: The Negro in Our History (1922), The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 (1915); and A Century of Negro Migration (1918). In 1926, he proposed and launched the annual February observance of Negro History Week, which later. from 1976, became Black History Month. His most ambitious project - a six-volume Encyclopedia Africana - was incomplete at the time of his sudden death on 3 April 1950. Further information is available at Wikipedia, African American Museum, NAACP, Time or Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Although there is no evidence that Woodson kept diaries, one of his associates, Lorenzo Greene, did - these are held in an archive of Greene’s papers at the Library of Congress. Greene was born in 1899 in Ansonia, Connecticut, receiving his BA from Howard University in 1924 and his MA in history from Columbia University in 1926.  From 1928 to 1933, he served as a book agent for, and research assistant to, Woodson, then the director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. He went on to serve as instructor and professor of history at Lincoln University in Jefferson City from 1933 to 1972. He married Thomasina Tally in 1942. The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620-1776 is considered his most important work. He died in 1988. Further information is available at BlackPast.

Towards the end of his life, Greene began editing his diaries. A first selection of extracts was edited by Arvarh E. Strickland and published posthumously in 1989 by the Louisiana State University Press as: Working with Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History, a Diary, 1928-30. Wikipedia notes that Robert L. Harris of Cornell University described the book as ‘one of the few documents that provide insight into the early growth of the field of Afro-American history and the life of Woodson’.

A second selection, also edited by Strickland, was published in 1996 by the University of Missouri Press as Selling Black History for Carter G. Woodson: A Diary, 1930-1933. Some pages of this can be previewed at Googlebooks. ‘Greene describes in the diary,’ the publisher states, ‘often in lyrical terms, the places and people he visited. He provides poignant descriptions of what was happening to black professional and business people, plus working-class people, along with details of high school facilities, churches, black business enterprises, housing, and general conditions in communities. Greene also gives revealing accounts of how the black colleges were faring in 1930.’

The publisher claims that the diary ‘provides a unique firsthand account of conditions in African American communities during the Great Depression [and] provides invaluable insights into the personality of Carter Woodson that are not otherwise available.’ Indeed, a less than flattering view of Woodson emerges from many of the diary entries. Here are several of those entries.

6 December 1930, Wilmington, Delaware
‘This morning I received six sets of books from Woodson’s office. He stated in his covering letter that I had failed to send certain monies for books to the office; that such was our agreement. I became so wrought up that I was of a mind to return at once to Washington, [and] tell Woodson to take the car and “go to hell.” But there was Poe, whom I had persuaded to come along with me. I could not leave him in the lurch; therefore, I said nothing. Together we sent Woodson $35; I remitted $13.98; Poe almost twice as much. Only in case the subscriber paid the entire amount in cash or check to the agent would we handle any funds belonging to the office. Yet his letter stated that Wilkey had sold twice as many books as I. Further that I must change my procedure and not keep the money belonging to the office “as I had done this summer.” He had, in fact, virtually branded me as a thief. God only knows what would have happened had he told me that to my face, for whatever my shortcomings and they are legion - I at least strive to be honest. I would not barter my honor and reputation for a few pennies. I wondered whether Woodson was trying to so anger me that I would give up the work; for, in the closing paragraph, he intimated that if I continued to attack the church, I would have to do so as a freelance. That would be evident to anyone. He probably was “quaking in his boots” because Rev. R. R. Wright, Jr., of Philadelphia replied to a statement I had made concerning the church, which Woodson believed might cause Negro ministers to withdraw their “support” from the Association. I believe John R. Hawkins, who is president of the Association, is behind this. He is also financial secretary of the A.M.E. Church and a political leader. My temper quickly subsided, for I knew that I had forwarded to the office whatever monies were due. [. . .]

As for the church, I did not give a “hang” whether it kept on mulcting the people or not. It could only do so until Negroes opened their eyes and refused to be “milked” any longer.

Now about Woodson himself. He is the most arrogant, scornful, and depressing person I have ever been associated with. He has a virulent temper, but does not like to see the same manifested by another. He is puffed up with his own importance and deprecates that of everyone associated closely with him. He possesses a humor which rankles, instead of warms, a wit which makes me wish to strangle him at times. Then, too, he reminds me of a politician. He has no honor. Like a reptile, he is sly [and] mole-like; he works underground, undermining his victim, until the latter is ready to step upon the hollow earth to his downfall. The case of Dr. [Charles H.] Wesley is still fresh in my memory. His word is like thin ice - easily broken. I refer here to his promises to me concerning the Negro Wage Earner. He will make mistakes and then place the blame on his subordinates. He has absolutely no regard for the feelings of others, but seems to believe that he has a God-given right to vent his spleen upon anyone. He can brook no subordinate position. He must be the ruler; he cannot share power; enemies he makes in profusion, who either abstain from supporting or else hinder the work. He doesn’t seem to care. His whole nature has been warped, bent, [and] blasted, I believe, by an unfortunate love affair. Since that time, he seems to revel in ascertaining the extent to which he can irritate others.

I do not believe he has one true friend in the entire world. He has countless acquaintances, thousands of admirers, but like Bismarck and others, he is not loved. He belongs to that group of mortals who, unloving and unloved, are prized because they possess some unique attribute that the world desires. What a shame! That Woodson is of this temperament renders it impossible for him to inspire younger black scholars to perfect themselves in Negro History with a view toward taking his place when death or infirmity shall cause him to relinquish the helm.’

16 December 1930
‘Another cold day. Late getting breakfast, for this work keeps me going so, night and day, that unless I rise late in the morning I find it difficult to receive adequate rest.

Cold as usual. Called upon several persons in North Philadelphia. Were not in, however. Called at the branch Y on North 43rd Street. Would telephone me regarding order. Don’t expect to hear from them.

Could not find Mr. Williams at home. Dr. Manley not in, either.

Received letter from Woodson. Came down off high horse. Asked what matter did it make whether or not 80c was sent in. Of course, none. Yet if such were the case why did he assume such a tone in reference to it so as to cause me to send him a threat of giving up the campaign? This leads me to believe that he can be smoked out of his blustering attitude if met with equal bluster and firmness. Mother wants me to come home for Christmas. Anxious to do so but hate to go empty-handed. My wish has been to visit home laden with presents for everyone. Can’t do so this year, however.’

18 December 1930
‘While shaving this morning, Poe brought me two copies of The Negro Wage Earner, my book, which Woodson has practically appropriated for his own. The cover is beautiful, jade green, with the authors’ names in gold. The jacket, however, is a vile bungling of incongruities. In the background is a factory; in the foreground a Negro wearing a collar and a tie and arrayed in a business suit. Woodson’s idea, no doubt, and perfectly correct because it is his.

