Marko Marulič [a. o.] [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9783112317853, 9783112306710

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
MARKO MARULIC
THE IDEOLOGICAL WORLD OF THE DENISOV BROTHERS
THE RUSSIAN BIBLE SOCIETY AND THE BULGARIANS
THE RAY OF THE MICROCOSM
RECURRENT IMAGERY IN DOSTOEVSKIJ
THE BATTLE FOR LITERATURE IN THE SOVIET UKRAINE: A Documentary Study of VAPLITE (1925-28)
PRAGUE AND THE PURPLE SAGE
THE SAD ARMCHAIR: Notes on Soviet War and Postwar Lyrical Poetry

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HARVARD SLAVIC S T U D I E S III

HARVARD SLAVIC STUDIES EDITORIAL

COMMITTEE

Managing

Editor

HORACE G . LUNT Associate

Editors

MICHAEL KARPOVICH

ALBERT B . LORD

HUGH MCLEAN

WIKTOR WEINTRAUB

VOLUME

M O U T O N

III

&

's-Gravenhage

19 5 7

CO

Distributed in the U.S.A. by HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

Copyright 1957 by Mouton & Co, Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands. All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form

The publication the

Department

Literatures

of this volume, sponsored of

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of Harvard

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PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS BY MOUTON & CO, PRINTERS, THE HAGUE

CONTENTS

Marko Marulic (1450-1525) MIRKO A . USMIANI, Dalhousie University

1

The Ideological World of the Denisov Brothers SERGE A . ZENKOVSKY, Harvard University

49

The Russian Bible Society and the Bulgarians JAMES F . CLARKE, University of Pittsburgh

67

The Ray of the Microcosm, by Petar Petrovic Njegos: Translation and Introduction

105

ANICA SAVIC-REBAC

Recurrent Imagery in Dostoevskij RALPH E . MATLAW, Harvard University

201

The Battle for Literature in the Soviet Ukraine: A Documentary Study of VAPLITE (1925-1928) GEORGE S. N . LUCKYJ, University of Toronto

227

Prague and the Purple Sage

247

SVATAVA PIRKOVA-JAKOBSON,

Harvard University

The Sad Armchair: Notes on Soviet War and Postwar Lyrical Poetry VERA SANDOMIRSKY, Wayne University

289

MARKO MARULIC by M. A. Usmiani In 1901 the four-hundredth anniversary of Croatian literature was solemnly celebrated, the official birthday having been the appearance in 1501 of the epic poem Judita, by Marko Marulic. In 1950 the Croatian nation in Yugoslavia again paid honor to the "Father of Croatian Literature" by special publications, particularly a new edition of Judita. Yet though the Croatian poems of Marulic have been thoroughly studied and are well known, they represent only a small part of his literary activity, for Marulic, using the name of Marcus Marulus, was primarily a Latin writer of prose and poetry. Six of his seventeen Latin prose works were published during his lifetime, and some of them were widely popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most vital of all was the De Institutione Bene Vivendi, which went through at least thirty-eight editions during two centuries and exerted considerable influence upon church oratory during the Counter-Reformation. With this work Marulic intended to become a Christian Valerius Maximus. His principal epic, the Davidias, had still higher and broader aims: it represents an attempt to create a Christian ^Eneid, an ambition shared by many humanists, such as Sannazaro, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Marulic was the first humanist to compose a poem of such size and scope, and the only one who chose his hero from the Old Testament. The Davidias remained unpublished, however; its name was known only to specialists; and it was lost until 1952, when its rediscovery was announced by C. Dionisotti. Some other unpublished works of Marulic have doubtless been altogether lost. Moreover, Croatian literary historians have neglected the published Latin works, for they are not counted a part of the national literature, and as a result we find contradictory and often

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mistaken appraisals of Marulic as a writer. The discovery of the Davidias has made it even more imperative to examine carefully all of Marulic's Latin writings and to give a more exact evaluation of his literary work and a clearer picture of his personality. Although it is not yet the time for a completely documented monograph on Marulic the writer, preliminary investigations have already revealed much that is new, and a study presenting the material and giving a broad outline of the problems involved is to be published elsewhere. As the works of Marulic were not well known, so his life has been described only in the short and not very informative biography written by his friend Franciscus Natalis (Franjo Bozicevic) soon after Marulic's death. Here again new discoveries enable us to revise former views. Documents found in 1950 illuminate the early part of Marulic's career, thus complementing Natalis' account, which deals chiefly with Marulic's later years. The documents show that, far from being the recluse which illinformed tradition would have him, Marulic was a leading figure in his native Split (Spalato). He had assembled around him a considerable group of humanists, educated by Italian teachers and in close contact with Italy and its humanistic movement. Similar groups also existed in other Dalmatian towns, especially in Sibenik (Sebenico) and Dubrovnik (Ragusa), but because of the lack of a central political organization in Dalmatia, these intellectuals remained strangely unaware of each other's existence. The towns lived as independent communes, dealing, particularly during the period of Venetian rule (1420-1797), directly with Venice in all matters concerning their external affairs. Even the trade between the towns had to go through Venice. Only after Marulic's death did this mutual isolation begin to change with the spreading of Croatian literature. The awareness of a common language and a feeling of national unity brought the Croatian writers of Dalmatia together, and the mutual influences became more and more apparent. At the time of Marulic, however, we have to picture him and his friends as a group isolated from the rest of Dalmatia, with their eyes turned toward Italy. When, at the beginning of the fourth century A.D., the aged Roman emperor Diocletian decided to give up state affairs in favor of the more peaceful occupation of vegetable growing, he retired to a magnificent palace on the Dalmatian coast, which he had built on

Marko Marulic

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a promontory enclosing a small bay. The palace was designed like a huge Roman camp, and was outfitted with marble and every other architectural luxury that Rome could afford. Nearby, a couple of miles inland, was Salona, the biggest Roman colony in Dalmatia. After the old emperor died, his palace was deserted until early in the Middle Ages, when barbarian invasions devastated Salona and forced its Roman inhabitants to seek refuge within Diocletian's well-fortified palace, or on the neighboring islands. They repaired the crumbling old palace walls, and in the enclosed space they founded a new city, today called Split (Spalato, from the palace of Diocletian). The Roman population of the town continued to grow, and soon the city spread beyond the walls of Diocletian. Until very late in the Middle Ages, however, the population did not mix with the barbarian Croatian Slavs who occupied the whole countryside. The same is true for all other Roman towns in Dalmatia, so that medieval Dalmatia presented a curious picture — all the towns were Latin, and the rest of the country Croatian. The towns formed a special province (thema Dalmatia) under Byzantine control. In time, however, they had to recognize the Croatian kings and accept within their walls the Slavic population which surrounded them. The resulting Slavization of the Roman population had progressed so far by the fourteenth century that we find Croatian families among the nobility in Split, and in the fifteenth century Croatian was the mother tongue of the entire population. The old Latin names appeared in double form, such as Papalis — Papalic, Natalis — Bozicevic, Marulus — Marulic. Christian names, particularly of women, usually had a purely Croatian form. The official language of the city administration was a mixture of Latin and Italian, so that the Croatian nobles had to speak at least Italian and usually also Latin. Merchants and artisans had to use these languages to some extent for professional purposes, but the women spoke only Croatian. In 1420, Split and the rest of Dalmatia (except Dubrovnik) came under Venetian political rule and remained a part of the Venetian empire until the days of Napoleon. Venice sent one of her nobles as conte of the city and provided archbishops for the diocese of Split, but otherwise Split retained its internal autonomy like other Italian cities of the time. The territory belonging to the city of Split was established early

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Usmiani

in the Middle Ages and remained almost unchanged until the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797. It covered a narrow stretch of land along the Dalmatian coast some fifteen miles long and two miles wide. In Venetian times the small nearby island of Solta and the eastern part of the island of Ciovo also belonged to the commune of Split. In the sixteenth century some 7500 people lived in this territory, the population of Split itself numbering about 5000. The population was divided into two social classes, nobles and commoners. The exact number of nobles is not known, but they came from sixteen families, and it can be reckoned that there were about fifty adult male nobles making up the City Council. Before 1420, the city administration was entirely in the hands of the High Council, while the conte had purely executive powers. Under Venetian rule the conte took charge of foreign affairs and was directly responsible to the Venetian High Council. He was equipped with a small guard to assure Venetian rule and see to it that all affairs, including commerce, were conducted for the best interest of Venice. The City Council retained complete control over internal administration, and elected about forty officers every three months. The highest officers were three judges, sixconsiliarii, andfiveexaminatores (a sort of notary, responsible for the verification of documents). Perhaps the most important office was that of City Chancellor. The chancellor, usually an Italian, was elected for an undetermined term by the City Council and functioned as a secretary-general to the Council. The most honored position in the city administration was that of city judge, although the office had lost much of its power when Venice took over. But the judge still had jurisdiction, with the conte, over civil matters. The City Council elected teachers for the school, a physician, the apothecary, and all other persons who were on the city payroll. It had the right to confer citizenship. Every noble automatically became a member of the Council on reaching his eighteenth year, and as a member he could be elected to any city office. In view of the small number of nobles, there were hardly enough to fill all the offices.1 It was to a noble family in this small city-republic that Marko 1 A good study of the Split of Marulic's time is G. Novak's "Split u Marulicevo doba," in Zbornik Marka Marulica 1450-1950 (Zagreb, 1950), pp. 33-123, hereafter cited as Novak.

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Marulic was born in 1450, and here he spent all his life. He died in 1524, revered by his fellow countrymen as their "brightest star." Marulic is the only Dalmatian writer who had the good fortune to have a contemporary biographer; yet his life was not, until recently, much better known than that of any other Dalmatian writer of his time, because his biographer wrote entirely from memory and out of tremendous admiration for the poet. Franciscus Natalis was an intimate friend of Marulic and a modest poet in his own right. 2 Natalis was a nobleman of Split, some twenty or thirty years younger than Marulic. In 1507 he married Clara de Marulis (not a relative of the Marulic family of the poet, but of the Glavosulic family), the only fact known about his life. His poetry is all occasional: epigrams, laudatory poems, and epistles. Several epigrams were composed in honor of Marulic, and one epistle is addressed to him. 3 Natalis wrote his biography soon after Marulic's death. 4 He was urged to the task by other admirers of the poet; a letter to "Petrus Luchari," which prefaces the biography, shows that this nobleman of Split encouraged Natalis, as did Franciscus Iuliani, a Venetian gentleman who collaborated with Franciscus Lucensis in the publication of Marulic's works in Venice. The Ciceronian opening of the letter-preface (Cogitanti mihi, 2 The name has the forms Natalis, de Natalibus, Natali, Nadali, Nadal (but not Vidali, as Lo Parco calls him; cf. Archivio storico per la Dalmazia [Roma, 1929], VII, fasc. 37, pp. 8ff.) and Croatian Bozicevic (cf. P. Kolendic, "Francisko Bozicevic i Franciscus Natalis," Prilozi za knjizvnost, jezik, istoriju i folklor, 8, 272-275). 3 G. Alacevic, "Francesco di Natale, patrizio Spalatmo," Bullettino di archeologia e storia dalmata, 10 (Spalato, 1887), 66-70 (hereafter cited as Bullettino). Compare also T. Matic, "Bozicevicev prijevod Petrarkine kancone Vergine bella che di sol vestita," Grada za povijest knjizevnosti hrvatske, 9, 87. 4 The exact date of composition is unknown. The biography was first published by D. Farlati in his Illyricum Sacrum (Venetiis, 1765), III, 433-435 (hereafter cited as Farlati). A better and more complete version was discovered by Vinko Milic, mayor of Split, in a manuscript containing poetry by both Marulic and Natalis, and was published in 1901 on the occasion of the four hundredth anniversary celebration of Croatian artistic literature. This version will be followed here, and cited as Milic: V. Milic, Prigodom proslave cetiristogodiSnjice hrvatskog umjetnog pjesnistva — Zacetnikom vlastelinom Markom Marulom, 1501-1901 (Split, 1901).

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praestantissimiePetre Luchare) sets the tone for the entire biography; it is a eulogy that allows the author to display the brilliance of his style. But anyone interested in the facts of Marulic's life will find only a few of them here, because Natalis was more interested in showing the religious side of his subject's character than in collecting the data of his life and works. Still, his close acquaintance and intimate friendship with Marulic make him our chief witness. But even here he is handicapped by the fact that he was so much younger than the poet. It is only the older Marulic that he knows well, a man who has retired from public life and dedicated himself to studies and religious practices. Naturally enough, Natalis extends his impressions from that period of the life of the poet to cover his entire biography. Since the activities of the young Marulic were unknown to him personally, he does not say much about them. Nevertheless, his veracity as a biographer is beyond doubt, even though in writing for the friends and admirers of Marulic he idealized his subject to no small extent. Another contemporary, Petar Hektorovic (1487-1572), a poet from the neighboring island of Hvar,- describes Marulic's sojourn at NeCujam in his Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje,5 while two poets from Zadar, Petar Zoranic (1508-1569), in his pastoral poem Planine,6 and later Juraj Barakovic (1548-1628), in Vila Slovinska,1 knew only that Marulic was famous outside his own country. If we add to these witnesses Antonio Proculiano, who in his speeches at Split in about 1558 (published 1567 in Venice) also eulogized Marulic, especially his Davidias,8 then lost, we have exhausted the list of contemporary sources outside of Marulic's own works. Of paramount importance for a biographer of Marulic is the fact that his will is preserved, with its invaluable codicil containing Marulic's autograph catalogue of his library.9 There is also another list of books, drawn up by executors of his will, which differs slightly from his own list. Particularly valuable for the study of his literary tastes and his methods of gathering material is the autograph manuscript of his personal thesaurus, entitled: Multa et varia ex 5

Stari pisci hrvatski, 6, 24-25. Stari pisci hrvatski, 16, 74-75. 7 Stari pisci hrvatski, 17, 113. 8 Monumenta spectautia historiam slavorum meridionalium, 11, 226. »F. Racki, "Oporuka Marka Marulica," Starine, 25 (1892), 152-163. 6

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diversis auctoribus collecta, quae maxime imitatione digna videbantur, in hoc opere reponenda... diligenter curavi,10 The lack of documentary evidence allowed biographers to conjecture about the gaps left by Natalis in the life story of Marulic. Stimulated by Natalis' emphasis on Marulic's piety and simple way of life, they built up a picture of the man as a solitary, meditating on the Bible and the Fathers; a hermit given to prayer, fasting, and flagellation, leaving his abode only to attend church services. But this general impression of Marulic as a recluse, thoroughly unconcerned with the world around him, is now radically changed by the discoveries of Cvito Fiskovic in the state archives of Zadar (Zara) in 1950. Fiskovic was gathering data on fifteenth and sixteenthcentury Croatian painters and sculptors in the archives of Split, which are now in Zadar, and incidentally (usput), he came upon several interesting and important notices about Marulic. He published his analysis of them in his study "Prilog zivotopisu Marka Marula Pecenica" in 1950,11 adding the results of some archeological research on the location of the house where Marulic was born, and other buildings connected with the author. This publication represents the most important contribution to the biography of Marulic since Natalis. The data found by Fiskovic are taken mostly from the acta of the court of Split, concerning trials and court decisions in connection with the execution of wills, collection of debts, division of the Marulic estate, dowries, etc. Other documents are concerned with Marulic's public service as index curiae, examinator, and iudex honorabilis, and also as a witness to contracts signed in the city office of the notary public. Still other papers mention his function as an attorney-at-law. An entirely worldly aspect of the life of Marulic, which Natalis did not even touch upon, is thus represented, so that we are now able to examine critically, for the first time, the value of that biography. It is regrettable that Fiskovic did not publish the documents themselves, but gave only his analysis of them. No final appraisal of the documents can be made until they are available in full. But even so, significant observations can be made on the basis of Fiskovic's citations and analysis. 10 The codex, preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Vittorio Emmanuele) in Rome, was discovered and published by F. Sisic, "Nepoznato Marulicevo djelo," Jugoslavenska njiva, VII, knj. 1 (Zagreb, 1923), 40-41. 11 Republika, 6 (1950), 186-204 (hereafter cited as Fiskovic).

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Fiskovic is inclined to interpret the portrait of the active, worldly Marulic revealed by the documents as a refutation of the withdrawn Marulic sketched by Natalis. In fact, however, the two sources are complementary, for the acta show the young Marulic performing his official duties in the city administration and functioning as the head of the family after his father's death, while Natalis is primarily concerned with the older Marulic who has turned from public life to the pursuit of his own interests in religion and literature. The reliability of Natalis' biography is in no way shaken by Fiskovic's analysis or the documents as presented. As a matter of fact, Natalis is hard to refute, for his assertions are often so general as to represent matters of judgment rather than fact. One may disagree with him, but it will be extremely difficult to prove him wrong, for he cautiously qualifies any statement about which he is not entirely certain. His biography therefore appears even more valuable now that the new discoveries confirm both its facts and its general tenor. But an entirely new dimension has been added to the view that it gives of Marulic, and the gaps it left open to conjecture can now be filled in some detail. A new picture of Marulic emerges: a man with an unusually introspective bent, but nonetheless a responsible and not atypical representative of his time and status. The literary works of Marulic himself are of little help to the biographer. He is a moralist, an evangelist who raises his voice in warning to others, but keeps his own troubles to himself. His writing remains strictly confined to the subject matter, with few allusions to his private life. Only once, in De Institutione Bene Vivendi, does he tell a personal anecdote — which went unnoticed by all biographers. Other very vague allusions are of no significance. His Carminum Libri VII, which might give us some facts about his private life, is lost. Of the extant poems, only a couple are of a personal character and merely confirm what we know already from Natalis; however, Francisco Natali Marci Maruli in Valle Surda Commorantis responsio, a poetic epistle, is a little more explicit. We get no information about the life of Marulic either from the notes of his publisher Franciscus Lucensis, or his collaborator Franciscus Juliani; but these notes, attached to his published works, will make it possible to establish a more precise chronology of his works.

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Through the years Marulic's name appeared in different forms: Marulo (1280) and Marolo (1293, 1298, 1305) first occur as names of "giudici della città di Spalato."12 In his own time, the name appeared as de Marulis, Marulis, and the Latin form Marulus, which he himself used in his Latin works. In his Croatian writings, he used Marul or Marulic. The Croatian name Pecenic, regularly used by the family in his time, is spelled Picinich, Pecinich, and Pechenich in public documents. The poet's father calls himself Pechenich, which is in all probability the most correct form. 13 In the fifteenth century we find in public documents names that seem to indicate two separate branches of one family, identified by the Croatian names Glavosulic and Pecenic, respectively.14 There is no traceable contemporary relation, however, between the two branches of "Marulorum prosapia" ; probably the two families did not consider themselves related at that time. The Glavosulic branch seems to have degenerated; after 1488 the last descendant with offspring, who was mentally ill, had to be placed under tutorship. 15 Those Italian critics who emphatically deny that the poet ever called himself Marulic, and blame Kukuljevic for having invented that version of his name, apparently never read the title of his dedication of Judita to Dujam Balistrilic; moreover, the father of the poet is called Marulic in a document of 1476.16 But Kukuljevic is wrong when he says that the Latin and Italian forms of the name date only from the time of the Venetian rule in Split (after 1420), and that the family name before that time was Pecenic.17 Just the opposite seems true, but because of Venetian influence the name 12

Ballettino, 9 (1886), 30, 64, 77, 80: not Marulov, as Fiskovic, p. 186, has it. Fiskovic, p. 187. 14 P. Kasandric, "Marko Marulic, zivot i djela," Marko Marulic, Judita (Zagreb, 1901), p. XII (hereafter cited as Kasandric). Like Kukuljevic and some others, Kasandric believes that these were two names for the same family, which then would first have been called Glavosulic and "later" Pecenic. He must have neglected to check his dates, which show that Glavosulic is used in a will of Magdalena de Marulis "Glavosulic" on August 28, 1488, while the grandfather of our poet, in a codicil to his will of July 4, 1456, gives his Croatian nickname as Pecenic. Thus the name Pecenic has priority over Glavosulic, and not the opposite, as Kasandric contends. Moreover, the family of the poet is never actually called Glavosulic in the documents, and there is no evidence that the de Marulis family called Glavosulic ever used the name of Pecenic. The names were not interchangeable, nor did either of them, as far as can be detected, replace the other. 13

15

Kasandric, p. XIII.

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Pecenic was used less frequently in the course of the sixteenth century and later it disappeared entirely.18 If we can judge by "the most perfect family tree of the house of Marulic," which Kasandric claims to have seen,19 the family came to Split "ab Oriente" in the middle of the thirteenth century, presumably from Greece. If this is true, one would expect a Greek origin for the name, and indeed the Greek humanist poet, Michael Marullus Tarcaniota (died 1500), who lived in Italy at the time of Marko Marulic, was often confounded with him. The name Marullos is a common version in Greece today. The family tree mentioned above was composed in 1633, and bore the proud title (part Latin, part Italian) Marulorum prosapia — Ab Oriente ducta, extendit ramos suos per orbem, et in ramis suis fructus honoris et honestatis — Anno Domini MCCXL + Arboro descendente di Maruli maschi Spalatini. The "extending branches" to us mean only those in Split, since we know of no other direction in which the family may have gone. The first sire is claimed to be a certain Stephanus, unknown to us, but several of his descendants are listed as judges in the acta of the commune of Split in the second half of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century.20 The poet's immediate family were nobles who had in the course of centuries acquired considerable wealth through commerce, land purchase, and apparently money-lending. For example we know that the poet's grandfather, Marco di Pietro Pezenich, lent the considerable sum of "lire 371" and "10 soldi" to the wife of the Croatian ban Johannes Nelipic and that he finally had to sell the silver objects she had pawned with him, since he could not force payment.21 Marco di Pietro had two sons, Peter and Nicholas,22 and five daughters, the third of which, Nicolota, became a nun in the convent of St. Benedict in Split. During the lifetime of these children, the family seems to have reached a climax in wealth and social prestige, since their names are listed again as judges and examinatores for 16

Fiskovic, p. 187. Kukuljevic, "2ivot Marulicev," Stari pisci hrvatski, 1 (1869), p. XLIII. This essay will be hereafter cited as Kukuljevic. 18 Fiskovic, p. 187. 19 Kasandric, p. XII ff. 20 Bullettino, 9, 30 ff. 21 G. Alacevic, "Caterina moglie di Giovanni Nelipcich," Bullettino, 23, 171. 22 Kukuljevic, p. XLVIII, wrongly calls him Luka. 17

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the first time since 1305, over a century before. Peter, the older son, married Jacobina Papalis, with whose family the poet maintained most friendly relations. Peter and Jacobina had three sons and five daughters, of which two, Julica and Jerka, entered the convent. Nicholas, the younger son of Pietro, became the father of Marko, the poet, and was "nobilis vir ser Nicolaus Pecenich de Marulis, procurator de Spalato," as he is called in a document of 1471.23 Natalis says this about Marko's father: "Marcus Marulusgenerosis natalibus ortus, patrem habuit Nicolaum Marulum, virum non modo politicis moribus [et\ liberalibus studiis excultum, sed studiosorum quoque omnium fautorem praecipuum, Reipublicae quoque suae defensorem acerrimum,"24 Evidence shows indeed that he was "politicis moribus [et] liberalibus studiis excultus": in 1453, he served as city judge, for the regular three-months term, with three other judges.25 This was the highest position in the city hierarchy after the count, so that documents were usually dated by the name of the count and his three judges. It is not clear what Natalis meant by "studiosorum... fautorem praecipuum"; perhaps Nicholas brought good teachers to the city, in which case he might also have been responsible for the presence in Split of Tideus Acciarini, Marulic's most significant teacher. Nor do we know why Natalis conferred upon him the title of "defensor acerrimus" of his home town. Probably Nicholas did take part in the then constant skirmishes with the Turks. But we also know that Natalis was rather lavish in conferring that kind of honorable mention. We know more about Nicholas as procurator of his own family. In 1454 he bought two small houses with orchards in the village of Grohote on the island of Solta.26 He was also engaged in commerce on a small scale, selling mostly the products of his own estate.27 Not overscrupulous in his business affairs, he left his sons a somewhat 23

Ibid. Milic, p. 4. 25 Fiskovic, p. 187. 26 Fiskovic, p. 196. 2 ' The port of Split records note under Nov. 21, 1475, "Concessa est licentia Nicolao de Marulis nobili Spalati conducendi Venetias in navilio Johannis Ragamich saccos quinque farinae, barilia quattuor magna ficum, barilia duo sardelarum et petios 15 casei." Cf. G. Novak, "Prilozi za zivotopis Marka Marulica," Prilozi, 6 (1926), 90. 24

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embarrassing heritage, including such activities as forging debtor letters and stealing undesirable wills. Marko had to struggle with these things, which did not come to light until after Nicholas' death in the first half of 1476. In July of that year, the disputes arising from his testament were under way. The mother of the poet was Dobrica de Albertis, daughter of Nicholas de Albertis. Natalis describes her as an "honorable matron of saintly life whose name corresponds to her life, because Dobrica means in Croatian a good person." 28 Her marriage contract is preserved, from which we learn that she was seventeen years old when she was given in marriage to Nicholas de Marulis on August 7, 1449. The contract was solemnly signed on August 21 of that year, in the main hall of the de Albertis palace in Split, with Alessandro Marcello, a Venetian noble and one-time count of Split, present at the ceremony. Dobrica's brother Janko de Albertis gave her away and signed the contract, promising to give her the dowry left to her by their late father in 1439 — 300 ducati — as well as cloth, jewelry, and silver, according to custom. Marco di Pietro de Marulis signed for Nicholas, promising that his son would marry the girl. Later, Janko found — or made — difficulties in fulfilling his part of the contract, which caused a lawsuit between him and his sister.29 Dobrica's life was long and apparently uneventful. In the documents she is frequently mentioned as the executor of the wills of her relatives and other citizens, thus confirming Natalis' description of her as "matrona gravissima." Presumably she died in 1519, since in that year our poet appears as the executor of her will. Marko Marulic was born in a house somewhere west of the palace of Diocletian and inside the "medieval and later city walls,"30 on August 18, 1450. He was the first child, born a year after his parents' marriage.31 After Marko came six more children, according to 28

Milic, p. 4. Fiskovic, p. 187. 30 Fiskovic has done extensive research to find the house in which Dobrica lived and Marko was born, but with only negative results (p. 191). He points out that none of the houses which hitherto have been considered as his could have belonged to Marulic since, according to his will, his house was located "in civitate nova Spalati," which is to the west and outside of the territory of Diocletian's palace. The old pictures of his alleged home show a house inside the palace. 31 Kasandric, p. XIV, suggests that according to the family tree which he saw the poet was the second child, but this is incorrect. 29

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Natalis: Simeon, Petrus, Joannes, Alexander, Valerius, and Bira.32 Some details of their lives help determine more accurately the chronology and circumstances of the poet's own life. Simeon seems to be the second oldest brother and the one dearest to Marko, who was profoundly affected by his death. Natalis gives the impression that he spent most of his adult life serving in the Venetian cavalry.33 He is mentioned as examinator communis several times between 1480 and 1482, and there is evidence that he, with his mother and brothers, designated Marko as the family representative in legal matters in November 1481. Nothing else is known about him and his name does not appear again until 1513, when he is mentioned as dead.34 He was evidently not married, so that his death involved no recorded legal procedure. The date of his death is of paramount importance in the life of the poet, because it prompts a turning point so sharp that Natalis considers it a kind of "conversion" due to grief. Simeon was surely dead by 1513 and, if we accept as conclusive Fisko vic's investigations, he is never mentioned alive in documents, either public or private, after 1482. It is unthinkable that a man who had several times been examinator communis could have been alive for over thirty years without leaving a trace. Surely, as a cavalry officer he would have been engaged — and recorded — in various activities for the defense of his city, along with his younger brothers, had he been alive. Moreover, his name is missing in the record of the first division of the family estate in 1501, although as second oldest son we should expect to find him there, even though the fifth son, Alexander, who was definitely living at the time, also is not mentioned in the document. It seems safe, however, to assume that Simeon died in or about 1482, and Natalis's narrative suggests the same date. The other brothers were captains on Venetian ships, Natalis reports. Before Peter became captain of his triremis, he married Jelena degli Alberti,35 who came from a branch of his mother's 32 Fiskovic (p. 189) found in a Marulic family tree another sister, Andriana, unknown otherwise. He conjectures that she must have died in early childhood, so that Natalis did not know of her existence, but she was apparently still alive in 1478. In any case, she is of no importance for Marulic's life. 33 Milic, p. 5. 34 Fiskovic, p. 189. Kukuljevic (p. XLVIII) found somewhere that Simeon was dead in 1477, which is evidently incorrect. 35 Kasandric, p. XIV.

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family. He is listed in 1478 as consiliarus communis, member of the council of nobles, to which as a nobleman he belonged all his life, and in 1480 and 1491 as examinator communis. In 1492 he travelled east as captain of a galley,36 and he was back defending Split against Turkish attacks in 1499. He was alive when the family estate was divided among the brothers in 1501,37 but in October 1504 he is mentioned as deceased.38 The career of Joannes is similar. We find him in 1488, 1490, and 1491 acting as examinator, and taking part in raids against the Turks and in March 1501 he is also triremis praefectura donatus. But Natalis says that "Joannes died soon after he was made captain of the ship," and the acta confirm the statement by listing him as dead in February 1502. Alexander married Clara degli Alberti 39 and "liberis procreandis operam dedit."i0 Records of five children attest to the accuracy of this statement. Alexander also distinguished himself in his special field of finance at the time when the town was hastily setting up new fortifications against the incessant menace of Turkish invasions, which became especially acute in 1501. In 1516 he appears as judge and in 1517 is mentioned as consiliarus communis.41 He died in 1533, last of all the brothers. 42 Valerius, like his older brothers, was a galley-captain or procomito and took an active part in the administration of his native city as examinator,43 His marriage to Jelena de Cindris seems to have been barren, but he had two illegitimate children by a servant, Catussa. He provided for them and their mother in his will of 1518. The will implies that his daughter Bira went astray, since he calls her "di mal affare." 44 Valerius died on August 18, 1520, apparently after a short illness. 36

Thus it appears from an inarticulate passage in Fiskovic, p. 189. Novak, Prilozi, 6, 88. 38 Fiskovic, p. 188. Kukuljevic (p. XLVIII) mistakenly places his death in 1492. 39 Kasandric, p. XIV. 40 Milic, p. 5. 41 Fiskovic, p. 188. 42 Kasandric, p. XIV. 43 H e is mentioned as such in 1491, 1501, 1513, and 1518; cf. Fiskovic, p. 188. 44 Kasandric, p. XIV. The poet sought in his will to assure her her due, urging Alexander to grant her the usufructus of a certain piece of land, "ut impleatur voluntas fratris nostri Valerii," and, should Alexander not consent to it, another piece of land, "in Spinuto," which belonged wholly to Marko, was to be given to her; cf. F. Racki, Starine, 25, 155. 37

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Natalis reports that Nicholas Marulic had only one daughter, Bira, of whom he says: Bira scorned the state of matrimony and spent her life in virginity in the monastery of St. Benedict, where she was consecrated to God from her childhood; she has in her possession many literary works and letters of exhortation to a good and happy life written in the vernacular by the same Marko.45 The monastery of St. Benedict was founded in the eleventh century and was later called Sancti Raynerii,46 Bira was put there a cunabulis, in her childhood, in accordance with the old custom among the nobility that it was an honor to have a nun in the family. Whether she showed any inclination to the religious life or not, Bira joined her aunt Nicolota and her two cousins Julica and Jerka, who were already in the same monastery. We may assume that she was not particularly happy in this environment, for Marko found it necessary to encourage her with a series of exhortatory letters in Croatian, fraternal epistles which she treasured. The letters are lost, but Marulic wrote to other nuns, and two of the epistles, both addressed to "Katarina Obirtica,"47 have survived. He begs the addressee to give comfort to his sister, to exhort her to bear her troubles patiently and persevere in the service of God along witn the other nuns. This would suggest that Bira's state of mind was somewhat restless. It is significant that Marulic had no personal message for his sister, but only commonplaces and general admonitions and the promise of "eternal salvation in the kingdom of heaven." Beside these letters, Marulic also composed "many literary works, vernáculo sermone" for the benefit of his sister and other nuns. The fact that these women did not know Latin induced Marulic to compose works in Croatian. Some of them are preserved, but it is impossible to ascertain which were in Bira's collection. 45 Bira is the usual spelling of a form of the name Elvira, ascording to F. Bulic, "Ime sestre pjesnika Marka Marulica," Ljetopis Jug. Akad., 32 (1917), 145ff. Birra is the spelling used by Natalis, who knew her personally. Her name is variously recorded as Vice (Kukuljevic, p. XLVIII), Risa (Racki, Starine, 25,155), Vica (B. Vodnik, Povijest hrv. knjiz., Zagreb, 1913, I, 100), and Vera (C. Jirecek, Die Romanen in den Staedten Dalmatiens waehrend des Mittelalters, II, 26). 46 Farlati, p. 139. 47 F. Fancev, "Dvije poslanice Marka Pecenica (Marulica)," Grada, 13, 187— 192.

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Kukuljevic, and many others after him, claimed that Bira later became the abbess of her monastery, but no evidence is cited.84 One letter of Marulic clearly shows that at that time she was not the abbess, for he tells her, "Recommend me kindly to the mother abbess as to a venerable mother in Christ." 49 Fiskovic asserts his documents show that Bira was dead in 1513, and that consequently Marulic's letters to her and the other Croatian works written for her must date from before that year. 50 This cannot be true, however, for Marulic mentions her in his will, in a connection showing that she must have been alive in 1520: he bequeaths her a silver watch presented to him by "the late Croatian ban Peter Berislavic." Berislavic died May 20, 1520,51 so that the will must have been composed after that. Marulic also left Bira the "book with the pictures of the Gospel stories written and illustrated by my hand." Bira still must have been alive when Natalis wrote the biography, for in speaking about Marulic's Croatian works in her possession he used the present tense: "apud quam ... monumenta et ... epistolae ... manu ipsius Marci conscriptae apparent." Natalis, immediately after his announcement of the poet's birth, gives a flattering preview of Marulic's lifelong achievements. If we take his statements seriously, Marulic was a genius excelling in all the arts, for he could "paint like Apelles and carve like Lysippus and Praxiteles."52 Manifestations of such excellence, according to Natalis, were visible early: "still a boy, he had excellent character." Passing over Marko's childhood, Natalis says, "he did not spend his youth in passions, as others are wont to, but passed all his time in study and lucubrations." Marulic's later life is entirely in keeping with this early tendency towards a quiet, studious life. Marulic was educated in the lay schools of his native Split. That he continued his studies longer than was ordinarily the custom, possibly under a private tutor, may be judged from the fact that, as recorded 48

Kukuljevic, p. XLVIII. Fancev, Grada, 13, 189. 50 Fiskovic, p. 189. 51 F. Racki, Starine, 25, 155: "sorori meae Risae [ = Birae] moniali S. Benedicti lego horologium meum ex argento, quod ego olim acceperam a D. Petro Berislavo, bano quondam Croatiae, episcopo Vesprimensi, ut ipsa pro anima eius suisque . . . orationem offerat deo omnipotent!" 52 Milic, p. 5. 49

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in the acta, his first appearance in public life was fairly late (1474). Perhaps his father required a relatively prolonged education for his children, a fact which might explain Natalis' description of Nicholas as a "distinguished patron of scholars." Lay schools (as distinguished from schools for the clergy) were introduced early in Split, because they had become necessary to facilitate the city's administration. Such a school is first mentioned in the acta of Split in 1352, when the commune hired a physician (chirurgus) called Blaz, with the understanding that he would teach the children of the town. The first rector scholarum, a certain magister Christophorus from Milan, is mentioned in 1428, under Venetian rule. 53 A rector probably had several teachers working under him. Thus Natalis mentions three teachers of Marulic, and it seems likely that Tideus Acciarinus, who was in Split for the entire period of Marulic's school days, was the rector. Private instruction could be had in Split at the time, for a lesser fee than in the regular school, but not from professional teachers. At boarding houses the children of nobles residing outside of Split could obtain room, board, and instruction. A cathedral school existed for the clergy, and the three monasteries — two Franciscan and one Dominican — undertook the education of their own monks. The lay school required high tuition fees which only noble families and other well-to-do citizens could afford to pay. Members of the lower classes could get an education only by joining the clergy.54 Nothing is known about the teaching methods and curriculum in those communal schools, so that we must therefore assume tlicv were based on the traditional trivium and quadrivium. The personality of the individual teacher played a far more important part than curricular requirements. In fact, the school was the teacher, and the education a student would get depended entirely upon him. The small Dalmatian towns, including Split, usually imported their teachers from Italy. But in view of their precarious financial 53 Novak, p. 106. Kukuljevic (p. XII) is probably dealing with the same person when he mentions one "magister Christophorus de Nava" as "rector scholarum in civitate Spalati" from 1434 to 1447. He also lists a "magister Hieronymus Genetius olim rector scholarum in Spalato." The latter may well have been the teacher of Marulic whom Natalis mentions under the name of Hieronymus Jenesius Picentinus, as Kolendic conjectures; cf. P. Kolendic, "Marulicev ucitelj Tideo Acciarino," Novo doba, 25 Dec., 1924, p. 4. 54 Novak, p. 106.

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situation, the towns could not afford many of them, nor could they attract humanists of great fame and learning. Most of their "scholars" were poor, unknown, and little respected. Illiteracy was therefore a common phenomenon among the Dalmatian nobility. In order to force the nobles to learn at least the two R's, the communes had to exclude all illiterates from public office.55 Such was the situation in the neighborhood of Split at Trogir and also at Hvar. 56 It seems, however, that conditions in Split itself were somewhat better, at least at the time of the poet, for here the teachers were more numerous and better qualified than in other towns. They trained a goodly group of intellectuals in Split, which was therefore much admired by its neighbors. Illiteracy was fought by such open-minded noblemen as the father of Marko. The general state of learning among nobles being what it was in Dalmatia, it is not surprising that the common people were for the greatest part illiterate, just as were the women of the nobility. Schools were for boys only, and the only women needing education were nuns, who had to recite the office, and of whom spiritual reading was required.57 This situation is all-important for the beginnings of Croatian literature. Nobles and wealthy citizens who wanted to give their children a more thorough education sent them to an Italian university, preferably to Padua. After 1471, subjects of the Venetian republic were not even allowed to attend any other university than Padua. However, in Dalmatia, most nobles could not afford university training for their children, who were mostly educated at home. A nobleman of Dalmatia educated abroad was an exception rather than the general rule. Many of the clergy, however, were educated abroad: they constituted the intellectual core of medieval society. At the time of Marulic, the clergy were just beginning to lose their intellectual monopoly under the influence of humanism. In the Split of Marulic's time the intellectual elite consisted of some 145 clergy, including thirteen canons, about thirty members of religious orders, about fifty male members of the nobility, and some thirty educated commoners.58 55

Monumenta historico-juridica slavorum meridionalium, 10, 274. Monumenta historico-juridica slovorum meridionalium, 3, 275-276. 57 S. Urlic, Crtice iz dalmatinskog skolstva (Zadar, 1919), p. 65; T. Matic, "Hrvatski knjizevnici mletacke Dalmacije i zivot njihova doba," Rod, 233, 76. 58 Novak, on p. 707, says that there were only about thirty nobles in Split, but 56

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It is against this background that we must picture the education of Marko Marulic. Natalis says little about his school years, aside from pointing out his progress in Latin and Greek. He says that he studied "sub Colla Firmiano, Tydaeo Acciarino et Hieronymo Genesio Picentino, a quo etiam Graeca elementa accepit."sa Of these three teachers, only the personality of Tydeus Acciarinus (Acciarini) is well known, thanks to the studies of Francesco Lo Parco. 60 Since he was apparently the most influential teacher of Marulic, a closer look at him will help us understand the poet. Like most Dalmatian teachers, Acciarini was an Italian. He was a struggling humanist and a teacher by necessity. Writing a plaintive letter to Angelo Poliziano in 1480 he says, "I was born in Marche, but by the will of Fate and my stepmother Fortune I teach in Cosenza. I, who until recently enjoyed the friendship of princes, have now, because of my evil star, opened a school." 61 Since the Hieronymus Jenesius "Picentinus" mentioned by Natalis came from the same part of Italy as Acciarini, we may conjecture that one brought the other to Split.62 Like other humanists of his time, Acciarini yearned to become a court poet or court scholar. We find him between 1457 and 1460 at the court of Alessandro Sforza at Pesaro. There he composed a Libellus with six carmina, dedicated "ad Alexandrum, Constantium et Baptistam Sfortiades," in which he begged for an official position at the court. According to Lo Parco, Acciarini left when life at the court of Sforza, who had marital troubles, became unbearable. He started on p. 100 he states that there were forty-six of them gathered in 1503 for the election of a new archbishop of Split, and these were probably not all, since some were away as captains on ships or otherwise travelling. 59 Milic, p. 5. 60 F. Lo Parco, "Tideo Acciarini — Umanista Marchigiano del secolo XV," Archivio storico per la Dalmazia, VII, fase. 37, pp. 17-42 (hereafter cited as Lo Parco). 61 L. Lo Parco, "Tideo Acciarino Piceno," Giornale storico d. Lett, hai., 68 (1916), 381. 62 P. Kolendic (Novo doba 25/XI1 '24, p. 5) believes that this teacher may be an offspring of the Greek family Genesios, and that he is the same person mentioned in a document of 1477 in Split as Hieronymus Genetius, "olim rector scholarum in Spalato" (see also Kukuljevic, p. XIII). Paleographically this is a very plausible conjecture, and it coincides with the date of his stay in Split. Natalis's spelling may be explained by the pronunciation of the name in Split, since Natalis uses no other source than his memory. The addition of the name Picentinus can only mean that the man came from Italy.

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to teach in Split in 1461 or 1462 and remained there for about ten years. From 1477-1480 he is listed as rector scholarum of the secular schools in Dubrovnik, 63 but there is good reason to believe that he was there as early as 1471 or 1472.64 As rector scholarum, he was in charge of two repetitores and one teacher of elementary school (scholae abachi), with a salary of 430 ypperperi. We may assume that there was a similar arrangement in Split, with the other two teachers as Acciarini's subordinates. As his querulous letter shows, he was back in Italy in 1480, with his own school in Cosenza. He apparently remained there for the rest of his life. The date of his death is unknown. Acciarini, like most other humanists, suffered from a kind of intellectual schizophrenia characteristic of Renaissance scholars. It came from the conflict rising from their strict adherence to the principles of Christianity on the one hand, and their genuine admiration of the great classical authors and their endeavor to imitate them, on the other. The conflicting ideals led to an uncomfortable cleavage both in education and in the lives of most humanists. Acciarini taught school only to make a living, because he had to consider himself a failure in spite of repeated efforts to climb the social ladder. Any favor he may have won from Alexander Sforza with his Carmina was shortlived. Some "Carmina ad Summum Pontificem edita," now lost, failed to attract the Pope's attention 65 to him in Split. Turning to Spain, he dedicated his one extant prose work, De Animorum Medicamentis, to Juan of Asturia, intending it for use in the education of the son of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabel of Castille. But this enterprise failed as had all others before. Acciarini lacked the recklessness and savoir-faire necessary to reach his worldly goal as a humanist. He was ill-equipped to fight in the fierce and unscrupulous competition for court positions. Opposed to his worldly ambition is Acciarini's religious side, which becomes apparent in his prose work. Although he displays humanistic erudition and makes free use of a sound knowledge of 63

C. Jiricek, "Der Ragusanische Dichter Sisko Mencetic," AfSlPh., 19 (1897),

78.

