Slovo o polku Igoreve

[J. Douglas Clayton]

>
>Edward L. Keenan has just driven another one of his golden nails into the
>coffin of Russian nationalist scholarship.  Not only is the Igor tale not
>part of "Russian" literature, it is not even a part of "Rusian" (Lunt)
>literature.
>
>Another way to look at this is to observe that there is one less reason for
>conflating things Rusian with things Russian, because there is one less
>Rusian cultural object for Russian culture to claim for itself.
>
>And this is good for Ukrainians, who are naturally offended by expressions
>such as "Kievan Russia" ("Rossiia kievskaia" - Berdiaev) in reference to
>Rus' before Russia existed.
>
Our job is not to police which works belong to which literary traditions,
but to dispassionately observe the functioning of the national myth that we
call Russian literature. If that myth appropriates Slovo, then we have a
right to describe that appropriation, document it, and account for it. It
is a literary fact. Whether or not we say they have no right to do it, they
will continue to do so. By the way, Slovo is also appropriated by
modern-day Ukrainians as "Ukrainian literature." This is as offensive to
some as "Rossiia kievskaia" is to others. What is important is that it is
done *because* it is offensive (in the etymological sense), in other words,
a counter-appropriation. Beyond the issue of appropriation (and indeed of
the authenticity of Slovo, which, in the context of modern Russian
literature is a red herring), no one can dispute, it seems to me, that
Slovo is a highly influential text in Russian literature, culture, and
identity - as important, perhaps, as Kosovo is to the Serbs.




******************************************************************************
J. Douglas Clayton                              Tel. 512-471-3607 (office)
Professor and Chair                                  512-899-0848 (home)
Slavic Languages & Literatures                  Fax  512-471-6710
University of Texas
Austin TX 78713-7217

http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/slavic/profs/clayton.html