Three Short Notes in the Style of AK (Herod)

Jerusalem seen from Mount of Olives, the way Pompey first saw it in 63 BC. Taken from The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia, a travelogue of 19th-century Palestine and the magnum opus of Scottish painter David Roberts. It contains 250 lithographs by Louis Haghe of Roberts's watercolor sketches.

It was first published by subscription between 1842 and 1849. It was the nineteenth century's most expensive, most successful, and most durable publication.

From your translator

THREE SHORT NOTES IN THE STYLE OF THE AUTHOR

1. When I set out to translate the two Krawczuk books about the love of Emperor Titus and Queen Berenice (Titus and Berenice, 2023, Rome and Jerusalem, upcoming), I was unsure whether to translate the first volume of the trilogy as well—the book you are holding in your hand now. While the story of the First Jewish War is relatively little known, Herod the Great has had perhaps two score biographies in English. Why publish another?

But rereading Herod, King of the Jews with that question in mind, I realized that Krawczuk brings something unique to the well-known biography. First of all, he brings his highly readable style, of course, which is a joy in itself and which I hope I manage to convey here well enough to motivate you to learn Polish and read him in the original.

Secondly, better than any author I have read, he couches the history of Herod within the parallel history of Rome, laying bare for the modern reader how the two histories intertwine, the limits within which Herod had to work, and the surprising significance of little Palestine in the larger Roman imperial politics.

But, above all, Krawczuk allows the reader to sense something that a British or an American reader may not readily intuit: how small nations see their own fate and survival in the shadow of great empires. The fact that the good professor wrote this book under Russian occupation, at an ancient institution of learning of a recalcitrant client nation of the Russian Empire, gives his observations vital relevance: in many ways, Poles are Eastern Europe's Jews.

2. While working on the text, I became aware of another dimension of the story. When editing, I read my text aloud to my Japanese friends—who are cultured and cosmopolitan but not necessarily very familiar with minor aspects of the history of the Roman Empire. But as I read my text to them, they suddenly burst out with a surprise of recognition. When, in one of the early chapters, the name of Judah Maccabee came up, they exclaimed: “Do you mean the guy from the Handel oratorio?” “Well, yes,” I said. “The very same.” Soon enough, we came across Mithridates of Pontus. “Mitridate Re di Ponto! Mozart!” my audience exclaimed. Just two lines lower came: “Vivaldi’s Farnace!” This went on for some time until my friends finally reconciled themselves to the fact that they were reading a story somehow fundamental to the consciousness of Western Civilization. By the time Aeneus made an appearance in the chapter on Herod saving Troy, my friends said nothing. One got up and put on the Purcell.

3. The back cover of this book features a reproduction of a fragment of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Massacre of the Innocents. The Bruegel family firm produced many versions of this painting (possibly as many as 14), but only this one, owned by the British Royal Collection, is thought to be by Pieter Senior himself. One of its previous owners, Rudolph II, the Magician Emperor and a connoisseur of panting, had it overpainted to hide the images of dead and dying children. Contemporary reality delivered enough of that.

Tom Pinch

Ardennes National Park

Luxembourg

TWO SHORT NOTES IN THE STYLE OF AK

Berenice, by Philippe Cherry (1759-1833), engraved by Pierre Michel Alix (1762-1817),

taken from the 1802 edition of Recherches sur les Costumes et sur les Théâtres de toutes les nations, tant anciennes que moderns ([Research on the Costumes and Theaters of all Nations, Ancient as well as Modern])

first published by M. Drouhin, Paris 1790. The drawing illustrates the 1670 play by Jean-Baptiste Racine.

From the translator

TWO SHORT NOTES IN THE STYLE OF THE AUTHOR

It is probably in keeping with the encyclopedic style of Professor Krawczuk for your translator to append two cultural notes to this delightful book.

1. In the year 1670, at the height of glory of Louis XIV, before rebellions and unlucky wars dimmed somewhat the brilliance of the Sun-King, his cousin and sister-in-law, Henriette d'Angleterre, daughter of the unlucky Charles I of England, and wife of Phillip d’Orleans, staged a bloodless duel: a head-to-head confrontation between two court dramatists, the aging Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) and the up-and-coming Jean Racine (1639-1699), both of whom she commissioned to produce a play on the subject of Berenice, Queen of the Jews. Performed a week apart at the end of November 1670, the two plays caused a furor, a loud war of words and pamphlets between two cultural (and, therefore, as always in France, political) factions—the supporters of either one or the other author. It was a war conclusively won by the new man.

Broken by his defeat, Corneille never wrote another play. For Racine, this victory marked his rise to power. In 1672 he was elevated to a seat in the Academie and went on to compose, in short order, his greatest plays: Bajazet (1672), Mithridate (1673), Iphigénie (1674) and Phèdre (1677).

The French ruckus sent a veritable cultural tsunami across the shores of European courts, all of which rushed to stage their own versions of the story, whether in dramatic or operatic style. As a result, the sheer volume of “Titus and Berenice” output deposited in the deep layers of European heritage is staggering while Racine’s play remains on the playbill in France until this day. As a result, most Europeans have heard of Titus and Berenice: the title rings a bell even if most can no longer say which church is tolling.

2. Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the Elder (1525?–1569) was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance, a painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so-called “genre painting”); he pioneered the use of both subjects as the main focus of large paintings. He was a huge commercial success during his lifetime and founded a dynasty of sons and grandsons who continued the business, often copying their founder’s designs. Hapsburg Emperor Rudolf II, the famed alchemist and art connoisseur, was a great admirer and collector of his work, which is how the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has come to feature a special room hung with twelve huge Pieter Breughels, including The Fall of Icarus, The Tower of Babel, The Hunters in the Snow, and The Peasant Wedding. It is, in my opinion, one of the most profoundly moving museum rooms in the world.

Tom Pinch

Ardennes National Park

Luxembourg

Illustrations featured in "Herod"

The illustrations featured in Herod are taken from The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia, a travelogue of 19th-century Palestine and Middle East and the magnum opus of Scottish painter David Roberts. The book contains 250 lithographs by Louis Haghe of Roberts's watercolor sketches. It was first published by subscription between 1842 and 1849, in two separate publications: The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea and Arabia and Egypt and Nubia. William Brockedon and George Croly wrote much of the text, Croly writing the historical, and Brockedon the descriptive portions.

The book has been escribed as "one of the art-publishing sensations of the mid-Victorian period. It exceeded all other earlier lithographic projects in scale, and was one of the most expensive publications of the nineteenth century and it has "proved to be the most pervasive and enduring of the nineteenth-century renderings of the East circulated in the West.” Prints from the series continue to be sought after and command very high prices--high three to low four-digits: a very high price for a nineteenth century print.

The print below is the Oasis of Ein Gedi, near Qumran, on the Dead Sea.