Library of Congress's Blog, page 188

Author as Superstar

(This post comes to us from Taru Spiegel, reference specialist in the European Division, which is cosponsoring the event along with the Poetry and Literature Center.)

Karl Ove Knausgård

What does a serious, award-winning author do when he is chosen “sexiest man of the year” by a leading women’s magazine? (He received the accolades from ELLE Norway in 2010.) According to various newspaper accounts, the Norwegian best-seller Karl Ove Knausgård said a few bad words.

Knausgård won instant critical praise for his earliest books in 1998 and 2004.  He acquired major international fame with his six-volume memoirs “My Struggle,” published in Norway between 2009 and 2011. The autobiography has generated much public discussion concerning the ethics of Knausgård’s personal observations about friends and family members, including his alcoholic father and relations with his former wife. However, he is also mercilessly candid when it comes to himself.

Knausgård will appear at the Library of Congress on Wednesday, May 2, at 6:30 p.m. to discuss and sign book one of “My Struggle,” now available in English. The event will be held in Madison Hall, located on the first floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, DC. Reservations are required; contact (202) 707-5395 or poetry@loc.gov.

Oh, and by the way, after the first shock wore off, Knausgård treated his superstardom with a sense of humor – which he has in considerable amounts.

The Armenian Literary Tradition

Last Thursday, the Library of Congress opened its newest exhibition, “To Know Wisdom and Instruction: The Armenian Literary Tradition at the Library of Congress,” and I had a chance to take a tour with its curator, Levon Avdoyan, the Library’s Armenian and Georgian area specialist in the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division.

The exhibition marks the 500th anniversary of Armenian printing and UNESCO’s designation of Yerevan – the capital of the Republic of Armenia – as its Book Capital of the World, 2012.

The tri-colors of the Armenian flag provide the perfect motif to bring the display together in what Avdoyan describes as a series of “little stories about Armenian tradition.”

In 1512, Hakob Meghapart (Jacob the Sinner) opened an Armenian press in Venice, Italy, and published an Armenian religious book, “Urbatagirk” (the Book of Fridays). The era of Armenian printing had begun. While the Library does not own one of the few copies of the book, the more than 70 objects showcased aptly highlight the movement it sparked.

David of Sasun: The Armenian Folk Epic, second printing, illustrations by Hakob Kojoyan, Yerevan: Haypethrat, 1961. African and Middle Eastern Division.

While many of the items on display are religious in nature, the exhibition also presents secular elements as well. Manuscripts range from 14th- and 15th-century gospel books hand-copied by monks to 19th-century works on palmistry (Constantinople, 1894), fire-fighting (Venice, 1832), cotton production (Paris, 1859) and the first modern Armenian novel, “Armenia’s Wounds,” by K. Abovyan (1848). The first complete Armenian language printed Bible from Amsterdam in 1666 is on display, along with a richly illuminated missal copied in 1722 for the use of the celebrant of the Armenian liturgy and a rare 19th-century musical manuscript by Pietro Bianchini, who was the first to transcribe the Armenian liturgy using European musical notation. A 20th-century Soviet edition of the Armenian national epic, “David of Sasun” (1962) is also on display.

And an interesting note: one of the last items I viewed in the exhibition involved one of my favorite poets, Lord Byron, who apparently traveled to Armenia to learn the language. He wrote, “I found that my mind wanted something craggy to break upon; and this – as  the most difficult thing I could discover here for an amusement – I have chosen to torture me into attention. It is a rich language, however, and would amply repay anyone the trouble of learning it.” On display, the noted romantic poet is depicted in a painting “The Mkhitarists Receive Byron on the Island of San Lazzaro,” by Armenian painter Hovhannes Ayvazovski, reprinted in a 2009 book by Shahen Khach’atryan.

“To Know Wisdom and Instruction” is on view through Sept. 26 in the South Gallery of the Thomas Jefferson Building from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The exhibition is also available online.

