‘Auf dem Kirchhofe’ Op. 105 no. 4 (comp.? 1888, publ. Oct. 1888)

‘Maienkätzchen’ Op. 107 no. 4 (comp. after summer 1886, publ. Oct. 1888)

BRAHMS WAS LINKED to Detlev von Liliencron through his uncle Rochus von Liliencron, and through Groth. Rochus von Liliencron, whom Brahms met in 1868, was the first (and initially sole) editor of the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, the vast German biographical encyclopaedia. He was prodigiously learned, familiar with German and Nordic literature and art, a good pianist, and an expert in medieval folksong and sacred songs. They met again in Munich in 1873. But Groth was the more significant connection; Liliencron admired Groth's Quickborn poems, and Groth in turn penned a positive review of Liliencron's Adjutantenritte poems in 1883. In that year, Liliencron sent Adjutantenritte to Brahms, resulting in the two settings. Brahms later acquired other works, including Eine Sommerschlacht (1887) and the 1889 Gedichte, both of which he read with care and interest, although no more music resulted.

The Adjutantenritte poems differ from Brahms's more usual fare. Based on Liliencron's military experiences in the 1870–1 Franco-Prussian war, the collection rejects Romantic idealisation in favour of a Realist stance which abandoned the elevated tone associated with lyric poetry. Not everyone admired it; one commentator observed that Liliencron lacked transcendence. Brahms's choice of ‘Auf dem Kirchhofe’ confounded expectations; Kalbeck felt that only Brahms's setting redeemed the verses. Billroth also ascribed all the credit to Brahms, judging from a letter of 16 October 1888:

Within the volume, the poem is found among a large group of military poems and ballads with patriotic-religious associations, which might explain Billroth's mention of works like the Requiem and the Gesang der Parzen; it might also explain why Brahms incorporated into the song a quotation from the Lutheran chorale ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’, the text of which laments Christ's sufferings and begs for comfort at the time of the singer's death.

This is not a book about ships, nor is it a book about naval sea battles. On these there is already a great deal of published material, and the most useful of these are referenced in the bibliography and notes. Mention is certainly made when pertinent of specific ships and particular battles but only for the purpose of highlighting the actual subject of the book – Islamic state navies during a period that runs, very approximately, from the sixteenth century through to the mid-nineteenth century. So as not to be held hard and fast to an exact set of dates, I have simply used the cover-all term ‘age of fighting sail’. Of intent, this is a book which examines how the three great Islamic empires, Ottoman, Mughal and Persia, together with a number of smaller states and sultanates, set about establishing navies during the age of fighting sail, and the purpose and function of those navies.

The term ‘fighting sail’ in itself refers to an age in which high-sided, squarerigged, timber-built sailing ships, armed with cannons mounted broadside, dominated the sea lanes of the world. In origin, such ships go back to the early fifteenth century, when European nations with an Atlantic seaboard began to develop such vessels for the purpose of extending trading links into more distant waters. This is a point that has to be fully recognised from the outset, that all of the Islamic states included in this study were prompted into the construction of high-sided, square-rigged warships by those developments taking place in Western Europe. Essential, therefore, is an understanding of how this technology was transferred and how quickly the Islamic states adapted themselves to the design, construction and handling of such ships.

Little in the English language has previously been written on the subject of Islamic navies, and that which has fails to address the whole epoch of fighting sail, concentrating on specific events or tightly managed periods. In particular, this is a direct result of an ethnocentric approach led by naval historians, who often take a nationalistic view towards their subject. When writing about navies of the Islamic world, English-language naval historians most frequently do so as a result of a western navy of interest making direct contact in some way, possibly through battle or a temporary alliance, with a navy from the Islamic world.

It might be thought that with the Portuguese having become, during the sixteenth century and beyond, such a considerable threat to the Islamic communities of the Indian Ocean and the trading web upon which those communities thrived, more attention might have been given to neutralising that threat. Putting aside the Ottoman and Persian empires, whose naval expeditions against the Portuguese have already been discussed, there was one other major Islamic empire during the age of fighting sail that could have turned itself into a significant maritime power in this region, that of the Mughals, an empire that dominated India from the mid-sixteenth century through to the early eighteenth century. While the Mughals did develop a navy, this based on the port town of Surat, with the vessels built there adopting European technical developments, on only a few occasions were these ships directly employed against the Portuguese or any other European navy. Instead, ships of the Mughal navy were invariably deployed in defending the empire against internal opposition. The Dutch and English, who could well have been viewed as a threat equal to that of the Portuguese, were seen as potential allies, for no other reason than that these two European nations had no more liking for the Portuguese than had the Mughals. In Surat, the British and the Dutch were permitted to build, maintain and repair ships, allowing the Mughals to gain an insight into methods of European ship construction.

