Many geopolitical minorities have historically understood that their survival is more likely to be guaranteed within an empire than within a nation–state. It would not be a scandal among some Basques to proclaim that the arrival of globalization has had beneficial effects so far. Clearly, globalization is a North American imperialistic formation in which the European Union amounts more to a mere historical reaction than a past enlightened dream finally come true. Yet globalization also represents a way out of the oppressive effects of the French and Spanish nation–states and of their imperialist–nationalist political and cultural institutions.

The increasingly global Basque reality of the 1990s manifested itself in many different political forms, some nationalist and others non–nationalist. On the Spanish side, a semi–federal or autonomous reality for the Spanish provinces of Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa, and Araba (Basque Autonomous Community or BAC) and a separate and similar semi–federal organization for the Spanish province of Nafarroa (Navarre) constituted two new political realities established after 1978. On the French side, a new and unprecedented nationalist force was created, which managed to establish new alliances with other non–nationalist forces. Although these unification moves remain unstable to this day, they were unthinkable in a Jacobin centralist state such as France just a few years before. All in all, however, the French side continued to be non–nationalist and remained part of a larger non–Basque political unity: the Department of the Atlantic Pyrenees (within the administrative region of Aquitaine–Limousin– Poitou–Charentes). Finally, the Basque diaspora, mainly in Europe and the Americas – but also in Australia and China – found institutional recognition in the Basque Autonomous Community,4 and became a new and global Basque reality, which no longer was diasporic (for that implies the preexistence of a nation–state) but rather post–diasporic: the traffic between the continental Basque Country and other (mainly) American post–diasporic enclaves became global and daily although still sparse. Although the future of all these political and cultural realities still remains uncertain, they became historically more vigorous in the 1990s than they had been since World War II.

As a result of globalization, two new Basque realities, two faces of the same coin, made their presence felt in the complex and heterogeneous Basque Country of the 1990s: the eruption of different public spheres – which did not correspond with those of the nation–state – and the commodification of Basque cultures.

Introduction

THE key family events during this year were the birth of the Wells's first child, Sidney, and the death of Bob, the youngest of the Boyce siblings. Joanna's confinement was not straightforward, and at first only one visitor, her sister Anne, was allowed. When Anne's baby, Charles, died at midnight on 25 February, his first birthday, Joanna was with her, to comfort her. In addition, both she and Henry continued to work assiduously on their submissions for the Royal Academy. Joanna's included the two landscapes she had begun at Joldens, A Homestead on the Surrey Hills (which was accepted) and No Joy the Blowing Season Gives (which was not), while Henry had eight miniatures and drawings accepted, including his painting of Clara Mordan.

George also had two landscapes accepted by the Royal Academy: At Lynmouth, North Devon and The East Lynn, at Middleham, North Devon. He was a regular visitor and support to Joanna in the weeks following her confinement, lamented that she was unable to attend the Punch and Judy show he had organised, and paid regular visits not only to Rossetti but also to Rossetti's lover and model, Fanny Cornforth. He may or may not have shared her sexual favours with his friend, but there is no doubt that they were close: a drawing by Rossetti of Fanny, leaning over George's shoulder while he paints, radiates intimacy, and on 17 January he records taking her to supper at the Argyll rooms and her trepidation lest Rossetti should come in – ‘and lo! he did so …’ Whatever the nature of his relationship with Fanny, however, George's friendship with them both led him to commission a painting of her, Bocca Baciata, from Rossetti, which would later be heralded as the earliest in a series of Aesthetic paintings of female figures.

On 26 April, George left London for Streatley-on-Thames, an ancient town with the ravishing river scenes to paint. There he would remain, on and off, until the end of the year.

Given that her relationship with her mother remained unresolved – it was not until 3 June that there was any indication of Anne Boyce's seeking a reconciliation – it was generous of Joanna to accompany her to Ilfracombe to help her care for Bob in his final days.

Today, many travel through the town of Leek on their way to somewhere else, yet those who do stop are quickly rewarded. Once famous for silk production, which has long ceased, Leek retains a strong sense of its past, which is a fascinating blend of global silk history, a glorious architectural heritage and moorland scenery. Although now converted to other functions, several huge mill buildings once used for making yarn and cloth survive alongside a varied and noteworthy range of distinctive buildings built during the Arts and Crafts and Gothic Revival eras. Commercial premises, private houses and a number of fine churches by distinguished architects continue to dominate the townscape, providing a strong sense of continuity.

