Vienna Slavic Yearbook. N.S. 11 (2023) – Abstracts
A Thorny Way to Standard Kashubian
Vladislav Knoll (Prague)
This article tries to follow up the concepts and concrete proposals on Standard Kashubian done during the creation of Kashubian written norm in the 20th and 21st centuries. It focuses on the evolution of Kashubian after the year 2000 and particularly on the position of the last Kashubian grammar by Hanna Makurat-Snuzik (2016) within the standardization process. The article also comments on the background discussions on standardization and evaluates the relationship between coexisting concepts on the shape of Standard Kashubian. Through this approach, the creation of a standard variety of a regional language is realistically portrayed and the issues the codifiers have to face and the ways they may take during standardization are showcased.
Keywords: Kashubian, literary Kashubian, Standard Kashubian, grammar, standardization
Monate, Feste und Wochenenden: Bezeichnungen von Zeitabschnitten in tschechischen Handschriften des 18.–19. Jahrhunderts in Pennsylvania und Preußen
Aleksej Tikhonov (Berlin)
After the lost Battle of White Mountain (1620), many Protestants from Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia went into exile to Saxony, Prussia, and North America. In exile, one such community was and is the Moravian Church (= Brüdergemeine). The refugees left behind Czech manuscripts, mainly from the 18th century. These texts originate from a language contact situation with German, English, and Latin. One of the succinct results of this language contact can be observed on the lexical level, specifically in terms of periods of time, such as names of months, holidays, and weekends.
Keywords: Czech-German language contact, Czech-English language contact, Czech-Latin language contact, Czech minority, loanwords, Moravian Church
Zur Frage der Deklination nicht movierter Zunamen von Frauen auf -a im Tschechischen
Miriam Giger / Markus Giger (Prag)
On the problem of the inflection of non-derived surnames of women with the ending -a in Czech. – The codification of Standard Czech requests a morphological derivation of most surnames of women according to the feminine gender, typically masculine Novák (nominal type) > feminine Nováková (with suffix -ová and adjectival inflection), masculine Malý (adjectival type) > feminine Malá (adjectival inflection). However, for some time the legislation of the Czech Republic has allowed the use of the non-derived surnames of women. When used in texts, in most cases they are indeclinable, especially when ending in a consonant (cf. Novák). However, a number of Czech surnames end in -a (e.g., Smetana, Svoboda), which is a typical ending of feminine nouns in Czech. By a corpus analysis we show that in written Czech there is (besides the use of uninflected forms) a certain tendency to inflect the surname of a woman like a feminine noun in such cases, not only when it is motivated by a homonymous feminine appellative such as smetana “cream” or svoboda “freedom”. In some cases, the inflected forms predominate. Surnames in -a also arise from the integration of derived surnames of women from other Slavic languages (e.g., Gladkova), these surnames oscillate sometimes between nominal and adjectival declension in Czech.
Keywords: surnames; Czech; declension; feminine gender
Deržavin und der Pugačev-Aufstand
Joachim Klein (Leiden)
This paper is about a poem of 1773–1774 by Derzhavin which was not published in its time – an “Epistle“ adressed to lieutenant-colonel Ivan I. Mikhel’son. Dealing with the the Pugačev-Rebellion of 1773–1775, the poem tells the story of how the city of Kazan’ was conquered by Pugačev and then freed by Mikhel’son and his regular troops. Why did Derzhavin not wish to publish his poem? Due to a lack of data, an answer to this question must be hypothetical, yet it stimulates an analysis of the literary, biographical, social and political circumstances under which the “Epistle“ was created and then not published.
Keywords: G. Derzhavin, Pugachev-Rebellion, Ivan Mikhel’son, Kazan’, chinopochitanie, M. Lomonosov
Ivan Kotljarevs’kyjs Enejida: Text – Kontext – Wirkungsgeschichte
Stefan Simonek (Wien)
This essay offers a critical introduction to Ivan Kotliarevsky’s famous “Eneida”, a travesty of Virgil’s “Aeneid”. The first parts of his work were published in 1798. As such, “Eneida” is considered to be the beginning of modern Ukrainian literature. The essay considers the poem’s plot as well as its various intertexual and linguistic devices. It likewise surveys the poem’s reception from the 19th century up to the present moment in contemporary Ukrainian literature (V. Neborak, Yu. Andrukhovych), elucidating various interpretations of Kotliarevsky’s travesty.
Keywords: Ivan Kotliarevsky, “Eneida”, Ukrainian literature
Судьбина «Судьбы театра»: о неосуществленной немецкой книге Вяч. Иванова
Майкл Вахтель (Princeton NJ)
The essay “The Sad Fate of The Fate of the Theater: On an unrealized German book by Viacheslav Ivanov” concerns the history of a German book of essays on theater by the Russian poet and philosopher Viacheslav Ivanov. This unrealized project was one of many attempts by Ivanov’s friend and admirer E. D. Shor to acquaint German readers with the works of contemporary Russian thinkers. A central role in the events reconstructed in the essay is played by Rudolf Roeßler, whom Shor met in 1932. Roeßler was the head of the union of German theaters (the “Bühnenvolksbund”) and its publishing arm, which selected and printed a significant number of books on theater. After long and complicated discussions, Ivanov’s book was accepted for publication in April of 1933, a few months after Hitler came to power. However, the reason that the book never appeared in print has little to do with the political changes and much to do with Ivanov himself, who either did not have time or did not wish to find time to rework his earlier essays. This history is reconstructed based on archival material from Rome, Cologne, and Jerusalem.