Now for the most infamous of assumptions and fabrications; so wholly has Woodson taken to himself the credit for the book, that all he waives responsibility for is the collecting of the information - and not even all of that. All the correcting, supplementing, and reduction of the data to literary form are, he states, his. This is an infamous lie. I myself not only collected the data, but also put it in virtually the exact form, with the exception of a few expurgations, in which the book now stands. When I left on the bookselling campaign, the page proof read: Lorenzo J. Greene, The Negro Wage Earner. Whatever corrections were made, moreover, were carried out by me under his supervision. And as for his supplementary data, there is not an idea of Woodson’s in the entire book, save the inconsequential statement that some Negro farmers worked for white planters during weekdays and labored on their own farms on Sunday and holidays in order to make ends meet. This practice was to show one means of the increase in Negro farms during the transition period, from tenant farmer to farm owner.

When I left in July, the book was ready for its final printing. All corrections had been made on the page proof. To think that he would offer such a monstrous misrepresentation to the world is amazing. But as I remarked in a letter to him in September, little more can be expected from a person devoid of a sense of honor. Woodson never held a high place in my estimation, but now my regard for him in every respect, save scholarship, has sunk to its nadir.

As to the book, it contains some mighty errors, chiefly because Woodson did not know its contents. In his fine art of expurgating, he has made a laughing stock of himself. Where I stated that 90-95 percent of the Negro steel laborers in Pittsburgh were unskilled in 1917, Woodson cut out the remainder of the paragraph, left the above dangling in midair, then two or three pages later the statement is made and proved by Census figures that about one-third of all Negro laborers in factories were doing work “requiring greater or less skill’’. Then, too, his monumental ignorance of how space was to be allocated in respect to the different topics is evident when he stated in the catalogue announcement that, since most Negroes worked in domestic service and on farms, more space would be devoted to these occupations. That is just what I did not do, for I purposely devoted more space to the other occupations.’

Dedekam, songwriter and diarist

Sophie Dedekam, considered one of the most significant Norwegian women composers of the 19th century, was born 200 years ago. Hardly known outside of Scandinavia, she is principally remembered for a hymn that is included in the current Church of Norway Hymn Book, and for a diary she kept while visiting France for several months in 1845. The diary was first published some 35 years after her death, but was recently re-published.

Dedekam was born on 1 April 1820 in the Norwegian coastal town of Arendal. Her father was a merchant and local politician, becoming the town’s first mayor. He also helped found and run a local museum, and was active in the theatre. As a child, Sophie was given music lessons by her mother - an accomplished pianist.  Aged 25, she travelled to France, where she gave a number of concerts in Paris and elsewhere. 

Back in Arendal, Dedekam continued with her domestic, social and musical life, as a singer and collaborative pianist. From an early age, she also composed songs. In 1854, her mother died, and thereafter she became more spiritual, embracing Pietism (a branch of Lutheranism). When her father died in 1861, she was unmarried, which left here dependent on friend and relations. Her main home was with her sister Cathrine and her husband, though she stayed with her life-long friend, the folklorist, bishop and poet Jørgen Moe and his wife, as well as with other relatives in Christiania (now Oslo). She died in 1894. Wikipedia seems to be the only online source of biographical information in English (and, oddly, Wikipedia’s bio in English is far more detailed than the Norwegian-language version).

Although Dedekam rarely received recognition for her songs, nor did she seek any, forty of her musical pieces were eventually published by Wilhelm Hansen Music Publishers (known today as Edition Wilhelm Hansen) in Copenhagen. A number of her songs, in fact, became quite well known. Two of her songs were also published by Theodora Cormontan, the first woman professional music publisher in Norway. According to Wikipedia, her most enduring set of songs is 6 Sange: udsatte for to syngestemmer og pianoforte (6 Songs for two voices and piano), originally published by Wilhelm Hansen and reissued by Recital Publications in 2009. The melody for which she is best remembered is associated with an evening prayer song that appears in the current Church of Norway Hymn Book (as well as in the current Swedish equivalent).

Dedekam is also listed (by Wikipedia) as a diarist - though I can only trace one diary that she kept and which was published. This dates from her sojourn in France in 1845. Her grandnephew Henrik Harboe edited the diary (and her letters from the same period) and published them in 1929 under the title Dagbok og brev fra en reise til Paris i 1845. The work was republished by Solum Forlag in 2000. Here are three extracts, scanned from the original Norwegian, and (very crudely) translated via GoogleTranslate.

9 April 1945
‘Today we have a fresh gale, after having the headwind yesterday and so it will be so some days we are in France. Here are many ships around us, several steamers have passed, and yesterday a vessel sailed so close to us that we could talk to the people. It was a Swede who came from Antwerp and was to speak Gothenborg. We envied him the good wind, today he can envy us. Thus things are going up and down in this world!

Now we have nothing more than a coarse loaf, so we must take our refuge to the ship’s bread. We still have some butter left, but surely we got the last jar; what is on board is almost inedible. We still have fresh meat for a roast and some fish cakes, so our stock is over. We have cooked delicious bird soup, fresh meat soup, juice soup, roast, today we had porridge and stew. The milk is long ago over, we use wine and water. We are glad to have some more time. Last Sunday we had Eggedram. We also made chocolate. The Captain is fishing for fresh fish, cod.

Here is very good, but there is also much that you have to turn on board. I have often thought of you, dear Cath. How it should have gone here with your chicken main. We lie so low and we can’t get any higher, as the ship often pours in one side, not to mention all the dunk we get when we were going out and into the bunk. We smoke here so that we are almost mad; then the door must open, . . . but we are very well, are not cold. Last night I was troubled by a visit, which I have the dreadful idea was a bed bug, but I have yet to know, Guess it was a flea, though it is far nobler animals, of which I speak a lot, but here must unfortunately be found by the former.

It blows hard, rains and is thick. We’ve only been on the deck for a little while, I dread the night if this is to increase. The Captain has dreamed of his Wife. God help us!’

27 July 1845
‘Here is a good Veir, and it is sad that we cannot use the last day we are probably in France. Thiis and Tellefsen have been here in Visit and invited us to tomorrow evening. Volkmar has eaten here. We did a little tour of la Jeée, but were chased in by the rain.’

28 July 1845
‘It is a precarious world in which we live; one has only the present moment that one can reasonably possess. Today, Aalholm has received a letter from Andersen in Fecamp, which will be completed on Thursday. Tomorrow we travel to Havre, and from there to Fecamp and from there to Norway. So it's the last day we're in Honfleur. We've been to Visit at Thiis, Mad. Pottier, St. Martin, Satis and Huberts. Last time we were at the Côte de Grace, which showed its beauty. There is no other place on earth that has made the impression on me, I sat long at the foot of the image of Christ and, with my inner heart, once again decided in this life to see the view from there. Tonight it is raining. We have been walking the streets of Honfleur for the last time, but I do not want to think about the sadness of “for the last time.” I have been given a very beautiful gold ring of food. Ullern. One thing makes me almost happy to be traveling, since Tellefsen has asked me to sing at his concert this Thursday, and I couldn’t say no, although it has cost me tears. One time to trade off could go ahead, but 2 times was multiplied. It is shown that he is a rare talent. He played for us a bit at Thiis and it was astonishing.’

