The Marquis of Bolibar

Part of yesterday's haul from the Raynes Park Platform Library was a rather battered novel of this name by one Leo Perutz, translated from the German and published in this country in 1926.

A curious blend of soldier's story - from the point of view of a German officer of a regiment serving under Soult in Spain in 1812 - and fantasy, fantasy which includes the Wandering Jew, a mythical figure who has been knocking around Europe since the 13th century. A story made into what seems to be a well known silent film, in Austria, in 1922. A sprightly tale, slightly racy - for some reason bound in plain brown card - which I associate with pornography from that time.

Largely set in a place called La Bisbal, a place which actaully exists, to the north east of Barcelona, not far from the sea, and where an unrelated battle was fought in 1810, for which see reference 2.

Perutz was born in Prague in 1882 which makes him an almost exact contemporary of Jaroslav Hašek, although Hašek was born in the provinces despite setting the first part of his most famous book - The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk during the World War - in Prague. Then while Hašek was a Czech nationalist, albeit a lefty one, Perutz was an Austrian novelist and mathematician, German rather than Czech and related to the better known Max Perutz. The present Perutz also, as it happens, did time as a statistician for an insurance company. He emigrated to Palestine from Vienna at the time of the Anschluss.

PS 1: according to reference 3, the image above is taken from a later, 1928 film, by Walter Summers and Jack Parker, made in Malta with a very large number of extras.

PS 2: according to Wikipedia, Marshall Soult was 'one of the eighteen Marshals of the Empire (out of twenty-six) who belonged to Freemasonry'. They get - or at least got - everywhere. He was big on looting works of art. And he seems to have managed to change sides on a regular basis, ending up as a successful politician, as which I believe he had a number of perfectly amicable meetings, in the margins, with Wellington - and dying at what was then the grand old age of 82.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Perutz.

Reference 2: https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalla_de_la_Bisbal_(1810).

Reference 3: https://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/. What appears to be the ten year old blog of a old film buff. Old films that is, not old buff.

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