03 March 2016
Champion of the smallest Slavonic nation: Jan Arnošt Smoler and the Sorbs of Lusatia
‘What’s in a name?’ asked Shakespeare’s Juliet. A lot, when the choice of name implies a political or ideological statement; at the time of the Czech National Revival, young patriots whose parents had had them christened plain František or Karel added more resonantly Slavonic names such as Ladislav or Jaromír to proclaim their solidarity with the nation’s glorious past and with Slavs of other countries.
However, members of a much smaller nation surrounded by alien territory faced particular problems; to adopt an outlandishly Slavonic name would cause all kinds of trouble with the authorities and neighbours who did not share their enthusiasm or even the ability to pronounce such words. In the case of the Sorbs of Lusatia, living in an area of Germany around Bautzen, the solution which they generally adopted was to use their given names but in a distinctively Sorbian form – and so Johann Ernst Schmaler grew up to become Jan Arnošt Smoler.
Jan Arnošt Smoler, reproduced in Peter Kunze, Jan Arnošt Smoler: ein Leben für sein Volk (Bautzen, 1995) YF.2005.a.19362
He was born in 1816 in Merzdorf, a village in Boxberg, Saxony, as the son of a village schoolmaster, Jan Korla Smoler, and was educated at the Bautzen Gymnasium with the aim of entering the Church. The family later moved to Łaz (Lohsa) in Prussia, where in 1835 a new pastor was appointed and stayed there for the remaining 38 years of his life. This was the poet Handrij Zejler, the leading figure in the Sorbian Romantic movement and one of the great figures of Sorbian literary history. A former pupil of the Gymnasium, he visited the schoolmaster and his 19-year-old son, who for the previous three years had been firing his fellow students with enthusiasm for the Sorbian language and the concept of Sorbian nationhood.
Map of Lusatia from L. Haupt and J.A. Smoler, Pjesnički hornych a delnych Łužiskich Serbow = Volkslieder der Wenden in der Ober- und Nieder-Lausitz (Grimma, 1841-1843). 1461.k.1.
The following year the young Smoler went to study at the University of Breslau, and while still a student published collections of folk-songs, Pjesnički hornych a delnych Łužiskich Serbow = Volkslieder der Wenden in der Ober- und Niederlausitz, a Sorbian phrasebook entitled Mały Serb (‘The little Sorb’), and a German-Upper Sorbian dictionary. Like other Slavonic collectors of folk material such as Karel Jaromír Erben and Božena Nemcová, he gathered a huge fund of songs and stories, such as the charming ‘Wolf’s Ill-Fated Attempt at Fishing’, in which the greedy but dim-witted wolf is tricked by the wily fox into dangling his tail into a pond as bait and ends up losing it when he is trapped as the water freezes.
Parallel title-pages in Sorbian and German of Pjesnički hornych a delnych Łužiskich Serbow (Grimma, 1841-43) 1461.k.1. (Also available online)
Unlike Zejler, who became a close friend despite a 12-year difference in age, he was not notable for his literary activities, but made a considerable contribution to the development of the Upper Sorbian literary language and to the Sorbian-language periodicals Jutrnička (‘Morning Star’; P.P.4881.b.) and Tydźenska Nowina (‘Weekly News’). He became editor of the latter in 1849, a post which he retained until his death in 1884.
At Easter 1845 Smoler called a meeting at the Winica (Vineyard), an inn near Bautzen, to discuss the foundation of a Sorbian scientific and cultural body similar to those established in other Slavonic countries on the model of the Matica Srpska, set up in Serbia in 1826. He had already drawn up a provisional constitution, but as it needed the approval of the German authorities the association did not begin its official existence until 7 April 1847. In the next seven years its membership grew from 64 to 220 so that separate sections had to be organized for various branches of Sorbian studies, including literature, national history, pedagogics, demography, music and economics.
The first issue of Časopis Maćicy Serbskeje (Bautzen, 1848) Ac.8954
Its main activity, however, was the publication of Sorbian literature and its own journal, the Časopis Maćicy Serbskeje, which appeared regularly from 1848 onwards. By 1923 its membership numbered 413, including foreigners as well as Sorbs – mainly Slavs, though with one British exception, William Morfill, Oxford’s first professor of Russian and other Slavonic languages. In 1873 the enterprising Smoler purchased, on his own initiative, a site in Bautzen for a ‘Serbski Dom’ (Sorbian House), as the Maćica Serbska’s headquarters, which finally opened its doors on 26 September 1904.
Although Smoler did not live to see this day, having died 20 years earlier, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had strengthened the position of the Sorbian language and helped to preserve its culture at a time when, with the unification of Germany in 1871, the Sorbian minority in Prussia was subject to the increasing threat of Germanization. He achieved this through his tireless work to raise awareness of the Sorbian heritage and ensure, by acquiring his own publishing house and bookselling business in 1850, that the printing and publishing of Sorbian material rested in Sorbian rather than German hands. 200 years after his birth, he would be gratified to witness the activities of the Ludowe nakładnistwo Domowina (Domowina People’s Press), founded in 1947, in continuing his work and promoting knowledge and understanding of the Sorbs and their language and culture.
Susan Halstead, Content Specialist (Humanities & Social Sciences) Research Engagement
05 February 2016
Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch?
On 5 February 1916 at the Holländische Meierei restaurant on Spiegelgasse 1, Zürich, the Cabaret Voltaire was launched. The Cabaret was the brainchild of Hugo Ball (1886-1927) in collaboration with a small group of artists and writers disillusioned with conventional politics and an equally conventional aesthetic response. 100 years since the inauguration of the Cabaret Voltaire, it is worth sparing a thought for this radical intervention that resonates still today. Dada m’dada, dada m’dada dada mhm, dada dera dada.
Hugo Ball in 1916, reproduced in Hugo Ball, Gesammelte Gedichte (Zürich, 1963). X.907/140.
Immediately unsuccessful and threatened with closure, the Cabaret Voltaire housed performances of progressively more outrageous, absurd and irrational pieces of poetry (of the “sound” and “parallel” varieties most famously), song, drama and manifesto. Their provoking output piqued the curiosity as well as the anger of the Zürich public.
