In this chapter Corinth recommends a traditional method of proportional sighting, using a knitting needle held at arm's length to measure the figure:

The first task, before beginning the actual drawing of the nude figure, is to establish the correct spatial arrangement.

Since spatial arrangement is what matters most in the making of pictures, one should start thinking about it at the outset.

In nude drawing, the goal is to use the paper as fully as possible. The highest point of the model, usually the crown of the head, should approach the upper edge of the sheet, and the lowest point, the sole of the foot, should be near the lower edge. For seated or reclining figures it may be necessary to turn the sheet crosswise, in which case one must also consider the left and right sides of the paper.

To achieve this arrangement, you must measure the nude in sections, draw a vertical line, and mark off the sections along it until they span from top to bottom edge. The nude is usually measured in head-lengths.

Besides this proportional division, you must also establish the position of other points through comparison, which I shall name later. The vertical and horizontal naturally come into play again here. At this point you will need these tools:

1. A plumb line (a piece of thread weighted at the bottom with metal);

2. A straightedge (for horizontal lines);

3. A knitting needle for sighting, to measure the proportions.

To sight: hold your arm outstretched and bring your eye, the tip of the knitting needle, and the uppermost point to be measured into one line. Then slide your thumbnail down until eye, thumbnail, and the second point align. Transfer this measurement to your drawing, and you now know how many such units compose the figure. Measure in the same way how the individual parts relate to one another. For horizontal measurements, proceed the same way from left to right. When measuring you must naturally remain at exactly the same spot and keep your arm fully extended. The slightest shift will distort the measurements and result in the most serious errors.

Corinth goes on to describe various parts of the body in detail, drawing the student’s attention to particular bones, muscles, and physical landmarks. I thought the section below was interesting because of the line from Ingres, and wonder if Corinth first heard it from Bouguereau while he was studying Académie Julian:

As mentioned above, the position of the nipples and navel should have already be indicated on the initial sketch, not only for measuring purposes but for a second reason: they give the torso its individual character. As Ingres used to say, “Le nombril est l’oeil du torse.”1 The short ribs become visible at the upper sides of the abdomen, and the serratus muscles lie over them. Below this comes a longer area free of bone, where the oblique abdominal muscles attach to sternum and pelvis.

The painter works his way through aspects of the front and rear view of a model, as well as the legs, arms, and hands, but he concludes by saying that it is not necessary for an artist to have a profound understanding of anatomy:

I hope that these detailed descriptions will allow you to make a sound nude drawing. But if someone were to ask if a knowledge of anatomy is absolutely necessary for the study of drawing, my answer would be no.

For just as a sensitive person could immediately determine if something were wrong with a drawing, even if he had never seen a naked human body before, so too will a talented beginner be able to find the right way to to proceed, relying on instinct and artistic feeling alone. And this would be a sure sign of his aptitude.

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19 April 1917

We never really understood why we were not attacked head-on. Either the enemy had overestimated our strength and wanted to surround us, which in fact they almost succeeded in doing, or our location was within range of machine guns that might have been located to the rear; we were unable to see them, but they could have been covering this very area. A few brave souls scaled the embankment, but almost all of them were shot down by a French machine gun that had already been set up on the bridge. It was a wretched thing to see these brave men defy death and climb up only to sink down and fall like puppets with their limbs dangling. Many a dashing soldier lost his life there. One of our best officers, a man who had been awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class, also went up the embankment. He was shot in the stomach when he reached the top.

We saw the poor man lying there, and we waved and shouted at him to stay still. He tried to crawl back, but the slope was very steep and he would have certainly tumbled to his death. One of our medics decided to climb up after him, under heavy fire, just to unbuckle his belt and persuade him to stay where he was for the time being. He remained lying there, and it seemed to us that he was too quiet; in fact he died after a short while. I had never spoken a word to him, but I was deeply impressed by the calm, confident, and free spirit of this heroic type and, along with the whole company, I mourned him as I have seldom mourned anyone else. The medic was a great braggart and a loudmouth, but I have never forgotten that last good deed he did for his comrade.

The seriously wounded rushed into the dugout, shouting for the medic; it was utter chaos. Anyone who found a position from which he could shoot took it and fired as fast as he could; the machine guns worked incessantly. Whenever a rifleman fell dead, his replacement would move up. The losses mounted with every passing minute.

The enemy’s advance soon slowed, and we saw that a few of them were beginning to retreat. We could only fire at the ravine to our right and left, and had no idea what was happening in front of us, or behind us. That was the dangerous thing about our position, which was truly desperate. We were completely cut off. Two of the machine guns had been damaged, and only one was still firing. We had already sent up the red flares to call for help, and apparently nobody had noticed. Now we were sending up white flares, which may have been misinterpreted. It appeared likely that we would be captured, and the lieutenant shouted that we were not to make it easy for them.

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You and I, my young friend, we naturally look with profound horror and contempt on the good folk who say: “Well, it doesn’t matter if the condition of the book is fine or poor, if the binding is tight or if the pages are loose; the important thing is that it belonged to Madame de Sévigné, or Bélise. It may smell like carnations or burnt fat, like the musk of courtesans or an honest woman’s light perfume; it is still a book... And what does it matter, after all, whether it comes from the Louvre or from Pont-Neuf.” What an execrable opinion, and a horrifying remark!1

What could be more foolish than to read and act in this way? Does it not bother you, gentlemen readers who lack a sense of smell, to hold a muck-stained book in your unwashed hands? A book that has been indelibly stained by the greasy hair and grubby fingers of some errant girl or scruffy lackey? Do you not mind flipping through a sewer, and smelling the abominable stench of a stable or some other nasty place every time you turn a page?

