The Tale of Igor's Campaign
The Tale of Igor's Campaign (
Old East Slavic: Слово о плъку Игоревѣ,
Slovo o plŭku Igorevě;
Modern Ukrainian: Слово о полку Ігоревім, Slovo o polku Ihorevim;
Modern Russian: Слово о полку Игореве,
Slovo o polku Igoreve) is an anonymous masterpiece of East
Slavic literature written in the
Old East Slavic language and tentatively dated to the end of
12th century. It is also occasionally translated as
The Song of Igor's Campaign and
The Lay of Igor's Campaign. The
Ukrainian sources transliterate the name as
Ihor. The originality of the book was disputed, though today prevailing opinion is that the book is authentic. The
Tale of Igor's Campaign was adapted by
Alexander Borodin into one of the great classics of Russian
opera. Entitled
Prince Igor, it was first performed in 1890.
The plot of this classic work is based on a failed raid of
Kniaz Igor Svyatoslavich of
Novhorod-Siverskyy (of the
Chernihiv principality of ancient
Rus') against the
Polovtsians or Cumans living in the southern part of the
Don region in
1185. Other East Slavic historical figures are mentioned, including
Vseslav of Polotsk,
Yaroslav Osmomysl of
Halych, and
Vsevolod the Big Nest of
Suzdal. The author appeals to the warring Russian princes, pleading for unity in the face of the constant threat from the Turkic East.
An interesting aspect of the text is its mix of ancient
Slavic religion and
Christianity. Igor's wife Yaroslavna famously invokes pagan gods from the walls of
Putyvl, although some Christian motifs are also present. Another aspect, which sets the book apart from contemporary Western epics, are its numerous and vivid descriptions of
nature, and the role which nature plays in human lives.
|
800th anniversary of the masterpiece on the 1985 USSR commemorating stamp |
The only manuscript of the Tale, dated to
1400s, was discovered in
1795, in the library of a
Yaroslavl monastery, where the first library and school in Russia had been established back in the 12th century. The monks sold it to a local landowner,
Aleksei Musin-Pushkin, as a part of a collection of ten texts. He realised the value of the book, and made a transcription for the empress
Catherine the Great in 1795 or
96, and published it in
1800 with the help of leading Russian paleographers of the time,
Alexei Malinovsky and
Nikolai Bantysh-Kamensky. The original manuscript was burned in the great Moscow fire of
1812 (during the Napoleonic occupation), together with Aleksei's entire library.
Vladimir Nabokov produced a translation into English in
1960. Other notable editions include the standard Soviet edition, prepared with an extended commentary, by the academician
Dmitry Likhachev.
A passage on Vseslav the Werewolf''In the seventh age of Troyan, Vseslav cast lots for the damsel he wooed. By subterfuge, propping himself upon mounted troops, he vaulted toward the city of Kiev and touched with the staff of his lance the Kievan golden throne. Like a fierce beast he leapt away from them at midnight, out of the white town, having enveloped himself in a blue mist.
''Then at morn, he drove in his battle axes, opened the gates of Novgorod, shattered the glory of Yaroslav, and loped like a wolf to the Nemiga from Dudutki. On the Nemiga the spread sheaves are heads, the flails that thresh are of steel, lives are laid out on the threshing floor, souls are winnowed from bodies. Nemiga's gory banks are not sowed goodly - sown with the bones of Russia's sons.
''Vseslav the prince judged men; as prince, he ruled towns; but at night he prowled in the guise of a wolf. From Kiev, prowling, he reached, before the cocks crew, Tmutorokan. The path of Great Sun, as a wolf, prowling, he crossed. For him in Polotsk they rang for matins early at St. Sophia the bells; but he heard the ringing in Kiev.
Although, indeed, he had a vatic soul in a doughty body, he often suffered calamities. Of him vatic Boyan once said, with sense, in the tag: "Neither the guileful nor the skillful, neither bird nor bard, can escape God's judgment. The release of this historical work into scholarly circulation created quite a stir in Russian literary circles, because the tale represented the earliest Slavonic writing without any mixture of
Church Slavonic. Ukrainian scholars in the
Austrian Empire declared, upon linguistic analysis, that the document contained transitional language between a) earlier fragments of the language of
Rus' propria'' (the region of
Chernihiv, eastward through
Kyiv, and into
Halych) and, b) later fragments from the
Halych-Volynian era of this same region in the centuries immediately following the writing of the document. The current
dialectology upholds
Pskov and
Polotsk as the two cities where the Tale was most likely written. Numerous persons have been proposed as its authors, including Prince Igor and his brothers.
