Razumov & the Ile Rousseau

“… Write, he had said. I must write – I must, indeed! I shall write – never fear. Certainly. That’s why I am here. And for the future I shall have something to write about.”

            He was exciting himself by this mental soliloquy. But the idea of writing evoked the thought of a place to write in, of shelter, or privacy, and naturally of his lodgings, mingled with a distaste for the necessary exertion of getting there, with a mistrust as of some hostile influence awaiting him within those odious four walls.

            “Suppose one of these revolutionists,” he asked himself, “were to take a fancy to call on me while I am writing?” The mere prospect of such an interruption made him shudder. […] “I wish I were in the middle of some field miles away from everywhere,” he thought.

            He had unconsciously turned to the left once more and now was aware of being on a bridge again. This one was much narrower than the other, and instead of being straight, made a sort of elbow or angle. At the point of that angle a short arm joined it to a hexagonal islet with a soil of gravel and its shores faced with dressed stone, a perfection of puerile neatness. A couple of tall poplars and a few other trees stood grouped on the clean, dark gravel, and under them a few garden benches and a bronze effigy of Jean Jacques Rousseau seated on its pedestal. […] He had found precisely what he needed. If solitude could ever be secured in the open air in the middle of a town, he would have it there on this absurd island, together with the faculty of watching the only approach.”

I was running late when I caught my train from Martigny. The journey to Geneva, with some very beautiful views for most of the way along the coast of Lake Leman, would take almost 2 hours. As the train pulled out of the station I worked out that I had two possible options. I could get off the train one stop early and attempt to make my way there on foot. Or I could go straight to the airport and leave my bag in the left luggage whilst I made a dash into town and back in a taxi. As I didn’t know the streets of Geneva, and I had no map of the place with me, I decided to hang the expense and go with option two. Trundling a suitcase blind through bustling streets, navigating purely by luck and vague inklings didn’t seem the sensible choice given that I had a flight to catch. Besides, there seemed something wholly appropriate about hurriedly stuffing my suitcase into a coin operated locker at the airport and then hailing a taxi.

“Where to?” the taxi driver asked, in French.

“ Île Rousseau, s’il vous plait,” I replied.

In my mind, I like to imagine the taxi pulling away and me casting a glance out of the back window, just to check I wasn’t being shadowed. But in reality the taxi driver wasn’t Swiss and had to get out a map for me to point out where I wanted to go. He seemed a little bemused.

“Tourist?”

“Oui” – Non! ... Je suis une spy!! ... Allez, Île Rousseau – Tout suite!

To be fair though, the taxi ride did feel a little like a chase scene in a spy movie as it was pretty much a swift almost straight descent through the streets of Geneva to the lake front. And as the taxi pulled round into a little street overlooking the water I looked out of the window to see I was about to step out of the car at the entrance to a very plush hotel. I paid the driver and he very helpfully explained where to go to find a taxi rank to get back to the airport.

“Merci beacoup.”

I got out of the taxi and the hotel doormen looked momentarily bemused.

“Bonjour,” I hailed them with a big smile and then, as the taxi sped away, I turned and walked purposefully in the other direction. 

Crossing the street I could see the little island ahead of me. It wasn’t at all how I’d imagined it, although it fitted the description in Joseph Conrad’s novel exactly. Two angled foot bridges meet in the middle of the river channel and at the apex a short bridge lead across to the tiny little island. Just as Conrad describes, its sides are made of dressed stone, there are a few tall trees under which are some benches, the ground is mostly gravel, and there is a refreshment kiosk. A road bridge passes close by on the far side of the island, beyond which stretches the vast expanse of the lake. The only things which seem to be different were the modern modes of conveyance zipping noisily across the road bridge in each direction, and, of course, the enormous jet of water spouting out of the lake, which an hour or so later I could clearly see out of my aeroplane’s window as I soared into the clear blue sky. The bustle of people on the island was perhaps a contrast to the scene in the book too. I doubt Mr Razumov would get the peace enough to scribble his secret notes there today, although I could well imagine two spies making a secret rendezvous here, strolling about and talking in hushed tones, their conversation masked by the rushing sound of the wind passing through the leaves of the tall Italian poplars and the weeping willows.

