Another Cover for the Maltese Novel: Amadeo Preziosi (1816-82)

Here is the image which is on the cover of the paperback I actually own.

As fate would have it, this is another Maltese connection, for the artist, Amadeo Preziosi, came from an aristocratic Maltese family. In 1842 he decided to follow other European artists to the near East, and ended up staying, residing in Istanbul. With five languages, Italian, French, Greek, English, Turkish (presumably Maltese as well?), he married 'an Istanbul Greek woman' and had four children. He died of accidentally self-inflicted wounds in a hunting accident, and is buried in the Catholic cemetery in Yeşilköy.

Note to self: Diacritical marks do come over into blog text if copied.

These details are from a news account of a 2009 sale at Bonhams of a self-titled sketchbook 'Souvenir de mon dernier voyage' (1875), which was estimated to go for £320,000 - 500,000.

Here is someone at Bonhams holding it.

The Maltese Novel

Greenmantle stands as 'the Malta book', just as a certain garment is 'the Montreal hat'. (There is also, of course, 'the Malta hat'.) There is equally a second 'Malta book', a trilingual book of poetry by John Cremona, Poesie - Poems - Poeziji (a dot should set on top of the 'z' in the Maltese, but blogging is made to disdain diacriticals for some technie reason).

The expression 'the Malta book', used of Buchan's novel, is, in true metonymic fashion, short for, an everyday ellipsis of, 'the book JT bought in Malta'. It's not a book about Malta, or originating in Malta (both of which Cremona's book is). Greenmantle is Maltese only for me, for 'yours truly'. It recalls a morning stroll from our hotel to adjacent Floriana, the temperature as always for that week 33 degrees, a stop at a tiny shop with a revolving rack of books, each going for 1 euro, the Buchan the most purchasable (I think I could have bought some Giradoux in French). Had I a certain sort of verbal skill which I have not cultivated over the years (perhaps I should have), I could render that shop for you swiftly, ecphrastically, as Buchan might have done. Example:

... [P]resently we saw a light twinkle in the hollow ahead.

It proved to be wretched tumble-down farm in a grove of poplars--a foul-smelling, muddy yard, a two-roomed hovel of a house, and a barn which was tolerably dry and which we selected for our sleeping place. The owner was a broken old fellow whose sons were all at the war, and he received us with the profound calm of one who expects nothing but unpleasantness from life. (154-5)

Thus might I work up a picture of my Floriana place-of-purchase; certainly I was sold the book by a man and a woman, probably a couple, certainly old and not-well-off.

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The source of the image is Google Images, namely an interview with the designer; the actual link seems broken, but the site where the interview appeared is listed as www.designrelated.com. Clearly the image is designed to be, stylistically, retro; Glenn Baxter used to work ironically in this mode. Note the pointed finger, which in fact identifies the picture as illustrating a moment in the novel which will be of interest to us.

Men On the Run, 2

The other 'determination' of the thoughts that follow is via my ecphrasis concerns,

notably sparked by a consideration of John Ashbery, Girls On the Run and Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.

[Consider the contiguities of the 'school photograph', or the 'conference photograph': one remembers the examples from the farm women's conferences my grandmother attended and that sometimes determined my childhood travels with her.]

[Incidentally, the text of Greenmantle that I found in Valletta is the 1994 Wordsworth Classics one (Wordsworth's place of publication counts as Ware). Its cover illustration is a detail from an 1852 watercolour, Abdullah--a Kurd from Bitlis, Amadeo Preziosi in the V & A, ironic given Hussin's remarks about Kurds on the page after the attaining of the castrol.]

Men On the Run, 1

sedum_spurium_400.jpg

400 × 300 - Sedum spurium 'Green Mantle' (also called yellow stonecrop)

Now, how did I get here? In a move worthy of a John Buchan hero, there I was in Malta,

and in a tiny shop in Valletta I bought Greenmantle for 1 euro, all the books on the single

rack were 1 euro, and 'the book had found its owner', had it not?

Malta, with its centuries of Mediterranean / Mid-East geopolitics, not to say 'the matter of

Germany' which imbrocates Buchan's WW1 with a WW2 which saw Malta under seige

once more....

According to the Calendar....

... it's 1 August 2010. This was my grandmother's birthday. I'm looking out over the river, a regular position for this writing. So, breach (into).

Frames, par-ergons, everythwhere.

As usual, I'm starting again. The calendar provides a framework for action. One works within the day, month, year, etc., as within frames.

As an experience, one can speak of 'Macbeth tomorrows'. But how would this relate to the 'one day at a time' tactic?

This is an image of a matchstick calendar. ('Draft autosaved at 11.50', the machine says.)

Let me click on 'Publish Post'.

And I can edit this ...?

Yes, so it would seem (always a matter of 'getting the knack'...).

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As a 'practice addition': 'Dirt is only matter in the wrong place', generally credited to Mary Douglas, is already around, and as a quote, in a letter to The Standard (the topic is Free Trade) from John Holling, 3 October 1904.