Following the exhibition closing, all the exhibition items will be digitized and added to the World Digital Library, where information about each item will be made available in seven languages.

Pics of the Week: All the World’s a Stage

"Cymbeline" / Abby Brack

On Wednesday, the Library of Congress rung  in William Shakespeare’s birthday with a celebration worthy of a standing ovation at the Globe Theater. Actors from the Shakespeare Theater Company’s Academy for Classical Acting at The George Washington University presented scenes from “Macbeth,” “Cymbeline,” “The Tempest,” Richard III” and “Julius Caesar.” (My own 10th grade recitation of Marc Anthony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech – which I can still do to some degree – probably would have been more worthy of a thrown rotten tomato.)

This annual celebration is one of the highlights of the Library’s literary year and always attracts a large crowd.

"The Tempest" / Abby Brack

The Bard’s birthday is actually observed on April 23, but it’s not really known if that date is accurate. What is known is that William was baptized on April 26, 1564, at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. Religious custom at the time required a child to be baptized on the nearest Sunday or other holy day following the birth, unless there was a legitimate reason not to. April 23 was actually a Sunday, with the feast day of St. Mark the Evangelist following on the 25th. However, scholars have noted that St. Mark’s Day was considered unlucky, and superstition may have stopped the Shakespeares from baptizing their son at that time. Also, the Bard died on April 23, 1616, making for a rather attractive symmetry for biographers.

Down to Earth

"Nothing can be Wealthier than Saving the Humanity," by Rohullah Hassani, 16, Quetta, Pakistan

Every year, Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 and citizens are called upon to do their part in protecting the environment, to promote and participate in “green living” and to celebrate our natural resources.

Conducted in affiliation with the Library of Congress Center for the Book and the Center for Environmental Literacy at Saint Mary’s College of California, the annual River of Words contest – which celebrates both National Poetry Month and Earth Day – is the largest youth poetry and art competition in the world, recognizing educational leadership in environmental literacy. Ten remarkable young poets and artists – ranging in age from 7 to 16 – and more than a dozen national finalists will be honored at the 17th annual awards on Monday, April 23, at 7 p.m. in the Library’s Montpelier Room.

Co-founded by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass and Pamela Michael, who now directs the Center for Environmental Literacy at Saint Mary’s, the goal of the contest is to “help children fall in love with the earth.”

Category I (Kindergarten – second grade) Grand Prize winner Blakely Berryhill, 7, from Vestavia Hills, Ala., writes in her poem, “The Guards”:

The sun guards the daytime treasure,

while the moon stands watch

over heaven’s darkness.

The stars help the moon

until the puffy white

clouds come back.

"Relaxing on Water," by Kristina Yu, 6, Suwanee, Ga.

11-year-old Julia Dixon of Washington, D.C., winner of the Anacostia Watershed Prize, laments urban sprawl in her poem, “A Birdseye View”:

As we feast upon dying species

And blame sharks for it all

The taxes we pay

Going into nuclear plants

Instead of schools

The artwork and poems of all the winners are available for viewing and reading at the River of Words website. May they inspire you to “Mobilize the Earth.”

 

This is Maverick Requesting a Fly By

Today marked a rather monumental occasion as the space shuttle Discovery made its final flight – not to the stars but to its permanent home at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum annex near Dulles, Va.

Library of Congress staff members were able to capture its final spin, as it took a few turns around the Capitol complex, including coming very close to the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building dome. You can see the video here, with Discovery perched atop a Boeing 747 jet.

Discovery is the most traveled spaceship, leading the fleet with 39 missions. It is also the first of the three retired shuttles to go on display at a museum. Sister ships Endeavour and Atlantis go on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, respectively, later this year.