61

Lo Parco, pp. 21 ff. Just which summus pontifex is meant is not clear. Lo Parco (p. 19) thinks that it might be Paul II Barbo (1464-1471), since he was a Venetian, and Acciarini lived in Venetian territory during his pontificate. 65

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the classics, he admonishes the prince to prefer the Scriptures and Fathers to the pagan philosophers, pointing out that the only true happiness consists in the perfect knowledge of God and the fruit of good works. 66 He goes on to expound the Christian principles of the moral life, especially as found in Jerome and Thomas Aquinas. Throughout, there is a dual emphasis on "fear of the Lord" and on "virtue." Emphasis on virtue is common fare in humanistic morals; "fear of the Lord" is an essential part of it for the Christian. The combination should be carefully noted, since it provided Marulic's main source of inspiration. Indeed, the influence of Acciarini on Marulic is unmistakable. In every work of Marulic, we find this thorough knowledge of, and deep reverence for, the classics on one side, and on the other the rejection of classics in favor of the Scriptures and Christian principles. Marulic claims that virtue and the moral life in general are the only goals worth striving for. His basis for the moral life is fear of the Lord, as defined in the Scriptures. Just what his feelings towards his teacher were is hard to say, since he mentions him only once in passing (when speaking about his youthful epigrams, which will be discussed presently); this one mention, however, suggests a proud and appreciative memory. If it is correct that Acciarini taught at Split for about ten years, he would have been there for the full range of Marulic's formative years, from his tenth until about his twenty-first. To this strong influence, as well as to his own natural inclination, we must attribute the uniform view of life apparent throughout the literary work of the poet. Kukuljevic asserted, without evidence, that Marulic must have been trained in Padua, and all subsequent biographers have parroted this theory uncritically.87 But none of the three teachers listed by 66

Lo Parco, p. 15. Kukuljevic names Marulic's chief teacher at Padua as "the famous Picentini, who also taught Greek." This is a paraphrase of Natalis's simple statement that Marulic studied, among others, "sub . . . Hieronymo Jenesio Picentino, a quo etiam Graeca elementa accepit." Kasandric, in searching for support for Kukuljevic's account of Marulic's education, was to his surprise unable to find in the history of the university of Padua any trace of the teachers named by Natalis. Nonetheless he went right on repeating Kukuljevic's mistaken assumptions. Furthermore, Kukuljevic made an additional mistake, which has gone unnoticed so far: he split in two the personality of Hieronymus Jenesius Picentinus, and made "a famous Greek scholar Picentini" out of the last part of his name, while the first part remained for him an unknown Hieronymus Jenesius. 67

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Natalis is to be found in the records of Padua university. Of two of them we know only that they taught in Split; Acciarini, as we have mentioned, was active also in Dubrovnik and in Cosenza.68 Moreover, there is no indication whatsoever that Marulic ever left the territory of the Split city-state for any purpose at all. Surely, had the poet really attended the university in Padua, his friend Natalis could not have failed to mention such an outstanding and significant fact in his biography. Kukuljevic's theory must be put down as a pious invention. Marulic cannot be considered a typical product of the educational system of the times. His knowledge is incomparably superior to that of his contemporaries, even the teachers among them. The long years he spent in retirement in his library brought him such familiarity both with the Scriptures and the Fathers and with classical Latin literature that his friends and Dalmatian contemporaries looked upon him as their "bright star." In his early years he seems to have been a serious and successful student; Natalis points to his skill in Latin and his knowledge of Greek, inferring great powers of eloquence. It was an unusual accomplishment to know Greek at that time, and surely Natalis would have elaborated on the point if Marulic's knowledge had gone beyond the Graeca elemento which Natalis does note. The catalogue of his library is entirely in Latin, and it seems safe to assume that the many Greek works mentioned were actually Latin translations, although this fact is specifically noted only for two or three volumes. Two works listed among the several classed as Grammatici again imply only an elementary acquaintance with Greek: Erathemata cum interpretatione latina, and a volume of Vocabula de graeco derivata.69 Apart from an occasional Greek word in Marulic's works, there is no further evidence. 68

F. Lo Parco, "Tideo Acciarino Piceno," Giornale storico d. Lett. Ital., 68 (1916), 381. 69 In the eighteenth century, Julije Bajamonti found among his family papers in Split a volume containing a Latin and Greek grammar, which, he believed, had once belonged to Marulic. The book was found among other papers of Marulic and bore notes which seemed to be in his hand. This may be the first of the volumes listed under "Grammatici" in his catalogue, "Diomedes et alii grammatici." This grammar and the other Marulic papers in the possession of the Bajamonti family in Split were burned when their house was set on fire by lightning; cf. I. Milcetic, "Dr. Julije Bajamonti i njegova djela," Rad, 192, 156.

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This limited knowledge of Greek was amply compensated for by Marulic's real mastery of Latin. Croatian was his mother tongue, but Latin was the language of his culture and education. When writing in Croatian, he appears to be hesitant, struggling to find the correct expression. But in Latin, he was intellectually at home, and the sentences flow with an ease that one ordinarily exhibits only in one's mother tongue. His achievement in Latin during his school years is emphasized by Natalis, who gives as an example of his eloquence: "he progressed in Latin so much that hardly a boy (pene puer) he delivered, to the admiration of everyone, a beautiful oration (pulcherrimam orationem) in honor of the doge Nicolo Marcello." Unfortunately, nothing more is known about the pulcherrima oratio, much as we would like to know exactly when and at what occasion it was delivered. Evidently it was merely a school exercise and so Marulic left no trace of it among his works. 70 At first glance, the date of the oration seems easy to determine. Nicolo Marcello was doge of Venice from August 13, 1473, until December 1, 1474 — less than seventeen months. And so all the poet's biographers, if they mention the anecdote at all, follow Kukuljevic's version, that the oration was delivered in Padua in 1473 or 1474. We must reject this theory for two reasons: one is that Marulic, as we have seen, never even went to Padua; the second is implied in the words of Natalis himself, who states that Marulic delivered his speech pene puer. In 1474, Marulic was twenty-four years old. As a nobleman, he was by law a member of the High Council of his city, and had been eligible for any administrative office since his eighteenth birthday. 71 Natalis' attribute would therefore hardly be fitting, especially since we find Marulic as early as February 1474 in the court of Split 70

Kukuljevic, however, found a simple solution to the puzzle (p. XLVIII). In keeping with his theory that Marulic studied at Padua, he says: "As a youth of 23, he saluted at Padua in the name of the student body the old doge of Venice, Nicolo Marcello (died Dec. 1, 1474), with a beautiful speech, to the admiration of all his listeners." According to this assumption, the speech would have been delivered in 1473, one year before the doge died, when Marulic was supposedly a senior at the University of Padua, and his excellence made him fit to represent his colleagues on such an occasion as a visit by the doge. The theory seemed plausible, flattering to Marulic, and what is more, flattering to national pride; and so it entered into the subsequent biographies of the poet. However, the words of Natalis, as well as the bare facts, will not allow us to accept it. 71 Novak, p. 63.

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as a legal representative of his mother in a lawsuit concerning his grandfather's will. A man so maturely engaged could certainly not be looked upon as pene puer at the same time. The point that Natalis was trying to put across, however, was that a very young person was able to make a Latin speech well enough to arouse the admiration of his elders. That he was still in his early youth is made quite clear by Natalis in the passage immediately following the account of the speech, for, although he does not make an explicit distinction between pueritia, adolescentia, and Marulic's later years, the periods are implicit in the arrangement of the narrative. We could assume that he made a mistake and that Marulic was not pene puer at the time when he delivered the speech; but in that case, the whole point in the anecdote would be lost. Rather, since Natalis wrote his narrative from memory, he may have confused the facts of some sixty years before, and the speech of Marulic might actually have been delivered, not in honor of the doge Marcello, but of his predecessor, doge Christophoro Moro, who ruled from 1462 until 1471. If Marulic delivered his speech at the beginning of Moro's reign, he would have been about thirteen or fourteen years old at the time.72 Marulic doubtless also engaged in another form of school exercise, the composition of poetry. From the Middle Ages on until late into the Renaissance this custom prevailed, and no humanistic school can be imagined without it. Such a school exercise produced innumerable verse-makers and poetasters. Beside his regular school exercises, Marulic composed occasional poetry of his own. Except for a single epigram, all of this early poetry has been lost, either because he did not deem it worthy of preservation or because it perished along with his other poetry in Carminum Lib. VII. The surviving epigram is preserved in his Inscriptiones repertae Solonis, which he composed later in life.73 It can be dated because it describes a land battle ("ausus confertos incurrere Georgius hostes" and "sanguine sparsit humum") which must have taken place about 1467-1468, when the Turks began invading Venetian territory in Dalmatia for the first time. Although Dalmatians had come into conflict with the Turks at sea, this was the first and most disastrous hand-to-hand encounter, in the Dalmatian lands 72 73

Lo Parco, p. 9. M. Srepel, "Marulicevo djelo 'De ultimo Christi judicio'," Grada, 3, 72.

Marko Marulic

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74

outside the walled cities. At the time the poet was in his adolescentia, seventeen or eighteen years old. 75 The date for Marulic's first contact with Juraj Sizgoric (Georgius Sisgoreus), a poet and descendant of a noble family of Sibenik (Sebenico), can be set at about the same time. Sizgoric's exact dates are unknown, but he had earned the degree of doctor iuris at Padua and from 1469 was canon and later vicar for the local bishops. 76 He was already a poet of renown when Marulic heard about him. In 1477 he published a collection of his poetry in Venice, Elegiarum et carminum libri III, which contains two letters of interest to us, one written by Acciarini and one by Marulic. Unfortunately neither letter is dated, and the internal arrangement of the letters and poems gives no chronological information. The poems are of the same type as the Sylvae of Statius, and their arrangement partly imitates that of the Sylvae. In his preface, Sizgoric states that the poems were composed in the course of the preceding years, at such moments when he felt moved by the spirit or was urged on by friends to write. When he had accumulated enough compositions, he published them according to the advice of Juvenal: "namque apud Ivuenalem legimus stulta est, inquit, dementia, cum tot ubique vatibus occurras, parcere chartae" [I, 17-8]. He continues, "In this book of mine I did not arrange the poems in the order they were composed, but they are arranged as I saw fit." 77 The letters are contained in the first book of the collection, which contains only three of Sizgoric's poems. The first letter is from a certain "philosophus Ambrosius" of Sibenik, the second from Marulic, and the third from Acciarini. It has been suggested that the juxtaposition of the latter two letters came about after Acciarini visited Sizgoric at Sibenik and mentioned his young student Marulic, later urging Marko to write to the great poet. Acciarini's visit took place in 1465 or 1466,78 and is confirmed by the phrasing of Acciarini's letter to Sizgoric and by one of the latter's poems. There is no 74

Novak, p. 43. P. Kolendic (p. 5; citing Monumenta spectantia hist. Slav, mer., 22, 332), places this epigram in 1464-1465, when the citizens of Split armed a galley for the war against the Turks, in which Georgius might have perished. However, it is not sure whether that galley was ever involved in any skirmish with the Turks. 76 M. Srepel, "Humanist Sizgoric," Rad. 138, 209. 77 Ibid., p. 213. 79 Lo Parco, p. 19. 75

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answer to any of the letters in the collection and since there is no evidence of any other contact between Marulic and Sizgoric, we remain uncertain about the exact nature of their relationship. 79 From Marulic's self-introduction as adolescens, we can date the letter somewhat before 1470, surely several years before its publication in 1477. 80 It is his first contact with Sizgoric, but impelled by his admiration for the poet, he loved him and now writes with youthful enthusiasm to ask for the gift of the poet's friendship. Marulic came to know the work of Sizgoric when "nomila ex metris tuis ... ad nos quoque pervenerunt." They must have been printed copies of Sizgoric's poetry, for otherwise it seems unlikely that they would have been spread all over Italy. 31 The letter ends with a renewed plea for the poet's friendship. According to the documents, Marulic made his first appearance in public in 1474, representing his family interests and discharging 79

M. Srepel, Rad, 138,219. Here is the letter: "M. Marulus, adolescens Dalmata. Ignotus ad te litteras scribo, quem etsi numquam viderim, amavi tamen, antequam viderim. Virtus hoc quidem tua effecit ingenti, quippe quae non solum eos, quos non vidimus, sed etiam, qui multo ante nos fuerunt, amabiles nobis reddunt. Vellim tamen, suavissime George Sisgoree, ut me tui tam studiosum mutuo complecti non fastidires amore, quod si tibi inest par doctrinae tuae humanitas. Hoc certe, quod omnium mihi est gratissimum, consecutus sum; video enim, quae vis in te juvene acerrimi ingenii et quam potens, etenim nonulla ex metris tuis, quaejamtotampervagantur Italiani, incredibilem quandam and prope singularem et divinam doctrinam praeferentia ad nos quoque pervenerunt. In his itaque contemplanti mihi tam artificiosam verborum compositionem, tam integras novasque sententias, qui priscis illis sanctisque vatibus propius accederet, videtur nemo. Teque non nostrae aetatis modo poetis praefero, sed etiam Nasoni, Propertio, Tibullo simillimum judico. Hi enim exactissime ornatissimeque elegiam scripsisse putantur. Tu igitur, jucundissime Georgi Sisgoree, sic tibi dii omnia bene vertant, facias, ut quemadmodum ingenii tui, ita mansuetudinis et humanitatis nomen viget et celebritas. Hoc est, talem jam mihi te preastes, qualem me quoque erga te esse cernis. Et si in hoc nimis forte temerarius ferar, quod te disertissimum juvenem mea exili oratione alloqui ausim, conciliandi tui defendar cupiditate. Vale." 80

It is impossible to date the letter with any precision. Lo Parco (p. 18) places it in 1465-1466, while Kolendic and some other retain the date of publication as the date of its composition. 81 It is true that the only known edition of the works of Sizgoric is the one which contains the letter of Marulic, and that Sizgoric, in Srepel's version, at least, says nothing in the preface about the previous publication. However, this does not exclude the possibility, and it would be interesting to search for it.

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civic duties. His father was still living at the time. Nevertheless, in February 1474, his mother sent him, as the oldest son, to represent her at the court of Split before the conte. There he declared that the executors of the will of his grandfather Nicholas de Albertis had not been selected legally, nor according to the will of the testator. 82 Later in the same year, we find him again in the City Hall as a witness for some masons. 83 We may assume that Marulic had been assisting his father in the business of administering his estate for a while before his death in 1476; in that year, the poet became the official head of his family. He retained that position practically until the end of his life. The death of his father brought a series of lawsuits with relatives and debtors, and Marulic had to defend not only the family property but also the reputation of his late father in some embarrassing and painful litigation. That Marulic placed considerable trust in his friend, the nobleman Peter Srica (who was later to publish the first edition of the poet's Croatian work Judita), is seen by the fact that he chose Srica to represent him and his brothers in a dispute with some relatives on inheritance questions in July 1476, shortly after the death of their father Nicholas. But in the following year both Srica and the late Nicholas Marulic were accused in an affair that puts them in a dubious light and at the time illustrates the intensity of family feeling in Split. Peter Marulic, the poet's uncle, had married Jakica Papalic. Her dowry had not been completely paid when she fell sick and wrote a will renouncing the unpaid portion in favor of her brother Nicholas Papalic. But she recovered, and the will, although deposited in the city chancery, was apparently unknown to her husband and children. Nicholas Marulic, however, did know about it, and when Jakica was drowned some time later, he resolved to steal and destroy the will in order to save the dowry for the Marulic family. With Peter Srica he went to the City Hall, asking for permission to inspect the will of Srica's wife. Browsing among the documents, they found the will of Jakica, and Nicholas quickly concealed it in his coatsleeve and departed. Nicholas Papalic, Jakica's brother, soon discovered the theft, but was unable to prove it. Nicholas Marulic resisted all attempts to be tricked into a confession, even on his deathbed. 82 83

Fiskovic, p. 190. Ibid., p. 194.

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Papalic sought the help of the praepositus of the chapter of St. Dujam (the chief canon of Split), who heard Nicholas' last confession, and tried to wrest from him a confession of the theft, so that he might die with a clear conscience; but old Nicholas was adamant. Nevertheless, Papalic refused to pay the full dowry when pressed by the Marulic family, and the dispute ended in court. Marko challenged Papalic to bring proof of the "calumny" against his father; and Papalic produced five witnesses, among them a maternal uncle of the poet, Janko de Albertis, who confirmed the story. The city count pronounced sentence against the Marulic family.84 It is hard to see clearly the part that Marko played personally in this affair. He did his duty in defending the honor of his late father, but we can readily imagine what grief and embarrassment the whole affair must have caused him. Only one lawsuit ended well for the poet at that time. 85 As executor of his grandfather's will, he became involved in litigation with his cousin Marcia, who claimed from him full payment of the dowry left to her by the late grandfather — 300 ducati — although the payment had been made at a previous time. The judge pronounced in favor of Marulic. The biggest lawsuit in which Marulic was involved lasted over four years, from 1478 to 1482. Marulic was functioning, together with his mother, as the executor of the will of a certain Antonius Johannis (Antun Ivanov), who had died in 1469. The settlement of this will proceeded slowly indeed; in February 1478, nine years after the testator's death, Marulic and his mother were accused by Johannis' heirs of mishandling the execution of the will while they were attempting to collect a debt of 400 ducati which the testator supposedly owed to the father of the poet. The heirs did not recognize this claim, whereupon Marulic produced proof in the form of some letters of Antonius addressed to his father; and the heirs thereupon brought charge of forgery against the late Nicholas Marulic. Evidence in court showed that Nicholas was given to bragging about his ability to imitate any handwriting, but had not been able to do it when put to the test. The final outcome of the trial is unknown, because some of the documents are missing. As head of the family, Marulic was busy also with the administra84 Ibid., p. 192. 85 Ibid., p. 194 ff.

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tion of the family estate. The documents show him in March 1479 and in July 1481 giving the lands of his estate to some peasants to cultivate them under contract. And in August 1482 he required that an estimate be made of the damage to his fields caused by the pigs of a certain peasant, Miho Orlic. This is the last such act signed by Marulic. After 1482, all business of this kind was handled by his brothers, particularly Peter. In this early period in his life, Marulic spent much of his time in the City Hall, ready to assist anyone who might need his services. Thus we repeatedly find his name as witness on contracts in private matters, such as family property divisions, commercial agreements, and the like. These activities brought him in contact especially with the artisans of Split. That he enjoyed the confidence of his fellow citizens is seen also by the fact that they often named him executor in their wills. From 1474 until 1480, his name appears some eleven times as witness in the documents. Marulic also functioned as lawyer in a case particularly interesting to us. It concerned Johannes Zanetti, archbishop of Split from 1476 until 1479, when he became bishop of Treviso, Italy. During his stay in Split, he borrowed from two Split noblemen, Michael Avanzi and Francesco Petraca, two large Bosnian silver belts, and failed to return them when he left the city. After an unsuccessful attempt to get their property back, the two nobles appointed Marulic and Jerome Cippico as their representatives, authorized to represent them in all legal procedures concerning this matter, "in Venice and before the doge." The outcome of the litigation is unknown. If the matter ever came before the tribunal of Venice, it would be possible to find Marulic mentioned in the Venetian archives.86 It would be most interesting to find out whether Marulic ever went to Venice; if he did, this would represent his only absence from Dalmatia. But nothing is mentioned about travels in Natalis' narrative, and the whole tenor of his biography implies that there were none. Some later writers assert that Marko travelled extensively in Italy, concluding this from the fact that he collected inscriptions from Rome and other Italian cities, and wrote a commentary upon them, In Epigrammata Priscorum Commentarius,87 but it is clear that this collection was made from books. The list of friends which Natalis gives at the 86 87

Ibid., p. 195; Fiskovic says nothing about the sequence of the case. Kukuljevic, pp. L and LXI.

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end of his biography distinguishes three groups, the last two being nobles and poets from Split. But the first group is made up of various learned and distinguished Italians (including a cardinal, Domenico Grimani) who were personally unknown to Marulic, but who had expressed great admiration for his literary works. Such a division would seem unlikely if Marulic had done any extensive travelling in Italy, for he would surely have met some of these people. Marulic became a member of the City Council in 1469, but we do not find his name listed in any public office until 1478, when he appears as examinator. This does not necessarily mean that he did not hold lower offices before, for the names of lower officers are not listed. They did not affix their signatures on documents, and election was per acclamationem. It is only the higher offices which carried enough prestige to be entered in the acta. Marko's brothers are similarly listed only as examinatores, although they very well may have held other lower offices. Marulic is listed as examinator in 1478 and again in 1479, when one of the most distinguished sculptors and architects of Dalmatia, Andrea Alessi, appeared before him as a witness.88 In May 1479, Marulic served as index honorabilis in several civil suits, and in June a marriage contract was signed in his presence. In the next two years he repeatedly held the same office and is mentioned also as index curiae and examinator. After 1481 we do not find him listed in any public office until 1487, when he was again iudex honorabilis, and then his name disappears entirely from public documents, apparently never to be mentioned again. Nothing is known about the literary activity of Marulic at this early period of his life, and we may assume that there was practically none. Only the one epigram, mentioned above, is preserved. Natalis, who is especially interested in the literary activity of his subject, mentions only the "pulcherrimam orationem" of his school years — evidently because there was nothing else to mention. All of Marulic's works show the experience of later years, and the spirit of a Christian recluse. The light poetry and especially love poetry characteristic of other writers in their early periods is in fact nonexistent for Marulic. It is typical that his library does not contain any of the Roman love elegists — Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, 88

Fiskovic, p. 194.

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Ovid — whom he must have read in school but evidently did not value enough to incorporate into his own collection. Even the one epigram surviving from his school days is an epitaph. The year 1482 brought a sharp turn in the life of Marulic. Up to that time his years were filled with the excitement of a brilliant career just beginning. Before the age of thirty he had secured the highest position attainable in Split, that of city judge. The requirements for this position did not include any professional training, only personal integrity and experience, since the decisions were founded on the unwritten common law of the community. Marulic was ready for this responsibility at an early age, completing with his intelligence what he may have lacked in experience. His behavior and bearing were beyond reproach, and the only weakness attributed to him by Natalis is a certain vanity in dress, a common failing among the young nobles. However, this brief successful period also brought with it some serious disappointments. His father died early, and the moral heritage which he left to his children was anything but honorable. The lawsuits in which Marulic eventually became involved created enmities and left behind a shadow of resentment among his own relatives. Marulic had strong family feelings, and such disagreements must have caused him genuine pain. Moreover, in his position as judge he had ample opportunity to observe the weaknesses of men and to discover the corrupt state of morals among his fellow citizens. The clergy especially were at the time a living scandal. Badly educated and irresponsible, they neglected their most elementray duties, devoting their time to gambling and their concubines. The bishops of Split lived in Venice and Rome from the fruits of their benefices, never even visiting their dioceses. Only one bishop, Bernardo Zane, lived for a while in Split during Marulic's lifetime.89 Marulic, a religious moralist by nature, must have been profoundly disturbed by all this. He was particularly indignant at the immorality of the clergy, which he attacked in violent terms thioughout his works. On top of all these disappointments came the death of his brother Simeon, which affected Marulic so profoundly that, according to Natalis, he withdrew completely from public life, giving 89

Farlati, p. 430 ff.

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up all his official duties. If the documents of the Split archives can be taken as conclusive, his retirement really began in 1481, when we meet his name in the documents for the next-to-last time as iudex honorabilis. According to Natalis it was the death of his brother that was instrumental in his final decision to retire completely.90 He spent the rest of his life in the privacy of his own home, devoting his time to study, writing, and religious practices, and taking care only of the mundane affairs concerning his closest family. Kukuljevic places the retirement of Marulic in the year 1476, in accordance with his mistaken notion that Simeon died that year.91 Simeon, however, died in about 1482, as we have already seen, and this coincides with the disappearance of Marko's name from all official records with the single exception in 1487. Natalis stresses the cause-effect relation between Simeon's death and his brother's retirement, and states that Marulic lived in retirement "per annos circiter quadraginta." Marulic died in 1524, so that the period of retirement, begun in 1482, comes to forty-two years, quite in accordance with Natalis' statement.92 Such a prosaic motive for Marulic's withdrawal from public life did not satisfy the populace of his native city. He had been Split's most prominent citizen, and it was inevitable that legends about him should arise in the course of time. His retirement was explained by 90 Milic, p. 6: "Usque ad obitum Simeonis fratris carissimi tangebat ilium vestimentorum cura nobilior; fragilitatis humanae, credo, recordatione ad divina animum hitic penitus erexit." 91 Kukuljevic, p. L. 92 Fiskovic, p. 189 ff., attempts to prove that the death of Simeon did not cause any change in the life of Marulic, because Simeon died much later than Kukuljevic asserts. He implies that the poet was then too old to change. He points out the fact that Simeon is mentioned as dead in 1513. Consequently Marulic, he says, "lived in general like other men of his class and circle" all his life. He further accuses Natalis of complete mispresentation of Marulic, and other biographers of the poet of mispresentation of Natalis. This conclusion is made by Fiskovic on the basis of the documents which he discovered. Our discussion will show that Fiskovic is wrong insofar as all the above accusations can be turned against him. He translates Natalis incorrectly, omitting the important word hinc (cf. note 90, above), so that the sentence has only the general meaning that Marulic turned his thoughts to God, not particularly in connection with the death of Simeon, but out of disgust with the greed and corruption of his fellow citizens. Had Fiskovic arranged his data carefully, the chronology would have shown him the correct answer.

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Marulic

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the conventional pattern of sin and conversion. The first record of this popular tradition was made in the eighteenth century by a Venetian traveller, Conte Agostino Santi Pupieni (Giuseppe Antonio Costantini), who stopped in Split on his way to Constantinople. He published his version of the story under the title "Fatto storico: Castigo dell' impudicizia" in his popular collection of gossipy and moralizing Lettere critiche, addressed to an imaginary cousin. His "letter" on Marulic is dated in Lessina on July 25, 1732.93 The story goes that Marulic and his friend Papalic were in love with the same girl, presumably a noble. They would visit her nightly in secret, climbing up to her room, which overlooked a narrow alley, by means of a rope ladder which she would hook to her windowsill and let down to them. While one swain was with the girl, the other kept watch in the alley. One night, when it was Marulic's turn to be with her, his overeager friend persuaded him to trade. Marulic was thus keeping watch in the early morning hours when a heavy sack was thrown from the girl's window. Marulic opened it and discovered the decapitated body of his friend. He hurriedly buried it in his own back yard. The tragedy so affected him that he spent the rest of his life as a hermit doing penance for his youthful sins. In another version of the tale, recorded by A. Kuzmanic, there is the added detail that the hapless girl was buried alive by her father because of her dishonor. The report of Costantini has caused polemics in the discussions of the life of Marulic, and it is still alluded to by some as "historical fact." 94 Kukuljevic is inclined to believe the story, reporting that he saw the hook and the rope ladder mentioned by Costantini, on the island of Brae.95 These objects are still kept in the city museum of Split as part of the small private museum of Capogrosso, the gentle93 Conte Agostino Santi Pupieni (ossia Giuseppe Antonio Costantini), Lettere critiche, II, 48-53 (Venezia, 1748). This is the 6th edition, in seven volumes, which is here quoted, and many other, later, editions testify to the popularity of the work. (Kukuljevic, p. XLVIII, wrongly gives one of the author's alternative names as Costadoni.) 94 The polemics about its veracity started in 1846 between Luka Svilovic (in the Italian literary magazine of Zara, La Dalmazia), who rejected the story with indignation, and Ante Kuzmanic who (in Zora Dalmatinska) accepted it and gave a slightly different version which he had he heard in Split. (Cf. Kasandric, p. XXIII ff.) 95 Kukuljevic, p. XLIII.

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man who first showed them to Costantini during his stay in Split. 96 Whatever may be the origins of this lurid tale, however, it seems quite unrelated to the poet Marko Marulic. The first record dates from two full centuries after his death and comes from a source scarcely to be considered reliable. No reference to it can be found in any contemporary written document, public or private, in any piece of prose or poetry concerning Marulic, or in any composition by the poet himself. Not only do we find no allusion to any kind of illicit love story, but there is no mention of any relation of the poet to women at all. To our knowledge Marulic never composed a love poem or took any interest in women whatsoever. As a matter of fact, he despised women, and thought that marriage was the lowest state into which a decent man could fall without actual degradation. 97 A single vague allusion to "amor profanus" was found in poetry ascribed to Marulic; four verses in the first book of the Davideis which § repel published in 1904. But the recent discovery of the real Marulic Davidias demonstrates that the Srepel publication is by some other author, and its content is therefore irrelevant to Marulic's life. Not only is there no scrap of confirmation for the romantic episode, but all evidence available is directly contradictory to it. The sources all describe only the Marulic of high moral standards, a paragon of respectability. It may be countered that this comes from the impression he gave in his later years of repentance. But there is absolutely nothing to suggest that his ways were any different when he was a young man. It would be a waste of time to quote all the early judgments about him: all the voices join in unanimous praise. Most explicit in this respect is Natalis. No matter with how much reserve we view his emphatic statements, we still cannot reconcile them with the passionate youth of the story. Natalis says, From his childhood until his old age he did nothing that would not be worthy of praise, said nothing not worthy of admiration... He did not 96 Fiskovic, p. 93. Kasandric, p. XXIV ff., analyzed the story and accepted it. He had reservations about the articles of "evidence," but for the rest he says "there is no reason at all to doubt the veracity or probability of the story." H e tries to excuse Natalis' failure to mention it on the grounds that "he did not deem it decent," since the tragedy was still fresh in the memory of the families involved. Natalis then, argues Kasandric, substituted the death of his brother Simeon as the reason for the change in Marulic. In fact, Natalis did a good deal more than that to make the story unbelievable, as our discussion will show. 97 Evangelistarium Marci Maruli Spalatensis, Lib VI, ch. 6 if. (Venetiis, 1516).

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spend his youth in passion, as others are wont t o . . . H e was so modest [verecundus], so kind, so friendly towards all, that he was rightly called by everyone the model of life, the mirror of virtue, the pattern of sincerity.

It is hard to believe, with Kasandric, 98 that Natalis knew about the story and yet so seriously distorted the truth. Furthermore, if he knew of the episode, other contemporaries must have known too. It is unthinkable that such a gruesome drama would have passed unnoticed in a small town like Split. And had it been known, Marulic could scarcely have held the high office of city judge, as he did at least once after the "conversion" date of 1482. Only one conclusion can be drawn: the story must be rejected as a part of Marulic's life. It can be viewed only as a vulgar fable of his native town. To judge by the archival documents, the poet's retirement seems to have been complete until 1501. As the oldest, he remained the titular head of the family, but in fact he left the administration of the considerable family property to his other brothers. As we can see from his library, he read the ancient works de re rustica, but he loathed his administrative duties." By this time all his brothers were married, but the family estate was undivided and administered by Peter alone until 1501, when the first of a series of divisions took place. The lands were cultivated by peasant serfs under signed contract, and the only signature on these documents for the period from 1482 to 1501 is that of Peter.100 Natalis is our only source of information as to Marulic's way of life during his retirement: "He loved most of all a small cell in his house, with his books, where he lived very modestly for about forty years, shut up with the Muses and sacred books; there he worked hard day and night, in vigils, fasting, a hair shirt, with prayers, harsh flagellations and heavy penance. His daily walk was from his cell to the church of the Blessed Virgin and St. Dujam, the disciple of St. Peter, chief of the apostles, and back to his cell. In that 98

Kasandric, p. XXIV. The catalogue of his library lists several works on agriculture: Varro et Cato de re rustica: Columela cum quibusdam aliis; Cresecentius. 100 Fiskovic, p. 191. Natalis, as usual, is not precise in his chronology, when he says at the beginning of the poet's retirement: "Domesticarum rerum curam Valerio ex fratribus iuniori liberam dimiserat, cuius mortem quantum aegre tulerit, Elegia meo nomini dicata luculenter indicat." We know from the documents that Valerius took over the administration in 1514, not earlier, as Natalis implies. 99

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church he was regularly present at the divine office, the first to enter the church and the last to leave. He never missed the divine service, never ate meat, and all the time he had after the church services he spent in study and literary work."101 It is this passage which is responsible for the picture of Marulic as a penitent recluse, and so is he seen by subsequent biographers. If we take it literally, Marulic must have led a grim life indeed. But the passage should be viewed with some reserve and tempered by Natalis's statement that Marulic was "affable and witty with his friends," and by his list of Marulic's many friends, acquired during the retirement period. Further evidence is to be found in his poetical epistle, Marco Marulo in Valle Surda commoranti Francisci Natalis epistola and Marulic's reply.102 Although these letters are of a later date, when Marulic was sojourning on the small island of Solta, they refer to the poet's life and his friends of previous years. The letters show that he was in daily contact with his friends in Split, who missed him so much when he went to live on Solta that they wrote, "We are not happy without you." Natalis mentions the friends of Marulic individually, saying for example of Barbarus that the news of any written word from Solta set him to dreaming about Marulic. Another friend, Hieronymus, rejoices when he receives a poem from Marulic, "De Virgine Sancta." This poem is the translation of Petrarch's "Vergine bella che di sol vestita," which Marulic also made at his friends' request. Hieronymus was so pleased with the poem that he went all over town singing it, accompanying himself on the lute. The poet in his answering letter greets them all, particularly "Hieronymum cythar clarum," and the poet Barbarus, who will particularly enjoy reading his poetical epistles and other compositions. All of this demonstrates that a group of intellectuals who were in contact with each other had gathered around Marulic and formed a small literary circle. With his friends Marulic often made visits of humanistic interest to the nearby Salona, as he points out in the dedication to Papalic of his commentary on the Latin inscriptions of Salona.103 This commentary, written at the request of Papalic, gives 101

Milic, p. 6. Ibid., p. 11 ff. 103 Inscriptiones latinae antiquae Salonis repertae a Marco Marulo Spalatensi, in specilegium monumentorum archeologicorum in terris quas Slavi australes incolunt repertorum (Zagrabiae, 1876), p. 84. 102

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an example of how the poet was encouraged to write by his friends. Their humanistic education kept the group together, as, in the best manner of their Italian masters, they devoted their leisure time to a study of the classics, and to the composition of an occasional piece of poetry. They would get together for mutual appraisal of their works and express their admiration for each other in "poetic epistles." But in spite of their humanistic training, the medieval spirit of the small provincial town remained deeply embedded in their minds, and they were never able to achieve complete synthesis. In any case, the presence of his friends made the "litteratum otium" of Marulic a great deal less grim than it would at first seem from Natalis. Whether or not Marulic composed anything during the period before 1501 is hard to ascertain, but we must assume that he did. His extant works show a sure and skillful hand in the composition of poetry. Such skill can be readily understood in regard to Latin poetry, which he had already practiced during his school years, but not so clearly for his Croatian works. The ability that he shows in his first dated Croatian poem, Judita (1501), compared with the awkwardness of expression in other poems also attributed to him, forces us to place all his shorter Croatian poems in the early period of his literary activity, before 1501. During that period he was learning to compose poetry in a language that had no artistic literature and only crude and anonymous translations and adaptations from Latin medieval religious poetry. To this early period, Fancev also assigns the composition, or rather translation from Latin into Croatian, of his prayerbook and of the life of St. Jerome, if indeed he is the author of the latter at all.104 But primarily this period in Marulic's life was spent in prayer and study, as Natalis points out. It is the time when he collected the material he was to use later in his works. His activities included buying books, copying manuscripts, and arranging quotations from his readings in alphabetical order in a small encyclopedia for handy reference. He accumulated a considerable library, and his own incomplete catalogue lists about eighty volumes. 105 Several interesting 104

F. Fancev, "Nova poezija Splicanina Marka Marulica", Rad, 245, 39-40. It is difficult to establish the exact number of volumes in Marulic's library, because his description is not accurate. He gives the names of authors sometimes without the title of their works and does not say whether the works are in separate volumes, complete, or abridged, etc. Ex.: "Columela cum quibusdam aliis; 105

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volumes in his own hand may perhaps be assigned to this period. They are three compendia: Compendium Bibliae, Compendium Vitae Apostolorum, and Valerii Maximi Compendium, all three "per Marcum Marulum." Two more volumes seem not only to have been copied by the poet but also decorated with miniatures. One was left to "magnifico domino Augustino de Maula," a Venetian noble and his friend, and the other to his sister, the nun Bira.106 These books are now unfortunately lost, but they give some confirmation to Natalis' assertion that Marulic was a talented painter.107 Aside from these illustrated Gospel texts, nothing is known of his paintings. Some believe that the poet did the etchings for the second edition of his Judita (Venice, 1523),108 but that is unlikely, for most of the pictures there have nothing to do with the story of Judith and they are evidently not by the same author. Moreover, Marulic never showed any interest in the publication of Judita and does not even list the book either among his works or in his library, so that it seems improbable that he would have done any extra work for any edition. But in the last analysis we cannot of course determine with certainty whether or not the pictures in the second edition have anything to do with the poet himself, since nothing else is left from his hand with which they could be compared. Nothing is known about his sculptures. At any rate he was an amateur in the fields of arts, and we should not take the words of Natalis too seriously. The religious practices performed in the secrecy of his cell were completed by his attendance at the cathedral of Split. There he could absorb the mixed impression of the old Roman temple, dedicated to Jupiter, adorned with magnificent rows of columns along its polygonal walls, and the incense and images of Christianity. Everipi Veronensis quaedam opera; etc." The list ends with this note: "Item aliae quaedam minutiae, quae distribuantur, ut videbitur comissariis meis." 106 Racki, p. 155-156. 107 Milic, p. 5. 108 V. Stefanie, "O izdanjima Maruliceve Judite," in M. Marulic, Judita, (Zagreb, 1950), p. 152; C. Fiskovic, "Umjetnicki obrt XV-XVI stoljeca u Splitu," in Zbornik Marka Marulica 1450-1950, (Zagreb, 1950), p. 145; D. Beric, "O slikaru Marku Marulu Pecenicu," in Slobodna Dalmacija, Organ Narodnog fronta Hrvatske za Dalmaciju, Br. 1686 (Split, 1. srpnja 1950), p. 2. Marulic had in his library one "Libellus de arte picturae."

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Natalis emphasizes the fact of his daily attendance. The services which Marulic "never missed" were held morning and afternoon, and attendance was required of all the clergy and canons who held some benefice in the church. If Natalis is right, the poet lived almost like a monk, and this brought him a high reputation in his medieval community, since the bishops of Split had a hard time to make even the clergy attend offices regularly. They threatened the laggards with punishment, fines, and the loss of benefices.110 The year 1501 marks the beginning of Marulic's most productive period, which lasted until about 1516. In 1501 he composed the Judita, a verse version of the biblical story of Judith, which made history because it is the first long poem in Croatian by any author. 111 In 1506 his De institutione bene vivendi was published in Venice, and other works quickly followed. Marulic had been discovered by the enterprising Venetian publisher Franciscus de Consorti Lucensis,112 who obtained from the Venetian government in 1504 the licenses and exclusive publishing rights of Marulic's De institutione and all his other works for a period of ten years.113 The poet had his material ready, since he had spent the past twenty years assembling it. He not only could satisfy his publisher's requests quickly; he furnished more than they could cope with. Notes appended by de Consorti and his associate, Franciscus Iuliani, to the printed works of Marulic indicate that they had in their possession many of his works which they had promised to publish. However either de Consorti never published them or else the printed copies have been lost, as have the manuscripts. In 1501, after almost nineteen years, we again meet Marulic in 108 Not only on Sundays, as Fiskovic wrongly interprets Natalis (Fiskovic, p. 189). Compare the words of Natalis as given on pages 35-36. 110 Farlati, pp. 430, 1148. 111 The work is known under this short title. The complete title page of the old editions is as follows: Libar Marka Marulica Splicanina, u kom se uzdrzi istorija svete udovice Judit u versih hrvatcki slozena, kako ona ubi vojvodu Oloferna po sridu vojske njegove i oslobodi puk izraelski od velike pogibli. 112 Franciscus Juliani in a note "ad lectorem" at the end of Marulic's Quinquaginta Parabolae says that the publisher F. de Consorti "cotidie doctissimorum amicitiam quaerit, ut ab illis libros exigat, quos postea ad mortalium utilitatem typis suis excudat." 113 R. Fulin, "Documenti per servire alia storia della tipografia veneziana," Archivio veneto, 23-1 (1882), 153.

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public life, for his name occurs in the archives of Split as a witness at a trial held in the cathedral on July 30.114 Since he visited the cathedral daily, he did not go much out of his way to perform this function. On February 7, in the same year, the first division of the family estate among the brothers is recorded. Three brothers, Marko, Valerius, and Peter, divided a portion of their common property into three equal parts by lot.115 In March 1506 Marulic appeared at the court of Split as a legal representative of his mother in a matter concerning the inheritance of his grandmother, Bira de Albertis.116 Except for these family matters, he continued to live in his quiet, leisurely manner. With the publication of his works in Venice, he became more prominent in his home town. We can imagine that not only his friends but also the other citizens of Split were proud of him. This doubtless disturbed the tranquillity of his daily routine, and so the poet decided to leave the city in quest of more complete seclusion. He retired to a place which Natalis calls "Vallis Surda," in a humanistic rendering of the Italian name Porto Sordo or the Croatian Necujam. 117 This pleasant spot is twelve miles from the coast of Split and is the largest inlet on the small island of Solta (Sutrium), then a possession of the city. Its name comes from the fact that it is sheltered on all sides against the wind. As far back as Roman times it was customary for the people of Split to build their villae rusticae there, as remains testify to this day. Roman floor mosaics are no rarity on Solta, and there are still parts of Roman walls around the place where Marulic spent his two years.118 The date of the poet's departure for Necujam is usually put at 1510, when he was sixty, but since Natalis says "pene sexagenarius," it may be earlier. Documents place Marulic in Split in 1506 and again in 114

Novak, Prilozi, 6, 88. Ibid., p. 89: "et positis tribus bulletinis in uno bireto, in quibus descripta erant nomina fratrum, et extractis ipsis bulletinis de dicto bireto sigilatis..." Each of them owned both individual and joint property, acquired variously through wills of their relatives. The property here divided apparently belonged just to these three brothers in common, which is probably the reason Alexander is not mentioned in this division. 116 Fiskovic, p. 191. 117 Kukuljevic, p. L, wrongly translates the Latin name of this place as "Gluha dolina." 118 Fiskovic, p. 198. 115

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Marulic

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119

1512, so that there is no reason not to take Natalis' qualifying adverb seriously. Further, he says that Marulic left Necujam after two years "ob piratarum formidinem." The reference is to the Turks, who began to attack Venetian Dalmatia with the greatest force in 1507, first by land and later, in 1508 or 1509, tried to plunder the islands by boat like pirates. It seems therefore likely that Marulic left the city at a time when it was disturbed by the attacks but the islands were considered safe, and that he returned when the islands too were threatened. The Turkish attacks were most severe around Split in 1510, and it is improbable that he would have left the city then, when the population of all the neighboring area, including the islands, was fleeing to the safety of the city walls. The attacks subsided somewhat later and peace was restored in 1513. For all these reasons I would place Marulic's sojourn on Solta earlier than is commonly assumed, that is, between 1506 and 1509. Some years earlier Dujam Balistrilic, the primicerius of the Split cathedral and a friend of Marulic, had retired to Necujam to live as a hermit. He built a small chapel dedicated to St. Peter, 120 with a small house nearby. The remains of the two buildings still clearly show the rustic simplicity of this small hermitage, typical for the region. There were a number of such hermits around Split at the time of Marulic, and he befriended several of them 121 until, following their example, he joined Balistrilic in his hermitage. Natalis describes his abode on the island as "quodam monasterium," evidently not knowing its exact nature. Eremitorium would be a more correct expression, although such small establishments were sometimes called monasteries. 122 Fiskovic's research has established that there was no true monastery on the island. However, the way of life in Balistrilic's hermitage was not much different from life in a monastery in its daily exercises, although it was less rigid. Marulic had lived in Split according to the old Benedictine rule of 119

Fiskovic, p. 193. Thence the name of the valley — Supetar. 121 Fiskovic, p. 196. In his will, Marulic left some books to two such hermits who lived on the hill of Marjan, close to Split. 122 D u Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, under eremitae. This distinction is important for the authorship of at least one Croatian poem attributed to Marulic, the "Dobri nauci" (Good advices), in which the author speaks about his bad experiences with monks in some monastery. Since Marulic never lived in a monastery, he cannot be the author of that poem. 120

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"ora et labora" for almost thirty years, and it was only natural that he should continue his daily religious practices at Necujam, where there was little else to do anyway.123 He had more peace and time now than before to devote to his books. For example, it was here that he translated into Latin the "Vergine bella che di sol vestita" of Petrarch, as we may conclude from the poetical epistle of Natalis. In all probability he worked mainly on his greatest work, the Davidias, an epic in fourteen books. Whether he wrote any complete work in Necujam is not known, but he may have at least begun the small work Quinquaginta parabolae, which he finished later in Split in 1510. The life which Marulic had left behind in Split, and to which the Turkish threat forced him to return, after two years' stay at Solta, was anything but pleasant. Life was in constant turmoil from the menace of the nearby Turks. Since the fall of Bosnia in 1463, only a narrow strip of land along the Dalmatian coast remained in Venetian hands. In 1467, the Turks had begun to invade Dalmatian territory; since then, there was little peace in Dalmatia. The littoral towns were badly beaten during the Venetian-Turkish war from 1499 to 1502. But the worst days came between 1507 and 1513. The Dalmatian cities were well fortified, and safe enough behind their walls; but their territory was devastated by fire and sword more than ever before. The country population was forced to seek refuge in the already overpopulated towns. In unexpected attacks, the Turks would descend upon the countryside by the hundreds, burning, pillaging, 123 Fiskovic, p. 199, contends that the retirement of Marulic at Necujam did not have any religious character, but that, "devoted to his literary work, in this age of Renaissance when many members of the noble class in our [Dalmatian] sea towns loved to go to the country, and preferred country life to life in overcrowded cities, Marulic left Split, which was threatened by the Turks, to write and work on his manuscripts in the island solitude with his friend." Two years of such solitude cannot be compared with the Renaissance nobleman's occasional rural sojourns, nor can Marulic's austere hermitage be interpreted as a "villa." In any case, we have no reason to suspect Marulic's of having any but the religious motivation suggested by Natalis for his retirement to the country. This attitude is consistent with the whole life of Marulic; Fiskovic was unable to disprove the assertions of Natalis in this respect. Hektorovic, whom Fiskovic quotes, and who is the first contemporary after Natalis to speak about Marulic, confirms everything Natalis says about Necujam, except his reference to a monastery there. Cf. P. Hektorovic, Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje, v. 763-784, e.g. in Stari pisci hrvatski, VI.