Hugo Ball performing at the Cabaret Voltaire, image from Wikimedia Commons
Irrationality was precisely the point, as Richard Huelsenbeck explains in his interview with Basil Richardson entitled ‘Inventing Dada’. Huelsenbeck, a German expressionist writer who helped establish the Cabaret in 1916, gives an account of the invention of Dada out of the foundations of the Cabaret Voltaire. He describes the humble beginnings borne out of life experience and not any concerted artistic movement as such. Ball and his companion Emmy Hennings worked factory jobs before deciding they must do something. This “something”, Huelsenbeck continues, was uncertain and undefined, or undefinable– what were they fighting for or against? He and the others soon realised that it was precisely this uncertainty that could define the motivations of their activity – irrationality was its essence.
Richard Huelsenbeck’s history of Dada, En avant dada (Hanover, [1920]). Cup.403.z.47.
Out of this sense of novelty and unconventionality came Ball’s sound poems, first performed in June at the Cabaret Voltaire. One famous example is ‘Gadji beri bimba’ (1916), a recording of which, among other sound poems, is to be found on the audio collection Dada for Now. The first verse reads:
gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori
gadjama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassassa laulitalomini
gadji beri bin blassa glassala laula lonni cadorsu sassala bim
gadjama tuffm i zimzalla binban gligla wowolimai bin beri ban
o katalominai rhinozerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo
gadjama rhinozerossola hopsamen
bluku terullala blaulala loooo
Ball tried to free himself from everyday language and invent new sound patterns, ultimately attempting to display a new level of artistic invention and creativity. (The Talking Heads song ‘I Zimbra’ from the album Fear of Music sets ‘Gadji beri bimba’ to music, giving it an African-inspired beat.) One month later, on 14 July 1916, at a Dada Soirée, Ball presented the first Dada manifesto, explaining his impulse to break from all rational notions of “the word”:
Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.
Ball soon separated himself from the ambitions of the Dadaists and, consequently, the group’s second driving force, Tristan Tzara, declared a “Dada Movement”, exactly the kind of fixity and purpose Ball and Huelsenbeck wanted to avoid. However, the last word should go to the founder of the Cabaret Voltaire, the Hugo Ball of 100 years ago,
gaga di bumbalo bumbalo gadjamen
gaga di bling blong
gaga blung
Hugo Ball ca 1916, drawn by fellow-dadaist Marcel Janco. Reproduced in Gesammelte Gedichte.
Pardaad Chamsaz, Collaborative Doctoral Student, British Library / University of Bristol
References
Breaking the rules: the printed face of the European avant garde, 1900-1937, ed. By Stephen Bury (London, 2007) YC.2008.b.251
Richard Huelsenbeck, Inventing Dada (interview with Basil Richardson) (1959), 1CD0268503
Dada for Now: A Collection of Futurist and Dada Sound Works (1985), 1LP0007598
Talking Heads, Fear of Music (1979), 1CD0000326
Hugo Ball, Gesammelte Gedichte. Mit Photos und Faksimiles, herausgegeben von Annemarie Schütt-Hennings (Zürich, 1970) X.900/11006.
The Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich today (Photo from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)
29 December 2015
The Big Dictation: the Excitement of Spelling.
On Saturday 19 December, two teams of 30 Dutch and Flemish spelling aficionados went head to head in the 26th edition of Het Groot Dictee, or The Big Dictation. This spelling contest is broadcast live on television in the Netherlands and Belgium, from the chamber of the Dutch Senate in The Hague, no less. In its 26 years the Big Dictation has become an institution, with its own website, Twitter feed, and a version for children.
So, what is it about? Now you’re asking. Is it simply about spelling, or competition, or national identity, with a (friendly!) rivalry between the Dutch and the Flemish?
Who knows? It’s probably a bit of all three. One of the attractions is probably that everyone can participate, albeit unofficially, from their own living rooms. It probably also helps that weeks before the contest the organizing newspapers, the Dutch De Volkskrant (The People’s Paper) and the Flemish De Morgen (The Morning) as well as language organizations offer practice exercises to get people in the mood. Schools participate, too, since children can do the children’s version. Isn’t this a fun way of learning how to spell? Words you’ve always struggled with will stick for ever in your mind, once it featured in the Groot Dictee.
Dutch spelling is formalised in the standard dictionary of the Dutch language: The ‘Dikke’ (Fat) Van Dale, a commercial title and in the Woordenlijst der Nederlandse Taal (Word list of the Dutch Language), or Het Groene Boekje (The Little Green Book) as it is better known. The latest edition of the Little Green Book was published in October this year, for the first time also by Van Dale. It is compiled by De Taalunie the body that oversees policies in the area of the Dutch language, and there is a free online edition.
Second edition (1872) of Matthias de Vries and L.A. te Winkel Woordenlijst voor de spelling der Nederlandsche taal, the predecessor of today’s Groene Boekje (British Library 1608/2709.)
This formalised approach to the Dutch language is similar to that of the French. It should therefore come as no surprise that the French were the first to come up with the idea for a Big Dictation. There it is held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which is where Philip Freriks, Paris correspondent for De Volkskrant in the 1980s and 90s, first saw it and subsequently brought it over to the Netherlands.
Philip Freriks . Photo by Maurice Vink from Wikimedia Commons
Freriks has presented the Big Dictation for many years and other journalists have contributed by writing the text, such as this year’s author Lieve Joris, journalist and travel writer. Originally from Flanders, she now lives in Amsterdam, when she is not travelling the world. She is known for her award-winning travel writing about the Middle East, for example The Gates of Damascus (London, 1996; YC.1997.a.94)
Lieve Joris at the 2015 Big Dictation. Photo by Ruud Hendrickx from wikiportret.nl
Although it was the Dutch team that won this year, overall the Flemish contestants made the least mistakes. 31 Dutch participants made 747 mistakes, against 620 by the 29 Flemish.
This year saw a few ‘firsts’:
- The contest was between the Dutch and the Flemish teams, whilst before the participants selected from the readers of De Volkskrant and De Morgen were pitted against the Dutch and Flemish celebrities.
- There was a final. After writing the Dictation the best Dutch reader and celebrity and best Flemish reader and celebrity battled it out over ten very difficult words.
- There was a Polish participant; a ‘wild card’ added to the Dutch team.