The death of German physics

‘I woke up during the night and had to think of all the misfortune in Germany. About Reinhold’s death, about ruined Berlin, about the terror we all have of the Russians, of the disinterested Americans, about Germany’s suicide, the death of German physics, and the absolute uncertainty of our fate.’ This is from the diaries of the German physicist Ernst Carl Reinhold Brüche - a key figure in the development of the electron microscope - born 120 years ago today. Although Wikipedia does have a short biography of the man, there are very few sources of information in English readily available online. However, Brüche did keep a diary, and a few extracts, translated into English, can be found in The Mental Aftermath: The Mentality of German Physicists 1945-1949 by Klaus Hentschel.

Brüche was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 28 March 1900, but, on the death of his father in 1914, the family moved to Sopot near Danzig (then part of the German Empire, but today Gdansk in Poland). There, at the technical university, he studied mechanical engineering before switching to physics under the guidance of Carl Ramsauer, a highly regarded research physicist. He remained at the university, teaching while continuing research on the measurement of electron scattering cross-sections of molecular gases. In 1929, he married Dorothee Lilienthal with whom he had three daughters.

From 1928 to 1945, Brüche was head of the physics laboratories at the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG) where he worked mostly on geometrical electron optics and on developing an electron microscope. In 1944 he launched Physikalische Blätter, an academic physics journal, and remained its editor until 1972. From 1946 to 1951, he was head scientist of the Süddeutsches Laboratorium in Mosbach, north of Baden-Württemberg, and from 1948, he was the managing director of Physik-GmbH also in Mosbach. In 1952 he founded Physikalische Laboratorium Mosbach. 

In 1965, Brüche became an honorary member of the German Society for Electron Microscopy, in 1970 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, in 1972 he received the Max Born Medal for Responsibility in Science, and in the same year he became an honorary citizen of the city of Mosbach. He died in 1985. A little further information can be found online at Wikipedia (the  German entry has more detail).

Brüche seems to have kept a diary at some points in his life. A few translated extracts have been published in Klaus Hentschel’s The Mental Aftermath: The Mentality of German Physicists 1945-1949 (Oxford University Press, 2007). Some pages can be consulted at Googlebooks. Here are several extracts from Brüche’s diaries as found in Hentschel’s book.

19 April 1945
‘We sit there in the forecourt of the Krügel building on a tree-trunk in the sun and feel like prisoners, which of course we are. We live under the most primitive conditions but even worse may well be in store for us. [. . .] Inside the factory no one wants to work anymore. It’s so pointless. Do what, and what for?’

22 April 1945
‘All in all I have got an image of Americans as a rich nation of high technological standards. Proud, unapproachable, and in everything technically superior and efficient. [. . .] We are sluggish, chase after ideals that in reality are completely different from what we think and we don’t even notice. We have a tick tor exactitude and don’t let ourselves be convinced that the others have long since found a simpler way that might not stand up to German criticism but leads more quickly to the goal and has been followed with success.’

28 June 1945
‘We don’t understand the Americans and they don’t understand us. [. . .] We will have to continue to strive and work, so that they see that all of us had not been Nazis and that it is for their own good that they don’t commit the same error with the Germans that we committed with the Jews.’

30 June 1945
‘Hilsch spoke for 4 hours long to two Englishmen and even if only 1% of it stuck, Saul must have turned into Paul. Lt. Comr. A. Elliott, RNVR, was the higher ranking of the two, who both listened with great interest to Hilsch’s portrayals of the stance of physicists toward the party. Hilsch said what any other physicist would also have said. But whether just any physicist would have taken such pains with 2 Englishmen is very doubtful.’

13 July 1945
‘I woke up during the night and had to think of all the misfortune in Germany. About Reinhold’s death, about ruined Berlin, about the terror we all have of the Russians, of the disinterested Americans, about Germany’s suicide, the death of German physics, and the absolute uncertainty of our fate. Isn’t it terrible to think: Russians in the cities in which Bach, Goethe, Haeckel, and whatever else their names are, lived and worked? My heart throbbed and tears almost welled up in my eyes.’

27 August 1945
‘These people remind me somehow of playing children, giant children, who thanks to their great strength have occasion to play with the Germans. It is cat playing with mouse. Does the cat realize at all that it is hurting the mouse when it allows the mouse, half dead as it is, to run a little more for its dear life so that it can catch it again? Why this disinterestedness by a nation that has taken upon itself the responsibility along with the power? Is this a game or cold calculation by the leadership? We want to work and rebuild. Why don’t they allow it? Why aren’t the trains running yet? Why is the post unusable and the telephone line broken? The Americans have been here for four months, four months of “peace” - and we are still waiting for peace. We are living off capital. Raw materials and supplies are everywhere lacking.’

11 October 1945
‘These mindless dismissals of all former Nazis could drive one to desperation. The method only shows that the Americans are no smarter than their predecessors, the Nazis. What did a reasonable man say to me yesterday? From a mild dictatorship with its faults we have now arrived at a severe dictatorship.’

Ye firme and stable earth

‘Being thus arived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees & blessed ye God of heaven, who had brought them over ye vast & furious ocean, and delivered them from all ye periles & miseries therof, againe to set their feete on ye firme and stable earth, their proper elemente.’ This from the famous journal kept by William Bradford, he who sailed on the Mayflower with other pilgrims to North America, and became the first governor of the new Plymouth Colony. He was baptised 430 years ago today; and this year marks the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower.

William Bradford, born in Austerfield, Yorkshire, to a wealthy farmer, was baptised on 19 March 1590. Both his parents had died by the time he was seven, and he was sent to live with his uncles. Unable to work on their farm because of sickness, he read a lot, and became very familiar with the bible. As a teenager, he came under the influence of reformist religious preachers, such as Richard Clyfton and William Brester. When King James I came to the throne in 1603 and attempted to suppress criticism of the Church of England, the reformists continued to meet in secret. Some of them, however, were arrested in 1607, while others determined to leave England - unlawfully. 