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leading off the cattle and abducting into slavery men, women and children. There was no organized army or police force to ward off their attacks. The small bands of mercenary soldiers which Venice kept in the towns were helpless, and the citizens had to fight the Turks under the leadership of some courageous noble. Especially in Split, the archbishop Bernardo Zane acted as their general. When Zane could not get help from Venice, he went to Rome, and there, before the Lateran Council which Pope Julius II had summoned on May 3, 1512, he delivered an oration in which he pleaded for the help desperately needed for Split and all of Dalmatia. In his oration Zane asserts that he has seen with his own eyes how the Turks tore children from the arms of their parents, raped women and young girls in front of their husbands and relatives, killed parents in the presence of their children, and yoked young men to plows like oxen.124 This desperate situation in the area rather naturally gave rise to a complete disruption of morals within the city, where the people were destitute of leaders and means of defence and often panicstricken by the constant threat from outside. Natalis reports the moral dissolution in an epistle to Marulic, pointing out in particular incessant quarrels and brawls in the city streets, mostly among relatives, and the general despair and mistrust among the people. 123 In contrast, Marulic describes in his answer the peace and quiet of Necujam. He invites Natalis to visit him there, and goes on to describe, with many classical allusions, the rustic beauty and plenty which will be theirs at this visit ("Grata salutatrix a te mihi littera venit..." etc.). He concluded the letter by reminding his friends of the instability and uncertainty of all the things of this world, and asks them to lift up their hearts to God: Illo ubi laeta salus, pax Candida, vita perennis Et sine lite quies, et sine nocte dies.

The critics have made much of the description of a Marulic in his epistle offers to his guests, claiming proof that Marulic was not as adverse to worldly Natalis would have us believe. The letter, however, 124 125

Farlati, p. 427. Milic, p. 13-14.

dinner which that it offers pleasures as must not be

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taken as a menu. It is rather an idyllic description of the simple and rustic bounty as opposed to the delicacies of the city.126 Unfortunately, he could not enjoy the "otium" of his country retreat too long. Necujam was not the "secure haven of peace" that he thought. The place where he lived was not fortified, and so the poet was forced to flee from the Turkish menace, back to his home town, where he had ample chance to put into practice the good advice which he gave to his friends, on how to meet the Turkish menace with Christian dignity and courage. Amidst the moral dissolution in Split, one fact may have given some comfort to Marulic. A few years after his return, the archbishop Bernardo Zane in 1511 summoned his synod, which issued new constitutiones for the restoration of discipline and morality among the clergy in Split, as well as the population at large. The practical effect of these constitutiones, however, seems to have been very slight. The synod was held on November 2, and Zane gave strong orders that all provisions were to go into effect by Christmas of that year, with the exception of some especially urgent cases, particularly concubinage.127 But the following year, 1512, Zane left Split to assist at the Lateran Council, as we have seen. In 1514, he resigned his office, and spent the rest of his life in Rome, where he died in 1517. His successor Andrea Cornelius lived in Rome until 1527, then came to visit his diocese and found himself forced to issue new constitutiones — which show that morals had dropped even lower than at the time of Zane. 128 Marulic himself was not idle in the face of the depraved moral situation in his home town. As we gather from a letter written by Franciscus Celsi, "comes et capitaneus Spalati," to the "Consiglio di X." of Venice on November 26, 1518, Marulic tried to use his influence on his fellow-citizens, particularly on the youth, who 126

Hektorovic in his idyllic poem Ribanje, v. 769-772, describes the inlet of Necujam as excellent fishing grounds, where the fisherman of Split and neighboring islands regularly fished. Thus Marulic had always plenty of fish, and the fact becomes apparent in his description of the dinner. The epistle of Marulic can be found in Milic, p. 15 ff.; also in Zbornik Marka Marulica 1450—1950 (Zagreb, 1950), p. 18 ff. 127 Chapter 18 said: "Quod presbyteri et clerici non teneant feminas suspectas; qui habent eas, e domo expellant in termino trium dierum proxime futurorum, sub poena privationis omnium suorum beneficiorum" (Farlati, 430). 128 Novak, p. 98 ff.; Farlati, p. 440.

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after harvest time were usually given to gambling. His admonitions, however, "which he gave by words and in writing upon the city squares also with frightening warnings and ugly pictures" were of no avail. This is usually interpreted to mean that Marulic produced some church dramas on the public square of Split, which were designed to impress the people. Great crudeness in the representation of scenes from hell was supposed to frighten them into a Christian life. There is no confirmation anywhere of such dramas in Split at this time, and even less of Marulic having produced them. Natalis also says nothing about any such plays by Marulic, which he would hardly have failed to mention if he had seen them or heard about them. The phrase of Franciscus Celsi describing the endeavor of Marulic to impress young people personally and by "written word" (in scriptis) upon the public square do not imply stage representations, but rather some pamphlets or posters which Marulic probably made and decorated with "brutissime figure" (ugly pictures) to underline his "pavurose minace" (frightening warnings). We know that Marulic could paint, since he decorated his book of Gospels, and here he used his skill probably on a larger scale, which gave Natalis some basis for praise of his artistic ability. In 1512 there appears a new friend of Marulic, Thomas Nigro, who tried to enlist the poet's literary talent for the war of the Croatian nation against the Turks. Nigro was a citizen of Split, and served as vicar of the diocese under two bishops, the second of which was Bernardo Zane. Accompanying the bishop to Rome, Nigro was present when Zane delivered his fiery plea for assistance to Dalmatia, at the first session of the Lateran Council. Nigro sent the speech on to Marulic along with a letter, in which he addresses him as "amicorum doctorumque virorum carissime." When Zane retired from 129 The letter is published in the Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum meridionalium, XI, Commissiones et relationes venetae, Tom. Ill (Zagrabiae, 1880), p. 226, and reads in part as follows: "Serenissime princeps et excellentissime — Essendo io sta molto inquietado dale querimonie de citadini de questo loco, che li suoi figliuoli prodiga zoventù secondo se faceva li recolti, cusi loro se metevano zuogar, consumando quella substantia, dela qual dovevano vivere cum li loro padri et familie; vedendoli non solo dispreciar li paterni admonimenti delo eruditissimo domino Marco Marulo, persona antiqua et che reverisce molto el signor dio, facteli a bocca et in scriptis sopra le piazze etiam cum pavurose minace et brutissime figure; ma ancora non temer le sanctissime leze del vostro eccelentissimo conseglio di X preconia voce publicate."

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the See of Split, Nigro became the secretary of the Croatian ban, Petar Berislavic, who in 1519 sent him to Rome as his ambassador to seek help against the Turks from Pope Leo X. That same year, Nigro was made bishop of Skradin (Scardona), Dalmatia, and soon was sent on the same type of diplomatic mission to the court of Charles V, where he was slightly more successful than in Rome. His bishopric, however, soon fell into Turkish hands, whereupon Pope Clement VII made him bishop of Trogir (Trail) in 1524. After two years he resigned in favor of his nephew, and died sometime after 1531. Nigro's letter to Marulic, written with a view to publication, seems to be one of his first diplomatic attempts to summon help for the hardpressed Croatian nation, a mission to which he devoted the best years of his career. The letter somehow found its way to a most unlikely place, the acta of the Lateran Council which were published in Venice. Farlati discovered it there, prefixed to the speech of Bishop Zane.130 It is full of praise for Zane, whose great endeavor it was to achieve peace among the Christian princes in order to start a crusade against their common enemy, the Turks. Nigro urges Marulic to take up the cause. "When you read the speech of Zane which I am sending you, dear Marko, you will perhaps express in words and publish in your writings the feelings which you now experience for yourself." Nigro is sure that the Pope will soon bring order into his troubled state and arouse the Christian princes from their "sleep of Endymion" to a joint expedition against the Turks. In his opinion everyone should do his share in this undertaking. Marulic did not act on his friend's plea, but decided to keep aloof from politics in any form. He thought, moreover, that his words would have no influence. Nigro thought otherwise and, as secretary to ban Berislavic he tried to influence Marulic by having the ban send the poet a golden watch. But it was due to the efforts of a Dominican preacher, Dominik Bucic (Bucchie) that Marulic was finally persuaded to raise his voice in protest against the neglect of the defenders of Christian civilization by the Pope and princes. His Epistola Domini Marci Maruli Spalatensis ad Adrianum VIPont. Max. 130 F a r i a ti does not give the year of publication (cf. Farlati, pp. 432 ff.), but all the later editions of the acta of that council contain the letter of Nigro, although it does not belong there; cf. J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum concilliorum nova et amplissima collection Tom. 32 (Parisiis 1902), p. 698.

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de calamitatibus occurrentibus et exhortatio ad communem omnium Christianorum unionem et pacem was published in Rome in 1522, possibly having been taken there by Nigro on one of his diplomatic missions. It served as a propaganda pamphlet. In this last period of his life Marulic settled all the business of his property administration and finally retired completely to the quiet life of his cell. A further division of the family property is recorded in 1513, but a large part still remained in joint ownership. In the same year a lawsuit, begun in 1512 about a debt between the brothers and Jelena, the widow of their brother Peter, was settled in her favor. In 1514 Marko and Alexander authorized their youngest brother Valerius to represent them in common legal matters. Apparently from this time on the poet again enjoyed a carefree life, devoted only to study and poetry. His name appears in the documents only three more times until his death. He was present for the final division of family property in 1516, when some lands were split by lot into three equal parts. 131 His last known legal service was to adjudicate a family property division between two brothers, artisans from the neighboring town of Trogir. He made a careful study of all their documents, pronounced his opinion, and gave some admonitions on the subject of brotherly love. His last appearance in court was as executor of his mother's will in 1519. Marulic had finished most of the literary works of which we know anything by 1516 or 1517. His second published book, the Evangelistarium, his most complete work on Christian ascesis, appeared in 1516, and the Quinquaginta Parabolae came out in 1517. The publisher, de Consorti, attached a note promising to bring out the De Imitatione Christi soon, but the promise does not appear to have been kept. The De Humilitate et Gloria Christi was published in 1519, and it was surely some time before this that Marulic completed the Davidias, fruit of many long years of labor, which he dedicated to Cardinal Domenico Grimani, the patriarch of Aquileia. This largest and most elaborate of his works was left by Marulic in the manuscript where it is still awaiting publication. 131

Fiskovic (p. 191) conjectures that the money which Marulic acquired at this division (608 ducati) were used by him for the publication of his works, but this is not correct. Marulic had a publisher who took care of these expenses, and who also got all the money from the sale of the works, which brought fame, but no material benefit, to the author. Copyrights were unknown at that time.

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Usmiani

His "otium litteratum" was disturbed by the death of his brother Valerius on August 18, 1520. The poet lost not only a beloved brother, but also the curator of family affairs, and for a while he gave himself up entirely to his grief. "There was no end to my tears," he writes in an elegy to Natalis. Consoled by Natalis in an answering elegy, Marulic replies with a description of his sorrow and the difficulties which this death caused him. Valerius had been a good husbandman and he had relieved the poet of all worldly cares: Interea mihi multa quies et tempora laeta Meus tamen in musis ingenium fuit.

Now, in his old age, he must again take over the administration of their estate, which he always called provincia durissima, and also had to look after the family of Valerius. This leaves him little time for writing: Quaeque aderant nobis procul effugere Camenae Deseruitque meam Pegasus unda sitim.

His "Muses' spring" soon ran dry; his time had come to depart. In 1521 he wrote his will, with particular care for the distribution of his books. He left some to friends and relatives, some to Split monasteries, some to be sold "and the price to be distributed among the poor." 132 In the Italian codicil to his will he gives an account of all his possessions, with detailed instructions for their disposal. He ordered much of his real estate sold for the benefit of the poor. He made special provisions for the widow of Valerius, because she "loved [him] like her father in everything and was obsequious and obedient as if she were [his] daughter, or sister born from one father and one mother, and not like a cousin." His last years were thus peaceful. He died on January 8, 1524, after a short illness, "integer vitae, scelerisque purus," and was buried in the church of St. Francis "extra muros," in the grave of his ancestors.

132 Racki, p. 158. For the cultural background of the Split clergy it is interesting to note that he left only religious and theological works to the monasteries and clergy. These works constitute less than a third of his library; the rest are secular works, of which he bequeathed only two authors to friends (Virgil to Hieronymus Papalic, and Plato to Nigro), and none to institutions.

THE IDEOLOGICAL WORLD OF THE DENISOV BROTHERS by Serge A. Zenkovsky It is difficult to understand the origin and extent of the spiritual rift between the upper and lower classes of imperial Russia without closely examining the forces which affected the cultural evolution of the Great Russians in the eighteenth century. The most important of these, the school system created and supervised by imperial authorities, laid the groundwork for introduction of the population to Western culture. The imperial educational system, however, from the time of Peter the Great until the liberation of the serfs, was open only to the upper strata of the population, while the lower urban class and the peasantry were actually excluded from these schools and thus isolated from the influence of Western culture.1 Likewise, the effect among the lower social strata of such other cultural media as literature, the press, and the theater was also insignificant. The imperial government's lack of concern over the problem of the cultural conversion of the peasantry and merchantry stands in sharp contrast with the intense missionary and propagandists activity carried on among these groups by the Russian spiritual traditionalists, the Old Believers. As well as spreading their religious tenets among the Great Russian population, the dissenters conducted an elementary but effective educational program which was responsible for the 1

There were only 4398 students in all the Russian state schools in 1786 and about 20,000 in 1800. After the emancipation of the serfs the number of students began to grow rapidly, reaching 280,000 by 1865. See P. N. Miljukov, Ocerki po istorii russkoj kultury (Moscow, 1903), II, 299, 301, 349. According to A. I. Sobolevskij in Obrazovarmosf Moskovskoj Rusi 16-17 vekov (SPb., 1894), pp. 26 ff., the reforms of Peter I brought about an increase in the rate of illiteracy among the Russian peasantry because the size of the clergy and number of monasteries were reduced and many parochial schools were closed.

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literacy of the members of their sects.2 The groups of the Great Russian population converted to the "Old Faith" were thus rendered ideologically more resistant to Western culture than those belonging to the established, "official" Orthodox church. The success of the Old Believers' educational and cultural endeavor is demonstrated by the fact that the vast majority of the dissenters were able to read and write, being often even well read in religious literature, while the rate of literacy among the rest of the Great Russian population — including the westernized upper classes — was no more than ten per cent before the introduction of reforms by Alexander II. 3 Although the Old Believers did not gain the full support they sought for their cause, their propaganda achieved spectacular success during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and their efforts to discredit Western culture and its sponsors, the state and the ruling class, bore fruit. For this reason the proponents of the new westernized culture of the empire did not encounter a cultural vacuum or mere disorganized fragments of the vanishing Old Russian civilization, but met — especially in northern and much of central Russia — an active and militant opposition. The Old Believers had succeeded in spreading among the lower classes a different type of culture and Weltanschauung, the collision of which with the westernized culture of the nobility and later of the intelligentsia greatly contributed to the distrust and antagonism between the two conflicting strata of the 2 There were few formally organized Old Believer schools before the end of the eighteenth century, but an elementary education could be had from priests and ministers (nastavniki) at home and in the monasteries. In 1870, N. M. Kostomarov wrote in his "Istorija raskola i raskol'nikov," Istoriceskie monografii, 12 (Moscow, 1882), 347-348: "The Old Believers' movement became a phenomenon of remarkable intellectual progress.... The Russian peasant received from the Old Believers a real education, elaborated a particular type of culture and learned more willingly." The same opinion has been expressed by a great many experts on the raskol (excluding missionaries of the established Russian church), such as Mel'nikov, Prugavin, Scapov, Kel'siev, and Andreev. In the provinces of northern Russia — Arxangel'sk, Vologda, Olonec, Kostroma, etc. — where the Old Believers were particularly numerous, the rate of literacy was much higher than in the central and southern provinces. See Enciplopediceskij slovar'1 published by Brokgaus and Efron, 6 (1897), 547-548. 3 Kostomarov, "Istorija raskola i raskol'nikov," pp. 383-384; A. S. Prugavin, Staroobrjadcestvo vo vtoroj polovine 19-ogo veka (Moscow, 1908), p. 97; B. G. Senatov, Filisofija istorii staroobrjadcestvo (Moscow, 1908), I, 31; A. P. Scapov, Socinenija (SPb., 1906), I, 29-31.

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Great Russian population. It was this disparity that was greatly responsible for the ensuing collapse of the empire and of its cultural patterns. The traditionalists' fight against westernization and their creation of a specific ideological world within the empire began simultaneously with the reforms of Peter the Great. At the end of the seventeenth century the forces of the traditionalists were exhausted. The heroic days of the struggle of Avvakum and his companions against reform had passed, while the executions of the 1680's and 1690's had annihilated the leadership of the Old Believers and persecution had driven them into the remotest regions of the empire. 4 Old Believer ideology became limited in its appeal because of a lack of constructive elements, since the dissenters' preoccupation with the theory of the Antichrist and their resigned acceptance of his victory in the world rendered them apathetic to a continued struggle for the souls of the Orthodox. 5 Their despair and dissipated energy were manifested by the innumerable fires of the Self Burners, who, having lost hope in the victory of their cause, preferred self-immolation. 6 The retreat of the most adamant Old Believers to the wildernesses of northern Russia was due not only to persecution by the authorities but also to the dissenters' own desire to avoid all contact with the world, for it, in their eyes, had become contaminated by the presence of the Antichrist and the spread of the "Nikonian heresies," and was forever lost for the true Orthodox faith.

4 Persecution of the Old Believers was initiated by Tsar Fedor in the 1670's and continued by Tsar Aleksej. Protopope Avvakum, Pope Lazar, Deacon Fedor and the monk Epifanij were burned at the stake in Pustozersk in 1682, and Pope Nikita Druzinin (called "Pustosvjat") was executed the same year in Moscow. Many lesser-known leaders among the Old Believers were executed in other cities. 5 The only constructive Old Believer ideological work of importance written in the seventeenth century was "The Answer to the Orthodox" by Deacon Fedor in collaboration with Avvakum, Lazar and Epifanij. This "Answer" remained little known, however, and has never been published in its entirety. See V. G. Druzinin, "Pustozerskij sbornik," in Letopis' zantjatij Arxcograficeskoj komissii (further abbreviated LZAK), 26 (1914). 8 In the years 1673-1687 the number of Self Burners reached at least 20,000. Some of these gar', as the mass burnings were called, took the lives of two and three thousand persons at once. See K. Loparev's commentaries on the monk Evfrosin's "Otrazitel'noe p i s ' m o . . . " in Pamjatniki drevnej russkoj literatury, 108 (1895), 034-058.

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This situation changed in the first years of the eighteenth century when the Old Believers found, in the person of Andrej Denisov, a man able to create a clear and positive doctrine and capable of forming new cadres of fanatic and tenacious missionaries who were subsequently to undertake a systematic campaign of Russia's reconquest for the old traditions. Andrej Denisov (1674-1735) was a member of an impoverished branch of the princely family of Myseckij which lived in the Olonec province. 7 Converted to the Old Faith in 1690 or 1691 by a former sexton, Danilo Vikulin (1653-1733), 8 Andrej Denisov appears in the history of the dissenters when he and Vikulin gathered together a group of monastically-inclined traditionalists for the purpose of founding a religious settlement. Their monastic community came into being in 1694 on the river Vyg, not far from the western shores of the White Sea. 9 Its original aim was escape from the heresies and temptations of the world of the Antichrist through common life and prayer. But soon, especially after the election of Andrej Denisov in 1702 to the position of cenobiarch — spiritual and administrative head of the community — the activities and goals of the Vyg settlement changed. In the next few years it grew into the most important center in Russia for the diffusion of the ancient Russian belief and traditions. By 1720 the Vyg settlement contained over 1.500 Old Believers, possessed a flourishing economy, and maintained active relations with all the vital regions of Russia. 10 Andrej Denisov and his brother Semen became known and respected as the recognized spiritual leaders of the dissenters, not only in the Old Believers' world but also among the representatives of the government and official church. Andrej knew Peter the Great 7 This impoverished Olonec branch of the Myseckij family had taken on the name of Vtorusin. Andrej's patronymic was Denisov or Dionisievic, and he and his brother became known under this name in the eighteenth century. See N. Barsov, "Bratja Andrej i Semen Denisovy," Pravoslavnoe obrozrenie (further abbreviated PO) 8 (1865), 4 0 5 ^ 0 7 . 8 Danilo Vikulin, or Vikulic (1653-1733), was the spiritual director of the Vyg settlement until his death. 9 The Vyg monastic settlement, later known as Danilov, was situated about 35 miles east of the northernmost point of Lake Onega and about 70 miles west of the White Sea. This region is now called the Karelo-Finnic S.S.R. 10 The Vyg settlement became an important economic center of the Olonec region and flourished as such until the early nineteenth century. In 1854 it was closed on order of the Petersburg government.

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11

personally, and was befriended by the Empress Anna and her mother, Tsarina Praskov'ja, both of whom corresponded with him.12 The ideological leader of the newly westernized empire, the wellknown Bishop Feofan Prokopovic, also corresponded with and venerated the Denisov brothers.13 One of the imperial administrators of the Olonec region admired Andrej Denisov so much that he once remarked that had Andrej been a member of the established church he would have been patriarch.14 The success of the Old Believers' cause in the eighteenth century and the revivification of their communities were due as much to the Denisovs' organizational abilities as to the voluminous writings left by the brothers. Andrej was quick to realize the role of education and the written word in the ideological conflict. Already a respected leader among the dissenters, he entered the school of his spiritual opponents, the theological academy of the established church, in order to learn the arts of rhetoric and grammar. 15 In his settlement at Vyg he organized a remarkable educational institution for the formation of new leaders.16 Andrej and Semen, both outstanding writers, were also the founders of a new literary school which fundamentally influenced Old Believer writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.17 11 1. Filipov, Istorija vygovskoj staroobrjadceskoj pustyni (SPb., 1862; written about 1740), pp. 114-115, 153-154; P. Usov, "Pomorskij filisof," Istoriceskij vestnik, 24 (1886), 151-155. N. Barsov, PO, 11, 420-427. 12 P. Usov, "Pomorskij filosof," p. 151. 13 E. Barsov, "Semen Denisovic Vtorusin," Trudy Kievskoj duxovnoj akademii (further abbreviated TKDA), 1866, II, 210. 14 N. Barsov, PO, 11,434. 15 Historians differ in their opinions as to the time of A. Denisov's formal study. N. Barsov believed that he studied in Kiev under Feofan Prokopovic, where the latter was a professor in the theological academy, in 1708-1715, while V. G. Druzinin thought that Denisov studied under S. Lixud in Moscow or Novgorod. 16 P. S. Smirnov, "Cerkovnyj raskol v pervoj polovine 18-ogo veka," Xristianskoe ctenie (further abbreviated Xr Ct), (March, 1909), p. 355. 17 V. G. Druzinin, Slovesnye nauki v vygovskoj pomorskoj pustyni (SPb., 1911), pp. 12-30, and P. Ljubopytnyj, "Katalog ili biblioteka staroobrjadceskoj cerkvi," Ctenija v obscestva istorìi i drevnostej rossijskix (further abbreviated COIDR), 1863, Vol. I, Part 2, pp. 1-64, Nos. 1, 12, 18, 21, 22, 23, 29, 34-6, 38, 39. The most prominent writers of this school were T. Petrov, Manuil Petrov, N. Seménov, D. Matveev, and A. Borisov. Borisov (1733-1791) had planned on organizing a regular academy in Vyg while he was head of that community.

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The work of the brothers in the field of literature is a rare example of mutual cooperation and endeavor. They represent, however, two very different intellectual types. Andrej was a systematic researcher, methodical dogmatist, and tenacious organizer. His sermons and messages constitute the best examples of Russian rhetoric of the time.18 Their elaborate style betrays a dependence on the old Muscovite school of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, itself the offspring of the Byzantine and Balkan literary school of the hesychasts, and also shows the influence of Ukrainian baroque literature.19 In his treatises Andrej displayed an unusual talent for analysis. His criticism of the texts used by the established church and his discovery of the falsification of the so-called "Decision of the Council against the Armenian Heretic Martin" were the first Russian linguistic and archeographic researches, and anticipated Russian scholarship by more than a century.20 Andrej's main work, Pomorskie otvety, which he wrote in answer to questions posed by the monk Neofit, a representative of the Holy Synod, became the cornerstone of the Old Believers' dogma. It demonstrates Andrej's remarkable ability at handling abstract problems of dogma and ritual, as well as his erudition. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the Pomorskie otvety was the first Russian scholarly treatise written according to strict scientific method. 21 18

V. G. Druzinin, Pisanija russkix staroobrjadcev (SPb., 1912), pp. 88-128, attributes 188 separate works to Andrej Denisov. The Iatter's major work, Pomorskie otvety, was written in collaboration with Semen and some other members of the Vyg settlement. Three important writings by A. Denisov are not mentioned in Druzinin's book: "Cetii minei" by Andrej and Semen, described by E. V. Barsov in Sbornik v ¿est' M. Ljubavskogo (SPb., 1917), pp. 663-708; "Povest' o strete v Moskve slona persidskogo," published in Russkaja starina (Sept. 1880); and "Slovo nadgrobnoe Petru Prokoflevu" in Russkaja starina (Nov. 1879), pp. 523 ff. 19 See the analysis of A. Denisov's sermons and extensive excerpts from them in E. V. Barsov, "Andrej Denisov Vtorusin kak vygoreckij propovednik," TKDA, 1867, I, 243-262; II, 81-95. 20 This analysis of the falsified manuscript, "Decision of the Counsil against the Heretic, Martin the Armenian," is contained in Pomorskie otvety (Moscow ed., 1911), pp. 79 ff. V. G. Druzinin in "Pomorskie paleografy nacala 18-ogo veka," LZAK, 31 (1918), 8-65, gives extensive commentaries on this work. 21 Pomorskie otvety has been published many times by the Old Believers since the middle of the eighteenth century, most recently in Moscow and Uralsk in 1911. Reference is made here to the edition published by the Moskovskoe staroobrjadceskoe bratstvo sv. Kresta in Moscow in 1903. V. G. Druzinin

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Semen, who became cenobiarch of Vyg after the death of Andrej in 1730, was an enthusiastic ideologist whose calling was to inspire and kindle the spirit of the dissenters. Both of Semen's main treatises, Vinograd rossijskij and Istorija o otcex i stradaVcex soloveckix, were devoted to the heroic history of the Old Believers' movement.22 They reflect the author's deep attachment to ancient, pre-Nikonian, Russian traditions and best illustrate his approach to the question of Russia's destiny. His treatise Vinograd rossijskij (The Vineyard of Russia), in which he discusses the "fall" of the Russian church and piety under Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Aleksej Mixajlovic and eulogizes the Old Believers who were martyred for the defense of the Old Russian faith and tradition, furnishes particularly important clues for comprehending the Old Believers' ideology and their mystical interpretation of Russia's historical role. The reverence in which the dissenters held the Denisovs found its expression after the brothers' death in their canonization by the Pomorskij tolk.2,3 Their writings, especially Pomorskie otvety and Vinograd rossijskij, are still as respected by adherents of the Old Faith as are the writings of the Church Fathers themselves. The main ideas of Andrej's Pomorskie otvety, in fact, were incorporated into the fundamental principles of the Old Believers' confession. In the first half of the last century, a member of the Filipovskij tolk, a certain merchant Vyzigov, expressed the Old Believers' attitude toward the Pomorskie otvety when he voiced his profession of faith, which became that of Old Believers generally: "I belong to the Christian faith accepted by holy Prince Vladimir upon the Christianization [of Russia] according to the 106 answers given to the monk Neofit by Prince Myseckij [Denisov] in the time of Peter I." 24 The literary work of the brothers Denisov has been regarded by most Russian historians merely as the product of Russian religious considers that none of these editions reproduces accurately the original text. See Druzinin, "Podlinnaja rukopis' Pomorskix otvetov," IORJaS, 17 (1912), kn. 1, pp. 53-77. 22 According to V. G. Druzinin in Pisanija russkix staroobrjadcev, pp. 133-161, S. Denisov (1683-1740) wrote 89 known works. Vinograd rossiiskij was published in Moscow and in Novgorod in 1911. 23 The memory of Semen Denisov is celebrated on May 24. 21 V. I. Kelsiev, SbornikpraviteVstvennyx svedenij o raskoVnikax (London, 1861), 4, 245-246.

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thought centered on the problem of ritual. It cannot be denied that the major part of the Denisovs' writing treats primarily questions of dogma and defense of the ancient rites and books. The scope of their work, however, is wider. The significance of the Old Believers' defense of ancient ritual and the ritualistic aspect of their doctrine, in general, have been greatly exaggerated. For the Old Believers the rites were a sacred and symbolic expression of the entire complex of the Orthodox and ancient Russian spiritual heritage. The rites became an important subject of disagreement with the established church because they constituted a mystical frame for the meaning and place of faith in life. For the Old Believers the spirit and matter, faith and life, the church and the state, all formed an indivisible unity which was imperiled, if not destroyed, first by the reforms of Patriarch Nikon and later by the secularization of the empire under Peter I. In their communities and in their daily life, the Old Believers endeavored to preserve this transcendent spiritual unity — the permeation of life with religious faith. They refused to accept a life deprived of Divine blessing, not sanctified by devotion to a higher — in their case, religious — idea. The followers of the Denisovs, the Pomorcy, who formed the best organized and strongest group of the priestless Old Believers, were so uncompromising in their attitude that they refused the ministration of priests consecrated by the established church, and remained without a clergy. Consequently, they held no regular church service, thus denying themselves benefit of some of the very sacraments and rites which they claimed to uphold. 25 Andrej Denisov, leading this struggle for the "true" faith and a renewed piety, justified his rejection of the established church and its sacraments with the words of St. John Chrysostom, "The church is not walls and a roof, but faith and life."26 Though they turned from the established church, the Denisovs considered that the state and the church of "true Orthodox Christians," like life and faith, could not be separated from each other. In fact, the focal point of the thought of the Old Believers, and partic25 Hence some Pomorcy and the sects of Fedoseevcy remained without the sacrament of marriage. Consequently, they denied the principle of the family and preached celibacy. 26 Pomorskie otvety, p. 8. See also E. Barsov, "Andrej Denisov," TKDA, 1867, XII, 260. According to Andrej Denisov, "faith was the central star which lit the entire universe." S. Smirnov, "Vygovskoe pomorskoe obscezitie," Xr Ct, 6 (1910), 640.

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ularly of the Denisovs, was the idea of a Christian nation inspired and permeated by divine law and even ruled by the actual presence of divine will — the Russian version of Civitas Dei.27 In the eyes of the traditionalists, ancient, pre-Nikonian Russia was the realization of this ideal, but unique, Christian state. Since the West had succumbed to the "papist Latin heresy" and Constantinople, the city of Caesars, had betrayed the Orthodox faith at the Council of Florence — and because of this treachery had subsequently been captured by the unclean Moslem Turks •— Russia alone remained the guardian of true Orthodoxy. "The wonderful vineyard of Russia," to quote Semen, "planted by God as a second paradise; a vineyard ruled by the miraculous power of the law of salvation" 28 — such had their country been, in the minds of the Denisovs, before its disgrace through the reforms of Patriarch Nikon. The Denisovs regarded the Old Believer congregations as the bearers of this notion of a Christian state and even termed the Vyg congregation svjatoe ravnoangeVskoe sobranie, apostol'skoe sovokuplenie, vseprekrasnejsee cerkovnoe soedinenie, or bogospasaemaja xristosobrannaja kinovija. For the realization of this theocratic Utopia and for the salvation of the Russian people, the nation as a whole, and the church and faith, the Denisovs carried on their fight against westernization. Since the enlightenment of all Russia through piety by the great and courageous prince [Vladimir], who was remarkable not only for his personal valor but also for the wonderful accomplishment of receiving from the east the radiant faith of Zion, the Russian nation has become endowed not only with an abundance of territories, which spread from sea to sea and from its rivers to the limits of the universe, but also with the true faith... In Russia there is not a single city which is not permeated with the radiance of faith, not one town which does not shine with piety, nor a village which does not abound with the true belief.28 The author, in his ornate, baroque language, goes on to liken Russia, so embellished by its temples, monasteries, hermitages, and sanc27 In Pomorskie otvety, pp. 16-21, A. Denisov based the historical argumentation of this theory on the writings of early Muscovite thinkers and the messages of Eastern patriarchs. 28 Vinograd rossijskij (Moscow, 1906), p. 1, and Pomorskie otvety, pp. 149, 167. 29 Vinograd rossijskij, pp. 2-3, and Pomorskie otvety, p. 16.1. Filipov, who was a contemporary of the Denisovs and cenobiarch of Vyg (1740-1744), follows the ideas of S. Denisov in his Istorija vygovskoj staroobrjadceskoj pustyni, Ch. II ("Stojanie pravoslavnyja xristijanskija very v rossijskoj zemli"),pp. 8-12,369-370.

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tuaries, to the sky set off by the stars, and even terms it a "second heaven." For the deeds, holiness and prayers of Russia's countless saints, God bestowed upon Russia its historical mission as bearer of the idea of a Christian nation and guardian of Orthodoxy, according to Semen Denisov. The Russian saints connect the earthly with the heavenly, the people of Russia with God, Himself. By their piety, faith and virtue they unite the Russian nation with Christ in one single flock at pasture in the meadows of Heaven, guided by the voice of Heaven. This flock is the mystical union of the finite with the infinite, of angels with men, . . . who together praise God and pray for the descent of peace and good will upon men. 30 These ideas of the Denisovs bear close resemblance to the teachings of Metropolitan Zosima, the monk Filofej, and Metropolitan Makarij. But they are similar to the doctrine of these protagonists that call Moscow the third Rome, only in regard to God's selection of Russia as an ideal Christian nation. 31 For Russian thinkers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the concept of Russian messianism was inalienable from the Byzantine monarchical principle, which proclaimed Caesar head of the nation and church and intercessor before God for the people. Another important element of this teaching was the concept of the legitimate succession of the imperial cities of Rome, Constantinople, and Moscow. For these thinkers the imperial city commanded the entire nation and functioned as the spiritual and political center and main bearer of authority. This role of Moscow as a third Rome was stressed as early as 1492, when Metropolitan Zosima wrote in his paschal calendar composed for the eighth millenium, " G o d extolled the pious and Christ-loving great prince Ivan Vasil'evic, ruler and sovereign of all Russia, as a new Emperor 30 Vinograd rossijskij, p. 4, and Pomorskie otvety, pp. 17-18. Also, I. Filipov, Istorija vygovskoj... pustyni, pp. 9-10. 31 The latest and most comprehensive explanation of the theory of Moscow, the third Rome, was offered by V. V. Zenkovsky in A History of Russian Philosophy (New York, 1953), I, 36-42. Father Zenkovsky disregarded, however, the importance of the cencopt of the imperial ruling city in the writings of the early Muscovite ideologists. W. K. Medlin in Moscow and East Rome (Geneva, 1952), pp. 99-104 a. ff. approaches this problem from a purely political-historical point of view and does not analyse its religious and mystical content nor its impact on Russian mentality and thought.

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32

Constantine of the new Constantinople — Moscow." The same idea was developed in a psalter of the early sixteenth century, in which Moscow is called "a city guarded by God, a most illustrious ruling city, a third Rome blossoming through piety," 33 while Filofej (about 1510) prophesied, "Two Romes fell, the third [Moscow] stands, and a fourth will never come into being."34 The monarchical content of this theory was of equal importance to these early Muscovite thinkers, in whose eyes the tsar was not only the chosen protector of the church but intercessor for the church and the people before God, as well as locum tenans of the divine throne. Filofej called the tsar "guardian of the holy and divine throne," 35 while Josif Volockij wrote, "Our sovereigns were chosen by God and placed [by divine will] on God's own throne." 36 Metropolitan Makarij, one of the last Muscovite theoreticians of the Orthodox monarchy, emphasized still more the nature of the tsar's role as mediary between his people — and even the church — and God. In his letter to Ivan IV he explained, "God has chosen thee, my lord, to raise upon the throne in His place, giving into thy hands the grace and the life of our great Orthodox faith." 37 In their writings the Denisovs reject both of these ideas: that of Moscow as a sacred city and that of the tsar as spiritual leader of the nation and its intercessor before God. They changed the basis of these concepts by substituting "Orthodox Russia" for "Moscow," and "all the Russian cities and villages" — actually, the Russian people themselves — for the tsar. This fundamental change in the theory of the Christian state was a real ideological revolution and a tacit repudiation of the spiritual primacy of the tsar. Introduction of 32 Russkaja istoriceskaja biblioteka, 1880, Vol. 6, p. 799. Cf. M. D'jakonov, Vlasf moskovskix gosudarej (SPb., 1889), p. 66. The title of "Tsar" (Car') was not taken officially until the reign of Ivan IV in 1547, but had been used unofficially since the mid-fifteenth century. See V. Malinin, Starec Filofeji ego poslanija (Kiev, 1901), p. 523 ff. 33 M. D'jakonov, Vlasf moskovskix gosudarej, p. 67. 31 Malinin, Starec Filofej, App., p. 56. One version of Filofej's message even bears the title "Poslanie v carstvujuscij grad," ibid., p. 67. The importance Filofej attaches to the theory of the imperial ruling city is indicated by his inclusion in the title of "Velikij Knjaz' Muskovskij" the appelation, "Guardian of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Moscow," ibid., p. 50. 36 Ibid., p. 50. 38 Ibid., p. 582. 37 Dopolnenija k aktam istoriceskim (SPb., 1846), I, 22.

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the doctrine of the primacy of the people thus transformed the old doctrine of an autocratic Christian state into a concept of a democratic Christian nation. Hence, the Denisovs might be considered the first Russian writers to present the people as the bearer of spiritual authority. This modification of the theory of a Christian (Orthodox) state can be explained not only by the fact that in the eyes of the Denisovs, as well as of all Old Believers, the tsar and Moscow were disgraced by the acceptance of the reforms of Patriarch Nikon and by the subsequent secularization of the state, but also by the impact of the longstanding democratic traditions of northern Russia. Most Old Believers of the time, including the prevailing majority of Pomorcy and the Denisovs themselves, came from northern Russia and were the spiritual descendants of the free citizens of the democratic republics of Novgorod, Pskov, and Vjatka. As early as 1698 the Novgorodian Council of Dissenters, which elaborated the basic elements of the Old Believers' dogma and organized the priestless group, anticipated the teaching of the Denisovs when it unanimously proclaimed, "We — Christians of the Evangelic confession — do not pray for the tsar. We are all equal and do not accept any imposed authority." 38 The principles of the spiritual primacy of the people and the democratic nature of authority were not dead letters or abstract doctrine in the ideology of the Denisovs and of the Old Believers. These teachings were put into practice in their communities. In the convenant of the Vyg settlement and in many of its documents, the principle of the final authority of the people, or of the congregation, was carefully stressed. This is also readily apparent by the continual reiteration in the Denisovs' own writings of the words sobor, sobornyj, sobranie, sovokupnost, soedinenie, bratovoditeV stvo,39 The very terms sobor and sobornyj, with the particular connotation of a communal organization and communal leadership blessed by God, were used for the first time in Russian literature by the brothers. The Vyg settlement, which was a sort of democratic federation of 38

A. P. Scapov, Socinenija (SPb., 1906), I, 469. See excerpts from the Denisovs' sermons and messages in E. Barsov, "Semen Denisov," TKDA, 1866,1, 205, 206, 207, 208, 213, 225, 226, 227; II, pp. 170, 180, 189, 297, etc. See also A. Denisov's funeral oration in Russkaja starina (Nov. 1879), pp. 579 if. 39

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monastic communities with adjacent villages populated by Old Believers, was organized along these democratic principles. At the head was a council composed of elders elected from the monasteries and other communities forming the Vyg Federation. 40 The elected cenobiarch had the same voice as the other elders, except that his opinion became decisive in cases where a vote was equally split. All decisions were made by a majority of the votes.41 The settlement owned its agricultural lands in common, organized industrial and trading enterprises and had its own merchant and whaler fleets.42 Most Russian monasteries applied the principle of common ownership, but in Vyg this was extended to the federated communities of peasants and fishermen as well, so that the Vyg settlement became a miniature socialist state based upon a collective economy. In the sermons of Andrej and Semen Denisov are often repeated appeals to the members of their congregations to limit their needs and to share their wealth with the poor. They condemned excesses of wealth and luxury,43 and though they did not reject the principles of private ownership and individual initiative, they introduced in their communities, along with communal ownership, collective work and mutual aid.44 Like most Old Believers, the Denisovs opposed not only the secularization of the state and the introduction of Western culture, but the expansionist, militaristic undertakings of the empire. Their predecessors, Ivan Neronov and Protopope Avvakum, had preached against war and had been persecuted for their pacifist propaganda. 45 40 E. Barsov, "Semen Denisov," TKDA, 1866, II, 170; P. S. Smirnov, "Cerkovnyj raskol v pervoj cetverti 18-ogo veka," Xr Ct (March 1909), p. 360; and I. Filipov, 1st. vyg. pust., pp. 140, 240, 256, etc. 41 P. Smirnov, Jstorija russkogo raskola staroobrjadcestva, (SPb., 1895), p. 100. Also, E. Barsov, TKDA, 1866, II, 171. 42 E. Barsov, "Andrej Denisov," TKDA, 1867, III, 231. 43 See I. Filipov, 1st. vyg. pust., pp. 138-141, 150-151, etc.; E. Barsov, "Semen Denisov," TKDA, 1866, II, 183; and P. G. Ljubomirov, Vygovskoe obscezlteVstvo (Moscow-Saratov, 1924), pp. 50-54. 44 In the Vyg settlement the principle of common ownership was applied even in the federated communities settled by peasants, which were legally independent from the monastic center. 45 Protopope I. Neronov strongly opposed Russian preparation for a campaign against Poland in 1631 because he considered that warfare was incompatible with the principle of a Christian state. For this he was deported to northern Russia. See Materialy po istorii raskola, ed. by N. Subbotin (Moscow, 1876),

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For the Old Believers as well, war was an unchristian phenomenon which led invariably to the ruin of the land and violent death of men, to the further militarization of the state, and to the strengthening of foreign influence within Russia. The necessity of maintaining a modus vivendi with the imperial administration, as well as the Denisovs' realistic attitude toward the government, prevented the brothers from openly condemning the tsar's military policies. Therefore they expressed their anti-militaristic and anti-imperialistic feelings in the guise of parables in their sermons. In one, for instance, Andrej relates the story of the Persian king Xerxes, who, when inspecting his troops before an expedition, wept because he realized that most of his warriors would perish in the coming battles. Andrej thus intimated that a Christian tsar should abstain from war if even a pagan king understood its horrors. 46 Idealization of Russia's past and emphasis upon Russia's role as guardian of the true faith did not hinder the Denisovs in their sober appraisal of Russia's intellectual and technological progress as compared to that of the west. Andrej Denisov had himself attended a westernized theological school, but he accepted only the techniques and methodology of modern education, not its secularized spirit and rationalism. For the brothers the dichotomy of faith and reason was resolved in favor of faith. In this regard they followed the tradition of eastern Christianity, which was more akin to the thought of Tertullian than to that of St. Augustine. Secularized philosophy and modern science did not have any intrinsic intellectual attraction for the Denisovs, and when a conflict between reason and faith did arise, they simply disregarded it, bluntly proclaiming that "Russia is not inclined toward the science of the academicians, nor does it find tempting the abstract, sophisticated speculations of philosophers, but rather it is characterized by a healthy faith and simple piety."47 This rejection of worldly wisdom was deeply rooted in some currents of Russian thought. More than two centuries before the Denisovs, Maksim the Greek had come out against the secularized thought of I, 265-266. Avvakum opposed the expeditions of voevoda A. Paskovin Siberia and even incited the soldiers to rebel. See "Zitie Protopopa Avvakuma," Russkaja istoriceskaja biblioteka, 39 (Leningrad, 1927), col. 35-38, and Trudy Otdela drevnej russkoj literatury, 9 (Moscow, 1953), 346, 398. 46 E. Barsov, "Andrej Denisov," TKDA, 1867, I, 247-248. " Vinograd rossijskij, p. 3.

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the West and against the culture of the Renaissance. He and his later followers in Russia were in this respect the pupils of Savonarola, whom Maksim the Greek had come to admire during the years he spent in Italy as a student. 48 Like Savonarola, he condemned the revival of pagan classical culture. In the Italian schools [he wrote] . . . Aristotle, Plato and other philosophers dominate thought like a powerful stream. Neither human nor divine dogma are contemplated without confirmation by the syllogisms of A r i s t o t l e . . . They [the Latins] are all guilty of this iniquity because they are drawn more toward external, dialectical knowledge than toward the inner ecclesiastic truth granted by G o d . 4 9

The earliest writers among the Old Believers — Avvakum, Deacon Fjodor, and Epifanij — also placed above all a "true," simple understanding of the teachings of Christ, and refused to accept the superiority of well-trained philosophers and dialecticians.50 In Old Believer thought this rejection of secularized knowledge and Western civilization came about also because of the conviction that the West was in the grip of heresies and the power of the Antichrist. In his picturesque style Semen pictures the Antichrist as a "tremendous black serpent with seven heads and ten faces." 51 This serpent, like a "ferocious beast, attacked the beautiful garden of Christ" (Russia), attempting "to uproot the holy Orthodox dogma, the laws of the church, the traditions of many generations and the order and rules of Christianity." Neither Semen nor Andrej connects the Antichrist with any definite person, as did some other traditionalists. The monk Avraamij in the seventeenth century had claimed that Patriarch Nikon was the Antichrist, and some fanatical extremists, contemporaries of the Denisovs, considered that the Antichrist was the emperor Peter I. Andrej, however, was not even convinced that the Antichrist had really appeared, because the spread and success of the Old Believers' movement denied the domination of the world by the Antichrist. Therefore his interpretation of the problems of the 48 Maksim Grek, Socinenija (Sergiev Posad, 1910-11), III, 195-204. It is believed that Maksim was in Italy the last decade of the fifteenth century. Cf. V. S. Ikonnikov, Maksim Grek i ego vremja (Kiev, 1915), p. 123. 49 Maksim Grek, Socinenija, I, 247. 50 "2itie Protopopa Avvakuma," p. 67. See also "Zitie Epifanija," Pamjatniki pervyx let staroobrjadiestm, ed. by Ja. L. Barskov, LZAK, 24. 51 Vinograd rossijskij, pp. 5-7, and I. Filipov, 1st. vyg. pust., p. 11.

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Antichrist is very vague. He states simply that the Antichrist is supposed, according to the theory of Simeon Metaphrastes, to appear in the world after the fall of Rome, but he does not say whether Rome has actually fallen or not. 82 Defense against the imminent danger of the Antichrist was actually the main aim of the Denisovs' efforts. Since, in their eyes, the established church had become contaminated by the Latin heresies and eventually would be dominated by the Antichrist, the brothers sought to rescue the true faith and insure the salvation of the world through preservation of the ancient Orthodox Christian tradition. Therefore their final objective was not only national but universal, although the first steps in its realization were limited: to unify Orthodox Christians through consolidation of the various groups of Old Believers "into one united body of the universal church," and to reconquer Russia for this church. The brothers' efforts met with success. They were able to create a clear and constructive ideology for the movement, to inspire the Old Believers with renewed enthusiasm, and to organize new cadres of leaders who would subsequently carry on missionary activity for the growth of the Old Believer movement. Toward the end of the brothers' lives, the Old Believers were no longer intimidated, harassed, and dispersed but had become well entrenched, staunch in spirit, and substantially greater in number. Their communities were to be found from eastern Siberia to the Polish border, from the shores of the White Sea to the southern confines of Russian settlement on the Don, Terek, and Ural rivers.53 They were firmly established financially, had excellent connections in Petersburg and in the local administrations, and their missionaries worked throughout all Russia. The growth of the Old Faith in the century following the Denisovs' death was more than spectacular; it endangered the further spread of westernized civilization in Russia. Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, one-fourth to onethird of the Great Russian population had been won over to the Old Belief and formed a specific cultural and ideological world within the empire.54 The impact of the traditionalist Weltanschauung was felt far beyond the limits of the Old Believers' communities. 52 E. Barsov, "Andrej Denisov," TKDA, 1867, 1, 251; P. S. Smirnov, "Vzgljad raskol'nikov na perezivaemoe vremja," Xr Ct (1909), pp. 715-718. 53 E. Barsov, "Semen Denisov," TKDA, 1866, II, 191. 54 The exact number of Old Believers has never been definitely determined.

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The Denisov brothers, as has been shown, had played an important role in the creation of this dissident ideological world inside imperial Russia. Both their ideology and their organizational and propagandists activity were of decisive importance in the reconquest of millions of Great Russians for the old tradition, which took place during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While the dogmatic details of their teachings were often rejected, even opposed, their messianic, national, and social approach to faith held great appeal for the peasantry and some urban groups of Russian society. The fact that these people identified the upper classes — that is, the landlords, the bureaucracy, the bourgeoisie and, later, the intelligentsia — with Western culture only increased the attractiveness of the traditionalist teachings for the lower strata of Great Russian society. At a time when Old Russian customs, traditions, and religion were despised by the upper classes and when foreign thought, foreign languages, and often even foreigners themselves dominated imperial Russian culture and policies, the national and democratic elements of the traditionalist ideology comforted and encouraged the dissenters. Hence, the success of the Old Believers' teachings, based so much on the repudiation of Western culture, led to a widening of the gap between the peasantry and nobility, and later between the intelligentsia and the people. The Old Believer movement was not able, however, to maintain its dominant position in Russian traditionalist philosophy. The time of the Denisovs had been the golden period of Old Believer thought, and after the death of the two brothers the movement produced no other thinkers capable of applying modern methods and techniques in the further development of traditionalist ideology. Moreover, all of the later Old Believers were interested primarily in the dogmatic aspect of their faith and disregarded its messianic and social elements. For The data of the census of 1897, giving the total number of Old Believers as three million, were not accepted by scholars because in that census many Old Believers declared themselves members of the established church in order to keep their civil rights. It is known, however, that there were about 8.5 million Old Believers (about 25 percent of the total number of Great Russians) in Russia in 1863, cf. Statisticeskie tablicy, published by the Ministry of the Interior (SPb., 1863), p. 235. M. N. Katkov (Sobranie peredovyx statej v Moskov. vedemostjax za 1864 g. (Moscow 1897), p. 218 considers that in 1864 there were ten million; P. I. Mel'nikov "Scislenie raskolnikov," Polnoe sobranie socinenij (SPb., 1898), 14, 391-393, puts the number at 10 million; A. S. Prugavin (p. 17) gives 15-20 million, or about 30 to 40 percent of the total Great Russian population.

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these reasons the continuance of Russian traditionalist thought in the nineteenth century devolved upon other groups in Russian society than the Old Believers. But the Denisovs' ideas as to the spiritual union of the Russian people with Christ, the messianic destiny of the Russian nation, the humble nature of the Russian spirit and man, and the sobornyj concept of the Russian state all found a place in the teachings of the Slavophils, Pocveniki, and Populists, whose theories bear a close resemblance to those of these two outstanding eighteenthcentury Russian thinkers. Thus, the teachings of the Denisovs form a significant link in the evolution of Russian thought and reveal many of its most vital elements. The appeal that the brothers' teachings held for Russians was confirmed not only by the growth of the Old Believer movement but also by the renascence of many of their ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

THE R U S S I A N BIBLE SOCIETY A N D THE B U L G A R I A N S 1 by James F. Clarke Although they were not aware of it at the time, it was eminently appropriate for Russians, who had received the Bible from the Bulgarians in the tenth century, to try to give it back to them in the nineteenth. The project to provide a modern Bulgarian translation of the New Testament was initiated in 1816 by the newly established Russian Bible Society, aided and abetted by its parent in London, the British and Foreign Bible Society. The attention of the RBS was first directed to the Balkans by a Phanariot Greek prince (Constantine Ypsilanti). The idea of a Bulgarian translation of the Scriptures was proposed by a Russian-appointed Moldavian archbishop. The translation was executed by an otherwise obscure monk who was probably a Greek, Teodosi, abbot of a Wallachian monastery. He was recommended by a Greek Patriarch who was shortly to be hanged by the Turks. The translation was "sanctioned" by Moldavian, Serbian (actually Greek), Russian, Armenian, and Greek bishops in Kisinev, Bessarabia. The project, which lasted more than seven years, was promoted and supervised by three Scotsmen, on loan to the RBS from the BFBS, which also supplied some of the funds. The work was edited by the RBS Russian proof-reader of Church Slavonic. After 2000 of the planned 5000 copies of Matthew were printed in St. Petersburg in 1823, the translation was deemed worthless and printing was halted. Not long after, the RBS itself was liquidated. Under such inauspicious circumstances it is not surprising that the first brave attempt to publish a translation of the New Testament in Bulgarian should have ended in utter failure. There was no accepted Bulgarian literary language and virtually no literature, for only nine 1 This essay is based in part on a paper read at a conference of Slavists at Ann Arbor in 1953. A Ford Foundation grant made possible its preparation for publication.

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publications by four authors are recorded before the RBS blundered into print with Teodosi's translation.2 With the ignorance of the facts and the naive enthusiasm prevalent in Bible Society circles, success could hardly have been expected. Nevertheless the history of a failure may prove instructive, and any scrap of evidence on the incipient Bulgarian literary activity of the time is of interest. Further, the Teodosi miscarriage did, indirectly to be sure, eventually lead to a "standard" Bulgarian version of the Bible. The involved circumstances and the outcome of the Teodosi affair and the RBS Matthew of 1823, complicated by the fact that almost as much mystery and confusion surrounded the second and somewhat more successful translation of the New Testament in 1828, have led Bulgarian bibliographers and Bible historians, in some instances five times removed from the original sources, to produce a hash of fact and fantasy. 3 Because not even the printed portion of the RBS Bulgarian New Testament was published, and because the persons concerned in it were so remote from the Bulgarian scene, in more ways than one, there are few early references to it in Slavic sources, and these are vague or misleading. Only two possible notices appear in contemporary Bulgarian books. The first is a derogatory remark in the postscript to the 1824 Primer by Peter Beron, who wrote, "What dishonor and shame is brought upon our people by a bad translation such as that sent by Archimandrite Theod. to the Bible Society in Petersburg." 4 The second is an allusion in the preface to Anastas Kipilovski's Sacred Stories, which appeared a year later. Because announced translations had not yet been published, Kipilovski explained, he was offering these Old and New Testament stories as a substitute.5 Thus 2

Listed in V. Pogorelov, O pis na starite pecatani btlgarski knigi (1802-1877) (Sofia, 1923). Pogorelov unjustifiably starts with the 1802Tetraglosson, butsince the "Bulgarian" text occupies only a small part of the work, it must be counted a Greek book; cf. Seliscev, Slavia, 5, 251 f. 3 There is no satisfactory bibliography or history for Bulgarian Bible translation comparable, for example, to that of V. Jagic, "Die Serbo-Croatischen Ubersetzungen der Bibel in ganzen oder einzelner Teile derselben," AfSlPh, 34 (1912-13), 497-540. 4 P. Berovic [Beron], Bukvar s razlicny poucenija (Brajov), 1824. Preface and postscript omitted in later editions (1841, 1847, 1850, 1856, 1862). 6 A. Stojanovic [Kipilovski], Svjastennoe cvétoobranie ili sto i cetyre svjastenny istorii (Budapest, 1825); in two parts, announced by Beron in 1824 as ready for

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it is clear that Bulgarian emigré circles north of the Danube were at least aware of Teodosi's project. Few of the pioneer Slavic scholars, even in St. Petersburg, knew much more. The first notice was taken by the Russian scholar Peter Keppen (Koppen). In 1826 he reported that while in Transylvania on an antiquarian foraging expedition in 1822 he learned from "informed" Bulgarians in Hermannstadt that a "Feodosij, archimandrite of Bistritsa, by birth a Greek, had translated the Gospels into Bulgarian together with a native Bulgarian." 6 At the same time Safarik, in his History of Slavic Language and Literature, mentioned, on the basis of the Society's reports, that the RBS was publishing a Bulgarian New Testament. 7 Reviewing Safarik's book the next year, Dobrovsky, on the strength of the remark in Kipilovski, "doubted very much" that the RBS had actually printed a Bulgarian New Testament. 8 The well-informed Kopitar, first Slavic scholar to take interest in Bulgarian books, made no mention of the RBS item in his list of known Bulgarian sources in 1829, although Sapunov's 1828 Gospels is included. 9 On the other hand, Safarik was deceived by an unwarranted interpolation in a fourth-hand article in a German magazine into believing that a Bulgarian New Testament had been printed in London in 1828.10 He later (1834) surmised that this publication. Safarik in his characteristically pithy style labelled him "der Schwarzrock Stojanowic... ein Pfaff-Sprachmeister": V. Burian, ed., Safarikovy dopisy slovinci Jer. Kopitarovi v letech 1826 a 1827 (Prague, 1931), p. 35. 6 In the periodical edited by Keppen, Bibliograficeskie Listy, No. 40 (April 12, 1826), 598-600. 7 P. J. Safarik, Geschichte der slawischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten (Budapest, 1826), p. 226; in press already in May 1825. 8 Anonymous review in the Jahrbücher der Literatur, No. 37 (Vienna, 1827), p. 13, to be ascribed to Dobrovsky on the basis of Safarik's correspondence with Kopitar (Burian, Safarikovy dopisy, p. 26) and Keppen (V. A. Francev, ed., Korespondence Pavla Josefa Safarika, I, 309 [Prague, 1927-28]). Dobrovsky obtained Kipilovski's book from Kopitar. 9 "Albanische, walachische und bulgarische Sprache," Jahrbücher der Literatur, No. 46 (1829), pp. 59-106. Kopitar's list included barely half of those now known to have existed. Cf. N. M. Petrovskij, "O zanjatijax V. Kopitarja bolgarskim jazykom," Spisanie na Bhlgarskata Akademija na Naukite, 8 (1914), 19-75. 10 "Reise des englischen Missionäre Leeves von Konstantinopel über Adrianopel nach Ternovo in Bulgarien," Das Ausland, I, No. 275 (Oct. 1, 1828), 10971099; see below, note 108. From Safarik this misinformation lodged in Jirecek's bibliography and then into general circulation.

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edition must have been sent from London to St. Petersburg and there "thrown into the fire or outhouse." 11 An American footnote was added by Talvj, who wrote in 1834, The Russian Bible Society had prepared a Bulgarian translation of the New Testament, intended more especially for the benefit of about 30,000 Bulgarian colonists in the Russian province of Bessarabia. But the specimen printed in 1823 excited so much doubt as to the competency of the translator, that it was deemed advisable to put a stop to its further progress.12 It is not strange that Safarik, Kopitar, and the western Slavists should have known little or nothing about the RBS misadventure, considering the difficulty of communication, but it seems odd that the interested scholars even in St. Petersburg were unaware of it. Even BFBS agents in the Levant were ignorant of the outcome some years after its fate was settled. The first of the Russian cataloguers and critics of Bulgarian literature in Russia after Keppen was the much-touted Ruthenian Jurij Venelin, himself one of the prime stimulators of the Bulgarian literary revival. Although personally acquainted with some of Teodosi's Bulgarian critics after his stay in Kisinev in 1823-1825, Venelin does not mention the Matthew in a review of the rebirth of Bulgarian literature which he published in 1837.13 Murzakevic, the Odessa historian who furnished Safarik and others with Bulgarian books, also fails to refer to Teodosi. 11 Neither Vasil Aprilov, the 11 Letter to Vuk, May 4,1834, in Lj. Stojanovic, ed., Vukovaprepiska (Belgrade, 1909), IV, 679; and idem., ¿ivot i rad Vuka Stef. Karadzica (Belgrade, 1924). 12 Talvj [Mrs. Edward Robinson, née Therese Albertine Louise von Jakob], "Historical view of the Slavic language in its various dialects, with special reference to theological literature," Biblical Repository, 4 (Andover, 1834), 328-413, 417-532; and the same later in various English, German and French versions. Talvj obviously had access to Bible Society sources. Note the similarity of her language and that of Henderson as quoted below, p. 74. Talvj was responsible for the assumption, very likely also derived from Henderson's reports, that the N T was intended for the Bessarabian Bulgarians. In the two pages she devoted to the Bulgarian languages, Talvj notes she could find "no trace of a literature." 13 "O zarodyse novoj bolgarskoj literatury," Moskovskij nabljudatel', September 1837 (reprinted as a booklet, Moscow, 1838); Bulgarian translations by M. Kifalov (Bucharest, 1848) and N. Daskalov (Istanbul, 1860). 14 N. N. Murzakevic, "Nynesnee sostojanie prosvescenija u bolgar," ZMNP 18 (1838), 114-123; Francev, Korespondence P. J. Safarika, I, 472-480.

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Bulgarian amateur scholar and philanthropist of Odessa, nor his critic Solov'ev, Murzakevic's colleague in the Lycée Richelieu, refer to Teodosi. 15 1. Sreznevskij's 1846 bibliographical survey does not list Matthew.1* In the first crude attempt at a Bulgarian bibliography, young Konstantin Jirecek, using material collected by his grandfather, Safarik, listed a New Testament, translated by Archimandrite Teodosi, abbot of Bistritsa, and an anonymous Bulgarian, printed in London in 1828 in 5000 copies, sent to St. Petersburg and there destroyed in totoP A few years later he corrected himself in a footnote to the extent of suggesting two alternatives : that Teodosi's translation made for the RBS in 1821 was unusable and immediately suppressed, or that 5000 copies were printed in 1823 and then suppressed, the Scriptures in the vernacular being considered dangerous. 18 Practically all subsequent Bulgarian bibliographers have followed Jirecek, combining and adding to previous errors — Teodorov, 19 Naôov, 20 Kutincev, 21 and even Pogorelov, the Russian compiler of the only satisfactory bibliography of early Bulgarian imprints. 22 Historians of Bulgarian Bible translation have not done much better than the bibliographers. The latest and most complete survey was made by Markovski in 1927, but he too was unable to surmount 15 V. E. Aprilov, Dennica novo-bolgarskogo obrazovanija (Odessa, 1841), criticized for excessive use of the personal pronoun by M. A. Solov'ev, Moskvitjanin, No. 5 (1842), 132-164; Aprilov replied, Dopolnenie, SPb., 1842. 16 1. I. Sreznevskij, "Ocerk knigopecatanija v Bolgarii," ¿MNP, 51 (1846), otd. V, 1-28. On Russian scholars and the Bulgarians, Francev, "Pervye russkie trudy po izuceniju slavjanstva, preimuscestvenno juznogo," Proslava na osvoboditelnata vojna. 1877-1878 g. (Sofia, 1929), pp. 35-53. 17 J. K. Jirecek, Knigopis na novobUgarska-ta kniznina. 1806-1870 (Vienna, 1872), no. 197. The first-published "bibliography," by I. V. Sopov, Spisok za bolgarskyte knigy koito sa izdadetii do sega (Istanbul, 1852), scarcely merits the name. 18 Geschichte der Bulgarert (Prague, 1876), p. 536, note 3. 19 A. Teodorov (Balan), "Btlgarski knigopis (1641-1877)," Sbornik za narodni umotvorenija, 9 (1893), suppl., 3-176; and Bblgarski knigopis za 100 godini (18061905), Sofia, 1909. Additons and corrections by N. Nacov in SbNU, 26 (1910-12), 1-54 and Sbornik BAN, 3 (1914), 1-15 and 17 (1925), 1-70. 20 Nacov, "Novobi.lgarskata kniga i pecatarskoto dëlo u nas ot 1806 do 1877," SbBAN, 15 (1921), 33. 21 S. Kutincev, Pecatarstvoto v Bhlgarija do osvobozdenieto (Sofia, 1920), p. 191, even gives the name of the English printer, Watts! 22 Pogorelov, Opis, no. 19.

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the bibliographical discrepancies piled up by his predecessors.23 The first important contribution to the study of the Bulgarian translations came in 1898 from Leo Wiener of Harvard University, but he was apparently unaware of the RBS Teodosi venture.24 His article aroused great interest in Bulgaria. Quoted, summarized, and amplified by Sismanov, it became the point of departure for all subsequent work on the subject.25 The second major contribution was the first of a series of articles on the Bulgarian renascence published in 1902 by the director of the Odessa Public Library, Popruzenko. By exploiting Russian material on the RBS that had been previously overlooked, he made considerable progress toward pinning down Teodosi; but as he had never seen or heard of a copy, questions remained, including that of the hypothetical London 1828 edition. 26 It was left to other Russian scholars to supply the missing links. A year after his first article, Popruzenko published an "Addendum" reporting the discovery by Jacimirskij of several printed copies of what Popruzenko surmised was Teodosi's 1823 Matthew,27 These samples, all defective, containing only pages 27-96 (10 : 2 to the end), were found in the Moldavian monastery of Bisericani. V. Sreznevskij described another of Jacimirskij's copies. 28 23

1. S. Marskovski, "Istorija na btlgarskija sinoden prevod na Biblijata," Godisnik na Sofijskija universitet (Bog. Fak.), 4 (1927), 1-61. Not only does he fail to utilize all the previous research, but he makes blunders like confusing a Modern Greek version with Modern Bulgarian (p. 9). 24 "America's Share in the Regeneration of Bulgaria (1840-1859)," Modern Language Notes, 13 (1898), 65-81. Although based on primary sources, Wiener's article contributed its share of inaccuracies, especially in the Bulgarian translation. 25 1. D. Sismanov, "Novi danni za istorijata na naseto vbzrazdanie," Bblgarski pregled, 9 (1898), 53-78. 26 M. G. Popruzenko, "Ocerki po istorii vozrozdenija bolgarskogo naroda. I. Perevody Novogo Zaveta na bolgarskij jazyk," ¿MNP, November 1902, 3-20; made available in Bulgarian by M. Moskov in Bzlgarska sbirka, 12 (1905), 119-128. S. Tomov, "Btlgarska evangelska literatura," Jubileen sbornik ([Samokov, 1909]), pp. 43-65, used Wiener-Sismanov-Popruzenko. 27 "Dopolnenie k pervomu ocerku," ¿MNP, October 1903, 345-346. 28 Popruzenko ("Dopolnenie," p. 346) speaks of a copy in the Petersburg Public Library, but according to Petrovskij (cf. next note), citing a personal communication from Seliscev, this was in error: the copy went to the Academy Library, presumably the Slavic section (cf. also Slavia, 5, 258). Sreznevskij describes a copy donated by Jacimirskij to the Manuscript Section: "Svedenija o rukopisjax... postupivsix v rukopisnoe otdelenie... v 1903 godu," Izvestija Akad. Nauk, 5th ser., 20 (1904), 0120f. [description] and 0138f. [sample text].

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The first to locate and fully describe a complete copy and to identify it correctly as the RBS 1823 Matthew was N. M. Petrovskij, who found it in the library of the Kazan' Theological Academy, where it was even listed in the published catalogue of 1874. Yet, because of the persistence of entrenched errors and seeming contradictions, Petrovskij, after a review of all the literature, reached the unsatisfactory hypothesis that there were two separate versions: one by Teodosi of Hermannstadt for the RBS, of which Matthew was printed in St. Petersburg in 1823; and a second by Teodosi of Bistritsa for the BFBS, the New Testament being published in London in 1828. Unless a copy of the 1828 edition were to be found, he concluded, the question would not be completely resolved.29 Pogorelov, in his 1923 Bibliography, did not mention the 1823 Teodosi, but Seliscev, in a comprehensive review-article, pointed out the omission and cited the one complete and two defective known copies.30 However, there is a fourth copy, complete and fully authenticated, which has escaped the notice of all. Listed tin the second volume of the Catalogue of the library of the BFBS, published in 1911, is the RBS Teodosi New Testament translation, of which only Matthew was "published" in 1823 in St. Petersburg.31 The library copy of the Catalogue has an added note that it was found in March 1910. What makes this particular Matthew noteworthy is a two-page identification on the flyleaf in the hand of Ebenezer Henderson, BFBS representative in St. Petersburg at the time, according to which: 29 N. M. Petrovskij, "K voprosu o pervom pecatnom perevode Novogo Zaveta na novobolgarskij jazyk," IORJaS, 22 (1917), kn. 2, 338-347. The copy had been received from Afanasij, archbishop of Kazan', who graduated in 1825 from the St. Petersburg Seminary. (It may be noted here that there never was an 1828 Bible Society NT.) 30 A. Seliscev, "K izuceniju staropecatnyx bolgarskix knig," Slavia, 5, 250-266. He identifies the Academy copies as noted above, n. 28. 31 T. H. Darlow and H. F. Moule, Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of the Holy Scriptures in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society, II (London, 1911). The only one in Bulgaria to use this source and Petrovskij as well, was Rajna Mileva, "Novobtlgarskite prevodi na biblejskite knigi," Sofia University, typescript, 1927. However, Mileva was still worried about a possible London edition of 1828. In general, old errors and new doubts persist, for example in N. Bobcev, "Stogodisninata na edna kniga," Otec Paisi, I (1928), 88-92, and I. D. Sismanov, "Uvod v istorijata na btlgarskoto vtzrazdane," Bblgarija 1000 godini (Sofia, 1930), pp. 279-319; and Markovski, cited in note 23 above.

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Theodosios, in 1823 completed a version of the New Testament in the Bulgarian dialect at Bucharest, of which an edition was ordered to be printed at St. Petersburg, but after printing 2000 copies of St. Matthew's Gospel (of which this is one)... it was deemed advisable to put a stop to its progress, as doubts were entertained of the competency of the translator. The leather binding bears the seal of the RBS. There is no title page, the only identification being the printed heading "The Gospel of St. Matthew." The bibliographical comedy of errors about a work of no intrinsic merit came about because of difficulties of communication, the lack of standing among Bulgarians of the translator Teodosi, the rudimentary state of Bulgarian literature and cultural life at the time, the disturbed political conditions attending the Greek Revolution, the understandable confusion between the BFBS and the RBS, and, most important, the cancelling of the translation and suppression of the printed portion, which soon was followed by the disgrace and demise of the RBS itself. The Russian Bible Society was another of the curious aberrations of Tsar Alexander I.32 In its short life it initiated translations that eventually led to standard versions in Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and a number of other languages, although these projects were completed under other auspices, after the RBS had been dissolved. Alexander approved the plans for a Bible society in December 1812, delaying his departure from St. Petersburg for Moscow and the retreating Grand Army of Napoleon to do so. The plans were submitted to him by the Minister of Foreign Confessions who was his influential boyhood friend, Prince A. N. Golicyn, in behalf of John Paterson, emissary of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The BFBS had, almost from its formation in 1804, looked to the great Russian empire as a promising field of activity and expansion, but the cooling of relations between England and Russia following Tilsit had cut off the original feelers. The initiative for establishing a 32

The rise and fall of the RBS as a Russian domestic episode is reviewed in S. R. Tompkins, "The Russian Bible Society — A Case in Religious Xenophobia," American Slavic and East European Review, 7 (1948), 251-268. Here only as much of its history as will serve as context for the Society's Bulgarian project is included.

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Bible society in St. Petersburg came from two Scotsmen, John Paterson and Robert Pinkerton. Paterson, having helped to set up societies in Scandinavia and in the recently annexed Russian province of Finland with Ebenezer Henderson, suggested to London that he be authorized to investigate the situation in St. Petersburg, where he arrived in August of 1812. Meanwhile Pinkerton, who had withdrawn from a Scottish mission at Karass in the Caucasus because of ill health, was pursuing a similar project in Moscow, where he had been living since 1810, and had written Paterson about his scheme.33 The two men joined forces. Paterson drew up plans and by-laws for the proposed society, in collaboration with Count V. P. Kocubej, former Minister of the Interior, Prince Golicyn, and others. Alexander's approval having been publicly announced, the St. Petersburg Bible Society (as it was first called), was officially and spectacularly launched on January 23, 1813.34 Because of the active backing of Alexander, who himself became a member and heavy subscriber, many prominent officials, members of the nobility, and high-ranking ecclesiastics, as well as a coterie of mystics and religious faddists, felt it necessary to give the Society support, sincere or otherwise.35 Besides Prince Golicyn and Count Kocubej, a number of dignitaries graced the Society as officers: Count K. A. Lieven, President of the Protestant Consistory; Count C. B. Vietinghof, brother of Alexander's future mother confessor, Madame de Kriidener; Count A. K. Razumovskij, Minister of Education; (later on) M. M. Speranskij; Mixail, Metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg; Serafim, Metropolitan of Moscow; Filaret, Archbishop of Tver'; and the heads of foreign religious denominations. Its president and guiding spirit was Golicyn, soon to become even more

33 Robert Pinkerton, Russia: or, Miscellaneous Observations on the Past and Present State of that Country and its Inhabitants (London, 1833), p. 312. Appropriately titled, this is an unchronological mixture of travel, description, and anecdote. 34 John Paterson, The Book for Every Land: Reminiscences of Labour and Adventure in the Work of Bible Circulation in the North of Europe and in Russia (2nd ed., London, 1858), p. 191. Also "Extracts of Letters [of Paterson and Pinkerton] from Russia Relative to the Formation of the Petersburgh Bible Society," BFBS, Ninth Report (1813), App., pp. 488^99. 35 E. J. Knapton, The Lady of the Holy Alliance. The Life of Julie de Kriidener (New York, 1939), p. 150.

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influential in the positions of Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs and of Education. 36 The St. Petersburg Bible Society was formed with the ostensible object of circulating the Scriptures primarily among the non-Russian and non-Orthodox inhabitants of the Empire ("members of foreign religions only"), especially the Protestant Germans, but almost immediately the Committee resolved to join in the distribution of the Slavonic Bible, the printing of which was the exclusive prerogative of the Holy Synod. 37 This was the particular object of the Moscow auxiliary established by Pinkerton in 1813. When the four-volume Synod edition was found to be too cumbersome, expensive, and limited in supply, Golicyn, as Procurator of the Holy Synod, obtained permission for the Society to print its own Slavonic Scriptures with improved type and the new stereotype process introduced in Russia by Paterson. This step was facilitated by "packing the court," as it were — appointing members of the Synod to the Committee. At this time also the name was changed to the Russian Bible Society by imperial ukase, and branches mushroomed by fiat throughout the empire from Poland to Siberia, eventually numbering 289. 38 But in the long run it was this very strength that became the weakness of the RBS. The translation of the Bible into Russian was without question the most important undertaking of the Society. The sponsors of this radical idea were more than willing to give Alexander full credit, and it was officially reported that "the idea of this noble work is the exclusive property of His Imperial Majesty, the pure suggestion of his own benevolence." 39 Here again the Synod was persuaded to yield, n condition, however, that the Slavonic text accompany the translation, and conservative opposition was temporarily silenced by another imperial ukase and the indirect sanction of the Greek Patriarch. At Easter, 1819, a specially bound copy of the Gospels was 36 P. von Goetze, Fiirst Alexander N. Golitzin und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1882), an eyewitness account. The fullest account of the RBS, based on English as well as Russian materials, is A. N. Pypin, "Rossijskoe biblejskoe obscestvo," Vestnik Evropy, August-December 1868; included in Vol. I of his Issledovanija i stafi po epoxe Aleksandra I, ed. by N. K. Piksanov (SPb., 1916), 1-293. 37 "Extracts of Letters from Russia," BFBS, Ninth Report, Appendix. 38 Paterson, Book for Every Land, p. 232; Pinkerton, Russia, pp. 379-384. 3 » BFBS, Twelfth Report (1816), p. 25.

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presented to Alexander, the first portion of the Bible in Russian.40 Now that the Society thus had broken with its original purpose, other ventures were rapidly added. From the Greeks of South Russia attention easily extended to the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, with the cooperation of the Russian ambassador at the Porte, Baron Stroganov. Direction of the Society's efforts to other Orthodox inhabitants of the Balkans came about naturally through the interest aroused in the Principalities by Constantine Ypsilanti, former Hospodar of Moldavia (1799-1801) and Wallachia (1802-1806).« At the second annual meeting of the RBS (1815), the members were "particularly pleased with a company of Greeks from Ancient Macedonia, Prince Ipsilanti and suite," especially since "these worthy descendants of the Church of Philippi" all subscribed, the prince giving 500 rubles. At Paterson's suggestion Ypsilanti was made a vice-president in charge of the "call from the South, especially Moldavia and Walachia." The Committee thereupon voted to print 5000 copies of the New Testament in Moldavian "for the inhabitants of Ancient Macedonia," much help being expected from Ypsilanti, who had offered to correct the proofs. When the first printed sheet was received in London, it was labelled "a dialect of modern Greek." 42 Paterson was under the impression that it was basically Slavic. Pinkerton, however, more accurately diagnosed Moldo-Wallachian as half Latin and half Greek, Turkish, and Slavonian, "very different from the dialects of the Slavonian spoken among the Servians, Bulgarians, and Dalmatians." 43 All of this illustrates the understandable ignorance about the peoples, languages, and geography of the Balkans, which proved expensive to the RBS on at least two occasions, but was less costly 40 1. A. Cistovic, Istorija perevoda Biblii na russkij jazyk (2nd ed., SPb., 1899), pp. 25 if. First published in 1873, this work is a valuable (though less objective) supplement to Pypin's history of the RBS. It was not until 1878 that the whole Bible in Russian was published. 41 Helene Ypsilanti, "Die Fürsten Alexander und Konstantin Ypsilanti als Hospodaren der Moldau and Walachei," Rev. Int. des Études Balkaniques, 3 (1937- 38), 225-238. 42 Letter from Ypsilanti, BFBS, Fourteenth Report (1818), App., p. 130; Twelfth Report (1816), App., pp. 20-22. 43 Paterson, Book for Every Land, p. 240; letter from Pinkerton, SPb., August 11, 1815: BFBS, Twelfth Report, App., p. 75. Apparently the first reference to Bulgarians in Bible Society sources.

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than the error made by young Alexander Ypsilanti in hoisting the flag of Greek revolution in the Rumanian Principalities a few years later. Prince Golicyn was foresighted, therefore, in urging Pinkerton to make a tour of southeastern Europe. This was in line with the policy of the London committee, which instructed Paterson to keep Pinkerton "moving about as much as possible in Poland, Russia, Moldavia, and the Crimea." 44 Equipped with a good knowledge of Russian and printing and a keen philological sense, Pinkerton set forth on his first extensive exploration in March 1816.45 He reached Odessa in late June, having promoted the establishment of Bible Society branches all along the way, and diligently gathered information on every dialect he encountered. After starting a local Bible Society, he set out for Kisinev, the capital of Bessarabia. Thanks to a plague epidemic in Moldavia, Pinkerton, on his way from Kisinev to L'vov and Cracow, was delayed at the quarantine station at Dubossary on the Dnestr long enough to write a lengthy report. 46 His first errand in Kisinev had been to arrange for the printing of 5000 Rumanian Bibles in the lately established press of Gavril, Exarch of Moldavia. A second object was to set on foot a Moldavian Bible Society. Lastly, Pinkerton wrote: In addition to these important objects, the [Moldavian] Exarch and the [Armenian] Metropolitan have both promised to exert themselves in order to procure a version of the N e w Testament in the Bulgarian language. This people speak the rudest and most impure dialect of the Slavonian, which is greatly mixed with the Turkish, and is unintelligible to the other Slavonian tribes. Their church-books and versions of the Scriptures, are in the Slavonian, and the very same with those used in the Russian and Servian churches. On this account, the Exarch, and others, assured me, that the modern Bulgarians are quite unable to understand the Slavonian Bible. A translation of some parts of the sacred text into Bulgarian, is said to exist in manuscript, which was made some time ago by one of 44

Paterson, Book for Every Land, p. 285. At the same time Paterson was appointed "resident" of the BFBS in St. Petersburg. 45 Pinkerton had already published a translation of Platon's Pravoslavnoe ucenie (1764) under the title: The Present State of the Greek Orthodox Church in Russia, or a Summary of Christian Divinity, by Platon (New York, 1815). 46 July 7, 1816, in Extracts of Letters from the Rev. R. Pinkerton on his late Tour in Russia, Poland, Germany [etc.] (London, 1817), pp. 23-26; also in BFBS, Thirteenth Report (1817), App., pp. 57-115.

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their Bishops in Bucharest. Proper search is to be made for this; and, should it be found, it will prove a help. However, the Exarch has it in his power, by his connexions with the Bulgarian Bishops, to get a good translation made; and, as they use the Slavonian character, it can be printed with the types intended to be used for the Wallachian Bible, and in the printing-office of the Exarch. From these few particulars, you will observe, that very important consequences for promoting the cause of Bible Societies, are likely to be fruits of my visit to Moldavia.

Kisinev was the closest Pinkerton got to the Balkans on this occasion, but during the rest of his journey he continued to think about a Bulgarian translation. In Vienna he had an audience with Prince Metternich, who invited him to dinner and graciously placed himself at Pinkerton's disposal. At Metternich's request he submitted a project for an Austrian Bible Society, in which, along with the various "tribes" within and outside the Austrian Empire to be benefited, he mentioned the "lamentable condition of the Bulgarians." However, of much more value than Metternich's diplomatic politeness was Pinkerton's association with Kopitar, who impressed him greatly.47 From him Pinkerton probably acquired some of the opinions on Slavic philology and ethnography that he incorporated in another long report, where he deplored the state of the Bulgarians and the "corruptness" of their language, so removed from the parent that they were least able to understand the Slavonic Bible which they still used.48 Pinkerton hesitated even to list Bulgarian in his classification of the eight Slavic dialects, but finally included it with the Russian language. The number of Bulgarians, which he reckoned at half a million, fully justified the steps he had already taken at Kisinev to obtain a translation of the New Testament.49 " Actually Metternich was as suspicious of Bible societies as he was of all others; cf., for example, his letters to Emperor Francis, Lebzeltern and Nesselrode, written just a year later, in A us Mettemichs nachgelassenen Papieren, (Vienna, 1881), III, 50-60. In a letter of February 12, 1822, Kopitar felt obliged to defend himself before the Vienna Chief of Police and Censorship for his Bible Society dealings (e.g., correspondence with the RBS). See A. I vie, Arhivska gradja o srpskim... knjizevnim i kulturnim radnicima, I, 203-208 (Belgrade, 1926). 48 Vienna, August 28, 1816: Extracts of Letters [Pinkerton], pp. 33-38. Kopitar had only very recently begun interesting himself in the Bulgarians. 49 Some ten years later Safarik classified Bulgarian as a dialect of Serbian, but gave the same round figure for the Bulgarians (from information supplied by Kopitar), Geschichte der slavischen Sprache, pp. 33, 223.

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Early in December Pinkerton was back in St. Petersburg, having covered almost 7000 miles, to find that the Russian Bible Society had moved into splendid quarters, presented by the Emperor, which allowed for sixteen stereotype presses and an annual output of 200,000 volumes. Additional help also had arrived in the person of a third Scotsman, Ebenezer Henderson, Paterson's former associate in the Scandinavian countries.50 A few weeks after Pinkerton's return a great stir was created by the announcement of the latest grants from London, including £200 for a Bulgarian New Testament. 51 Meanwhile Exarch Gavril of Moldavia, a zealous supporter of the Bible Society, was bestirring himself as a result of his meeting with Pinkerton. 52 Since the death of Ypsilanti in Moscow in June 1816, he had been correcting the proofs of the Moldavian New Testament sent from St. Petersburg, and when the Bessarabian branch was organized he became its vice-president along with the Russian governor, General Baxmetev. At the annual meeting of the RBS in September 1818, a letter received the previous year from Gavril was read in which he pointed out that the Bulgarians, a neighboring people of the same religion as the Russians, desperately needed to have the Word of Life in their native language since they were not able to understand the Slavonic. Consequently Gavril undertook to find out if a ready translation of 50

Extracts of Letters from John Pater son and Ebenezer Henderson during their Respective Tours through the East Sea Provinces of Russia, Sweden, Denmark... to Promote the Object of the BFBS, (London, 1817). The multilinguist Henderson was known as the author of Iceland; or the Journal of a Residence in that Island, during the years 1814 and 1815... (Edinburgh, 1818). 51 There seems to be no basis for W. Canton's statement that already in 1815 the RBS announced a Bulgarian New Testament: History of the BFBS (London, 1904), I, 223. 52 The Exarch, a Rumanian by birth, had a remarkable career. Born Gavril Banulescu-Bodoni in Bistritsa, Transylvania, 1746; educated Bra?ov, Budapest, Kiev, Mt. Athos, Smyrna, Patmos; taught in Ia$i and elsewhere; became a monk in Constantinople; rector of Poltava Seminary, 1782; bishop of Akkerman and Bender, 1792; Metropolitan of Moldavia, 1792; archbishop of Ekaterinoslav, 1793; Metropolitan of Kiev, 1799; member of Holy Synod, 1801; pensioned, 1803; Metropolitan of Ugro-Wallachia and Moldavia, 1808; Metropolitan of Xotin and Kisinev and Exarch of Moldavia, 1812 until his death in Kisinev in 1821. N. Iorga, Istoria bisericii romanefti fi a viefii religioase a Romanilor (2nd ed., Bucharest, 1930), II, 203 if. P. Cazacu, Moldova dintre Prut ft Nistru 18121918 (Ia$i, n.d.), pp. 124-128; S. Ciobanu, La Bessarabie (Acad. Roumaine, Etudes et Recherches, 13 (Bucharest, 1941)), pp. 51 ff.