These sad men and stupid women, these simpletons call it a book. It is an infectious bit of cloth, a rag that has no name in any language! Bah! I would not read from those soiled pages, not even if they contained the most beautiful passages from all literature. No, I would not even read about Priam at the feet of Achilles, putting his lips to the hands that killed his son; nor of Iphigenia being brought to the altar in Euripides; nor of Anacreon under his vine; nor of the Cyclops in Theocritus contemplating the waves on the Sicilian shore.

There is nothing beautiful and good, nothing great and heroic in a humiliated, dirty book that is full of disgusting things and filth. Look into any of the gilt-edged books that some idiot has purchased and find an impurity, and someone will answer with that silly refrain: “It doesn’t matter to me!”

That person does not know how to read. He has only read tabloid newspapers, cheap novels, or historical adventure books.

While you are at it, ask him if he has no qualms about giving his arm to a woman of questionable repute who shuffles through the street in her worn-out shoes, with her nose in the air and mud on her dress. Ask him if it does not matter whether there is a spot on his coat and holes in his boots. It is just as shameful, if not more so, to have a pile of rubbish in the corner of your room, arrogantly masquerading as a library when even the rag-and-bone man would not want it.

The Obolus Press publishes the kind of books you won’t find anywhere else: works that have never been translated into English, literary and philosophical texts that have fallen out of print, and monographs about neglected European artists.

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Here are a few excerpts from Corinth’s Das Erlernen der Malerei (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1909), my translation:

It is generally assumed that people who wish to devote themselves to painting have an innate ability to do so. People call this ability talent. It shows itself in early childhood, and later in life it helps the poor to overcome their poverty, since the joy of creation renders all adversity insignificant. For the rich, conversely, this talent and joy in creative work may prevent them from frittering away their money in mere dissipation.

A professor in southern Germany once remarked, and he was not entirely wrong, that it takes three things to make a good painter: talent, industry, and money. You might lack one of these, he said, but never two. In other words, one must possess talent and industry, talent and money, or industry and money.

The creation of a work of art (a picture) requires the study of two subjects:

1. drawing

2. painting

There must also be further theoretical lessons in:

1. perspective (a sense of space and proportion)

2. human anatomy (clarity of construction; bone and muscle theory)

3. art history (studying pictures from the past in order to build on them)

Students of painting will approach the art in their own fashion. Their differing approaches are due to personal individuality.

The more talented an artist is, the more singular his perception (individuality) will appear to the public. The masses will not understand him, so his work will go unrecognized for the foreseeable future and will find no buyers. He must assert himself and compel recognition; then his fame will be all the greater and will endure beyond his death. Many an artist has only been honoured posthumously, by a better generation.

In this manual I treat chiefly of drawing and painting. The student must seek theoretical instruction in the other three subjects elsewhere, whether in books or schools.

As stated earlier, you should note how the individual parts of the head stand in relation to one another: the length and breadth of the forehead, how the eyes sit beneath it, as well as the length of the nose, the mouth, and the chin. Then observe how the major areas relate to each other in size. Consider how the area from chin to eyes compares to the forehead, and so on. It is best to begin drawing from the centre, say with the position of the eyes, and then add the rest. Besides comparing the relationship of the elements to one another, you must also determine which points of the various features lie forward or back, lower or higher.

For this purpose you have two essential guide lines: the vertical and the horizontal. These two lines are invaluable because they never shift and always meet at right angles. The vertical shows you what lies to the right or to the left; the horizontal shows you what stands higher or lower.

An example will make this clear: Take the inner corner of an eye, the edge of the nose, and the corresponding corner of the mouth on the same side of the face. Drawing a vertical line through the corner of one eye shows how much the other points deviate from it; similarly, a horizontal line drawn through that same corner shows how much higher or lower the corner of other eye stands.

To recognize patterns of light and shadow clearly and draw them accurately, one important technique is to squint or, as the French say, clignez les yeux. It is adjusting the eyes, like a camera lens, to focus on whichever parts of the object seem most important at the moment.

I cannot stress this enough: compare the various elements, and understand not only how one part relates to the others and to the whole, but also see what the movement is and how it is expressed.

The sockets, which lie beneath the frontal bone, house the eyes. These are surrounded by a ring muscle forming the upper and lower lids, both with lashes. The opening of the ring muscle determines the shape of the eye — whether it is large or small, round or elongated. Then there is the eyeball with its iris and pupil. The inner and outer corners of the eye rarely sit at the same angle. When the outer corner is higher, the eye takes on a slanted, almond-shaped look; when the inner corner is higher, the expression turns gentle, as one sees in a dog.

Indeed, it is worth noting that some part of the human face often resembles that of an animal: some faces call a bird to mind, a long hooked nose suggests a ram, and a puffy fat face with small eyes makes one think of a pig. Such observations should be cultivated diligently, for they reveal the subject’s character, and work that reveals character is always a praiseworthy thing.

The nose will be hooked or straight, depending on the shape of the nasal bone. The nasal bone and its cartilage form the bridge of the nose and, on either side, the nasal walls. On the underside of the soft tip sit the nostrils and the flared sides of the nose. The tip of the nose may be bulbous and thick, or fine and pointed; when it is large and prominent, it sometimes has a visible cleft down the centre. When a short nose is combined with a squat face, one is reminded of a bulldog; Bismarck was a striking example of this type.

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Hans Ostwald, A Moral History of the Inflation (my translation), pp. 22-23:

During the inflation, every little item, especially raw materials, took on an incredibly high value. In the controlled economy, the most basic foodstuffs were available for fractions of a cent. Currency depreciation had made rent nearly meaningless. Eventually it cost about as much to rent a two room apartment for a year as it used to for a week. But copper and bronze had great value. They had to be purchased from abroad at a high price.