Needless to say any use of electronic spellcheckers is strictly forbidden, although the words for these devices pop up in the Dictation; such as ‘spellingchecker’. Now there’s a fine example of how the Dutch incorporate English words into Dutch. That aside, it doesn’t look as if spelling checkers have taken the fun out of spelling, so it is to be hoped that ‘The Big Dictation’ will see many more episodes. It is a true celebration of the richness of the Dutch language.
Marja Kingma, Curator Dutch Language Collections
Further reading
(This is a small selection of the many titles about Dutch spelling which can be found in the British Library catalogue.)
Henriëtte Houët, Grammatica Nederlands : woorden, zinnen, spelling. (Houten, 2011). YF.2012.a.14746.
F.J.A. Mostert, ‘Dutch Spelling Reform’, Language International, vol. 8, no 2, 1996, pp. 18-20. 5155.709680
G.C. Molewijk & Vic de Donder, De citroen van de gynaecoloog : de sitroen van de ginekoloog : de nieuwe spelling: pro of contra (Amsterdam, 1994) YA.1995.a.7045.
G.C. Molewijk, Spellingverandering van zin naar onzin (1200-heden). (The Hague, 1992) YA.1993.b.9041.
21 December 2015
World proverbs in speech, text and image
All the world over, wise people say “Nobody knows his own defects” and “What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over”.
You may find this an inspiring indication of the oneness of mankind, or alternatively depressing proof of the lack of originality of the human mind.
The current BL exhibition “West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song” includes some small figures which are thought to refer to popular proverbs.
As described in the exhibition catalogue, “The gold-weight [above, from the collections of the British Museum] depicting two crocodiles with one stomach embodies the Asante proverb Funtufunefu, denkyemfunefu, won efuru bom, nso woredidi a na woreko, meaning that even though they have one stomach, they fight over food when eating.” (p. 123).
It’s from Ghana, and dated somewhere in the 18th to 20th centuries.
I’m reminded of European misericords, carvings under the seats in the choir stalls of medieval churches. These often show motifs which can be matched to popular tales or sayings. The examples below from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam show a man banging his head against a brick wall and another falling between two stools. (These two images also occur in Bruegel).
European popular proverbs are written down, in the context of Latin literature, as early as the 13th century. The most common contexts are sermons and grammar books.
Arabic proverbs (more properly learned than popular) made their entrance in the West in 13th-century Spain, and were printed in erudite bilingual Arabic-Latin collections from the early 17th century on.
African proverbs, at least in those parts which were occupied by Britain and France, were not printed until the 19th century (see Moll’s bibliography).
The BL recently acquired a book which I think is typical of the first printing of African proverbs:
Elementos grammaticaes da lingua Nbundu offerecidos a S.M.F.O. Senhor D. Luis I por Dr. Saturnino de Sousa e Oliveira e Manuel Alves de Castro Francina (Loanda, 1864) YF.2015.a.25009
The context is a grammar of the Nbundu (Kimbundu) language, spoken in Angola. Early printed grammars of French (etc.) for English (etc.) speakers regularly included an anthology of proverbs. And so it is in this book of 1864.
Here the Nbundu original is given followed by the literal Portuguese translation, and then the Portuguese equivalent.
Elementos Grammaticaes proverbs
The monkey doesn’t look at his tail
Often the ant dominates the elephant
What the eyes see, causes envy
The rat is an expert in his hole
One who makes water often cannot lie down in a wet place
The witchdoctor starts with his own house and ends up outside
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Studies
References/further reading:
Walter S. Gibson, Figures of speech : picturing proverbs in renaissance Netherlands (London, 2010) YC.2010.a.7023
Otto E. Moll, Sprichwörterbibliographie (Frankfurt am Main, [1958]) Humanities 1 Reading Room HLR 398.9
Barry Taylor, ‘Los Libros de proverbios bilingües: disposición e intención’, in Corpus, genres, théories et méthodes: construction d’une base de données, ed. Marie-Christine Bornes-Varol and Marie-Sol Ortola (Nancy, 2010), pp. 119-29. YF.2012.a.22372
Barry Taylor, ‘Éditions bilingues de textes espagnols’, K výzkumu zámeckých, měšťanských a cirkevnich knihoven, ‘Jazyk a řeč knihy’, Opera romanica, 11 (2009), 385-94. ZF.9.a.4837
West Africa : word, symbol, song / general editors, Gus Casely-Hayford, Janet Topp Fargion and Marion Wallace. 2015.
15 December 2015
The Man who Hoped: Celebrating Esperanto Book Day
Type the name “L.L. Zamenhof” into the British Library’s online catalogue and dozens of results will appear: books, articles, journals and scores. As time passes and the centenary of Zamenhof’s death (14 April 1917) approaches, more and items will be added to our collections, as the fascinating personality of the creator of Esperanto and his language keeps attracting the attention of more scholars worldwide.
Portrait of L.L. Zamenhof (from The Life of Zamenhof by Edmond Privat, London, 1931). 010795.a.77
The most recent academic study in the catalogue is Esperanto and its Rivals (Philadelphia, 2015; m15/.11262). Its author, Roberto Garvía, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, starts with the story of George Orwell’s not-so-happy stay in Paris with his aunt Nellie Limouzin and her partner, radical Esperantist Eugene Adam, known as Eugeno Lanti. The second, and longest part of the book is dedicated to Esperanto and the third to its very diverse users worldwide. Part I is dedicated to Volapük and Part IV to “Ido and its Satellites”.
Another book by Esther H. Schor, Bridge of words: Esperanto and the dream of a universal language (New York, 2015) will join the collection soon. The classic work by Umberto Eco La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea (Rome, 1993; YF.2005.a.22144), which dedicates some pages to Esperanto, is also available to readers in English translation by James Fentress as The search for the perfect language (Oxford, 1995; YC.1996.b.4086) and, of course, in Esperanto too, translated by Daniele Mistretta: La serĉado de la perfekta lingvo: en la Eŭropa kulturo (Pisa, 1994; YA.2001.a.15737).