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the Holy Scriptures was to be found in that language and if not he would try to seek out a suitable translator. In referring to this letter, Pinkerton added that Gavril "is now corresponding with learned men of that nation, about this very necessary and desirable object." 53 There is no record of any results of the Exarch's good intentions. It was left to Pinkerton himself to initiate the first Bulgarian translation of the New Testament. This came about in connection with his second and even more extended tour of Southern Europe between February 1819 and February 1820.54 Armed with letters of introduction to Ambassador Stroganov and the Russian consuls, and to the several patriarchs, Pinkerton eventually landed in Constantinople from Greece in September. Among his errands here was the revision of a Turkish Bible made from a seventeenth-century manuscript he had discovered in Leiden, which the British society was about to publish. 55 Secondly, Pinkerton hoped to obtain a new translation of the whole Bible in modern Greek to replace the almost 200-year-old version of the New Testament circulated since 1810. While making arrangements for printing Greek Bibles and Testaments at the Patriarchate, Pinkerton made inquiries about a Bulgarian translator. His original idea had been to return to Russia overland by way of Adrianople, Bucharest, and Iasi. Gregorios, the Greek Patriarch, with whom he had established cordial relations, therefore furnished him with a strong letter of recommendation to Ioanikios, Greek Metropolitan of Tirnovo and Exarch of Bulgaria, requesting him "to search for a person among his clergy qualified to translate the New Testament into the vernacular Bulgarian." At the same time the Patriarch recommended "a certain Archimandrite named Theodosius of the Monastery of Bistritsa near Bukarest" as the person best qualified for the work. 56 53 Pypin, Issledovanija i stat'i, I, 53, from the Fifth Annual Report of the RBS, for 1817 (to June 1818); Pinkerton, July 29, 1817: BFBS, Fourteenth Report (1818), App., p. 85. 54 Letters written during this trip are in the BFBS London Archives (dates as given, usually O.S.), "Agents Book" No. 2; some were published in BFBS, Sixteenth Report (1820), App., pp. 1-42, and in RBS publications. 55 A. A. Cooper, The Story of the (Osmanli) Turkish Version (London, 1901), p. 14. When the NT portion was published in Paris (1819), it produced a storm. 66 Pinkerton to J. Owen (secretary of the BFBS), C'ple., Oct. 27, 1819: BFBS, Sixteenth Report (1820), p. 25. Quoted also by Pypin, Issledovanija i stafi, p. 58. In a subsequent letter (February 20,1820), Pinkerton wrote of "Theodoseus

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Unfortunately, severe illness forced Pinkerton to give up the more arduous twelve-day land route in preference for the direct sea voyage to Odessa, where he arrived at the end of November, only to find that he could not even visit Bessarabia and his friends in Kisinev because of the recurrent plague. Instead he forwarded the Patriarch's letter to Tirnovo and while in quarantine took steps that he hoped would "ultimately produce a version of the New Testament for the poor ignorant Bulgarians."57 Evidently the Patriarch's candidate proved acceptable as well as receptive, for on returning to St. Petersburg Pinkerton was informed by Pini, the Russian consul in Bucharest, that Teodosi was already at work on the translation. 58 There is, of course, no assurance that the outcome would have been different had Pinkerton been able to carry out his original plans, but it is conceivable that through personal contacts on the spot he might either have succeeded in locating a more suitable candidate or else have dissuaded the Bible Society from hastily embarking on a rash venture. As it was, the Committee in St. Petersburg, reminded by Pinkerton of the £200 grant from London, rushed into an unanimous resolve to publish Teodosi's translation, apparently without further investigation of his fitness, and to have the printing done (also at Pinkerton's recommendation) at the Exarch's press in Kisinev.69 The importance attached to this project is indicated by the fact that it was one reason for Golicyn's recommending that Pinkerton made a second visit to Constantinople; he was prevented from so doing, however, by the state of his health. According to the RBS annual report for 1820, the Committee had been informed that Abbott Teodosi had finished his translation and that steps were being taken to revise it with the spiritual leaders of the Bulgarian people.60 of Bukarest" as personally selected by Patriarch Gregorios V (1797-98, 1806-08, 1818-21). " Odessa, December 21, 1819; BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 2. Pinkerton, who had spent six weeks in plague-ridden Constantinople, describes the horrors of the Odessa quarantine, where he was "imprisoned" for fourteen days (Russia, pp. 121-134). 58 SPb., February 7, 1820; BFBS, Sixteenth Report (1820), p. 41. Presumably Pinkerton had a letter of introduction to Pini and may have forwarded the Patriarch's letter through him. 5 " Pinkerton to Owen, SPb., June 19, 1820: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 3. This press, established by Gavril, functioned from 1814 to 1883. 60 Pypin, Issledovanija, p. 61.

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In March 1821, Pinkerton was able to report on the basis of an official communication from Consul Pini that Teodosi was making the final copy, the translation having taken about a year. Six months later, the manuscript arrived in St. Petersburg and was referred back for approval to "the principal clergy in Bulgaria," which presumably meant the friends in Kisinev.61 Finally, in February 1822, at a more than usually splendid meeting of the General Committee of the RBS that was "graced" by fifty vice-presidents and directors, including three metropolitans, three archbishops, several bishops and archimandrites, governors, nobles, and others of the highest rank, "a beautiful manuscript of the whole New Testament in Bulgarian, sanctioned by the ecclesiastical authorities of Bessarabia, and ready for the press," was presented and it was unanimously resolved to print 5000 copies — in St. Petersburg.62 Yet neither the highest ecclesiastical sanction nor the most splendid collection of vice-presidents could transform Teodosi's handiwork into a Bulgarian translation of the New Testament. In the course of a 9000-mile tour of inspection and promotion through southern Russia, taken this time by Paterson and Henderson between March 1821 and February 1822, the first hint of trouble came to light.63 On their way south from Xotin to Kisinev, at Skuleni, the quarantine station on the Prut, they encountered more than 20,000 Wallachians, Moldavians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Jews, and gypsies fleeing the consequences of young Ypsilanti's rash revolution. At Kisinev, also thronged with refugees, they found that their good friend Exarch Gavril was "no more." A meeting of the local Bible Society to discuss the refugee problem held on June 22 was attended by the governor, General Inzov,64 and other notables, including Daniel, Greek metropolitan of Adrianople, who, according to Henderson, had escaped the fate of Patriarch Gregorios by "suffering himself to be confined in an empty wine cask, in which he was conveyed in a cart, drawn by oxen, in the midst of a caravan that had been hired to 81

Pinkerton to Owen, March 6, 1821: BFBS, Eighteenth Report (1822), p. 29; "Extract from the Minutes of the RBS held the 22 September 1821," BFBS, "Correspondence Book" No. 9. ez Pinkerton, February 20, 1822: BFBS, Eighteenth Report (1822), p. 45. 63 Henderson's Biblical Researches and Travels in Russia (London, 1826) is largely devoted to this journey; also reported in BFBS, Eighteenth Report. 64 Inzov had recently been appointed "guardian" for the Bulgarian colonists, as he was of Puskin during his exile in Kisinev.

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convey a large quantity of wine to the coast of the Euxine. In this awkward situation he remained for three days, till safely shipped for Russia." 6 5 From refugees the discussion led to colonists and to the subject of the Bulgarian New Testament. The two visitors were assured that comparatively few Bulgarians spoke or read Bulgarian, using Turkish instead, as did many Greeks and Armenians. The Armenian archbishop, therefore, suggested that a Turkish version of the New Testament in Cyrillic letters would be more useful. Considering the disturbed conditions in Turkey, the Kisinev Committee decided as an experiment to recommend the printing in this form of 2000 copies of St. Luke for the 30,000 Bulgarian colonists of Bessarabia. Happily this novel idea was not adopted in St. Petersburg. 66 More significant and more cryptic is a reference to Teodosi in a progress report from Paterson and Henderson to the London Committee, written shortly after their Kisinev visit: Doubt having been entertained of the proper qualifications of the Archimandrite, a Greek by birth, who had been recommended as fit for this task, a native Bulgarian, who is said to possess considerable learning, had voluntarily undertaken the translation which he engaged to place at the disposal of the Russian Bible Society; but, as it was impossible for the Committee to come to any determination on the subject before they were in possession of more satisfactory information respecting the merits of the version, it was referred to the friends in Kishinev to institute a proper inquiry relative to the point, and without delay communicate the results of their investigation to Petersburgh. In the meantime, the translator, impatient that the business had been postponed had published 65 Biblical Researches, p. 264. A few days later Paterson and Henderson represented the BFBS at the funeral of the Patriarch in Odessa. 66 Some basis for this recommendation did exist, for Turkish then formed a large element in Bulgarian vocabulary and was used in conversation with Turks and Greeks. Some years earlier Bishop Sofroni of Vraca wrote in a postcript to an unpublished collection of Bulgarian sermons, "I have made use of expressions from the Turkish language, because by this time the Bulgarian people in Turkish lands have become more accustomed to speaking Turkish and have lost their language": A. Teodorov-Balan, Sofroni Vracanski (Sofia, 1906), p. 72; cf. P. N. Oreskov, Avtobiografija na Sofroni Vracanski (Sofia, 1914), p. 43. The Turkishspeaking Orthodox Christian Gagauzi in Bessarabia, who were originally classed with the Bulgarian colonists, probably also served as a basis for this scheme; I. Titorov, Bblgarite v Besarabija (Sofia, 1905), pp. 279-287; Ciobanu, La Bessarabie, pp. 28-35. The early Bulgarian authors relied heavily on Turkish and Greek loan-words until Russian influence gained ascendancy.

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an address to his nation, in which he calls upon them to assist him in carrying the work through the press.67 Both the "address" and its impatient author remain otherwise unidentified. Although first doubts about Teodosi seem to have been raised before his translation was actually received in St. Petersburg, they were temporarily forgotten after the manuscript was returned with the blessing of the Bessarabian friends. By the time the manuscript was finally ready for the press, important changes were taking place in the St. Petersburg organization. Paterson and Henderson had quit the British and Foreign Bible Society, partly it appears because of jealousy of Pinkerton, but mainly because they felt themselves and their opinions disregarded in London. 68 They were promptly engaged by the RBS, Paterson as manager of all printing and distribution and the more scholarly linguist Henderson to be in charge of Oriental versions. 69 Fortunately they continued to correspond with London. Pinkerton, on the other hand, was about to be recalled to London. Meanwhile Teodosi, accompanied by two deacons, arrived in St. Petersburg from Hermannstadt 70 at the end of October 1822, to assist in seeing his New Testament through the press. He had magnanimously refused any compensation other than expenses for himself and his deacons, although that cost was estimated to be more than three times what he would have received for the translation. In addition, although it doubled the cost of printing, Teodosi insisted that the authorized Slavonic text be printed parallel with the Bulgarian, on the theory that since the Bulgarians as yet had no books in their vernacular, this would make it more acceptable.71 67 Xerson, July 4, 1821: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 4. Understandably this passage was omitted from the Eighteenth Report (1822), pp. 16-19, and it is not included in Henderson's Biblical Researches, p. 259. 68 The immediate cause was the long-standing controversy over the Turkish NT (Paris, 1819), which the BFBS decided again to circulate with a page of errata, despite the insistence of Henderson and Paterson that it be suppressed. Eventually it was completely revised and republished with the OT in 1827. 69 Paterson, Book for Every Land, p. 362. Pinkerton on the other hand took pride in never having received a penny from the Russian Government or RBS. 70 Hence the confusion respecting Teodosi "of" Hermannstadt. 71 Letters from Pinkerton, November 13 (n.s.) and Paterson, November 7/19, 1822: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 5. Paterson estimated the edition (presumably the whole NT) would cost at least 36,000 rubles. Cistovic, who had access to the

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The first sheets of Teodosi's translation had scarcely come from the printer on November 19 when fresh attacks arose. In an optimistic but revealing report to London, Paterson wrote: In my last to Dr. Steinkopff I referred to the Bulgarian and if I recollect right spoke in high terms of the Archimandrite, the translator who has come to this place to edit the work. I have still the same opinion of him as a general scholar; but as far as the Bulgarian is concerned I fear that I must now speak of him in a very different manner. I had no sooner seen the first proof sheet than I began to fear he was but ill qualified for the work he has undertaken. It appeared evident that he had no fixed principles of grammar, of orthography or even of translation. A few days afterwards a memorial was sent in from a number of Bulgarians complaining of his translation and altho' we had strong reasons for not giving implicit faith to the memorialists, yet neither could we place full confidence in the translator. But his being on the spot rendered it necessary to proceed if possible. I proposed therefore to the Committee that instead of printing 5000 copies, we should only print 2000 and as the Slavonian was printed along with it in parallel columns the people would at least have one text on which they could depend, to which the Bulgarian altho' the style might be incorrect would at least serve as an explanation. I have taken another step to secure against gross faults and preserve uniformity as far as possible, by appointing our Slavonian corrector, who with a little exercise can easily make himself so far the master of the language as to understand it, to read the proofs along with the archimandrite. By this means I have some hopes that we may be able to produce a version tolerably correct for a first edition, which altho' not always correct in its style will neither contain additions, omissions nor palpably false renderings. Had this translation been printed anywhere else than in Petersburg I fear we would have had to put it down under the rubric of very bad ones.72 Yet a year after printing had started Paterson was compelled to admit that the translator was utterly unqualified regardless of where the translation might be printed. In a footnote to his history of the Russian Bible, Cistovic supplies details of the charges of the Bulgarian "memorialists" and ofTeodosi's RBS sources, states that Teodosi received 4000 rubles for the translation (possibly a confusion with the £200 BFBS contribution for a Bulgarian version) and only 500 for traveling expenses (Istorija perevoda Biblii, p. 48). 72 Joseph Hughes, January 23, 1823: BFBS, "Correspondence Book" No. 9. In the letter to Steinkopf (foreign secretary), November 7/19, 1822, reporting receipt of the first proofs, Paterson had indeed made no criticism of either the translator or the translation and presumably was not then aware of any faults.

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rebuttal. The authors, Bulgarians living in Transylvania, professed gratitude to the RBS for its Christian care but expected nothing good from Archimandrite Teodosi. Not being a native, he could not know Bulgarian grammar, nor did he know Slavonic or Russian. His native helper, on the other hand, knew only Bulgarian. Consequently in their eagerness to further the cause, the "memorialists" recommended three compatriots known for their learning, patriotism, and knowledge of Bulgarian, Slavonic, and Russian grammar: Mihail Kifalov, former Moscow Commercial Academy teacher, and the merchants Atanas Nekovic and Vasil Nekovic, the last of whom had already made a specimen translation. Teodosi, in turn, wrote off the charges as stale and familiar intrigues based on pretended patriotism; he dismissed the authors as illiterate (shown by their Greek signatures, etc.); he condemned the specimen translation as incorrect and distorted, an accusation for which he supplied proof. Since there were no books in Bulgarian, there could be no rules for it, and those used by the would-be translator neither were accepted by nor were the same for all Bulgarians. Because Bulgarian was derived from Slavonic he had used the grammatical rules of that language except where usage did not permit. Apparently Teodosi's defense was effective. In any event, Paterson was not deterred from continuing. But almost a year later, when the printing of Matthew was finished about the middle of October, and after he had returned from a six-month vacation at the Emperor's expense, Paterson reported to London, "We have been obliged to give up the idea of proceeding with the Bulgarian at present as after putting us to an expense of more than 10,000 Rubles, we found that the translator was utterly unqualified for his work." 74 Regretfully he wrote a few months later, "I fear we can make no use of the Gospel we have printed as no attention has been paid to any of the rules of grammar." Still, "our Committee had not taken any decision on this subject." 75 But in the same letter Paterson wrote, "You will rejoice to hear that we have the prospect of obtaining a correct translation in 73 Istorija perevoda Biblii, pp. 45-47. There is no clue to Teodosi's anonymous helper, noted also by Keppen (1826), who was in Hermannstadt in 1822 a few months before receipt of the complaint in SPb. No "assistant" is mentioned elsewhere in RBS sources. 74 October 4, November 24, 1823: BFBS, "Correspondence Book" No. 9. 75 April 1, 1824: BFBS, "Correspondence Book" No. 9.

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the Bulgarian language. This nation appears to be bestirring itself at present and as they have voluntarily entered into correspondence with us on the subject we hope the result will be favorable, provided there be no interference from any other quarter." That nothing came of the new prospects is to be inferred from the fact that there was interference from "other quarters." It was only a couple of months after this last letter of Paterson's that disaster overtook the RBS. Following upon radical changes in the composition of the Committee, which drastically curtailed its activities, there came a crackdown on political subversives and religious delinquents. The suspension of the RBS ordered by Alexander's successor, Nicholas, in effect put an end to its activities two years later. This is not the place to go into the many possible explanations for the liquidation of the RBS.76 A contributing factor was certainly the series of unfortunate translations and editions, of which Teodosi's was a very minor one. The phenomenal growth and success of the Society was based on the active support of the emperor and the government ("bureaucratic, almost police dissemination of the Bible"77) and in large measure due to the personal interest and influence of its president, Prince Golicyn, who was at once Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Procurator of the Holy Synod, Director of Posts, head of a number of other philanthropic societies, and a confidant of Alexander. When the tsar came under the influence of Metternich, Arakceev, and others of their ilk, Golicyn was even less able to hold in check the nationalist reactionary Orthodox element, who in spite of lip-service to the Society had always been opposed to its aim. Golicyn's fall came about in May 1824. At the seventy-ninth and last meeting of the RBS, he was forced to yield his presidency to the senior vice-president, Serafim, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Novgorod and previously a seeming supporter of the Society. The Ministry of Education went to Admiral Siskov, the much titled and decorated President of the Russian Academy and one of the leaders in the revolt against Golicyn and the Bible Society. 76 Stuart Tompkins' article (cf. note 32 above) is devoted mainly to this problem. Cf. Pypin, Issledovanija i stat'i, pp. 82-135; Cistovic, Istorija perevoda Biblii, pp. 51-109; T. Schiemann, Kaiser Alexander I ( = Vol. I of Geschichte Russlattds unter Kaiser Nikolaus I), (Berlin, 1904), pp. 405-430. 77 Pypin, Issledovanija i stat'i, p. 127. Paterson called Alexander a "true nursing father" to the RBS, Book for Every Land, p. 260.

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The Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs was broken up and Golicyn retained only the Ministry of Posts. Thus the prop was literally knocked out from under the RBS. Its demise followed soon after that of Alexander, in whose funeral procession the RBS was not included. Characteristic of the psychology behind the opposition is a parody of the First Psalm found among Siskov's papers: Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly Methodists, nor standeth in the way of sinners who conceal themselves behind the Bible, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful sent by the secret organizations within the Bible societies; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, in the law of the Lord doth he meditate day and night, even as for 1824 years the Holy Orthodox Church has taught. 78 In the general obscurity attending the last days of the RBS, the final disposition of the 2000 Matthews remains a matter of conjecture. 79 Safarik's guess about the fire or outhouse may have been correct. In a comparable case, after "blasphemies" were discovered in a badly edited RBS edition of Henry Martyn's Persian New Testament, it was condemned to waste-paper. Or the Matthews could have been among the many books destroyed by the record-breaking flood that inundated the Bible House storeroom on Catherine Canal in November 1824.80 How the incomplete copies discovered by Jacimirskij got to Moldavia remains a mystery, unless perhaps they had first been sent to Kisinev for some kind of review. One might expect to find copies of Matthew in Teodosi's Bistritsa monastery in Wallachia, which Jacimirskij also ransacked, rather than in Bisericani, in the Bistritsa valley in northern Moldavia. 81 At all events, although there are references in RBS and BFBS reports to the "publication" of Matthew, it is evident that it was neither published nor circulated, even though Nicholas's ukase of April 24, 1826, suspending the RBS 78

Quoted in Cistovic, Istorija perevoda Biblii, p. 257, who attributes it to M. L. Magnickij, one of the main cogs in the anti-RBS conspiracy. While Golicyn was minister, Magnickij, one of his officials, subscribed 10,000 rubles in the name of Kazan' University (though he bought no books for its library) and required every student to possess a Bible or NT; cf. Pypin, p. 122. 79 Pinkerton doubtless was mistaken later in listing only 1000 copies; Russia, p. 383. 80 Paterson, Book for Every Land, pp. 366, 386-392. Paterson put the Bulgarian in the same category as the Persian, Turkish, and Serbian versions. 81 However, as early as 1850 the Bistritsa books and manuscripts were being transferred to Bucharest; Jacimirskij, Slavjanskie i russkie rukopisi rumynskix bibliotek, pp. 237-239.

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permitted the sale of already printed Scriptures. That no title page was printed can also be assumed.82 Judging from the printed evidence, Teodosi's hodge-podge can scarcely be called a Bulgarian translation. Often there is little or no difference between the right ("Slavonic") and left ("Bulgarian") columns, carefully labelled by Henderson in the BFBS Library copy. Bulgarian and Slavonic are mixed and there is lack of consistency in the fifty-one footnote glosses and in the parenthetical explanations within the text. To what extent the net effect is to be attributed to Teodosi's dependence on the Slavonic original, to his Bulgarian collaborator, or to Paterson's Russian "corrector" of Slavonic cannot be determined, but it may be questioned whether the last named added anything to its Bulgarian character.83 About Teodosi nothing further is known, other than that he was a Greek (or at best a hellenized Bulgarian), that he was an archimandrite and head of Bistritsa monastery near Rimnik in Little Wallachia, and that he presumably travelled to St. Petersburg via Hermannstadt, across the mountains from Bistritsa, with two deacons, one of whom may have been his Bulgarian helper.84 It is known that Bistritsa, founded at the end of the fifteenth century and famous for the relics of the medieval Bulgarian writer, Grigori Sinait, had Bulgarian inmates, as did many other monasteries north of the Danube. One of Teodosi's immediate successors was in fact a Bulgarian, Gavril Petrov, of Vraca. 85 After the fiasco in St. Petersburg Teodosi appears 82 A s late as the 1838 BFBS Report, "Compendium of Languages...," a "Bulgarian Gospel of St. Matthew" was listed under RBS and SPb. The 10,000 copies of the first volume of the suppressed RBS Russian OT also lacked a title page. Of the approximately one million copies of Scriptures in forty-two languages printed or imported by the RBS, almost half were undistributed at the time of its suppression; Pinkerton, Russia, pp. 382-383. 83 The heading on the first page is "Ot Mattheja svjatago blagpvestvovanie." A sample of the left column is the last verse: "I da ucate tex da soxranjat vsja, kolika zapovedax vam: i eto az s vami esm vo vsja dni do sversenija veka. Amin." For other excerpts, see Petrovskij, JORJaS, 22, kn. 2, 345 f. 84 He is identified as a Rumanian by P. Constantinescu, Rolul Romaniei in epocha de regenerare a Bulgariei (Ia?i, 1919), p. 27. Because he is also referred to as Teodosi of Bucharest (see Pinkerton's letter of February 20, 1820) and because Consul Pini was in close touch with him, Teodosi may have made his translation there, as Henderson stated on the BFBS Library copy. 85 1. Georgiev, "Grad Vraca," SbNU, 14 (1904), 42-53. Petrov was an unsuccessful candidate for bishop of Vraca and a minor patron of Bulgarian letters.

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to have lapsed back into oblivion along with his abortive translation. Not much more is known about Teodosi's critics and rivals. One thing is apparent, that the known interest of the RBS in a Bulgarian translation of the New Testament, publicized by Pinkerton and perhaps by Exarch Gavril and others, was sufficient to arouse attention among the small group of budding Bulgarian literati in the 1820's. Unfortunately the identity of the various translations and would-be translators mentioned in Bible society sources is largely a matter of conjecture. In 1816, Pinkerton was told in Kisinev of a purported manuscript translation of parts of the Bible by a Bulgarian bishop in Bucharest. Chances are that reference here is to Sofroni (1739-c. 1815), formerly bishop of Vraca. In 1803 Sofroni had exchanged the precarious patronage of Pasvanoglu in Vidin for Bucharest and the protection of the Hospodar, Constantine Ypsilanti, and of the Metropolitan, Dosoftei Filitis. As the author of the first Bulgarian book, a substantial 546-page volume of translated Scripture readings and sermons published in 1806 at the episcopal press in Rimnik, Sofroni should have been known to anyone concerned with Bulgarian Bible translation. 86 In addition to writing "day and night" for his people, as he says in his autobiography, Bishop Sofroni was also active in getting Bulgarian volunteers for the Russians during the Russo-Turkish war of 1806-1812. He died probably before 1816, leaving a number of unpublished works.87 Among translations of the Scriptures in existence at this time, though apparently not known in Kisinev, is the Bulgarian New Testament manuscript discovered in 1895 by the indefatigable Jacimirskij in the Moldavian monastery of Neam{, noted Slavic and Bulgarian religious and literary center, founded at the beginning of the fifteenth century and associated with the name of Grigorij Camblak. 88 Lacking any identification, it has been dated all the way from 86

Kiriakodromion: sirec nedelnik; title page in J. F. Clarke, "The First Bulgarian Book," Harvard Library Notes, 3 (1940), 295. In the preface Sofroni stressed the need for a Bulgarian translation of the Scriptures. 87 V. N. Zlatarski, "Politiceskata rolja na Sofronija Vracanski prez ruskoturskata vojna (1806-1812)," Godisnik Sof. Univ. (Ist.-Fil. Fak.), 19 (1923), 1-85. A document signed by Sofroni, dated Bucharest, August 2, 1813, is the last record of his life; V. D. Stojanov, "Istoriceski materiali za btlgarskij narod," Periodicesko spisanie, 6 (1883), 131-147. 88 Described by Jacimirskij in "Slavjanskie rukopisi njameckogo monastyrja v Rumynii," Drevnosti, Trudy Slav, komisii Imp. Mosk. arxeolog. obscestva 2

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the end of the seventeenth (Jacimirskij) to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries ; Petrovskij places it c. 1822 and suggests a connection with Teodosi's translation. Yet on the basis alone of its idiomatic and consistent modern Bulgarian language and orthography, this hypothesis must be discounted. 89 The Neam{ New Testament translation would have been admirably suited to the purpose of the RBS, had it been known and approved. That Exarch Gavril was in contact with actual Bulgarian bishops is to be doubted inasmuch as Sofroni was virtually the only one in the Phanariot-controlled church of that time. More likely, he may have gotten in touch with Greek incumbents of Bulgarian sees, possibly with Ioanikios, Metropolitan of Tirnovo (1818-1821), to whom the Patriarch referred Pinkerton in 1819, or with his predecessor. Directly or indirectly, Gavril may also have been in touch with Bulgarian "learned men," few as they were, as Pinkerton reported in 1817. As a result of the unfavorable publicity accorded Teodosi in 1824 in Beron's widely used textbook, several Bulgarians appear to have had the idea of making their own New Testament translations, not unmindful of the fact that Russian interest was involved. But at other times one finds considerable hesitation regarding Russian connections, especially by Bulgarians living in Turkey. One of the principal areas of Bulgarian activity at this time lay north of the Danube in Transylvania and the Principalities, centering in Bucharest and Brasov. Following the outbreak of the Greek (Orthodox) Revolution, and Tudor Vladimirescu's revolt, in both of which Bulgarians were involved, the long-standing Bulgarian merchant colony in Brasov was augmented by well-to-do refugees from Bulgaria proper and from Bucharest, so that it became for Bulgarians something like what Novi Sad was for the Serbs. In fact, in the mid1820's Bulgarian émigrés in Brasov were planning a sort of Bulgarian "Matica." 9 0 We learn from Beron (1795-1871), who came to (1898), 17, 21; excerpts in IORJaS, 4 (1899), 447^51 and 5 (1900), 1246-1250; on Neamt see Jacimirskij, Slav, i russk. rukopisi rumynskix bibliotek, pp. 515-619. 89 The Neamt NT has also been attributed, unsuccessfully, to Spiridon, author in Neamt in 1792 of an unpublished work somewhat comparable to Paisi's more famous Slaveno-Bulgarian History; cf. J. F. Clarke, "Father Paisi and Bulgarian History," in H. S. Hughes, ed. Teachers of History (Ithaca, 1954), pp. 258-283. 90 Konstantin Veliki, Kulturni vnski mezdu Bhlgari i Rurmni v nacaloto na bilgarskoto vzzrazdane (Sofia, 1945), pp. 16-17.

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Brasov from Bucharest in 1823, that "elders," or trustees (epitropi) had been selected to supervise the publishing and translation of Bulgarian books. In the postscript to his Primer, Beron appealed to his compatriots to collect manuscripts for publication and send them to the trustees, who already had undertaken the task of obtaining a translation of the New Testament. He also listed half a dozen forthcoming books scheduled for publication.91 There can be no doubt of a direct connection between the Transylvania Bulgarians who memorialized the RBS with regard to Teodosi's translation in 1822 and the activities of the Brasov trustees. Beron specifically refers to Teodosi's translation: "about which our people wrote [to St. Petersburg] and begged that they arrange for learned persons to look it over and to correct it so that it may become good and every Bulgarian understand it." The Vasil "Nekovic," one of the three candidate translators nominated in the memorial, whose sample translation was attached, appears to be the Vasil Nenovic named by Beron as one of the trustees responsible for producing a Bulgarian New Testament. His translation of Old and New Testament history, announced by Beron in 1824, was published in 1825.92 NenoviS also dabbled in commerce, law, and politics. Venelin damned him for using the post-positive article and took credit for ending his teaching and literary career.93 The Russian-educated Mihail Kifalov, identified in the Transylvania memorial as former teacher in the Moscow Commercial Academy, was translator (or interpreter) for the Superior Council in Kisinev in 1825 (and perhaps earlier), and served in a similar capacity with Governor-General Kiselev and at the Russian Consulate in Bucharest. He became a Russian citizen and eventually secretary of the Odessa gubernija. As an author he is of little account, his main contribution being a translation of Venelin's caustic appraisal of 91 Beron was a graduate of the Munich medical faculty (1831) and in Paris he was a well-known author of a dozen scientific works when he died forty years later; cf. B. Conev, "D-r Petir Hadzi Berovic-Beron," in H. Negencov and N. T. Balabanov, eds., Sbornik D-r Petbr Beron (Sofia, 1926), pp. 13-68. 92 Svjastennaja istoria cerkovna ot Vetxi-et i Novy-et Zavet (Budapest, 1825). 93 T. Palade, "Colonistii Bulgari la noi," Omagiu Profesorului Ilie Barbulescu (Ia$i, 1931), pp. 500-510; Biblioteka D-r /v. Seliminski (14 v., Sofia, 1903-31), 11, 99-112; 14, 7-15. Nenovic also appears as "Nenkovic" in some sources and Atanas as "Nenovic."

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young Bulgarian literature. 94 In 1855 he printed for free distribution 3,000 copies in Bulgarian and Greek of a bequest leaving the bulk of his estate for a hospital in his native Teteven, but he made the mistake of entrusting the money to the Russian consulate in Bucharest, which used it to enlarge the consular premises. 95 There is no printed evidence of the literary abilities of the third candidate, Atanas Nekovic, though he once sent three translations to Neofit Rilski for revision and publication. As early as 1804 he was in St. Petersburg, in connection with a political scheme supported by Bishop Sofroni, with whom he also collaborated during the 18061812war. Often signing himself "Deputy of the Bulgarian Nation," he lobbied for forty years in Istanbul, Bucharest, St. Petersburg, and Vienna for himself and for various political schemes. When the complaint to the RBS was received in St. Petersburg, he was in Odessa with a pension from the Russian government, where he had been sent from Istanbul by Ambassador Stroganov after the outbreak of the Greek Revolution. 96 It is possible that one of the three proposed translators was the learned but impatient "native Bulgarian" referred to by Paterson and Henderson as "addressing an appeal to his nation" in 1821 for help in publishing his New Testament translation. 97 At all events, there seems to be a close connection between the "Odessa" critic, the Brasov memorial, and the report picked up in neighboring Hermannstadt by Keppen in 1822, for all of these identify Teodosi as a Greek, the last two sources also mentioning a Bulgarian helper. One may also presume that the unsolicited correspondence which Paterson, in the spring of 1824, joyfully foresaw as leading to a correct translation stemmed from the Brasov group, although there is no other reference to it in Bible society or Bulgarian sources. 94 Zaradi vozrozdenie novoj bolgarskoj slovestnosti (Bucharest, 1842), with much additional material. In 1825 Kipilovski announced in his book that Kifalov was preparing for the press a booklet of moral content, but it never appeared. 95 S. Velev, Zlatna kniga na daritelite za narodna prosveta (Plovdiv, 1907), pp. 265-278. 96 Sismanov, Novi studii iz oblastta na bzlgarskoto vbzrazdanie: V. E. Aprilov, Neofit Rilski, Neofit Bozveli, SbBAN, 21 (1926), 213; S. Romanski, Bzlgarite v Vlasko i Moldova. Dokumenti (Sofia, 1930), pp. 36-43. 97 In 1844 Grigorovic found such appeals to Bulgarians published during the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-12, which he attributed to Bishop Sofroni; S. Romanski, "Btlgarski vtpros v prepiskata na I. I. Sreznevski s V. I. Grigorovic," SpBAN, 54 (1937), 95-176.

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While Teodosi and the RBS were being buried in St. Petersburg, the scene of Bulgarian Bible translation activity shifted to Bulgaria proper. The chief actors now became Henry Leeves, first regular BFBS agent in the Levant; and Ilarion, a Cretan and the reluctant successor of the martyred Ioanikios as Metropolitan of Tirnovo and "Exarch of all Bulgaria."98 In May 1825, Leeves was inquiring of Pinkerton in London about the RBS Bulgarian version. At the same time he reported that Ilarion was in the Turkish capital with a Bulgarian translation of the New Testament which he had had revised and was prepared to print at the patriarchal press along with some other Bulgarian religious books. Some months later he told Pinkerton that if nothing was forthcoming from Russia, Ilarion was in a position to get a translation published in Bucharest." Then in December Ilarion told Leeves he was on the trail of another translation by a "schoolmaster of Vraca" who hoped to make his fortune with it in Russia but would part with it for 5000 piasters, meanwhile delaying his journey to St. Petersburg; and that he had invited the author and his manuscript to Tirnovo where the bestjudges pronounced it excellent.100 But in spite of the fact that the translator, now aware that Teodosi's translation had been condemned in St. Petersburg, was getting impatient, the London committee ordered a fresh examination. This time the Tirnovo experts rejected it.101 The Bible Society correspondence is annoyingly anonymous with 98

Ilarion was elevated in June 1821, immediately after the hanging of Ioanikios in Constantinople for complicity in the Greek Revolution, and arrived in Tirnovo in November. He served until June 1827, and again from 1831 until his death in Tirnovo in February 1838: P. Cilev, "Starata Kondika na ttrnovskata mitropolija," SpBAN, 3 (1912), 149-162; I. Snegarov, "Ttrnovski mitropoliti v tursko vreme," SpBAN, 52 (1935), 207-254. Ilarion is infamous in Bulgarian history for allegedly having destroyed the old Tirnovo patriarchal library: Ju. Trifonov, "Predanieto za izgorena starobtlgarska biblioteka v Ttrnovo," SpBAN, 14 (1917), 1-44. 99 Constantinople, May 24 and December 10, 1825: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 7; whether the same or another translation is not clear. 100 Leeves, January 2, 1826: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 7. 5000 piasters (c. £80) was four times the annual school teacher's salary at that time. Ilarion offered 3000 p. and thought the translator might take 4000. Ten years later Neofit Rilski accepted 4500 p. (now only £45) to translate the NT (B. Barker, Smyrna, November 3, 1835: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 18). At this writing Leeves was still expecting something to come out of St. Petersburg. 101 Leeves to Pinkerton, March 9, April 5, June 26,1826: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 10. Even with this precaution London had ordered only Luke printed.

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regard to the authorship of the several actual or proposed translations reported. The only schoolmaster known to have been in Vraca at this time was Konstantin Ognjanovic (1792-1858), of Serbian origin, translator, author, or publisher of several Bulgarian books, including a translation of the popular St. Alexis legend. He had a hand in establishing the first Bulgarian press in Constantinople (1843), where he served as Bulgarian teacher to the American missionary Elias Riggs and assisted him in the preparation of Bulgarian tracts. In 1845, he was professor of Slavic and European languages at the Greek theological seminary on Halki. Authorities differ on his inclusive dates in Vraca but agree that he was hired as teacher by 1822 and left for Bucharest not before 1827. On the other hand, although he had a finger in the distribution of Neofit Rilski's 1840 New Testament, there is nowhere any reference to any previous connection of his own with Bible translation. 102 At all events, hardly was the ink dry on the rejection in Tirnovo when the energetic Ilarion came up with a fresh proposal. There were two individuals in a town in his diocese, he wrote Leeves in 1826, "employed in forming a grammar of the Vulgar Bulgarian founded on that of the Ancient," who were capable of making a translation of the New Testament and would do so as soon as they finished the grammar. 103 A clue to their identities is furnished in a letter Ilarion wrote to Aprilov years later in which he claimed he had persuaded "three" men in Svistov, learned in Slavonic and Bulgarian, to collaborate on a Bulgarian grammar which he had undertaken to publish, on the basis of which he had planned to get the Scriptures translated. 104 There were three noted teachers in Svistov in Ilarion's time, all of whom published Bulgarian grammars, but only two were there in 1826. One of these was Emanuil Vaskidovic (1795-1875), Greek by 102 Darlow and Moule (Catalogue, II) incorrectly identify the "schoolmaster of Vraca" with Sapunov and the 1828 Gospels. On Ognjanovic see B. Penev, Istorija na novata bhlgarska literatura (Sofia, 1933), III, 567-582. Zitie JV. Aleksia (Budapest, 1833; 2nd ed., Constantinople, 1853; 3rd ed. [not listed in Pogorelov, Opis], Bolgrad, 1866), was his first and one of the earliest and most popular books in Bulgarian, if the language can be called such. 103 Leeves to Pinkerton, November 7, 1826; mentioned again on April 27, 1827: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 10. 104 In this letter of December 2, 1834 (quoted in Aprilov, Dopolnenie, 17), Ilarion places the event "eight years" earlier, necessarily before his deposition in June 1827.

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birth according to some authorities, who ran a famous GrecoBulgarian school in Svistov from 1815 to 1864. Between 1821 and 1825, he was one of Ilarion's secretaries in Tirnovo. In contrast to Ognjanovic, who belonged to the conservative "Venelin" school, Vaskidovic was a proponent of spoken Bulgarian as the basis for the literary language. This may have had something to do with Ognjanovic's rejection (if it was he). Vaskidovic was the author of a series of elementary textbooks, including a grammar. According to a contemporary, it was only Ilarion's death in 1838 that prevented him from publishing a translation of the Gospels by Vaskidovic. 105 Archimandrite Neofit Bozveli (1785-1848), in Svistov from about 1813 to 1833, became Vaskidovic's assistant and collaborated with him in the textbooks, including the grammar, which they published in Belgrade in 1835. Later Bozveli became the outspoken leader of the anti-Greek Church campaign. He left behind a mass of unpublished material, including a translated treatise on the Bible. According to a pupil, Ilarion had commissioned him in 1837 to "arrange" the Gospels in Bulgarian for publication in Constantinople. 106 The third famous Svistov teacher, Hristaki Pavlovic (1804—1848), set up a rival Greco-Bulgarian school there in 1831. Ilarion, writing after the event, probably was mistaken about having dealings with the three men at the same time. The first of Pavlovic's widely used textbooks preceded those of his rivals by a couple of years. Under the pernicious influence of the Venelin reaction, between the first (1836) and second (1843) editions of his Bulgarian grammar, he switched from using to denouncing the "filthy" post-positive article. Pavlovic has the greater distinction of being the first editor of Paisi's Bulgarian History, published without attribution in 1844. Among his unpublished works is a translation of the Gospels, arranged according to the Orthodox liturgy, which Ilarion also is credited with intention of publishing.107 Ilarion was not the only promotor of Bulgarian Bible translation. 105

Trifonov, SpBAN, 14, 36. There is nothing to indicate Greek origin in Vaskidovic's ultra-Bulgarian writings, whereas Ognjanovic called himself "Serb" on Bulgarian title pages. 106 M. Arnaudov, Neofit Hitendarski Bozveli (Sofia, 1930), pp. 307-309, thinks there is confusion with Neofit Rilski, who, encouraged by Ilarion, started translating the NT in 1836. 107 Sismanov, Novi Studii, 243; Penev, Bhlgarska literatura, III, 546-562;

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On a trip to Tirnovo in November 1826, Leeves found in Sliven that at the instigation of the cooperative archbishop of Adrianople, two local priests had embarked on a New Testament translation but had given it up after doing a portion of the first Gospel when they learned about Ilarion's (Svistov?) project.108 As a result of this journey Leeves reached the same conclusion as Ilarion, namely, that in view of the "unformed" state of the language, it would have to be "reduced" to some grammatical rules before the New Testament could be translated and to this end he was for translating and printing one Gospel.109 Other propositions were turned up by a Greek ecclesiastic who had been commissioned by Leeves, early in 1827, to explore possibilities in Bucharest; Leeves had reason to believe there were Bulgarians there capable of making a satisfactory translation. Not only did this Greek send back two sample translations but also a proposal from the author, not otherwise identified, of a translation Ilarion was said already to have considered.110 This was not long before Ilarion was "exiled" to Dimotika and therefore temporarily out of the Bulgarian picture. Bucharest was of course a logical spot in which to look for a Bulgarian translation. In the ten years since Exarch Gavril undertook to find one there, Bucharest, like Brasov, had become a focal point for Bulgarian political and cultural activity. In the end, however, it was not directly any of Ilarion's or Leeves' efforts but largely a private Bulgarian initiative that produced the first published portion of the Bible in Bulgarian. As far as can be determined, this New Jubileen sbornik na svistovskoto citaliste. 1858-1931 (Svistov, 1931). Venelin's attack on the post-positive article and those who used it was published in his O zarodyse novoj bolgarskoj literatury, in 1837 (cf. note 13). 108 To Pinkerton, January 18, 1827, printed in BFBS, 23rd Report (1827), 65-73; with editorial changes in the Missionary Register (1827), 478-485; translated in Das Ausland (1828), whence Safarik had his incorrect notion of an 1828 London NT. The Sliven episode is incorrectly cited by Wiener ("America's Share"), and consequently in Bulgarian material; e.g., S. Tabakov, Opit za istorijata na grad Sliven (Sofia, 1924), II, 396-398. 109 Benjamin Barker (sub-agent in Smyrna) to Pinkerton, January 31, 1827, quoting Leeves: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 9. Eventually Ilarion did have a hand in sponsoring both Neofit Rilski's Grammar (1835) and NT (1840). 110 To Pinkerton, February 22, April 27, 1827: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 10. Conceivably this was the "Schoolmaster of Vraca" or the Serafim-Sapunov version discussed below.

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Testament translation, by Father Serafim and his brother Peter Sapunov, was ready before Teodosi began his translation and was sanctioned in Tirnovo and Bucharest in 1820 before Teodosi had finished his first draft. Whether the Serafim-Sapunov translation, about which Leeves learned also from the Greek ecclesiastic in Bucharest, had any relation to Ilarion's several schemes or, for that matter, with anything reported in RBS sources, cannot be determined. Nor is there a satisfactory explanation for the long delay in publication, which at the end Leeves was prepared to assist. When Sapunov decided to undertake the printing himself in 1827 (Serafim had died in 1821 or 1822), it may well have been to forestall some other translation. After additional delays the first part, the Gospels, was published in 1828 at the metropolitan press in Bucharest. However, the rest never followed and the Gospels had very limited circulation, partly because of a rash reference to the "coming of the army of the mighty empire of all Russia" on the title page. 111 In 1827 Leeves was rejoicing that a Bulgarian translation of the New Testament was to result from native initiative and, incidentally, "without any expense or responsibility" on the part of the BFBS, even though he could not have known what a headache Teodosi had been to his colleagues in St. Petersburg. 112 For a variety of reasons, the appearance of Sapunov's Gospels in 1828 merely served to compound the subsequent confusion over Teodosi and the RBS Matthew. The involvement of two similar organizations, the RBS and the BFBS, the absence of any real Bulgarian participation, the understandable inclination of Paterson to bury Teodosi, his translation, and his Matthew, the disgrace of the RBS, the peculiar circumstances of Sapunov's publication, and the rumors of half a dozen other such ventures have all combined to magnify the problem of Teodosi. On the surface it might appear that Pinkerton and his compatriots, 111 Reproduced in Harvard Library Notes, 3, 299. Data on Sapunov in Leeves' (later Barker's) correspondence, beginning with April 27, 1827, are supplemented by correspondence between Metropolitan Grigorie of Bucharest and Patriarch Agathangelos, in Parajkev Angelescu, Noul Testament bulgar dela 1828 (Bucharest, 1934), quoted in H. Kodov, " K t m istorijata na btlgarskija prevod na Sv.Evangelie ot 1828 g o d D u h o v n a kultura,September-December 1934,172-177. 112 April 27, 1827: BFBS, "Agents Book" No. 10; August 11, 1827, BFBS, Twenty-Fourth Report (1828). Actually Barker continued to haggle with Sapunov until Ilarion came up with a fresh translator, Neofit Rilski.

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in typical RBS fashion, had acted too casually and with unseemly haste on a matter about which contemporary Slavic scholars (Dobrovsky, Kopitar, Safarik, Keppen, etc.) were only too ready to admit ignorance and exercise caution. For statistics' sake there was the temptation to add another version and another edition. Also Pinkerton, Henderson, and Paterson were "constantly on the wing," to quote Henderson, and interested in many other things besides a Bulgarian New Testament. Perhaps it was unfortunate that Pinkerton, with the clearest view of the Balkans and the best contacts, was promoted to London and later Frankfort. On the other hand, there were the "friends in Kisinev," to use the RBS euphemism for the polyglot collection of displaced ecclesiastics on whom Pinkerton and the others depended not only for ecclesiastical sanctions (a Bible Society policy at that time) but also for linguistic imprimatur. Yet even if Teodosi had been a Bulgarian Vuk Karadzic, the result might have been similar, considering what happened to Vuk's Serbian translation at the hands of the same "friends in Kisinev" — a "comedy," as Vuk himself later charitably described it. 113 Because of the accident of political geography, the RBS naturally turned to Kisinev rather than to Brasov or Bucharest. Besides, Kisinev was the administrative center for the Bulgarian colonists in Bessarabia, of whom there were some 30,000 at this time, in addition to those in southern Russia and the Principalities. Coming from various parts of Bulgaria, these colonists formed a sort of crazy-quilt of dialects and customs.114 Although Pinkerton had had in mind mainly the Bulgarians in Turkey, undoubtedly Exarch Gavril's interest was prompted by the presence of these Bulgarian colonists and emigrés in his parish.115 113

Preface to the first edition of his NT, Leipzig, 1847. Vuk's troubles stemmed from a combination of ecclesiastical and linguistic interdicts. 114 A short survey of the dialect problems in the area today, with indications of the origins of some of the colonists, can be found in S. B. Bernstejn, "Zadaci izucenija bolgarskix govorov SSSR," Ucenye zapiski Instituía slavjanovedenija, 2 (1950), 219-224, and E. V. Cesko, "Itogi raboty po sostavljeniju lingvisticeskogo atlasa bolg. govorov SSSR," ibid., pp. 232-241; see also A. A. Skal'kovskij, Bolgarskie kolonii v novorossijskom krae (Odessa, 1845), and N. S. Derzavin, "Bolgarskie kolonii v Rossii," SbBAN, 29 (1914). 115 It was while teaching at Gavril's seminary in Kisinev that Venelin first came in contact with Bulgarians and became interested in their history and language. Popruzenko, Ju. / . Venelin i negovoto znacenie v istorijata na bhlgarskoto vhzrazdanie (Sofia, 1903).