As I’d sat on the train, watching the shimmering blue of the lake and the white misty wall of mountains on the far shore passing by, I’d been reminded of another passage in a different book which I’d also read along time ago. This one was by Jean Jacques Rousseau himself. It was the distant sight of a boat across the water which had prompted its recall.

“My morning exercise and its attendant good humour made it very pleasant to take a rest at dinner-time, but when the meal went on too long and fine weather called me, I could not wait till the others had finished, and leaving them at table I would make my escape and install myself alone in a boat, which I would row out into the middle of the lake when it was calm; and there, stretching out full-length in the boat and turning my eyes skyward, I let myself float and drift wherever the water took me, often for several hours on end, plunged in a host of vague yet delightful reveries, which though they had no distinct or permanent subject, were still in my eyes infinitely preferred to all that I had found most sweet in the so-called pleasures of life. Often reminded by the declining sun that it was time to return home, I found myself so far from the island that I was forced to row with all my might in order to arrive before nightfall.”

It wasn’t until I returned home and looked up the passage once again that I realised he hadn’t actually been writing about his native Lake Geneva, but a different lake – Lake Biel (or Bienne) – further north, where he had lived for a time. Rousseau’s name is rightly celebrated in Geneva now, perhaps the city’s most famous ‘citoyen’ even – but the fact his brooding bronze effigy sits alone isolated on a little island maybe says something about the contemporary esteem he was once held in by his fellow Genevans during his own lifetime. His final resting place is in the suitably august crypt of the Pantheon in Paris. He had lived out his last years in exile in France and died there in 1778. The statue on the island in Geneva was erected in 1834. Sitting on the train I was sure most people here would know who Jean Jacques Rousseau was, but how many people I wondered would recall the enigmatic Monsieur Razumov? An intense, and darkly introspective Russian student, sat scribbling away in the shadow of that monument. Not many I suspect, and not least because he never existed – or at least, he has only ever existed in the mind’s eye of his creator, Joseph Conrad, and the many devotees of Conrad’s novels, particularly those who have read and enjoyed Under Western Eyes, his tale of exiled Russian revolutionaries in Switzerland.

I suspect I’m not the only person who has ever made a pilgrimage to that spot for Joseph Conrad’s sake, rather than for Jean Jacques Rousseau’s; but it did seem a trifle mad to do so in a slim spare hour before catching a flight. I couldn’t not though. I’d passed through Geneva three times that year already, once by road and now three times by rail, but there hadn’t been time before to make this little detour. I’m very glad I did though, because Under Western Eyes is a very special book for me. I’m sure we all have them. They are that one book – usually a novel, often read early on in our lives – which really connects with us. There maybe many other books which speak to us just as clearly in later years, but there’s something very special and absolutely unrepeatable about that first novel which sucks us so completely into its world that it changes us and informs our outlook on life forever thereafter. Under Western Eyes was that book for me. Its characters and events seemed so real and so vivid that I could picture them; and then, to find that this place too, was real, surprisingly only reinforced the imagined reality. I could picture Razumov sitting there, scribbling his informer’s notes, as if they were memories of my own, of events which I had witnessed for myself even.

I remember when I first read that part of the book I promised myself that one day I would visit this spot. I was 15 at the time, and almost 25 years later I’d kept my promise. Every 10 years I re-read Under Western Eyes. It’s interesting to see how the book transforms each time I read it, reflecting on it at different points in my own life, the story seems to change ever so slightly as I get older. I see things I’d missed before, or find I’ve remembered certain details incorrectly, or even added elements in my mind. Certain stories do that – they live within us as much as they live within the covers of their books. I’ve now read it three times straight, and I’ve dipped into it countless times. I’ve read many critiques of it too. But it’s not simply this book alone; if you like one novel by Joseph Conrad you tend to like them all – confirmed Conraddicts, in that sense, are no different from the devotees of Dickens, or Austen acolytes, or whichever writer you care to name.

One of the reasons why this book may have connected with me though may in fact have been the thought of this place itself – the Île Rousseau. This thought struck me, oddly enough, remembering that passage of Rousseau’s as I sat on the train looking out over the waters of the lake – thinking about Rousseau’s notions of escape, the need to be alone – how we each need to seek our own solitude sometimes. Like Razumov sitting scribbling here on the Île Rousseau; like Rousseau himself drifting with his idle thoughts in his rowing boat on Lake Biel. Wherever I’ve lived I’ve always found a spot I like to go to, simply to sit and think, or to sit and read. It’s usually a pleasant place with a nice view, often somewhere out in the open. Where I grew up it was a hilltop overlooking a grassy field not far from my school; when I lived in Stoke Newington it was a particular bench by one of the ponds in the local park; and, when I lived in Tokyo, studying Japanese, it was a particular grassy spot in Shinjuku Gyoen, beneath the swirling cherry blossom in Spring. Wherever I go, I realised as I sat in another taxi racing me back to Geneva Airport, even if I’m only there for a short time, I tend to find my own Île Rousseau.

Also on 'Waymarks'

Visiting Conrad's Grave - Canterbury

Click on the old images for links to their on-line sources. All other images are by taken by me in 2014.

 

Martigny: One Town, Two Seasons

In 2014 I made two trips to Switzerland, where I worked on an exhibition hosted by the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny. The first trip I made was in the winter, returning for my second trip there in the summer. It was wonderful to see the contrast in the seasons in this Alpine town. When not working on the exhibition we explored Martigny and the surrounding valleys and mountains. In the winter we headed up to Trient and Finhaut to catch a glimpse of Mont Blanc and the Trient Glacier, finding ourselves lost amongst the thickest snowdrifts I’ve ever seen. We also explored Saint-Maurice, and motored along the shores of Lake Geneva to Lausanne via Montreux and the beautiful Château de Chillon (see here). This is also the region of Switzerland which is famous for the St Bernard mountain rescue dogs, and Martigny has a wonderful museum and shelter dedicated to these dogs too. In the summer we went to see the lake at Champex-Lac, and ate its famous speciality, Trout Meunière, caught fresh that morning from the lake. The Valais region is a beautiful part of Switzerland. We were made very welcome there by our very generous host, and everywhere we went – with our stumbling attempts at recalling our long forgotten French lessons from our school days – everyone we met was very friendly and kind. And the food and wine of the region were well worth writing home about too.

On our exhibition at La Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Switzerland, 2014 (Canal 9 Valais)

I also enjoyed wandering around Martigny itself, exploring the market square, the Roman amphitheatre, climbing the tower of La Bâtiaz, and strolling back to our hotel along the River Drance. In doing so I tried to take some photos which echoed the same views which J.M.W. Turner had sketched when he’d visited the town in 1802 (see here). Taking photos which match old views like this, either from sketches, paintings, or from old black and white photographs is something I am very keen on, like history repeating itself, perhaps – but it’s not often that I’ve thought of echoing my own photos. Yet whilst strolling along the River Drance on a wonderfully warm summer's day it struck me that I still had the photos I’d taken whilst walking the same path back in the deep cold of winter stored on my camera, and so, out of curiosity to see how much the place had changed with the turning of the seasons, and to see how closely I could find the self-same spots where I had stood to take those photos with the exact same camera, I set about echoing my own journey of a few months previous. What follows is a photo album of images created by me of one place at two points in time in the same year – a small exercise in a personal micro-history repeating itself.

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Other posts on my travels in Switzerland:

The Visitor of Chillon

Walking with Mr Turner in Martigny

Razumov & the Ile Rousseau

An Album of Photos of my Travels in Switzerland

 This newsreel from 1933 about climbing the Great St Bernard Pass and the region's famous mountain rescue dogs has a brief glimpse of Martigny (at 0.28).  

Motor Racing in Switzerland (1934) - Montreux Grand Prix. The Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny has a fantastic collection of vintage cars.

Walking with Mr Turner in Martigny

In 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte crossed the Great St Bernard Pass with his 40,000 strong army. A heroic feat which certainly appealed to the contemporary Romantic imagination of the time. Like Hannibal and Charlemagne before him, he was a modern embodiment of ‘a superhuman power pitted against the supernatural terrain.’ The feat, and the man himself, were immortalised in Jacques-Louis David’s contemporary portrait – Napoleon on the St Bernard Pass.

Yet only two years later, in 1802 – during the brief Peace of Amiens – a different painter actually made the same mountain crossing for himself. Only 27 years old at the time, but already at the top of his profession and widely regarded as the most outstanding British landscape painter of his generation, J.M.W. Turner was travelling on his first tour of continental Europe. In later years, unlike his contemporary countryman, the landscape painter John Constable, who never left Britain at all, Turner became a frequent traveller in Europe. Despite a poor aptitude for foreign languages Turner’s confidence was ever undaunted. His first tour, travelling in style in the company of an aristocratic patron, must have set the pattern – even though subsequent trips were made alone and as cheaply as possible. Turner’s unabashed adventurousness was perhaps matched only by his natural curiosity and his artistic acuity – the body of works he created whilst on this first Alpine tour is regarded by critics as peerless. 

 

According to David Blayney Brown, “No painter before Turner, and none since, has so truly grasped the wilderness and grandeur of the mountains, their beauty, their savagery and their tragic loneliness. And here, of course, he left the Grand Tourists far behind. They had hurried through the Alps to acquire polish and sample the pleasures of Italy, but for Turner they were an education in themselves, confirming – if confirmation were needed – his commitment to the art of landscape, and raising his conception and techniques to new heights.”

It’s thought that Turner probably saw a version of Jacques-Louis David’s epic portrait of Napoleon sat astride his rearing steed atop the St Bernard Pass when passing through Paris. And it is certainly appealing to speculate, as Blayney Brown does, that in retracing the same arduous mountain crossing, Turner “… doubtless heard local stories from the guide of the real details of the 1800 crossing – how Napoleon had based himself in Martigny directing supplies before rejoining his men, or sent the monks at the Great St Bernard hospice rations to feed the troops when they arrived – and as he scrambled over the pass, would have realised the extent of David’s flattery and fiction. Did he, as he passed through Bourg-Saint-Pierre on his descent through the Val d’Etremont towards Martigny, learn how a peasant from the village had guided Napoleon over the pass, on a mule and in the rear of his army – so different from the heroics of David’s canvas? It would take ten years, a snowstorm in Yorkshire and the hubris of Napoleon’s Russian campaign before Turner felt able to deflate such myth-making in the greatest of his Swiss pictures, ‘Snowstorm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps,’ reducing the ancient Carthaginian to whom Napoleon was often compared to invisibility in an apocalyptic mountain blizzard.”

Snowstorm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, 1812

I like this notion of the very ordinary Mr Turner as the leveller of tyrants. Deftly underlining the genuine measure of man against the reality of nature and the power of the elements, grounded in his deeper, practical understanding and his geographical knowledge of the locale. This is informed, and intellectually expressed, anti-propaganda of the subtlest order. That said, though, it’s interesting to note another painter, Paul Delaroche,  whom I very much admire, was later commissioned to paint a more realistic scene depicting the crossing. This version, clearly echoing David’s, was not meant to be demeaning, however, as Delaroche apparently admired Napoleon.

Last year I visited Martigny twice, in winter and in summer. It is a small town, which dates back to at least the Roman era (when it was known as Octodurus or Octodurum), tucked away in a steep sided valley a short distance from the far eastern end of Lake Geneva, not far from Mont Blanc – an ancient crossroads town with roads leading off to Italy and France, as well as other parts of Switzerland. I was working at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, an art gallery whose grounds incorporate several Roman ruins amidst a fine collection of modern art sculptures. 

A little way down the road stands the remains of a very fine Roman amphitheatre. Overlooking the town is La Bâtiaz, a small fort with a high tower, which gives commanding views along the valley whose slopes are covered with terraces laced with carefully cultivated vines. The wines of the Valais region are, in my carefully considered (and equally savoured) opinion, one the best little known secrets of Europe. Martigny is very proud of its heritage – and certainly of its connections to famous artists such as Turner, plus poets and writers, like the Shelleys and Lord Byron, who all passed through here; perhaps unsurprisingly, though, less mention seems to be made of his nibs, ‘Old Bony’ – Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1999 the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, in collaboration with the Tate Gallery in Britain, hosted a wonderful exhibition, titled: Turner et les Alpes. It was a real pleasure to leaf through the catalogue for this exhibition, and to compare it to the vistas which greeted you whilst walking around the town, almost as it were as if one was peering over Turner’s shoulder in some places – seeing him sketch out the scene in one of his sketchbooks, which were later worked up into finished watercolours – like a window into his past.

Further Reading:

David Blayney Brown, Turner et les Alpes, 1802 (Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 1999)

David Hill, Turner in the Alps: The Journey through France & Switzerland in 1802 (George Phillip, 1992)

  

All images of artworks, The Tate Gallery, London; except the two paintings of Napoleon, Wikimedia (click on images for more info). Photographs of Martigny by me, 2014.

You might also like to read Alex Cochrane's article on Charles Dickens' visit to the Great Saint Bernard Hospice in 1846 - "Dickens: The Frozen Dead and a Macabre Swiss Mortuary" 

Also on 'Waymarks'

Martigny: One Town, Two Seasons

The Visitor of Chillon

Razumov & the Ile Rousseau

The Visitor of Chillon

“Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls:

A thousand feet in depth below

Its massy waters meet and flow;

Thus much the fathom-line was sent

From Chillon’s snow-white battlement”

- Lord Byron

In February this year, whilst I was on a work trip to Switzerland, I visited the Château de Chillon near Montreaux, on the easternmost shore of Lake Geneva. The castle is one of the most famous and picturesque sites in Switzerland, the idyllic subject of many a wistful tourist picture-postcard, yet its long history makes for a fascinating study of kaleidoscopic historical and literary perceptions. Its current idyllic symbolism and almost Disney-like beauty belies a very bloody history, such that writers from earlier eras once described the imposing ‘Bastille’-like edifice as dark, oppressive, and ugly.

The castle is thought to be over a thousand years old, with traces of human occupation on the rocky islet upon which the castle is built dating back to the Bronze Age – as demonstrated by excavations carried out from the late 19^th century by the archaeologist, Albert Naef (1862-1936). The oldest written mention of the castle dates from 1150. The castle’s history is now divided into three important periods: the Savoy era (12^th century to 1536); the Bernese era (1536-1798); and, the Vaudois era (1798-present). For much of its existence the castle was maintained as a fortress, arsenal, and prison. It was decommissioned in the 19^th century, since when it has been preserved as a historic monument.

Set beneath a steep cliff, isolated on a rocky island which it occupies entirely and reached by a single wooden bridge, the castle with its tall imposing walls is a formidable mix of round and square towers topped by red tiled roofs. With the aid of an excellent leaflet given to you when you pay at the entrance gate it’s possible to explore the entire castle by yourself and get an understanding of the original functions of each of the rooms and galleries within. The building is fabulously atmospheric, from the dank chilly airs of the lake-level store rooms and dungeon up to the fresh airy heights of the central tower (which one ascends via a series of creaking wooden staircases that rather reminded me of those in the central tower of Himeji castle in Japan).

Unsurprisingly, the castle has been the subject of much artistic and literary interest over the centuries. Notable from the sketches, prints, and paintings of artists such as J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893), as well as the writings of the English Regicide, Edmund Ludlow (c.1617-1692),  and the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) onwards. The castle is perhaps best known by the poem The Prisoner of Chillon written by Lord Byron (1788-1824) after he visited the castle in 1816.

“There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,

In Chillon’s dungeons deep and old,

There are seven columns, massy and grey,

Dim with a dull imprisoned ray,

A sunbeam which hath lost its way,

And through the crevice and the cleft

Of the thick wall is fallen and left;

Creeping o’er the floor so damp

Like a marsh’s meteor lamp:

And in each pillar there is a ring,

And in each ring there is a chain;

That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain,

With marks that will not wear away

Till I have done with this new day”

The Prisoner of Chillon is actually a pair of poems (a sonnet and a longer narrative poem or ‘fable’) in which Byron recounts, and rather embellishes, the story of the castle’s most famous captive – François Bonivard (1493-1570). Bonivard was the Prior of Saint-Victor in Geneva and a republican opposed to Charles III of Savoy’s attempts to take Geneva. He was captured in 1530 and held captive at Chillon until 1536. For the first two years of his captivity he was held in comfort in the upper rooms of the castle, but spent the remaining four in chains in the castle’s dungeon, where he is renowned to have worn down the stone floor in pacing about one of the pillars to which he was shackled. He was eventually liberated when the castle was successfully besieged by the Bernese and Genovese, and returning to the newly Protestant Geneva he was made a member of the governing Council of Two Hundred.

The pillars of Bonnivard’s dungeon are all inscribed with numerous names both famous and obscure from different dates. One of these is that of Byron himself, now neatly framed, although some doubt has been cast as to whether the poet himself actually cut it into the stone or whether it was done by a later hand once his poem had been published and become a phenomenal success. Either way it was of interest to me as I recall seeing Bryon’s name scored into the old school room at Harrow (my home town) when I visited on a school trip when I was about 11 or 12 years old – and, if my memory serves me well, the two graffitios do look rather alike (?).

Later writers who visited the castle took a less romantic view and have left accounts which seem to seek to debunk or demythologise Chillon. Writing in 1833 John Ruskin (1819-1900) in particular sought to pick some very pedantic holes in Byron’s poetic tropes: “ ‘So far the fathom line was sent’ – Why fathom line? All lines for sounding are not fathom lines. If the lake was ever sounded from Chillon, it was probably sounded in metres, not fathoms.” (Zzzzz … I, for one, have never been able to get very far into anything written by John Ruskin!). Other writers were still even less impressed with the place itself. Writing in his diary whilst staying at the Hotel de Byron in Villeneuve on June 12^th 1859, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) observed: “The castle is terribly in need of a pedestal; if its site were elevated to a height equal to its own, it would make a far better appearance.” Given its waterside setting he then compares the castle to “an old whitewashed factory or mill.” Perhaps Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany would have been more to his liking?

Hawthorne’s fellow countryman, Mark Twain (1835-1910), typically took a somewhat more wry or nuanced view: “I had always had a deep and reverent compassion for the sufferings of the ‘prisoner of Chillon,’ whose story Byron has told in such moving verse, so I took the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of the Castle of Chillon, to see the place where poor Bonivard endured his dreary captivity 300 years ago. I am glad I did that, for it took away some of the pain I was feeling on the prisoner’s account. His dungeon was a nice, cool, roomy place, and I cannot see why he should have been so dissatisfied with it … He surely could not have had a very cheerless time of it in that pretty dungeon. It has romantic window-slits that let in generous bars of light, and it has tall, noble columns, carved apparently from the living rock; and what is more, they are written all over with thousands of names, some of them, – like Bryon’s and Victor Hugo’s, – of the first celebrity. Why didn’t he amuse himself reading these names? Then there are the couriers and tourists – swarms of them every day – what was there to hinder him from having a good time with them? I think Bonivard’s sufferings have been overrated.” (Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, 1880).

I suppose everyone takes their own view of a place particular to themselves and perhaps their time. For me Chillon is a beautiful and fascinating place, sublimely atmospheric, rich in literary and historic ambience. And, for anyone of inclinations similar to mine, I recommend Patrick Vincent’s excellent pocket-sized Chillon: A Literary Guide as the perfect exploring companion.