Month: March 2022

Defining & Redefining Macaronesia

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Grove Koger

The first time I ran across the term “Macaronesia,” I assumed it must be a misprint for “Macronesia,” and that the term must refer to some grouping of large (“macro”) islands. Micronesia, after all, is a region of small (“micro”) islands in the Pacific Ocean. 

But I was wrong. Macaronesia is indeed the correct term and is derived from the Greek phrase makárōn nēsoi, meaning “fortunate isles” or “isles of the blessed”—an enticing but largely mythological reference to the islands that lie, or might lie, west of the Strait of Gibraltar in what we know today as the Atlantic Ocean. In this sense, they were a land of perpetual summer, and, according to Pliny the Elder, abounded in “fruit and birds of every kind.”

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But pinning down the term’s modern meaning isn’t quite so simple. The term “Macaronesia” was apparently coined by British botanist Philip Barker-Webb (1793-1854), who included three archipelagoes—Madeira, the Selvagens and the Canary Islands—in the designation, all of them lying off the coast of Northwest Africa. However, later botanists added the Azores, which lie nearly 900 miles west of Portugal, and Cabo Verde, which lies more than 300 miles west of westernmost Africa. (I’m indebted for this information to the authors of “Restructuring of the ‘Macaronesia’ Biogeographic Unit: A Marine Multi-Taxon Biogeographical Approach” in Scientific Reports.)

Of these five groups, Madeira, the Selvagens (which are administered from Madeira), and the Azores are part of Portugal, the Canary Islands are part of Spain, and Cape Verde, which was once a colony of Portugal, is now an independent nation.

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If you look at the map at the top of today’s post, however, you’ll notice how widely separated some of them are; the Azores, for instance, are more than 1,500 miles from Cape Verde, and Cape Verde itself is about 1,000 miles from the Canaries. Does it really make sense to group them together?

The authors of “Restructuring of the ‘Macaronesia’ Biogeographic Unit” don’t think so, writing that they “found no support for the current concept of Macaronesia as a coherent marine biogeographic unit.” They reached their conclusion after considering six kinds of marine life, and in light of what they found, they suggested removing Cape Verde and giving it “status of a biogeographical subprovince within the West African Transition province.” They also suggested removing the Azores and establishing them as their own ecoregion, and establishing a new ecoregion made up of Madeira, the Selvagens, and the Canary Islands.

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While the scientific terminology involving biogeographical regions may not be familiar, the thrust of the authors’ comments is clear: Philip Barker-Webb got it right, and in his honor, the authors suggest calling the new ecoregion Webbnesia.

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The map at the top of today’s post was created by ArnoldPlaton and is reproduced courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.The first photograph, of a mountain village in Madeira, is by ArunSwamiPersaud (pixabay.com) and is reproduced courtesy of Needpix.com. The second photograph, showing a typical scene in the Selvagens, is by Coimbra68 and is reproduced courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, while the third photograph, taken by laurajane (pixabay.com), is of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, and is reproduced courtesy of Needpix.com.

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André Basdevant’s Bold Visions

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Grove Koger

I struggled for a bit with the title of today’s post, in part because I had frustratingly little information about my subject, and in part because I couldn’t decide what attitude to take toward that information.

André Basdevant was a French engineer who put forward at least two arresting proposals that, while visionary enough, were wildly impractical. A third proposal was equally visionary but far more practical, although his involvement in it, sadly enough, came to nothing,

If we take those concepts in order, we can begin in 1936 with Basdevant’s proposal to build a pair of helical access ramps spiraling up from the streets of Paris to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower.

Judging from the online image I’ve found, each ramp would have involved ten tight revolutions—meaning that a dizzying corkscrew ride would have carried you up 377 feet from street level. Once you’d accomplished that feat, you would be able to dine at your leisure in the tower’s restaurant. But this being Paris, you would of course be wining and dining—all before making what I’m pretty sure would have been an equally dizzying descent, an experience that I can imagine might well lead to another serious bout of wining.

I think can we can agree that this was a wildly bad idea.

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Basdevant’s second concept, dating from 1938, was even grander in design. He proposed the construction of a rotating elevated landing strip in the middle of Paris directly above the Seine.