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The Bible Society gentlemen of St. Petersburg could hardly have been expected to know about the Phanariot system. Nor could they possibly have known anything about the intricacies of the Bulgarian language problem, although they came to have strong suspicions. Their boldness in plunging into the untrodden Bulgarian field is matched by the hesitancy of their contemporary Slavic scholars in Russia and Austria. The pioneering quality of the RBS Bulgarian project can be seen from the fact that the first to introduce the world to the Bulgarian language was the homespun Serbian scholar Vuk Karadzic, who, prompted by Kopitar, published a short grammatical description of Bulgarian in a series of articles in a Serbian newspaper in Vienna after Teodosi's translation had already been accepted in Kisinev and St. Petersburg.116 Yet although Vuk used a Bulgarian informant, from Razlog in Macedonia, for some time neither he nor his Slavist colleagues knew where Razlog was. The interest aroused by Vuk's disclosures prompted Keppen to duplicate Vuk's experiment in Hermannstadt in 1822, where he found a Bulgarian colony. Using as informant a merchant from Gabrovo (Dimiter Mustakov), he came out with a different result and the correct conclusion that there was more than one Bulgarian dialect.117 The efforts in St. Petersburg and Constantinople to put the Bible into Bulgarian came at a time when the pioneer works of the founding fathers of Slavic studies, including Vostokov (1820), Dobrovsky (1822), Kalajdovic (1824), Safarik (1826), and of Keppen, Kopitar, Karadzic, etc., were tackling what was to be a central issue of Slavic studies: the place of "Old Bulgarian" (as the first Slavic literary language eventually came to be called by many) in the origin and development of the Slavic languages and literatures, and consequently they were interested in the actual spoken Bulgarian language. While Bible Society agents were freely traveling among the Bulgarians, Safarik, for one reason or another, never dared realize his 116 In "Dodatak k sankt-peterburgskim sravnitelnim rjecnicima.. .s osobitima ogledima bugarskog jezika," first in Srpske novine, December 23, 1821 and ff.; separately in Vienna, 1822; reprinted by P. P. Djordjevic, Skupljeni gramaticki ipolemicki spisi Vuka S. Karadzica (Belgrade, 1895), II, 178-240. 117 Romanski, "Btlgarski vi.pros," pp. 107-110. Keppen included his findings in the Bulgarian article he published in his Bibliograficeskie listy in 1826, shortly before it was suppressed by the authorities for "sacrilege" to the Slavic Apostles. Compare the suppression of the RBS.

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cherished life-long dream of studying the Bulgarians in their native habitat. 118 When the Russian Academy under the presidency of Admiral Siskov gave up the idea of trying to induce Safarik and some of his Czech colleagues to migrate to Russia in order to establish Slavic studies at the four Russian universities (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Xar'kov, and Kazan'), Venelin (1802-1839) was given 6000 rubles for a year's travel and research in the Principalities and Bulgaria but he spent less than three weeks in Varna and a few more in Silistra. His Bulgarian grammar (1835), rejected by the Academy, remained unpublished. Later, deciding to train its own Slavists, the Academy granted five-year traveling fellowships to four young scholars with the express assignment of visiting Bulgaria, but only one of them, Grigorovic, dared do so; and in 1844, he brought back "rich loot," to quote the envious Safarik.119 In 1822, Teodosi was right at least about there being "no rules of grammar." The approval his translation got in Kisinev was probably due to ignorance. In Tirnovo and in Brasov there would have been no unanimous consent. In fact, long years of acrimonious philological debate and "orthographic" see-sawing were to follow, stoked by Venelin's sour animadversions. Next to the Church Question, probably the most burning national issue was how to spell. Although the publication of the whole Bible in 1871 did not completely resolve the controversy it helped to entrench the literary language along Russian-modified lines of the spoken Eastern dialect as against the old-fashioned, also Russian-modified, "Slaveno-Bulgarian" Church Slavic, the conventionalized literary medium which some writers 118 §ismanov, "Licnite snosenija na P. Ios. Safarika s B-hlgarite," Bhlgarski pregled, 2 (1894), 74-85; and "Beleski za Btlgarija v n>kopisnoto nasledstvo na Pavla Iosifa Safarika," Bzlgarski pregled, 3 (1896), 58-77. Safarik itched to clean up the "Augean Stables," as he described the chaotic state of knowledge of Bulgaria (letter to Kopitar, February 27, 1827). 119 Sismanov, "Studii iz oblastta na btlgarskoto vtzrazdanie. V. I. Grigorovic, negovoto pttesestvie v evropejska Turcija (1844-1845), i negovite otnosenija k t m btlgarite," SbBAN, 6 (1916), 52ff. In 1841 the Bishop of Montenegro advised Prejs (Preuss), another of the four Russian scholars, not to venture into Bulgaria unless he had two heads in reserve: Romanski, "Bhlgarski vtpros," p. 119. Kopitar also, particularly in his capacity as Imperial Librarian, regretted the niggardliness of the Vienna authorities (in comparison with SPb.) in subsidizing pilfering expeditions to Mt. Athos and the like: "Patriotische Fantasien eines Slaven," in Kopitars Kleinere Schriften (Vienna, 1857), I, 70.

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believed to be "Old Bulgarian" but which had been losing ground for some time.120 For his analysis of the Bulgarian language, Vuk had used, in addition to two Bulgarian books and some other transcribed oral material, translations of New Testament selections by his Bulgarian informant. 121 Later Venelin used Sapunov's Gospels (1828) at which to direct his Bulgarian language theories and in 1844 Grigorovic utilized both Sapunov and Neofit Rilski's 1840 New Testament as texts for his excellent study of the Bulgarian language.122 Although, taken by itself, Teodosi's still-born attempt served mainly to exercise Bulgarian bibliographers, the efforts of Pinkerton and his successors nevertheless have a place, small though it be, in the history of the Bulgarian language and literature and of Slavic studies. The Russian Bible Society's concern for the Bulgarians came at a time of both political and academic interest in the Balkans. The history of this concern reflects the general state of ignorance in Europe about Bulgaria in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It reveals something of the aims, methods, and problems of the Bible societies and of their contributions in fields other than the dissemination of the Bible.123 It is also a part of the early cultural phase of the Bulgarian national revival. Finally, just as Bible societies were a significant by-product of Protestant missionary "imperialism," so perhaps one may detect in some of the activities of the semi-official Russian Bible Society a manifestation of Russia's urge to the Balkans. 120 Penco Slavejkov, one of Bulgaria's greatest modern writers said, with some exaggeration, that "the translation of the Bible put an end to the language disorder, the competition of various dialects for primacy, and established the literary language. After publication of the Bible (1871), the quarrels among the various Bulgarian dialects were silenced, and the eastern Bulgarian dialect became the common language of all intellectual and national workers." Quoted in Zornica, 51 (April 8, 1931), 5. The OT was first published in three parts in 1860, 1862, and 1864, and revised in 1871. 121 The originals, minus Vuk's editing, are among Kopitar's papers in the Ljubljana National Library. There is a description by Jacimirskij, Opisanie juznoslavjanskix i russkix rukopisej zagranicnix bibliotek (Sbornik ORJaS, 88 [1921]), 908-909. 122 Neofit himself listed in his 1835 Bulgarian Grammar all Bulgarian books known to him, including Sapunov (which proved to be a better translation than his own NT). Teodosi is not mentioned. 123 Kopitar wrote in 1829, with reference to BFBS publications, "Dadurch mussen die Hungerjahre dieses Faches auf einmal in erfreulichen (Jberfluss verwandelt werden." "Albanische, walachische und bulgarische Sprache," p. 106.

THE RAY OF THE MICROCOSM by Petar Petrovic Njegos Translated with an Introduction by Anica Savic-Rebac* INTRODUCTION 1. THE POET AND HIS POSITION

When the Yugoslav nations, a hundred and fifty years ago, had newly begun to take an active and independent part in great political events, mainly through the insurrections in Serbia and her emancipation from Turkish domination, the Western world also discovered the Yugoslavs' highest artistic achievement, their folk poetry. This happened just at the time that the Romantic movement was new and enthusiastically interested in folk poetry, and generally in the poetry of distant countries. Serbian folk poetry, advancing together with the struggle for national liberation, conquered the world, delighting readers by its special character and unique features. It delighted them, but from time to time it also called forth a feeeling of strangeness, even though the country where it had arisen, the nearest East, almost touching their frontiers, was open to everybody and was without particular mysteries. It had distinct outlines and harsh contrasts, and was * Editors' note. Mrs. Rebac, Professor of Classics at Belgrade University, died soon after this article and translation had been received in this country. In preparing her typescript for publication, we have made only the most necessary editorial changes and have preferred in some cases to leave the interpretation of an unidiomatic passage or the location of an obscure reference up to the reader. The translation is very free and perhaps idiosyncratic, but we have made few emendations. It was not Mrs. Rebac's intention to give a close rendering of the diction and idiom of the original, but to present the philosophic content in a poetic form which she considered suitable. Her version is stylistically unlike Njegos, but her faithful reproduction of Njegos's ideas is a real tour de force.

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inhabited by people who acted quickly and decisively. Nevertheless, this country with its poetry was something new and separate, with something of an atmosphere of remoteness, the psychic realm of a nation which had developed under circumstances and influences very different from those which had formed the Western nations. The Yugoslav lands had been in closest touch with one force which had not directly influenced the West — Byzantium — and were engaged in actual struggle with another such force — the Muslim East. These two contacts, which are felt even today, near and living in many traditions, had met with the peculiar character of our nation, harsh and passionate. This character vigorously modified the borrowings it took f r o m the East and created out of them a new whole which is not to be understood through a study of influences, but only directly, through the actions and works of the Yugoslavs themselves. It was precisely because the West, and also the eastern Slavic countries, felt our folk poetry to be the completest expression of the character of the Yugoslavs that the poetry was approached with such a vivid interest. It offered the Western reader (we may take Goethe as an example) the same contrasting qualities of nearness and remoteness as the country — belonging at once to modern Europe and to an exotic antiquity, showing a strange present through which appear features of ancient Greece and Byzantium, and preserving in its European nearness not mere reflections but the very life of the East. Like our country, this poetry is a world of vigorous contrasts, where in tender love songs inflexible traditions of fighting appear, and in heroic ballads a strange ethical and sentimental meekness occurs. The cult of heroic self-sacrifice, inherited from a close touch with classical traditions, is connected with a new and highly developed feeling from our national tragedy of the fourteenth century, the loss of the independent Serbian state, which had become the predominant feature of the psychological life of the nation through centuries. Out of this outer and inner state there emerged Montenegro, as its most complete concretization — that small piece of rocky and barren soil which had first freed itself from Turkish domination and had carried on a continuous struggle with the Turks. The irresistible impression it gives is that of being a projection of ancient Sparta into modern times, a country where the entire moral life was set on heroic discipline, where the heroes of the national past were invoked

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in battles like the Dioscuri in ancient Greece. Montenegro itself found its own fullest concretization in the great poet of the Montenegrins and the Yugoslavs, Petar Petrovic Njegos. Bishop Rade, as Njegos's people love to call him, uniting his ecclesiastic rank and his popular, non-ecclesiastic name, more than any other Yugoslav poet combines folk poetry with his own artistic creation, archaic thought with modern philosophy. With new ideals he joins influences which had led a hidden life through centuries; and in a Western European setting he places the ancient heroic Balkans, represented in the fighters of Montenegro. His figure, strange and fascinating even today, a hundred years after his death, a hundred years which have given us many poets of rank, still dominates our poetry, though he has not actually exerted a great influence on the literary creation of our nations. His is not a poetry which might be imitated; such a synthesis of the general and the personal, of popular and artistic elements can be realized only in a single case, only by an exceptional personality. In a certain sense, he marks an end, though he was writing in the beginning of a new period of our literature; an end because his work is the most complete transposition of folk poetry into literary creation. It reaches the highest point folk poetry could attain in its meeting with literary art. It is not a conscious and determined penetration into the essence and the style of ancient folk poetry as it appears in Chatterton, nor does it sing in the spirit and manner of the folk songs of Burns and of the Serbian poet Branko Radicevic. It is an eruption of the popular soul with all its fullness, of the popular style with all its primitive completeness, into literature. Bishop Rade succeeded in forming it in the peculiar plasticity of his expression; this gives his work its great symbolic value for the Yugoslavs, and his poetry a unique position even in our literature, which developed in much closer contact with popular life and poetry than did the literature of the Western nations. This can be understood only from the peculiar circumstances of his life, and from his brilliant qualities as well as from certain limitations of his genius. In the beginning of the nineteenth centrury, when the boy Rade Petrovic, who was to become the prince of his small country and the great poet of the Yugoslavs, was born in the village of Njegusi, Montenegro was a peculiar social and political formation. It was

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sometimes called an Orthodox theocracy, but it has been rightiy emphasized that this term is not adequate, since the priests were not a separate class but were peasants and warriors like all the other inhabitants of the country, only a bit more literate. The highest authority was, however, the bishop archimandrite of the monastery of Cetinje, who since the end of the seventeenth century was customarily elected from among the members of the family of the Petrovici, the former dynasties having perished in family struggles and in fighting with the Turks. Montenegro was surrounded by Yugoslav countries under direct Turkish or Austrian domination. In the days when our poet was born, in 1813, the prince-bishop was his uncle, Petar I, highly respected by the people, very active as a politician and a soldier, and finally proclaimed a saint. The subjects of the bishop, as well as his family, were peasants and warriors who lived in the poverty of their bare mountains but cherished the proud traditions of their families, their famous ancestors, and spotless honor. This peasant aristocracy of warriors existed simultaneously with elements of patriarchal democracy in a people where there were neither classes nor wealth. It often came into conflict with the autocratic tendencies of the prince that were constantly growing and endeavoring to break the opposition of the families organized in clans and of prominent leaders. In this small state with social relations so primitive and complicated at the same time, where a bishop was the commander of warriors, where everybody was a peasant and poor, but the chief motive of all activity was pride of families and individuals, where political conflicts consisted in struggles between the peasant aristocracy of the chiefs and the patriarchal autocracy of the princes; where, nevertheless, every activity had one final aim, the resistance to the foreign enemy whose overwhelming superiority was in no proportion to the small and poor country defending itself— there Rade Tomov Petrovic grew up, reigned, and created his poetical works. He was the nephew of the bishop Petar I and was himself destined to be bishop, and prince under the name of Petar II. As a boy Petrovic first left the humble cottage of his parents, where his education had consisted of folk poetry, for the old monastery of Cetinje, where he got some theological knowledge, and then for a school in the neighborhood of Herceg Novi, on the coast of the Adriatic, in the Bay of Kotor, where he was touched by some worldly culture. After a short time, however, he returned to the monastery of

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Cetinje (the town of Cetinje then hardly existed at all) and there he found the most eccentric tutor that could be imagined, the poet Sima Milutinovic Sarajlija (i.e., of Sarajevo). He was a dreamer and an adventurer, a soldier and a Freemason, who passed his days with fighting and literary work, wandered from Vidin in Bulgaria, where he lived as an exile, to Weimar, and when he was not engaged in some fighting, wrote the most unintelligible verses in the whole of Serbian literature. Such a teacher could not develop in his pupil a strong feeling for form, a cult of art and artistic discipline, especially at a time when our writing was only beginning to absorb the spirit and expression of modern literature; but he imbued him with a high notion of the poet's function. At the same time he was unable to give him an introduction and guidance into higher intellectual regions, especially into philosophy, which attracted them both irresistibly; nor could he provide him with a many-sided general education. Sarajlija, however, did awaken Petrovic's intellectual hunger and guided it in a spiritual and even mystic direction which came to prevail with the poet and found expression in his verses, though in fact it was not in full harmony with the nature of his intellect and the peculiarity of his temperament. The teacher himself had passed through materialistic phases; his own temperament and intellect were not those of a mystic. He was probably attracted to mysticism by his inclinations toward the fantastic, and particularly by some personal influence which had made an extraordinary impression on his poetical receptivity. Such influences could have come from different sources. From several of his poems we may conclude that Sima Milutinovic went through an adventure which led him to mysticism when at Vidin, where, after some materialistic verses, he wrote two mystic poems which doubtless influenced his pupil. 1 Some rare Cabbalistic elements in the work of his pupil could induce us to suppose that Milutinovic knew at Vidin some learned rabbi from Salonica or Palestine; but it is quite as possible that, as a Freemason, he was received during his rather long sojourn in Leipzig and Jena into some lodge with mystic tendencies, some late offshoot of the Rosicrucians, where Cabbalistic, or rather pseudo-Cabbalistic elements were cultivated. 1 These are The First Dawn of Solitude, and especially The Second Dawn of Solitude. Their influence was studied by J. Heidenreich in Prilozi za knjiievnost, jezik, istoriju ifolklor, 18,128 if.

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In fact, we meet with Cabbalistic elements in a poem of the pupil — The Ray of the Microcosm (Luca mikrokozma) — and not in the works of the teacher. But the bishop's travels were those of a high political personage to Russia, Austria, and Italy, and there were in them fewer possibilities for strange meetings than in the wanderings of a free poet. Milutinovic probably introduced his pupil in some way to the Masons. There were possibly Masons in the circle of friends Njegos had in Trieste, and it is almost certain that his teacher of French, Faume, who spent a year in Cetinje after having fought in the Polish insurrection of 1830-31, was a Mason.2 Probably some similar ties attached him to the prominent Slovak writer L'udevit Stur; this follows from the verses he addressed to him. He was perhaps himself the member of a closed circle at home or abroad that cultivated ideas which emerge in his works and for which he wrote the Ray, but his mystic inclinations must in the first place be connected with his earliest and most important teacher. He made this connection himself, dedicating to him the Ray and setting forth in the funeral poem to his "dust" his main mystic convictions. In other respects, the influence of Milutinovic is not so marked. Doubtless he developed in Njegos one of the features of every young man in Montenegro, an ardent patriotism; the poet emphasized in the Dedication of the Ray, in the midst of quite different ideas, the national ideals of "the Serbs and the Slavs" of his teacher and himself. It was in part a merit of Milutinovic's that the patriotism of Njegos developed such a wide historic outlook; and above all, Milutinovic directed his pupil to connect the Serbian heroic ideal and the Serbian heroic past with ancient Greece. Our poets from 1800 nearly to 1900 felt Hellenic heroic myth and history through our past, which was often imbued with mythic elements; and, vice versa, they often felt our own past through Hellenic myth and history. This connection or synthesis may be met with in any poetry close to classical tradition; but it is nowhere uttered in such an immediate and simple manner as with us, where it 2 As Prof. Kolendic pointed out to me, Njegos had many intimate friends among the Freemasons in Kotor, where, as in the whole of Dalmatia, many lodges were founded during the French domination. They were closed by the Austrians, but their members continued to feel like Masons and to cling to Masonic traditions. Whether the poet himself was received into a lodge somewhere is a point still to be elucidated.

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issued less from literary classicism than from ancient traditions of the Balkans, which imbued our patriotism almost insensibly with the classical heroic ideal. Becoming conscious of this closeness, the poets of our classicism speak quite naturally, in one breath, of "Alexander, Milos, and Scaevola" (Lucian Musicki) and think of "Troy, Kosovo, and Sparta" (Ljubomir Nenadovic, in 1889). The patriotism of Milutinovic is also full of this feeling of closeness to antiquity. In his odd diction, however, we have only a hybrid interlacing of mythological and Serbian national motifs. But with the bishop it became a harmonious synthesis of ancient and national elements in one and the same vision, and inspired his Mountain (Gorski vijenac), a work which develops the theme of heroic death, conceived in the spirit of antiquity, where Oblilic, the hero of the battle of Kosovo, soars like a genius of war "above youths of fiery heart." These sentiments are proffered in a simple diction, near to that of folk poetry. Fortunately the teacher, who never succeeded in freeing himself from his heavy and turbid phrases, had his pupil maintain the simple popular style, the one with which the young man had grown up. He did not change it even under the influence of high artistic poetry, Russian and French, which he could read in the original, but remained faithful to his native style. Mystic philosophy and the heroic myth of the ancients, connected with our own struggle for national liberation — these are the main elements of culture conveyed to young Rade by his teacher. The other knowledge he got, at home and for a short time in Russia, was inevitably twofold, political and theological. He was well acquainted with theological problems, though he was not a model monk nor an orthodox thinker. But that was not required from him. The atmosphere of the Eastern Church is lighter and dogmatically less rigid than that of Catholicism; and besides, the Serbian priests, especially in Austria, were in a politically dangerous position and had more grievous cares than those about dogmatic orthodoxy. This made it possible for another poet who was also a bishop, the classicist Lucian Musicki, mentioned above, who wrote in the first decades of the past century, to declare in an ode that he had chosen his ecclesiastical name of Lucian from admiration for the Greek writer Lucian of Samosata — who used to mock at all religions, including Christianity. Moreover, in poetic expression heterodox

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opinions are easily overlooked; that was for centuries the case with Paradise Lost. But both Milton and Njegos were well-trained theologians, and thus they knew how far they could go in the free expression of their opinions. After all, the Serbian public did not reproach the bishop with heterodoxies and a life far from that of an exemplary monk, because it was well aware that his priestly function was purely political. Like the prelates of the Renaissance, who were often politicians and soldiers, he clung to his ecclesiastic rank exclusively for political reasons, while in other respects he behaved like a civilian, used to wear arms and the national dress of the Montenegrins, very rarely celebrated Mass, and wrote ardent love-poems — which, however, he did not publish, and of which only one has so far been found. He made no great effort to conceal his gallant adventures, especially abroad, where, as one of the best-looking men of his time, of brilliant intelligence and high rank, he was admired by ladies of the high society of St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Italy. All this was not held against the poet and prince who was, besides, a bishop. This was the bright side of his political position; but it brought to him great hardship likewise. Neither the inner nor the external circumstances of Montenegro were easy. The small, semi-sovereign country, surrounded by the peripheral districts of two mighty empires, Turkey and Austria, was under the protection of a third, very distant empire — Russia. The position was all the more difficult for Njegos, who had no particular political talent, though he was neither irresolute nor overscrupulous. He could not record any outstanding political success, but he passed somehow with his little ship of state through the political tempests of two decades. This cost him much grief and tension. The inner circumstances in his country harassed him even more, particularly the complicated relations of the chiefs of the clans with each other and with the prince, and their opposition to his efforts to organize something like a firm central government. During two decades he endeavored to break their opposition, as well as their personal jealousies; at times he even thought of an escape from his difficult position to a country where he would enjoy complete freedom — to America. 3

3

See Pisma iz Italije, by Ljubomir Nenadovic (Belgrade, 1907), p. 24.

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My own fate, too, well known it is to thee — I deem, there is no similar on earth: I grew beside the gates of Tartarus, It howls at me with horrid yells of hell... These words from the Dedication of the Ray are among those rare confessions of great personalities whose sincerity at once appalls and delights us in a spiritual atmosphere remote from immediate personal passions and emotions. These hardships and struggles in his life give, however, a fuller relief to his personality, and we need not regret that it was so, especially since he was no martyr but always returned the blows he got. He was not mild towards himself either; once he called himself "a prince among barbarians and a barbarian among princes." For though he was highly conscious of his own worth and that of his nation, though in his testament he thanked God for having "raised him high above many men in spirit and body," he nevertheless felt that he and his nation — still engaged in continuous fighting against the same enemy as through centuries, and for this reason living inevitably in primitive conditions — were in many respects separated from the modern European family of nations. But at the same time he believed that his real value and greatness were in his unity with his people, with the fighting instincts and their inmost tendencies. In his words about "the prince among barbarians and the barbarian among princes" we can see as much pride as self-criticism. He did, however, all he could to get as near as possible to the modern European pattern of thought. Unfortunately, for many reasons we are not sufficiently acquainted with the intellectual elements that formed his mind; especially for his later years, we are mostly limited to conjectures. Only a very few of his letters with literary and philosophic content are left; his memoirists, such as the charming Ljubomir Nenadovic, were much more concerned with his dazzling appearance among foreigners in Italy, where Nenadovic had known him, and with the primitive and heroic mentality of his attendants, than with precious information about the literary works and the philosophic currents Njegos cherished and admired. Nenadovic himself, though of vigorous Serbian stock and the son of one of the leaders of Karageorge's insurrection, looked at him in some measure as a foreigner would have done — he admired him as a bright and somehow exotic picture. He was, of course,

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interested in the bishop's political plans but he did not analyze his moral life and his passionate intellectual experiences. The latter are too little known to us. Part of Njegos's library and of his correspondence has been destroyed, perhaps through the fault of his second successor, King Nikola, who was himself a poet and enormously ambitious. Then came the Austrian occupation of 1915-1918, when even his bones were moved from his tomb on Lovcen, the mountain which dominates the whole region, and which the bishop himself had chosen for his last resting-place. The remains of Njegos's library have been interspersed with later acquisitions, so that it has become nearly impossible to select the works which actually belonged to the bishop. On the other hand, such precious books have disappeared as the French translation of Paradise Lost with notes in Njegos's hand, which would reveal to us so much about the poet's relation to Milton. There are in the library Russian translations of classical poets, the Greek tragedians, and Pindar with underlined verses. It is rather difficult to believe that this was done by some other hand than Njegos's, e.g., the passage in Pindar's second Olympian Ode (v. 75 ss.) about the mystic destiny of the soul. The readers of the Ray will notice that the literary influence of these works on Njegos was not remarkable; in fact, he was much more susceptible to the intellectual content than to the artistic features of the works of great poets he used to read. His poetry, so complicated in thought, is simple in style. But even his predecessors' ideas he accepted only insofar as they corresponded to his inclinations. This obviously resulted from his position between folk poetry and literary art, and from his inspired but non-artistic temperament. It is particularly to be noticed in a comparison with Milton, who was, besides Dante, the poet he read most intensely, who influenced him in his conception and in many details, but whom he did not attempt to imitate in his artistic aims. Unfortunately, being deprived of the poet's literary biography, we do not know how he himself estimated the influence of Milton, as well as that of Dante, on the Ray; but he gave a precious hint of his appreciation of their greatness. In the dedication of the Mountain Wreath to the memory of Karageorge, we read the lines: It is not hard for a lion to step from a great wood — In great nations the nest for genius is made.

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Knowing his love of truth and the psychological insight of his confessions, we understand that here too he is speaking not only of Karageorge and Napoleon but at the same time is comparing himself to the poets of great nations. He evidently was aware of all that hampers the development of a poet in a small and poor nation, particularly in such a difficult period as that in which he lived — as well as of all that helps it in great and free nations. But at the same time he was conscious of his own particular significance, a significance which is on a different level from that of a modern poet, but which keeps his glory still alive in his nation, now that a century has passed since his death. First of all, there is his personality, strange and fascinating, which continues to be intensely vivid to the imagination of the Yugoslavs. As Byron used to impose himself on the imagination of his readers, surpassing by the style and the symbolic value of his personality his own poetic greatness, so the personality of Bishop Rade dominates our literature, transcending by its great symbolic outlines the very limits of his poetry. In his splendid and tragic personality the nation sees its own splendor and tragedy. As the prince of Montenegro and the poet of the Mountain Wreath, he is at once the symbol and the main poetic utterance of our struggle for national freedom. With these general ideals, and the Serbian awareness of the tragic elements of their destiny, he unites a complicated inner life, a bitterness of personal experiences, and intellectual pessimism. To a certain degree he had to sacrifice his ambitions as a poet to his political activity, his emotional life to his ecclesiastic position. Relative freedom of word and action he nevertheless enjoyed, and a certain contentment he received from his high position could not remove his bitter feeling of havin gsacrificed precious emotions and activities. To us, retrospectively, his life appears overshadowed by his illness — tuberculosis. We see him wandering through Italy, led by some faint hope of recovering, and dying in the chill melancholy of old Cetinje, when he was but thirty-eight years old (October 19, 1851). Then there is the intellectual root and bias of his poetry, which often transcends its poetic expression. It has been said that he falls out of the history of literature like an erratic block. That is true only if we consider him as a poet of the full nineteenth century; but we have, in fact, no right to do so. The very social structure and political

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situation of his country, the peculiar conditions of his education, his deep attachment to the folk — all this points to the fact, already emphasized, that his greatness is not on the same level as that of a modern poet. He was a poet of rank, but he cared little for the artistic side of poetry; he was a thinker, but his philosophy led him mostly to very ancient conceptions. In politics he belonged to his time, but his activity was limited to a land where the struggles themselves had partly an archaic character. Njegos is the epitome of the ancient Balkans, heroic and mystic, the Balkans of fighting and agones and the Balkans of Orphism and Bogomilism, complicated in richness of motifs and simple in artistic expression, something of a folk poetry overladen with the wisdom of centuries and, for this very reason, less artistic than genuine folk poetry. Issuing from a deep primary unity with the folk, having a sort of memory of the experiences of centuries, Njegos's poetry compels us to consider it as a product of a much earlier age than that in which it was written. This is to be felt, in the first place, in its peculiar nearness to ancient Greece, which results not from individual experience but from the circumstances in which our nations developed. As already mentioned, many Yugoslav poets of the nineteenth century united the past of Greece and our own in one vision, very simplified, of course, blending the Hellenic cult of virtue and liberty with the ideals of our struggle for freedom. In this there was literary influence too; but Hellenism, in general outlines, lives with us a life very different indeed from that in the West, where it mostly depends on conscious admiration. It is a life of organic continuity and immediate inheritance, a spiritual renewal of ancient subconscious traditions. It issued from primeval heroic and mystic elements spreading through the Balkans, from the Hellenic features of Eastern Christianity and medieval Bogomilism, from the slow penetration of the late efforts of Byzantine culture. That is the way in which Njegos, together with his nation, experienced Greece, adding to it a conscious cult of the virtue of the ancients. In this he is nearer to our own, and to the Western Middle Ages than to the Renaissance and to the centuries following it; for this later Hellenism has passed through the medium of conscious artistic and intellectual admiration. Though he began to translate the Iliad and read the tragedians and Pindar, it is not through literary influence that Njegos became a poet of motives belonging to Greek and

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Eastern antiquity, but through sympathy with latent and often deeply hidden currents in his nation. The poetry of Njegos consists, like that of Pindar, of two basic elements, the heroic and the mystic. The society in which he sang and for which he sang lived itself for the sake of heroic fighting and the glory of a name. In him, the heroic element is deeply patriotic, being closely connected with the ideal of national liberation. But this patriotism itself is essentially a sort of patriotic religiousness, as in the Athens of Pericles, where Euripides himself never approached it with his criticism. Our patriotism developed under different conditions, under the impact of the fall of our independent state and the cult of self-sacrifice; but its main feature is the Greek (and Roman) patriotic religiousness. Njegos became the highest poet of his nation in the nineteenth century because he is the most typical singer of the heroic ideal and the glory which outlives the fallen hero, and because he conceived these elements as a high reality and the most precious of achievements. At the same time he was, like Pindar, the poet of the mystic fall and rising of the soul. Only a man of the Balkans, subconsciously near to the ancient Greeks, could recreate this Pindaric unity of the heroic and the mystic element, could sing of the glory which outlives the hero as the only aspiration of the fighter, and at the same time of the mystic destiny of the soul. I. E. Harrison considers that the mystic eschatology sung by Pindar was in contradiction with his temperamental materialism; the same might be said of the Yugoslav poet. But that inner duality of temperamental materialism and spiritual aspiration is not rare with poets, and even with philosophers; it is, however, rarely manifested so directly as at the stage of archaic complexity, when Pindar and Njegos proclaimed immortality in glory as well as the mystic life of the soul. Such archaic complexity makes it possible for poets to express different ideals existing simultaneously in the nation and in themselves. With Pindar as with Njegos, there enters into the wider ideal of heroism a narrower one, that of mysticism — issuing for the Greek poet from an Orphic circle, for the poet of the Yugoslavs from halfforgotten ancient traditions and contemporary influences which are very difficult to determine. These two elements could not possibly be blended, as they spring from different roots, naive materialism and spirituality. They were not blended for Pindar either, though there

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existed in ancient Greek tradition a particular paradise for heroes, which was changed in later days into a paradise for great statesmen; it is presented to us by Cicero in the Somnium Scipionis. But this is not mysticism, only the transposition of the cult of glory to some more lasting regions. Nor did Njegos blend these two elements; but he represented the ecstasy of dying for a high aim as a psychic state not far from mysticism. It is this transcending of the limits of earthly life which connects in archaic complexity the heroic rejection of life and the mystic craving for a life above life; and this complexity itself is natural with poets who accepted mysticism in spite of their temperamental materialism as men and artists. These two basic elements of Njegos's poetry are at the same time its two dominant motifs; they are fully expressed in The Mountain Wreath and The Ray of the Microcosm. Quite naturally, in the atmosphere of the Wreath there are traces of mysticism — in the heroic speeches of the blind old Iguman Stephan — while in the Ray there are inevitably heroic elements. Among his shorter philosophic poems, there are some which read like preludes to the Ray, such as the earliest, written before he was twenty, The Montenegrin to the Almighty God. He mentions there already the travel of the soul away from "the fiery ocean" and her return to it, and the binding of innumerable worlds by an invisible chain. Others are written in the same period as the Ray, e.g., The Thought; or even later, as the Funeral Hymn for Sima Milutinovic, and the Hymn to Night, dated Rome, January 1, 1851; they further develop the theme of the Ray. The heroic motif occupies an even larger place in the work of Njegos. In early poems, which are a copy of folk poetry in spirit and style, it has not yet emerged out of the traditional historic pattern; even in later works, as in the play The False Emperor Stephan, where the emphasis is on the representation of Montenegrin events in the eighteenth century, drawn with remarkable realism and with much psychological insight, it is given as a necessary element in the events but not as the inner center of the work. In the Mountain Wreath, however, the heroic motif is before us, bare and ecstatic, in some disproportion with the central event but deeply connected with elements of national life of a far more general significance, and perfectly blended with the poet's patriotism. Those whom the poet apostrophizes as the "Generation created for song," to whom he addresses the words:

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Young grain, incline thy stalks, Thy harvest came before its hour, those "Youths with fiery heart" — they are not the heroes of a local and even ambiguous conflict, but the representatives of the final struggle which is to bring freedom to the Serbians and to all the Yugoslavs. They are the heroes of the future — a very near future, as the poet hoped — who are only half-way projected into the past. This anticipation of the future, much more than the representation of the past, made the Mountain Wreath so dear to our nations; it gives the work its wide horizons and its symbolic value. The very diction of the work is born out of the heroic element, and is essentially the diction of the folk. Out of it is born its melody also, which is not to be echoed in another language. This melody is particularly stirring in the choruses which accompany the action in this work, which is conceived as a drama but in fact has the life of an epic, with dialogues in loosely connected scenes. In an attempt to render in a foreign language verses vibrating with the exaltation of a whole community, such as the song beginning: "Level Cevo, nest of heroes" — there would chiefly remain the epic element, without the deep undercurrent of emotion. The magic of verses like those at the end of the work, where the bishop Danilo consoles one of the heroes about his broken rifle: Gloomy Vuk, raise thy moustaches, Let me see the buckles on thy breast, Let me count the gun-balls, How many of them have broken thy buckles — consists in a strange blending of the poet's voice with that of the folk, but it is hardly to be felt outside the Serbian language. It is often difficult to distinguish, in Njegos, how far philosophic reflection goes, and where poetic vision begins. This is particularly difficult in his basic concept itself, in his philosophy of light; it is always uncertain whether it originates in philosophic or in artistic experience. He was probably highly receptive to sensations of light, and this made him accept that philosophy with such ardor. Before he was twenty, he sang that our soul was the spark which departs from the fiery ocean and returns to it again. This concept gave an almost exclusive bias to his imagination. What fascinates him most are storms of light in the infinite, the rising of young suns from the dark

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abyss, the parallelism of "worlds and minds," and above all light as the center and the essence of the universe, the divinity manifesting itself in light — "God is light" — and from which there emanate souls like rays. Light is for him The central disk from which the flames of beams Are streaming forth like whirl-winds... And the way of emanation is the same as that of the return to God : Yes, all the beams, imprisoned in gloomy woods of clouds — To the general disk every beam must return. Divinity as the ocean of light, the hearth or the disk, the soul as the spark or the beam — that is the central artistic vision as well as the main philosophic conception of our poet. Several years after the death of Njegos, Victor Hugo wrote the lines : Rien n'existe que lui, le flamboiement profond, Et les âmes, les grains de lumière... The beauties of the earth, as far as they appear in the poetry of Njegos, are mainly a connection with those of the sky: the dew or the hailstone which is raised to the sky by sunbeams, the flowers with which the earth greets the morning sun. Even the sea which he saw so often in the magnificent Bay of Kotor had for him merely a symbolic importance, as in the image in the Mountain Wreath describing how the whole material creation is convulsed by the spasms of the spirit imprisoned in it : The sea is groaning under the might of the sky, The skies are shaking in the sea... Earthly beauties consisted for Njegos mainly in the sparkling of high mountains and eternal snow ; he loved them most when at an almost abstract distance : even in comparisons, where poets usually introduce images of warm and intimate life, he speaks of the celestial armies waiting like forests covered with snow, clashing like masses of polar ice. Once, in a strange image, the two faithful cherubs are passing . . . like two ships with swelling sails that glide Through narrow channels, and through snowy fields Move winding o n . . .

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Once there appears the classical comparison with bees, and once a throng of sea-gods and monsters which has itself probably a mystical background. The poet's imagination, which often gives a material appearance to that which had to remain abstract or at least uncertain, makes the beauties of the earth seem remote and unreal. The mystical element provails in poems of more human interest likewise. It is highly significant that the only extant love poem of Njegos — Night more precious than Life — has a particular merit as the description of a mystic experience. There are few poems in the literature of the world — one of them is the Ghitagovinda — where mystic panerotism is expressed so directly as here, the ecstasy of loVe embracing the universe, a mood in which the lover feels that the human soul has its intercourse with heaven. The whole poem is an amazing "holy marriage." The introduction is the ecstasy preceding the consummation of love: When a bud is opening, or dewdrops falling slowly from the grass, To my ears they sound like thunder... Moments seem as hours to me now, and time stands still... In this metamorphosis of all sensations, the poet, who in his mystic approach to divinity feels as a woman, now, in a rapid change of function, embraces his beloved " . . .like a great god." In this ecstasy, the poet feels not only the nearness of divinity but divine powers in himself; later, however, he experiences an inevitable sinking from that state: But deprived of my throne I am a lesser deity... In this unique representation of the mystic moments in the ecstasy of love, which is partly so intense because the poet did not think of publishing the verses, the emotional and even the sensual moments are of little importance. Probably he would not have revealed so directly the mystic experience in connection with sensual love had he had a greater interest in the emotional side, and had he wished to express it. In the Mountain Wreath he described a love which is simply feeling and nothing else, the strangely restrained feeling of a celebrated warrior who is hiding it

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and which he utters only in a sort of trance. But this is not given as a personal experience of the poet, only as one of the many traits illustrating the life of Njegos's mountaineers, a feature from the heroic sphere, to which it belongs, as the first love poem belongs to the mystic sphere. The poet's ethics too are deeply rooted in mysticism; his very pessimism is connected with mystic traditions. The mysticism of the Orphics, the most ancient European mysticism, developed in Greece during a period of unusual economic hardship, and since then pessimism has been one of the basic features of mysticism. The body is the grave of the soul, with Plato, who proffers the Orphic derivation of [xa, the body, from ai^a, the grave; with Dante, for whom the body is una triste tomba; with Victor Hugo, for whom it is a prison; with Njegos, who varies the image in many ways. This pessimistic conception found deep echoes in Njegos's personal inclinations; we are impressed by the verses toward the end of the Ray about the final destruction by flame of the earth, the theater of horror, The scene of evil, by the heavens abhorred, The brooding nest of human misery, Envenomed by the bitterness of tears, Polluted oft by streams of guiltless blood, Accursed a thousand times before my throne By the heart-rending voice of innocence... The same feeling made him state in his will, written on May 20,1850: "Even as Thy inaccessible majesty dissolved me into hymns of divine j o y . . . still with horror I observed and lamented the miserable destiny of man." So we see that with his pessimism Njegos remained in the circle of mystic ideas, while as a singer of the heroic ideal he inclined towards a more serene conception of life. As a poet Njegos is, of course, much more than a mystic. Nobody has yet been made a poet by mysticism. To become that, many other qualities are needed, qualities of imagination and expression which mostly issue from temperament and artistic training. It is only by them that this region of the mind is won for poetry. Njegos had a sufficient amount of these qualities for the daring enterprise of expressing through the language of poetry the outward imaginative

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side of the philosophy of light, the beauties of the material universe, his conception of divine space, and of composing a whole out of different mystic motifs. Njegos could not, however, prevent his imagery from conflicting with the spiritual tendency of his poem. What I ascribed to his archaic complexity — his double conception of immortality, the contradictions between mystic spiritualism and a personally conceived deity — appears in his imagery and diction as an excessive materialization of spiritual elements. It is obviously very difficult to treat such a subject harmoniously. Dante succeeded in representing what is spiritual in the Paradiso without rendering it personal and material. Milton harmonized to a rare degree his artistic temperament and his philosophic conceptions : in both he is a materialist. With men, however, who neither are permeated with other-worldliness, as Plato and Dante, nor have the refined consistency of Milton, the duality of a spiritual philosophy and a materialistic imagery is almost inevitable. With Njegos, as we have seen, there occurred a strange eruption of mystic elements into his primary materialism, and it would have required a greater philosophic and artistic flexibility than his to overcome this conflict. He is more simple and direct than Dante and Milton, and for that reason in many respects nearer to the apocalyptic pattern. But he has qualities, such as his monumental bearing and the archaic character of his style, which call forth associations with Heraclitus himself, as when he sings of heroic fighting: The blow finds the spark in the stone, It would else remain there buried... Without hardship a sword is not forged, Without hardship a song is not sung... or of the despair of the bishop Danilo : My tear has no parent, Above me the heavens are closed, They accept neither my lament nor my prayer... or, of the struggle for freedom, where : There is no resurrection without death. It is mainly these qualities that determine his position in the world's literature.

