If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
The Gadfly by E. L. Voynich
I came across _The Gadfly_ by E. L. Voynich yesterday at a
book sale, and immediately suspected that it was the source for the Russian (Soviet era) movie of the same name, the musical score for which was composed by Dmitri Shostakovitch. Some of you may have seen the PBS miniseries _Reilly, Ace of Spies_ that aired back in 1983. It was based on the biography of the same name by Robin Bruce Lockhart and starred Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born (?) British secret agent who was Ian Fleming's model for James Bond. The reason I mention it here is that the producers used the Romance segment from the Gadfly Suite of Shostakovich as the theme music for the series. Why all this about Reilly? Well, first a little about E. L. Voynich, who turns out to be a most interesting human being. She was born Ethel Lillian Boole, in Cork, Ireland in 1864. Her father was George Boole, the inventor of Boolean Algebra. Her mother was Mary Everest, niece of George Everest, the Surveyor-General of India after whom the mountain was named. In 1887, she journeyed to Russia, remained there for two years and became acquainted with a number of revolutionaries, as well as briefly meeting the Csar. In 1893 she married Wilfrid Michael Voynich, a Polish revolutionary who had escaped to London in 1890 with the aid of some of Ethel's acquaintances from Russia and set up the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom along with her and another emigre named Sergei Kravchinskii, who was on the lam from Russia for the murder of the chief of the Csarist secret police, and who had taught Ethel the Russian language before her travels there. W. M. Voynich became an antiquarian bookseller in London in 1894 along with his wife. (In 1914 they would open a bookshop in New York City.) In 1895, Ethel Voynich met Sigmund Rosenbaum aka Sidney Reilly in London. According to historian Robin Bruce Lockhard, the two of them traveled to Italy together as lovers. A more recent historian, Andrew Cook, only says that Reilly was trying to get information on her radical connections. In any case, their relationship had a literary offspring, her novel, _The Gadfly_, which she published in 1897. [The copy I bought is the true first edition, Henry Holt, NY, 1897, as the British publisher Heinemann waited for American reactions before publishing at home.] The novel is about the adventures of an international revolutionary in Italy (would you believe). Reilly later claimed she was writing about him, though she never verified it. Others have claimed that Reilly fictionalized his own background based on the novel. But now at least the significance of the Romance from Shostakovich's score for The Gadfly is apparent. Robin Bruce Lockhart, it should be noted, was the nephew of R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Acting British Consul General when the Russian Revolution broke out. He and Reilly were implicated in a plot to assassinate Lenin and were imprisoned for a short while before being released. R. H. Bruce Lockhart wrote of these adventures in his memoir, _British Agent_ . Ethel Voynich continued to write novels, including _An Interrupted Friendship_ (1910), which was published in Russian as _The Gadfly in Exile_ . While her books were not best sellers in the US or England, by the time she died in 1960 (in New York) at the age of 96, The Gadfly had sold more than 2,500,000 copies in the Soviet Union. She published her last book, _Put Off Thy Shoes_ , in 1945. When she was not otherwise occupied, she composed music. While in London, because of her revolutionary activities, she came to know Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. And if the name Voynich seems familiar to you for some other reason, you are probably correct. W. M. Voynich, her husband, in 1912 acquired a manuscript of about 240 pages in Italy, that was incomprehensible. It is thought to date from 1450 to 1500 c.e., and is written in an unknown script and language. Cryptologists have spent decades trying to decode it without the least success. Not even one word is known. Some people believe that it is a fake and may have been manufactured by Voynich. Whether in tribute or otherwise to W. M. Voynich who brought the manuscript to the attention of the world, it is now known as the Voynich Manuscript. It resides now at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. And for a bit of romance, when Wilfrid was introduced to Ethel in London, he said to her that he believed he had seen her before, when he was in prison in Moscow looking out at a protest outside on Easter Sunday, 1887. She replied that she was there. In 1955 she discovered that she was hugely famous in the Soviet Union, regarded as one of the best writers of English fiction. The Russian authorities, on learning that she was alive and living in New York, sent her a set of her books in 18 different languages. They even arranged to pay her royalties for their publication of her works. -- Francis A. Miniter ως ουκ αν αιων' εκμαθοις βροτων, πριν αν θανη τις, ουτε ει χρηστος ουτ’ ει τω κακος. |
Ads |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
The Gadfly by E. L. Voynich
are you a man or a woman?
"Francis A. Miniter" wrote in message ... I came across _The Gadfly_ by E. L. Voynich yesterday at a book sale, and immediately suspected that it was the source for the Russian (Soviet era) movie of the same name, the musical score for which was composed by Dmitri Shostakovitch. Some of you may have seen the PBS miniseries _Reilly, Ace of Spies_ that aired back in 1983. It was based on the biography of the same name by Robin Bruce Lockhart and starred Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born (?) British secret agent who was Ian Fleming's model for James Bond. The reason I mention it here is that the producers used the Romance segment from the Gadfly Suite of Shostakovich as the theme music for the series. Why all this about Reilly? Well, first a little about E. L. Voynich, who turns out to be a most interesting human being. She was born Ethel Lillian Boole, in Cork, Ireland in 1864. Her father was George Boole, the inventor of Boolean Algebra. Her mother was Mary Everest, niece of George Everest, the Surveyor-General of India after whom the mountain was named. In 1887, she journeyed to Russia, remained there for two years and became acquainted with a number of revolutionaries, as well as briefly meeting the Csar. In 1893 she married Wilfrid Michael Voynich, a Polish revolutionary who had escaped to London in 1890 with the aid of some of Ethel's acquaintances from Russia and set up the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom along with her and another emigre named Sergei Kravchinskii, who was on the lam from Russia for the murder of the chief of the Csarist secret police, and who had taught Ethel the Russian language before her travels there. W. M. Voynich became an antiquarian bookseller in London in 1894 along with his wife. (In 1914 they would open a bookshop in New York City.) In 1895, Ethel Voynich met Sigmund Rosenbaum aka Sidney Reilly in London. According to historian Robin Bruce Lockhard, the two of them traveled to Italy together as lovers. A more recent historian, Andrew Cook, only says that Reilly was trying to get information on her radical connections. In any case, their relationship had a literary offspring, her novel, _The Gadfly_, which she published in 1897. [The copy I bought is the true first edition, Henry Holt, NY, 1897, as the British publisher Heinemann waited for American reactions before publishing at home.] The novel is about the adventures of an international revolutionary in Italy (would you believe). Reilly later claimed she was writing about him, though she never verified it. Others have claimed that Reilly fictionalized his own background based on the novel. But now at least the significance of the Romance from Shostakovich's score for The Gadfly is apparent. Robin Bruce Lockhart, it should be noted, was the nephew of R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Acting British Consul General when the Russian Revolution broke out. He and Reilly were implicated in a plot to assassinate Lenin and were imprisoned for a short while before being released. R. H. Bruce Lockhart wrote of these adventures in his memoir, _British Agent_ . Ethel Voynich continued to write novels, including _An Interrupted Friendship_ (1910), which was published in Russian as _The Gadfly in Exile_ . While her books were not best sellers in the US or England, by the time she died in 1960 (in New York) at the age of 96, The Gadfly had sold more than 2,500,000 copies in the Soviet Union. She published her last book, _Put Off Thy Shoes_ , in 1945. When she was not otherwise occupied, she composed music. While in London, because of her revolutionary activities, she came to know Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. And if the name Voynich seems familiar to you for some other reason, you are probably correct. W. M. Voynich, her husband, in 1912 acquired a manuscript of about 240 pages in Italy, that was incomprehensible. It is thought to date from 1450 to 1500 c.e., and is written in an unknown script and language. Cryptologists have spent decades trying to decode it without the least success. Not even one word is known. Some people believe that it is a fake and may have been manufactured by Voynich. Whether in tribute or otherwise to W. M. Voynich who brought the manuscript to the attention of the world, it is now known as the Voynich Manuscript. It resides now at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. And for a bit of romance, when Wilfrid was introduced to Ethel in London, he said to her that he believed he had seen her before, when he was in prison in Moscow looking out at a protest outside on Easter Sunday, 1887. She replied that she was there. In 1955 she discovered that she was hugely famous in the Soviet Union, regarded as one of the best writers of English fiction. The Russian authorities, on learning that she was alive and living in New York, sent her a set of her books in 18 different languages. They even arranged to pay her royalties for their publication of her works. -- Francis A. Miniter ως ουκ αν αιων' εκμαθοις βροτων, πριν αν θανη τις, ουτε ει χρηστος ουτ’ ει τω κακος. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|