Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles and Tales by S. A. ZenkovskyReview by: A. D. StokesThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 43, No. 101 (Jun., 1965), pp. 435-438Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205671 .

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REVIEWS 435

Mayakovsky-of its revolutionary fervour, Pasternak, closest of all to Pushkin, to that poet's subtlety and wisdom, grandeur and simplicity'.

The book is written vividly, even passionately, with some comparisons with western literature and some felicitous definitions, and even while protesting against some of the author's judgments, one finds this work both interesting and provocative.

Liverpool NADEJDA GORODETZKY

Zenkovsky, S. A. (ed. and translator). Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles and Tales. With an Introduction by S. A. Zenkovsky. E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, I963. xi + 436 pages. Plates, maps, glossary and chronology.

THE scope of this anthology of translated mediaeval Russian literature is wider than the title suggests. A general introduction gives a brief outline of the history of Russian literature to 1700, and the texts themselves, which are divided into three periods (The Kievan Period (IO30-1240) (130 pp.); The Period of Feudal Divisions (I240-I478) (I04 pp.); and The Muscovite Period (I478-I 700) (I55 pp.)), include examples of all the main genres. Thus, in spite of the title, this was clearly conceived as an anthology of early Russian literature as a whole; and as such it should be judged.

The editor has comparatively few completely new translations to offer, for in selecting the excerpts to be included, he seems to have relied to a large extent on those works which have already appeared in English or modern Russian translation. Thus we find extracts from Cross's The Primary Chronicle, Wiener's Anthology of Russian Literature, Fennell's Corre- spondence between Prince A. Kurbsky and Tzar Ivan IVof Russia, Jane Harrison and Hope Mirless's The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, M. 0. Skripil's Russkaya povest' xvii veka, etc. It would have been preferable to use Fedotov's more readable and accurate version of ZhitSye Avvakuma in A Treasury of Russian Spirituality and Obolensky's translation of Slovo o polku Igoreve in The Penguin Book of Russian Verse (although the latter may not have been available at the time), but in general there is little to quarrel with in the selection of works. Here the reader can discover much of the better known literature of mediaeval Russia, from the sermons of Hilarion and Cyril of Turov and the Kievo-Pecherskiy Paterik, through the hagiographies of Epiphanius the Wise, to the povesti of the I 7th century. It would of course be easy to point out gaps in the list, and it is a pity that Poucheniye Vladimira Monomakha, Moleniye Daniila Zatochnika, Istoriya o Kazanskom tzarstve and the virshi of Simeon Polotsky, to name but a few, are not represented; but, accepting the fact that the editor had a limited number of pages at his dis- posal, it would be difficult to suggest which works to exclude in order to find a place for these additions.

But if the choice can be applauded, some of the translations themselves and the general editing of the anthology call for more adverse comment.

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436 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

The blame for mistranslations should perhaps be laid at the door of the original translators, but the editor has revised some of the translated texts, and it would surely have been better if he had subjected all of them to a critical scrutiny and eliminated some of the more obvious errors; e.g. the reference to 'rifles' on p. 280 and to 'Viking tradesmen' on p. 435; 'ferry' (perevesishche) (p. 55); 'the spear pierced the ears' (lete skvoze ushi) (p. 89); 'the free son of a free father' (svobodnaa svobodnago) (p. 8 I); 'In accordance with the previous treaty' (ravno drugago sveshchan5ya) (p. 64); 'by a man' (vsem chelovekom) (p. 8 I); 'through our own strength' (po sile nashey) (ibid.); 'the ancient Antonius' (starets) (p. 94); 'such a dispersion' (sitsevago pleneniya) (p. I82); etc. A complete list of such mistranslations would be lengthy. The editor should also have ironed out some of the inconsisten- cies, deciding whether to call Grozny Ivan IV, as he does in some texts, or John IV, as he does in others; checking to establish whether 'aurochs' is really a plural, as it appears to be throughout the translations of Slovo o polku Igoreve and Zadonshchina, or a singular, as it is in 'Prince Roman, Khan Otrok and the Wormwood'; whether 'serf' or 'slave' is the more correct translation of rab on p. 3 I 8; whether terms such as voyevoda should be translated or simply transliterated and explained; etc. Disturbing, too, is the style, or rather the mixture of styles in some of the translations. In the tale of 'Peter and Fevronia of Murom', for example, in which Zenkovsky is evidently following Skripil"s somewhat free modern Russian transla- tion, the idiom is at times a startling combination of the modern and the faintly archaic: 'he again spoke to the maiden: I came to your place and saw you weaving' (p. 240); 'Actually, they went to a burial. . .' (ibid.); 'Actually, he and my father climb trees' (ibid.); 'asking that she make a shirt, towel, and pants from this linen' (pp. 241-2). Or again, in 'The Life of St. Michael, A Fool in Christ': 'send your envoy to the Great Prince of Moscow right now' (p. 257).

These are comparatively minor blemishes, in spite of their number, but the anthology does not manage to escape without at least one major howler. Nestor was indeed the author of one of the three main versions of the story of the martyrdom of SS. Boris and Gleb, but the work translated and attributed to Nestor on pp. 87-9I is in fact the story in the Povest' vremennykh let s.a. IOI5, not Nestor's celebrated ChtenEye o zhitii i o pogublenii blazhennuyu strastoterptsu Boris i Gleba. And it is not therefore surprising that Zenkovsky gives a totally inaccurate account of the treatment of the Boris and Gleb theme in early Russian literature on pp. I3-14. Here we read that Nestor's version is the 'most detailed and realistic', and that 'In Nestor's eyes Boris and Gleb were martyrs for peace in Russia'. Nestor's Chteniye is the least realistic precisely because he was not concerned with the political significance of the martyrs' voluntary acceptance of death. Consequently, many of the historical details which we find in the chronicle story and in the anonymous Skazaniye are 'omitted, distorted, or blurred by Nestor, whose primary aim was to write a genuine vita which conformed to the traditions and conventions of the genre. His Chteniye, unlike the other two versions, does not confine itself to an account of the assassination of the two princes: in traditional style it seeks to show that they had been des-

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REVIEWS 437 tined to be saints and martyrs from their earliest years, thus transforming them, in the words of Stender-Petersen, into 'ideal heroes of Christianity, divested of human, secular features'.

The general introduction and the introductions to individual works are of necessity brief and factual; and therefore a certain amount of over- simplification has to be accepted. But the price demanded by conciseness seems altogether too high in the section dealing with the Second Southern Slav movement (pp. 2I-2). A few lines on Hesychasm is not enough to explain the development of the new style in hagiography in the I4th and I5th centuries; and the description of the style is also inadequate. Zenkovsky writes: 'For a Hesychast writer, not the recorded biography but the ideal truth of the saints' life was important. Their vitae depict not the everyday deeds of the heroes but rather the supreme truth and eternal significance of the saints' actions.' Taken by itself, this statement is un- exceptionable, but it will inevitably be read in conjunction with Zen- kovsky's comment on the vitae of the preceding Kievan period: 'The vitae were traditionally constructed according to a stereotyped pattern, with the ideal of sainthood outweighing an accurate presentation of the details of the saint's actual life.' (p. I4). The general reader will be hard put to it to discern any difference between the two approaches. And he will be further puzzled to find on p. 22 that Epiphanius the Wise, the greatest native Russian exponent of the new style, 'despite his rich stylistics . . . success- fully conveys a realistic portrayal of the saints'; and, on p. 205, that Epiphanius 'perfected a completely new style of writing', for here, in the introduction to Epiphanius's works, no mention is made of Hesychasm or of the part played by the Southern Slavs in developing the new style. Neither is it helpful to be told that the legend of St Mercurius of Smolensk is 'written in a simple style characterized by redundancy' (p. 258); nor yet that Slovo o pogibeli Rus'skyya Zemli 'is usually found in miscellanies. . .' (p. 173), since there are only two extant copies of the text, and it is not therefore 'usually' found anywhere. The introduction to the 'Life of Arch- priest Avvakum' (p. 32 I), on the other hand, is inaccurate rather than in- adequate in its treatment of the Raskol. It manages to ignore the central issues, suggesting that the Raskol was merely a struggle for power in the Church; and this is all the more misleading since Avvakum's own intro- duction to his zhitiye is omitted in the translation.