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Njegos and Bogomilism. The problems set by the poem are manifold, as there are in it different layers, resulting from different influences. Among these, there are influences of Western poetry; the reader will notice at once the affinity of several motifs in the poem with Dante and Milton. Njegos himself belongs to their circle — the circle of outstanding men passionately active in politics, who wrote epics on cosmic events. Njegos's kinship with them is obvious in many elements of the Ray; it is evident that he knew and studied them. But Njegos's poem did not result from the influence of these works of poetry. That may be proved doubly : on the one hand, by deep divergencies from these works, though they present in other points important resemblances, and, on the other, by the primary character of the basic ideas of the poem, by their origin which is obviously not literary. These ideas are in the main very ancient and very general; they have echoed in many different ways through literature. But their appearance in Njegos is of such a nature that we feel they are not poetic echoes, but come from a source much more direct, a source that aimed at the ideas themselves and not at their poetic expression. In this I am not so much reminded of Dante and Milton, for with them ideas keep their primary philosophic directness ; nor of Byron's Cain, where there is an interesting coincidence with the Ray. I have in mind rather some verses of Lamartine (L'Homme, in Les Méditations) where there are several thoughts which occur also in our poem, especially in the Dedication. Njegos knew Lamartine, and tried to translate him, but obviously only for the reason that in him he found some ideas similar to those he cherished. To think that Lamartine inspired Njegos, to think that even Dante and Milton did so in the first moments of conception, amounts to a misinterpretation of the basic ideas of the poem; it means a lack of comprehension of the primary and archaic character of its spirituality, as well as of the details which point to works of quite a different range, outside of the generally read European literature. These details point to Philo and Origen, to the Cabbala and to currents most closely connected to it: the scriptures of the preCabbalistic Merkhaba-mysticism, and the late pseudo-Cabbalistic literature which, in the beginning of the last century, was still in vogue with the Rosicrucians. The details in the poem point even to the

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possibility of a closed circle, in Yugoslavia or abroad, that might have bestowed ideas on the poet, and for which he could have written the Ray. And besides all this, they point to the most ancient formulation of the basic concept the poem is built upon: the concept of the fall of the divine soul into the "prison" of matter, the "tomb" of the body. This concept is indissolubly connected with the Balkans. There it grew up, about 600 B.C., somewhere between Thrace and Attica, in the doctrine of the Orphics; there it was renewed in two renaissances, one in the eleventh century, in the gnosis of the Bogomils — the Balkan Neomanichaeans — and the other, single and isolated, in the work of our poet. It is obvious how the first renaissance came about. Ancient Orphic thought, which was raised to a high literary and philosophic level in the works of Pindar, Empedocles, and Plato, was renewed with peculiar intensity in the first centuries of the Christan era in Gnosticism — where it lived in the strangest forms — and in speculations near to Gnosticism, e.g., in Origen. In late Gnostic forms, it continued to exist in the Near East throughout the first millenium, and in connection with Manichaeism, and Origenism, too, it came to a new life in Provence, in the Hellenic atmosphere of Massilia and Arelate, and in the Balkans, where it found a soil propitious from ancient times. The second renaissance, in the poem of Njegos, is much more difficult to explain. In many of its elements, the Ray seems a late blending of Orphic and Gnostic conceptions with Manichaeism; and these are also the main elements which constituted Bogomilism, as well as the doctrines of the Western Catheres. In the poem of Njegos there are, quite naturally, other elements of great importance also, but the central place belongs to those just emphasized. What made it possible for our poet to write a work so closely connected with Bogomilism? The question has not even been posed by students of our literary history, for the simple reason that the elements of Bogomilism in the poem were never seriously discussed — with one exception, some thirty years ago. First of all, it is necessary to determine how much was known about Bogomilism before the appearance of the epoch-making work of Racki, The Bogomils and the Patarens, issued in 1869-70, and which of these early publications could have been known to the bishop. This is a task for specialists. I will only hint at the fact that in the fifties of the last century the

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interest in Bogomilism had begun to grow constantly, abroad as well as in our country, and reached its climax in the appearance of RaSki's work; but Racki began his investigations about fifteen years earlier. In 1842 the renowned scholar Kopitar had helped the German theologian Gieseler in his publication of the main Byzantine writing on Bogomilism, the Narratio de Bogomilis by Euthymius Zigabenus. As Njegos was well acquainted with Kopitar, it is very probable that he had some conversations with him about Bogomilism early in 1844, when he stayed for more than two months in Vienna. A year later he wrote the Ray. It is also highly probable that ihe poet read some work on Manichaeism, for example, J. C. Baur's excellent book, which appeared in 1831. But besides written documents and publications on the Bogomils, there still were extant confused remembrances and halfforgotten traditions in different popular circles. Perhaps it is from these that there issued for our poet the first interest in Bogomilism and even the inevitability of his choice — as for Goethe the preference for the legend of Doctor Faust, which lived for such a long time in the German nation. Njegos was inwardly carried along by deep currents of popular life. These were currents long ago restrained but never completely suppressed, and they could still move an exceptional sensitivity. The genius of the bishop felt those ancient elements, latent and slumbering, but for a long period closely connected with certain psychic tendencies of the Balkan nations; thus we can read the Ray as we should read some of the lost works of the Bogomils — as a work which tells us in a certain sense more about the nature of Bogomilism than the spare monuments of Bogomilism itself. Balkan Neomanichaeism, as well as that in the West, was a complex creation. This is not the place for a detailed analysis of its elements; besides, such study has been done in the last decade in the works of Runciman and Obolensky. I wish only to emphasize again the two main features of Bogomilism: that of essentially dualistic Manichaeism, where the fall of Primary Man, an emanation of the Highest Light, into darkness and matter involves no fault; and the concept, Orphic in its origin and accepted by Gnostics and Origen, of the soul's sin in preexistence, and her atonement in the priosn of the body. This second concept proceeds from an essentially monist view of ethics, for which there exists only deviation from God, not autonomous evil. According to the predominance of one of these

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two features, that of thorough dualism with the eternal coexistence of evil, or that of emanatism, which conceives Satan as a fallen angel and a son of God, there was effected in the Middle Ages the division of the Neomanichaean communities into two main groups. Rigorous dualism was in general less common; in the Balkans, it was represented by the ecclesia Drogometiae, of Macedonia; in the West, by the community of the Cathars of Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Albi. Now we come to the most striking characteristic of the poem: both Neomanichaean features are present, united in a peculiar way. In the Ray as a whole there predominates the emanatistic concept which came into Neomanichaeism through various Gnostic elements and the influence of Origin (which is known to have taken place with the Cathars of the West 4 ); and in so far as our scholars have pointed to features of Bogomilism in the Ray they did so only with regard to the sin of the soul in preexistence and her atonement in the body. This was done in 1920 by Toma Matic. In a short article 5 he quotes the declaration of a medieval Bogomil 6 : nos dicimus animas nostras esse illos angelos qui de caelo cediderunt, qui iterum revertentur; and from another manuscript 7 : dicunt quod animae hominum sunt daemones qui de caelo ceciderunt, quiperactapoenitentia in corporibus, uno vel pluribus successive, revertentur in caelum. Two editors of the Serbian text of the Ray have each mentioned in one short phrase a feature of Bogomilism in the poem — and that is all. Matic's article points, as already emphasized, only to the "Origenian" motif in the Ray. If the connections of the poem with Bogomilism were limited to this fall of the divine soul in preexistence, they could be overlooked; this motif had such a vast radiation in ancient and modern mystic philosophy and poetry that its role in Bogomilism is only an episode. Even the fact that it is given such a predominant place in the work of a Yugoslav poet, deeply bound to the life in the ancient Balkans, might be taken as accidental. But what compels us to pay serious attention to the problem of the poet's connection with Bogomilism is the other range of elements peculiar to Bogomilism, the dualistic one. They appear in the poem with their 4

See J. Denis, De la philosophic d'Origene (Paris, 1884), p. 571. Ljetopis Jugoslovenske Akademije, 1920, pp. 72 if. 6 See Racki, Starine; 1, 93 ff.: "A Disputation between a Catholic and a Bogomil"; and Drag. Uniewald, in Rod, 280 (1949), 164 ff. ' Ibid., p. 139. 6

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Manichaean features, though attenuated, as was natural, as echoes of a past state which has been mastered, at least to a certain point, and of course without the complicated cosmogonical and eschatological myth of Manichaeism, which has never been renewed as a whole either in Bogomilism or elsewhere. Most striking in the poem for students of Manichaeism is the realm of dark forces existing from primeval times, or even from eternity, long before the fall of Satan. In Canto 3, the Almighty speaks to the two faithful archangels (vv. 785, ss.): A frightful huge empire had once extended On far the sad dominion of its gloom. Its monstrous legions entered heaven's fields; The horrid ugliness of such abortions No one can ev'n imagine but myself. And only to the sacred mount sublime And to my throne they did not dare approach— My fiery looks with horror crushed them all. Those masses huge, in senseless motion heaving, Have ever yet been subject to my will. At times, though rarely, they escaped the rule, Until I raised the crown above the throne... They still continue to exist "in the void cold abyss," where they are occupied with a monstrous pseudo-creation. It is obvious that God thinks them coexistent with himself from times immemorial, if not from eternity. All these features are peculiar to Manichaeism: the coexistence of evil, the rising of the forces of darkness into the realm of light, their monstrous creation, and disordered motion — ¿cTaxTo? xivYjat? as it is called by our Greek authorities — all except the final illumination of the dark abyss, hoped for by the self-confident and optimistic God of the Ray, for in Manichaeism, darkness is finally only separated from light and abandoned to itself. The same motif is to be found in Canto 2, vv. 587, ss.: The powers of darkness, here they once were broken And split asunder into giant blocks, From here they fled out of the realm of being And sank into the state of woeful death. This concept of coexistent evil and darkness is emphasized in

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many more places in the poem. Gabriel, in his speech in the same Canto (v. 885), describing how he conceives of the universe, says: Of gloom I put as much as there is light... supposing thus a dichotomy of the universe. The separation of the clear part of the universe from the dark one in which there reigns the evil apxwv, the apostate from God, is a general feature of every Gnostic system.8 This apycov is a creator too, as the imitator Patris of the Bogomils. (We shall see that in Canto 2, v. 821, ss., there is a similar idea.) But the dark forces in our poem and their abortive creations are of a different nature, opposed to light not by falling off from it but by coming from another origin. The Ray emphasizes, besides, the Manichaean feature of strife between light and darkness. God says (3, 775-7): And if my sacred duty I deserted, The reign of darkness should remain for all Eternity. In that strife, Huge victories, And giant triumphs there are held by light O'er the dumb empire. (813-15) The fall of Satan himself, in a much later moment, is connected by God with those ancient forces of darkness: . . . or else The glooms should have erected him his throne... (942-3) In Canto 5, v. 1369-70, God says: Satan's injustice has led up the black And evil world into the upper air... In accordance with the view of the Bogomils, as found in a great number of tales, recorded by Ivanov and Dahnhardt, 9 Satan wishes a joint reign with God: By evil blinded and his lasting ruin, He means to share dominion then with me, To share omnipotence, that both of us Should be creators of new rolling worlds. (4, 981-4) 8

H. Leisegang, Die Gnosis (Leipzig, 1924), p. 18. 1. Ivanov, Bogomilski knigi i legendi (Sofia, 1925); Dahnhardt, I, 1907. 9

Natursagen,

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Artica Savic-Rebac

All these ideas are in closest connection with the principal one: with the existence of evil long before the fall of Satan. In 1937, Prof. G. Scholem, of the University of Jerusalem, with whom I discussed these problems, wrote to me: This is typical dualism, which, if I am not wrong, could be known to a Serbian poet through the rich Manichaean popular tradition quite as well as through learned studies in the Fathers. 10

There are other features characteristic of Manichaeism and of Neomanichaeism in the poem. In the first place there is the "ray of the microcosm" itself — the luminous self, the heavenly double of man, his companion and guide to heaven and immortality. This heavenly double appears already in Mani's biography; it issued probably from the ancient Persian concept of the Fravashi, the immortal part of the soul, according to the Avesta. In late antiquity, this luminous self is not limited to Manichaeism but is to be found in various Gnostic currents, with certain modifications; but its principal form is Manichaean. In the Kephalaia11 we read: " . . .her master, the Nous-Light, who comes from above, who is the ray of the pure giver of light, who comes... leading the soul to the land of light." In a Cathare text, the Liber supra Stella, the spirit (the higher self) comes down from heaven and addresses the soul; the soul knows him, and instantly remembers what sin it committed in heaven. We have the same situation in the poem (1,212-16): . . .There flashed a beam before my eyes; a voice, An angel's voice, was heard there near to me: "Of thy own darkened soul I am the beam Of flame immortal; and it is through me That thou rememberest still what thou hast lost."

The mystic conversation in the poem is closely similar to that in the Liber supra Stella.™ As this is the only Cathare text where this ancient Manichaean concept has been found, it is not strange that it has not yet been discovered in documents of Bogomilism, which are so much 10 The kind letter of Prof. Scholem — which I shall quote in connection with some other problems also — is dated Jerusalem, 1 December 1937. 11 c. 138, from C. Schmidt-H. J. Polotsky, "Ein Mani-fund, in Ägypten," S. B.preuss. Akad. Wiss. (Berlin, 1933), p. 70, quoted by H. Söderberg, La religion des Cathares (Uppsala, 1949), p. 212. 12 Published by Ilarino da Milano, Aevum, 1945; quoted by Söderberg, p. 217.

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scarcer than Western texts. What is striking is its appearance in Njegos. As originally Manichaean we must consider also the feature that our earth, following the short eschatology in Canto 6, at doomsday shall be burnt to ashes. In the Interrogado Iohannis (translated into Latin from a Slavic original), it is said: "Et exiet de inferioribus terrae obscurum tenebrosum, quod est tenebrosum gehennae ignis, et comburet universa." This "dark fire" in the Bogomil tradition is obviously connected with the "black fire" of the Manichaean eschatology, immanent in Matter, which is finally to consume the world.13 There are, however, non-Manichaean features in the poem. The fire consumes, in Njegos, only the earth, as the rest of the world, according to our poet, is divine, or at least divinized; and it is not a "dark fire," inherent in Matter, but the sacred flame of divine justice. With this Njegos obviously endeavored to make it conform more closely to orthodox views ; but the dominant feature is Manichaean, and accepted by the Bogomils. These conformities between our poet and Bogomilism form an extremely difficult problem, since it is as yet impossible to trace with any probability his way to Manichaean and Neomanichaean traditions. In supposing that he could not have known them, especially not in such detail as is suggested by the Ray, we should set ourselves a still harder task: to study the inner connection of mythic and mystic conceptions and the laws which lead inevitably from one concept in this area to another, and then to suppose that the same processes went on regularly in the poet's mind. This would be even more striking than to assume that he succeeded in getting information about traditions which had had such an important part in the life of his nation. Njegos, the Cabbala, andPhilo. To these dark forces of Manichaeism there are to be found corresponding features also in the Cabbala. That is "the other side" — the realm of dark emanations and demoniac forces "which are no more essentially rooted in God, though they sprang from one of his potencies."14 According to some passages in 13 Cf. the Introduction of H.-Ch. Puech in Puech-Vaillant, Le traité contre les Bogomiles de Cosmas le prêtre (Paris 1945), p. 2112. 14 See the great article Kabalah by Prof. Scholem, in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, especially col. 689 if.

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the Zohar, this realm is a rudiment of the destroyed primeval worlds. In the Ray, God shows an intimate knowledge of the evil forces which hints at some connection of his with them (4, 788-9): The horrid ugliness of such abortions N o one can ev'n imagine but myself.

If we are not willing to suppose that these verses have only the very pale meaning that God has a much stronger imagination than his angels, we must suppose that his intimate knowledge of these forces hints at a connection of his with them as it is indicated in the Zohar. This is, however, merely a hypothesis. But there is the myth of Satan in Canto 4 about the cosmic cataclysm which destroyed the former worlds out of whose wrecks God made this present one where he is the only ruler. This concept is also developed in Byron's Cain. Lucifer says (1, 1): Did not your Maker make Out of old worlds this new one in few days?

Further on (2,2), he bears Cain through the universe, in order to show him: What was before thee, The phantasm of the world of which this world Is but the wreck—

and it came to life By a most crushing and inexorable Destruction and disorder of the elements, Which struck a world to chaos.

If it were for this one passage, one could imagine that Njegos got the concept only from Cain; but as there are in the Ray many other images and concepts originating from the Cabbala, I am sure he knew this one too through some Cabbalistic channel. I believe, however, that he read this famous work of romantic poetry; moreover, it is Satan in the Ray as well as in Cain who speaks of the cosmic cataclysm and of this world as a poor wreck. 16 In the concept of destroyed primeval worlds, the feature peculiar to the Cabbala is that evil is their still remaining rudiment; the 15 Plutarch, De Is. et Osir. 54, speaks in a different connection about the "picture and phantasm of a future world."

Njegos's "The Ray of the Microcosm"

133

concept itself was, however, stated already by Origen, who taught the successive destruction of earlier worlds. This doctrine of his was condemned in 543 and 553, and was consequently removed from the Greek text of De Principiis, as well as from the Latin translation of Rufinus; it is preserved in quotations, 16 e.g., In secundo autem libro mundos asserit (sc. Origen) innumerabiles, non iuxta Epicurum uno tempore plurimos et sui similes, sed post alterius mundifinem alterius esse principium.17 Njegos accepted the destruction of former worlds, but he made their number simultaneously very great also, since his universe, which shows in Canto 1 the traditional pattern of ascension through various spheres, is boundless at the same time, especially as represented in Canto 3. We shall see the importance of Origenian motifs with Njegos; but in this passage of the poem I suppose a predominance of Cabbalistic features, combined with echoes from Byron's Cain. In another essentially Cabbalistic passage he agrees with another great poet of European Romanticism, Victor Hugo; but Hugo's poem Ce que dit la bouche d'ombre, in which we find the pertinent verses, appeared ten years after the Ray. With Njegos we read (1, 422-4): See yonder huge and gloomy globe on left18 That sends forth beams of darkness, and alone In the clear space is clad in purple gloom. The verses of Hugo run as follows : Et l'on voit tout au fond, quand Voeil ose >> descendre, Au delà de la vie et du souffle et du bruit Un affreux soleil noir d'où rayonne la nuit.

It is known, especially through the studies of Professor Denis Saurat,19 how many concepts came to Hugo from the Cabbala; in the image of the black sun he agrees strikingly with the Yugoslav poet, and there can be no doubt as to their common Cabbalistic inspiration. The dark powers, existing long before the fall of Satan, came to Njegos obviously in the first place from the Manichaean realm of evil and darkness, coexistent with God and light — but through some work inspired by the Cabbala, where the "world of the 16

Hieron, Ep. adAvit. 5 (S.L. 25,1063). This concept of Origen possibly originated in the myth of Plato's Politicus. 18 In the Cabbala, the dark emanations are qualified as the left side. 18 La religion de Victor Hugo (Paris, 1929). 17

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Savic-Rebac

Kelippot" is nearly deprived of real existence, or at least mastered and bound to the abyss20 — and so it is represented in some verses of the Ray. Beside these, there are still other Cabbalistic elements in the poem. For the history of Balkan civilization, they have not same importance as elements from Bogomilism, but nevertheless they are highly characteristic, and not to be overlooked when we seek to understand Njegos. As to the central concept of the Deity as light and of the soul as a beam or a spark, it is so ancient and so general that the poet could have formed it without any influence of the Cabbala; in connection, however, with other features in the poem, Cabbalistic influence must be taken into serious consideration. The philosophy of light in the Cabbala issued from ancient solar myths and religions which were early blended in the Hellenic world with philosophic speculations — first in the works of Parmenides and Plato (Republic 6, 508 BC; 509 B) and then especially in the first centuries of the Christian era, in the writings of Philo and in Neoplatonism, in the Gnostic systems, and in Manichaeism. In the Christian world this philosophy was popularized by the first epistle of John (1:5): 6 0eo; 9Ü; laxt, and later on by the Nicaenum. Throughout the Middle Ages it continued to be nourished from the works of Augustine and from writings of Neoplatonic inspiration, translated from Arabic. Among these, a prominent role is to be ascribed to the writing entitled Aristotelis Theologia (in reality compiled from Plotinus), where it is asserted that "in the high brilliance of the world of light all things are beams; there the sun is all the stars, while in our sky one star stands beside another." 21 It is well known how much the philosophy of light is dominant in Dante's great poem, despite the opposition of Thomas Aquinas to it. Quite naturally, with the ancients and in the Middle Ages it developed into gnoseology, and was closely linked to the philosophy of love. This philosophy of light is to be met with in modern times also, e.g., in the young Hegel.22 It is interesting that in the Slavic languages the same root, svet, means world as well as light. The Slavs themselves have produced several remarkable philosophers who put light into the center of their 20

Scholem, /. c., col. 709. See Clemens Baeumker, Witelo (Münster, 1908), p. 387. This is still the standard work on the philosophy of light. 22 H. Leisegang, Denkformen (Berlin and Leipzig, 1928), p. 148. 21

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teaching: in the thirteenth century the Pole Witelo, in the late Renaissance Patricius, a Croat from northern Dalmatia, and the Czech Amos Comenius. Among them, we may number Njegos also. These few words were necessary to emphasize how difficult it is to fix a single source and model in concepts so general as the philosophy of light; for the Cabbala itself, which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries developed into one of the main representatives of lightmysticism, was formed by ancient Oriental (Persian and Babylonian) and Gnostic currents, as well as by Hebrew medieval Neoplatonism. It is, however, of great importance for the problems of our poem that the philosophy of light dominates the Cabbala, and that the Cabbala conceived of human souls as sparks from the central flame.23 Another image from the Zohar2i says that God represents the Central Point, Cause of all things... from this mysterious Point there issues a slender ray of light which... contains all lights." In this passage in the Cabbala the ray is not connected with man; that was done by Philo, who designates man at the same time as a ray (6cTCai, a M e H H c 4 e p e B C H C K O i o /topojKHoii

tockoS ot

ceAa

40 c e A a ,

Co B^oBbeit cAe30K) h c necHeio jkchckow BnepBbie BoiiHa Ha npoceAKax CBeAa.6

These lines, which swept the country, are memorable not for their quality but for the fact that they are so typical. Many such poems were written, revealing the sudden need of the intelligentsia to outgrow itself and to respond to the suffering of the millions. The discovery of the peasant was crucial; for, by embracing him in adoration, the poet alienated himself, no matter how young he was, from the system. The penalty came later. In order to appreciate this widened scope, one must recall the period immediately before the war, the era of the poetic armchair. In the late thirties, the message of Majakovskij's poetics was as dead as it is today. His ostensible disciples, such as Semen Kirsanov, had turned to the miniature, and so did all poets of any stature. Under the cumulative pressure of Stalinism, which crushed far more than revolutionary poetry and the idealism of an entire new generation, the poet was forced to hide in rhymed bagatelles. (Considering the ramifications of the political purges, it is remarkable that he was permitted to hide at all. But evidently totalitarianism has many safety valves.) The typical flavor of those prewar days may be recaptured through some examples, more telling than the love lyrics which also flowed rather profusely. Il04C0AHyxy ot ahbhh He CKpbiTbca HHKy^a —

b

rpsran yBH3AH Horn, Meat rpHflxaMH BOfla.

5 Zinaida Sisova, Blokada (Moscow, 1943), p. 17. * Konstantin Simonov, Vojna (Moscow, 1944), p. 45.

297

The Sad Armchair BecHyujaTBiH h pwaum, CTOHT OH B KapTy3e.

3aieM cfiejKHT oh C rps4KH Kor^a oh paa rpo3e? (1938)

This was the best a timid epigone of Acmeism could offer. But the perplexed sunflower was, in every sense, harmless enough. More remarkable, since it was daringly imbued with message, was the first collection of a young poetess, Margarita Aliger. One poem, revealing excerpts of which follow, was severely criticized. It is easy to see why. The poem illustrates only too well the distrustful mood of the intelligentsia. The young woman relishes the solitude of a majestic mountain landscape, and with a clear conscience at that. H ciacTAHBa. H TBepflo Bepio b k6h,

0 6 i e 3 , 4 H A urap.

KaK Bee,

Tpy^HCb,

KaK Bee,

KpyjKHCb

IlpeMHH.

H e 6eAKoii H

b

KOAece —

Xnpypra

T b i s e s A e Haii^euub ^py3eft,

Be34e TBOH npHHTCAH. — okho b moio

Ha

3eAio —

IlaMHp

nocAaAa AKa^eMHa.

K o r ^ a ra3eTy pacnaxHy — OHa

— b «ripaB^e» —

Kanoiue

CTpaHy

Cepreii —

—

noeT b

K a c r o p c K o r o 3aTMHT.

CBep^AOBCKe

FpeMHiia.

H b Heii BCTpeiaio He o ^ H y

O ^ h h AHiin> a H e 3 H a M e H H T . . . .

3HaKOMyic> 4>aMHAmo . . .

H

Bopnc

t o , noacaAyft, B p e M e H H o !

11

MOpHK.

Aliger, in a contrasting mood, took to the mountains again and, making them anthropomorphic, imagined the rocks and stones passing judgment on the strangely divided flock of ascending Katjusas and Serezas. H

3Haro a, h t o b h x 3 a K O H a x e c r b

CTOAeTbHMH o S ^ y M a H H a s MecTb 6 p O ^ H H e M y , KpHKAHBOMy

Hapo/lljy.12

Others, however, like SSipacev, skirted this dispute as well as all others, curled away in their armchairs, or concentrated on sunflowers and assorted Russian berries. Severe admonitions from above were unable to stop their escape. But then came war. Stones, careers, and sunflowers were forgotten overnight. Without needing to be cajoled, the poet turned into an eager propagandist. In return he was permitted unheard-of liberties. Patriotism began with a salvo in unison, but soon diverged into variant themes of intimate personal experiences. The respite from bombastic generalization permitted near-heretical explanations of utmost heroism springing from loyalties having very little con11

V l a d i m i r L i f s i c , " D r u z ' j a , " Literaturnyj

12

M . A l i g e r , Stixi

i poemy,

p. 4 6 .

sovremennik,

1 9 3 6 , 11, p. 1 3 7 .

300

Vera Sandomirsky

nection with the system. Suddenly the poet discovered that the soil was defended for the sake of a long-forgotten birch tree, or in the name of one loved woman or child. Ho b *iac, icoiyia nocAe^Haa rpaHaTa Yace 3aHeceHa b T B o e i i pyKe H

B KpaTKHH MHr n p a n O M H H T b

pa30M

U2LAO

Bee, *rro y Hac ocTaAocb B^aAene,

Tbi BcnoMHHaenib He CTpaHy GoAbinyio, Kaicyio tbi H3i»e3^nA h y3HaA, Tbi BcnoMHHaeim. po^HHy, TaKyio Kaxoft ee tbi b ^eTCTBe yBnz;aA: KycoK 3eMAH, npiinaBiiiHH K TpeM 6epe3aM, /I,aAeKyio 4opory 3a AecKOM, PenOHKy co CKpnnyiHM nepeB030M IleciaHbiH 6eper c HH3KHM hbhakom.13 Together with this allegiance to the melancholy poverty of a TjutCev landscape rather than to the alleged plenty of collective-farm barns, other emotional relationships were elaborated upon. Not the least significant among them was the sense of kinship with national history. To be sure, the road had long since been paved by the official re-enthronement of Nevskij, Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great in Stalin's imperial thirties; but intimate religious overtones were then considered quite improper. War granted amnesty for this theme too — R roBopio c To6oit nepe^ pa3AyKoii, CTpaHa Moa, AaAenaa moh . . . K a n b iohocth — MOAIOCB T e 6 e cypoBO H 3HaK>: CBeT H paflOCTb 3TO Tbi. 1 4

AeHHHrpa,^ b ceHTaSpe . . . 3AaTOcyMpaiHbiii, yapcTBenHwii AHCTona^.15 Tbi pyccKaa — 4bixaHbeM, KpoBbio, 4yM0ii. He BHepa MyacHHKoe TepneHbe ABBanyMa h ijapcnaa hchctoboctb IleTpa . . ,16 B Te6e coc4Hhhahcb ^yMofi

13

K. Simonov, "Rodina,"

Vojna,

pp. 48-49.

14 Ol'ga Berggol'c, "Osen' sorok pervogo," Tvoj put' 16 Ibid., "Vtoroe pis'mo," p. 20. 16

Ibid., "Razgovor s soboj," p. 29.

(Leningrad, 1945), p. 14.

301

The Sad Armchair

This stylization a la russe, this pointed juxtaposition of "peasant patience" and "tsarist violence," this prostrate worship under a cupola of explicitly dark gold — such things were not viewed as freakish. On the contrary, they were in great demand. Ol'ga Berggol'c rose suddenly to national fame, and no front-line soldier (maxorocnyj) lyricist could rival her in the public's appreciation. Indeed, she touched off a veritable chain reaction, for she had found the secret of what the reader wanted: both the solitary birch tree at a lonely crossroad and the tarnished gold of a cathedral, to illuminate the figures of Jaroslavna, Alenuska, and Avvakum. All this amounted to a largescale prettification that in choice of words alone smothered the verbal onslaughts of Sovietism. Ornate, throbbing, intoxicating, it served its purpose. Less wordily but no less memorably, the Tolstoyan kind of soldierdom was also honored. Untrained in the subleties of simplicity, honesty, and tact, the young poet groped for a heartfelt word. The more he tried, the more he became aware of his pathetic inadequacy. But he showed courage in his abstinence from loudness, didacticism, and the varnishing of reality. Underneath it all, guilt at the suffering of the nation was growing. Aio6nTeAi. no33Hn, neceH KpacHBbix H e JKAH ot MeHs. H hx neTb He Mory iT nOA3 OKpOBaBAeHHblii, BUIHBblii, B Kan XAe6oM, nirraacb AHiiib 3Ao6oii k

— HapbiBax Bpary. 17

The poet, becoming aware of the discrepancy between truth and literature, sensed that the prescribed hosannahs to the system might only widen the gap and soil the memory of the dead. Even the obtuse became uncomfortable. Aleksej Surkov, one of the loudest, had this to say in a piece entitled "2izn' i mecta": YMOAKHeT rpoM, npoftAyT rofla, M h nocTapeeM B4Boe, BTpoe.

H 6yAeT CAOJKeHa Tor^a Taxaa CKa3Ka o repoe: Hto iika oh, He ataAea cha, IIpoTHB acecTOKoro TeieHba H B CMepTHblii iac npOH3HOCHA BbicoKonapHbie peneHba . . . " Evgenij Dolmatovskij, Vera v pobedu (Moscow, 1944), p. 47.

302

Vera Sandomirsky IlycTb HX npHKpacflT. H e

!

B o o 6 p a > K e H b e A I O 6 H T MOUJH,

A leAOBeqecKaa >KH3HB Bcer4a r p y 6 e f t , rpa3Heit, CBHTeii H npoiije. 1 8

Although this potentate among poets had the hardest time shedding his grandiloquence, the pointed symmetry of "ruder, dirtier" contrasted with "holier, simpler" clearly shows that even he had caught the infection of un-Soviet humanism. The search for the "true" word lingered for a long time after the war was over. In fact, frustration in the quest increased when the time came to reminisce. The Leningrad poets, following a heretically introspective tradition, outdid themselves (almost to their own undoing): I I p H X O A H T C B 0 3 p a C T O M TOCKa n o

i H C T O T e T a K o r o CAOBa,

H t o OTpa3HAO 6, KaK p e n a , H e TOAbKo B 4tiMKe o6AaKa H o >KH3HH caMyio o c H o s y . H

HTO6I>I A i o S o B a A c s

H e TOAbKO u r y M H o t i

rAaa necTpoToio

A Bceio n p a B ^ o i i 6e3

npmcpac,

Bceit HeAyKaBofi KpacoToio.19

Another Leningrad poet, in a less lofty manner, expressed rebellious irritation with the vulgar courtiers who did not seem to understand what the problem was all about: H e /(AH T o r o a noSbraaA B a.^y, H a 4 p e M e c A O M cnHHbi H e p a 3 r a 6 a a , H T O 6 M CTHXH B e A a H a

UOBOAV

OSo3Haa rapMoirata KpacHo6aa.20

In the days of 2danovism this amounted to treason: minor, but dangerous nonetheless. Small or big, all the deviations, irritations, and self-recriminations, flagrantly unchecked until today, grew out of very special wartime conditions. Somewhat perversely, the song that at first seemed to contain risky notes of heresy became an expression of the artistic intelligentsia's loyalty to the regime, became propaganda of notable efficiency. 18 19 20

Aleksej Surkov, Rossi/a karajuscaja ( M o s c o w , 1944), pp. 8 1 - 8 2 . Nikolaj Braun, " S l o v o , " Zvezda, 1947, 7, p. 53. Aleksandr Gitovic, as quoted by A . Dement'ev, Zvezda, 1949, 3, p. 206.

The Sad Armchair

303

Wartime permissiveness worked another way: a torrent of oldfashioned, sentimental love lyrics burst forth. The special audacity of the prolific Simonov satisfied the craving of the public. He published a lyric cycle dedicated to a brashly sensuous extra-marital affair with a temperamentalfemmefatale, a detailed bedroom rhapsody complete with supplications, jealousy, and l'heure bleue.21 This, to the nonSoviet taste, trite and outdated moi et toi was so new and exciting that Simonov's small collection brought him more fame than anything else in his voluminous output. Readers took understandable pleasure in versified libertinage and particularly in the return of a flesh-andblood mistress, after some thirty years. (When the punitive postwar period came, however, critics assaulted the epigone of free love.) The reactions of both reader and critic contradict the Stalinist theory on love and marriage. The titillations of the Soviet middle class are indeed middle-class. Knowing well, however, what he was doing, Simonov tried to insure himself by construing his longing for his stylized and treacherous beloved as an integral part of his personal war effort. At the time, even that could be made part of the adoration of the motherland. Both in the special case of love lyrics — granted ample raison d'être by the taskmasters — and in the over-all attempt to glorify the country and the suffering millions, hints of restlessness and anxiety appeared rather early. Most prominent was the feeling that from now on everything — life and literature — would have to change, become somehow not as it had been heretofore. Complementary rather than antithetical to this spreading anxiety was one of the most interesting underground trends, the fatalistic acceptance of one's lot. It seemed particularly common to women : T m MHoii ô e c n p e A e A B H o XTpHMH Mofi A O i e p H H H

AïoÔHMa, nOKAOH

3 a KHnëHHO-ôeAue 3hmm, 3 a

3a

CHHHH, KaK AëH, pyccKyio peib,

HeÔOCKAOH,

3a moahtbm

CypoBbix npa6a6oK mohx,

H 4aace 3a to, ito cpeflb 6htbm Moil

21

CblH

He

OCTaACH

B 5KHBMX.22

Konstantin Simonov, S toboj i bez tebja, Lirika (Moscow, 1942). Ljudmila Tatjaniceva, "Rossija," as quoted by S. Babenyseva, Oktjabr', 1946, 10-11, p. 187. 22

Vera Sandomirsky

304

Despite the evident prettification and grandiloquence, the verbal pose and ornamentation a la russe, Tatjaniieva's low filial bow and prayer to stern ancestresses indicate a state of mind quite un-Sovietized. Women poets, whom the war had called out in great numbers and whose range between heroics and grief was wide, were the first to sound the restless, haunting note. The unique freedoms of those days enveloped everyone and intensified special human relationships established under the stress. The foreboding of the pain to come with their impending dissolution was just as widespread. High or low, war poetry managed to reflect fragments of psychic changes heretofore camouflaged. Pavel Antokol'skij said one thing clearly enough as he mourned Jewish mass graves: H

TbI, pOBeCHHK CTpaillHOrO

T b I , HeAOBeK COpOKOBLIX

HcnoAOCOBaH naMHTbio, KaK H

CTOAeTbH,

TOflOB, nAeTbio,

BnpHMb H a CTapOCTb MHpHyiO

TOTOB?23

He was mercilessly lashed for this poem during the official cosmopolite-anti-Semitic obscenities; his message was construed as Jewish nationalism fortified by nadryv plain and simple. But tragic memories not only sustained the poetry of a grief-stricken "elder"; they penetrated the lyrics of all sensitive poets. All these moods, voiced by young and old, show that the war poet was gradually becoming alienated. When it became opportune, he was brought back into line. But disciplinary measures turned out to be not entirely effective. Before we go on to the postwar transition and the Soviet poet's inability to adjust to changed regulations, the main achievements of the war period itself must be cited. Sufficient time has elapsed to enable one to see that in the mass of the so-called maxorocnaja lirika — poured out by beginners who took to pen and paper in the trenches and saw little more than the action in which they participated and the trauma of their comrades' deaths — very little actual poetry remains. Although nothing proved of epic sweep, some cycles of lyric fragments do seem to possess longevity. Such are Aleksandr Tvardovskij's Vasilij Terkin, Aleksandr Prokof'ev's Rossija, Margarita Aliger's Tvoja pobeda, Pavel Antokol'skij's Syn, and the closely interrelated Leningrad cycles of 23

Pavel Antokol'skij, "Ne vecnaja pamjat,'" Znamja, 1946, 7, p. 64.

305

The Sad Armchair

Ol'ga Berggol'c, Zinaida Sisova, and Vera Inber. Poetry was written under tension and danger, at least during the critical phase of the war. In the better poetry, which as never before illuminated the intimate portrait of an average Soviet citizen, one common characteristic, which pointed quite inadvertently to the damage perpetrated by "socialist realism," stood out. This was the craving for plain and simple realism, which became apparent as soon as the repressive lids were loosened. Curiously, it was revealed by a sweeping discovery of the world of objects. Bread, water, wood, toys, and the like were celebrated as soon as the dogmatic duty of the poet to "form character" was suspended. Thus did poetry enter a period of Sachlichkeit that had no counterpart in prose. The universe of daily accoutrements contributed to the intimacy of the human portrait. A few lines from a father's mournful recollection of his only son killed in the first months of war are an illustration: . . . T a K K a K )KC MHe BIWfl^eTLCH B 6 b I A O e C K B 0 3 b T y M a H H O e CTeKAO,

Hto6m e r o

HeKOiraeHHOc

B HeHaiaTyio

^ctctbo

kjhoctb n e p e n i A O

CTaMecKa. KAenjH. CMHTaa

C rB034HMH

Bcex KaAH6poB.

. . .

KopoSica

Moaotok.

H a c o c aah iiihh BeAOCHneflHbix. IIpoSKa

C neperopeBiiiHM

Motok AaiiSom a^x M a p o K .

np0B040M.

A a T y H H o f t npoBOAKH.

C y x o i i pa36HTbiii icpa6. K a p a H f l a u i H . . . PuCyHKH. rOTOBaAbHH. IlAOCKHfi C naAHTpoii. /^Ba HeTpoHyTtix

H tioShkh BnepBbie

HacToanjHx,

BnepBbie B3pocAbix KpacoK.

BecneiHOCTH. B e e

—

flUJHK

xoACTa.

riecTpoTa

Ha^epno. Bee —

Hacnex.24

This unadorned catalogue of "fragments of paradise in the desk drawer" evoked the image of an engaging adolescent who had been nurtured with great love in a cultured home and somehow turned out devoid of the militant Komsomol attributes he should have had. The bitter joy of observing was relentless in its appeal. One of the best-known passages comes from Vera Inber, as she recorded the ravages of the Leningrad starvation: 24

Pavel Antokol'skij, Syn (Moscow, 1943), p. 22.

306

Vera

Sandomirsky

A TaM, 3a 9THM, cAe^yeT KOHey. M b CTapoM o4eaAe, ijBeTa I I H A H , AHrAHHCKHMH 6yAaBKaMH 3amnHAeH, BeHeBKoft nepeBH3aHHbiii MepTBeij, TaK Ha caAa3Kax Aa^HO cHapasceH, H T O , RHflHMO, B ceMbe He nepBbid O H . 2 5 Her observation — perhaps the very contrary of " m a k i n g it strange" — is controlled and cathartic. Having long craved for permission to look around without assuming a didactic posture, the poet learned to approach death with tact and restraint. The very fact of the safety pin on the corpse does not startle unduly, does not detract irreverently, but conveys, with a minimum o f means, the familiarity o f the besieged with death. This naturalistic manner came to be known as factography, which, reviving the Acmeist tradition, made the verse firmer and more communicative than it had been in a decade. HeHacTHbiii B e n e p , THXHH H XOAO^HBIII. M e A b q a i i m i i i i 40>K4HK c b i n A e i c f l BnoTbMax. . . .

H CTeHM ciiAOiiib B npoSoHHax CHapa^OB . . . A Ha npocneKTe — icyMKa r o p c m a H : T p a M B a a » c ^ y T y pjKaBOii S a p p H K a ^ b i , BOTBY H 40CKH

6epejKHO

AEPACA.

B O T ACEHUJHHA CTOHT C ^OCKOH B o6T>HTbax,

YrpioMo coMKHyTw ee ycTa, ,^ocKa B RB034AX — KaK 6 Y ^ T O laCTb pacnaTba, BOABINOH O6AOMOK pyccKoro KpecTa.26 One observes in this fragment the same shift in emphasis from a human object to a thing-object, with the purpose of avoiding the dreaded "declarativeness." Hardship is made concrete within the verse line itself; the function of the distrophic beet-tops and the wooden boards pierced with nails is the same as that o f the safety pin. The focus on the wooden cross rather than on the tight-lipped woman eliminates a great deal of grandiloquence, that chronic disease of Soviet poetry which was so offensive to the genuine sufferers. Factography combined the remnants of A c m e i s m with the long-forgotten neo-realist interest in microscopy. Details were rediscovered, and, successful always or not, became the most direct 25 26

Vera Inber, Pulkovskij Meridian (Moscow, 1944), p. 15. Ol'ga Berggol'c (Leningrad, 1945), p. 30.

The Sad Armchair

307

route to the tragedy of war, opened passages into the deeper understanding of the nation's martyrdom. BnoA3

M y p a s e i i OAHOMy H a

CMepTBK) nOBeaAO

mcKy —

He3HaK0M0;

AanKH pacKHflbiBaa umpoKO, Mcaachho oh nepemeA k ^pyroMy. M , ^e AOB HTO CKOAb3HyB H a A A o 6 MHHOBaA, n o 6 e a c a A H a HepHbiMH yCHKaMH

yXOM, SpoBH,

pa3HioxaA

Cbcjkhh h npnTopHLiH

3anax

KpoBH.27

Those human traits most poignantly commemorated in the wartime poetry are the stark stubbornness of the simple widow of Leningrad and the humor and resilience of the simplest of soldiers, Vasilij Terkin — Vasja Everyman. It is no overstatement to say that Tvardovskij's Terkin has become a folk hero, not so much because of the swift vernacular in which the cycle was written but through the immediate affection he won from the mass reader.28 A remote but not unnatural descendent of Platón Karataev, Terkin personifies the unassuming, radiant qualities of Russian endurance. He is articulate, warm, and cheerful without being a peasant buffoon (xoroso kogda kto vrét, veselo i skladno); disciplined without servility; resourceful and resilient against all odds. His indomitable vitality is expressed in ecstatic accordion-playing and prodigious consumption of tobacco and vodka. Quite credibly, neither death nor devil can take him. He is the perennial Russian worker-soldier, Russian miracle-man. And the lovable thing about him is that he is very ordinary, if only as the poet's wish-fulfilment (prosto paren' sam soboj, on obyknovennyj). Such a man is held together, as always, by masculine fatalism: "he takes everything as it is." If there is nothing of the rebel in Terkin, his sturdy common sense and humor are the next best things one can hope for. Terkin found his way into the hearts of those, particularly in exile, who love Russia. The success of Terkin rested to a large degree on the nostalgically independent overtones in the voice of the poet and on his occasional 27 Evgenij Dolmatovskij, "Propal bez vesti," Vera v pobedu (Moscow, 1944), p. 19. 28 "Pis'ma frontovikov o Vasilii Terkine," Znamja, 1944, 12, pp. 194-202.

Vera Sandomirsky

308

sallies into dangerous territory. Meeting Terkin, when hungry and cold, "our brother" is trailing behind the turntail Soviet government as it flees eastward, the poet is tormented by a gnawing guilt. Laconically he describes his own function in an infantry detachment of ten, which included a commanding officer of insignificant rank, as H

.JKJ KCLK

BbIA

öoAee H/teÄHbiH

T A M K A K 6BL

NOAHTPYK.

There is priceless irony in the two little words kak by. Sometimes Tvardvoskij permits himself an open joke about certain basic features of the system : TopoAa CAaiOT coA^aTM, FeHepaAhi HX SepyT. It is important to him that the soldierly courage of his hero remain unadorned, since only in that way could it become meaningful beyond mere literariness. H He 3HaeM noieiuy, —• CnpaiiiHBaTh He CTaAH, —

EEoieMy ror^a eMy He ^aAH Me^aAH.

The details all show Terkin as a Russian and not a Soviet soldier. In fact, he is singularly un-Soviet. The explicit identification of the poet with him stands for a tacit alienation from ihe ruling ideology, and also heightens the wistfully romantic lyricism of the long poem. C n e p B u x ¿(Heft r04HHbi r o p t K O f t , TH>KKHH H a c

B

3CMAH

He myTH, BacHAHii RLO4PY»CHAHCI> M M C

PO^HOH, TËPKHH, T060Ö.

Several years and many pages later, the parting between the poet and his hero presages what would actually happen only too soon. The poet knew that his Terkin, having overcome death itself, had no place in the normalcy of Soviet days of peace. T ë p K H H , T ë p K H H , B caMOM ^ e A e , H a c

HacTaA,

Boiice

OT6OH.

H KaK 6y4To ycTapeAH T o T i a c

0 6 a

Mbi

c

T060H.

CKOABKHX

CAOBHO . . .

