Reprise Post: Kolęda - "Gdy się Chrystus Rodzi"

"Kolędy" are the hymns of of the European Christmas Season, which runs from December 4th through Epiphany, January 6th. This is intriguing and mysterious, since the "calends" are the first days of the months in the ancient Roman calendar.

"Gdy się Chrystus Rodzi,"  "When Christ was Born," is an enduring favorite due, I would say, to its tenderness and happiness, a quiet, reverent happiness.  Few things bring greater joy than this hymn performed by good musicians and choristers in a beautiful church at midnight on Christmas Eve.

This choir, "Harmonia," performs with a traditional up-tempo refrain.

A choir from Poznań renders the carol in constant, serene tempo.

Kolenda online is the source of lyrics below, and gives the musical score as well:

Gdy się Chrystus rodzi i na świat przychodzi,
ciemna noc w jasnościach promienistych brodzi.
Aniołowie się radują
pod niebiosa wyśpiewują:

Gloria, gloria, gloria
in excelsis Deo!

Mówią do pasterzy, którzy trzód swych strzegli,
aby do Betlejem czym prędzej pobiegli,
bo się narodził Zbawiciel
wszego świata Odkupiciel:

Gloria, gloria, gloria
in excelsis Deo!

O niebieskie duchy i posłowie nieba,
powiedzcież wyraźniej, co nam czynić trzeba,
bo my nic nie pojmujemy,
ledwo od strachu żyjemy:


Gloria, gloria, gloria
in excelsis Deo!

Nascitur cum Christus et mundo apparet,
Caeca nox fulgore radiante claret.
Angeli in caelis visi
Cantat hymnum paradisi:
Gloria, gloria , gloria,
In excelsis Deo.

Pavidos pastores angeli hortantur,
Bethehem quam primum ut proficiscantur:
Natus enim est Salvator,
Mundi machine Creator.

Gloria, gloria, gloria,
In excelsis Deo. 

Spiritus caelestes caelique legati,
Quidnam faciamus, nobis revelate.
Imperiti nil pollemus,
Metu capti vix vigemus.

Glioria, gloria, gloria,
In excelsis Deo.

 

 

 

English translation here.

Ehret and Evans's International Book of Christmas Carols - a wonderful volume - displays this carol on a two-page spread, giving the first two verses, in Polish and English.

Błogosławiony Bożego Narodzenia!

A Blessed Christmas Season!

to family and friends, far and near.  Julie

 

(This post appeared originally on 12/22/2012. It was edited and updated on 12/27/2020.)

Reprise Post: Kolędy (Polish Christmas Carols) - "Dzisiaj w Betlejem"

 

"Dzisiaj w Betlejem" ("Today in Bethlehem") is a carol of eager, triumphant gladness.

Dzisiaj w Betlejem, dzisiaj w Betlejem
Wesoła nowina
Że Panna czysta, że Panna czysta
Porodziła Syna

(refren:)
Chrystus się rodzi
Nas oswobodzi
Anieli grają
Króle witają
Pasterze śpiewają
Bydlęta klękają
Cuda, cuda ogłaszają

Maryja Panna, Maryja Panna
Dzieciątko piastuje
I Józef święty i Józef święty
On ją pielęgnuje

(refren)

Chociaż w stajence, chociaż w stajence
Panna Syna rodzi
Przecież on wkrótce, przecież on wkrótce
ludzi oswobodzi

(refren)

I trzej królowie, i trzej królowie
od wschodu przybyli
I dary Panu, i dary Panu
kosztowne złożyli

(refren)

Pójdźmy też i my, pójdźmy też i my
przywitać Jezusa
Króla nad królami, Króla nad królami
uwielbić Jezusa

(refren)

Lyric Translate gives a satisfactorily literal translation to English:

Today in Bethlehem, today in Bethlehem
(there are) merry news
That the pure Maiden, that the pure Maiden
Has born a son

(Refrain:)
Christ is born
He's going to deliver us
The angels are playing (music)
The kings are bidding welcome
The shepherds are singing
The cattle is kneeling
Wonders, wonders do they announce

