Slovo o Polku Igorove Online?

[Keenan, Edward]

Motivation, of course, is always very difficult for any historian to
establish, especially when dealing with a person who, like Dobrovsky,
suffered from a severe (but not always intellectually debilitating) mental
illness, almost certainly bi-polar disorder.

With that major reservation, and for reasons too complex to set forth in an
email, I think that the general intellectual environment among educated
Czechs of Bohemia in the 1790s supports arguments for several plausible
contextual motivations.

By the way, the text is not very long -- some 2800 words, and it would be no
great feat to copy it out on a few sheets of paper in an hour or so.

And Dobrovsky -- often called Abbé -- was a priest, not a monk.

Edward L. Keenan
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History, Harvard University
Director, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections
1703 32nd. Street, NW, Washington, DC 20007

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alina Israeli [SMTP:aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 10:22 PM
> To:   SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
> Subject:      Re: Slovo o Polku Igorove Online?
> 
> If "Slovo" is a hoax, in other words a literary crime, there must be (if I
> remember my Agatha Christie correctly) means, motif and opportunity. The
> monk might have had the means (knowledge etc.), but what was his motif?
> Why
> would he provide another culture with an epic work?
> 
> In the history of literary hoaxes and mistifications (Mérimée, for
> example)
> there was some reason, but then there was also a desire to take credit for
> it. Why would a Catholic(?) monk write a Russian epic? Why would one show
> such a tour de force and not claim credit for it? At least eventually.
> 
> Opportunity should include the absence of witnesses. Even if composing
> took
> no time at all (which is doubtful), writing it by hand surely took a lot
> of
> time. Other monks should have gotten suspicious as to what is being
> written. Not to mention the cost of paper in such quantities. Is it
> possible that absolutely no one knew about the undertaking? And when the
> manuscript was discovered, why no one would come forward? No one knew or
> they all swore to a lie and no one told the truth even on the death bed?
> 
> Is there anything else in the history of world literature where a hoax was
> created and whose author was not discovered till two hundred years later
> based on circumstancial evidence?
> 
> Respectfully,
> Alina Israeli
> 
> **************************************************************
> Alina Israeli
> LFS, American University                phone:  (202) 885-2387
> 4400 Mass. Ave., NW                     fax:    (202) 885-1076
> Washington, DC 20016
> 
> aisrael at american.edu
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
>   options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
>                 http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------