From: Sergejus Tarasovas
Message: 1910
Date: 2000-03-21
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:Sorry for misunderstanding and thanks for the reference. As for artistic merits, we just have nothing to compare it to: all the other survived literature of the region is either church (most) or of utilitary use (like chronicles and economic notes). We could compare if we had found other work of the same genre.