Category: cholera

Memento mori to jollity in Skåne

(Skåne is the southern country in Sweden on the eastern side of the Øresund Strait from Copenhagen. The specter of Cholera is reaching out from France.)

His Royal Majesty and generals.

(accompanied by some playful verse which I cannot render in full, but here’s one pair of couplets)

But look into the distance! What do we get to see?
It is the cholera that is seen to prevail,
She, who explains all gaiety and caressing,
should she interfere with our play?!

(Fäderneslandet, Stockholm, 1884)

Swedish cholera cartoon

Failed speculators

For early Swedish satirical press one should apparently look to Grönköpings Veckoblad, but so far as I can tell, there is no historical digital archive available. Rather by accident I’ve finally run across another potential Swedish contribution to this collection. Fäderneslandet (Fatherland) was a Stockholm newspaper in operation since 1830, achieving a rather large circulation by the 1870s. Sporting the subheading “Freedom Work Justice,” it apparently fostered a politically radical stance, but more often functioned as a scandalous broadsheet. In any event, they occasionally published cartoons, including this one from during the cholera pandemic of 1892, accompanied by rhymed couplets in the original.

(Fäderneslandet, Stockholm, 1892)

Swedish cholera cartoon
Gothenburgers:

Attention! This newspaper is reporting:
“The Traveling Kaiser is not coming.”
Because of cholera? Yes, it’s a given,
he cannot defy it – no.
But, alas, organizers of festivities,
Officers and gentlemen who bear the sword!
Yes, major patrons and merchants,
it’s a blow to the bill of goods.
That Kaiser Wilhelm would visit us,
it was just said in all the squares.
And we wanted to hold a feast for him
in our proud Gothenburg.
We intended to light things up
and put on the fireworks.
“He will decorate us for this
with ribbons and medals,” we thought.
But these were golden illusions
they evaporated away for this time.
Yes, now by forests [of newspapers?] and millions [of kroner?]
our nose has become terribly long.
Whose fault it is, we all know,
it is cholera, at the knees of the gods!
Oh, may it go to Gehenna
and be put there in quarantine!

Defending against the dangers of the Comedy Theater

(The Vigszinház or Comedy Theater was generally the most popular in Budapest.)
The pitchfork at the city outskirts —
Even chorela doesn’t come in!
(The orthography signals something other than high diction. Note the phonetic metathesis of “cholera.” Contemporaries would have understood the reference to a folksong lamenting that cholera didn’t affect lords or priests, only the poor peasants.)
(Borsszem Jankó, Budapest, 1900)

Hungarian cholera cartoon

It would have been better the other way around

“Pardner, did you hear that there is chorela [cholera] among the people of Újpest? Even real chorela!”
“Surely it would be better if their money was real and their chorela fake.”
(Újpest, or New Pest, was a recently-incorporated town on the north side of Budapest proper, and a higher proportion of its residents were Jewish, though not from the bourgeois elite.)
(Kakas Márton, Budapest, 1911)

Hungarian cholera cartoon

I’m not needed in Spain

Cholera at the French-Spanish border, to Spanish prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo: “Ah! Are you the boss? Well, I’ll head back. I’m not needed in Spain.”

In January Andalusian anarchist workers associations had tried to take control of Jerez de la Frontera, an action that was violently suppressed by the government. The following month four anarchist workers were executed, but not before a small bomb was set off in the Plaza Real in Barcelona. Just weeks before this image was published, greengrocers in Madrid launched a “mutiny,” a popular revolt in the face of new municipal taxes. The Conservative Cánovas, then serving his fifth turn as prime minister, strongly resisted expanding suffrage to the working class. (See a previous issue for another excellent image; El Motin was unsurprisingly deeply hostile to monarchist politicians.) He also pursued a hard line against Cuban independence. He was eventually assassinated by an Italian anarchist in 1897.

(El Motin, Madrid, 1892)

Spanish cholera cartoon

It’s ongoing (Allegory)

Some out of habit
others because of the cholera
some on a whim
and most for fashion,
everyone is going to bathe
in the blue waves.
Only I who do not have
not a single quarter of an hour,
I stay here by force
because they hang by force.
Stay here…? I’m already crying…!
Why? For one thing
…………………….
I’m afraid to be
alone with the microbe
(La Caricatura, Madrid, 1885) (Sadly I cannot say anything about Nao Ping. This one is rich with possibility.)

Spanish cholera cartoon

A scene from Don Juan Tenorio

Don Juan Tenorio (the Seducer) was a 1844 play by José Zorrilla that retold the Don Juan legend for modern Spanish audiences. The object of satire here is prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Costillo, sometimes referred to as “the monster” for his curious combination of intellectual hauteur and political brutality.
Cholera: “You have slapped me in the face!” [i.e., “I demand satisfaction!”]
The monster: “Christ almighty! My father!”
(El Busilis, Barcelona, 1884)

Spanish cholera cartoon

Carnival and Lent

(This is not a freestanding cartoon, but one of several small illustrations that accompany an essay by this title. A rather rough translation of a bit of the surrounding text follows. I’m including this item because it is the earliest available Spanish example I have located so far.)

The recent carnival in Madrid has been bountiful in amorous intrigues, very weighty puns, and acts of honor.

As if revolutions, wars, typhus, influenza, morbid cholera, national pneumonia, and doctors who take death as their lackey were not enough, there are men who have such little esteem for their lives, that I must get away from all that chaff pretending to be skewered like veal on a spit. This would be dreadful if, fortunately, there were not charitable souls in the world who would try to convert the fiery impetus of the Matachines [carnivalesque dance troupes] into healthy prudence… [A metaphor or Aesopian tag for revolutionary factions, which did not win the day in 1848? I am out of my depth here.]
(La Linterna mágica, Madrid, 1849)

Spanish cholera cartoon