Mary the Maiden, Mary the Maiden
Is nursing the child
And Saint Joseph and Saint Joseph
He's taking care of Her

(Refrain)

Although in a little barn, although in a little barn
The Maiden is bearing Her son
After all He'll soon, after all He'll soon
deliver the people

(Refrain)

And the Three Kings, and the Three Kings
arrived from the east
and they gathered precious
gifts for the Lord, gifts for the Lord

(Refrain)

Let's go, too, let's go, too
and bid welcome to Jesus
King of Kings, King of Kings
to adore Jesus

(Refrain)

The International Book of Christmas Carols has the melody, harmony, accompaniment, and chord notation, although the lyric differs.

Many ensembles record this kolęda, including Mazowsze and also The Mater Dolorosa Choir.

 

(This is an edited version of the original post of 12/24/2012.) 

 

Reprise Post: Chopin, Christmas, and "For Our Freedom and Yours!"

Lulajże, Jezuniu, “Lullaby, Little Jesus” is a traditional Polish Christmas carol dating from the nineteenth century, or who knows, perhaps earlier. Here is a lyric in original and in translation; very homey, yes?

Lulajże Jezuniu, moja Perełko,

 

Lulaj ulubione me Pieścidełko.

 

Lulajże Jezuniu, lulaj, że lulaj

 

A ty go matulu w płaczu utulaj

 

          Hush little Jesus, my little pearl,

          Hush my favourite little delight.

          Hush little Jesus, hush, hush

          But you lovely mother, solace him in tears

Here it is sung by Stefan Witas in a 1932 recording for Columbia. It is worth the trouble to follow the link and take a listen, as it is a great recording of a nice tenor voice, plus all the scratchy vinyl versimilitude.

And here is another, recent recording, perhaps a little syrupy, but with the advantage of clarity, sung slowly enough that it is easy to listen and read the lyric at the same time.

Fryderyk Chopin incorporated this carol into his first scherzo, his Scherzo No.1 in B minor, Op. 20. Why would he do that? And for that matter, why would he set a musical joke in a minor key?

In 1830, Chopin was in Vienna.  The Polish military cadets in Warsaw launched an uprising against the Russian Tsar. This November Uprising of 1830 involved Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Belarus, and went on for 8 or 9 months until its ultimate defeat.  This was their battle flag:

                                                     IN THE NAME       OF GOD

                                                     FOR                                AND
                                                    OUR                              YOUR

                                                                  FREEDOM

This is translated as  For our freedom and yours, and has been repeated in subsequent wars, and is repeated now.

Chopin’s friends persuaded him to remain in Vienna while this insurrection raged in his homeland.  So his compatriots were fighting for independence far away; he had TB anyway; he could not fight.  I think that, obsessed with the knowledge of the fight and feeling the agony of his homeland, he must have considered a musical joke perfectly appropriate.  It was a sick joke that Fate was playing on the Poles and their allies. The music speaks of frenzy.

Here is The Taking of the Warsaw Arsenal, Marcin Zaleski 1831.

This is easily imagined on hearing the scherzo.  Here is Artur Rubenstein performing.

The structure of the thing is all there to read about, but the stunner is what happens in the very center of it.  At 3’20” in this recording, the waking nightmare pauses, and reverie takes over.  We hear the melody of Lulajże, Jezuniu.  We hear just the melody, as if we were being rocked in maternal arms, or as if we were in meditation before the Manger, or as if we were at home at Christmas.

But then we are jerked awake, startled back to the present and to war.

There are times when, after reading the news for an hour, I deliberately send my thoughts back to the security and the wholeness of my own childhood – for I was lucky to have such. My father would look at me and say Pieścidełko – little dear one.

I see the twinkling tree and all the glowing lights; I sense the dark snowy winds beyond the curtains; I hear the music; I sense the fragrances from the kitchen; I notice the rustlings of dear ones moving around the house.  Yes, I go back there in memory on purpose, but then startle awake, jerk back to the present, where there is knowledge of protracted, seemingly distant, yet decisive battle.