Minor inaccuracies also abound in the introductions: the Russian metropolitan see was not transferred to Moscow in I325 (p. 23); the uni- fication of Great Russia was not completed in I 478 (p. 25); Svyatoslav was killed in 972, not in 97I (p. 58); the Pechenegs did not attack Russia for the first time during Svyatoslav's reign (p. 59); fratricidal strife among the sons of Vladimir I did not cease in ioi6 (p. 71); I224 is not the date of the Mongol invasion of southern Russia (p. I67), nor is I237 the date of their advance on Novgorod (p. 258); Serapion of Vladimir's sermon on 'the merciless heathens' refers to the Mongol invasion, not to Christians who disobey God (p. I 99); the internecine conflict of the second quarter of the I5th century was between Dmitry Shemiaka and Vasily II, not Vasily III (p. 247); Vladimir Monomakh became Grand Prince in I I I 3, not in I I I 2,

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438 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

and he was not 'the last prince of Kiev to be recognized by all Russian princes of the Kievan era' (p. 295); etc. If the editor had only consulted his own 'Chronology of Russian History and Culture' on pp. 435-6, he would have been able to correct at least some of these slips.

But how important are such mistakes and inadequacies? This depends very much upon the reader for whom the anthology is intended and by whom it will be read; for in criticising it for its faults, one should not lose sight of the fact that it makes readily available to a potentially large public a wide variety of themes in early Russian literature; and in this role, as a populariser of the hitherto inaccessible, it is to be warmly welcomed and commended. The texts themselves will be all that will concern the general reader: it will matter little to him whether Monomakh acceded in I I I 2 or I I I 3, or whether or not Nestor was the author of this particular version of the martyrdom of Boris and Gleb. The serious student of the period, on the other hand, should not need to be told that translations are no substitute for the original texts; that if all literature loses something in translation, mediaeval literature, in which content is so often determined by the liter- ary decorum of the genre, suffers most, because, while it is easy enough to render 'what happened', the facts, the all-important manner in which the facts were presented is frequently lost. Nevertheless, in practice the anthology will be used, and is being used, by the student of early Russian literature who feels unequal to a struggle with the Old Russian of the original works and who welcomes the simplicity of potted histories of literature. As an aid to this type of student, the anthology should be treated with caution.

London A. D. STOKES

Markov, V. The Longer Poems of Velimir Khlebnikov. University of Cali- fornia Publications in Modern Philology, vol. 62, Berkeley and Los Angeles, I962. vi +273 pages. Index. Bibliography.

THIs remarkable book is without any doubt one of the most impressive recent contributions to the study of Russian literature.

While many of us were travelling along well-marked paths, Markov embarked on a truly pioneering venture. His book is the first full-length study in any language of one of the most seminal and most baffling figures in modern Russian poetry. Moreover-and perhaps more important-it is the first extended treatment of an important dimension of Khlebnikov's legacy which hitherto had been 'largely neglected or misinterpreted'. Markov effectively dislodges the still lingering image of Khlebnikov as primarily a purveyor of such dadaistic tours deforce as 'Zaklatiye smekhom'. He reminds us that Khlebnikov wrote more than thirty long poems and that his most significant and enduring achievements are embodied not in his 'overpublicised short experimental verse' but in these larger-scale efforts. In doing so he does much to bolster the Jakobson-Tynyanov view of Khlebnikov as the main exponent of the epic strain in Russian futurism, indeed in modern Russian poetry.

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