Slovo o polku Igoreve

[keenan at fas.harvard.edu]

Dear Colleagues,

I append, as promised, some "theses" that form the basis of my forthcoming
book, in the hope
that they might stimulate and at the same time shape our discussion.  I am
well aware that in the
end only the detailed evidence and argument that I hope to provide in the
book can resolve
these tangled matters, but it seems useful for the moment to have at least a
full and careful
summary of my current views available to others.  And it seems quite
inappropriate for me to
"lurk" while others are discussing these matters on line.

At the same time, as you can imagine, I doubt that I shall be able to
respond to each and every
posting on every aspect of the matter.  To do so, I judge from the traffic
of the past few days,
would be a full-time proposition, and I desperately want to get this fat
manuscript off my desk.

So here a few propositions for you, some of which will be of more interest
than others, depending
on one's own special field.  Please note the care with which I use modifiers
like "probably,"
"possibly," "plausibly," and the like.  There are still many minor aspects
of the story that are not
clear to me.  Conversely, when I say "all," or "none," I am being equally
careful and mean to
indicate that further doubt is unwarranted.

(Apologies for the absence of French and Czech diacritics.)
....................

TO LAY THE GHOST OF THE "LAY OF THE HOST OF IGOR"

I.      One cannot plausibly reconstruct, on the basis of documentary sources,
either the details
of the "discovery" of the putative original manuscript of the Igor Tale
["IT"] or its paleographical
characteristics.  All statements by "eye-witnesses" concerning these matters
are mutually
contradictory or demonstrably false.  There is no missing "Iaroslav
Chronograph," and no
documented proof of the existence of any portion of the IT before 1792 or 1793.

II.     By contrast, one can indeed demonstrate, on the basis of the authentic
correspondence
of the principals, that no "original" manuscript was lost in 1812 -- or,
more precisely, that no one
spoke explicitly of that loss, even when pressed on the matter by an
enthusiastic fellow believer,
when discussing the burning of Musin-Pushkin's house, or when republishing
the IT in 1819.  It is
indeed possible with some confidence to trace the development of the
"destruction legend,"
which did not acquire any general currency even among enthusiasts until some
time after Musin-
Pushkin's death in 1817.

III.    Speculations about the mythical "Musin-Pushkin manuscript" proving
baseless,
historians are left with more conventional documentation -- and with the
text itself, the only
unimpeachable source, apparently, of what we know and can learn about its
origins and
authorship.  After nearly two centuries of efforts to explain its numerous
orthographic, lexical,
morphological, stylistic and thematic "puzzles," an unacceptable -- even
growing -- number
remains without answers.

IV.     A new attempt to resolve them requires a clear-eyed reappraisal of the
"scholarly
tradition," many components of which are quite deplorable.  I have in mind
not only the pillorying
of Andre Mazon and Aleksandr Zimin; the very tools of philology have been
bent to the shape of
an imagined original text.  Dictionaries and other reference works are
corrupted by "ghost" words
and speculation deriving from dogmatic belief in the authenticity of the
tale; a vast array of
secondary non-scholarly behaviors has influenced neighboring disciplines and
crossed national
boundaries.

V.      Consequently, one must re-open the inquiry and re-interrogate all
available witnesses.
These fall naturally into three distinct categories: 1) the "eye-witnesses"
(Musin-Pushkin,
Malinovskii, Selivanovskii) whose testimony is solicited after 1812 by the
unreliable, mad
Kalaidovich; 2) documented "sightings" of the/a text of the IT -- NB not
"Musin-Pushkin's
manuscript" -- before 1800 (Ivan P. Elagin [1792-3], Kheraskov [1796],
Karamzin [1797]); 3) the
witness of the texts themselves, that is, the Editio Princeps, the so-called
"Catherinian copy," the
"Malinovskii papers," and a few other pre-1800 traces.  Although it is
readily apparent that the
"eye-witnesses" impeach themselves and one another, and that the
"sightings," while irrefutable,
are limited in their import, both are helpful in reconstructing the milieu
in which the IT took final
form.  These texts, properly construed,  are themselves eloquent and
unimpeachable witnesses
to the process of creation of the text, which took its near-final form in
mid-1798.

VI.     The close study of the "Malinovskii papers" reveals clues as to how the
text was put
together, and permits us to talk of first and second "states," before and
after the integration of the
"fragments" found in Malinovskii's archive.  These fragments contain, as
clearly delineated and
integral units, the well-known passages from the "Apostol" of 1307 and the
late version of the
"Molenie Daniila Zatochnika," as well as compact borrowings from specific,
identifiable copies of
the Zadonshchina (especially ms. Sin. 790) and the "Skazanie o Mamaevom
poboishche"
(Timkovskii's copy).  Elagin clearly copied the incipit from a version of
the "first state;"
Kheraskov and Karamzin probably saw or were told of the same version.  A new
chronology of
the history of the text, 1792/3-1800, can be constructed with some confidence.

VII.    The consideration of textual (lexical, morphological) features leads to
the conclusion that
the two "states" were probably the work of a single author.  The scrutiny of
"original" passages
(i.e., those not clearly related to the texts mentioned just above) permits
the delineation of an
authorial persona, characterized by an extraordinary familiarity with
Slavonic languages and
narrative texts, especially Biblical and historical; by a deep interest in
Slavic valor and unity; by a
fascination with sound and light effects -- especially bird and animal
sounds; by a deist
equanimity with regard to paganism, Christianity, and a personified nature;
and, paradoxically,
by a deficient familiarity with certain specifically East Slavic linguistic
and historical realities.
This author is also familiar with the Hebrew Old Testament and Targum, with
Classical and
Biblical Greek and Latin, and with the Italian Renaissance.

