Nestor the Chronicler
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Forensic facial reconstruction by Sergei Nikitin.
| |
| Born | The middle of the 11th century |
| Died | The beginning of the 12th century |
| Occupation | monk |
| Known for | compilation of Primary Chronicle |
Nestor was a monk of the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev from 1073. The only other detail of his life that is reliably known is that he was commissioned with two other monks to find the relics of St. Theodosius of Kiev, a mission which he succeeded in fulfilling. It is also speculated that he supported the reigning prince Svyatopolk II and his pro-Scandinavian party and disliked Greek influence in Kiev.
His chronicle begins with the Deluge, as those of most Christian chroniclers of the time did. The compiler appears to have been acquainted with the Byzantine historians; he makes use especially of John Malalas and George Hamartolus. He also had in all probability other Slavonic language chronicles to compile from, which have since been lost. Many legends are mixed up with Nestor's Chronicle; the style is occasionally so poetical that perhaps he incorporated bylinas which are now lost.
As an eyewitness he could describe only the reigns of Vsevolod I and Svyatopolk II (1078–1112), but he could have gathered many interesting details from the lips of old men, two of whom could have been Giurata Rogovich of Novgorod, who could give him information concerning the north of Rus', Pechora River, and other places, and Yan Vyshatich, a nobleman ninety years of age, who died in 1106. Many of the ethnological details given by Nestor of the various tribes of the Slavs are of the highest value.
The current theory about Nestor is that the Chronicle is a patchwork of many fragments of chronicles, and that the name of Nestor was attached to it because he wrote the greater part or perhaps because he put the fragments together. The name of the hegumen Sylvester is affixed to several of the manuscripts as the author.
Historian Sergey Solovyov remarked that Nestor cannot be called the earliest Russian chronicler, but he is the first writer who took a national point of view in his history, the others being merely local writers. The language of his work, as shown in the earliest manuscripts just mentioned, is Palaeo-Slavonic with many Russisms.
St Nestor died around the year 1114, and was buried in the Near Caves. He has been glorified (canonized) as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church. The body of the ancient chronicler may be seen among the relics preserved in the Kiev Caves Laura. His feast day is celebrated on October 27. He is also commemorated in common with other saints of the Kiev Caves Laura on September 28 (Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Kiev Caves) and on the Second Sunday of Great Lent.
Known works
- Life of the Venerable Theodosius of Pechersk (1080)
- Primary Chronicle (1110s)
- Reading (about Boris and Gleb) (1115)
References
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Nestor (author)". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press
External links
Media related to Nestor the Chronicler at Wikimedia Commons- Russian text of the chronicle
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Chronicle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Chronicle of Bygone Years)
Contents
Three editions
Primary edition
The original compilation was long considered to be the work of a monk named Nestor and hence was formerly referred to as Nestor's Chronicle or Nestor's manuscript. His compilation has not been preserved. Nestor's many sources included earlier (now-lost) Slavonic chronicles, the Byzantine annals of John Malalas and George Hamartolus, native legends and Norse sagas, several Greek religious texts, Rus'-Byzantine treaties, and oral accounts of Yan Vyshatich and other military leaders. Nestor worked at the court of Sviatopolk II of Kiev and probably shared his pro-Scandinavian policies.The early part is rich in anecdotal stories, among which are the arrival of the three Varangian brothers, the founding of Kiev, the murder of Askold and Dir, the death of Oleg, who was killed by a serpent concealed in the skeleton of his horse, and the vengeance taken by Olga, the wife of Igor, on the Drevlians, who had murdered her husband. The account of the labors of Saints Cyril and Methodius among the Slavic peoples is also very interesting, and to Nestor we owe the tale of the summary way in which Vladimir the Great suppressed the worship of Perun and other traditional gods at Kiev.
2nd edition
In the year 1116, Nestor's text was extensively edited by hegumen Sylvester who appended his name at the end of the chronicle. As Vladimir Monomakh was the patron of the village of Vydubychi where his monastery is situated, the new edition glorified that prince and made him the central figure of later narrative. This second version of Nestor's work is preserved in the Laurentian codex (see below).3rd edition
A third edition followed two years later and centered on the person of Vladimir's son and heir, Mstislav the Great. The author of this revision could have been Greek, for he corrected and updated much data on Byzantine affairs. This latest revision of Nestor's work is preserved in the Hypatian codex (see below).Two manuscripts
Because the original of the chronicle as well as the earliest known copies are lost, it is difficult to establish the original content of the chronicle. The two main sources for the chronicle's text as it is known presently are the Laurentian codex and the Hypatian codex.The Laurentian codex was compiled in what are today Russian lands by the Nizhegorod monk Laurentius for the Prince Dmitry Konstantinovich in 1377. The original text he used was a lost codex compiled for the Grand Duke Mikhail of Tver in 1305. The account continues until 1305, but the years 898–922, 1263–83 and 1288–94 are missing for reasons unknown. The manuscript was acquired by the famous Count Musin-Pushkin in 1792 and subsequently presented to the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg.
