About the Miscellany of Charms from the Collection of V. M. Undolsky

Алексеева А.С.

doi:10.7256/2454-0749.2023.12.69357

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Philology: scientific researches

Reference:

Alekseeva, A. (2023). About the Miscellany of Charms from the Collection of V. M. Undolsky. Philology: scientific researches, 12, 119–126. https://doi.org/10.7256/2454-0749.2023.12.69357

About the Miscellany of Charms from the Collection of V. M. Undolsky

Alekseeva Alina

ORCID: 0000-0001-8584-4613

Junior researcher, Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences

119019, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Volkhonka str., 18/2

alevtina.sergeevna@gmail.com

Other publications by this author

DOI:

10.7256/2454-0749.2023.12.69357

EDN:

OOPGNI

Received:

17-12-2023

Published:

31-12-2023

Abstract: The article deals with a collection of handwritten charms of the second half of the 17th century from the collection of V. M. Undolsky (Russian State Library. F. 310. No. 1179). The manuscript was published twice by L. I. Sazonova and A. L. Toporkov (in 2000 and 2002) with a commentary, but it has not yet been the subject of textual and linguistic investigations, which are necessary in the study of texts circulating in the handwritten sphere. These purposes make possible to draw conclusions about the origin of the collection, the pecularities of its creation and sources. The article presents the results of the study manuscript de visu. The special attention is paid to the peculiarities of handwriting, scribe’s mistakes and reflections of live pronunciation which is considered in the context of the handwritten culture of Old Rus’. In present article the observations is based on the textual, linguistic and comparative research methods that are relevant in the study of medieval manuscripts. The investigation allowed to propose several commented refinements to the edition based on a detailed study of paleography, textual features, and language, as well as the involvement of other manuscript and printed texts, historical and dialect dictionaries. The scribe’s errors in the manuscript from the collection of V. M. Undolsky are related to the existence of the antigraph, which does not allow us to agree with the publishers’ assumption that the collection was recorded from an oral source. The dialectal features of the charms leads to the conclusion about the Central or Middle Russian dialect of the scribe. It is possible that the owner of the manuscript, Vasily Volotsky, is the podyachy Vasily Volotsky, who is mentioned in the documents of 1699 and 1701 years of the Arzamas clerk’s izba.

Keywords:

Old Rus’, handwritten charms, Old Russian manuscripts, apocryphal literature, folklore, dialectology, textual criticism, paleography, cursive writing, Velikoustyuzhskij collection
This article is automatically translated.

L. 30 vol.-31 "... and hide (in a footnote: Ispr., in the Russian Communist Party. skumoe) my servant of God's name, and my children's body is strong (l. 31) la kameni his slave Ivan. One hour at a time." In our opinion, the conjuncture of the ccu[i] is necessary in this fragment, since the request is directed to the sovereign (the imperative of the fence is above). Instead of the century, the hour in the collection is written as a second, meaning ‘at this hour’; cf. with syakov, syakov ^{[8, pp. 194-195]} (in the manuscript under consideration, a form with a reflection of the sound is presented).

2. Dialect features

As for the language, in the field of phonetics, the manuscript notes: a) a mixture of ?/e, which may indicate a completed transition [?] > [e]: I bequeath (l. 2 vol.), copper (l. 3), etc., b) transition [’a] > [e] under stress between soft consonants: bless (L. 5), take out (L. 20, 21), c) akanye in the second pre-stressed and stressed syllables: akiyane (example, however, is not indicative, because it can be lexicalized; L. 1), apostali (L. 15), zapoda (l. 30), d) strong yawning: ko(s?)tenting (l. 15 vol.), shoko (l. 31). The manuscript also contains examples reflecting the fricative formation of a voiced back-lingual consonant in the Church Slavonic vocabulary, which is uninformative for determining its quality in the dialect itself: arhaniel (L. 10), evan'ili (S.)you (L. 14 vol.), a(r)Han'el (L. 24 vol.), evan'ili(S.)you (L. 27 vol.). The combination of phonetic features suggests the Central Russian origin of the manuscript.

3. Conclusion

Repeated reference to the handwritten text allowed us to propose a number of alternative readings.