VIII.   Josef Dobrovsky (1753-1829) was probably the only person of his
generation who could
properly understand the IT, and he is in all likelihood its creator.  His
early biography and training
in Biblical and Slavic studies suit him uniquely for that role.  His work in
the manuscript
collections of Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1792-93 (including
Musin-Pushkin's) provided him
access to precisely those manuscript copies of all known possible sources
that have the most
telling similarities to the text.  (His surviving notes record his use of
such crucial items as the
1307 Apostol, ms. Sin 790, and the Hypatian copy of the Primary Chronicle.)
He arrived in
Russia at the peak of interest in Ossian and fascination with Tmutorokan'.
His Slavofil (his word)
views, his later reactions to the publication of the IT, and his response to
the forgeries of
"medieval Czech" poems by his students Hanka and Linde are all congruent
with this conclusion.

IX.     Reexamination of the text reveals that a large number -- almost all --
of its well-known
"obscurities" (hapax legomena, garbled passages, out-of-place "polonisms"
and "classicisms,"
pagan/Christian contradictions, geographical and genealogical absurdities,
etc.) can be resolved
in light of the hypothesis of Dobrovsky's authorship.  In particular, the
often-discussed "Turkic"
lexemes are in their majority (leaving aside proper names) Slavic, Hebrew,
or Italian in origin.

X.      Tentative conclusions:
        1.      The original text of the IT was composed in several stages or fragments,
starting
in 1792 or 1793, by Dobrovsky, as an "imitation" of the Zadonshchina, which
he had just read, or
as Ossianic "variations" on its themes.  It is probable that Dobrovsky did
not set out to perpetrate
a hoax, and did not intend that these "fragments" be published (see 7,
below).  He showed the
"first state" to Elagin, and subsequently, after returning to Prague, sent
him (or perhaps
Malinovskii) additional "fragments."
        2.      Elagin's papers having passed after his death to Musin-Pushkin,
Kheraskov and
Karamzin somehow learned of the existence of the text(s).  They both alluded
to "fragments,"
unmistakably some portion of the IT text, in print.
        3.      After Karamzin's explicit public announcement of the discovery in 1797,
Musin-
Pushkin appears to have instructed Malinovskii to prepare an edition.
        4.      Malinovskii was primarily (almost solely?) responsible for the
preparation of the
final text, which occupied him from mid-1798 until the appearance of the
first edition in 1800.
        5.      Dobrovsky was unaware of this activity, and was taken by surprise by the
appearance of the text Editio Princeps in 1800.  But he chose not to
challenge the text's
authenticity (as he would later, for a time, not expose his students'
fraud), and subsequently
always treated the subject very circumspectly.
        6.      It is quite possible that neither Musin-Pushkin nor Malinovskii knew the
real
origin of their text, but both certainly knew that they had never seen an
"ancient manuscript."
(Malinovskii may well have known more than he told Musin-Pushkin about
theorigin of the text.)
Hence their obfuscation in dealing with Kalaidovich, and Malinovskii's
ill-fated commission in
1815 to Bardin to fabricate an "ancient" copy.
        7.      The question of motivation is exceedingly complex, not only because we must
set aside the prejudices of our age about authenticity and our sense of the
grandeur of the IT, but
because Dobrovský was without doubt gravely afflicted with manic-depressive
illness, and we
cannot know his mental state when he began and continued to work on his
"fragments."  But the
views reflected in his voluminous writings and correspondence -- some sane,
some clearly
delirious -- comport well with the "message" of the IT, to the extent that
the latter can be
established.


I've tried in these brief paragraphs to provide a sense of how I now see the
text and its history.
There remain, for me, many unanswered questions and, I do not doubt, many
unanswerable
ones.  As we approach a general discussion, let me make three appeals to all:

Please remember that most questions anyone might pose -- about textual
relations, about lost
manuscripts, about motivations and behaviors -- will arise from the
seemingly intolerable
contrast between common probabilities, on the one hand, and what might
appear to be highly
improbable conclusions (e.g., that a famous Bohemian Gelehrter might,
without wishing it, have
bamboozled the Russian learned public.)  But the most improbable belief in
this whole field of
culture history is the belief that such a text could have appeared in East
Slavic territory in the
late twelfth century, whereas the appearance of one more Ossianic text
anywhere in Europe or
America in 1793 is so probable as to be quite unremarkable, were it not for
the length of its
successful run.

Remember, too, that I say nothing about the poetical or other literary
merits of the text, though I
have spent far too much of my life considering them.  It doesn't really
matter to my argument
whether this is a work of great artistry, a learned bagatelle, or a
delirious pastiche.  I do,
however, think that here we can agree with Dmitrii Likhachev, who made a
thoughtful point in his
remarks prepared for the public humiliation of Aleksandr Zimin in 1962, a
copy of which he
helpfully sent to Roman Jakobson at the time: since generations of Russian
geniuses -- poets,
sculptors, graphic artists and musicians -- have been inspired by the IT to
create great works of
art, the IT itself must have been written in the twelfth century, where it
towers over the literary
landscape as a work of genius; had it been written in the eighteenth, it
would have been a "mere
trifle" (_bezdelushka_).

Remember, finally, that Zimin was right when he wrote to Likhachev that "the
Igor Tale is, after
all, not an article of faith, but a subject of scholarship."  And Likhachev
was profoundly wrong
when he wrote to a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party,
"the question of
[the authenticity of] the Igor Tale is one of significance to our nation."
Russian culture and
national self-esteem can easily survive -- and in my view will benefit from
-- the removal of this
alien organism, which has become a malignant impediment to self-examination
and historical
understanding.

Edward L. Keenan
Professor of History
Harvard University
Robinson Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138

(617) 495-2556   FAX: 496-3425