Yes, you’ve read that correctly.

The project would have placed the strip on two very large, circular platforms supported by a series of immense towers. (Or are they skyscrapers?) In case you’re wondering, the artist who prepared the second image you see in today’s post has seated the viewer in what may be a biplane, looking down at the airstrip through the plane’s crossed rigging wires.  

Again, I’m sure we can all agree that this was a wildly bad idea.

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Basdevant’s third concept was grander still. In 1938, he presented a proposal to the French Chamber (the CCI de France) to dig a tunnel beneath the English Channel. His design provided for a double-track railway on its lower level and four lanes for automobiles on its upper level. Of course, the idea of a tunnel beneath the channel wasn’t new, having been around for at least two centuries, but technical and political considerations had long delayed its implementation.

In any case, Basdevant’s proposal was impressive enough to win the sponsorship of the French Chamber, but the approach of World War II forestalled all such projects, although the Supreme Allied War Council briefly considered whether the tunnel might be dug quickly enough to aid the allied cause. After the war, Basdevant was able to present his proposal officially to an Anglo-French commission, but British authorities rejected it, citing technical issues involving geology and ventilation. In coordination with several other engineers, Basdevant submitted a revised proposal in 1958, but it was not to be (although by this point you might be rooting for the poor fellow). Under the terms of an alternative proposal, the tunnel was eventually dug by the Anglo-French construction consortium TransManche Link and opened for rail service, and rail service only, in 1994.

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Fažana & the Brijuni Islands

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Grove Koger

In May 1911, Thomas Mann and his wife visited the island of Veli Brijun (VEL ee bree YOUN) off the southwestern coast of the Istrian Peninsula. But what might have been an idyllic holiday didn’t turn out that way. The weather was bad and, says Mann’s biographer Ronald Hayman, there were no sandy beaches. So the couple moved on to the Venetian island of Lido, which was destined to become the fatal setting for Mann’s Death in Venice. 

In that famous novella, you’ll remember, the writer Gustav Aschenbach takes a night train to Trieste and a boat to Pula as he makes his way to an unidentified Adriatic island. Lying “not far off the Istrian coast, it had beautifully jagged cliffs facing the open sea, and it was populated by rustics wearing colorful tatters and speaking a language full of outlandish sounds. However, it kept raining, the air was oppressive,” and there was no “gentle, sandy beach.” So, after ten days, the writer takes “a swift motorboat” back to the naval base at Pula and a “steamship that was about to weigh anchor for Venice.”

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On our 2013 visit to Croatia, Maggie and I followed in a few of Mann’s (and Aschenbach’s) footsteps, visiting Veli Brijun as well as Fažana (fah ZHAH nah), an attractive little seaside community across a narrow strait from the island. We had taken a long bus ride over Istria’s grassy, rolling hills and a much shorter one from Pula. And while we planned to return to Pula for half a day to see its famous Roman amphitheatre, Fažana promised a more relaxing experience.

Like most of Europe, Istria has a complicated history, one involving the Austrian Empire, Italy, Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Slovenia in the last two centuries alone. But you could be forgiven for thinking that not much has ever happened in wonderfully placid Fažana itself. Look hard, and you’ll find a mention here and there in the history books. But broaden your search to include the Brijuni (bree YOO nee) Islands, and you’ll see repeated references to Josip Broz Tito. The Yugoslavian dictator was fond of the area, and made Veli Brijun his summer residence.

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The influence of Italy is hard to miss in the peninsula. Italian has been the second official language of Croatian Istria since 1994, and it’s also an official language of the areas of Slovenia bordering on Italy. And Fažana itself is very Italian in appearance.

Istria’s climate is a bit milder than that of the southern Croatian coast, but when we were there in late summer, we couldn’t have asked for pleasanter days. (Mann really should have postponed his trip.) Our hotel, the Marina, lay on the seafront, and every morning we enjoyed caffè macchiatos (more robust versions of cappuccinos) and breakfast on its terrace, gazing out across the water to the islands on the horizon.

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One day we booked a tour of Veli Brijun that took in its modest assortment of Roman ruins and exotic animals (most of them gifts from heads of state visiting Tito). But my most vivid memories are of two of the island’s autochthonous species—its amiable goats and the large noble pen shells (Pinna nobilis) that we saw living in the island’s little harbor. The shells, which can grow to a length of four feet, are now in serious decline throughout the Mediterranean and have been declared a protected species.

About those sandy beaches, whose absence so disappointed Mann and his character—there’s one now, apparently constructed since Mann’s time. Hartleben’s 1913 Handbook of Dalmatia mentions a “well-kept beach,” although it doesn’t specify whether it’s sand or pebble. But there are none of the “beautifully jagged cliffs” that Aschenbach saw. It’s an imaginary journey that he’s on, after all, and those cliffs may well be harbingers of the dangerous beauty awaiting him in Venice.

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Maggie’s photographs show our hotel in Fažana and a friend I made on Veli Brijun. The postcard of the island’s harbor dates from 1913 and the map from 1912. The photograph of a noble pen shell was taken by Hectonichus and is reproduced courtesy of Wikipedia.

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With Rockwell Kent in Greenland

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Grove Koger

As I expand and update When the Going Was Good, I’m posting revised entries from the first edition. Today’s deals with the most famous travel account by Rockwell Kent, who died March 13, 1971.

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N by E (New York: Brewer & Warren, 1930)

Born in New York State, Kent studied architecture at Columbia University and art under such distinguished teachers as Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase. He supported himself as an architect for several years, but eventually turned to painting and illustrating. Working in a direct, dramatic style, Kent produced striking paintings and prints of the New England coast, Alaska, and similar climes. At the same time, he was developing the strong socialist views that would eventually damage his reputation with America’s political leaders and tastemakers.

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Inspired by “the strange story of the Greenland settlements and their tragic end,” Kent signed on with two shipmates in June 1929 to sail to the world’s largest island aboard the 33-foot cutter Direction, calling at Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. The Direction survived the treacherous Davis Strait between North America and Greenland, but was driven aground by a storm in Karajak Fjord on the great island’s southwestern coast on July 15. Kent made a successful 36-hour trek for help, yet after his companions were rescued, he stayed on in Greenland for two months to paint its vast and extraordinary landscape.  

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N by E recounts the brief voyage of the Direction and Kent’s subsequent experiences in Greenland. The book is written in a stylized, sometimes elliptical, intensely poetic style, the verbal equivalent of the many woodcuts that Kent prepared to accompany it. In fact, the book is designed to be apprehended as a whole, from its striking title pages to its close. Absorbing it phrase by phrase and image by image, we cannot help but agree with Kent, who on his solitary trek realizes, “Oh God, how beautiful the world can be!” 

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Other works by Kent include Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska (1920; rev. ed. 1970); Voyaging Southward from the Strait of Magellan (1924; rev. ed. 1968); Salamina (1935); and Greenland Journal (1962). And for further information about Kent, see David Traxel, An American Saga: The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).

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The image at the top of today’s post is the cover of the Wesleyan University Press reprint and is based on the cover of the first edition, while the third image is the title page of the first edition; both designs are by Kent himself. The portrait of Kent dates from about 1920, but the identity of the photographer is unknown. Kent’s painting Early November North Greenland (which you may see identified as The Beginning of November. North Greenland) was completed in 1933.

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Gerardus Mercator and His Map

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Grove Koger

One of the happier features of the many elementary classrooms I once sat in was a pull-down wall map of the world. There for you to study (if you were geographically inclined, as I was) was a large image of the world—one in which the countries of the world were set out in reassuringly standardized colors and the lines of latitude and longitude were laid out in reassuringly straight lines and at proper right angles.

That image was in large part the work of Gerardus Mercator, a Flemish cartographer who was born in what’s now Belgium in 1512. As a young man, Mercator studied under Dutch cartographer and instrument maker Gemma Frisius, and went on to print his first map (of Palestine) in 1537. A decade and a half later, he moved to the German city of Duisburg, where he set up a shop making and selling maps, globes and scientific instruments.

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Mercator’s most famous (and revolutionary) map, Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata (New and More Complete Representation of the Terrestrial Globe Properly Adapted for Use in Navigation), dates from 1569. The map was printed in 18 separate sheets of paper that could, if the purchaser so desired, be glued together to produce a single map about 79.5 inches wide by 49 inches high.

