American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves by Université Libre deBruxellesReview by: Lawrence L. ThomasThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Summer, 1970), pp. 231-233Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/306011 .

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Reviews 231

bolized by a woman with a pail of warm milk. Whatever the tenor of the poem, references to Russian history are not uncommon, especially, of course, the devastating influence of the Tatar invasion. Other references are to the medieval period; Burich uses the "Igor Tale." But most of the imagery is modern, city or countryside.

Almost two-thirds of the poets have concerns that are more universal or personal. Brodsky is the best of these, writing apparently innocent poems that actually call to mind the bitter-sweet course of life and of the world. These poets' subjects might be anything, but they can be linked by an emphasis on pain and evil-the destructiveness of war, general death and violent competition, the rule of the machine, individual tragedy. Ryzhova adapts Psalm 137 in which the Jews are forced to sing in captivity. Though pain and evil are likely topics for poetry anywhere, these poems seem to depict a jungle that is the reverse of the coin of Socialist Realism-an unduly pessi- mistic world. A very small group of poets seem to be entirely personal in their concerns. Akhmadulina's subjects are relationships among individuals.

One hesitates to judge the quality of the originals from translations (the poems are said to have been selected for their worth), but some of the poets, apart from the better known, have come through well: Garbovsky, A. Ivanov, Timofeyevsky. Bosley most typically translates into free verse with occasional rhyme and near rhymes. Pasternak's "Hamlet," which appears as an introductory piece, is changed from four line stanzas of trochaic pentameter to free and blank six line stanzas. Translating poetry is hard and thankless, to be sure. But when all allowances are made, I cannot think that this book would hold the attention of the wide audience to which it is addressed. The volume is perhaps a document. Sapiets has supplied a popularly written Introduction, which rehearses the events of the Thaw and subsequent repercussions (Sinyavsky, Daniel, Solzhenitsyn). In places he writes from too deep a bias. But he offers some history of the underground magazines themselves.

Evelyn Bristol, University of Illinois, Urbana

Universite Libre de Bruxelles. Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves. Tome XVIII (1966-1967) and XIX (1968). Dediet a Boris Unbegaun. Bruxelles, 1968. xxxii, 514 and 285 pp., 1,000 fr. b. (two volumes), 750 fr. b. and 350 fr. b. (each volume separately).

The first volume is an Hommage international (with contributions from 38 scholars representing 13 countries), the second is an Hommage des slavisants belges (with 9 contributions). Hopefully, libraries will bind the two volumes as one, since the pagina- tion is continuous and since both indexes appear at the end of the second volume. This review will ignore the separation of the two volumes.

The range of the contributions, as one might expect given the range of Professor Unbegaun's interests, is enormous. In linguistics, M. Altbauer notes an instance of intentional etymological literalness in translations from the Hebrew of the Song of Songs, O. Axmanova offers some remarks on homonymy and lexicography, S. Bern- stejn calls for a close study of Old Russian texts of East Bulgarian provenience in the belief that they have preserved material necessary for the reconstruction of Old East Bulgarian, and V. Borkovskij investigates various kinds of incomplete sentences in Old Russian and their stylistic usage. F. Filin surveys the history of East Slavic e starting with an over-view of Common Slavic e, which he believes, probably rightly, may not be satisfactorily reconstructable. A. Gallis has noted the use of the Gen.-Acc.

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232 The Slavic and East European Journal

for the terms for the classical meters in Trediakovskij and Lomonosov and considers it an extension of the Gen.-Acc. for the names of cards, games, musical instruments, etc. P. Garde has an article on rules of accentuation in Russian forms with a "mobile" vowel-an article written without any knowledge, apparently, that Dean Worth was simultaneously working on problems in this area. D. Gerhardt offers a long, erudition- packed article suggesting that the Russian interjection, a], af, aj might be of German origin. A. Isacenko, under the slightly misleading title, "Borrowing or Loan Trans- lation" (misleading because it implies fine distinctions between loan words, loan translations, loan shifts, etc.-distinctions which are not made in the article), has an interesting discussion of the post-war shift, in Czechoslovakia, from an orientation toward German to an orientation toward Russian and, to some extent, English. V. V. Ivanov does his level best to exaggerate the effect of cokan'e on the over-all phonological system of proto-East Slavic, while R. Kolaric attempts to prove, on the basis of toponymics, that there was no break in cultural continuity, in Slovenia, between the time of the Roman (and Romanized) inhabitation of the area and the subsequent Slavic one. J. Kurylowicz sees the origin of the 2d. and 3d. sg. aorist desinence -tE in the 3d. sg. present of athematic verbs. P. Kuznecov offers a not very illuminating contribution to the history of /f/, /f'/ in Russian, J. Lothe has an essay on the linguistic controversy of 1822, with particular emphasis on the views of P. A. Katenin, M. Pavlovid takes up an instance of parataxis in the Gospel (John, I: 6) and surveys it from his own lonely little pinnacle of psychologism, and A. Ros- setti makes a few comments on the category of neuter, particularly in Rumanian. D. Tschilewskij here publishes the first part of what is promised to be a longer work on "astronomical onomastics"; this first section is largely confined to Ukrainian names for stars, planets, and constellations and is based on, among other things, field work conducted in 1908-1910! J. Veyrenc offers some observations on the relation between preterit and perfective aspect in Russian, while M. Woltner has a long, and fascinat- ing, article on dog names in Russian literature. Her tremendously well-researched article proves again that ars longa, vita brevis. Despite the fact that she discusses over 240 names (not counting derivatives), luck would have it that her far-flung net did not capture a name which pops up in this very sbornik (p. 283). Eight articles are devoted to word-studies or etymology. They are by At. Decaux (Polish titles such as podkomorzy), V. Kiparsky (Old Russian burapyl'niki, burtal'niki), L. Kiss (West Slovak and Czech habain 'Anabaptist'), N. Nilsson (English bridge, the name of the card game), J. Schiitz (Veles and Svarog), F. Slawski (Polish dial. krzemir, etc.), A. Vaillant (syns 'tower' and kurel`kb), and V. V. Vinogradov (the history of Russian podvig). L. Kadrovics and P. Kiraly report on a newly discovered copy of a Croatian Protestant postil, and some newly found Croatian glosses, respectively. One article, by J. Derschield, is devoted to language pedagogy.