(This post first appeared on December 24, 2019, and has been edited slightly.)

Polish Wooden Churches Restored

As part of a revamping of the Links listing in the right sidebar here, I have added a link to The First News, a magazine-style site pitched to potential tourists with inclinations to visit Poland.

A recent article discusses the completion of a project to restore ten wooden churches that date from medieval times. The photographs of exteriors and interiors are intriguing. All ten restored structures form a new wooden-church tourist trail in Wielkopolska, which is "Greater Poland," an ancient historical region that includes Poznań. The map below is from the article:

 

 Zdrojewski and Matynka ancestors came to America from Wielkopolska. The dialect map below is from the linked Wikipedia article, which also has images of historic maps as well as of coats of arms of the various historic families. These coats of arms are obviously the best ones!

Map of Polish dialects by Aotearoa - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11836448

Reprise Post: Advent Carol: "Czekam na Ciebie"

Today's reposting is a third edit of the original 2013 kolęda post.

Czekam na Ciebie,  "I wait for You," expresses longing and yearning for the arrival of the Savior.  The Liturgical Season of Advent is prime time for these feelings.

How does it sound? In minor mode, it sounds yearning. Like this, sung by a church organist with an affecting baritone. And like this, performed in the style of a quiet folk tune.

From Nuty Religijne we can obtain the score with Polish lyrics:

Source for the Polish lyric is teksty.org:

Czekam na Ciebie, Jezu mój mały,
ciche błaganie, ku niebu śle.
Twojego przyjścia, czeka świat cały.
Sercem gorącym przyzywa Cię.

          I wait for You, my little Jesus,
          Silent supplication to the sky send.
          For your advent, the whole world is waiting.
          Fervent hearts call You.

Spójrz, tęskniony na tej ziemi,
przyjdź, o Jezu, pociesz nas!
Szczerze kochać Cię będziemy.
Przyjdź, o Jezu, bo już czas.

          Look upon this Earth with its longing,
          Come, O Jesus, comfort us!
          Truly we will love You.
          Come, O Jesus, because it is already time.



Usłysz Maryjo głos Twoich dzieci,
Tyś naszą Matką na każdy dzień.
O daj nam Słońce, które rozświeci,
grzechu i błędu straszliwy cień.

          Hear, Mary, the voice of your children.
          Thou art our Mother, every day.
          Give to us the Sun, that its light
          Will enshadow sin and terrible error.

Spójrz teskniony na tej ziemi,
daj nam Zbawcę, Dziecię Twe.
My dla Niego żyć pragniemy,
Jemu damy serca swe.

          Look upon this Earth with its longing,

          Give to us the Savior, your Son.

          We for Him to be living crave,

          To Him we will give our hearts.

This is a revision of the 2013 post Czekam na Ciebie.

This is edited once more for 2020.

OSS Special Operations in China, Close Reading 2: Chapter 1

Part 1 in this series concerns the front matter of the book, which by the way I will refer to shorthand as "MMB."

Here in Part 2 we take a look at the first full chapter, "The China Situation - Background for War."

The approach is to set the scene in Kunming, site of OSS HQ, where Mills et. al. landed to kick off operations after being briefed.

Kunming is a large, bustling, beautiful city in Yunnan, the province that occupies the southwest corner of China. Located on a plateau at an altitude of about 6,000 feet, beside a beautiful lake, it is the capital of the province, bordered by Tibet to the northwest, the Himalayas to the west, Laos and Vietnam to the south. The climate is said to be the best in all of China, and it became the location of summer palaces and a resort for Chinese royalty and high government officials. When we arrived, the province had a population of some seventeen million including farmers and refugees from war-torn areas to the east. 

(Here at Gene & Clara's, if you enter "Kunming" in the blog search utility high on the right sidebar, it will give you 13 posts having the label "Kunming." Even so, I have not been able to identify any photo in the Photobook as being of that city. Was that a matter of security policy, even in September 1945, when our EJZ was in Kunming being debriefed?)