Not So Secret Garden

One of the things I love most about going home to southern Mississippi is going home to my mom’s garden. The sights and smells are always like a big, warm hug. The jasmine she’s got growing on a trellis is a focal piece. The calla lilies lining one side of the yard are some of her prized flowers. Louie the bougainvillea (my mom likes to name her plants, this one after its namesake Navy admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville) brings a traditional southern flair to her yard. And let’s not forget all her “accents” – her statuary of St. Michael and St. Francis, the bricked patio that she and my dad hand-laid themselves and, last but not least, her collection of rocks she “rescued” from her and dad’s many travels. All of these things come together to create a warm refuge that clearly shows the love put into it.

Malcolm Matheson house, Fox Hunt Road, Alexandria, Va. Lantern slide by Frances B. Johnston, 1927 / Prints and Photographs Division

The Library of Congress today is releasing online the digital images of a rare collection of more than 1,000 hand-colored, glass-plate lantern slides of American gardens taken a century ago by one of the first professional female photographers to achieve international prominence, Frances Benjamin Johnston. Johnston last projected them during lectures in the 1910s to 1930s to rally Americans to grow gardens in an effort to beautify a landscape left neglected and deteriorated from industrial pollution during the Gilded Age. And they have not been seen since, until now.

The absence of garden names, locations and dates had kept these lantern slides from general public access, until historian Sam Watters took it upon himself to catalog the garden collection. After five years of research in libraries and archives, he has transformed vague earlier notations into detailed data.

Through these efforts a book was born. “Gardens for a Beautiful America: 1895-1935: Photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston,” published by Acanthus Press in collaboration with the Library of Congress, features 250 full-color images and essays that describe the importance of Johnston’s work with gardens and explain the techniques she used to compose lantern slides that resemble delicate miniature paintings.

The Library is the repository of Johnston’s personal papers and some 20,000 of her photographs. She has long been acknowledged as an important photographer for her many contributions to early photojournalism and documentation of historic architecture.  These photographs help bring her role in the Garden Beautiful movement as an advocate and artist working with garden clubs, horticultural societies and museums front and center.

Make sure to check out this blog post from the Prints and Photographs Division, which also talks about Johnston and points to related resources for further research.

An Unsinkable Legacy: Remembering the Titanic

The Titanic / Prints and Photographs Division

In the wee hours of the morning on April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic – the largest passenger steamship in the world at the time – sank into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean after hitting an iceberg only a few hours earlier. More than 1,500 people died. This year marks the centennial of one of the deadliest maritime disasters in history.

Let me tell you another story about another ship, The Titan, billed as "unsinkable." Setting off across the Atlantic, it also hits an iceberg and goes down. Most of the passengers perish.

The Titan is the story you haven't really heard about or read about in the news and history books – probably because it's a work of fiction. Written by Morgan Robertson in 1898, "Futility" tells a tale eerily similar to that of the Titanic – 14 years before the actual tragedy. Was Robertson unknowingly predicting the future? As it turns out, his fictional ship is almost identical to the real one, including its dimensions and the speed at which it was traveling when it hit the iceberg.

Very few copies of the 1898 edition still exist. (Robertson re-released his book in 1912, following the Titanic sinking, with a new title, "The Wreck of the Titan.") The Library of Congress has a copy in its Rare Book and Special Collections Division; there are other copies in the British Library and a few other private libraries.

You can read the book online here.

View from the S.S. Carpathia of the iceberg that sank the Titanic / Prints and Photographs Division

Robertson didn't sink the market, as it were, when it came to such predictions. Another eerie coincidence is in W. T. Stead's short story, "From the Old World to the New," published in 1892. In the story, a White Star Line vessel, The Majestic, rescues the passengers of another ship after a collision with an iceberg. Strangely enough, Stead himself would go down with the Titanic 20 years later.

The San Francisco Call. April 19, 1912

As far as the actual facts go, the Library has many primary sources on the Titanic. With headlines like "Queen of the Sea's Awful Fate on Her First Trip Out," "Death in Husband's Arms Better Than Life Alone for These Heroines of the Titanic," or "Wm. T. Stead, 'Titanic' Victim, is Sending Messages From Spirit Land" the Library's Chronicling America newspaper collection brings you the news of the tragedy. More sample article and search suggestions can be found here.