Many people worldwide have found and keep finding their “perfect language”. For them it is Esperanto. They use it often or even on a daily basis, as Zamenhof intended: for international communication. Some Esperantists share their experiences with wider public in blogs and books. The fervent Irish Esperantist, educationalist and environmentalist, Maire Mullarney published Esperanto for hope in 1989; it was republished in 1999 as Everyone’s own language (YK.2002.a.6844), followed by another book, Maire Mullarney argues about language (Galway, 2004). Some authors are seeking a special mission for Esperanto in the modern world. The German Esperantist Ulrich Matthias published a book Esperanto - das neue Latein der Kirche [Esperanto: the new Latin for the Church] (Messkirch, 1999; Esperanto version, Esperanto: la nova latino de la eklezio, Antwerp, 2001. YF.2009.a.26086).
And, of course, we have quite a few biographies of Zamenhof himself. Some of them were translated into English, such as The Life of Zamenhof by Edmont Privat translated by Ralph Eliott. Others were written in English first, e.g. Zamenhof, Creator of Esperanto by Marjorie Boulton. (London,1960; 10667.m.13). No lack of “secrets revealed” either! La kâsita vivo de Zamenhof [The Hidden life of Zamenhof] (Tokyo, 1978; YF.2007.a.19318) by N.Z. Maimon looks as the ideology of Homaranismo developed by Zamenhof.
Original works and translations by Zamenhof are part of our collections, as well as La Unua Libro and his correspondence (Leteroj de L.L.Zamenhof, Paris, 1948; ZF.9.a.6229). More than 900 photos related to Zamenhof, his works and his family, are collected in the Granda Galerio Zamenhofa published by Adolf Holzhaus (1892–1982) at his own expense (Helsinki, 1973; YA.2001.b.4401).
Selection of biographies of L.L.Zamenhof from our collections (Photo by Olga Kerziouk)
Our Esperanto Collections are also rich in material about the whole Zamenhof family. Two of Zamenhof’s younger brothers became ardent Esperantists themselves and tried their hand at poetry and translations. Leono Zamenhof (1875-1934) translated Aleksander Świętochowski’s drama Aspazja into Esperanto as Aspazio (Paris, 1908; also available as an e-book in Project Gutenberg, where more than 50 books in Esperanto are digitised). Feliks Zamenhof, known as Fez, wrote poetry in Esperanto and translated too. A collection of his works Verkoj de Fez: plena Verkaro de Dro Felikso Zamenhof, edited by Edvardo Wiesenfeld,was published in Budapest in 1935. Recently the Polish researcher Marian Kostecki collected and published the poetical works of both brothers in one book, Esperanta verkaro de fratoj Zamenhof (Czeladź, 2006?; YF.2008.a.25231).
Photograph of Felix Zamenhof from Verkoj de Fez. Budapest, 1931. YF.2014.a.2787
L.L. Zamenhof and his wife Klara had three children, Adam, Sofia and Lidia, all of whom perished in the Holocaust. The best known is Lidia, who was a keen teacher of Esperanto and traveller. Lidia became a dedicated follower of the Bahai Faith after meeting the American journalist Martha Root. The tragic life of Lidia Zamenhof, who died in Treblinka, is the subject of the American writer Wendy Heller’s book Lidia: the life of Lidia Zamenhof, daughter of Esperanto (Oxford, c1985; X.950/44270)
Photo of Lidia Zamenhof (From Wikimedia Commons)
Recently Zamenhof himself became the hero of a novel by the American writer Joseph Skibell, A Curable Romantic (London, 2010; Nov.2013/1041) – together with Sigmund Freud! Esther Shor published an interesting review in The New Republic.
December 15, the birthday of L.L. Zamenhof, is also known as Esperanto Book Day. Keen reader Maire Mullarney wrote in her book Everyone’s own language: “Welcomed at first, later detested by dictators, undermined by the jealous, Esperanto grew steadily, and now is in excellent health”. Use the opportunity to visit the British Library and to find more about Lingvo Internacia and its creator.
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto studies
References/Further reading
Zofia Banet-Fornalowa, La familio Zamenhof.(La Chaux-de-Fonds, 2000). YF.2008.a.17135
Aleksander Korĵenkov, “Homarano”: la vivo, verkoj kaj ideoj de d-ro L.L. Zamenhof. La 2a eldono, korektita kaj ampleksigita. (Kaliningrad, 2011). YF.2011.a.23688
Zbigniew Romaniuk and Tomasz Wiśniewski. Ĉio komenciĝis ce la Verda : pri Ludoviko Zamenhof, lia familio kaj la komenco de Esperanto = Zaczęło sie na Zielonej. (Łódż, 2009).YF.2010.a.417
Henk Thien. La vivo de D.ro L.L. Zamenhof en bildoj. (s.l., 1970) YA.2001.b.4400
Halina dokumento pri la studentaj jaroj de L.L.Zamenhof. (Osaka, 1977). YF.2008.a.17335
La lastaj Tagoj de d-ro L.L.Zamenhof kaj la Funebra Ceremonio. (Kolonjo-Horrem, 1921). YF.2008.a.12302
28 October 2015
A life for a language: Ľudovít Štúr (1815-54) and the Slovak nation
28th October is celebrated annually in the Czech Republic as a national holiday commemorating the establishment on that day in 1918 of the independent state of Czechoslovakia under its first president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. With the ‘Velvet Divorce’ of 1993, the peaceful dissolution of the union between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, it is no longer a holiday in the latter, although many Slovaks continue to feel that it should be. Instead, Slovakia remembers 1st January 1993, the first day of the existence of a separate Slovak state. However, in 2015 the Slovaks have an additional reason to celebrate on 28th October – the bicentenary of the birth of the man without whom the Slovak language as spoken nowadays might never have existed.