Early reactions
When the first modern edition of the Tale was published, questions about its authenticity have risen, mostly centered on its language. Suspicion was also fueled by contemporary fabrications (for example, the "Songs of
Ossian" which were actually written by
James Macpherson). Today, majority opinion accepts the authenticity of the text, based on similarity of its language with that of other texts discovered after the Tale.
Proposed as forgers were
Aleksei Musin-Pushkin himself, or the Russian manuscript forgers
Anton Bardin and
Alexander Sulakadzev (Bardin was publicly exposed as the forger of four other copies of 'Slovo'). One of the notable early proponents of the falsification theory was the notorious journalist and orientalist
Josef Sienkowski.
It should be noted that the authenticity of the monument hasn't been questioned by any professional linguist. According to the majority view, such a perfect imitation of 12th-century language could not be practicable before the discovery of
birch bark documents in 1951, let alone two centuries earlier. Historians and journalists, however, continued to question the tale's authenticity well into the 20th century.
Modern developments
The problem was politicized in the
Soviet Union: any attempts to question the authenticity of 'Slovo' (for example, those by French Slavist
André Mazon or by Russian historian
Alexander Zimin) as well as the non-standard interpretations, based on Turkic lexis, such as proposed by
Oljas Suleimenov (who considered Igor's Tale to be an authentic text), were officially condemned. However, being a persecuted point of view does not imply its correctness. Mazon and Zimin's views were opposed, e.g., by
Roman Jakobson, the most reputable Slavist of the 20th century, whose works were also banned from publishing in the USSR.
One of the crucial points of the controversy is the relationship between Slovo and
Zadonschina, an unquestionably authentic poem, preserved in six medieval copies and created in the 15th century to glorify
Dmitri Donskoi's victory over
Mamai in the
Battle of Kulikovo. It is evident that there are almost identical passages in both texts where only the personal names are different. The traditional point of view considers Zadonschina to be a late imitation, with Slovo being its pattern. The forgery version claims vice versa that the Igor's Tale is written using Zadonschina as a source. Recently,
Jakobson's and
Zaliznyak's analyses show that the passages of Zadonschina with counterparts in Slovo differ from the rest of the text by a number of linguistic parameters, whereas this is not so for Igor's Tale. This fact is evidence of Slovo being original with respect to Zadonschina.
Recent views
Although many scholars uphold the authenticity of the work, some challenge it. For instance, in his article "Was Iaroslav of Halych really shooting sultans in 1185?" and in his book "Josef Dobrovsky and the origins of the Igor's Tale" (
2003) the Harvard Professor of History
Edward Keenan states that Igor's Tale is a fake, written by Czech scholar
Josef Dobrovsky.
A recent book by a Russian linguist
Andrey Zaliznyak (
2004) analyzes the arguments of both sides and concludes that the forgery version is virtually impossible. He also revokes some of Jakobson's linguistic arguments for the authenticity of the text. Only in the late 20th century, when hundreds of bark documents were unearthed in Novgorod, was it demonstrated that the puzzling passages and words from the tale actually existed in everyday speech of the 12th century, although they didn't find their way to chronicles and other written documents. Zaliznyak concludes that no 18th century scholar could possibly imitate the subtle grammatical and syntactical features that are present in the known text. Nor could Dobrovsky, Keenan's candidature, fulfil such a task, as his views on Slavic grammar were strikingly different from the system found in Igor's Tale.
Vladimir Nabokov once said that there is not a single work in world literature that could approach the tale by sheer range and complexity of its prose rhythms. 18th-century Russia had neither the scholars to understand
Old East Slavic so perfectly, nor the great poets capable of creating such a masterpiece.
*
Prince Igor*
Old East Slavic language*
The original edition of 1800*
Roman Jacobson's edition*
Several Russian translations*
Text and Ukrainian interpretations*
Leonard Magnus English translation of 1915, parallel English/Russian