Speaking of newspapers, as publications mark the Titanic centennial, you may be seeing lots of old photographs of the ship and such. Some of those are coming from the Library's own photograph collections. From images of its construction and interior design to views of the ship on its first and final voyage to survivor portraits, knowing the ultimate outcome of the Titanic makes looking at these pictures all the more haunting.

As the Titanic went down, it's said that the ship's musicians played to the bitter end in an effort to maintain calm during the evacuation. According to survivor accounts, the hymn "Nearer My God To Thee" was the song they played. You can hear a version of it in the Library's National Jukebox.

This really is just a sampling of the related resources on the Titanic. Several of the other Library blogs are also marking the anniversary. Make sure to check them out for more fascinating stories.

 

 

New and Improved

The Library of Congress is constantly in the process of improving its products and services to better assist its patrons, friends and researchers. Recently we launched a series of updates to the website, enabling users to find and use our online materials more easily.

The Library's main web search function has been improved. A new feature allows users to narrow their search results by language and location. In addition, the homepage and search-results pages have updated search boxes that allow users to refine their search by format, such as books, photos and maps.

Detail from a map of New York, 1776 / Geography and Maps Division

Speaking of maps, the Library has implemented a new "object" page – initially limited to some 9,500 maps from the Geography and Maps Division – that present material in a cleaner, simpler layout. An improved zoom feature lets you better examine the finer details of the map images, including a "full screen" view. And, you can take your map "on the go," as it were, thanks to better mobile-device functionality and the now-Library-standard features such as social-media sharing.

Most of these maps are in the new template.

Additional collections will be changed to the new template over the next several months.

Other improvements include better use of metadata and expanded links to related material.

You can access the new features at www.loc.gov/search or use the search box found of most web pages in the upper right-hand corner.

 

Last Chance to See "Creating the U.S."

On May 5, the Library will close its popular exhibition "Creating the United States." The exhibition has been on view for four years and seen approximately 2 million visitors passing through its space. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough once called it the one exhibition every American should see on a visit to Washington, D.C.

Notable items on display include Thomas Paine's "Common Sense," James Madison's notes from the 1787 Constitutional Convention (June 18, 1787), Madison's Copy of the Federalist's Papers and Thomas Jefferson's Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1805).

Although it was moved for preservation reasons, Thomas Jefferson's handwritten draft of the Declaration of Independence, with edits by his fellow founding fathers John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, held a place of prominence during the exhibition's inaugural months. There are interactive displays showing where some of its central tenets came from.

Of course, you can see all these materials and more online, including interactives that allow you to delve deeper into the creation of these cornerstone texts. But, trust me, there's nothing quite like seeing them in person and sharing the same space, however briefly. So, if you're in town, make sure to visit or revisit this landmark exhibition before it's gone.

Last Chance to See “Creating the U.S.”

On May 5, the Library will close its popular exhibition “Creating the United States.” The exhibition has been on view for four years and seen approximately 2 million visitors passing through its space. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough once called it the one exhibition every American should see on a visit to Washington, D.C.

Notable items on display include Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” James Madison’s notes from the 1787 Constitutional Convention (June 18, 1787), Madison’s Copy of the Federalist’s Papers and Thomas Jefferson’s Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1805).

Although it was moved for preservation reasons, Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten draft of the Declaration of Independence, with edits by his fellow founding fathers John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, held a place of prominence during the exhibition’s inaugural months. There are interactive displays showing where some of its central tenets came from.

Of course, you can see all these materials and more online, including interactives that allow you to delve deeper into the creation of these cornerstone texts. But, trust me, there’s nothing quite like seeing them in person and sharing the same space, however briefly. So, if you’re in town, make sure to visit or revisit this landmark exhibition before it’s gone.