MMB summarize the topics covered in the briefing:
          civil war between the KMT and the Communists;
          Imperial Japanese occupation of the eastern third of China;
          Japanese difficulty in moving westward, due to terrain and Chinese resistance;
          "puppet governments," i.e. Chinese localities, and their armies, set up by the Japanese and loyal to them;
          unapologetic use by the KMT of American forces and materiel to consolidate KMT position and control the Communist incursions;
          the position of the Communists:

The Communist Eighth Route Army under Mao was deployed along the western reaches of the Yellow River and in central China, and to the north and east toward Peiping. Mao's headquarters was in Yenan, about 300 miles north of Hsian [our Shian/Xian] where he sat out the war and waited for it to end so he could continue the fight against Chiang Kai-shek. When they were fighting at all, his efforts were directed against the Nationalists.

          Wedemeyer command of the China Theater from 1944;
          US Army Air Force, the 14th (successor to Chennault's Flying Tigers) and the 10th;
          complete inability of Chinese infantry to fight regular ground warfare, and the consequent reliance on guerilla warfare, for which the OSS trained contingents of them;
          Navy Intelligence operatives; SACO; Donovan getting the OSS independent of SACO;
          Tai Li, magnate of Chinese Secret Police.

Thus in a few pages we are given the background situation. Does it sound familiar to G&C readers? Well, I hope so! The R. Harris Smith papers gave us some nitty-gritty on these topics:  
  
Nationalist Warlords, Ambivalent Warlords, Commies, and Americans
Fighting Idealists Find Raw Cynicism
"The Chinese Puzzle" Considered With Some Source Material from the Hoover
Mysterious Letter from Chungking

This first chapter also describes forcefully what we would call the lack in China of modern infrastructure, most painfully of roads and motorized vehicles:

So, for lack of more effective transportation, OSS teams and their guerrilla fighters just had to walk, and walk, and walk! They almost always moved at night for security, carrying all their weapons, ammunition, demolitions, food and other supplies with them. It had been somewhat like that in the Burma jungle campaigns, but not so in Europe where vehicle transportation was usually available when you needed it. China was quite a change for us.

This recalls to mind a remark our EJZ made when asked straight out, on one occasion, what it was like for him in China. He paused, then said There was a lot of running.

MMB Chapter 1 also lays out some OSS organizational structure.
          Col. Richard Heppner, Commander of OSS Detachment 202, HQ Kunming;
          Functional branches, "carefully compartmented for information security:"
                    SI, Secret Intelligence, espionage;
                    SO, Special Operations, guerilla warfare and sabotage;
                    X-2, Counterintelligence;
                    MO, Morale Operations, psychological warfare;
                    MU, Maritime Unit;
                    Research and Analysis;
                    Field Photography;
                    Communications.

Finally, in this Chapter the authors emphasize that the support of Chinese people, military and civilian, made possible the success of OSS operations in China.

Remarkably, there were only five OSS personnel and several hundred of their Chinese Nationalist guerrilla soldiers killed in action during this last year of combat in China while accounting for 12,348 Japanese troops killed and the destruction of the enemy ground transportation system and logistics facilities. Reasons for the unusually low number of friendly casualties were their guerrilla tactics and most of all the wholehearted support from almost all civilian Chinese living in the areas of operations.

If you've read Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, about the 1942 Doolittle raids on Japan and the rescue and extraction of the US fliers downed in China, you have been given a full and vivid picture of the depth and universality of the Chinese civilian support of Americans there to fight the Japanese. With all the murder continuing to and through 1945, that Chinese support can only have grown.

Next up: Chapter 2, "The Ping-Han Railway."

I invite G&C readers to acquire personal copies of the book and turn this into a group read. Solving puzzles with missing pieces is not an outstanding talent of mine; fellow readers will contribute to a good time, and also catch errors!

from OSS CBI Photoboook 11

As we go along in this reading of MMB, I will point out ways to use the blog to find related matter. For example:

If you enter "OSS CBI Photobook," it will give you all posts having that phrase in the title, with the most recent at the head of the parade.

If you enter "OSS CBI Photobook 11" it will give you the first pages in the Photobook to have photos of China. Page 11 is covered in two posts: first here, and next here.