In Amsterdam, then in Leiden, Bradford was taken in by the Brewster household, but in 1611, when he turned 21, he was able to take up his inheritance. He bought a house, set up as a weaver, and earned himself some standing in the community. He married Dorothy May, and in 1617 they had their first child. Although, the emigrants from England had been free to worship how they pleased, they were worried about their children being over-assimilated into Dutch culture. They began planning to travel to North America to set up a new colony, and for three years negotiated with financial backers and with the English authorities seeking permission to settle in the northern parts of the Colony of Virginia. Some 100 passengers set sail from Plymouth on the Mayflower in September 1620 (later this year will mark the voyage’s 400th anniversary - see here for the many events being planned). After various difficulties, they finally anchored first at Cape Cod harbour - the so-called Mayflower Compact (the first governing document of what would become the Plymouth Colony) was signed that same day - and then at (new) Plymouth. Bradford’s wife, though, had fallen overboard and died before reaching reaching Plymouth.

After a gruelling winter, during which many of the settlers died, including the already chosen governor, Bradford was unanimously elected to be governor. He served nearly 30 years (with a few breaks) from the early 1620s to 1656. As early as 1621, the settlers held (what would later be seen as) a first thanksgiving, a secular harvest feast shared with native Americans. He married the widow Alice Southworth in 1623, and they had three children. Bradford is credited for his handling of judicial matters (land disputes), for establishing institutions, and for his religious tolerance. He died in 1657. Further information is available from Wikipedia, History.com, Evangelical Times, Biography.com, MayflowerHistory.com

Bradford’s journals - if you can call them that - are considered by historians as the preeminent work of 17th century America, and as the most authoritative account of the Pilgrims and the early years of the colony they founded. Bradford contributed to an early (1622) published history of the pilgrims: A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England. Although primarily by Edward Winslow, Bradford seems to have written most of the first section. This can be read at Internet Archive.

However, it is thanks to Of Plymouth Plantation (sometimes titled William Bradford’s Journal) that Bradford is best remembered. The journal was written between 1630 and 1651 and describes the story of the pilgrims from their time on the European mainland, through the 1620 Mayflower voyage and the setting up of the colony until the year 1647. The manuscript has a long and rather involved history. Bradford himself made no attempt to publish it, but it was passed down to his grandson and over the years borrowed by historians - see the History of Massachusetts Blog for more details. Then, the manuscript went missing until it was discovered in the Bishop of London’s Library in London in 1855. It was published a year later, and one consequence of this was a sudden interest in the Thanksgiving holiday idea. Another, was that there were calls for the manuscript to be returned to New England, which it was eventually.

Bradford’s journal has since been published under many different titles, and is widely available on internet sites (see Googlebooks, The Plymouth Colony Archive Project, Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg). The original manuscript is held by the State Library of Massachusetts in the State House in Boston. It has 270 pages, is vellum-bound, and measures​ 292 × 197 mm. Most of Brafrord’s text reads as a narrative or history, rather than a journal written day-by-day, and there are no dated entries as would normally be found in a journal. Here is one extract dating from the time of the Mayflower’s arrival in North America.

‘Being thus arived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees & blessed ye God of heaven, who had brought them over ye vast & furious ocean, and delivered them from all ye periles & miseries therof, againe to set their feete on ye firme and stable earth, their proper elemente. And no marvell if they were thus joyefull, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on ye coast of his owne Italy; as he affirmed, that he had rather remaine twentie years on his way by land, then pass by sea to any place in a short time; so tedious & dreadfull was ye same unto him.

But hear I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amased at this poore peoples presente condition; and so I thinke will the reader too, when he well considers ye same. Being thus passed ye vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembred by yt which wente before), they had now no freinds to wellcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses or much less townes to repaire too, to seeke for succoure. It is recorded in scripture as a mercie to ye apostle & his shipwraked company, yt the barbarians shewed them no smale kindnes in refreshing them, but these savage barbarians, when they mette with them (as after will appeare) were readier to fill their sids full of arrows then otherwise. And for ye season it was winter, and they that know ye winters of yt cuntrie know them to be sharp & violent, & subjecte to cruell & feirce stormes, deangerous to travill to known places, much more to serch an unknown coast. Besids, what could they see but a hidious & desolate wildernes, full of wild beasts & willd men? and what multituds ther might be of them they knew not. Nether could they, as it were, goe up to ye tope of Pisgah, to vew from this willdernes a more goodly cuntrie to feed their hops; for which way soever they turnd their eys (save upward to ye heavens) they could have litle solace or content in respecte of any outward objects. For sum̅er being done, all things stand upon them with a wetherbeaten face; and ye whole countrie, full of woods & thickets, represented a wild & savage heiw. If they looked behind them, ther was ye mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a maine barr & goulfe to seperate them from all ye civill parts of ye world. If it be said they had a ship to sucour them, it is trew; but what heard they daly from ye mr. & company? but yt with speede they should looke out a place with their shallop, wher they would be at some near distance; for ye season was shuch as he would not stirr from thence till a safe harbor was discovered by them wher they would be, and he might goe without danger; and that victells consumed apace, but he must & would keepe sufficient for them selves & their returne. Yea, it was muttered by some, that if they gott not a place in time, they would turne them & their goods ashore & leave them. Let it also be considred what weake hopes of supply & succoure they left behinde them, yt might bear up their minds in this sade condition and trialls they were under; and they could not but be very smale. It is true, indeed, ye affections & love of their brethren at Leyden was cordiall & entire towards them, but they had litle power to help them, or them selves; and how ye case stode betweene them & ye marchants at their coming away, hath allready been declared. What could now sustaine them but the spirite of God & his grace? May not & ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: Our faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes;[AI] but they cried unto ye Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie, &c. Let them therfore praise ye Lord, because he is good, & his mercies endure for ever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of ye Lord, shew how he hath delivered them from ye hand of ye oppressour. When they wandered in ye deserte willdernes out of ye way, and found no citie to dwell in, both hungrie, & thirstie, their sowle was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before ye Lord his loving kindnes, and his wonderfull works before ye sons of men.’

An early pandemic hero

In these troubling times, with Covid-19 reaping havoc across the world, it is worth remembering Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, a Russian born scientist credited with carrying out the first effective programmes for tackling pandemics. Born 160 years ago today, he developed vaccines for cholera and bubonic plague, and organised successful inoculation campaigns in India - until being falsely accused of causing several deaths. He left behind diaries covering much of his life, some of which are held by the British Museum, but there is very little information online about their content. One biographical study suggests that his diaries reflect bitterness towards ‘faithless assistants’.

Haffkine was born into a Jewish family on 15 March 1860 in the prosperous Black Sea port of Odessa (then in Russia now in Ukraine). His early education took place in Berdyansk, a port much further east on the Black Sea, but he returned to Odessa to study natural sciences at Malorossiisky University. There he came under the influence of microbiologist Elie Metchnikoff, a future Nobel Prize winner. After earning a doctorate, he joined the staff of the Odessa Natural History Museum where he worked until 1888, publishing five papers on the hereditary characteristics of unicellular organisms. Although his career was blighted by growing anti-semitism, he was allowed to leave Russia for Switzerland where he joined the University of Geneva, teaching physiology. Two years later, he moved to Paris to join Metchnikoff who had been invited to head the newly­ opened Pasteur institute. Haffkine was employed as an assistant librarian, but also worked in the lab on bacteria.

By the early 1890s, Haffkine had shifted his attention to studies in practical bacteriology. He developed an anti-cholera vaccine that he tested on himself. Anxious to assess the value of the vaccine, he applied to the Russian embassy and others for a suitable opportunity. The British ambassador in Paris, and a former Viceroy of India, helped enable Haffkine to visit India, where ongoing epidemics were rife. He was appointed state bacteriologist to the Indian government in 1893, and successfully employed his cholera vaccine. He set up a lab (which later moved to Mumbai and even later became the Haffkine Institute), and went on to develop a vaccine against bubonic plague. In 1897, he was knighted by Queen Victoria. In 1901, he was made Director ­in ­Chief of the Plague Laboratory with a staff of 53, and his plague vaccine was used to inoculate half a million people.

There was, however, much scheming against Haffkine. His staff, mostly British officers, were less than enthusiastic at having a Jew running the organisation. Some British officials thought him a Russian spy; and Indian dissidents tried to discredit him by attacking the vaccine as a poison or made up of animal flesh. When 19 inoculated people died of tetanus, Haffkine was blamed. After an enquiry, he was relieved of his position (some even named this The Little Dreyfus Affair). He returned to Europe in 1904. The enquiry decision was eventually, in 1907, overturned, and with the support of many eminent scientists, Haffkine was able to restore his reputation and return to India in 1908.

With his previous post (at the plague lab he had set up) occupied, he was made Director-in-Chief of the Biological Laboratory in Calcutta, but it had no facilities for vaccine production, and his terms of employment were restricted. Frustrated, he retired at the minimum age of 55, and returned to Europe, to live in France, then Switzerland. He travelled widely, with a renewed passion for Jewish issues, focusing on the welfare of Jews and migration as well as the health and education of the Jewish people He never married. He died in 1930. Wikipedia has some further biographical information online, as does the US National Library of Medicine. But better sources are Barbara J. Hawgood’s article on Haffkine in The Journal of Medical Biography (available at The James Lindlay Library website) and Marina Sorokina’s article Between Faith and Reason Waldemar Haffkine (1860-1930) in India which can be found on the Russian Grave website.

Haffkine left behind a store of diaries. According to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York it holds a ‘photostat’ of Haffkine’s diary and a typed transcript. It says: ‘The diary is fragmentary for the period 1895-1908, but is complete for the period May 1915 to October 1930. The original manuscript is at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The diary has a “guide” and annual indices.’ However, I cannot find any evidence of the diaries on the Hebrew University website. The National Library of Israel does have a Haffkine archive, but it doesn’t specifically mention any diaries. On the other hand, the British Library (India Office Records and Private Papers) holds some 16 diaries (plus an index of social engagements) kept by Haffkine, dating from 1919 to the year of his death. Furthermore, the US National Library of Medicine holds ‘published materials from the India Home Department related to the vaccination incident (along with Haffkine's personal diaries on microfilm)’

Unfortunately, I can find very little further information about Haffkine’s diaries online. Sorokina in her article Between Faith and Reason mentions her subject’s diaries three times.
- ‘The diaries and notebooks of the young Haffkine show him to have been a romantic and revolutionary.’
- ‘An officer-­in- charge of the Laboratory, Major William Barney Bannerman, who had spent about 20 years serving the Indian Medical Service, intrigued against Haffkine with the support of some of the staff. In his diaries, Haffkine wrote bitterly of Bannerman: “There is nothing for him to do. . . we do not let him do anything else.” ’
- In his diary Haffkine sadly confessed to himself: “The main feature of my life is solitude”.

Also, Hawgood says in her article that Haffkine’s ‘personal diaries for the years 1903-05 reflect his bitterness that “he was dispossessed of the fruits of his labours by faithless assistants [British medical men]”.’

A bath in fish-glue

‘Days of such exhaustion, sometimes I feel as though I’ve taken my bath in fish-glue. Horrified to find no time left over for thinking: I’ve turned into a machine.’ This is from the WW2 diaries of one of Greece’s pre-eminent 20th century poets, George Seferis, born 120 years ago today. Although a career diplomat with Greece’s foreign ministry, he regularly published collections of poetry, sometimes likened to that of W. B Yeats or T. S. Elliot, which eventually earned him a Nobel Prize for Literature. Several volumes of his diaries were published posthumously, and there have been two selections translated in English.

Seferis was born in Izmir/Smyrna then part of the Ottoman Empire on 13 March 1900 (29 February, Old Style dates). In 1914, the family moved to Athens, where his father, a lawyer, worked at the university. After concluding his education, Seferis studied law at the Sorbonne in Paris. On returning to Athens, he joined the Royal Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the start of a long diplomatic career. In the 1930s, he was posted to the UK and to Albania. In 1941, he married Maria Zannou. During the Second World War, Seferis moved with the Free Greek Government in exile to Crete, Egypt, South Africa, and Italy, and returned to liberated Athens in 1944. Thereafter, he continued to serve in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and held diplomatic posts in Ankara, Turkey and London. He was appointed minister to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq (1953-1956), and was Royal Greek Ambassador to the UK from 1957 to 1961, the last post before his retirement in Athens.

Throughout his life, starting in the early 1930s, Seferis published collections of poems. According to Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard translator of his collected poems into English: ‘The distinguishing attribute of Seferis’s genius - one that he shares with Yeats and Eliot was always his ability to make out of a local politics, out of a personal history or mythology, some sort of general statement or metaphor.’ In 1963, his poetry was internationally recognised with the Nobel Prize for Literature ‘for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture’. (Other finalists that year included Pablo Neruda, Samuel Beckett and W. H. Auden.) When, in 1967, the right-wing Regime of the Colonels took power in Greece after a coup d’état, Seferis took a public stand against the regime’s censorship and repression, but he did not live to see the end of the junta. He died in 1971. Further information is available from Wikipedia, The Poetry Foundation or the Nobel Prize website.

Seferis left behind at least nine volumes of a journal that spans most of his life. It was while serving in the Greek embassy in Ankara, in 1948, that he first began to arrange and edit these journals. But not until 1960 did he start to prepare the texts for publication in various volumes - all with the title ‘Days’ (probably in imitation of the poet C. P. Cavafy). However, from 1967, once Greece had entered a period of military rule, he made the decision, like other Greek writers, not to publish under the regime’s harsh censorship rules. Consequently, selections from his diaries were only printed posthumously. A first English translation by Athan Anagnostopoulos appeared in 1975, published as A Poet’s Journal: Days of 1945-1951 (Harvard University Press). It would be more than 30 years before another volume appeared in English - A Levant Journal, as translated, edited and introduced by Roderick Beaton (Ibis Editions, Jerusalem, 2007). This is divided into two sections: Wartime (1941-1944) and The Passing of Empire (1953-1956).

In his introduction, Beaton provides more information about the diaries: ‘In the case of Seferis, it is debatable whether one should speak of a single “journal” or a series of different “journals.” In his notebooks he himself made a clear distinction between the personal journal(s), the Days, and what he called his “Service Journal,” of which two volumes have appeared in Greek under the title Political Diary. These deal essentially with matters pertaining to Seferis’s lifelong career as a civil servant in the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which he eventually rose to the rank of ambassador. The evidence of Seferis’s personal archive, preserved in the Gennadius Library, Athens, is inconclusive as to how consistently he maintained this distinction in practice. Leaving aside the somewhat special case of the Political Diary, there are many gradations of difference even within the Days. The volume covering the 1920s, for instance, is highly literary and self-conscious in style, almost totally devoid of factual or personal information; the one that covers the early 1930s has been culled from a series of intimate letters. It is only from the mid-1930s onwards that the Days settle down, more or less, to the sharply drawn sketches and more relaxed meditations that many readers of these volumes in Greek have admired. But even here, the density and type of entry vary greatly, as does the extent of later reworking. Finally, the balance of introspection, observation, political and cultural commentary shifts from period to period, sometimes even within a single volume. As a result, even if one were to speak of a single journal, the Days, that would not be to imply a homogeneous, continuous testimony.’

Here are several extracts from Beaton’s translation of Seferis’s journals

26 August 1942
‘It must be years since last I tried to write at such an hour. From the open window, behind me, comes a cataract of sounds that I’ve never, since we came to this hotel, been able to get used to. The Arabs, the trams, the traffic, everything leaks noise. We both sleep badly. I think with bitter nostalgia of our house in Zamalek, which we lost in our mad exodus to Palestine. Panel-heaters, klaxons, engines, newspaper-sellers - it’s like the end of the world out there. I’m reminded again of the image of the ant struggling uphill with an enormous weight. It runs away from him, and he starts over, again and again. The same image as I had a year ago.

What business has a “sensitive" (in the technical sense) person in the midst of all this?

Work has been heavy, since we came, with many difficulties, and non-existent resources. Much of the time is wasted. You lie down at night and look back at your day, drained dry like a glass of water. You don’t know what’s happened, what use any of it has been.

Even in this diary I haven’t been able to write more often.

Last Saturday, the 22nd, telephone call from the British Embassy: “This afternoon at 6. To meet a distinguished person.”

Doors and portals with sentries and servitors, until you reach the inner garden. An English lawn bright green and at the end of it a triangular sail, poking up from the invisible river beyond. Various people from the newspaper world were gathered. Suddenly all conversation ceased. The signal had been given to go in. In the ballroom, a great chamber apparently in the process of being painted, in front of an exceedingly small table, hunched up like Rodin’s Thinker, except for his head that was watching and following everything, sat Churchill. He wore mauve dungarees; held in his hand, like a stubby pencil, was a long cigar. With all this crowd around him, he looked somehow smaller, as though at the far end of an enormous lecture-theater. Then he spoke and came closer. At the end, when it was time for questions, some reporter wearing a fez asked him what he thought of Rommel.

“That is the way of generals,” he replied, “sometimes to advance, sometimes to retreat. Why, no one knows . . .” ’

18 September 1942
‘To Mr. and Mrs. Lachovaris’ place. They always have company with them. A spindly Englishwoman, saying nothing, knitting. She’s going to teach Maro the language. An Englishman with fair hair and the look of an intellectual - he looks younger than he is in reality - is fairly quiet too, then bursts into speech. We discuss the life of the Arabs, old houses in Cairo, the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. He says the Egyptians don’t like it if you talk to them about this book. They think it “indecent”: they’re almost ashamed of it. But when it comes down to it, they re ashamed of everything.

Outside, it sounds like the end of the world, with shouting and soldiers singing. By now the nights are very cool, almost cold. Exhaustion every evening. Not real tiredness, more from nerves. Impression of swimming through mud. Perhaps, of course, all this may pass. Above all, there’s a lack of people. And among the few who remain, most are mad.’

14 July 1943
‘In Alexandria I met Henri al-Kayem. This time last year he’d sent me his poems published by GLM (in the manner of Jouve); but it was only now that we managed to meet. His house is bright, full of light; books with familiar spines. They offer me iced tea and black Havana cigarettes. His wife is as tiny as he is himself: she’s a Malgache. Great refinement in the movements of her hands. Both of them very soft-spoken, they almost whisper. In their house I felt crass in my movements, like a steam-roller. There’s no peace to spare, to make the most of company like theirs. This time I was sorry for it.’

23 July 1943
‘Days of such exhaustion, sometimes I feel as though I’ve taken my bath in fish-glue. Horrified to find no time left over for thinking: I’ve turned into a machine.’

7 October 1953
‘These Arab cities. Half permanent, half nomadic. Houses half buildings, half encampments. The horror of civilization chipping away all round you like a chisel, and all you can feel are the splinters. This pitiable dust in your eye: coca-cola-ism, peps i-cola-ism. Cars handled like drunken camels, and the ancient monuments, ancient beyond hope, mixed up in this inhuman muddle - sometimes it seems a pathetic nightmare.

Yesterday at the house of the doctor, the honorary consul. His wife is French, he’s very well off - with a mania for travelling the world by airplane. It could have been the ante-chamber of a modern Inferno. Photographs on the wall: the Bedouin father, face like a bird of prey or Pelecanus onocrotalus, wife at his side wearing a large cross. They’re Orthodox Chrisrians - bare electric bulbs - lacework made of nylon - a colossal frigidaire in the dining-room: Hostile walls, my God! I’m tired.’

Manuscripts don’t burn

It’s 80 years to the day that Mikhail Bulgakov, one of Russia’s most interesting 20th century writers, died. Although feted at home for a short period in the 1920s, his satirical tone fell out of favour with the authorities, and he spent the last decade of his life unable to publish any writing. His most famous book - The Master and Margarita - was kept secret for years after his death and not published until the 1960s. Intriguingly, he had, in the book, used the phrase ‘Manuscripts don’t burn’, and this has since become a famous quote. The phrase, however, applies even more pertinently to a diary Bulgakov kept in the 1920s which, after having been confiscated by the authorities and returned, he himself destroyed! Yet, a copy was found 60 years later, buried in the KGB’s files.

Bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891 to Russian parents, his father being a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy. He married Tatiana Lappa in 1913, and with the outbreak of the First World War volunteered as a doctor for the Red Cross. He was sent to the front line, where he was severely injured. In 1916, he graduated from the medical school at Kiev University and then served in the White Army, before also briefly serving in the Ukrainian People’s Army. After the Civil War, much of his family emigrated to Paris, but Bulgakov went to the Caucasus, and was then refused permission to leave Russia. In 1919, he gave up medicine for literature, and in 1921 moved, with Tatiana, to Moscow to pursue the life of a writer.

In Moscow, he worked as a journalist and for the literary department of the People’s Commissariat of Education. Parts of a largely autobiographical novel (much later published in English as The White Guard) were serialised in a journal. In 1924, he married again, to Lyubov Belozerskaya. In 1926, according to Wikipedia, he published a book called Morphine, which gave an account of his addiction to the drug (taken initially to ease the pain of war wounds). From the mid 1920s, though, Bulgakov mostly wrote and staged plays, especially with the Moscow Arts Theatre. He was at the height of his popularity in 1928 when he had three plays showing. But, increasingly, he found himself at odds with the Soviet authorities for the nature of his satire; and, before the end of the decade, government censorship was preventing publication of any of his work or the staging of any of his plays.

In 1929, Bulgakov wrote to Maxim Gorky (see The New York Times, for example): ‘All my plays have been banned; not a line of mine is being printed anywhere; I have no work ready, and not a kopeck of royalties is coming in from any source; not a single institution, not a single individual will reply to my applications.’ In 1931, Bulgakov married for the third time, to Yelena Shilovskaya, who would prove a dedicated and inspirational partner. And then, at a complete loss, he wrote to Stalin asking for permission to emigrate. He refused, but arranged for him find work in the theatre, as an adapter of classics and a producer. Stalin’s favour protected Bulgakov from arrest, but the political climate remained too hostile for his writing to be published.

During the last decade or so of his life, Bulgakov worked on what would become his most important literary work - The Master and Margarita, a multi-leveled satire and fantasy - but it was suppressed by the authorities. Bulgakov died on 10 March 1940, and it was not until the 1960s that The Master and Margarita was finally published, subsequently bringing its author considerable but belated worldwide attention. See also Encyclopaedia Britannica, IMDB, Library of Congress, or Russiapedia for further information.

For a few years in the 1920s, Bulgakov kept a diary, says Dr Julie Curtis, in her biography Manuscripts Don’t Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov - A Life in Letters and Diaries (published by Bloomsbury in 1991, and a few pages of which can be read online at Amazon.com.)

In her preface, Curtis writes: ‘An extraordinary story attaches to [the diary], which everyone, including Bulgakov, had supposed to have been destroyed over 60 years ago. In 1926, Bulgakov’s apartment was searched by the OGPU (a forerunner of the KGB) and his diaries were confiscated, along with the text of The Heart of a Dog. Since Bulgakov was on this occasion only marginally implicated in a case being mounted by the secret police against one of his acquaintances, he soon began to make official complaints demanding that the manuscripts be returned. He finally got them back some three years later, in 1929, whereupon he immediately burned the diaries and resolved never to keep a diary again. Since that time, it had been assumed that the diaries were lost, until the advent of Glasnost prompted the KGB to admit that, in fact, the OGPU had made a copy of at least part of of the diary back in the 1920s, and this was still sitting in the KGB’s archives.’

‘The fate of Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita,’ Curtis continues, ‘which was published after being kept secret for a decade while he was alive, and for a further 26 years after his death, together with this astonishing re-emergence of his diary 60 years on, has lent a peculiarly prophetic force to a phrase from The Master and Margarita which defiantly proclaims the integrity of art: ‘Manuscripts don’t burn.’ This is the phrase from the novel most frequently quoted in the Soviet Union today.’

Although there are relatively few entries from Bulgakov’s diary in Curtis’s book, Curtis does give more general information about them: ‘In these diaries Bulgakov is very frank, a foolishness which taught him a painful lesson when the diaries were confiscated, and which he never indulged in again; amongst other things, they contain traces of a condescension towards Jews which has caused some dismay amongst his present-day admirers. He is also candid when it comes to speaking about himself and his relationship with Lyubov, whom he describes as his ‘wife’ for some months before the official registration of their marriage. There is an unattractive irritation with himself that he should be so physically infatuated with her, and there is a hint of his doubts about the strength of her commitment to him, which seems to have led, on occasions, to him making scenes. . . The diaries reveal, too, Bulgakov’s obsessive preoccupation with his health, which may be attributable to the fact that as a doctor he knew that there was always a danger he might succumb to the same disease as his father . . . In addition, we can trace in the pages of the diaries the indications of a nervous susceptibility which would lead in due course, when his life really became difficult, to bouts of terror at being left alone and a fear of walking alone on the street. Overall, the image of Bulgakov that emerges from his diaries is not quite that of the cultivated man of letters he was to project in later years.’

Subsequent to Curtis’s biography, Roger Cockerell edited and translated a selection of  Bulgakov’s diaries and letters covering a 20 year period (1921-1940). This was published by Alma Classics in 2013 as Diaries and Selected Letters. Cockerell based his selection on a Russian edition of the diaries and letters published in 2004, though he also consulted a more complete (Russian) edition of the diaries and letters dating back to 1997.

Here are several of Bulgakov’s diary entries, as found in Cockerell’s edition.

29 October 1923
‘The heating was on for the first time today. Spent the entire evening sealing the windows. This first day of heating was especially noteworthy for the fact that the famous Annushka left the kitchen window wide open all night. I really don’t know what to do with the wretches who live in this apartment.

I have a severe nervous disorder connected with my illness, and such things drive me mad.

The new furniture from yesterday is now in my room. In order to pay on time we had to borrow five chervonets from Mozalevsky.

Mitya Stonov and Gaidovsky came round this evening, invited me to join the journal Town and Country. Then Andrei. He was reading my ‘Diaboliad’ and said that I had created a new genre and an unusually fast-moving plot.

It had only been the Moscow Agricultural Pavilion on fire at the Exhibition, and it had been quickly put out. Definitely arson, in my opinion.’

6 November 1923
‘Kolya Gladyrevsky has just gone; he’s creating my illness. After he’d left I read Mikhail Chekhov’s poorly written and second-rate book on his great brother. I’m also reading Gorky’s brilliant My Universities.

I’m now full of thoughts, and have just begun to realize clearly that I need to start being serious about things. And, what’s more, that writing is my entire life. I’ll never return to any sort of medicine. I don’t like Gorky as a person, but he’s such a huge, powerful writer, and he makes such terrifying and important points about writing.