The Hypatian Codex dates to the 15th century. It was written in what are today Ukrainian lands and incorporates much information from the lost 12th-century Kievan and 13th-century Halychian chronicles. The language of this work is the East Slavic version of Church Slavonic language with many additional irregular east-slavisms (like other east-Slavic codices of the time). Whereas the Laurention (Muscovite) text traces the Kievan legacy through to the Muscovite princes, the Hypation text traces the Kievan legacy through the rulers of the Halych principality.The Hypatian codex was re-discovered in Kiev in the 1620s and copy was made for Prince Kostiantyn Ostrozhsky. A copy was found in Russia in the 18th century at the Ipatiev Monastery of Kostroma by the Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin.
Numerous monographs and published versions of the chronicle have been made, the earliest known being in 1767. Aleksey Shakhmatov published a pioneering textological analysis of the narrative in 1908. Dmitry Likhachev and other Soviet scholars partly revisited his findings. Their versions attempted to reconstruct the pre-Nestorian chronicle, compiled at the court of Yaroslav the Wise in the mid-11th century.
Assessment
Unlike many other medieval chronicles written by European monks, the Tale of Bygone Years is unique as the only written testimony on the earliest history of East Slavic people. Its comprehensive account of the history of Rus' is unmatched in other sources, although important correctives are provided by the Novgorod First Chronicle. It is also valuable as a prime example of the Old East Slavonic literature.See also
Notes
Further reading
- Chadwick, Nora Kershaw (1946). The Beginnings of Russian History: An Enquiry into Sources. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-404-14651-1.
- Velychenko, Stephen (1992). National history as cultural process: A survey of the interpretations of Ukraine's past in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian historical writing from the earliest times to 1914. Edmonton. ISBN 0-920862-75-6.
- Velychenko, Stephen (2007). "Nationalizing and Denationalizing the Past. Ukraine and Russia in Comparative Context". Ab Imperio (1).
External links
- Transcription of the original text
- From the Laurentian manuscript
- From the Hypatian manuscript
- From the Novgorodian manuscript
- A collation of the chronicle by Donald Ostrowski in Cyrillic is available at http://hudce7.harvard.edu/~ostrowski/pvl/ together with an erudite and lengthy introduction in English. This is an interlinear collation including the five main manuscript witnesses, as well as a new paradosis, or reconstruction of the original.
- English translations
- The Russian Primary Chronicle, Laurentian Text. Translated and edited by Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bylina
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Bylina (disambiguation).
Contents
History
Most historians of East Slavic and Russian folklore believe that byliny as a genre arose during the Kievan period, during the tenth and eleventh century; byliny continued to be written till about the arrival of the Tatars in the thirteenth century and the destruction of the Old East Slavic civilization.[6] Byliny incorporate elements of history from several epochs into their stories. For example, byliny singers refer to many of the enemies of the Kievan people as Tartars though the stories originally referred to other steppe peoples in conflict with Kievan Rus’. The character of Prince Vladimir refers to a generalized “epic Vladimir” rather than an allusion to a specific historical Vladimir.[7]Collections
Byliny have been collected in Russia since the seventeenth century; initially they were published for entertainment in prose paraphrases. The Cossack Kirsha Danilov compiled the most notable of the early collections in the Ural region for the mill owner Prokofi Demidov in the middle of the eighteenth century.[8] In the middle of the nineteenth century Pavel Rybnikov traveled through the region of Lake Onega and rediscovered that the bylina tradition, which was thought to be extinct, still flourished among the peasants of northeast Russia. A storm stranded Rybnikov on an island in Lake Onega where he heard the sound of a bylina being sung; he persuaded the singer to repeat the song and wrote down his words. He proceeded to collect several hundred bylina, all of which he recorded from spoken paraphrase, and published them from 1861 to 1867 in several volumes entitled Songs Collected by P. N. Rybnikov.[9]Another influential collector, Alexander Gilferding, published one collection entitled Onega Bylinas Recorded by A. F. Gilferding in the Summer of 1871. He improved upon Rybnikov’s work by transcribing the byliny directly from the sung performance rather than the spoken retellings. He noticed that the rhythm differed between the sung and spoken versions, and asked the performers to pause for a longer period of time between lines to allow him time to record the words from the song itself. He also organized his collection by singer rather than subject and included short biographical sketches of the performers with their collected songs, thus focusing on the singer’s role in the composition of the song.[10] Following the work of Rybnikov and Gilferding, many more scholars searched for byliny everywhere in northern Russia, and obtained byliny from the shores of the White Sea and the rivers flowing to the north.[11]