As a result, the brass door handles and rods that held down carpets were stolen, and soon even the carpets themselves disappeared. Towards the end of the inflationary period, thieves risked going after public monuments, and prudent municipalities had some of their monuments locked away in warehouses. Thieves even stooped so low as to rob graves. In Stahnsdorf they stole metal funerary urns, and in the St. Paul cemetery on Berlin’s Seestraße, a woman who was there praying saw people carry off a bronze monument that weighed three hundred pounds. They stole metal grave fences and borders everywhere. Yes, even the manhole covers that were above the sewers appealed to the metal thieves. Couplings and leather straps were stolen from railway cars, and the plush covers were even cut away from the seats; some people went about wearing trousers that had the same pattern as railway upholstery.

If you would like to know more about Hans Ostwald’s account of the economic turmoil in Germany during the 1920s, you can watch this brief video or read this review in the Times Literary Supplement (paywalled).

One day, Baudelaire’s landlord complained that he was making an unbearable racket.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” he replied graciously. “When I am at home I behave like all respectable people.”

“I’m sorry, but we hear you moving furniture and banging the floor at all hours of the day and night,” answered the landlord.

Baudelaire took a serious tone. “Once again, I give you my word that nothing out of the ordinary takes place. I chop wood in the living room and drag my mistress around the floor by her hair. Everyone does this sort of thing, and you have absolutely no right to concern yourself.”

I see in the most recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement that researchers have discovered new photographs of Baudelaire’s mistress and muse Jeanne Duval.

Why translate?

Because translation is akin to romantic conquest — in its persistent and audacious pursuit, in the way it overcomes resistance, unravels secrets, and finds the decisive phrase that will unlock the heart.

Because it is a joy to convey in our own language the striking effect that the original work had on us. As Victor Hugo said: “The translator obeys the poet as the mirror obeys the light; he reflects the dazzling glow.”

Because the concentration that is required to weigh every word and find the right meaning exercises judgement, memory, and imagination at the same time, and it teaches us as much about the beauty of our own language as it does that of the source language.

Because the translator breaks the silence that separates languages and peoples. In the translator, the place where words end marks a new beginning. He both transmits and regenerates.

I stumbled across this slim collection of anecdotes and aphorisms about translation while browsing through the library stacks, and am enjoying it. A good aphorism will rattle around in your head for days. I’ve often found myself thinking about this one:

A seventeenth-century translator used to say: “The dictionary is an indispensable footman who will expel any annoying doubts. However, the translator should not allow the footman to kick him out of his own house.”

If you read French and are interested in translation, I recommend Batista’s book. If you’re in Canada, I see that Renaud Bray has copies in stock.

The stock tip was king in those days. Everyone paid hommage to it. Evenings in the pub, mornings in the barber shop, on the bus and on the suburban railway — there was always a stock market sage somewhere, offering his tips. If he had ties to big business or a bank manager, his words were regarded as divine prophecy, even if his relationship with the bank manager was only that of a clerk or a typist. Indeed, there were women who knew exactly what was going on in mining stocks. And the lovers who talked of securities between kisses also gave the best tips: I. G. Farben, Zellstoff, or Sarotti. In those days everyone knew which stocks to buy.

This was not constant throughout the inflation years, however. There were lows and plateaus between bull markets. When the markets were on an upswing, then all was well again. Take the fall of 1922 for example, when a medium-sized bank received 50,000 orders on a single day. The stock exchange had to take three days off to give the banks enough time to process the public’s orders. People speculated on everything — it did not matter if they were chauffeurs, starving homeowners, artists, or accountants. The share prices went up, though not always as much as the price of other things, such as food, for example. At the end of October the price of butter rose by 50 per cent, but stocks only increased by 20 per cent. From early 1922 until the autumn of that year, the price of stocks on the exchange rose two and a half times, but the value of the US dollar increased twentyfold during that period, and goods were twenty-five times more expensive. So businessmen and producers were more secure than speculators! Then things resumed their upward swing again, as one young man described in his rapturous account of those days:

The inflation, you could really live then! Time was on our side. I had no worries, so I did not need to think much. I used to take a thousand marks to the bank in the morning — not too early, though, since you’d have a good sleep first. It was always late in the morning … So with a thousand marks you’d go to the bank and place an order to buy four hundred marks’ worth of shares. In those days you only needed to put down a 20 or 25 per cent deposit! … The bank would buy the shares. And one or two days later there were shares in my account worth six, eight, or even ten or twelve thousand marks! Then you only needed to sell off a small portion to balance the account. The bank would have its four thousand, and I had four or six thousand left over. Well, then you’d put in another order to buy, and in a few days the stocks would go up again — it was easy to make up the difference to the bank from the gains, and I still had a nice balance in my account.

That was all you needed to do then, just go to the bank in the morning. Well, perhaps take a quick look at the financial papers once in a while.

“Oh, even that wasn’t necessary!” said one older man. “The stocks went up anyway — they did the work for us!”

“The only unpleasant thing was sometimes the crowd at the bank… Didn’t everyone run to the bank? Didn’t you have shares too? Ah, the paper stock certificates were so beautiful. Rudelsdorf, Simpelline, and Zellstoff…’

“Well, I did not buy such elegant stocks,” said the older man. “At first I always used a portion of my salary to buy shares in several smaller firms. I sold them off bit by bit over the course of the month. My family and I were always able to live off the proceeds of each share for several days.”

“Yes, those were the days!” exclaimed the younger man. “I lived like a king! Like a king!”

“Well, I didn’t have it bad either,” said the older man.

“Well, you could have purchased larger shares. They rose even more quickly. There was really something left over after you sold those! It did not matter what you bought. You didn’t need to put in much mental effort… We lived, oh how we lived! Every night, every night! Always on the move. The finest and most expensive things! I lived like a king, like a king!”

This way of life and leisure was only possible thanks to credit: The banks gave it to the customers, and the Reichsbank provided it to the banks. In the early fall of 1922, banks were given a substantial portion of the 100 billion marks that had just been printed. The money was originally intended to stimulate the economy, but more than anything it encouraged speculation.