Portrait of Ľudovít Štúr by Jozef Božetech Klemens (From Wikimedia Commons)
Ľudovít Štúr (1815-1856) was born in Uhrovec (in the same house, incidentally, which was later the birthplace of Alexander Dubček) as the second child of the schoolmaster Samuel Štúr and his wife Anna. The area was strongly Lutheran, and the religious tradition into which he was baptized would exercise a powerful influence on him throughout his life. After receiving a good grounding in Latin and other subjects from his father, the young Ĺudovít was educated at the Lutheran Lyceum in Bratislava (then known as Pressburg), where he became acquainted with the writings of Slavonic patriots including Ján Kollár, Pavel Jozef Šafarík and Josef Dobrovský, and joined the Czech-Slav Society. Rising to become its vice-president, in 1836 he approached the well-known Czech historian František Palacký, appealing for his support in the creation of a unified Czechoslovak language and claiming that the Czech spoken by Slovaks in Upper Hungary was no longer intelligible to their countrymen elsewhere. In the interests of Slavonic unity and impartiality, he proposed the acceptance on both sides of a number of Czech and Slovak words, but this proved unacceptable to the Czechs, leading Štúr and his circle to mount a campaign for a new standard Slovak language. They travelled through Upper Hungary to canvass on behalf of this after a meeting on 24 April 1836 at the ruined castle of Devín (Dévény, near Bratislava) where they not only swore an oath of loyalty to their cause but chose new Slavonic names, with Štúr himself adding Velislav to his own.
Castle Devín, Bratislava (Devín village), Slovak Republic (Photo by Radovan Bahna from Wikimedia Commons)
The Slovak language movement might have seemed to be doomed from the outset because of the threefold opposition which it faced. Not only had it experienced a rebuff from the Czechs, but as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the territory in which Štúr grew up had had German imposed on it as the language of bureaucracy and officialdom, and there was also an increasingly vocal movement in promotion of the Hungarian language. Štúr was fluent in German, and studied from 1838-1840 at the Protestant University of Halle, while continuing to maintain contacts with Czech patriots and, in 1839, publishing an account of his journey to Lusatia, the ‘smallest Slavonic nation’ centred around Bautzen.
While teaching grammar and Slavonic history at his old school, Štúr acted as co-editor of the literary journal Tatranka (Pressburg, 1832-45; British Library PP.4874.bbh), and planned to start a Slovak political journal. However, his application for a licence to do so was rejected in 1842, when he also launched a petition against the persecution of Slovaks by Hungarians in Upper Hungary. The following year he was compelled to leave his Lyceum post after an investigation into the activities of its Institute of Czechoslovak Language, and to publish his summary of the Slovaks’ grievances against the Hungarians, which no Hungarian publishing house would touch. At the same time, however, he and his followers were working on the codification of a new Slovak language, which gradually came into literary use in 1844. Advocating the Slovaks’ right to their own language, schools and political independence within Hungary, he was chosen in 1847 as a deputy in the Hungarian Diet in Bratislava, representing Zvolen (Zólyom), two months after the formal adoption by both Roman Catholics and Protestants of the new standard Slovak language.
The events of 1848, however, interrupted his political career, as the Diet ceased to meet after April. Instead Štúr visited Prague to establish Slovanská Lipa, an organization to foster cooperation between Slavs, and took part in the first Slavic Congress there. His involvement in the presentation of the petition Žiadosti slovanského národa (Requests of the Slovak Nation) in May 1848, including calls for the abolition of serfdom, universal suffrage and freedom of the press, led to a Hungarian warrant for his arrest, and in September he and the other members of the Slovak National Council proclaimed independence from Hungary. After organizing the Slovak military volunteer campaign, Štúr headed a delegation which on 20 March 1849 formally presented the Slovak nation’s demands to Franz Josef II at Olomouc, but when, after lengthy negotiations, the Slovak volunteers were disbanded in November he returned to Uhrovec. His spirit remained unquenched despite further obstacles and tragedies (he was placed under police surveillance in Modra, where he moved to care for his seven nephews and nieces following his brother Karol’s death in 1851) which did not prevent him from publishing several more important works on Slavonic songs, myths and culture, including O národných povestiach a piesňach plemien slovanských (On the national songs and myths of the Slavonic races; 1852: YA.2002.a.21123) and Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft (Slavdom and the world of the future; Bratislava, 1931; X.800/2232).
Ironically, having survived the armed uprising of 1848-49, Ľudovít Štúr met his end through a gunshot – but one which he accidentally inflicted on himself during a hunting expedition on 22 December 1855. He lingered for three weeks, dying on 12 January 1856, and was honoured with a national funeral in Modra. In his forty years of life, this man from an obscure town in Slovakia had given his people the gift of a versatile and expressive language, as suited to poetry as to political debate, and fought tirelessly for its place in the world, in keeping with his creed: ‘My country is my being, and every hour of my life shall be devoted to it.’
Susan Halstead, Content Specialist (Humanities and Social Sciences), Research Engagement.
31 July 2015
The Following Story as a Matter of Life and Death
Cees Nooteboom’s 1991 novella Het volgende verhaal (The Following Story) attempts to narrate death as a process of becoming imperceptible, and the action in the novel takes place when the narrator is neither alive nor dead but somewhere in-between. The novel ends at the beginning: it is a story within a story, a cyclical narrative that does not have a clear-cut beginning or end. It portrays a world in which the states of life and death are not limited or quantifiable. Instead, the normally measurable dimensions of time and space become stretched and malleable in the strange and endless moment between living and dying.
Cees Nooteboom in 2007 (Photo by HPSchaefer via Wikimedia Commons)
The philosopher Rosi Braidotti has strong words regarding the foregrounding of death as the ultimate other that has haunted much postmodern theory, writing that it “fuels an affective political economy of loss and melancholia at the heart of the subject”. She offers an alternative, freeing death from its anthropocentric perspective by conceptualising it as the experience of “becoming-imperceptible”. Rather than remaining in a static state of being, the subject is always undertaking a series of processural changes and is thus always becoming. A focus on the in-between spaces between one thing and another means, that the boundary between life and death itself becomes blurred.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari write that a writer must “become a nomad and an immigrant and a gypsy in relation to one's own language”. Nooteboom’s works do this: they are widely available in translation, which is relatively unusual for the often domestic world of Dutch literature. Dutch is sometimes perceived as a small language and culture occupying a minority position within the majoritarian location of the European Union and its hegemonic languages. The Netherlands even has a difficult relationship with its own writing: a 2008 study of Dutch reading habits revealed that over half of books read in the Dutch language were translations, suggesting that Dutch literature had become minoritarian even in its country of origin. As a successful travel writer as well as novelist, Nooteboom has escaped these intimate national, linguistic, and canonical borders.