The town, which still retains its market town status, is set against the rugged landscape of the Staffordshire Moorlands, which provide a water supply and a dramatic backdrop, with miles of meandering drystone walls and a multitude of buildings of weathered local stone. Many of the region's churches, too, are quarried from the landscape, and blend in with the hills and river valleys. They enclose another important heritage, however, that is mainly hidden from sight. Those who know where to look will discover a legacy of the time when richly coloured silks, including fine embroidery, were produced locally. Inside, in calculated contrast to the local stone, can be found embroidered silks designed to stand out as a focal point. The impact they made in the nineteenth century was profound and that effect endures, as the silks are varied and astonishing. Many are decorated with India's timeless patterns and are still radiant with the intense natural colour applied in Leek. Now a valued legacy, they speak of outstanding design and demanding techniques that were once part of daily life in town and village. They are symbolic of the town's relationship with its natural features and specialist skills, which were adapted to serve global demands. They reflect a distinct community structure along with aesthetic, entrepreneurial and spiritual values, and stand today as reminders of the global silk trade and the wider preoccupations of the residents.

Introduction

IN her desire to fulfil her promise to her father as fully as possible, it was natural that Alice should look back on the letters and diaries with which she had been so closely involved for so long, and find within herself the need for a final summing up. She had lived with her parents’ lives and work for many years by then, and it was as if Joanna, who died so young and whom she had never really known except through her father's eyes, had taken on flesh for her – as if the letters themselves had given to ‘airy nothing, a local habitation and a name’. Whatever the reason, Alice was compelled to say more.

In two remarkable essays she sums up her mother's character from all that she had read and heard, and her appearance from the portraits and memorials that survived.

In Joanna's Character we are reminded of her generosity of spirit – a selfless quality that she had evidently inherited from her own father. She also had a gift for friendship which was evidenced very early on during her schooldays, and was later perhaps most apparent in her support – emotional and practical – for her less robust friend Hennie Moore. Her care both for her brother George throughout his trouble with his hip, and for her youngest brother Bob, an invalid, was extraordinary by any standards. Lest we are tempted to think of her as some kind of saint, Alice also reminds us that she had a wicked sense of humour and enjoyed nothing more than a good tease. Given her fears about the effect on her art of being a wife and a mother, it is also touching to discover just how much she revelled in her babies and just how idyllic her short marriage proved to be.

Alice also collected together the Obituaries of her mother that appeared following her untimely death. These speak for themselves, but Alexander Gilchrist summed up the general mood in the Critic on 27 July 1861, when he said: ‘Seldom have the tidings of the premature loss of a gifted artist had so painful a significance for us as those … of the unexpected death … of Mrs H. T. Wells.

Canon, Margin, Institutions, and Modernity

Canon

The book of poetry Ethiopia (Etiopia) was published by Bernardo Atxaga in 1978 and was partially translated, with revisions, to Spanish and French with the title Poems and Hybrids (Poemas & Híbridos, 1990; Poèmes & Hybrides, 1995). This poetry book must be studied in light of the evolution that Atxaga's writing has undergone ever since. After all, the renowned author of today is the result of the evolution of that earlier young poet, and this evolution also constitutes the central conduit of Basque literature. In this chapter, I undertake an analysis of Ethiopia from the present to the past. My aim is to grasp the meaning of this historical evolution in order to understand the general situation of contemporary Basque literature, of which Atxaga is a central part.

The Spanish National Award of Narrative awarded to Atxaga in 1989 represents, in the field of literature, the ultimate achievement of a political trend that developed in Basque culture during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s: Atxaga became officially sanctioned with a prestigious Spanish literary award. ‘Officially’ here makes reference to the Spanish administrative reorganization as a system of regional autonomies (regimen de autonomías), which was the result of the political and historical struggles settled in 1978 with a new democratic constitution. It is this system of regional autonomies, and the web of languages that such a system encompasses, that determined the meaning and value of the term ‘official’.

One could argue that this political process began, at least symbolically, with the explicit references that the first Lehendakari (‘President’) of the Basque Autonomous Community, Karlos Garaikoetxea, and the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, made to two Basque poets: Aresti and Orixe, respectively back in the 1970s and early 1980s. With Atxaga's award the process took an important step further as he became, like no other, the official writer of the Basque Country. From being a friend, colleague, or just another writer among many, suddenly, Atxaga went on to become an official persona with whom all complicity was lost. Certainly, this also prompted a new development: the Spanish public came to know at least one Basque poet, apparently called Achaga, Ashaga or something of that sort, because you know, those strange Basque tx-s and the like do not make for an easy Spanish reading.