On this large map, Mercator pioneered a new way of representing the curved surface of the world in a flat manner. Any map involves at least four aspects of the geographical features it represents: area, distance, direction, and shape. Because it’s flat, however, the map must sacrifice accurate representation of at least two of these. If the map represents a small area, there’s generally not much problem. But when the area increases—as it did when Portuguese navigators pushed farther and farther into the Atlantic Ocean—the distortions increase as well. And that was a serious problem for those plotting a ship’s course.

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During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ships carried charts known as portolans showing coastal features and straight lines representing points, or directions, of the compass. When such charts were accurate, navigators could use them to plot a course from port to port. But outside the familiar world of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, the portolans couldn’t be relied on. 

Mercator’s revolutionary approach to representing the earth’s surface involved straightening the meridians of longitude (the imaginary lines encircling the earth and running through the north and south poles). As an initial step, this strategy distorted area, distance, and direction. But Mercator went on to restore correct direction by gradually increasing the distance between the parallels of latitude (the imaginary lines encircling the earth from east to west) as they approached the poles.

The positive result of Mercator’s innovative projection was that navigators could plot their courses as straight lines on their charts. Over time, however, the negative result has been that generations of schoolchildren (destined to be voters and politicians) have grown up thinking that Greenland, North America, and Eurasia are much larger than they really are—and that the countries near the equator are much smaller in comparison. We’re living with the consequences of those misconceptions today.

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The image at the top of today’s post is Mercator’s revolutionary 1569 map. The second is a 1574 portrait of Mercator by Frans Hogenberg, and the third is a portolan chart (drawn on vellum) from 1541. All are reproduced courtesy of Wikipedia.

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Mykola Lysenko, Ukrainian Patriot

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Grove Koger

In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I’m writing a few words today about renowned Ukrainian composer and patriot Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912), who’s regarded as the founder of the national movement in his country’s music.

The descendant of a noted Cossack family, Lysenko was born in the central Ukrainian town of Hrynky in 1842. His mother taught him the basics of piano, but he came to appreciate Ukrainian music in large part thanks to his grandparents. And although he studied natural sciences at universities in the cities of Kharkiv and Kyiv, he spent his spare time collecting Ukrainian folksongs.

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A scholarship allowed Lysenko to follow his musical interests at the Leipzig Conservatory, and he went on to study orchestration under famed Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Saint Petersburg in the mid-1870s. When he returned to Kyiv, he supported himself by giving recitals and lessons and organizing choirs, and eventually opened his own conservatory, the Lysenko Music and Drama School, in 1904. Throughout these years, he added to his knowledge of Ukrainian folk music and folk instruments. Among his subjects were the kobzars, itinerant Ukrainian bards whose songs Lysenko transcribed and whose melodies he later incorporated into his works.

At the same time, however, Lysenko’s growing realization of his Ukrainian identity brought him into conflict with Russian authorities, whose country had dominated Ukraine, in one complex way or another, since at least the middle of the seventeenth century. The publication of books written in Ukrainian was banned, and Lysenko himself was forced to publish many of his scores abroad.

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You can learn more about Lysenko in David Dicaire’s Early Years of Folk Music: Fifty Founders of the Tradition (McFarland, 2010). And for more information still, see Taras Filenko and T.P. Bulat’s World of Mykola Lysenko: Ethnic Identity, Music, and Politics in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Ukraine (Ukraine Millennium Foundation, 2001).

I have to admit that I was unfamiliar with Lysenko until I happened to run across recordings of his works on YouTube. Over the past few years, I’ve listened to dozens of compositions on the platform that were new to me, and as a result I’ve “discovered” quite a few wonderful works. Among these is a short piece that seems to be Lysenko’s best-known work, his lyrical 1877 Piano Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes No. 2, popularly known as Dumka-Shumka. You can listen to a recording here.

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The photograph of Lysenko’s grave in Kyiv’s Baikove Cemetery is by Håkan Henriksson and is reproduced courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The second image shows costumes designed by Fedir Krychevsky (1879-1947) for Lysenko’s opera Taras Bulba, and is reproduced courtesy of WikiArt. The opera is based on a short novel set in Ukraine by Ukrainian-born writer Nikolai Gogol.

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