Het volgende verhaall in the original Dutch and in English translation
In Het volgende verhaal, systems of naming are playfully sabotaged. The self is no longer fixed and static; instead, identities become multiple and nomadic. The novella’s narrator has three names: his legal name, Herman Mussert, his pen name, Dr Strabo, and his nickname, Socrates. In all cases, the names do not singularly refer to the one bounded body of the narrator. Nooteboom shares Strabo’s occupation of a travel writer: nebulous identities can be passed from organic to literary body and exist within and without each other.
Even something as seemingly empirically stable as physical matter becomes open-endedly fluid in the novella. Herman remembers a pillar in a Spanish cathedral on which the touch of many pilgrims over many years had eroded the shape of a hand. The resulting relief in the marble is sculpted not by a sculptor but through the differing repetitions of a gesture, making imperceptible changes perceptible. The hand is perceptible despite it being “not there” from Herman’s perspective. It is both there and not there, remaining in a fixed state only until another pilgrim places their hand on it: human affective connective potential.
The dissolving matter and fragmented identities are part of Herman’s process of death, although it only becomes evident later in the narrative. Herman leaves his physical body in Amsterdam and embarks on a journey of becoming-imperceptible, eventually finding himself on a boat with other passengers who share their story of dying. Finally, Herman has to share “the following story”, bringing the reader back to the start of the book. Herman says that this is what remains of his subjectivity after it leaves his body: it exists as a story, or different stories to be told by the people he connected with. In Braidotti’s words, even though our nebulous selves die “we will have been and nothing can change that”, the present perfect continuous asserting the enduring continuum of life beyond the “I”.
Ruth Clemens
References:
Cees Nooteboom, Het volgende verhaal : roman (Amsterdam, 2011) YF.2013.a.986 (English translation by Ina Rilke: The Following Story (London, 2014). H.2014/.7727)
Rosi Braidotti, , ‘The Ethics of Becoming Imperceptible’, in Deleuze and Philosophy, ed. Constantin Boundas (Edinburgh, 2006) pp. 133-159. YC.2007.a.12470
Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Cambridge, 2013) YC.2013.a.7861
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka : pour une littérature mineure (Paris, 1975) X.900/17435 (English translation by Dana Polan: Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (Minneapolis, 1986) 8814.628200)
Marc Verboord and Susan Janssen, ‘Informatieuitwisseling in het huidige Nederlandse en Vlaamse literaire veld. Mediagebruik en gelezen boeken door literaire lezers en bemiddelaars’, in Ralf Grüttermeier and Jan Oosterholt (eds.), Een of twee Nederlandse literaturen? Contacten tussen de Nederlandse en Vlaamse literatuur sinds 1830 (Leuven, 2008). Awaiting shelfmark
Ruth Clemens is a Postgraduate student in Comparative Literature at University College London. She won the Essay prize in the category Post Graduates, awarded by the Association for Low Countries Studies for her essay ‘Becoming-Imperceptible in Cees Nooteboom’s The Following Story and Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman.
20 July 2015
From Boulogne-Sur-Mer to Lille
In a week’s time an important event will take place in the northern French town of Lille. Esperantists worldwide will meet again for their biggest annual gathering, the World Congress of Esperanto – and this year for the 100th time.
As a curator of Esperanto Collections I am asked more often than I would like: “Is Esperanto still alive? Does anybody speak Esperanto these days?” and other rather annoying questions. I usually congratulate the person on meeting their first Esperantist (i.e. me) and invite them to check our rich Esperanto Collections. Type the word “Esperanto” in our electronic catalogue “Explore the British Library” and you will be surprised to find a lot of books, journals, musical scores in Esperanto (original literature, translations, history of Esperanto clubs, biographies of famous Esperantists etc.) and about Esperanto and Esperantists.
Cover of Sikosek’s book Sed homoj kun homoj (Rotterdam, 2005) YF.2006.a.30996
No lack of information about World Congresses of Esperanto either. In 2005, to mark the 90th Esperanto Congress in Vilnius, Lithuania, Ziko Marcus Sikosek compiled a good guide, Sed homoj kun homoj. Universalaj kongresoj de Esperanto 1905-2005, in which you can find most useful information about the history of the congresses and their chronology. The title of the book comes from the famous speech by L. L. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto, in 1905 in Boulogne-Sur-Mer, where the first congress took place. It emphasises the fact that during Esperanto congresses all language barriers fall apart and everybody communicates with each other just as “a human being with human beings”.
The British Library holds various booklets and guides about some World Congresses of Esperanto. Quite a few of them took place in Britain: the 3rd in Cambridge (1907), the 18th in Edinburgh (1926), the 22nd in Oxford (1930), the 30th in London (1938), the 46th In Harrogate (1961), the 56th in London (1971), the 74th in Brighton (1989).
Members of the Organisation Committee for the 22nd World Congress of Esperanto in Oxford (from XXIIa Universala Kongreso de Esperanto...; Oxford, 1930; 12902.aa.62)
For each congress the Organization Committee (called in Esperanto LKK - La Organiza Komitato, picture of above) prepares a guidebook about the host country (some of these guides are part of our collections – photo below)
Postcards, and sometimes stamps, are issued for each congress. The biggest collection of congress memorabilia is held in the Esperanto museum in Vienna, now part of the Austrian National Library.
Stamp of Lithuania for the 90th World Congress of Esperanto in Vilnius, 2005 (From Wikimedia Commons)
The Esperanto movement has a rich history of prominent people from many countries who took an active role in organising the congresses. Amongst the pioneers I would like to mention Hippolyte Sebert, the French general and scientist, who learned Esperanto in 1898 and then dedicated many years of his long and active life to the organization of the Esperanto movement and congresses. The British Library holds his early books in French (about artillery, and a treatise about trees in New Caledonia), as well as edition of his letters to Zamenhof during 1909-1913, compiled and edited in Japan (Kial ludoviko abdikis? 1990; YF.2009.a.15613)
Nowadays many people researching their ancestors consult guides and books about the congresses, looking for their family members known to be enthusiastic Esperantists and travellers in their youth (or later years). Here is what the list of participants for the 4th Esperanto Congress in Dresden looked like (from Kongresa Libro; Dresden, 1908; YF.2012.a.27394).
These days the programme of 100th World Congress of Esperanto is easily available to all on the Internet. At the moment 2485 Esperantists from 82 countries have joined the congress in Lille. Some will join on arrival. If you happen to be in Lille between 25 July and 2 August 2015 pay attention to the languages spoken on the streets, hotels, in public transport. You have a lot of chances to meet your first Esperantist and find out how very much alive and kicking the language is! And, as very recent events show, citizens are ready to be taken into custody and pay fines, as during the protests against the renaming of Esperanto Street in Kazan, the Russian Federation.
“Important event”, I said? Yes! It proves that the neutral “artificial” language, created in 1887, lives and prospers, bringing joy and all kind of social activities to its users (picture below from the 4th congress in Dresden in 1908), and starts to attract more researchers to study this unique socio-linguistic phenomenon in depth.
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies
10 July 2015
Basque and Georgian – are they related?
Basque, the only non-Indo European language in Western Europe, is an isolate, a language unrelated to any other living or dead. Nonetheless attempts have been made to demonstrate a relationship with a variety of languages including ancient Iberian, Pictish, Etruscan, and Berber. The most consistently proposed kinship has been with the Kartvelian family of Caucasian languages, in particular with Georgian.
The origin of Basque has been bound up with theories about the origin of the Basque people themselves. Greek and Roman historians referred to the region corresponding to modern Georgia as eastern Iberia, as distinct from western Iberia, i.e. Spain and Portugal. The Greek geographer Strabo referred both to the Iberians of the Caucasus and to the ‘western Iberians’ (Geographica, bk. XI, ch. II, 19). Appian of Alexandria later wrote ‘some people think that the Iberians of Asia were the ancestors of the Iberians of Europe; others think that the former emigrated from the latter’ (Historia Romana, bk. XII, ch. XV, 101). However, he continued ‘still others think that they merely have the same name, as their customs and languages are not similar’. The Georgian language was also known, confusingly, as Iberian.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Basque historians adopted the prevalent Spanish legend according to which after the Flood, Tubal, a son of Japheth, was the first settler in the Peninsula, but they added that he settled first in Cantabria, i.e. the Basque region. Esteban de Garibay (born 1525) found evidence for this claim in similarities between place names in northern Spain and in Armenia, e.g. Mount Ararat (in modern Turkey) = Aralar, the mountain range in Gipuzkoa and Navarra. He also links the Basque Mount Gorbeia to an Armenian peak ‘Gordeya’. He considered Basque the first language of the whole Peninsula and, presumably, the language of Tubal. Other writers followed Garibay, notably Andrés de Poza and Baltasar de Echave. Garibay’s identification of similarities between toponyms, however fantastical, can be seen as a forerunner of the Basque-Caucasian hypothesis.
Esteban de Garibay, Los XL libros del Compendio historial… de todos los reynos de España (Antwerp, 1571) British Library C.75.e.4.
In the early 20th century philologists developed more scientific arguments for a link between Basque and Caucasian languages. Typological similarities certainly exist between Basque and Georgian. For example both are ergative languages. Put at its simplest, this means that the subject of a transitive verb appears in the ergative case (or ‘agentive’), while the object is in the absolutive case and is unmarked. Thus, in Basque we have ‘gure aitak etxe berria erosi du’ (‘our father has bought a new house’) contrasted with ‘gure aita Donostian bizi da’ (‘our father lives in Donostia’). In Georgian, ‘father’ in the first sentence would be rendered by ‘mamam’ and by ‘mama’ in the second. However, the ergative construction would not be employed in subject-direct object-verb constructions in all tenses and aspects. In Basque the ergative is more regularly employed.
Another notable similarlity is that the verb morphology of both languages is pluripersonal, i.e. the form of the verb may encode not just the subject of the sentence, but any direct or indirect objects present. In Basque this is illustrated in the examples:
Nere semeak kotxe berri bat erosi du = My son has bought a new car
Nere semeak bi kotxe erosi ditu = My son has bought two cars.
The infix it in the auxiliary verb in the second example agrees with the plural object bi kotxe. However, the verb morphology of Georgian is extremely complex and functions very differently from Basque.
Typological parallels are all very well, but ergativity and pluripersonal agglutinative verbal morphology are not exclusive to Basque and Georgian, and doubt concerning possible kinship between them arises when lexical coincidences are cited. According to Basque philologists today, the majority of those seeking similarities have cast their nets very wide, claiming cognate fish when most should have been thrown back. Cognates with Basque have been sought among several Caucasian languages, although a genetic relationship between the Northern and Kartvelian groups remains unproven. Furthermore, in many cases proto-Basque forms have not been matched with proto-Georgian forms; many coincidences are thus anachronistic. The philologist R.L. Trask also stressed that the Basque, in its hypothetical early form, had a vastly impoverished consonantal system in contrast to the wealth of consonants of the Northern Caucasian groups in particular. Today, Georgian has 28 consonants, Basque 21.
The 36 letters of the Georgian alphabet according to Alphabetum ibericum, sive georgianum… (Rome, 1629); 621.c.33.(1.)
The case for a relationship between Basque and other languages intensified in the early 20th century with the philologists Hugo Schuchardt, C.C. Uhlenbeck and Alfredo Trombetti. Much of the debate was conducted in scientific periodicals, particularly the Revue Internationale des Etudes Basques (P.P.4331.aeb.). We might add here the Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr who developed the so-called Japhetic theory linking Kartvelian with Semitic languages and subsequently the theory that all languages had a common origin. He also found parallels between Kartvelian languages and Basque.
Marr (third from right) with a group of Basques, reproduced in Nikolai Marr, Basksko-kavkazskie leksicheskie paralleli (Tbilisi , 1987) YA.1991.a.23022
The case for possible Basque-Caucasian cognates continued to be advanced in the second half of the last century by linguists such as René Lafon and Antonio Tovar. However, later scholars, notably Luis (Koldo) Michelena and Trask, firmly rejected the Caucasian link. This has not stemmed the tide of speculation, which in fact has widened to include Basque in a macro-language family (Dené-Caucasian) and even beyond in the hypothetical single language of the so-called proto-world. This notion seems to bring us back to Nikolai Marr. These last speculations find approval also among those still hoping to prove a common ethnic origin for the Basques and the Iberians of the Caucasus. Given that the Basque language remains alone in a class of one, it is wisest to conclude that the case for a link remains unproven.