Classifications
There are several ways to categorize bylina, and scholars disagree on which classification to use. Scholars from the mythological school differentiate between byliny about ‘older’ and ‘younger’ heroes. The ‘older’ heroes resembled mythological figures, while the ‘younger’ heroes resembled ordinary human beings. The historical school classifies byliny based on the principality in which the story took place, as in Kivan, Novgorodian, and Galician-Volhynian cycles. The mythological byliny of giants and the like probably originated long before the Kievan state was founded, and cannot be classified easily by principality. Scholars of the historical school often consider mythological byliny separately. Other scholars group byliny based on content, including heroic, fairy tale type, novella type and ballad-byliny. Most scholars prefer classification based on principalities.[12]Structure
Because of their nature as performed pieces, byliny singers employ basically linear and easy to follow structure.[13] Byliny structure typically includes three basic parts, introduction, narrative portion and epilogue. The introduction sometimes includes a verse to entice the audience to listen. Introductions often describe heroes at a feast being given a task or setting out on a mission. The narrative portion relates the adventure with exaggerated details and hyperbole to make the story more exciting. The epilogue refers to the reward for the mission, a moral or a reference to the sea, since byliny were often performed to attempt to calm the sea.[14] To help listeners grasp the story, singers used ‘tag lines’ to preface speeches or dialogues, setting up for the audience who is talking to whom.[15]Common Themes
Scenes common to byliny include a hero taking leave of his mother, saddling a horse, entering a council chamber, bragging, departing over the wall of a city, going on a journey, urging on his horse, in battle, dressing in the morning, exchanging taunts with an enemy, becoming blood brothers with another hero, and asking for mercy. Singers may use their telling of these scenes in many of their songs, incorporating different elements in song after song. Themes in many bylina include the birth and childhood of a hero, father and son fighting, battling a monster, the imprisoned or reluctant hero returning in time to save his city, matchmaking or bride taking, a husband arriving at the wedding of his wife and encounters with a sorceress who turns men into animals.[16] Christian beliefs mixed with pre-Christian ideas of magic and paganism in byliny, for instance, saints would appear to defend mortals against darkness.[17]Adaptations
Vasily Kalinnikov, a famous Russian composer from the nineteenth century composed an overture on this theme, Bylina.References
- Jump up ^ "Bylina (Russian Poetry) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia," Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia, accessed December 05, 2010, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/86999/bylina.
- Jump up ^ Felix J. Oinas, "Russian Byliny," in Heroic Epic and Saga: an Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 236.
- Jump up ^ James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), xx.
- Jump up ^ Alex E. Alexander, Bylina and Fairy Tale; the Origins of Russian Heroic Poetry,(The Hague: Mouton, 1973), 13.
- Jump up ^ Felix J. Oinas, "Russian Byliny," in Heroic Epic and Saga: an Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 236.
- Jump up ^ Felix J. Oinas, "Russian Byliny," in Heroic Epic and Saga: an Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 238.
- Jump up ^ James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), xx.
- Jump up ^ Felix J. Oinas, "Russian Byliny," in Heroic Epic and Saga: an Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 236-237.
- Jump up ^ James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), xv-xvi.
- Jump up ^ James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), xvi-xvii.
- Jump up ^ Felix J. Oinas, "Russian Byliny," in Heroic Epic and Saga: an Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 237.
- Jump up ^ Felix J. Oinas, "Russian Byliny," in Heroic Epic and Saga: an Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 240.
- Jump up ^ James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), xxvi-xxvii.
- Jump up ^ Felix J. Oinas, "Russian Byliny," in Heroic Epic and Saga: an Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 247-249.
- Jump up ^ James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), xxvi-xxvii.
- Jump up ^ James Bailey and Tatyana Ivanova, An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), xxvii-xxviii.
- Jump up ^ Elizabeth Warner, Russian Myths (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 18-20.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου