Transcription Vanzetti to Donovan, Dec 28, 1926

I want to think about this letter in conjunction with Bernadette's post on the Dec 19, 1926 letter.

                               28 Dec., 1926
Mrs. Mary Donovan
Dear Friend,
                     Just few words
in answer to your nice Christmas
card and the good wishes thereby
expressed. They reached me at due
time and were most welcome and
appreciated.
    I hope that everything goes
well with you, that you might have
passed Yuletide at home
and that all of yours are well.
   Have received many letters and
cards this Christmas, but I realize
that many of my good friends,
the most of them, [illegible] just thoughts
and wished good to me and acted
in my behalf but not written.
   I have wished to answer sooner to you,
but am been very busy-- so, please,
excuse my delay. Have not seen Mr.
Thompson for quite a long time and I
know of nothing of now.
[VERSO]
This years I have received very
many letters and cards for Christmas
and New Year.
   I would wish you an  happy
New Year, but it seems idle to
me, for I wish you every day
happy-- not merely the first of
the year, as the less (or is it more?)
fool do.
   Mark Twain has said that
"The only useful holyday that we
have is "April fool," for it remind
us [^of] what we are in the other days of
the year.
   Christmas, whereas, is a cheating
holiday, for we pretend to be good
then-- which, when not a bad
illusion is rank hypocrazy-- holy
macherel (is makerel correctly
spelled?-- I am [^only] sure of holy, though fish peddler.
   Well, hoping to hear or see you
in a near day, I send you hearty greetings.
                          Bartolomeo Vanzetti


Bernadette brought up some insightful  thoughts on the peculiarities of Vanzetti's letters to Mary Donovan, noting the inconsistent spelling errors, illogical structure of topics, and open parentheses and quotes to conjecture on possible censoring intrusions. This letter, written only a week later, is an interesting counterpart- the spelling and grammatical errors seem innocent enough and the sentence structures are fairly sound. As a whole, the letter is focused and tends to imparting warm thoughts on the holiday rather than listing off various and extraneous topics in great detail, as with the previous letter. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with the paragraph about how most of his friends "wished good to me and acted on my behalf but not written" or the emphatic statement "holy macheral." I could imagine the former having been shaved some by a censoring hand, but both cases could be the products of a language barrier. Regardless, pairing these two letters against one another, I find that the fact of the clarity and focus of this letter supports Bernadette's claims of intentional coding and extensive censoring in the previous letter.

In a cursory google search here, I found that Mary Donovan was Vanzetti's recording secretary for the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee. I, like Bernadette, am still curious who Donovan was to Vanzetti more expressively.

From what I can gather, this letter is far less about matters of "business" than the previous.  I'm guessing the December 19th letter had some intention of informing his comrades of the prison conditions, which could be either inciting or pacifying to them, I'm not sure. Unless this letter has been severely censored, it seems kinder and more personal, adding some cynicism towards Christmas perhaps to make Donovan less sad that Vanzetti was separated from herself and the others during it.


Does anyone know how these letters were censored? I'm a bit confused on whether a second party actually changed the letters, which I suppose would require that they be written again, or if Vanzetti wrote them with a censoring hand himself.

Transcription of Letter from B. Vanzetti to M. Donovan

This is a very strange document, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it.  I even feel a little bad for Mary receiving this letter for a few reasons:

1) The letter seems to be written without regard for being logical (maybe this is explained with the cuts made by the censors).  He begins the letter more or less normally by thanking Mary for her visit (to the prison I'm assuming) and telling her about his reading material.  He then makes some esoteric references to correspondence he has with other people (a mysterious Mr. Ch., Mrs. Evans, Keave).  The bulk of the letter recounts his weekly schedule in the format of a numbered list, but it sometimes repeats numbers.
2) It is full of spelling errors (zoupper for supper; wishel for whistle; checkes for checkers; mouvig for movie, to name a few among many others).  Vanzetti is even inconsistent with his mistakes-- he misspells wishel only twice, but then proceeds to spell it correctly for the rest of the letter.
3) The overall syntax is bizarre.  For some reason, he leaves quotes and parentheses open-- which seems completely random to me.  His sentence structure is also strange; he is fond of using multiple colons, semi-colons, and dashes at will.

It seems to me that the letter itself was already very choppy even before censors changed its content.  Also, all of the grammatical and spelling errors may be attributed to the fact that English was a second language for Vanzetti, but I think that it is also possible that the letter was deliberately coded in some way, considering Vanzetti's political affiliations and that maybe he knew that censors would read his letter before Mary got to read it herself.

And Megan, I'd like to know-- Who is Mary Donovan? 

[PAGE]

Mary Donovan

130 Myrtle St.

            Boston, Mass.

(ink blots and smudges toward middle of page)

[VERSO]

                                                Dec. 19, 1926.

Dear Comrade Donovan:

            At the fierce music of the cold and strong wind

blowing through this bright winter morning, I am thinking

how good of you it was to pay me a visit during

this cold waves.  As I told you to be expecting, Mr.

Thomson came yesterday afternoon and brought me

several our weely from Europe and South America,

many letters, “The Authorized Life” of Eugene V. Debs, &

“What His Neighbors Say of Him.” (Debs.  So that I

have much to read and much to write presently, Mr. Ch.

tell me that Mrs. Evans will send some money to Jim’s family,

and I told him of what we had talk about—it will be settled.

Since he told me that he will come back soon and since

I have had no time to write my letter of consent

to the comrades of “Freedom + I indeed expect to see

him soon again and must therefore get busy.  He did

not express adversation to the letter’s publication, but

repeatted the advice to dwell on “why we were armed.

He also said that I was not looking so well as the time

before—I answered to have took “salt” two conservative

days—first Thursday and Friday, and that I am O.K.

(Keave interrupted this writing at this point this

morning to go to the “yard” were Jim—who show M. Ch.

yesterday, after me, told me that the later will be here again

next Tue., or Wed.,--am glad to know it.)

            Returning to us, you deserve indeed a better letter than

this poor one that I am so willingly writing.  Well I

am going to give you a tableau of our daily life-routine: 
(1)   At six o’clock, A.M. the wing’s bell rings once: We can

[PAGE]

                                                 2

“get off” and light the pipe even before to begin to dress-up.

From 6 to 7 A.M. we can do what we like, in our room.

(2)   7 A.M.: A second ring: we must be ready to go

to take the breackfast at the ckichen “window,” and

return to our room.  From 7 to 8 A.M. we can do what

we like in our room.

(3)   8 A.M.: A third ring: now we must have our room

clean and ordered and be ready to left it. One wing

after another (the occupant) goes indisdain [?] line to

em^pty the bucket at the dump, situated against the

wall that faces the freight-yard.  From there we

line again, two by two this time, and go to the shops.  

(4)  11.20 A.M.: The wishel blown by the shop’s officer,

means that we can get to the front of the shop, where

we can freely talk and play checkes.

(5)   11.45 A.M.: A second wishel tells us to leave the

shop, line on the yard side-walk, then go to the ckichen,

take our dinner, and carry it to our room.

(6)   There we must stand at the door, gluiging [?] one

of its bar untill the officer counts us and locks our doors

From then to one o’clock, we are freely locked in our room.
(6) At one o’clock, another ring.  The room must be
in order, we go to the shops, us always in line.    

(7)   3.40 P.M.: A whistle tells us that the day-work is

finished: we are already dressed for “the “yard,” we go

to the shop front, there to talk or play for a while.

(8)   3.55 P.M.: A wistle tells us to go to the yard—the

general signal is given by the “yard bell, In which talking,

playing and yacking [?] are allowed- 
(8)   4.10 P.M.  The yard bell rings: we line, go to the ckichen,

[VERSO]

                                             3

take our zoupper, and go to our room.  After that our doors

are locked we can eat, or not, and untill night o’clock

we can dispose of our time to make, write, read, or

walk, thing, swear, and so on.  We have evening schools,

voluntary, not obbligatory.  Some prisoners go two or

three evening a weeks; some a thers don’t go: it lost

an our and a half.

(9)     8 8.55 P.M.  The wing bell rings again, we must retre and     

stop to smoke.

(10) 9 P.P: the last bell ring of the day—the light gogoff

we must be at bed.  This is our daily routine.

The “yard” time is changed several times during the year,

according to the lenght of the solar-day; in Summer

time we stsay more in the yard—though we quit working

lately than at Winter.

Now, about the “Lord Day:

At six o’clock the first ring: at seven, the breackfeast

one; than we can go to the first c atholic service;

than to the second (protestant service—or we can stay in

the room.  The batter service end after eleven o clock—

more or less after according to the lenght of the two

priest bunks—and, everybody goes to the yard from

which we returne to the ckichen and our rooms, at

11.45 A.M. In the afternoon, we have the “Neither Christian

nor Scientis service, exept one Sunday a month in which

we have “methbidist service.”  We have also “Ebrew service.”

As you see, the only thing of which the State class not

economizers on us, is “religious dope—and the State is

skunnely wise.  As a rule, we have a “show” or “a mouvig”

every another Sunday. Praise be the Lord.  Amen.

[PAGE]

                                   4

For long and for many time I have forgotten to tell you

a good thing that we own to you: after the inspection

of many ispector to our shop, and after many delays,

they finally built a powerful “draft,” in our shop,

which freed usof almost all the gas; It was indeed

a great deal better, Vthan a forets.  It seemed to me

that you look better, much better yesterday than two weeks

ago.  Then you must have been troubled somehow—maybe

by passenger trouble, and if I did not cooked[?] about; it

is because I disliked you tell you if you were indisposed:

some time it discourage one; some time it may imbarasses

one; all the time you wish me free of preocupations and

consequently you wish to hinder from me anything which

may trouble me.  For all these reason I have expected you

eagerly, and I am glad that yesterday you seemed to

be in good condiction—so have care of yourself, and try to

komback, next time, even better, that that gluden one.

Now, dear Mary Donovan, I will inclose with

this letter, the copies of three items, hoping they will

rich you soon, and spare you the trouble of acquiring

them else how.  “The “Why I am in Favor of Death

Punishment, did not appeared, as I told you, in

the Boston Globe of last Sunday, but in the B. Globe

of Dec. 5, 1926.

I could write something for the coming  Buletin”:

either the continuation of the journalistic topic or a

comment-reputation of the tw included item.  But I have

very much to write.  Yet if the coming Bulettin” is already

completed, and if you dim uself “comment”—let me know

it in time, and I will try to do something.

[VERSO]

                                           5

This is all for now.  Be of good cheer.  Tell Mr. Ch.

about that journalist, please.

With hearty greeting to you and many expurds

praying  you to share them to yours Ones, I am

                  sincerely yours, Bartolemeo V.

P.S.  It was my intention to inclose the
“B. American clippin, about the speech of Mr. Bushnell-

but I am unable to find it, exept its traduction

by the Gazzeta of Massachusetts, of the 11 Gem.

If you write to Jim Larking, give him my regards.

Sacco and Vanzetti for Thursday

I am doing my presentation on Sacco and Vanzetti Thursday. I'd like to give you a bit of background on who they are and their situation to help situate the letters. I was not able to make it to the library today to set aside the specific letters to look at, but they will definitely be ready before class tomorrow (Tuesday). If all you get a chance to look at is the letter that Dr. Irmscher put online, that is absolutely fine. (iu.box.com/vanzetti).

            Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and anarchists that lived in Boston, MA. They were both convicted of murder in 1920 for killing two men during the robbery of a factory in Braintree, MA. They had two trials, and were both executed on August 23, 1927 after serving 7 years in prison. Another man, Celestino Medeiros, confessed to the murders, the robbery and that neither Sacco nor Vanzetti were present, but this did nothing to halt their execution. For this reason, among others, the case is still officially open. There is still much controversy surrounding the Sacco and Vanzetti case, so the bulk of information can be rather dense and confusing. If you are interested in the timeline of events, this is a chronology that someone at the University of Missouri made: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/SaccoV/chronology.html

            An important aspect of this case is the fact that both Sacco and Vanzetti were ardent and active anarchists. Here is an article on the type of anarchism specific to Sacco and Vanzetti, if you are interested. It is fairly long, so I won't ask you to read it unless you really want to. (I will also talk more about their anarchism in class)

recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/SaccoVanzetti/essayrd.html     

              A major issue that these letters bring up is censorship. The letters were published in 1928 by the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee. A lot of letters were completely omitted, and many of the ones included in the publication were corrected, paragraphs were omitted, and things were changed-- including the letter that is posted on the course site. I'd like to ask you to think about why they might have done this and what repercussions such actions may have. (I will have a copy of the published version of the letters in class on Thursday as well). 

In honor of St. Patrick's Day

I found this online and I thought I'd share it with you guys. The Trinity College Library has the entire Book of Kells available on their website here, so you don't have to go to Ireland to see it! I think what surprised me most was the shape that the last couple pages (676 and 677) were in.

Frank L. Crone and the Philippines under the United States

Hello everyone,

For my presentation on Tuesday, we will be looking at photographs collected by Frank L. Crone while he worked under the Philippine Bureau of Education from 1909-1915.  The materials from the Crone mss are available at the reading room-- I put on hold a photo album (one of the eight Crone kept) and a typescript of a speech written by Crone.  I have marked the pages in the photo album I'd like you to focus on, but if you have the time or interest to page through the entire photo album--it wouldn't take too long-- that would be fantastic.  As for the speech, you only need to read a short segment (pages 3-5) just to get a sense of the development of Philippine-American relations well into the first two decades of the twentieth century.  You can access the photographs and the speech online here, though I highly encourage you to take a look at them (especially the photographs!) in person.

Since we will be working primarily with photographs, I'd like to provide you with some historical context to help you 'read' them.  I will be brief here and will elaborate more during the presentation, but if you have any pressing questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

The first paragraph probably already had you wondering: Who is Frank Crone and what does he, or United States in general, have to do with education in the Philippines at the start of the twentieth century?  To fast forward through history, the Philippines was under Spanish colonization for over 300 years, from Magellan's arrival on Mactan Island in 1521 to the Philippine Revolution of 1898.  Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Spain was a waning imperialist power (having lost most of its colonial possessions except for Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and smaller islands scattered throughout Micronesia and Polynesia), and the United States looked at this as an opportunity.  It wasn't until the sinking of the USS Maine in Cuba that formally engaged the US and Spain in war-- the Spanish-American War.  The Americans fought against Spain in the Caribbean and the Pacific-- along side Cuban and Philippine revolutionaries determined to gain independence from their colonizer, Spain.  Ultimately, the US came out as the victor against Spain.  After the signing of the Treaty of Paris, Spain gave up the its remaining colonies to the United States, the Philippines included for an extra $20 million.

This posed a problem for the Cubans and Filipinos.  What of their revolutions for independence?  While Spain did surrender to the United States, what role would Cuban and Filipino leaders have in the post-war peace talks and what kind of say in the Treaty of Paris?  They were given none, essentially.  Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam were considered to belong to the United States, despite Cuba and the Philippines' successful revolutions against Spain.  The Philippines declared its independence and already selected its first president, General Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine Revolution against Spain.  But of course, the United States was not too happy with that, and the Filipino revolutionaries engaged in war with the United States for what is said to have been three years (1899-1902) by the United States government, despite the numerous insurrections that broke out afterwards.

And this is where Frank Crone and American schools in the Philippines comes in.  The United States wanted to engage in its own form of imperialism and colonization-- though in such a way that was distinct from Spanish rule as well as that of other imperialist powers, like the British in India.  President McKinley wanted to implement 'benevolent assimilation' in its newly acquired Philippine colonies with the aim of Christianizing and educating the Filipino.  Education in the Philippines played a pivotal role in McKinley's plan for benevolent assimilation--the basic argument of the United States was that the Philippines was not ready for self-government and needed first to be taught how to be 'civilized' before such a 'savage' country could ever set up its own government.  Crone eventually became the director of the Bureau of Education in the Philippines and directly oversaw the processes of implementing 'education to civilize.'  Such a process included having English as the primary language of instruction (which has survived to the present today), introducing American narratives in the Philippines, and championing the US as the Philippines' savior against Spain (a narrative that continued through WWII with the Americans as the liberators against the Japanese).    

What I would like for us to pay attention to on Tuesday is the role of photography in building the American imperialist narrative in the Philippines.  A visual language of imperialism emerged at the turn of the century where imperialist powers displayed their colonies as spectacle-- through photography, film, exhibitions-- to build, justify, and sustain their narratives of colonial rule.  Some of the first films were taken in the Philippines-- footage of the American soldiers fighting against unruly colonial subjects during the Philippine-American war or of the technologically backward navy of General Aguinaldo.  Another form of spectacle, the 1904 World's Fair in St. Luis went so far as to put on the first human exhibits of Filipinos where natives were taken to represent the various regions of the Philippines and were shipped to Missouri to be observed by curious Americans.  Much of such display was to demonstrate how effective Americans were in 'civilizing' the Filipino but at the same time how backward they still were and very much in need of American 'aid.'  Photography, however, had the ability to be easily commodified and consumed by the vast majority of the American public that needed to be acquainted with the new colony in the far-away, 'exotic' Pacific.  How are we, then, to read these photographs?  What kind of imperialist tropes are visible in them?  How do they build and sustain the American imperialist narrative and alter Philippine narratives to fit imperialist ones?  What is the 'colonial gaze'?