If you would like to know more about this book, you can watch this brief video or read this review in the Times Literary Supplement (paywalled).

I have a few “imperfect” hardcover copies on hand that I am selling at 25% off; the text on the spine was printed a little too high, otherwise the book is fine.

Just enter IMPERFECT in the coupon code box during checkout:

If the IMPERFECT coupon code stops working, it means I’ve sold them all.

Note that, under the USMCA, Canadian books remain exempt from tariffs. American customers will not face any additional taxes or fees.

In the preface Guillemin explains that he is writing for all the curious souls who are interested in the heavenly bodies but have neither the time nor the inclination to become professional astronomers (my translation):

I hope that this book is as easy and pleasant to read as a novel, or at least as interesting as the accounts of travellers who have returned to tell of unknown lands. Is this not also a voyage, but one of the mind? A journey which follows science through celestial regions, moving from one stage to another, or rather from sun to sun, to the utmost limits of the visible universe? It is true that the reader will not find any sudden twists and turns, or be surprised by the emotions that make our hearts beat faster when we think about how our fellow creatures endured hardships — but they will be given an opportunity to contemplate the most sublime of all dramas: the majesty of great wonders, the unalterable, the eternal harmony of the laws of nature.

Leafing through the fourth edition on Gallica (Paris: Hachette, 1870), I was struck by the illustrations that map the sky over Paris at different points of the year. I grew up in a small town and, although I love Montreal, I do miss seeing the stars at night.

What a joy it must have been in the days before light pollution, to be able to raise your eyes and say with Baudelaire:1

     I want to watch the blue mist of the night come on,
     The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
     The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
     And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
     The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
     And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
     I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
     And build me stately palaces by candlelight.

Here are the plates showing the cityscape at night (I increased the contrast slightly):

With that, I am “closing the shutters and pulling the curtains tight” over this blog for a few weeks while I take time away from computer screens and enjoy the holidays.

Of course I’ll continue to ship books to customers who order them from The Obolus Press, but the digital fast and real-life feasting begins today.

Best wishes to the friends and strangers who follow along here. I’ll return in 2026.

After the endless tension of the last few hours, I was about to crawl into the dugout, but at that moment a large shell exploded directly above me. I did not see anything. Instead I felt rather than heard a powerful blow. The men around me fell down with loud cries. I stood unharmed, but I was deaf and almost passed out from fear. I later learned that two or three of the men who were standing beside me had been killed instantly and that just as many, including our platoon leader, had been seriously wounded. I went into the tunnel and leaned against the wall. A kind of crying fit came over me; I can still see a wounded man, stripped naked, lying on a stretcher, bleeding from several locations. A corporal who, like me, had escaped unharmed but was in shock, fell down unconscious. I caught him and then sat down in a corner and drifted out of myself. Then I was seized by chills, similar to what I had experienced earlier at Verdun. I shook back and forth all night, but in the end my nerves calmed down again and I was able to stand my two hours of guard duty like everyone else.

We had been without a doctor until then, but he came up to the position that night and applied proper bandages. He also gave painkillers to the hopeless cases, and their constant moaning ceased. Under the cover of darkness we worked with redoubled zeal to fortify the position, and when we were not working we stood watch at posts which were on the embankment near the railway station and at the top of the ravine overlooking the field. Food carts even arrived, bringing two large pots of cold braised cabbage for every eight men, and a canteen of coffee. The latter amounted to two tablespoons and one sip per soldier. But then bread and fat also arrived, and we came back to life.

The position facing the enemy required the highest level of attention, and the others were on constant alert, so it was impossible to sleep properly the entire time. My post was on the right slope and I had to keep watch over the dreaded signalman’s hut — without allowing myself to be seen, of course.

On one occasion, I noticed that an enemy observer used to emerge from the hut every minute or so, only to disappear again immediately. The observer at our machine gun position could not see this spot. I raised my rifle and aimed calmly, as if I were lining up a target at the shooting range. The Frenchman appeared, I pulled the trigger, and at that very moment he disappeared. The man at our machine gun post later told me that, after I had fired, he had seen the French soldiers who were active behind the hut rush towards the location, but he had not been able to make out anything else. It may well be that this shot cost a Frenchman his life. The memory of it weighs heavily upon me, but I did what I was required to do as a soldier — and in this case I had no choice, given that he was certainly acting as the observer for the sniper who had inflicted such heavy casualties on us.

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In this instalment, Koch is relegated to painting road signs. When he points to one of his typefaces in the newspaper, a fellow soldier thinks he is putting on airs.

Tonight, once again, I am really tired of it all. On 18 November there was work duty to clear the road, and the whole squad had to shovel away the big mess of snow. It was cold and we had to stay outside through lunch. Towards the south there was a steep mountain range covered in fresh snow. In the middle of a meadow stood a lonely, sick horse with his head hanging low. He didn’t move all day and probably remained that way until he fell down and died of hunger and exhaustion. I have often seen such poor, abandoned animals in Serbia. We marched back at 4 pm. The road was blocked up and we were overtaken by a long column of prisoners. It was a familiar sight, although the indescribable misery of these sick, weak, half-starved people never ceases to move us. Women were peering anxiously into the ranks of men. Suddenly a young woman cried out and rushed towards one of them, who immediately fell into her arms. They only managed to exchange a few hurried words, and then the German cavalryman who was bringing up the rear rode up and struck him on the head with his lance; the prisoner quickly returned to the column and, without looking back, trudged away from his home and his wife.

On 19 November I was ordered to go and to work as a painter, specifically to make road signs in German. We were in a carpenter’s shop and it was quite comfortable, all very dry and warm. There was not much to do, and for the most part we sat on a workbench and chatted. I struck up a conversation with the young soldier who was next to me; he was the son of a book printer. We talked about a number of things, and I asked him if he knew any of the newer typefaces. He replied eagerly and confidently that he did. There was a newspaper on the table that used my typeface, and I asked him if he was familiar with it. He didn’t know the name straight away; I said it was Kochschrift and that I had designed it.1 He looked at me incredulously and thought that I might have set the type, but when I explained that I had created it and that my name was Koch, he shook his head and explained that he couldn’t believe it since, as far as he knew, only professors designed those kinds of things. I kept silent, embarrassed, and on the way home I had to think seriously about whether I really had made the typeface. That was my only moment of triumph as a type designer, and it fell miserably flat.

I’ll return to my translation of Rudolf Koch’s memoir next week.

Many wartime memories must have been stirred by events marking this past Year of the Veteran.1 My own are of the RCAF’s radar detachment at Cape Scott, that tip of land tilted slightly to the west at the northern end of Vancouver Island. Following Pearl Harbour, the defence of Canada’s west coast became a priority, and Cape Scott was chosen as the site for one of a chain of radar detection stations stretching from Victoria to the Alaska border. By the time I arrived in February of 1943, construction was complete and the station was fully operational.

Vital to its survival were craft such as the Mermaid and Combat, 60-foot fishing boats that had been commandeered for the duration to serve as supply ships. They had crews of about ten, all with Air Force rank so that a deckhand might have the incongruous title of Leading Aircraftman. Their home base was Port Hardy, the most northerly port of call on the island for the commercial passenger and cargo vessels that plied the inner channel. The voyage from there to Cape Scott was a hazardous one and could be made only under certain wind and water conditions. If unfavourable weather conditions held for several days, men at the Cape would go on emergency rations, and sometimes mail, fresh meat and tinned milk were dropped by plane. Men on their way to a posting there would be held at Port Hardy or at an RCAF seaplane base at Coal Harbour, some ten miles south, until weather was deemed suitable to attempt the trip.

There were two parts to the station at Cape Scott: the operations site and the camp-site. At the former, the radar equipment for detection of enemy aircraft and the tracking of our own planes stood atop a headland at the very tip of the cape, while at the latter, sleeping quarters, orderly room, mess hall, canteen, sick bay and the other buildings with more domestic uses occupied much lower ground some distance away. Some of these structures stood in a bog, and wooden catwalks connected one with another. A makeshift road consisting mostly of two plank tracks connected camp and operations and enabled the station transport truck to travel between the two. Along the way there was Cape Scott Sand Neck, a bridge of sand that actually joins the Cape to the island, and often after a high wind we had to dig out the plank tracks before the truck could proceed.

Except during the very worst windstorms when the revolving aerial was locked fast in one position, we were “on the air” around the clock, and the radar “mechs” and operators had to work in shifts at the operations site. In addition, we all took turns on wood-cutting detail. The original plan had been to supply the detachment with coal for heating and cooking, but getting it there was difficult and driftwood was so abundant on the beaches that burning wood seemed more sensible, even to the military mind.

Also, whenever the supply boat visited — which was about every other day, weather permitting — everyone who was off duty swarmed down to the beach to help with the unloading: “organized sports” it was called. There was no wharf or float and no shelter from the heavy seas. The supply ship used to anchor off shore and lower its dinghy, while a rowboat from the Cape detachment set out from shore; both small boats then went back and forth between supply ship and beach until the incoming cargo was all on shore. Usually the mail bag came ashore first; the corporal clerk would take it to the orderly room and have letters and parcels from home all sorted and ready for distribution by the time the “organized sports” were over. (Some years later one of the corporal clerk’s daughters turned up in a Grade 10 class I taught, confirming that the whole experience had not been a dream.)

Then came the sides of beef, sacks of potatoes, cartons of canned goods, pieces of technical equipment, hardware, housekeeping and medical supplies. And there were barrels of oil, always barrels of oil. Oil was our life blood, since it was required to fuel the diesel engines that powered the generators that provided the electricity that ran the equipment that was our reason for being there. The barrels were tossed over the side of the vessel and then they were shepherded to shore by dinghy and rowboat and, closer to the beach, by our guys in wet suits or swimming trunks, depending on the weather. I was not at the Cape when the 1500 pound safe was delivered by the Combat, but the saga of its being unloaded and brought ashore in the dingy became one of the legends of the west coast detachments. And no easier than the safe to bring ashore was a piano for the canteen which, as it turned out, no one could play.

Other, unscheduled, events required everyone to pitch in on his off-duty hours. For example, in late summer of the year that I was there the B. C. Star, sister ship of the Mermaid and Combat, disappeared with all hands while headed for a detachment in the Queen Charlottes. We were requested to trace on foot the shoreline of the Cape as far as possible in both directions to search for wreckage that may have washed ashore. Nothing was found.

One might think that without such off-duty emergencies and in such a place that boredom would set in. But such was not the case. We did our washing, played ping pong, listened to records, played cards, wrote letters, read, and shot the breeze. Two radar operators went into business and for a price did the laundry for those guys who, even in these circumstances, could not bring themselves to do their own. The process involved not only washing the various items of apparel, but firing up the woodstove to heat the water used. One radar mechanic in his off-duty hours became a barber. We started a mimeographed weekly called The Isolationist, and we produced a talent night.

The supply boat usually brought a movie that was shown each evening until a replacement arrived on the next boat. While I was there, we happened to get a run of movies with Ginger Rogers, one of the oldies that she had made with Fred Astaire and a number of the more recent ones that she made without him. The corporal clerk wrote her a letter on our behalf telling her that she had been named the Sweetheart of Cape Scott. In return we received a number of glossy publicity stills that we tacked up on the orderly room walls. The photographs were accompanied by a signed note so badly typed that we figured all the competent studio stenographers in Hollywood had gone into aircraft plants and Ginger had typed it herself.

The canteen where the films were shown was, of course, the most popular building at the camp-site. It was the scene of endless table tennis tournaments and of heroic drinking parties every night after the supply ship had brought a new supply of beer. One night in September, 1943 there was free beer for all to celebrate Italy’s surrender to the Allies and, for those who didn’t drink, the equivalent value in chocolate bars. Occasionally a padre was dropped off, and for the service which he conducted a makeshift altar would be draped with fresh cedar boughs and topped off with a driftwood cross.

Most of these activities could be carried out on the many days when rain came down in sheets for hours at a time. The rain seemed to remind us just how the forest that surrounded us came to be so dense and lush and green and why one day it would reclaim our settlement and cover our every trace. But on those days when the sun shone, we explored the nine sandy beaches and countless rocky coves. We played volley ball on the sand and hunted for shells and strange driftwood shapes from which we made lamp bases. We lay in the sun and tried to articulate our feelings about the place and why we were there. I don’t suppose the words pollution or environment ever passed our lips, but I think we realized that we were in a rather special place. We speculated about the future of the Cape; we wondered whether we were the last to see those beaches stretching empty and unspoiled for miles before post-war development would turn them over to the tourist and lumbering industries.

Fortunately, we were not. In 1973 Cape Scott Provincial Park was established, and that wilderness, never quite tamed by us, would remain as it was for others to enjoy. It is accessible only by trails, and the trailhead is reached only by a logging road from Port Hardy; now a thriving community of 5000 and the northern terminus of the Island Highway down to Victoria. The intrepid hikers in the park are given various warnings in the park brochures: “the park is a wilderness area without supplies or equipment of any kind”; “torrential rains can be expected at any time and may last for days on end”; however, “the visual and emotional rewards, especially on a clear day, are beyond compare.” We knew all about the torrential rains that lasted for days on end, and we also had those visual and emotional rewards.

Some years ago I wrote to the B.C. government to ask whether there was any kind of memorial in the park to commemorate the RCAF years at Cape Scott. A reply from Premier Vander Zalm himself said that there was no knowledge of such a memorial to the RCAF in Cape Scott Provincial Park.

I am glad that the B.C. government has done what it could to preserve the natural beauty of Cape Scott, and one hopes that the hardy visitors to the park will continue to see those silver sands as we saw them those many years ago and not stained with globs of bunker fuel and strewn with the carcasses of strangulated birds after another Exxon Valdez. But it would also be gratifying if somewhere along the trail they might come across a discreetly placed plaque commemorating us and the time when we were there, when Ginger Rogers was Sweetheart of the Cape.

After the war Fred Farr studied English language and literature at Victoria College, University of Toronto, graduating in 1949. He became a teacher and spent most of his career at Downsview Collegiate.

Fred was on a distant branch of the family tree (the husband of my first cousin, once removed), but to me he was a close, avuncular friend. He died on this day in 2012.

He asked me to type up this account of his time at Cape Scott for publication — I can’t remember if we sent it to the Grope and Flail or the University of Toronto alumni magazine. In any case, it wasn’t printed. I found it while cleaning some digital clutter, and decided to post it on Substack; perhaps the relatives of other men who served at Cape Scott will find it.

The shipping companies we use now have systems in place that allow us to send books to American customers without incurring additional fees.

Canadian books are exempt from tariffs under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), so there will be no extra charges at delivery if you buy from www.oboluspress.com

The German typographer Rudolf Koch (1876–1934) wrote a memoir about his experiences during the First World War. I am translating it into English, and sharing excerpts from my first draft as I go. Previous posts are here.

Near Rhiems, April 1917

Now we entered the communication trench. It was about 9 o’clock in the morning. The French had been pushed back in hand-to-hand combat the day before, and we soon saw the gruesome traces of the fight. We shuddered as we hurried past a spot where there had been a direct hit on one of our machine guns; no one who has seen such a thing should describe it to others. The only lesson to be drawn from such sights is that one’s eyes learn to bear the most dreadful scenes, and this is something that cannot be conveyed when talking about it afterwards. Doing so only arouses horror, a horror that is much greater in the uncertainty and darkness of one’s imagination than it is in the bright light of day.

We then encountered the first French corpses. Neither I nor anyone else had ever seen such terribly mutilated bodies and I still remember that, when our section needed to come to a halt for a moment, a call came from the men in the rear saying that they wanted to move farther up, since they could not bear the sight of it — and these were soldiers who had fought at Verdun. The dead were all French, white, and they were wearing brand new uniforms, so there was no doubt that they had only arrived at the front a short time ago.

During the night the bodies had been moved a little to one side, after rigor mortis had already set in. With their pallid limbs they stood out in the wind like figures in a wax museum.

It was a path full of horrors but, despite how gruesome it was, I also felt a certain grotesque magnificence in Nature, even in the appalling violation of its works.

We stopped once again. The men went through the backpacks of the dead and found biscuits, chocolate, sardines, and bread — beautiful, white, French bread. One man found an entire loaf that was soaked with blood all along one side; after a brief moment of hesitation we sliced up it up and shared it out. But I really disliked the taste, and did not finish eating my piece.1

No tariffs on Canadian books

Books printed in Canada are exempt from tariffs under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). American customers will NOT have to pay fees when Obolus Press titles arrive in the mail. No nasty surprises at delivery!

We were forced to temporarily suspend sales to the US earlier this year because shipments were being delayed at the border, but these problems have been solved.

Still shipping during the Canada Post strike

For Canadian buyers, we ship by courier and are unaffected by the Canada Post strike.

Comment below or email sales@oboluspress.com should you have any questions.

As to what the future holds, that is difficult to say; the CUSMA free trade agreement is due to be renegotiated in 2026.

I have a monograph on the academic painter William Bouguereau in the works, and I was thinking about trying something higher end, with sewn bindings and thick art paper... but if I were to print it in China as planned, anyone who buys a copy from the States will (by my calculations) still get dinged with a 27.5% tariff. Cue the angry customer emails and reversed credit card charges. So that project is on hold.1

I might produce it as a small format, limited edition that can be shipped overseas at a reasonable price. There is, after all, a Commonwealth full of potential readers. What’s old is new again.2

I’m in the midst of Rudolf Koch’s memoir of the First World War, and it is full of these oddities. In one entry he says he “rolled up” his great coat before an attack. What does that mean, exactly? Did German grenadiers storm the trenches with grey, woollen pool noodles flopping around on their backs? A quick search turned up this YouTube video, showing how the men would fold their outerwear into a canvas square which was then wrapped around a canteen and secured with leather straps to create a Sturmgepäck, or assault backpack. Very tidy:

In another, stranger passage Koch describes how some of his comrades converted munitions into cooking fuel:

I met a few other soldiers on the way back [from the first aid station] but they were afraid that the shelling would start again and they had no interest in accompanying me back to the front line. These fellows had a knack for more peaceful pursuits. One of them was using a hand grenade to heat his coffee. If you unscrewed the handle of this murderous device, you could safely light the contents and get a nice, even-burning flame. Another man was busy frying a couple of lovely eggs using the same technique.

I had never heard of grenades being used this way. Given the details and the date in Koch’s diary, my first guess was that these men had disassembled an early M15 version of the Stielhandgranate since the detonator was kept separate and the explosive charge was ammonal.

Initially I wondered if the TNT used in later models of German “potato masher” hand grenades might have been too powerful for this sort of application. Surely the whole thing would blow up in their faces… But then I found a YouTube video demonstrating (at the 16 minute 43 second mark) that several grams of TNT powder can indeed be set alight to produce a big, smokey (and toxic) flame. So perhaps the later M16 version could have been used to heat rations too.

My interest in militaria and explosives is academic, but I fear my innocent googling may have put me on a watch list. It occurred to me afterwards that my keywords were a little spicy.

Should this blog fall silent, you can assume that the Mounties took me away.

All of my posts are free to read, but if you would like to help bail me out of prison I welcome small, one-off donations via PayPal.

In this instalment, you will find links to the original German songs on YouTube.1

From a letter written while on the train to Belgrade

30 October 1915

We are quite comfortable in our carriages. It is not heated but, given the cramped conditions and our woollen blankets, it is warm enough. Once in a while a window needs to be opened to let out a thick cloud of smoke. A Bohemian peasant woman waves to us and, as we pull away, she wipes her eyes with the hem of her skirt. The overall mood is quite cheerful. A few of us are more pensive. We sing a great deal — all of the songs that really suit the situation. No one would say what he truly feels in words, but in song everyone can express it without shyness. It doesn’t count; other people do not take it seriously, and you can shout out your feelings and not be laughed at. As gloomy as it is, the song Morgenrot gives everyone courage:

     I will quietly submit to God’s will,
     And I will fight bravely.
     Should I meet Death,
     I will die a good cavalryman. 

But they change the last line to say “a good infantryman” instead of cavalryman. After that we sang Weh, daß wir scheiden müssen:

     Alas, we must part,
     Let me kiss you once again,
     I must ride at the Emperor’s side
     Into treacherous Switzerland

and then Heute scheid’ ich, morgen wand’r ich with the second verse:

     If, under the open sky,
     I should fall asleep on the battlefield,
     Out of my grave will bloom,
     Out of my grave will bloom,
     Sweet flowers: Forget-me-not!

The lads are very proud of the long journey that they are undertaking and send postcards to every acquaintance they can think of. One of them writes the name of each stop in his notebook. The region is very beautiful and everything is admired in great detail. The country folk all wave to us. In one farmer’s garden, a girl and boy were standing together. When the girl saw us, she threw her arms around the boy’s neck as if she wanted to keep him there. They both waved as we rode away.

“These are my boots. I wore them when I was 40 years old, while serving as a grenadier — in the sand of the Marque river, on the country roads of Serbia, in the assault on Dead Man’s Hill near Verdun, in the field hospital, and at home. I wore them again in the Champagne region and near Rheims during the heaving fighting in front of Brimont, where they were wrecked by a French grenade on 2 May 1917.”

Rudolf Koch, Soldier’s Boots, woodcut (1919)

The German typographer Rudolf Koch (1876–1934) spent much of his career creating blackletter Fraktur scripts, but in the English-speaking world he is probably best known for his Kabel and Neuland typefaces. They are still popular today. In fact, of the Hoosier Type Co. mentioned the former in a Substack note just a few days ago.

After a false start as a book illustrator and cover designer, Koch began working at the Rudhard’sche (later Klingspor) type foundry in Offenbach in 1906. He was also an instructor at the city’s Hochschule für Gestaltung. After the war he established a community workshop, where he and several assistants taught handicrafts such as calligraphy and woodcut printing. The notes to the Printing and the Mind of Man exhibition that was held in London in 1963 suggest that Koch “enjoyed a reputation in Germany similar to that of Eric Gill in England”, which I think is a fair assessment. Koch was heavily influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement, and once said that he felt such an affinity for William Morris that he found it impossible to believe that Morris was not a German. Behold the pinnacle of Teutonic praise.

During the First War Koch signed up as an enlisted man and served from 1915 to 1917; he was 40 years old, and it was tough going for him physically and socially. His wartime memoir, Die Kriegserlebnisse des Grenadiers Rudolf Koch, is a straightforward and often harrowing account of life on the march and in the trenches.