If you search for "OSS CBI Photobook 12," the results will be  then here, and finally here.

Page 12 has the CBI patch pasted on it among the photos.

Does that mean that Page 11 is not China at all, but rather a rest camp in Assam, taken prior to deploying to China? It's your turn to squint at those photographs again for clues.

Page 12 has several shots of a village, like this one, not at all Kunming-looking:

OSS Special Operations in China, Close Reading 1: Front Matter

Previous discussions of Mills, Mills, and Brunner 2002 are these:

OSS CBI Photobook 15 - Southwest China, 1945- Reconnaissance, Part 2, Is this "Frenchie?"

Nationalist Warlords, Ambivalent Warlords, Commies, and Americans (This is about related material in the R. Harris Smith book.)

Looking for Log in All the Wrong Places

I can find no citation for the front jacket image. Was it of the Yellow River Bridges Mission of August 9, 1945? Or was it of another mission, earlier in the summer?

Who took the photo? Pfc. Eugene Zdrojewski, Field Photo? Or Captain Zarembo? Or Frenchie? Or members of another Team?

This scan of the back jacket image shows guys under awnings in a boat. What is the location - perhaps Kaifeng, city of canals? 

We've looked at photos of Kaifeng before, here, then here as well, and also here. 

Francis Mills's Acknowledgements begin with the reason this book was written when it was:

Preparation of this book was started in 1985 when the CIA declassified many of the secret reports prepared by commanders of Special Operations teams of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), with details about the guerrilla wars they conducted in mainland China against the Japanese Expeditionary Army during  1945 . . 

Chinese place-names, common and proper nouns, and other terms that we run across at G&C are spelled in English in different ways, for example Peking/Beijing. John W. Brunner's Preface includes mention of the nineteenth-century Wade-Giles system of Romanized transcription of Mandarin to English:

At the time when the events in this book took place, the most prevalent practice was to use the Wade-Giles system . . . Because the pertinent documents and military maps of the period generally used this system, that is the system that will be used here.

We are doing that here, too, because we are looking at all this primary material. So far, the only place-name for which I routinely give two spellings is Sian/Xian.

The Introduction explains that Francis Mills was

. . . in charge of Special Operations in the large area of China north of the Yangtze River, extending north to . . . Peking. In this story he describes the operations in North China and also tells about the expansion of other guerrilla attacks in the southern half of the country that were so effective against the strong, clever, ruthless and barbaric Japanese Expeditionary Army during the last year of the war . . . the . . . Japanese Army of about one million men that had occupied and controlled the eastern area of China extending about 300 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean.

More detail is found in an online essay about the book; here are the first three paragraphs from that essay's "About the Author" section:

In 1943, as an Army Major in the Field Artillery, Frank Mills volunteered for overseas duty with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). After training in Special Operations, he was ordered to London to join the combined Special Forces Command of British, French and Americans, to support Resistance efforts in Europe as part of the Allied invasion of France. 

 With OSS Special Forces Detachment 101, he landed in the D-Day Invasion with advance elements of the First Infantry Division on Omaha Beach. He coordinated French Resistance activities with the military operations of First Army as the Allied invasion forces went ashore and moved through France.

 When the German forces had been driven out of France in late 1944, he was named OSS Chief of Special Operations for the Central Field Command in China. In that capacity he was in charge of all OSS guerrilla warfare against the Japanese Expeditionary Army in the area extending about 1,000 miles north from the Yangtze River and along the Yellow River.  He remained at that command until September, 1945.

Did Francis Mills meet Albert Robichaud, our "Frenchie," in France? So far I've found no reference to that; we'll keep on the alert for clues. Next up: Chapter 1, The China Situation, Background for War.

Still Camera on the National Mall, 1944

This is a second look back at a May 6, 2014 post of photos showing the OSS team training with cameras just prior to deployment.  The first look back, at the movie camera, is here.


November, 1944, The National Mall, Washington, D.C. – Our EJZ and a small group of buddies, having completed survival and tactical training on Catalina and crossed back to the East Coast by train, continue briefing at OSS offices in the Capital. Further outtakes from the post of May 6, 204 include several photos of a still camera, of which this is the most clear:

With the help of kind friends we have identified this as a Graflex Speed Graphic large-format press camera.  The "Anniversary Speed Graphic" of 1940-1946 is described  No grey metal exposed, satin black with chrome trim. Wartime model: no chrome. Bed and Body track rails linked, allowing focusing of wide angle lens within body. Solid wire frame viewfinder. Trim on face of body is found only on top and sides.

"Anniversary Speed Graphic"

as described on the Graflex.org site.

The Graflex FAQ has all the details, after starting off with an iconic image of a c1940s press photographer, just as is shown in Hollywood movies of the time.  From the FAQ:

The Speed Graphic camera has two shutters - focal plane and in-lens; three viewfinders - optical, wire frame and ground glass; interchangeable lenses; a rise and fall front; lateral shifts; a coupled rangefinder; and a double extension bellows adaptable to lenses from 90mm to over 300mm.

The Speed Graphic looks complicated, but is one of the simplest and most flexible cameras made. Afflicted by a ``Rube Goldberg'' variety of features - three viewfinders! - you prove your skill everytime you use it. Nothing in the Graphic is automated; if you don't pay attention you can double expose, shoot blanks, fog previous exposures or shoot out of focus images. However, once you get used to it, it is amazingly easy to use.

. . . In 1940, Graflex announced the Anniversary Speed Graphic with Kodak Anastigmat (or the then all-new Ektar) lens. The new features included the coupled rangefinder and flash solenoid to use the then popular flashbulb. The bed would drop past horizontal, allowing the use of the new wide angle lenses. . . The Speed Graphic was the still camera of World War II. . . 

The Graflex Speed Graphic is still in use and has fans.

Graflex Speed camera owned by a professional photographer

From a fan comment at photo.net:  A lot of American photographers (and others) used the Graflex Graphic cameras, which are large format sheet film cameras that were equipped with the finest lenses of their days. The large format plus the best lenses and fine-grained film resulted in tremendously sharp and obscenely detailed pictures with wonderful tonality. No digital camera will get you images with a comparable high resolution.

The same fan comments once more, mentioning things that stir the childhood memory:  Add fine-grained film and you get stunning, sharp and detailed pictures with extreme resolution. I guess not even the most expensive digital back available today will beat such a large format negative in terms of details and "megapixels" -- to say nothing of "bokeh" and the nice, diffused look of large flash bulbs. . .And of course the film wasn't processed by the local one-hour photo minilab with a bored high-school-age minimum wage worker, but by dedicated professionals with decades of experience (Capa's misfortune was caused by an excited and new lab technician... I always wonder what happened to him).

Bokeh is a term new to me; Wiktionary defines it as a subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image. . .   Sounds disturbing!  And it sounds like something not desirable in reconnaissance phototography. However, on looking again at old family photos, I'll see if anything of that description strikes me.  Can the photographer regulate how much bokeh enters into an exposure?

As for the nice, diffused look of large flash bulbs, that look is all over the interior shots of old family photos and wedding photos. Plus I remember standing often in an arranged group shot, the heat and light of JPZ's giant floodlights on stands full in all our faces.

Robert Capa's misfortune, mentioned by the fan, was that his images of the D-Day landings were almost all destroyed by a lab tech under pressure to rush the processing while unfamiliar with all the details of the film he was handling.  From a June, 2014 Vanity Fair article: Banks had put Capa’s films into the drying cabinet as usual, but was so frantic he closed the door with the heat on high, believing that would speed the process. Without ventilation, the heat melted all of the emulsion off the film.

The Graflex Anniversary Speed Graphic shows up in the Photobook in the hands of various team members - EJZ, Frenchie, and the third guy who shows up all the time but whose name we still do not know.  Now that we have seen clear pictures of this and the movie camera, and had some names to associate with them and some of their parts, we can notice them more reliably while looking through the photos in the Trove. That is the hope, anyway.