The errors and corrections of the scribe discovered by the publishers and us (l. 3 vol., 6 vol., 12 vol., 17, 18 vol. — 22, 26) seem to be the result of an incorrect reading of the antigraph. To this series, you can also add examples on ll. 1-1 vol. (inconsistencies could arise because of the shift on the line above where there are two forms of presence: on Tom sea Akina Stoi(t) Stolby zheleznoi, then(m) a(l)b St[ICU] Spa(s) Siderite(l) podperson zlatymi poskom, and thy ruby bi of them cost the all-Merciful Saviour for Evo zlatymi pokomi...) and on p. 13 vol. (double the spelling of one word, and once with the error: krajca of Shalom and Pasir and pair and sin Bulat).

Examples reflecting the peculiarities in the field of phonetics indicate the possible Central Russian origin of the collection of conspiracies. In this case, it is possible that Vasily Volotsky, the owner of the manuscript, is the subdeacon Vasily Volotsky mentioned in the cases of the Arzamas clerical hut for 1699 and 1701 ^[11].

References

1. Russian State Library. F. 122. №32. First half of the 17th century. 148 l.
2. Russian State Library. F. 310. №1179. Second half of the 17th century. 36 l.
3. Bible. Ostrog, August 12, 1581. 628 l.
4. Likhachev, D. S. with the participation of Alexeev, A. A. and Bobrov, A. G. (2001). Textology (on the material of Russian literature of the 10th–17th centuries). St. Petersburg: Aleteia.
5. The Russian National Corpus. https://ruscorpora.ru (17.12.2023).
6. Sazonova, L. I., Toporkov, A. L. (2000). The charms against weapons. Collection of the 17th century. Living Antiquity. №1. P. 36–38.
7. Sazonova, L. I., Toporkov, A. L. (2002). Collection of charms of the 17th century against weapons. Apocryphal literature in Russia of the 17th–18th centuries. Moscow: Indrik, 225–232.
8. Dictionary of Russian folk dialects (2010). T. 43. Moscow: Nauka.
9. Dictionary of Russian language of the 11th–17th centuries (1980). T. 7. Moscow: Nauka.
10. Dictionary of Russian language of the 11th–17th centuries (1987). T. 13. Moscow: Nauka.
11. Central Archive of Nizhny Novgorod Region. F. 1403. I. №1.

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The article submitted for consideration "On the collection of conspiracies from the collection of V. M. Undolsky", proposed for publication in the journal Philology: Scientific Research, is undoubtedly relevant, due to the author's appeal to the study of the manuscript of the 17th century. This research contributes not only to the study of a particular manuscript, but also to the study of the linguistic features of the language of that era, which contributes to a better understanding of the history of the development of the Russian language. The article is groundbreaking, one of the first in Russian philology devoted to the study of such topics in the 21st century. The article presents a research methodology, the choice of which is quite adequate to the goals and objectives of the work. All the theoretical inventions of the author are supported by practical material from the manuscript under study. The article presents a research methodology, the choice of which is quite adequate to the goals and objectives of the work. The author turns, among other things, to various methods to confirm the hypothesis put forward. The article also uses general linguistic methods of observation and description. The combination of methods made it possible to systematize the achievements of predecessors and describe empirical data. This work was done professionally, in compliance with the basic canons of scientific research. The research was carried out in line with modern scientific approaches, the work consists of an introduction containing the formulation of the problem, the main part, traditionally beginning with a review of theoretical sources and scientific directions, a research and final one, which presents the conclusions obtained by the author. It should be noted that the introductory part provides too scant an overview of the development of problems in science. The bibliography of the article contains 11 sources, among which theoretical works are exclusively in Russian. We believe that referring to the works of foreign researchers on the stated issues would undoubtedly enrich the work. Unfortunately, the article does not contain references to fundamental works such as monographs, PhD and doctoral dissertations. In general, it should be noted that the article is written in a simple, understandable language for the reader. Typos, spelling and syntactic errors, inaccuracies in the text of the work were not found. The comments made are not significant and do not affect the overall positive impression of the reviewed work. The work is innovative, representing the author's vision of solving the issue under consideration and may have a logical continuation in further research. The practical significance is determined by the possibility of using the presented developments in further thematic works in the field of Russian literary criticism. The results of the work can be used in the course of teaching philological disciplines at specialized faculties. The article will undoubtedly be useful to a wide range of people, philologists, undergraduates and graduate students of specialized universities. The article "On the collection of conspiracies from the collection of V. M. Undolsky" can be recommended for publication in a scientific journal.

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About the Miscellany of Charms from the Collection of V. M. Undolsky