Book No. 938. V.F. Smirnov. Sorta iabloni, kul’tiviruemye v SSSR. M., Nauka, 1982, 280 pp.
Anyone learning Russian surely has only to see the word for apple, yabloko, to remember it forever, because it contains three round letters that look just like rolling apples. The word is an apple! I think Russians like the word, too. There are famous works by Chekhov, Bunin, Yevtushenko and probably many others whose titles feature yabloko.
This book’s title translates as Sorts of Apple Grown in the USSR. The stamp B.L.L.D. DUPLICATE on the title page indicates that I picked it up on one of my trips in the 1980s to the British Library Lending Division at Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, to select Russian geology duplicates for the University research group I worked for. In addition to the hundreds of geology duplicates, the librarians would show you a pile of duplicate books on every subject under the sun and tell you to take any you fancied. I don’t recall choosing this one and I can’t remember opening it before now. I’ve always loved apples, though, and probably couldn’t resist picking it up as a reference book for my Russian library.
Before opening this book, which describes about a thousand different sorts, I could have told you only three things about Russian apples. First, that the last independent party to be banned by Putin from taking part in parliamentary ‘elections’ is called Yabloko: it was founded in 1993, is liberal, pro-democracy, and against the war. The name is actually an acronym of its three founders’ surnames, but has always been catchy. Second, Chekhov’s friends nicknamed his teenage female admirers in Yalta antonovki, punning on the name of a Russian apple, and I translated this in my biography of Chekhov as ‘Anton’s Pippins’. Third, in 1978 I was introduced to a very eminent visiting Russian anthropologist whose name in Russian sounded like Bramlei. He was over six foot tall, looked as English as English, was known to be descended from pre-revolutionary English in Russia, and implied in conversation that they were the family of the famous Bramley cooking apple.
Obviously, I was not going to read every word of the text on each of 1000 sorts of Russian apple. I did, though, start at A and browse-read-browse-read through all 280 pages of it, and so many interesting things emerged that I am glad I did. For instance, there are hardly any in your face Marxist-Leninist-Soviet names; they are mainly expressive literary names, some of which existed long before 1917. Then it is amazing how many varieties were developed by the plant breeder and geneticist Ivan Michurin (1855-1935). There are plenty of American and Canadian sorts, such as Golden Delicious — which proved so unpopular in Britain that it triggered the comeback of old English cultivars. There are few that were introduced from the UK, but I was delighted when the penny dropped that Batskaia krasavitsa is the Beauty of Bath. I relived standing with my headscarved grandmother in about 1958 by the gnarled Beauty of Bath in my grandparents’ orchard as she bit into one of the small, juicy, bright red gems of her favourite apple, and offered me one myself.
I shall always value this book, before it goes off to America, for two discoveries. There is absolutely no mention of the Bramley apple in it… Why did the Academician’s forebears not succeed in transplanting the most popular English cooker to Russia? Well, it turns out that Yulian Vladimirovich Bromley (as his name is spelt in the West) was not descended from the apple family, but from the Anglo-German Bromley dynasty of engineers founded in early nineteenth century Russia; in a pre-stressed position that o is aurally indistinguishable from an a. And the Russians did not need to import the Bramley apple, because, as this book amply makes clear, they already had, and still have, the antonovka, the ‘most popular old Russian variety’ (p. 19), e.g. for making apple pies!
There is a big problem with the book, however: it contains not a single illustration. So I prefer this, which always hangs on the wall before me in my shed:
Apple Map of Great Britain published by Common Ground, 1993
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SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
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Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
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‘Library Notes’ (5)
Book No. 938. V.F. Smirnov. Sorta iabloni, kul’tiviruemye v SSSR. M., Nauka, 1982, 280 pp.
Anyone learning Russian surely has only to see the word for apple, yabloko, to remember it forever, because it contains three round letters that look just like rolling apples. The word is an apple! I think Russians like the word, too. There are famous works by Chekhov, Bunin, Yevtushenko and probably many others whose titles feature yabloko.
This book’s title translates as Sorts of Apple Grown in the USSR. The stamp B.L.L.D. DUPLICATE on the title page indicates that I picked it up on one of my trips in the 1980s to the British Library Lending Division at Boston Spa, West Yorkshire, to select Russian geology duplicates for the University research group I worked for. In addition to the hundreds of geology duplicates, the librarians would show you a pile of duplicate books on every subject under the sun and tell you to take any you fancied. I don’t recall choosing this one and I can’t remember opening it before now. I’ve always loved apples, though, and probably couldn’t resist picking it up as a reference book for my Russian library.
Before opening this book, which describes about a thousand different sorts, I could have told you only three things about Russian apples. First, that the last independent party to be banned by Putin from taking part in parliamentary ‘elections’ is called Yabloko: it was founded in 1993, is liberal, pro-democracy, and against the war. The name is actually an acronym of its three founders’ surnames, but has always been catchy. Second, Chekhov’s friends nicknamed his teenage female admirers in Yalta antonovki, punning on the name of a Russian apple, and I translated this in my biography of Chekhov as ‘Anton’s Pippins’. Third, in 1978 I was introduced to a very eminent visiting Russian anthropologist whose name in Russian sounded like Bramlei. He was over six foot tall, looked as English as English, was known to be descended from pre-revolutionary English in Russia, and implied in conversation that they were the family of the famous Bramley cooking apple.
Obviously, I was not going to read every word of the text on each of 1000 sorts of Russian apple. I did, though, start at A and browse-read-browse-read through all 280 pages of it, and so many interesting things emerged that I am glad I did. For instance, there are hardly any in your face Marxist-Leninist-Soviet names; they are mainly expressive literary names, some of which existed long before 1917. Then it is amazing how many varieties were developed by the plant breeder and geneticist Ivan Michurin (1855-1935). There are plenty of American and Canadian sorts, such as Golden Delicious — which proved so unpopular in Britain that it triggered the comeback of old English cultivars. There are few that were introduced from the UK, but I was delighted when the penny dropped that Batskaia krasavitsa is the Beauty of Bath. I relived standing with my headscarved grandmother in about 1958 by the gnarled Beauty of Bath in my grandparents’ orchard as she bit into one of the small, juicy, bright red gems of her favourite apple, and offered me one myself.
I shall always value this book, before it goes off to America, for two discoveries. There is absolutely no mention of the Bramley apple in it… Why did the Academician’s forebears not succeed in transplanting the most popular English cooker to Russia? Well, it turns out that Yulian Vladimirovich Bromley (as his name is spelt in the West) was not descended from the apple family, but from the Anglo-German Bromley dynasty of engineers founded in early nineteenth century Russia; in a pre-stressed position that o is aurally indistinguishable from an a. And the Russians did not need to import the Bramley apple, because, as this book amply makes clear, they already had, and still have, the antonovka, the ‘most popular old Russian variety’ (p. 19), e.g. for making apple pies!
There is a big problem with the book, however: it contains not a single illustration. So I prefer this, which always hangs on the wall before me in my shed:
Apple Map of Great Britain published by Common Ground, 1993
ADVERTISEMENT
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
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