Ruth First died a violent and bloody death at the hands of the South African security police in August 1982, when she opened a letter bomb addressed to her at her office at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique (Frankel 1999: 303; Pinnock 2012: 24; Wieder 2013: 251). Her murderers’ identities are common knowledge. They were Roger Jerry Raven, Johann Coetzee and Craig Williamson, one of the apartheid-era police spies and a man at the centre of many rumours and the acknowledged agent of countless crimes (Ancer 2017; Frankel 1999: 316; Slovo 1997: 321–40; Harlow 2009: 26). After he made what he presented as a full confession of First's murder, the TRC granted Williamson amnesty for this and for the many other crimes that he had committed. He remains a free man. The force of the explosion that killed Ruth First was such that her blood and body fragments were dispersed throughout the office she shared at the university (Wieder 2013: 251). Descriptions of the murder scene linger on the details of First's dismembered body in the space where she used to work, write and read.

First's relationship to the apartheid security archive is one that haunted her, and her own work is best understood as that of a counter-archivist. Her praxis as meticulous editor of the work of others is suggestive of her writing method in 117 Days, a book typically read as a documentary report of her time in prison (Frankel 1999: 2), and as representative of the ethnographic tradition of South African resistance writing (Roux 2005, 2009, 2014a). Instead I argue that the writing method approximates more that of careful editorial practice, reading and rereading the events, redacting what the author might have left behind as part of the hostile archive that did in the end fatally seek her out. Barbara Harlow has suggested that First's work as librarian, archivist and researcher provides us with ethical protocols for the work of reconstructing the past as legacy for the future (1996: 116–17). In a subsequent commentary on First, Harlow wrote that First's life and what she calls her ‘bio-bibliography’ are in their own ways ‘instructive … in reconsidering the contemporary issues facing the “humanities” as both academic discipline and intellectual tradition’ (2009: 29).

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's promise to uncover the truth about life under apartheid provided us with a template through which to understand the South African present. The TRC's findings are archived in recordings and transcripts, and the Commission has been debated in scholarly literature and in the media, and interpreted, transformed and adapted on screen and on stage, as well as in literature. The reckoning with the past brought many secrets to light, although as Jacob Dlamini argues in Askari, and as Brian Rappert and Chandré Gould show in The Dis-Eases of Secrecy, the many secrets that were not told structure the present still, and run like veins under the skin of the current order. Eugene de Kock's testimony to the TRC has been the subject of much discussion, newly reactivated after his release from prison after having served only twenty years of what was meant to be a prison term of 212 years plus two life sentences.

Since his release, de Kock has appeared, incongruously, at two literary events, in both cases attending with his biographer Anemari Jansen. He was asked to leave the Sunday Times literary awards shortlist function (Malecowna 2016), as his presence offended many of those attending the event. He was also photographed, thinly disguised as an ordinary civilian, with Jansen at the Franschhoek Literary Festival (Gqirina 2016). He remains recognisable despite the fact that he no longer wears the distinctive thick-lensed glasses so familiar from his photographs, and that his build is much heavier. To see him drinking a glass of Porcupine Ridge wine at a public event, celebrating a book about himself, has angered many South Africans.

Even before his release he had been photographed outside prison, and his name appeared from time to time in sensational newspaper articles, reporting on the help and advice he has given to forensic teams looking for the physical remains of people killed by apartheid special forces. His complex role as special advisor came about because of his intimate knowledge of the violence (the word journalists often like to use is ‘encyclopaedic’, as if praising de Kock for remembering so much); this tainted knowledge is used to locate and return the remains to families who have been unable to bury their dead.

The South African visual artist Zanele Muholi mobilises the complex meanings of a bloody fingerprint in her series of artworks called Isilumo Siyaluma (period pain, or the pains associated with periods), the prototype of which provides the cover for this book. Muholi's menstrual artworks are made with a particular kind of blood, blood that in some languages is named differently so as to distinguish it from other bloods. Menstrual blood is differently valued symbolically, and its relation to the skin or surface of the body is distinct. The bleeding of menstruation is the result of the body naturally shedding the thickened (invisible and internal) womb lining, which replenishes itself after being shed, then grows and is shed again cyclically (periodically, as the name indicates). Menstrual blood is the body's mode of self-regulation, but it also structures and punctuates time. It is different from the other bloods that flow in a closed circulatory system through our bodies and which are brought to the surface in a blood test.

