Vienna Slavic Yearbook. N.S. 6 (2018) – Abstracts
Zur Sprache der ältesten Bücher der Burgenländischen Kroaten (Duševne pesne 1609 und 1611)
Gerhard Neweklowsky (Wien / Klagenfurt)
On the language of the f irst Burgenland Croatian books (Duševne pesne 1609 and 1611). Grgur Mekinić is the author of the Croatian hymns printed in Western Hungary (today Burgenland, Austria) in 1609 and 1611. The texts are translations of German, Latin, and Hungarian Protestant hymns. Mekinić himself did not stem from Burgenland, it is uncertain where he came fr om. He was a Protestant pastor who wanted to disseminate the new faith, encouraged and invited by the owner of the dominion of Eisenstadt and Forchtenstein. Mekinić’s efforts, however, failed, since the vast majority of Western Hungarian Croats remained Catholics. The language of the hymns is the Ikavian-ekavian subdialect of Čakavian Croatian. In the article Mekinić’s language is compared with Burgenland Croatian including their old literature, the Čakavian Postilla of 1568, and other dialect material. It can be stated that Mekinić’s hymns are the first two books of the Burgenland Croats, but they do not represent the beginning of their literature, since they were forbidden by the Catholic church and afterwards entirely forgotten. The uninterrupted Burgenland Croatian literature begins only more than a century later.
Key words: Burgenland Croatian language, oldest printed books, Protestant hymns, Čakavian dialect, Ikavian-ekavian subdialect, Western South Slavic dialectology
Земная судьба небожителей в жизни и творчестве Алексея Ремизова
Елена Обатнина (С.-Петербург)
The present article “The Earthly Destiny of the Celestials in the Life and Work of Alexei Remizov” examines Alexei Remizov’s strategy in creating a biographical myth based on his and his wife’s lives. By studying his correspondence mostly dating back to 1912, it reconstructs several existential motifs in Remizov’s personal mythology, such as earthly nature of Remizov himself, celestial nature of Serafima Pavlovna and her earthly fate given to her as a punishment, thus providing an enhanced understanding of the typology of conflicts in Remizov’s writings and his own biography.
Key words: Alexei Remizov, Serafima Remizova-Dovgello, Viacheslav Ivanov, Zinaida Hippius, “Church of the Third Testament”, Orphic tradition, reception of Orphic teachings in Russian culture
Музыкальный подтекст стихотворения Пастернака «Импровизация»
Анна Сергеева-Клятис (Москва)
The present article considers Boris Pasternak’s poem “Improvisation” (1915) in the musical context, deliberating which musical composition could have been described by the poet. The author suggests that the improvisation was based on the music from the Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” and finds correlations in the ballet, its libretto, depictions of characters and their musical leitmotifs. By using the interdisciplinary approach, the article corrects existing notions of the meaning of the poem and Pasternak’s own poetic intentions in the “Improvisation.”
Key words: Boris Pasternak, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Fyodor Tyutchev, musical sources in Pasternak’s poetry, “Improvisation”, “Swan Lake”, interdisciplinary approach
“Moscow has ears everywhere!”: From Pasternak’s Death to Olga’s and Irina’s Arrests
Paolo Mancosu (Berkeley CA)
Using hitherto unpublished archival correspondence, the article reconstructs some crucial events that took place in 1960 and ended with the arrests, in August 1960, of Olga Ivinskaya, Pasternak’s companion and literary assistant, and of her daughter, Irina Emelianova, in September of the same year. Many of these events rotate around a document that came to be known as “Pasternak’s will”, in reality a power of attorney, that Pasternak had signed on April 15, 1960 on behalf of Olga Ivinskaya. The document was entrusted to Giuseppe Garritano and his wife for safe delivery to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Pasternak’s publisher in Italy, but disappeared in mysterious circumstances in June 1960. The reconstruction shows, among other things, how Olga Ivinskaya tried to restore the document using a blank sheet of paper with Pasternak’s signature on it and that the original had been intercepted by the KGB.