The range of the contributions in literature is equally broad. Cl. Backvis has an article modestly, and misleadingly, entitled "Trois notes sur . . . Vladimir Odoevskij." Actually, it is a long essay treating Odoevskij as a precursor and as a sort of Union Station of ideas and influences-or, as Backvis prefers to call them, "confluences" (p. 573). P. Berkov offers a pioneering study of Russian neo-Latin poetry (concen- trating, for the most part, on Prokopovi'). M. Braun chanced upon a copy of Mereikovskij's first book of poetry, with annotations in a hand which appears to be that of a contemporary. The annotator, an otherwise very ordinary critic, showed that he was at least able to detect that something new was in the air, if only by his expressions of irritation. Ch. Hyart makes a structural comparison of the Serbian deseterac and the French epic decasyllable, with particular emphasis on syntactic forms

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Reviews 233

and restrictions placed on their use. F. Jacopin investigates Slovenian poets' exploita- tion of grammatical, and especially accentual, variants in their verse, while I. Mahnken studies A. K. Tolstoj's formal devices as evidenced by stylistic changes he subsequently made in his early stories. L. Mfiller points out that a liturgical formula in Metro- politan Hilarion's panegyric to St. Vladimir has its origin in a very similar formula in the medieval Laudes regiae of Western Europe (especially popular in France) and speculates about its mode of penetration into Kiev. His speculations take us back, of course, to Ana r?ina once again. A. Neuckens-Askenasi attempts to prove that KolPcov retained elements of Classicism in his poetry. She believes that this constitutes better methodology than attributing certain elements in his poetry now to romantic rhetoric, now to neo-classicism, etc. But she quite forgets that evidence for a literary current in an author should be all of one piece, not a batch of disjecta membra. M. Onatzky- Maline discusses the Acmeist heritage in Bagrickij, particularly those elements in his poetic vision which were closest to Gumilev, and M. Pankowski offers an interesting study of what he believes to be a psychopathological basis for the use of neologisms in such writers as Laforgue and Leimian (with a very careful choice of illustrative material). L. Pacini Savoj's article, "The Structure of Tolstoy's Characters," begins with an analysis of the isolation (desolation?) of Tolstoyan heroes and drifts off into considerations of Tolstoj's attention to detail as leitmotif. F. Seeley offers interesting observations on Tolstoj's depiction of reality, particularly as exemplified in his descrip- tion of the battle of Borodino. But I cannot agree with what appears to be his central thesis that "les objets de l'intelligence sont les relations entre objets et entre concepts, et ces relations, Tolstoi n'est jamais parvenu a en maitriser la manipulation" (p. 349). Maybe so, but I think it's much safer to view Tolstoj as a crafty schemer sitting at the center of a very complex set of Chinese boxes. J. Striedter argues strongly that Griboedov's Sof'ja should be viewed as a type (sentimental, pre-romantic) who is gradually individualized during the course of Gore ot uma. R. Triomphe makes an interesting attempt to explore the system of Lermontov's imagery as a system, without regard for literary influences or biographical details. Lastly, I. Vaxros offers some observations on the metrics and vocabulary of Tjut'ev's translations from Heine.

There are two articles devoted to art and law. J. Blankoff explores the iconog- raphy of Dionisij and his school, particularly as reflected in frescoes in the Feropontov monastery, while F. Gorle studies the Novoukaznye stat'i of 1669 from the point of view of the historical development of law in the Muscovite state, with special refer- ence to the Ulo'enie of 1649.

Finally, there is a bibliography of Unbegaun's works, and (Americans have their own reasons for taking note) a warm, and judiciously written, necrology of W. Led- nicki written by C1. Backvis.

There is an editorial note (p. 518) complaining that, for various reasons, it was difficult to get proofs back from authors in good time. The volumes have certainly suffered from this fact-there are a great number of misprints. Luckily, they all seem to be resolvable, one way or the other. One bad error, however, deserves to be men- tioned. Kolaric's article is one place out of alphabetical order in the Festschrift itself and was omitted from the index. If it is true that articles get lost in Festschriften, his is really lost.

Lawrence L. Thomas, University of Wisconsin, Madison

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