I have described this part of my life for my children and grandchildren because it seemed important enough to write down; as commonplace as the events may be for those who served in the war, they may still be of interest to my descendants. I sincerely hope that that they will be spared from such bitter and difficult times. I also feel compelled to tell them that I did my duty honourably, and that I am both proud and pleased to have done so.

— Rudolf Koch in the introduction to his memoir

The book was published in Leipzig by the Insel Verlag in 1934 (Koch died that same year), and it is set in a Fraktur typeface that the author designed himself. It has never been translated into English, so I’ve decided to take on the job. I am about half way through, and will be sharing excerpts on this blog over the next few months.

If you know of anyone who is interested in typography or the Great War (I’m not sure how far these two circles would overlap on a Venn diagram), please let them know that they can follow along here.

A Word About Shipping, Tariffs, and Future Projects

When Patrick Kurp interviewed me for the New Criterion a while ago, I mentioned that I was translating Marius Vachon’s 1899 biography of the French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905). I’ve posted a few excerpts and regular readers might be wondering when, if ever, it will be published.

Damned if I know!

The new US tariffs have me scratching my head about where to print and how to distribute. I had been planning something a little higher end for Bouguereau (a limited edition with sewn bindings and thick art paper) but if I print it in China as I had originally intended, I believe that anyone who buys a copy from the States will be dinged with a 27.5% tariff.1

And it’s not just Chinese-made books that are posing problems: I’ve been forced to suspend sales of all paper books to the US yet again. One of the shipping companies I use recently warned that if Customs and Border Protection finds just one package on their vehicle that has been misdeclared or contains obscure country of origin information, the entire truck will be denied entry and sent back to Canada. Cue the emails from angry customers and reversed credit card charges.2

Throw in the never-ending Canada Post labour dispute, and I wonder if the Obolus Press will have to switch to producing nothing but e-books…

In any case, I’ve set Bouguereau to one side and am now translating Koch’s memoir. I’ll reconsider things in a few months’ time.

If you would like to support me as I ferry neglected artists and authors into English and back into print, I welcome small, one-off donations via PayPal.

The overwhelming greed of those years led to incidents reminiscent of the Middle Ages. People caught up in these rackets lost their consciences entirely, as Maximilian Harden relates in the report from Hamburg that he wrote for Die Zukunft in July 1919:

The Heil factory, which produced goods for mass consumption, made its canned food from the flesh of dead rats, dogs, and cats. The pestilent smell gave them away, and then it was too late. The gathering crowd discovered the reeking carcasses, and raised their fists in fury at the greedy factory owner who had turned a profit in such an ignominious way. A local correspondent describes what happened next:

In Hamburg, the town hall square and Jungfernstieg were filled with angry people. They were pulling a cart in the midst of them. An older, pale-faced man was standing in it and, with trembling hands, held a sign in front of himself that read: “I am the manager of the Heil plant.” Behind him was a man with another sign: “The Foreman.” The people were holding pieces of rats, cats, and dogs in both their hands. Now and then the cart stopped and the men had to eat from a pot. I could not see what it contained. Some said it was raw cat meat, others described it as “Heil Soup.” The thing was the absolute essence of popular justice, and the masses enjoyed the show.

If you would like to know more about this title, you can watch this brief video or read this review in the Times Literary Supplement (paywalled). There’s also a PDF e-book.

25% Off, While Supplies Last

I have a few “imperfect” hardcover copies on hand that I am selling at 25% off; the text on the spine was printed a little too high, otherwise the book is fine.

☞ To buy an imperfect copy click here and then add the book to your cart — the coupon code for 25% off should be applied automatically.

If not, just enter the IMPERFECT code in the coupon box during checkout:

If the IMPERFECT coupon code stops working, it means I’ve sold them all.

Note that, under the USMCA, Canadian books remain exempt from tariffs. American customers will not face any additional taxes or fees.

No artistic city has been painted more often than Venice, and none is more appealingly and mysteriously changeable. It blooms in the sun and is a beauty at night. It is happy and tragic, loving and fearful, obvious and secret. It is triumphant in the present and overwhelmed by the weight of the past. It is glorious and outmoded, magnificent and eroded, a heroic ruin. How does one see it, grasp it, interpret it? A cosmopolitan crowd swarms the place. The barbarians descend from rainy countries, the Germans who tyrannized over the city for a century and a half still lust after it, and it remains the traditional honeymoon spot for dull, bourgeois couples.

The idle, the vicious, and the depraved of every nation frolic in Venice, just as profligate and playful as they were in the 18th century, when the city was at its nadir: dispossessed of its colonial empire, its arsenals empty and its commerce dead, its queen turned courtesan, the city became a pleasure destination for all the debauchees of Europe. All this, combined with the visitors who are infatuated with painting and architecture, gives one a false impression of Venice and its inhabitants, who hide inside during the tourist season and detest the foreigners who make the hotel owners and common people rich.

Visit www.oboluspress.com to buy a copy of this translation.

If you would like to support me as I ferry neglected artists and authors into English and back into print, I welcome small, one-off donations via PayPal.

In order to be happy I need to know that you are happy, but I do not need to see it first-hand. I have always said that it would be very difficult to live with you, and the closer I observe you, the greater this difficulty appears to be, at least to my eyes. I make no secret of it. As long as you are the way that you are, I would rather make any sacrifice than come to this decision [i.e., to tell him to stay away]. I am well aware of your good points. I am not shying away from your nature or inner qualities, but rather your outward manner, your opinions, your judgements, and your habits. Simply put, I cannot share your views about anything that concerns the outside world. Your moroseness, your complaints about things that cannot be avoided, your bizarre judgements which you pronounce like an oracle without allowing anyone to speak against them — these things oppress me and ruin my good humour without being of any benefit to you. Your nasty disputations, your lamentations over the stupidity of the world and human suffering disturb my nights and give me bad dreams.

Subhead courtesy of Elisabeth Welch.