It was with the EIC that the Mughals formed a particularly important alliance, ships of the Company sailing with Mughal traders for the purpose of safeguarding them from attack. Here the enemy was either the Portuguese or pirates from the west, the latter, in common with the Portuguese, possessing large, heavily-armed, square-rigged sailing ships. Antony notes that western pirates by the late seventeenth century had become quite numerous in the Indian Ocean, with Madagascar infamous as a pirate retreat and some Europeans going native and joining forces with indigenous sea raiders.

From the beginning to the end, the dramatic action of Morountodun moves swiftly, indeed almost relentlessly, as if everything to be encountered or staged is predetermined. The play's young protagonist, Titubi, like the eponymous heroine of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, is seemingly unstoppable in the manner in which she successfully engages every obstacle placed in her way; that is until the play's denouement. We first meet her as the over-pampered and decadent daughter of a wealthy, doting mother. But then with little understanding of the structural basis of her social status, Titubi transforms into a militant defender of the status quo who rapidly comes to an awareness of the threats to her privileged existence. On the cusp of this new awareness, she volunteers to infiltrate the community of rural peasants in revolt against the state, the purpose being to bring about the crushing of their rebellion. But in yet another transformation, Titubi becomes a partisan of the peasants whose cause she makes her own, having come to an understanding of the social and human costs of the oppression of the rural community. But that is not the end of the transformations in the action of the play as Titubi eventually joins others in hopes of bringing about a truce between the state and the revolting peasants, only to have her hopes for a life of personal fulfilment and social progress dashed. This occurs in the shattering denouement of the play as the leader of the revolt with whom Titubi falls in love and marries (who renames her Morountodun) is killed, together with the entire military leadership of the revolt. Thus, the sense of relentlessness or even predetermination is strong in the action of the play and it is against the structural background of this relentlessness that we are confronted by the fact that Osofisan does everything he can as a playwright to undermine and complicate this impression. This is important because, in the opinion of this critic, this is the source of the considerable artistic achievement of the play.

Aspects of Morountodun that illustrate this claim that its artistic power derives from a juxtaposition of sweeping, relentless action with expressive and performative idioms that both slow down and complicate the action are diverse.

4-part choir:

‘Geistliches Lied’ Op. 30 (comp. April 1856, publ. July 1864)

‘O liebliche Wangen’ Op. 47 no. 4 (comp. summer? 1868, publ. Oct. 1868)

‘An die Stolze’ Op. 107 no. 1 (comp. summer 1886, publ. Oct. 1888)

IN BRAHMS'S DAY, the poetry of the Baroque poet Paul Fleming was found in numerous musical contexts: for example Fleming's religious texts to the melodies of Heinrich Isaac were found in contemporary hymnbooks, and Mendelssohn also set his texts. Brahms also owned a copy of Fleming's poetry in a 1685 edition in which his two solo texts appear consecutively. However, nearly two decades separated the composition of the solo songs; also, the poems were reprinted elsewhere as part of a wider resurgence of interest in German Baroque poetry. They also appeared under different titles from Brahms's songs. ‘O liebliche Wangen’ was originally titled ‘Auf die italienische Weise: O fronte serena’, but Brahms simply used the opening words. ‘An die Stolze’ was untitled in the 1685 edition; in an 1822 edition edited by Wilhelm Müller, it was titled ‘Liebeszwang’. The 1865 edition of Fleming's poetry by the library of the Stuttgart Literary Society is the first which uses the title ‘An die Stolze’. Brahms may also have known Lemcke's 1871 popular history of German literature, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung neuerer Zeit, which uses the title ‘An die Stolze’.