I hope the information I've provided helps in understanding these photographs.  In his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin writes, “[Photographs] demand a specific kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them.”  He seems to be warning consumers of photographs to be weary of taking what photographs present to us at face value, and I hope the quick history review helps to provide meaningful context.  But at the same time, I hope that we can discuss how that very principle-- the notion of examining photographs with free-floating contemplation-- makes the photograph such a useful weapon in crafting imperialist narratives.

-Bernadette

Baudelaire

I hope you're all having a lovely break. I just wanted to give you a little guidance for my presentation Tuesday.

I have put two documents on hold, both of which are letters (at least in part) written by Charles Baudelaire. I will save his biography for class, but in short, he is a prominent French poet of the mid- to late-19th century. He was also a major translator of English/American works into French -- you'll notice one of the letters mentions his translations of Poe's work.

Another important point: the letters are, of course, in French. While I would love for you all to learn French in the next 8 days, I understand that's probably a lot to ask, so I've included my own translations of my transcriptions. I know the documents won't be of much use to try to transcribe or anything, but if you know French, I would love for you to try, even for a portion of the letters! Please look at the documents themselves or the images Professor Irmscher has uploaded to get a feel for Baudelaire's handwriting and the differences between the two letters aesthetically.

The first letter is written to Michel Levy, who headed the printing press that published Baudelaire's translations of Poe. The second is written to Jean Morel and is a bit more complicated, as it appears to be an early draft of a poem called "Les Sept Vieillards" (The Seven Old Men), titled in the draft "Fantomes Parisiens" (Parisian Ghosts). The poem is then literally cut off and what seems to be a letter is written on the back with Charles Baudelaire's signature curiously glued to the verso of the first page.

I'd like you all to focus on the aspect of language in archival studies as well as the age of the documents themselves. These are the first documents we've looked at that are not in English and the oldest we've studied in detail; how does that impact our understanding of their meaning and cultural context? Does a translation retain the essence of the document, or does it invariably lose something in the process? This applies to both my translation of Baudelaire and Baudelaire's translation of Poe -- while Baudelaire was undoubtedly a much more masterful translator than I am, do the same limitations apply to his attempt to convey Poe's American-rooted stories to a French audience?

Edit: I forgot to include the link to the images/translations, which is right here: https://iu.box.com/baudelaire. Thank you, Professor Irmscher, for putting them up on the site!

They make a cute couple, no?

1960, Feb. 22
Ian Fleming

"...what was easy at 40 is v different at 50. I used
to believe - sufficiently - in Bonds + Blonds +
Bombs. How the keys creak as I type +
I fear the zest may have gone. Part of
the trouble is having a wife & child.
[Page 2]
They k[???] the writerliness out of one. I
shall definitely kill off Bond with my
next book - better a poor bang than a
rich whimper!"


1912 Mar ?
Virginia Woolf

"I began life with a tremendous
abound ideal of marriage, then
my birds eye view of many
[Verso Page 1]
marriages disgusted me + thought I must
be ailing[?] what was not to be had.
But that has passed too. Now I only
ask for someone to make me vehement
+ then I'll marry them!"
...
I spent a strange fortnight in
bed among faded old ladies
who might have been weeds at the
bottom of a river they were so
placid + remote from everything
+ yet alive.               I am now
[Verso 2]
leading a semi-invalid life + it is
very nice when the days are fine,
doesn't that sound old!"


(Only moments) before class, I just wanted to post this interesting little alliance Fleming and Woolf have in their attitudes toward the "zest" of life and domesticity.  They are such the unlikely pair. A couple years ago, I think my sophomore year, I took a class on British Sexualities and we had an entire unit on Fleming's misogyny, homophobia, racism, and just general imperial/colonial attitude toward British masculinity in the come-down of GB's heyday. Woolf also deals with the waning of England's imperial might during the interwar period and perhaps shares some classist ideologies, but one could agree her treatment of gender is wildly, wildly progressive and queer. Anjona told me briefly a day or two ago that Fleming seems as though he tries to be Bond (which I'm sure will be said far more eloquently and ingeniously in the presentation.) Anyway, the matter of killing off Bond rings with a bit of a suicidal threat-- not that Fleming himself is suicidal, but that killing off Bond has greater implications than simply bringing a franchise to a well-meant close.
Anyhow, there seems to be a shared fear of aging and becoming irrelevant, that the world will move on without them, that strikes me.