Key words: Boris Pasternak, Olga Ivinskaya, Irina Emelianova, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Pasternak’s “will”, KGB, Doctor Zhivago, Heinz Schewe, Gerd Ruge, Georges Nivat, Soviet cultural policy in the 1960ies
The Battlefield of Translation: Joseph Brodsky and Daniel Weissbort
Zakhar Ishov (Tübingen)
Following Joseph Brodsky’s expulsion from the USSR and his settling down in the USA, translation of his poetry into English became a matter of Brodsky’s professional career. Brodsky meticulously revised English translations of his work done by others in order to preserve the original form and meter of his poems – an unheard of move for a non-native speaker. By looking in detail at the changes he made to a translation into English from his cycle “A Part of Speech” completed by a British poet and translator Daniel Weissbort the present article examines one episode of Brodsky’s intervention. The heated correspondence between the two over those changes became a forum where Brodsky expounded his theory of formal translation. On his part Weissbort had misgivings about the manner in which his own attempts were subsumed by Brodsky’s (self-) translations. A detailed analysis of the poem “The North Buckles Metal,” initially translated by Weissbort and subsequently revised by Brodsky, probes these theoretical pronouncements discussing the multiple layers of meaning mobilized by the poem, and the manner in which Brodsky’s translation maintains these in the English through strong rhymes and frequent assonance and alliteration.
Key words: Joseph Brodsky, poetry translation, Daniel Weissbort, Russian-English prosodic contrasts, comparative poetics, versification, formal translation
Aleksej Remizov im Briefwechsel mit der Übersetzerin Fega Frisch
Heinrich Riggenbach (Basel)
Alexei Remizov in Correspondence with his Translator Fega Frisch. – Fega Frisch became one of the first Remizov’s translators. Her translation of “Krestovye sestry” (Die Schwestern im Kreuz, 1913) introduced Remizov to German reading public. Frisch’s epistolary contact with the writer was interrupted by the World War I, and renewed in the early 1920s after Remizov’s emigration to Germany. This publication brings together their previously unpublished letters, written between 1909 and 1925, that provide important insight into personal and professional relationship between an author and his translator and agent.
Key words: Alexei Remizov, Fega Frisch, Russian literature in translation, Russian- German literary contacts, reception of Russian writing in Germany
Виктор Шкловский в ОПОЯЗе и Московском Лингвистическом Кружке (1919-1921 гг.)
Игорь Пильщиков (Москва / Таллинн
/ Лос-Анджелес) -
Андрей Устинов (Сан-Франциско)
The article „Viktor Shklovsky in OPOIAZ and the Moscow Linguistic Circle (1919–1921)“ reconstructs the most important period in Viktor Shklovsky’s literary biography: t he c reation of t he S ociety for t he Study of Poetic L anguage (OPOIAZ) in 1919 in Petrograd, and his activities related to the Moscow Linguistic Circle. The authors present the evolution of Shklovsky’s ideas on poetics and film theory throughout this period against a historical background. They also describe his organizational skills in establishing OPOIAZ as a working association of literary scholars, and Shklovsky’s attempts in collaborating with his colleagues from the Moscow Linguistic Circle, namely Roman Jakobson, Osip Brik and Boris Tomashevsky.
Key words: Viktor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson, Boris Tomashevsky, Osip Brik, Boris Eikhenbaum, poetics, film theory, Russian Formalism, OPOIAZ, Moscow Linguistic Circle
Из Именного указателя к «Записным книжкам» Ахматовой
Роман Тименчик (Иерусалим)
“Towards the Index of Anna Akhmatova’s Notebooks”. – This part of series of historical and literary commentary to the poet’s notebooks examines several of her literary relationships, in particular with Mikhail Slonimsky and some minor contemporaries. Also, it reconstructs the poet’s meetings with Gleb Struve, his reviews of her poetry, as well as her responses to Gleb Struve and Boris Filippov's editions of Osip Mandelshtam’s, Nikolai Gumilev’s and her own literary works.
Key words: Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Osip Mandelshtam, Mikhail Slonimsky, Lidiia Chukovskaiia, Korney Chukovsky, Gleb Struve, Nikita Struve, Boris Filippov
Автобиографические письма Николая Зарецкого
Федор Поляков (Вена)
The article “Nikolai Zaretsky’s Autobiographical Letters” reconstructs the artist’s biographical details, from his work in St. Petersburg to his role in the Russian émigré communities in Berlin, Prague and Paris. It clarifies his stay in the Crimea, his departure to Istanbul, his activities in Czechoslovakia and later in France. The author also discusses Zaretsky’s circle of correspondents, his exhibitions, and his valuable manuscript and art collection.
Key words: Nikolai Zaretsky, Aleksei Remizov, Žofie Pohorecká, Roman Gul’, Nicolay Andreyev, Baroness Maria Vrangel’, Russian Berlin, Russian Prague, Russian émigré art, Russian art and book collectors