As with Brentano's ‘O kühler Wald’, Brahms's cutting half of ‘An die Stolze’ changed the poem considerably. It removed some extensive nature imagery in the third verse, and a tongue-twisting line in the fourth verse: ‘Dass ich stracks sterbe hier’ (‘Then let me immediately die here’). The two set verses are given below:

Ahdaf Soueif(b. 1950) is one of the few Egyptian authors writing inEnglish, and probably the most well known. Born in Cairo andeducated in both Cairo and England, Soueif combines activismand art in a range of genres that encompasses short stories,the novel, autobiography and essays. Translation, both ofher own work into Arabic and Arabic publications intoEnglish, is not only part of her professional repertoire,but broader questions of linguistic and cultural translationare key themes of her fiction. Soueif has won a number ofliterary awards, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in1999 for her second novel, The Map of Love(1999). Although her literary reputation is not in need of‘favourable mention’ by intellectual and scholarlyluminaries, it seems remiss to neglect the importanceaccorded her first novel, In the Eye of theSun (1992), by Edward Said. ‘The Anglo-ArabEncounter: On Ahdaf Soueif’ in the collection,Reflections on Exile (2002), suggeststhat Arab-Anglophone crosscultural, translational exchangeis inherent in Ahdaf's project through the mere fact of therepresentation of Arab culture through the English language,refracted through English literature and culture. Ahdaf'sfiction is striking for its acknowledged intertextualengagements with English literature, especiallynineteenth-century literature. Furthermore, the novel'sinherent structural ‘worldliness’, using the term in itsSaidian sense, signifies the emergence of Arabic literaturefrom the constraints of narrow nationalism into a liberatoryinternationalism. What Said observes about Soueif's firstnovel may as aptly be applied to her second novel,The Map of Love. Both novels are thefocus of this essay, but through the lens of questions ofhuman relations, which are a noticeably neglected dimensionof cultural and literary studies generally.

From the mid-nineteenth century to the Civil War of 1936, Madrid experienced notable social and physical changes that were provoked by economic and technological modernization. One of the ways in which the authorities tried to respond to Madrid's rapid population growth and the rise of social inequalities was through control of the urban space. An expansion of the city to the north, east and south, known as the Ensanche, and with a grid layout, made it easier to accommodate and police the growing population, to segregate rich and poor areas and to sanitize public space (Carballo, Vicente and Pallol 2013; McKinney 2010: 19–23; see the chapters by Pallol and Vicente in this volume). There were further problems that Madrid's authorities had to deal with, not least the rise of rural immigration and, with it, the spread of poverty and epidemics, particularly cholera (Fernández García 1986; Parsons 2003: 15–17; Cruz 2011: 154; Shubert 1991: 40; Fuentes Peris 2003: 10; Bahamonde Magro and Toro Mérida 1978: 42–43; Silvestre Rodríguez 2001; Carnicer 1986; Carballo, Vicente and Pallol 2013: 305; Pallol Trigueros 2013: 27–28). Seeing the poor on the streets provoked discomfort among the rising middle classes, who saw them as sources of disorder and disease (AMV 1899a; Fuentes Peris 2003: 135–36). Spurred on by social scientists and the developing media, the authorities used legal and police persecution against the poor, or confined them in workhouses (Llano 2017: ch. 10). Organ grinders did not fit into existing categories of poverty and were prime scapegoats among the poor, being accused of challenging and misappropriating the codes of conduct on which the rising middle classes predicated their lifestyle. This applied particularly to what the middle classes saw as their misappropriation and corruption of the honour code.

Scapegoating has been the most common way throughout history of designating a wrongdoer and turning society against him. Scapegoating often targets vulnerable individuals or groups and often follows an arbitrary course, so that ‘the borderline between rational discrimination and arbitrary persecution is sometimes difficult to trace’ (Girard 1986: 19). The scapegoating of organ grinders by the middle classes in nineteenth-century Madrid needs to be seen in the broader context of the scapegoating of the poor in the media and the social sciences.

The Restoration of the British monarchy in 1660 in the person of the bachelor Charles II produced a Europe-wide intrigue to provide him with a wife. In fact, almost from the beginning the Portuguese Princess Catharine of Braganza was the likely bride, and the international competition simply enabled Charles to increase his terms in the treaty of betrothal. From the first the English wanted the Portuguese North African port of Tangier as part of those terms.

Situated on the northwest corner of Africa, Tangier was a walled town and port, and had been Portuguese since 1471. It was not very strongly defended, and would probably have fallen to the local Moroccans in a few years if the Portuguese had kept it; nor was its port either commodious or particularly safe, being too shallow for larger ships. But its location, on the southern lip of the mouth of the Mediterranean, made it particularly attractive to fighting seamen in the light of experience gained in the previous decade. Edward Mountagu, now Earl of Sandwich, and Admiral Sir John Lawson, two eminent commanders who had been instrumental in bringing Charles across the North Sea to London, and both former officers of the republican navy, were enthusiastic advocates; unlike the king, they had actually seen the place, so their opinions carried some weight.