Keywords: Viacheslav Ivanov, E. D. Shor, Rudolf Roeßler, history of theater, the “Bühnenvolksbund”, Russian culture in exile, Russian-German cultural relations
Как сделан «Aevum aetherium» Вяч. Иванова
Геннадий Обатнин (Хельсинки)
The article is devoted to the analysis of the peculiarities of the manuscript of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s poem “Aevum aetherium” (1904) in the context of the poets’ testimonies about the process of poetry creation. It makes it possible to draw a number of remarkable conclusions concerning Ivanov’s using of rhymes and sounds as well as his interest for fixed metric forms.
Keywords: Vyacheslav Ivanov, poetics, verse production, fixed metric forms, glosa, history of rhyme
Подложный Сталин: Американская история скандальной фальсификации
Илья Виницкий (Princeton NJ)
Thе article “Fake Stalin: An American History of a Scandalous Falsification” examines the history of fictional “interviews” with Joseph C. (sic!) Stalin, published in the American press from 1926 to 1927. The publications provoked a significant international scandal. According to Stalin, the American public was misled by “swindlers and blackmailers” who had been hired by American and British capitalists opposed to the peaceful politics of the USSR. The article identifies the author of this series of falsifications as Ivan Narodny (Jaan Sibul, 1869–1953) – an Estonian emigrant from the Russian Empire and a staff writer for the Sunday issues of William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper syndicate, – and reconstructs the “Stalin plot” (the journalistic crusade against the “father of peoples”) in the work of this exceptional fraud and “telepathic” propagandist.
Keywords: Joseph Stalin, Ivan Narodny, falsifications, propaganda, international scandals, “the tabloid imagination”
Elsa Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Marija Levis
Heinrich Riggenbach (Basel)
The posthumously published reminiscencies of Marija Levis contain some hitherto unknown details of the lives of Elsa Mahler (Professor of Slavonic Studies at Basel University) and her friend Vera Michajlova, dating back to the early nineteentwenties.
Keywords: Marija Michajlovna Levis, Elsa Mahler, Vera Michajlovna Michajlova, University of Basel
Письма деятелей русской культуры Александру Когану и Павлу Бархану (Из израильских архивных коллекций)
Составление, подготовка текста, вступительная статья и комментарии Владимира Хазана (Иерусалим)
The article Letters of Russian Cultural Figures to Alexander Kogan and Pawel Barchan (From Israeli Archival Collections) combined two names, whose life and work, up to the present day is largely covered in vague veil. The author not only states the presents of impressive “blank spots” in the biographical descriptions of the publisher Alexander Eduardovich Kogan (1878–1949) and the journalist, translator, and art critic Pawel (Paul) Abramovich Barchan (1876–1942), but also makes an attempt to full in these “spots” with specific archival materials – letters to them from well-known persons of the Russian culture, which are held at the National Library of Israel (Jerusalem). In the first case, there are letters from A. Remizov, I. Ehrenburg, N. Roerich, A. Benois, K. Balmont, S. Sorin, M. Dobuzhinsky, and others; in the second – written by a dancer, choreographer and ballet tutor M. Fokin. All the archival materials presented in the article are published for the first time.
Keywords: Alexander Eduardovich Kogan, Pawel (Paul) Abramovich Barchan, Russian exile and artistic life in the 1920s; Russian ballet; Serge Diagilev’s Russian seasons; Mikhail Fokin
Из комментариев к книге стихотворений и переводов Эллиса «Крест и Лира» VII–IX
Федор Поляков (Вена)
This is a continuation of the series of commentaries (cf. vol. 10, 2022 of this journal) that concern the editing of the verse collection The Cross and the Lyre by the Russian Symbolist poet Ellis (Lev Kobylinskii, 1879–1947). The present contribution consists of three sections: VII. Poems of The Cross and the Lyre from Ellis’s Moscow collections (1911 and 1914). – VIII. The hаgiographical motif of the youth Anselm in the palace of the Heavenly King. – IX. “The Madonna on the Tree”: a poetic reflection of a cult tradition.
Keywords: Ellis (Lev Kobylinskii), Russian symbolism, translations of medieval poetry, legends, hagiography, St. Anselm of Canterbury OSB, Eadmer OSB
Борис Пастернак. Неизвестные письмо и телеграмма к Сергею Радлову (Несостоявшееся сотрудничество)
Марина Сальман (С.-Петербург)
Boris Pasternak. Unknown letter and telegram to Sergei Radlov (Failed collaboration). The published letter of the poet allows us to clarify the circumstances of his trip to Leningrad in November 1931. From the letter new information becomes known about the conclusion by Pasternak of an agreement for the translation of R. Wagner’s libretto „The Rhine Gold“.
Keywords: Boris Pasternak, Sergei Radlov, Anna Radlova, Richard Wagner, Veniamin Buchstein, Mikhail Kuzmin, Sergei Spassky, Sofia Spasskaya-Kaplun, Irakly Andronikov, Yury Tynyanov, Adrian Piotrovsky, Pasternak’s biography, History of Culture
Из Именного указателя к «Записным книжкам» Ахматовой: недопоименованные
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 discusses several names not directly mentioned in the source, forgotten by the poet or not correctly identified.
Keywords: Anna Akhmatova, Maxim Gorky, Nikolai Gumilev, Rudyard Kipling, Ivan Makovskii, Maryna Mniszech, Ivan Nikitin, Georgii Šul’c, Marina Tsvetaeva, Driftwood (Koryaga)
Iter per tenebras: Вспоминая Георгия Маслова
Андрей Устинов (Сан-Франциско) / Игорь Лощилов (Новосибирск)
This is the publication of the never published reminiscences (1922) of Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky about the poet Georgii Maslov (1895–1920) who served as an inspirational figure for the whole generation of St. Petersburg poets and Pushkin scholars.
Keywords: Georgii Maslov, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Pushkin Seminarium, St. Petersburg University, Literary Notes, Boris Khariton, Gleb Struve