Geoff West, Former Curator Hispanic studies and Anna Chelidze, SEE Cataloguer Russian/Georgian
References
Itzia Laka, A Brief Grammar of Euskara ([Vitoria-Gasteiz], 1996); available at http://www.ehu.eus/es/web/eins/basque-grammar
Juan Madariaga Orbea, Anthology of Apologists and Detractors of the Basque Language (Reno, 2006). YC.2007.a.857.
R.L. Trask, The History of Basque (London, 1997). YC.1997.b.547
José Ramón Zubiaur Bilbao, Las ideas lingüísticas vascas en el s. XVI. Zaldibia, Garibay, Poza (Donostia, 1989). YA. 1993.a.5626.
La Prensa Iberica interview with Davit Turashvili: http://www.laprensaiberica.org/?p=414
10 June 2015
A reluctantly modern voice from the 17th-century Russian storm: Archpriest Avvakum and the Life written by himself
Many have maintained the Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, written by himself [Zhitie Protopopa Avvakuma, im samym napisannoe] (ca. 1670) to be the first modern work in the history of Russian literature, for its harshness, bitterness and powerful imagery, which seem to have been handed down through unknown paths to later writers, such as Pushkin and Tolstoy:
And I came up, and she, poor soul, began to complain to me, saying, “How long, archpriest, are these sufferings to last?” And I said, “Markovna! Till our death”. And she, with a sigh, answered, “So be it, Petrovich. Let us be getting on our way”.
An autograph drawing by Avvakum, from f. 2 of the 1675 Pustozerkii sbornik I.N. Zavoloko MS (Pushkinskii dom, St Petersburg). The British Library has a facsimile edition with a transcription of the MS (Leningrad, 1975) 2702.a.59.
Avvakum Petrov lived and wrote in the second half of the 17th century, a politically and religiously stormy period, which opened with one of the deepest political crises in Russian history (the interregnum known as the ‘Time of Troubles’, 1598-1613) and culminated with probably its deepest religious one, the Great Russian Schism (1653). In this context, Avvakum was a representative of the first generation of religious dissidents who opposed the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon (1605-1681) in the Russian Orthodox Church, which created a split not only within the Church, but on a wider scale between large parts of the population and higher ecclesiastical hierarchies.
Though most probably an unconscious talent, or maybe just not capable of producing a finer product of art, due to a lack of higher education (as suggested by one scholar), Avvakum nonetheless produced an impressively ‘modern’ piece of literature.
His accomplishments in the literary use of the language are such that Dostoevsky numbers him alongside Pushkin as one of the Russian writers who cannot be properly translated into any European language. But while in Pushkin’s case this is due to his exploring and exploiting the potential of the language to the full, Avvakum is a different kind of innovative writer. To contemporary eyes, one of his achievements was the ability to disentangle himself from the ‘anonymity’ of the Middle Ages, so that writing an autobiography would represent an extraordinary innovation itself. However, we may consider this to be its main innovative feature only if we weigh it with the rules and structure of the hagiographical genre, which Avvakum’s work superficially follows. The idea of a writer as an original author, and not only as a compiler or as the ‘hand of God’, was in fact already gaining acceptance at the end of the 17th century — for instance in the work of Symeon of Polotsk, to name one of its best-known representatives.
Avvakum is instead still deeply mediaeval in his theoretical conception of writing. Although he produced an innovative literary work, he still pursued the old Russian aim of being dushepoleznoe [‘useful for the soul’]:
Avvakum, archpriest, was bidden by the monk Epiphanius, in that he was my ghostly father, to write down my life, that the word of God should not be given over to forgetfulness, and for this reason was I bidden by my ghostly father to write for the glory of Christ our God. Amen!
But to reach this aim he used a language shaped after his vernacular, with vivid and rough images and expressions, only at times interrupted by Church Slavonic, when the subject matter ‘required’ it:
And you, for God’s sake, who read and listen, do not despise our popular speech, for I love my native Russian tongue, I am not used to embellish my discourse with philosophical verses, because God does not listen to our refined words, but it’s our deeds that he wants … There is nothing much to ponder over: our Lord does not look for words in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or in any other language, but he wants Love and other virtues; for this reason, I shall not concern myself with rhetoric and I’m not ashamed of my Russian language.
F. 162v from the Pustozerkii sbornik I.N. Zavoloko (1675) showing Avvakum’s famous defence of his ‘simple speech’.
Despite the pride and love he shows for his ‘simple’ mother tongue, unprecedented in the history of Russian literature, the way he weaves together the unrefined, rough tones of the physical or everyday descriptions, and the stern or even prophetic voice of some more solemn passages, is not a ‘literarily conscious’ one. And yet, this is paradoxically one of the reasons why Avvakum’s Life is considered a remarkable literary achievement and a fascinating case study.
For nearly 200 years, the manuscript of Avvakum’s Life circulated privately in Old Believers communities. It became more widely known only in 1861, when the Russian historian N.S. Tikhonravov published the first ever printed edition.
Title page of the first printed edition (St Petersburg, 1861) 4886.b.4.
For a further insight into the long way that led, after two centuries, to the first printed edition of Avvakum’s Life see V.I. Malyshev, ‘Istoriia pervogo izdaniia Zhitiia protopopa Avvakuma’, Russkaia Literatura, 1962, no.2, p. 147. (Ac.1125.o/33; also available online).
Nilo Pedrazzini, Trainee
References:
The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum by Himself, translated from the Seventeenth Century Russian by Jane Harrison and Hope Mirrlees, with a Preface by Prince D.S. Mirsky, London : The Hogarth Press, 1963. X.108/431.
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Panchenko, ‘Avvakum kak novator’, Russkaia Literatura, 1982, No. 4, pp. 142-152. Ac.1125.o/33 (also available online)
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Panchenko, Russkaia kul’tura v kanun petrovskikh reform, (Leningrad, 1984). X.529/66294
Pierre Pascal, La Vie de l’Archiprêtre Avvakum écrite par lui-même. Traduite du vieux russe avec une introduction et des notes par Pierre Pascal, (Paris, 1938). 20043.df.8.
Pierre Pascal, Avvakum et les débuts du raskol. La crise religieuse au XVIIe siècle en Russie, (Paris, 1938). Ac.1117.
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