Today, at about five, I was at Lezhnev’s, and he said two things of significance to me: firstly, that my short story ‘Psalm’ (published in On the Eve) was magnificent, as “a miniature” (“I would have published it”), and, secondly, that On the Eve was universally despised and loathed. That doesn’t frighten me. What does frighten me is the fact that I’m thirty-two, and the years I have wasted on medicine, my illness and my weakness. I’ve already had two operations on the idiotic tumour behind my ear. <...> They’ve written from Kiev to say 1 should begin radiotherapy. Now I’m afraid that the tumour will spread. And I’m afraid that this blind, stupid, detestable disease will interrupt my work. If I’m able to carry on, I’ll write something better than ‘Psalm’.

I’m going to start studying from now on. My voice may sometimes trouble me, but it cannot be anything other than prophetic. Quite impossible. And I cannot be anything other than a writer.

Let’s wait and see, learn and be silent.’

8 January 1924
‘There’s a bulletin in today’s newspapers about the state of Trotsky’s health. It begins as follows: “On the 5th November last year L. D. Trotsky was ill with influenza...” and ends as follows: “...to take time off, with a full release from all his responsibilities, for a period of not less than two months.” Any further comment on this historic bulletin would be superfluous.

And so, on 8th January 1924, Trotsky was kicked out. May God help Russia: He alone knows what the future holds for her! May God help her.

Spent the evening at Boris’s. Have just got back with Taska. Great fun. I drank wine, and my heart was fine.

The chervonets is worth 3.6 billlion.’

16 April 1924
‘Just returned from the opening of the railwaymen’s congress at the Assembly of Nobility (now Union House). The entire editorial hoard of the Hooter, with very few exceptions, was there. My job with others, was to correct the shorthand report.

In the circular hall, divided by a thick curtain from the Hall of Columns, there was the clatter of typewriters and the bright electric lights of the chandeliers glowing in their frosted white shades. Kalinin, in a dark-blue shirt, round-shouldered, mispronouncing his Rs and his Ls, appeared and said something or other. In the dazzling floodlights they were filming everywhere.

After the first session, there was a concert. Mordkin and the ballerina Kriger danced together. Mordkin is handsome, flirtatious. Performers from the Bolshoi sang, including, amongst others, Viktorov, a Jew, a dramatic tenor with a repellently piercing but huge voice. A certain Golovin, a baritone from the Bolshoi, also sang. It turns out that he is a former deacon from Stavropol. Joined the Stavropol Opera and within three months was singing the part of the Demon - and then, a year or so later, found himself the Bolshoi. Incomparable voice.’

25 July 1924
‘What a day! Spent the morning at home writing a satirical piece for Red Pepper. Then the daily process began of dashing from one editor to another in search of money, without seeing any chink of light ahead. Saw the unspeakable Furman from the newspaper Dawn of the East. Two of my pieces were returned. I had great difficulty getting Furman to hand the manuscript back, since I owed them the twenty roubles they’d already paid me. I had to write him a note that I would return the money no later than the 30th. Then I handed in one of these articles to Red Pepper, together with the one I had written earlier that morning. I’m sure they’ll be rejected. And then, in the evening, Sven rejected my article for Splinter. Was at his apartment, and somehow managed to get a promissory note for 20 roubles, for tomorrow. Nightmarish existence.

To cap it all, I rang Lezhnev in the afternoon to learn that there was no point in negotiating with Kagansky concerning the publication of The White Guard as a separate edition, as he hadn’t got any money at the moment. This was a new surprise. I now regret that I didn’t take the thirty chervonets at the time. I’m sure The White Guard won’t now be published.

In short, the Devil only knows what’s going on.

It’s late, about 12; have been with Lyubov Yevgenyevna.’

5 January 1925
‘The weather in Moscow is something quite extraordinary: in the thaw everything has melted, and the mood amongst Muscovites precisely mirrors the weather. The weather suggests February, and there’s February in people’s hearts.

“How’s this all going to end?” a friend asked me today.

Such questions are asked in a dull, mechanical way, hopelessly, indifferently, any way you like. Just at that moment there was a group of drunken communists in my friend’s apartment, in a room right across the corridor. In the corridor itself there was a foully pungent smell - one of the Party members, my friend told me, was asleep there like a pig, completely drunk. Someone had invited him. and my friend hadn’t been able to refuse. Again and again he went into their room with a polite and ingratiating smile on his face. They kept shouting to him to join them. He kept coming back to me, cursing them in a whisper. Yes, right: somehow this must all stop. I believe it will!
Went specially today to the publishers of the Atheist. It’s situated in Stoleshnikov Alley or, rather, in Kozmodemyanovsky, not far from the Moscow City Council building. M.S. was with me and he delighted me from the first.

“What, aren’t they smashing in your windows?” he asked the first girl we came across, sitting at a desk.

“What do you mean?” (confused). “No, they aren’t” (threateningly).

“What a pity.”

I wanted to kiss him on his Jewish nose. It turned out that there were no copies from 1913 left. All sold, they reported proudly. We managed to get hold of the first eleven back numbers from 1924. Number 12 had not yet appeared. When she found out that I was a private individual, the young lady, if that’s the right way to descibe her, gave them to me reluctantly.

“I should really be giving this to a library.”

Apparently they have a print run of 70,000, and it’s a total sellout. There are some unspeakable swine in the office who keep on leaving the room and coming back in again; and a small stage, curtains, scenery...  On a table on the stage there’s some sacred book, a bible perhaps, with a couple of heads bent over it.

“Just like a synagogue,” said M. as we were leaving the building.

I was very interested to know just how much this had all been said for my special benefit. It would be wrong of course to exaggerate, but I have the impression that some of the people who have been reading The White Guard in Russia use a different tone of voice when speaking to me - with a kind of oblique, apprehensive deference.

I was very struck by M.’s reaction to the extract from The White Guard. It could be described as rapturous, but even before this I’d had this feeling growing inside me, a process that had been going on for some three days. I will be terribly sorry if I’m mistaken and if The White Guard is not an exceptional piece.

When I skimmed through the copies of the Atheist at home this evening I was shocked. The salt was not in the blasphemy, although that was huge, of course, if you’re looking at it just from the outside. The salt was in the idea, an idea that can be historically proved. Even Jesus Christ was being depicted as a crook and a scoundrel. It’s not difficult to understand who’s responsible for this. The offence is immeasurable.’

***

And here are a few entries from Yelena’s diary (found in Curtis’s biography) concerning the last few days of Bulgakov’s life.

29 September 1939
‘I will go straight to Misha’s grave illness. . . World events are seething all around us, but they reach us only indistinctly, so struck down are we by our own misfortune.’

1 January 1940
‘1939, the most difficult year in my life, has gone, and may God grant that 1940 should not be the same!’

15 January 1940
‘Misha is correcting the novel [The Master and Margarita] as much as his strength will allow, and I am copying it out . . .’

16 January 1940
‘42 degrees below zero! . . . I believe that he will get better.’

10 March 1940
‘16.39 Misha died’

This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 10 March 2010.