There were numerous other terms in the dowry in the betrothal treaty, including the transfer of Bombay, a reasonably large cash payment (never completely paid) and a military and naval alliance, intended to defend Portugal against Spanish attack, and which led to the presence of a considerable English military force in the country for the next ten years. But from the point of view of this book, it is Tangier which is the most interesting item.

The extent of the crisis which the prospect of the marriage produced is indicated by the fact that Lawson, in command of a fleet, having returned from Algiers, took up station in the Strait to deter any Dutch or Spanish interference in the transfer, and a defeat of the Portuguese in Tangier by the Moors precipitated a preliminary, precautionary occupation of the town by a force of English sailors to prevent a Moorish conquest.

Today we assume all too often that the processes of transformation during our journey into the contemporary world – industrialization, population growth, urbanization – are advances and good in themselves. Yet even when these processes were beginning at the start of the nineteenth century, there were those who warned of the perils of modernization, ranging from Malthus and his fears concerning population growth to those who, Engels included, were critical of the consequences of industrialization. Included in this last group we also find those who observed a link between urbanization and the corruption of social customs, something which would leave ample traces in literature and other forms of representation (Capel 2000).

Madrid, as a major city, did not avoid these narratives of condemnation. There is a substantial body of literature on the Spanish capital as a ‘hateful city’ (Castillo Cáceres 2010) as there is for other great cities (Marchand 2009). It has similarly been observed that such writings and references, particularly those linking the city to delinquency, had scant relation to reality. They were at heart an expression of fear and moral panic in the face of social change, and the emergence of new players on the social scene – members of the lower classes – with new forms of behaviour and identity (Walkowitz 1992; Kalifa 2010; Pallol and Gómez Bravo 2013; Vicente Albarrán 2014). In this chapter I will concentrate on the critical discourse applied to Madrid, with its roots in fear, which ran parallel to urban development in the first decades of the twentieth century. Going further than a simple record of evidence that attests to the appearance of this moral panic, I shall pay particular attention to the change and persistence of discursive themes in this area. I shall discuss the topic through two texts that were both widely available in the period and which, despite belonging to different genres, had many points in common – medicine and public health – as well as through the writings of political propaganda. On the one hand I shall draw on La mala vida en Madrid (1901) by Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas de Aguilaniedo, a ‘psycho-sociological’ work that was the culmination of a whole cluster of writings on medical hygiene and public health and criminology that were in vogue at this time in Europe (Campos 2013: 8–10).

The great loser in the treaty settlements at the end of the Spanish Succession War was Spain itself. Not only did it lose the Spanish provinces in Italy and Flanders, and found its trade monopoly with the overseas empire opened to British merchants and ships, but it had to cede control over two parts of its metropolitan territory, Gibraltar and Minorca, to Britain. These territorial losses eventually rankled particularly, as did that of Oran, taken by the Algerines in 1708. Spanish resentment at these, and its Italian losses, meant that these matters became the centres of British concern in the Mediterranean in the thirty years after 1713.

For Spain the enemies were all too numerous: Austria, which held the former Spanish provinces in Italy and Sardinia; Savoy, which held Sicily; Britain, holding Gibraltar and Minorca; Algiers, holding Oran; France, whose king Louis XIV died in 1715 and had cut the Spanish King Felipe V out of the succession to the French kingship and out of the regency for his young successor. Italy and its islands became Spain's target of choice for recovery. This was in part because of the influence of King Felipe's second wife, the Italian princess Isabella of the Farnese dynasty of Parma, and his latest chief minister Cardinal Alberoni. The king did not in fact need much wifely persuasion, nor did the Spaniards generally, to work for the recovery of other lost lands. This ambition became one of the dominant international political themes of the next generation.

Queen Isabella – referred to as ‘Elizabeth Farnese’ by British historians – was a strong-willed woman married to a man who was liable to devastating fits of depression. As a result she became one of the most effective powers in Spain for much of her husband's reign. One of her main ambitions was to see that her sons by King Felipe achieved their own kingdoms – he had a son by his first wife, who eventually succeeded him. The former Spanish provinces in Italy, and her own homeland of Parma, were to her particularly apt targets for her sons.