The menstrual cycle has an invisible phase (unremarkable, and unremarked upon), followed by the hyper-visible phase when bleeding occurs. This bleeding has, at various times and in various contexts, required menstruating women to be separated or to bring ourselves and our blood into invisibility. A vast scholarly and activist literature has reflected on and analysed these prohibitions, and the shame and embarrassment associated with visible menstrual blood. When menstrual blood rises to the surface (on clothing or on furniture) it has extraordinary power to unsettle and cause discomfort. It is these meanings of blood that are brought to the surface of the canvas in Muholi's work.

To make the Isilumo Siyaluma series, Muholi collected her own menstrual blood, pressed her finger into the fluid and then made prints, using her finger dipped in the blood as paint. The viscosity of menstrual blood makes it different from other human bloods as a painterly medium, and most women are used to touching this blood (at least from our own bodies). There is a welldocumented tradition of menstrual art by women artists, and Muholi's work is informed by this tradition but with activist agendas shaped and inflected by her own location. In discussions by Pumla Dineo Gqola (2006) and Nomusa Makhubu (2012) these situated agendas are shown to be central to Muholi's activist project.

THE myth of Orpheus has cast a spell on some Italian Renaissance philosophers that is quite difficult to explain. To explain why they were so fascinated by Orpheus as a historical and mythological character, in this chapter I propose that precisely because of his elusive character, Orpheus could be used as a model to shape diverse, innovative theories about the relationship between God, nature, history, man, music and creativity.

I begin with the place of Orpheus in Marsilio Ficino's Timaeus commentary (1484/96). Ficino used Orpheus to dissolve temporal and cultural discrepancies between pagan philosophy and Christian thought. In line with some of his ancient and medieval predecessors, Ficino saw Orpheus as one of the earliest prophets and the founding father of Orphism, a religious cult concerned with the mysteries of the cosmos and with the secrets of the afterlife. In order to be able to reveal these secrets, Ficino stressed that the implication of the myth was that music possessed the power to alter the nature of all parts of the Creation to the extent of even conquering death.

The second part of this chapter contrasts Ficino's interpretation of Orpheus with that of Girolamo Cardano's De tranquillitate (On Tranquillity, 1561). Cardano made the search for the secret behind those extraordinary lost powers of Orphic music one of the main themes of his musical thought. Although inspired by Ficino's philosophy, Cardano departs strikingly from his famous predecessor in seeing Orpheus above all as a mythical, secular hero, and interpreted the famous myth of the power of his music through the lens of Aristotelian philosophy.

Both case studies demonstrate how the myth of Orpheus in the Italian Renaissance functioned as a justification of new intellectual and aesthetic standards that emerged in Italy from the end of the fifteenth century onwards. In these new philosophies, Orpheus played an important role: he testified to the new powers attributed to words and music in Italian Renaissance philosophy and music theory as vehicles of the healing and enlightening power of music.

MARSILIO FICINO

Ficino's philosophy is closely connected with music and theology, and therefore the myth of Orpheus seems to fit his philosophy very well.

The text has been taken from Directorium, pp. 288–9, BM, fol. 124r–v.

Prima cautela inquisitoris est, ut si videat hareticum uti duplicitatibus verborum in suis responsionibus: utpote aquivocationibus, conditionis adiectionibus, quastionum retorsionibus, quastionum admirationibus, tergiversationibus, verborum translationibus, et sic de aliis eorum cavillationibus, qua dicta sunt supra: quod non permittat in huiusmodi persistere, sed conetur per sua interrogatoria ad propositum, de quo intendit ipse inquisitor, reducere: ut si interrogetur, an credat in unicam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam; intelligendo de ecclesia eorum, que est ecclesia malignantium: interrogetur ille de qua ecclesia dicit, et quis praest? et si dicat, quod Papa, interrogetur ubi moratur pro nunc ille Papa, et similia, prout materia requiret: et sic de aliis ad propositum, de quo quaritur, eum reducendo.

The inquisitor's first ruse is as follows: If he sees that the heretic is using verbal tricks in his replies, in the shape of equivocations, added conditions, twisting questions, wondering at questions, evasions, shifting words, and thus is showing scorn for the things which are mentioned above, the inquisitor should not allow him to persist in this way but endeavour through his interrogation to bring him back to the matter which the inquisitor himself intended. For example, if he (the heretic) is asked whether he believes in one holy Catholic Church he may understand that as being about his church, which is the church of the wicked. He should be asked what church he is speaking of and who presides over it. And if he says the Pope, he should be asked where that Pope lives at present. He should be asked such questions as are needed to bring him back from other things to the subject about which he is being questioned.