Slovo o polku Igoreve

[Earl Sampson]

   As a rank amateur in these matters, I had not intended to participate in
the SLOVO debate, but since my name has been invoked -
on Thu, 7 May 1998 14:54:37 -0400, Peter Fischer wrote:
>as the
>current disputation about the authenticity of the Igor Tale has
>generated more and more commentary, the temptation to leap into the fray
>became too strong to resist.  Still, I held back for a while expecting
>my old friends and classmates in Roman Jakobson's Igor Tale seminar of
>1960/61, Bob Rothstein and Earl Sampson, to wade in ahead of me because
>a few months ago they had both reminisced here about that unforgettably
>idiosyncratic seminar, surely one of Jakobson's last and greatest
>classroom performances at Harvard...

- I feel something of an obligation (to the shade of Roman Jakobson?) to
weigh in on the side of the "authenticists."  For me the two decisive
arguments have always been the linguistic and the artisitic, i.e. the
unlikelihood that anyone in the late 18th century had either the linguistic
sophistication to recreate 12th century Russian, or the artistic genius to
create such a masterpiece (both these doubts have already been more
eloquently expressed by participants in the current debate). That said, I
must admit that Professor Keenan's outline of his arguments has *somewhat*
shaken my long-standing faith, originally inculcated by Jakobson, in the
Tale's authenticity. I look forward to the elaboration and documentation of
those arguments in his book, but for the time being I remain a believer.

   Since Peter ended his message on a personal note, I beg the indulgence
of the list to do the same - not with a dream, but a reminiscence: of the
one and only time I encountered Professor Keenan in person, when Peter
Fischer introduced me to him on the steps of Widener Library, and he was
eager to share his excitement over just having heard of the public attack
on Zimin, to which he alludes in his May 7 posting. For some reason, that
brief, unremarkable scene has remained carefully preserved in my memory, to
be recalled in the intervening years only infrequently, but nonetheless
clearly - but never more vividly than now, when its three participants have
met again, so to speak, in cyberspace.

Earl Sampson
Boulder, CO
esampson at cu.campus.mci.net