HX HA

CBeTe HeTy,

H T O npOHAH TC6H, n 0 3 T .

MHoro,

ÖE^Hoii KHHre 9 T O H MHoro, M H O T O A C T . .

.

The Sad Armchair K p H T H K , yMHHK TOT, Hto vHTaeT 6e3 yAbi6KH,

HtO eil

HnjeT,

309 HeT ah

r^e

oihh6kh,

T o p e ecAH He Haider. 2299

But at the divide between the war and its aftermath stood the critic: although Tvardovskij's publicly acclaimed contribution to the war effort could neither be undone nor suppressed, it was to be, as soon as possible, relegated to its proper historical place as a special wartime dispensation. The critics all noted well Tvardovskij's stress on the word "Russian," and suggested that the values expressed by him had become, as he had foreseen, irrevocably outmoded. 30 In the same fashion, Darja Vlas'evna, the Leningrad widow and mother bundled in her tightly crisscrossed Russian shawl, was discarded. The grieving poetess who had shared tears and bodily warmth with Darja tried in vain to protect her: A 4Aa 6oah Harneii MOAiaAHBoii, ,4aH paHeHHH CKpblTHX, HMipOCTHX, HexBaraAO 6 Ha 3eMAe HaniHBOK, H h MaAHHOBHX, H H 30A0TbDC . . .

C i a c r a e n3B«Hoe, AW^cKoe, Hto b 6pe^y, b kpobh, bo MrAe 6oSb C6eperAO h bmhccao npocToe Cep^ne MaTcpHHCKoe tboS.31

Already the later wringing of hands had begun, as well as, superficial intent notwithstanding, a goodly measure of what Zdanov was to call defeatism. But human heroism was still of the humble, everyday, anonymous variety. If occasionally during the war, Russianness was defended in a different manner, with hyperbolic romanticism, the defenders turned out to be even less Soviet-minded than the realists. Aleksandr Prokof'ev's five Sumov brothers, young and strong eagles sent out to shed their blood for the sacred soil by their super-eagle old father, All quotations from A. Tvardovskij, Vasilij Terkin (Voenizdat, 1946). " . . . the social type of Soviet man is frequently deprived of characteristic traits in the representation of novelists and poets. He becomes a personage 'of all wars and of all ages' (Tvardovskij, Vasilij Terkin, Prokof'ev, Rossija). Sometimes he is a 'bast-shoe sage' who withstands the enemy with his primitive, peasant irresistibility (Kasil's short stories)." Fedor Gladkov, "Zametki pisatelja," Novyj mir, 1945, 4, p. 152. 31 Ol'ga Berggol'c, Leningrad, pp. 50-51. 29

30

Vera Sandomirsky

310

are stylized bogatyri with legendary strength and lack of individuality, rather than mid-century collective farmers.32 At the war's end, it was hard to part with the heroes and heroines, the overstated ones and the more numerous everyday stoics. For they all sprang from the intoxicated reveling in narodnosf, which, although unmolested for two or three years, had but little to do with official Soviet patriotism and was in fact the most soothing escape from it.

3. RHYMED MUSHROOMS . . .

CTapHK

Ha,4 CKa3KaMH Koxa MypAtiKH B H3HeMOJKCHHH

nOHHK.

Nikolaj Usakov, "Esce vesna" Kan MaAO HaM Ha^o, KaK y30K Mnp nopoio. Vsevolod Rozdestvenskij, "Rodnye dorogi"

Nevertheless, final farewells were decreed. The result was — and still is — not up to expectation. Instead of sallying forth at once to "build" the boisterously impending era of Communism, instead of displaying due forgetfulness of the killed and maimed, the confused poets continued to follow several maniacal inclinations. Some repeated again and again that no matter how hard one tries, war cannot be forgotten. A soldier muses as he puts his uniform in mothballs: Ho KaK MHe paccTaTbCH C BOCHHblMH flHHMH? BoBeKH He cSmtb hx c pyK?

Hto ^eAaTt?! B o A t m a a CoA^aTCKajI naMHTb HmcaK He Ae3eT b cyH^yK.33

Another, in images devoid of socialist optimism, returns to the foxholes: B

nycrbix

/KiiBeT B

3eMAHHKax, b n y r a H H b i x

Ayuia.

rAyxHX yrAax,

r ^ e

6peBHa,

Tpamiieax

ncie3HyBiiieii bohhh, r ^ e noceAHAHCb

KaK iiokohhhkh,

3MeH,

icpHLi.

3 4

32 " . . . Oni idut, i sotni verst / Slomit' ix ne smogli, / I esli b put' ix byl do zvezd I Oni b ego prosli!" Aleksandr Prokof'ev, Rossija (Moscow, 1946), p. 30. 33 Jurij Jakovlev, "Frontovaja sapka," Znamja, 1947, 6, p. 80. 34 Sergej Orlov, "Stixi," Znamja, 1946, 4-5, p. 100.

The Sad Armchair

311

In some, the guilt for having survived became obsessive, bordering on mild but genuine paranoia: CoA^aTbi H

mctht.

A

a

coA^ax,

e c A H a AO M e c T H

floacHA

Mhc HyjKHo ABHraTbca, h A O A K e n : 3a mhoh y G H T b i e cac^ht.35

Even the very youngest spoke in such fashion. Mere rhetoric satisfied the urge for revenge; much more vital was the fear of scrutiny by the dead. Besides this anxiety, there emerged forcefully and illogically — particularly among the Leningrad poets — a romantic nostalgia for the years so close and already so remote.36 Retrospective loyalty went deeply beneath superficial poetics, and on occasion lost itself in a kind of stupor. Those who survived the Leningrad ordeal frankly admitted it: B TBOii

H

BMep3Aa

H

K TBoeMy npHrBOxt^eHa

H e n O B T O p H M b l i t AG a BH^eHbK).37

But restlessness was no more useful to the regime than was stupefaction. Guilt, nostalgia, exaltation — all mixed together in an almost hysterical determination to remember — were in flagrant contradiction to the orders concerning liquidation of war moods. Gripping the edge of a mass grave, the poet felt compelled to vow: T b I OTXOfllHB

He

Tm

He cMeii 3a6hrrb!38

3a6hiB*iHB —

0TX04H, —

These moods, however modulated, found a release once more in prostration before the motherland, which in the course of the war had taken on a meaning both intimate and a-Soviet. Tvardovskij spoke for many: MaTb-aeMAa moh po^Haa,

Tbi n p o c r a , 3a mto —

Pa.AH

ToAbKO

pa^oCTHoro

tw

npocra

He

3Haio,

mchh.39

Now this was no frame of mind in which to tackle reconstruction, remobilization, and self-reindoctrination. The rift between the regime and the poet became critical. In spite of invectives and fratricidal 35

Vladimir Turkin, "V okope," Oktjabr\ 1946, 3^4, p. 163. "Vecno so mnoj voennaja junost' moja, / Est' te goda, ot kotoryx nel'zja otdalit'sja, / Est' te puti, ot kotoryx nel'zja otklonit'sja." Leonid Xaustov, "Suxo i krepko sosnovaja paxnet xvoja," Zvezda, 1948, 5, p. 63. 37 Ol'ga Berggol'c as quoted by L. Levin, Zvezda, 1947, 5, p. 199. 38 Lev Ozerov, "Babij jar," Oktjabr\ 1946, 3-^, p. 163. 39 Tvardovskij, Vasilij Terkin, p. 195. 36

312

Vera Sandomirsky

denunciations, "the heroic theme retreats backstage and the theme of suffering grows and grows." 40 The more it grew, the more the poetic effort splintered. Stern admonitions sucessfully arrested the war reminiscences, but they also drove the poet underground, away from the dreary discontent of postwar Soviet life. Curiously, he took along a pillow. The wartime poet had been too short of breath to settle down and compose epics. Lyrical, folkloristic, or newspaperish, war poetry was written and read in postures other than slouching in an armchair. And factography, nourished on the Acmeist tradition of concreteness and precision, saved a number of cycles from the fatal taint of kamernosf. But then the poets, perplexed at the abrupt termination of wartime contracts with the regime, bereft of their Terkins and Vlas'evnas, were driven back upon themselves. The chronicle of war ended with prohibitive finality and no other chronicle was forthcoming. So armchair verses, some sheepish and overqualified, some quite unself-conscious, were offered instead. Even the freedoms of war did not permit such an open view of the poet's internal affairs as did the new outburst of kamernosf. Detailed self-portraits of individual poets replaced the sketches of suffering folk heroes and heroines. Their mental hygiene left much to be desired. The collective pronoun WE had never really entered war poetry either. It could not, since the regime and everyone concerned understood that war was waged decidedly not in the name of any antiquated collective myth. Passionate interest in the stark chronicle, in the fact, in the vivid detail, in the concrete peculiarities of individual heroism or even in the stylized bogatyf Russianness, prevented any other pronoun from taking over. Such was the nature of wartime Sachlichkeit; and the side-line oimoi et toi lyrics — a very fashionable tamed gypsyism — was not in the least morbid so long as the yearning emphasis was placed on the toi. But, in vindication of Zdanov's wrath, the /, uncapitalized and unglamorous, invaded the lyrics at the close of the war, and even displaced the toi as love poems became sadder and sadder.41 40

V. Druzin, "O stile sovetskoj poSzii," Zvezda, 1947,5, p. 188. They are so numerous that it suffices to open at random any 1945 or 1946 literary journal. A typical "tragic love" poem of that period is Il'ja Sadof'ev's "Terpkoe vino," Zvezda, 1946, 1, p. 75. With its precarious title, it attracted Zdanov's special anger. It is important to stress that melancholy love was a 41

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313

Melancholy spread far and deep. It was deflected and sublimated by a great number of poets in persistent landscapism. Many others expressed it in a manner that was curious, to say the least: a midget army of pretty-pretty objects trooped through verses, triumphantly proclaiming itself in a barrage of diminutives. Examples are too numerous even to choose the best ones. 42 Prettiness of the sort overcome even in 2ukovskij's day had no end; the wild raspberries of idyllic infantilism were rampant. Somehow perversely deriving from both the middle-classdom of the Soviet intelligentsia and from its tenacious anti-urbanism, infantilism beckoned from the side-paths of the a-Soviet maze. The very quantity of nature lyrics, particularly those with a rococo pastoral flavor, was astonishing. In no way explorative or imaginative., these lyrics symbolized a retreat into mists inevitably pink, an ecstasy over bees always golden, a communion with the soul of daisies.43 A clue to the poet's motivation is provided by the enormous quantity of verse in which we are struck not so much by the hesitancy to make nature anthropomophic as by a frequent metamorphosis of the poet himself into rain, snow, or meadow. 44 But sometimes the poet, choosing favorite subject not only of the older poets. It captured the young as well. Among little-known poets, examples of entirely a-social introspection can be found; for instance, in Veronika Tusnova's "Stixi," Oktjabr, 1945, 8, p. 183, and Mixail Dudin, "Pir," Znamja, 1945, 7, p. 61. 42 "No vot probryznul dozdik melko / 1 stalo vdrug svetlo-svetlo. / Rosoj s lista umylas' belka... / So mnoju rjadom za peneckom / Na solnce vylezli gruzdi, / 1 veter, prjadaja po kockam, / Prines maliny mne v gorsti." Nikolaj Rylenkov, "Stixotvorenija," Novyj mir, 1946, 6, p. 77. 43 "Tixo solnce plyvet v rozovatom rassvetnom tumane," Vadim Sefner, Zvezda, 1947, 12, p. 119. — "Ot klevera i povilik / Leteli zolotye pcely," Mixail Dudin, Znamja, 1945, 7, p. 60. — "2du, okunajas' v dux romaski, / Cto serdce pticej stanet vdrug / 1 vyporxnet iz pod rubaski...," Nikolaj Rylenkov, Oktjabr', 1945, 9, p. 1. 44 The two famous instances of this, which fed the fury of critics, are Vladimir Lifsic's "Atenskoe uscel'e": "Ja gora i prigorok. / Reka i rucej. / Les i rosea. / Pastux i podpasok. / Ja segodnja ne tvoj, / I ne svoj, / I nicej! / Ja zakat / Iz dvenadcati krasok!" (Zvezda, 1947, 12, 162) and Viktor Goncarov's "Dozd"': "Ja segodnja dozd'. / Pojdu brodit' po krysam, / Teplye paneli polivat', / Vtrubax taraxtet' / i nicego ne slysat', / Nikomu ni v cem ne ustupat'. / Ja segodnja budu samym smelym, / Samym sil'nym — / budu sam soboj. / Raznocvetnym — ryzij, /, krasnyj, / belyj, — / Radugu otkryvsij nad rekoj. /1 nikto menja derzat' ne budet./ Razve cto, / staniski zasuciv, / Detvora kurnosaja zaprudit / Nikomu ne nuznye r u c ' i . . . " Znamja, 1948, 6, pp. 77-78.

314

Vera Sandomirsky

slightly antiquated words and the posture of a recluse, patently brought an accusation against the taxing obscestvennost': Kan AacKOBa K cKHTaAbijaM Bce3Haiomaa, My^pas n p a p o ^ a ! 45

Here was the problem itself: the poet was running and he could not conceal his hide-outs. The critics were disturbed; they could afford acquiescence even less than the poets. They hurled assorted invectives, most devastating of which were the cries of "kamernosf " and "sozercateVnosfY' "On lyrical non-war poetry there lies an annoying stamp of cold calmness and passive contemplation." 46 One cannot argue with "contemplation"; but the damning qualifications "cold" and "passive" are purposely misleading. Therein lie precisely the paradox and the pathos of the inner life of the Soviet postwar intelligentsia. Trite as the recent nature poetry is, a throbbing emotion, though a guilty one, underlies it. For it represents a passionate desire for tranquillity and vegetation. If in the war, poetry had somehow revived Acmeism, in the postwar period the vestiges of Symbolism heralded by the older poets sifted down even to the beginners. The critics did not let this escape their notice; hardly anything annoyed them more than Rozdestvenskij's lines: A TaM, cpe^b Tyq, b 6eryiijHe TyMaHbi B l i c o k h h Mecaij npaBHT cboh i c a h o k , H KajKeTca — yKpa^Koio CBeTAaHa CKOAI>3HT K BopoTaM 6pocnTb 6auiMaioK. 3aBeTHbiii l a c H TafiHbi a r a ^ a H i m . . . Kan xpynoK B034yx, 3aKOBaBiiraii ^aAb! 0.4HO HeocropojKHoe ^ u x a H t e , — H 3a3BCHHT OH, pyxHyB, K a K X p y C T a A b . HTO 3araAaTb? KaKOit nOBepHTb TaftHe, KaK BOCKpecHTb 3a6brroe ,4aBHO? . . 47

But the poet did find one extraordinarily safe hideaway: the den of the fairytale. It served several purposes. By spinning sweet nothings in style russe — 45

Leonid Martynov, Lukomor'e, as quoted by O. Ivinskaja, Novyj mir, 1945, 10, p. 175. 46 V. Bakinskij, "Poezija i sovremennost'," Zvezda, 1948, 7, p. 162. 47 Vsevolod Rozdestvenskij, "Ves' den' metel' kruzila," as quoted by Bakinskij, p. 164.

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CAy^aAOCb a h BaM co6HpaTB rpn6bi? B Aecax, r,¿ne TponHHKH npoTOirraHW AeiimM, r ^ e KOHH TyMaHa BCTaioT Ha ^bi6ti . . . ? H3BCCTHO AH BaM KaK CTapHK-nOAOCHHOBHK B TpaBy 3aroHaeT CBOIO ¿eTBopy,

KaK B vKCATblX nAaTOIKaX H apKO-MaAHHOBblX Be^yT x0p0B04 cbipoeacKH b 6opy? Bn4aAn-An Bbi, KaK nofl xBOHHOK) Kpuuieii TyAaeT b canoacKax ca6kh MOAO^eHbKHX éAOK ^epacacb?48 not only did he animate a technicolor landscape, making it all more cheery, but he persevered in glorifying the motherland. And that, after all, could still be interpreted as a patriotic stride even if a bit slow and devious. In the same breath, the forgotten past could be harmlessly embraced. Most important, perhaps, the bunnies and the mushrooms — particularly when decked with the gold of historicity — were soothing to the pangs of melancholy. Diminutives sprang up with nightmarish rapidity: Aio6ak) 6epe3y pyccKyio, T o CBeTAyio, TO rpycTHyio, B 6eAeHOM capaaHiHKe, C nAaxoHKaMH b KapMaHramcax,

C KpacHBbiMH 3acTeacKaMH,

C 3eAeHbIMH Cep&KKaMH. . . , 49

Though he might overindulge in sweetness, as long as the proximity of folklore to the creative impulse could be claimed for the benefit of consumers as well as narodnosf, the poet was more or less safe. At least, he was protected from the accusation of harmful overemotionalism. For nothing could be gayer than the little pockets and the tinkling earrings. The necessities of stylization protected the mushrooms, birds, daisies and all. Trapped in the exigencies of chauvinism, the critic, although he was ordered to act, was really in no position to attack effectively such ejaculations of Russianism and uncover their reality: a rather safe escape. And it cannot be stressed enough that many of the young joined the internal migration. 48 49

A. Kovalenkov, "V lesu," Novyj mir, 1945, 4, p. 116. Aleksandr Prokof'ev, Rossija, pp. 6-7.

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316

There was room in seclusion for individual variation. To what an extent landscapism was a shelter for a delicate amount of intoxication can be seen in Pavel Subin, a good young poet. His song-like quality seems natural : OTKpoK) nofl Beiep OKHO b AHCTonafl:

BbiOTca

BmimëBMe cBeiH

H

3aTeriAHA 3aKaT. . . .

B o 3 H e c ë T OT n o A e ü

Pe3Haa,

H a 4 30A0T0M p o u j

To^eHaa

H iëpHo-6arpoBbie rpaHH.

CMCpKHCT. H

HOHb

/JaAb Ha A TpaBOH

C e p e ô p o jKypaBAeit.

H3 aAoro b lëpHoe

H

AbëTCH H

AHCTBOH.

Ty^H cypoBbie

TycKAOH

—

napiH,

AHCTbH H e 3 p H M M e

B coH, b 3a6biTbë :

-

H a c b l MOH, 4 H H MOH,

CepAUe Moë!50

No rabbits and mushrooms here : only loneliness. And the traditionally poetic ornateness of red-black-and-gold brocade only sustains the introverted mood, refreshing after officially approved collectivefarm balladry. Subin also illustrates, in another miniature, that only the subterfuge of imitative folklorism permits real artistry : r^e-To b 4e6pax xoAO^a EcTb AyKaBCTBO Aernero, KoA^OBCKaa M0A040CTb Aeca nocefleBinero. . . .

Hto-to b AyHHOM H H e e ripOMeAbKHyAO-KaHyAO. H MaHHT 3a BëpcTaMH

M t o ace s t o — cTpaHHoe

TOAyÔblMH 3Bë3AaMH

H HeyAOBHMoe, /IpeBHee h paHHee, /Jo 6eflbi AK>6nMoe? . . . Hto-to b ohh chhhc I J e A b i M yapCTBOM rASHyAO,

Ab^HCTblMH

3 a C H e r a M H HHCTblMH

MOHHCTaMH.

ToAyÖKaMH UIBHAKHMH IIIH6KHMH A o m a ^ K a M H , I U e p C T f l H M M H CBHTKaMH, A e , 4 H H b I M H CBHTKaMH. . . ,

Since the system was ambivalent about the whole matter of this fairy-tale stylization, the poet found it a curiously impregnable fortress, wherein mild heresies were thought and perhaps even lived. Here he could defrost the glacial obscestvennost' and character formation. /tojKflb O h 50 51

6pe/(eT 3a To6oft n 3a mhoh, caobho nec

MOAiaAHBbiii, p y i H o i i .

CKOAb3HT n O ^ p y K a M H , 3 B e H H T n o K a M H H M K O r O T K a M H ,

Pavel Subin, "Osen'," Znamja, 1946, 2-3, p. 71. Pavel Subin, " I n e j , " Znamja, 1944, 5-6, p. 18.

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3a4eBaer Hac mokpbim xboctom b nepeyAKe n y c T O M . Mm 3h6hcm UOA BeTpoM BHe3anHMM. Euje ^aAeKO 40 yTpa; HaM corpeTbCH nopa b 40Me cKa3Kn! . . . H b MeTeAH OTpbiBHCToii, xhujhoh, p a 3 r p e 6 y a T p o n H H K y 3 a xhhchhoh! 3Bepn 4 e T C T B a , nrpyuuKH, c o i i ^ y r c H c i o f l a , a H a e A K e K a i H e T C H 3 B e 3 4 a . CHa He Sy^eT, Mopo3a He 6y^eT. CTaHeT naAfcijaM 3hmoh ot pa6oTM TenAo. Hinero, mto okho c e p e 6 p o M o6pocao b /(Omc CKa3Kii ! 5 2

Chilling horror outside — warmth inside. There was little whimsy in all this. Rather, emboldened in his cozy stronghold, the poet indulged in excesses. Of several varieties, the most unavoidable was infantilism, often an unintentional, obtuse parody on his own efforts. C a O B O K CAOBy

pflflbllHKOM.

JKhah mm y 6 a 6 y i i i K H /3,a HipaAH B AaAMIIIKH. n p o copoKy 6a6yniKa CKa3Ky TOBopHAa, KaK OHa BopoBKa

Kaimcy BapiiAa. Hy, a boak rpoMHAa

r i o AecaM maTaACa. . . .

MocKBe 6eAOKaMeHHOH CAaBa — CTOAHije. CAaBa Garane CnaccKoii. CAaBa pyccKHM Aio^aM. A Tenepi. h cKa3Ky CKa3biBaTb 6yfleM.53

Thus is told, of all things and in all seriousness, a story of partisan heroism and collaborationist corruption, where protagonists pose as everyone from Ivanuska-Duracok to Solovej-Razbojnik. The relative simplicity of animated landscapes or evocative frost patterns on a window-pane led to the greater pretentiousness of ornate episodes with historical flavor.54 The poet left the forest for the palace, where princes made theatrical entrances accompanied by other unrestrained personages. An example is a long narrative poem significantly entitled Svjatoslav. A o chx nop n o M o p o B rcrnop, HoBropO^CKHH rOBOpOK, . . . flp CHX nop OH HApeH, 30A0T, Emctp, KaK 6ncep cKaTHMx 3epeH, — LJapb-Mopo3 Ham, — ™cr-y3opeH, — 52

Fedor Folomin, "Dom skazki," Novyj mir, 1946, 3, p. 79. Boris Smidt, "Skazka o Solov'e-Solovuske," Zvezda, 1946, 5-6, p. 7. Visarion Sajanov, quite a mediocrity, had already been master of this manner for some time. 53 54

318

Vera Sandomirsky Uapb-^OflOH 4a qapb-ropox! . . . B0A0flHMHp-KHH3b C KHHrHHeft BLDCO4HAH Ha KpfciAbyo; CBCTAM fleBbi-6eperHHH BocnAbroaAH c MecjujoM. BbiA 3a^apeH BCCM pa36oiiHHK, H o — 3a/pipa BceH 4ymoS — 3aCBHCTeA-B3rAyUIHA COKOAHK Becb-TO Khcb — n « p 6oAbiHoii. . . .

/ t p y r a ! KaK 6bi HH cy^HAH — PyCCKH Ab, TOCTH Ab My>KaKH Bee MM B »H3HH necHb AIO6HAH KaK xMeAbHbie Myacuxn. TaK nocAymaii TOAOC 3bnHbm! — Moxcex, 4HK OH — no-MyjKHibH,

M o » e i , rpy6bra, He MyatraHbift . . . MoateT . . . MOJKeT H A3bI1HHK — R BAiobAeH, 6paT, B KpacoTy! 55

These masked pagans and drunken muzhiks presented a problem.56 The critics did not quite know what to do with them; orders from above were not clear. Only the old-time "militant" literary potentates found something decidedly wrong with the allure of a pseudo-historical past. 57 The others merely stated that too much intoxication was inappropriate. Basically, however, no one could seriously disagree with "joyousness," even in the shape of buffoonery. The definition of the Stalinist postwar "beautiful life" allowed for a great deal of velvet and gold. So today, even the youngest poets revel in Slavic antiquity, princely exploits, and semi-delirious archaisms, all of which would be inconceivable to young poets of the twenties and even the thirties who had been stimulated by what they thought were the social dynamics of the new system. The social order has petrified; the material ornateness of the rulers' ways and means has seeped down to the people. From it flowers a wish-fulfilment for 65

Dimitrij Petrovskij, "Solovej-Razbojnik" (iz podmy Svjatoslav), Novyj mir, 1946, p. 146 f. 56 Particularly, when, liberally imbibing braga, stuffing their mouths with bliny, and uttering incredible archaisms, they invaded the kolxoz itself; cf. Nikolaj Trjapkin, "Tri stixotvorenija," Oktjabr,' 1947, 11, pp. 53-55. 57 "V izobrazenii ljudej i del 'davno minuvsix d n e j ' . . . sliskom uz gusto paxnet ladanom, parcoj, bozen'koj i, narjadu s 6tim, sliskom mnogo epolet i regalij, mitropolitov i carej." Fedor Gladkov, Novyj mir, 1945,4, p. 152.

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which the system is willing to pay the price. Nor is that price so very high. For it is only an ideological paradox. The ponderous restoration spirit, absorbed with circumvention of the revolutionary heritage, is to the regime's advantage. The Kremlin mystique serves its purpose as long as all the popularized, re-gilded, re-silvered glory of the more than remote past flows into it — but not the other way around. The flow must be unilateral. The only truly dangerous excess, in all manifestations of narodnost', is the one where Sovietism, improperly reversed, dissolves without trace into Russianness at large. The reversal on occasion was permissible, but not since the war. And if it does occur, wistfully, sadly, so much the worse. The following poem is of note because, again, the author is of the youngest generation. As he sees it, triumphant speeches of Soviet potentates, with a singular dreariness, are woven into the fatalistic web that stretches from Monomax to unborn great-grandchildren. GryHHT ^epeBHHHaa npHAKa. Grapyxa ch^ht y oKHa. . . . E h Tbicjrea act, BToii npaxe, A npi^eii He bii^ho ce^bix. Pa6oTaAa npii MoHOMaxe, IIpn npaBHyicax 6y^eT tbohx. . . .

IlacxaAbHbie 3Be3^M PjraaHH, TyiuaH 6eAopyccKHx noAeit, 3a6brrbie rAaBbi CKa3aHHit, IIoSeAHbie pe*m Boavteii. . . . H Bcmue BeTpw Pocchh CkodSht h AHKytOT b Tpy6e.58

Possibly, the only perceivable contribution to Blok-Esenin Russianism is the "indifferentism" (a favorite Soviet invective) of this poem. And that raises the question of whether Eseninism is still rampant. There is nothing new in Soviet discussions about literary problems. Repetitiousness is evidence of the chronic nature of many tendencies, one of which is the problem of style russe poetry, enormously complicated at one time by the excesses of Eseninism. No matter what a fair appraisal of Esenin himself may be — probably somewhere between the extremes of Bunin's revulsion and Bohemian infatuation — the fact remains that he was a poet, and one not entirely characterized by the term "peasant." He was more and less than that. Similarly, Eseninism, a disease that spread among the city youth mourning over his suicide, was complex: for one thing, Esenin's disciples later fused their lamentations with the sorrows of Majakovskij's zealots. 58

Jaroslav Smeljakov, "Prjaxa," Znamja, 1946, 4, p. 80.

320

Vera Sandomirsky

The regime, having disposed at one time of the Formalists' discoveries and having postulated the myth of "character formation," was forced to act whenever poetry seemed to be forming character in the wrong direction. Two equally devastating charges were brought against Eseninism: alcoholism and style russe. In a famous article in Pravda of January 12, 1927, none other than Buxarin described Eseninism as "revolting, powdered, and arrogantly made-up Russian obscenity, amply drenched in drunken tears," and accused it of reviving the horrors of the slave-holding past. 59 Today a critic might be forced to echo these sentiments, but he does so feebly. On the one hand the official postulate has been expanded to read that poetry is primarily character-forming in terms of nationalism. A chauvinist amnesty was granted to more things than just "little icons." On the other hand, if Eseninism has survived, it has become emasculated. Gone are the involvement, pose, class-commitment, and love-hatred. Style russe has become professional and as such is merely a password. Thus, as the regime lost its leverage against this excess, its very attitude has become blurred. Style russe cannot now be attacked precisely because it is merely a cypher that effectively conceals the disillusionment of the intelligentsia.

4 . SILENCE TmimHa, TM Aymiaa H 3 Bcero, ITO

CAbimaA.

Boris Pasternak, "Zvezdy letom"

When melancholy began to spread at the close of the war, a remarkably large quantity of verse was written around the key-words tisina, detstvo, and starosf — "silence," "childhood," and "age." Some poets took to wringing their hands and looking back, back, back. B nycryio H O I B , AAAAMBRAAA EtiAoe Harne HiijeT Hac. K neMy! . . .

pyKii,

59 He damns the rabskoeprosloe: "Ono — v 'ladankax' i 'ikonkax', v 'svececkax' 'lampadkax'. Ono — v ostatkax sovinizma." Reprinted in Oktjabr1927, pp. 131-138.

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EcTfc B MHpe M H O r O SeAblX P 0 3 H aAblX, Ecn> NTHLJTI B He6e H B P Y I B A X B O ^ A , E c T b 3KH3HB H C M e p T b . H o H H C K a K H X BOK3aAOB

B MHHyBmee He

XO4HT

noe3^a. 60

Again it is important to note that some very young men expressed such feelings. They retreated from the present, from the suburban here-and-now. BecHOH, KaK H a n o c A e ^ H e M py6esce, ^aBHo SbiAoe noBTopHTb noApoGao M h c xoneTCa. KaK0ii-T0 /(peBmiii, ^poGnbrii /(oac/ib. JKeHujHHy, KOTopoii HeT yace, KaKyro-TO CTpoKy H3 Tex Terpa^eii, KoTopbie ^aBHo 3a6biTbi M H O H . . . . Kap-raH 4HK006pa3iibie HaSpocKH . . . CoBceM C A y i a i h i o RH^anHbie Benin

(3Meii Ha4 peKoft, opAHHoe raes^o), GiaCTAHBblii COH HeHMOBepHO Benjuit, H a 4 BoArofl — BCTpeiy noe3AOB H npoiee TaKoe noBTopHTb MHe Tan xoieTCH, hto Kaac^yio BecHy H

H a ^ H H a i O JKHTb B TOM n p O I I I A O M p H T M e

C o B c e M He SaMCHaH

HOBH3Hy.61

Here the poet flagrantly casts off social relatedness; wanders amidst haphazard, light-weight memories; infuses the triflling matter with a relaxed tone. How vast, how accessible is thenon-Sovietized no-man'sland! And if in the last lines, the present is rejected with audacity, in the key-words "on the last frontier" there is suggested that pervasive feeling of something new and different to come which we have noted before. The war itself had become that last frontier. Sooner or later an undertone of despair sounded in so many poets that the regime's attempt to isolate it as a specifically Leningradian problem merely stressed its severity. In the run-of-the-mill production the vocabulary itself was split between whimperings of personal despondency and shreds of optimistic public language. How pitiful, 60 81

Vadim Sefner, Prigorod, as quoted in Oktjabr', 1947, 4, p. 185. Aleksandr Mezirov, Znamja, 1945, 9, p. 72.

322

Vera Sandomirsky

for instance (and such examples are numerous) is the obbligato of "glory" and "labor" in a sad little thing like this: IIOBIIAHKOii MOAOflOCTb IIOBHAa,

JKh3hi>, HCAB3H cKa3aTb, TTO6 y^aAacb. Bee ace, noBTopaio, KaK 6biBaAo: CAaBa TOH, 1TO AHBHeM npoHeCAaCb, CAaBa acH3HH crporoii, SbicTpoTe^Hoit, CAaBa H36paHHoiny mhoh Tpy^y, PyccKoit peiH, hchoh h cep^eiHoii, H a 3eMAe, b KOTopyio yPiAy."2

A much discussed postwar poem of Margarita Aliger illustrates even better, for there is some finesse in it, the dichotomy between message and mood; the paradox of the virtuous intent to "stride forward" and the admission of crippling fatigue. One might conjecture that the contradictory pull of this little poem results less from the author's own will than from the subconscious clash between habitual formulae and emotions repressed far from sufficiently. Aioah MHe oihhSok He npoujaiOT. IIpHTepneAacb a 4ep»aTb oxseT. Aencoft jkh3hh MHe He oSeiijaioT TeAerpaMMH yrpeHHux ra3eT. nje^pbie Ha npa3flHbie npHBeTbi, /}hh ropaT, KaK 6a6oiKH b orae . . . Hto Mory s 3HaTb o AerKoS jkh3hh : Pa3Be TOAbKO H3 iy>KHX CTHXOB . . . IlAeiH MHe crn6aionjaH Homa, Bee » e Tbi, KaK neptmiKO Aeraa. Thh MeHH! KAa^H uje^pee npoce^b, Ecah b ieM BHHOBHa h — npocra. CTaHb euje TaaceAe, h6o c6pocHxb Mhc Te6a rpy^nee, neM Hecrii. 63

This almost masochistic plea for crushing burdens was severely criticized as introspective defeatism, and thereby precipitated a major quarrel. 64 Strangely, credit is due to Konstantin Simonov, that skilful liaison-man, for gallantly standing up in Aliger's defense and 62

Vera Zvjaginceva, Znamja, 1944, 9, p. 80. Margarita Aliger, Novye stixi, as quoted by K. Simonov, "Zametki pisatelja," Novyj mir, 1947, 1, p. 167. 63

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323

insisting that her "sublimated" stoicism should be accepted at face value.65 But for many, stoicism was no solace, and rapidly disappeared. In its stead appeared the interrelated motifs of recapturing a highly romanticized childhood or anticipating, with all degrees of morbidity, old age and death. Even those who only a short while before had been the most martial of front-line poets now joined the pursuit of time past. The postwar period was indeed hard to take. /¡,eA CKa3aA, *rro BepGoHKH K BecHe o6iiiMBaioT 3 a f t y u cepbiM MexoM . . . HyjKHo l a u j e B ^ C T C T B O ye3acaTb, 4TO6M He ipeBOJKHAH n e i a A H . .

The anguish of old age, no isolated theme, was particularly forceful; it also demonstrates the strong connection between the older and younger poets. Next to the then silenced Pasternak and Axmatova, the maligned but on occasion still audible Pavel Antokol'skij and Vsevolod Rozdestvenskij are poets of stature. The system has countless surprises in store: their lyrics of great sadness were printed. An established notion notwithstanding, Zdanov's rage had a wide basis in fact. Grieving over the death of his only son, Antokol'skij again and again takes stock: HTO ace, CTapOCTh

TaK CTapOCTb

HexHTpan, KaaceTca, Benjb. H e cHAeH ee TOAOC, 4 a Bce-TaKH OH He 3AOBeuj . . . I I O C M O T P H M K Y ^ A OHA

RAEX,

HTO 3 a 4 B e p b p a c n a x H e T , ITO 3a

nbiAb

C ieAOBeKa cMaxHer, — Moacer, c K a 3 K O i i n o p a ^ y e T , MoaceT, H T O a c e , XOAOA —

H

NPAB^y

NPHCY^HT

..

TAK X O A O A !

IlpHWMHCb KO MHe K p e n i e , ,4pyacoK. 3aHaBecHA, HeapKyio AaMrry 3aacer. PACNABMAIOTCH Araja. C a c s h t c h y c T a A u e BCKH. HTO ace, 3HaraT, HaBeKH? Bbixo^HT a snpaB^y HaBeKH. 87

FL OKHO

64

Semen Tregub, " N o v y e stixi Margarity Aliger," Literaturnajagazeta, October 26, 1946 and "Pisatelju K . Simonovu," Novyj mir, 1947, 6, pp. 253-259. 66 Konstantin Simonov, " Z a m e t k i pisatelja," Novyj mir, 1947, 1, pp. 157-173. " 6 Semen Gudzenko, Novyj mir, 1946, 6, p. 76. 87 Pavel Antokol'skij, "Cetyre stixotvorenija," Zvezda, 1946, l , p . 75.

324

Vera Sandomirsky

Even the youngest, though not quite so literally and with far less justification, sought refuge in the twilight behind drawn shades. Voicing a very Soviet protective anxiety, another father's helplessness and downright horror at life is unmistakable in the warning to his daughter: XpaHH Moe 3aBeiHoe HacAeflcrBo, — OTCTOH PA34YMNII, r o p a a y , 4 a i ,

—

H e B C H A a x a c n a c ™ OT 3AHX OIUHSOK, 3 a M K H y n > Te6a B cnoKoiicTBHe h THiin>,

—

B e f l b B e e paBHo H a m ny-n> 6WA KpyT h 3m6OK, H Tbi ero HeBOAbHO noBTopmm.. 68

Practically every lyricist joined in the shuddering at the "grievous errors" of life; the private and heretical craving for rest and peace; the grand search for SILENCE. Clearly such quietude lay oif the main road. Camouflaged by prettiness, all sorts of silence came to be rhapsodized: the snowy, frosty kind with icicles — B c a , 4 BOH^y: 4 o p o a c K H Bee nycTM, H AEPEBBH —

crycTKH TCMHOTM.

AOMKNE noxpycTbmaioT AVIHHKH. O i e H h TtlXO flblUIHT THUIHHa. BYFLTO KTO-TO B INANKE-HEBH^HMKE

XO^HT psmoM . . , 69

and the hotter, more glowing kind, full of vernal expectations — K a n xoMeTcs cqacTta paHHeii BCCHOH,

K o r ^ a B 3a6bin.e CTOHUH> NOA cocHoit! H Ayuiy oxBaraT TaKaa neiaAb, KoTopoii Ha3BaHHa HeT no^nac,

H Tan ce6a noieMy-xo acaAb, TOHHO jKH3iib He y^aAacb. H o o 6 o A b i g a e T BCCHM -ropacecTBo,

H ac^euib Hero-To, He 3Haa i e r o . Tbi CAymaeuib npeflBe^epHioio THUIB . . .70 Vsevolod Rozdestvenskij, "Doceri Natase," Novyj mir, 1948, 4, p. 213. •* Leonid Xaustov, "Novosel'e," as quoted by V. Bakinskij, Zvezda, 1948, 7, p. 166. 70 Il'ja Sel'vinskij, "Vesna," Oktjabr\ 1946, 1-2, p. 6. 88

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It invaded love lyrics — /taAeiCHX npe^KOB TeMHoe HacAeAbe — BeceHHJtH SpoflHiaa Tocna . . . TOMHT 3aKaT TMcaieAeTHeii Me^tio . . . Tbl, HaHBy, B HyjKOM, 6e33By^HOM ^OMe CnoKoÜHO cnHiiib. B OKHe ctoht AyHa. H 3Haro

h — AeamT b tbohx AaAOHax

Mos noTepHHHaa THiiiHHa.71

And on occasion, the entire world dissolved in a sort of pan-quietude— MHe 3hoh oTBecHbiil naMHTeH h ak>6! . . . Ho MHe H AOjKAb OTpa^eil npOAHBHOÜ! . . . Mhc no cepflijy h BKpafliHBbiii TyMaH! . . . ITOHHTHO MHe H BeTpa TopmecTno! . . . Bm cnpocnTe, a r4e ace THiiiHHa? H o 3TO H 30BCTCH THUIHHOK)-. Kan 6eAHH ijbct co^epacirr Bee TOHa, Tan H3 Aoacfla, TyMaHa, BeTpa, 3hoh H THiiraHa 3eMHaji coTKaHa.'2

Winter or summer, wind or storm, this melancholy lyricism was full of self-pity, was remote from the present. Some poets even dared, on a more philosophical plane, to divorce the Muse from her official obligations, both toward stepped-up reconstruction efforts and toward the militant present in general: Tbi — MHAoe nponiAoe Hauie. Tw — SyflynjHOCTb Haiimx ^eTeft. . .. Tbi — Bee c leM HeAb3a paccTaBaTbM Tbl

BCe, 1TO HeAb3H pa3AK)6nTb . . . ' 3

On this formidable emotional detour, even toska, that dangerously anti-Soviet word, was exhumed and toyed with. /[a. yjK Aymie k 3eMAe h hotkom npnna^y /[a 3apowcb b necKH, 3 a x o i y — yAeny Ha Apyryio 3Be3^y, A yiiAy ot tockh. 71

Veronika Tusnova, "Lirika," Novyj mir, 1945, 10. p, 86. Gleb Semenov, "Tisina," as quoted by A. Tarasenkov, "Zametki o pofezii," Novyj mir, 1948, 4, p. 208. 73 Nikolaj Usakov, "Podzija," as quoted by E. Naumov, Zvezda, 1948, 5, p. 195. 72

326

Vera Sandomirsky y MeHH 4Be pyKHj y

MeHH

KyAaKH,

A y Heft ncy; rAa3aMH Kpyra bcahkh, y MeHH ecn> TOBapHura-BeceAbiaKH . . . Boace Moft, IlOMOrH MHe yfiTH OT TOCKH.'4 The protective sands appear here for the sake of the rhyme; but they also appear to bury the poet, who, in attempting to escape himself, finds least painful the posture of complete prostration. Again, we must note the lack of whimsy in this malaise. The intense desire for the stillness of introverted contemplation sometimes led to a detailed description of the most private emotional landscapes; Margarita Aliger's Tvoja pobeda is the best example in this vein. Every page of the poem speaks of loneliness. So the longing for quietude, expressed in lyric bagatelles or in more pretentious forms, becomes a longing for loneliness, preferably found in adoration of nature. But how is one to know whether the freeflowing melancholy is an attribute of the previously achieved isolation of the intelligentsia from the public tumult, or whether it marks, with all its romantic overtones, the impossibility of attaining that state of bliss? At the close of the war, melancholy ran rife in the leading journals and in a great number of collections. It was also profusely criticized. Such dualism marked an ambivalence in the attitudes of the system. Did it then and does it now really prefer to have the poet, as a representative of the creative intelligentsia, scurry about in the midstream of obscestvennost', or would it rather have him relegated to his corner, there to spin the inconsequential thread of sorrowful prettiness, not such a useless product after all? For some readers — and who can count them? — respond to sadness. And empathy and catharsis can be good social building blocks. It is also possible, of course, that the world of writing, editing, publishing, and literary criticism, communist theory notwithstanding, is altogether peripheral to the main stream of political life. That, however, is unlikely. Aseev once said that Majakovskij had accelerated the poetic "Leonid Martynov, "Toska,"

Novyj mir,

1945, 11-12, p. 112.

The Sad Armchair

327

tempo to the speed of thought. Shackled by imposed simplistic traditionalism, devoid of linguistic and structural exploration, lyric poetry crawls in circles of redundancy. In this slowest of slow motions, it permits a naked view of the poet's lonely, tired, postwar psyche. Of course, correct, militant verses of "social significance" have been turned out. Zdanov's reforms immediately produced versifications of foreign policy as well as several boisterous collectivefarm reconstruction ballads and "epics." A young lyrical poet, one Mixail Lukonin, capitalized on an "up-and-at-them" emotional obliteration of the war experience. And the court poets of XrusSevism receive new assignments in remembering as well as forgetting. But the numerical paucity so far of the "correct" thing, and the speed with which it was acclaimed as an example for urgent emulation only underline the serious illness of those many lyricists who are still marking time and seem incapable of following instructions. But perhaps this is just as well. Obsessive longing for quietude is not only a favorite literary topic but, more deeply, is a description of the poet's desired way of life. So considered, what does the eruption of diminutives and oversweetness mean? Does it mean sterility and an oppressive decay of taste? Or was everyday urban reality in the stringent last days of Stalinism so stagnant that crude beautification was not only called for but was humanly justifiable? Most important, was this drug necessary to the poet or to the audience? If to the latter — and very likely this was so — then the system itself was peddling the dope, more or less surreptitiously, under the over-all heading of middle-class beautiful life, in which a tempered amount of sadness and sentiment was even then paradoxically permissible. To lay bare the poetic sterility of Soviet society is a sorry task, for it is only too obvious. More valuable, perhaps, is a textual documentation of the fatigue and despondency of the poet as he stood facing the postwar world. He did not quite know what to do with emotion, and the system attempted then, as it still does, to meet the problem by wooing the intelligentsia, relentlessly, though deviously, and in spurts, as it were. The system's standing gift to the sick and tired is a network of intricate and minute safety valves. Those that permit escape into fairyland prettiness, velvet and gold ornateness, a temporary armchair stupor, have so far been the most effective.