From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1905
Date: 2000-03-20
----- Original Message -----From: Sergejus TarasovasSent: Friday, March 17, 2000 8:48 AMSubject: [cybalist] Re: Praeneste fibula> "Slovo o polku Igoreve" (The Tale of Igor's Campaign), the
> greatest monument of Old Russian literature, has been
> regarded as a hoax by some Slavicists (unfortunately, the
> manuscript was destroyed in the fire of Moscow in 1812)
> mainly on account of being too perfect to be true, though as
> far as I know the majority view at present is that it IS
> authentic after all. Come to think of it, "Beowulf" also
> stands apart from the other Old English literature.
>
> Piotr
IMHOP, "Slovo" contains so many inconsistencies (a mixture of Old Russian
and Church Slavonic forms, sincopated versions of words like Zl'a
'(personified) sorrow' instead of Zel'a etc etc) that I'm just anxious to
know the names of those Slavicists.
I mean "perfect" the artistic sense, as a work which surpasses the other local literature of the same period -- I don't mean "linguistically homogeneous". As a matter of fact, if I were a forger of old literature, I'd do my best to make my creation as organically inconsistent as Homer's epics of Beowulf are. Would it fool anybody otherwise?I first read aboutr "Slovo" being possibly a hoax in a rather old historical grammar of the Slavic Languages published in England (it was so long ago that I'm not even sure who the author was; I think his name was Mackenzie, if you want names).Most of those who doubted the authenticity of "Slovo" are now dead, I suppose (not because of Igor's curse but because more recent scholarship has undermined the hoax theory). This is also what the Encyclopaedia Britannica seems to imply:Piotr