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This is a publication of a 19th century text, associated with the pilgrimage to Mount Athos. The text, edited by father Theodosius Sinaita in 1839, was extremely popular during the Bulgarian National Revival and brings a rich information about the monasteries on Mount Athos.
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The author considers the phenomenon of the images of the Belorussian in the works of modern Slavic writers. The following structural components of its paradigm are analyzed: auto-images (images of Belorussians in Belarussian literature) and hetero-image (images of Belarussians in Polish, Czech and Ukrainian literature), their formal characteristics and inner content, modality and interaction, as well as the functional and strategic significance for the formulation of the principles of national Identity and outline of its boundaries at the time of creation (for auto-images). Taking as an example the works of Karpovich, Topol, Urban, Singaevsky, Andrukhovych and some others texts, the author shows that in the non-Belorussian writers’ works, the images of Belarus and the Belorussians have been generally stereotyped (in Ukrainian and Czech literarture) or grotesque (in Czech literature) or even stigmatized (in Polish and Czech litersture). Such images illustrate the cultural and civilization influences and fix certain typological coincidences between the corresponding literary receptions. The imagological image appears to be an extralinguistic phenomenon, a full-fledged subject of interethnic relations, the modality of which forms the scenario of such relationships and determines the role of the author as their social mediator. The article also compares the image of the Belarussian in classical and modern Belarussian literature. There are examples of postmodern ironic rethinking of Kupala autoreflections in the works of Belarussian poets of the 21st century, attempts to deconstruct stereotypical perceptions of Belarussian realities are demonstrated. There is a connection between the updating of the image of Belarus in the writings of modern Belarussian writers and the intensity of the processes of self-identification in the stream of Belarussian culture of the 21st century.
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The paper is concerned with the issue of textual visualisation of Caucasus in Russian travelogues performed in 1820-1830th – the decades of the Caucasus War escalation. Taken as example entries from the travelogues of I.T. Radojitsky and V.B. Bronevsky published in Russian Empire in early XIX c., the authors show deep connections of the outlook on the region and people inhabited it with the foundation of the Orientalism as an approach to describing native people of the Imperial frontier.The research underlines the importance of scrutinised study of travellers experience they endured on voyages by the Caucasus in deep connection with the political course on “pacifying” the region, proclaimed by the Imperial authorities. Racy images of the Cossacks, Russian settlers, native peoples and “unpacified” highlanders were performed in order to legislate the Imperial annexation of lands and their acquisition by Russian civilisation. Together with the motives of showing huge contrast between the pastoral life of Russian peasants and towns dwellers with the backwardness of the natives, matched the common ideas of European colonialism, the authors show public awareness of the “unpacified” highlanders expressed by the travellers in the image of “a Circassian”. We traced features of Russian literature Romanticism in the travellers depicture of a Highlander as a “noble savage” did for a living by robs and plunders. The authors came to the conclusions that images, elaborated by Russian travellers and righters were utter vivid and influenced on the perception of the region by Russian layman until the early XX c.The paper is concerned with the issue of textual visualisation of Caucasus in Russian travelogues performed in 1820-1830-th. – the decades of the Caucasus War escalation. Taken as example entries from the travelogues of I.T. Radojitsky and V.B. Bronevsky published in Russian Empire in early XIX c., the authors show deep connections of the outlook on the region and people inhabited it with the foundation of the Orientalism as an approach to describing native people of the Imperial frontier. The research underlines the importance of scrutinised study of travellers experience they endured on voyages by the Caucasus in deep connection with the political course on “pacifying” the region, proclaimed by the Imperial authorities. Racy images of the Cossacks, Russian settlers, native peoples and “unpacified” highlanders were performed in order to legislate the Imperial annexation of lands and their acquisition by Russian civilisation. Together with the motives of showing huge contrast between the pastoral life of Russian peasants and towns dwellers with the backwardness of the natives, matched the common ideas of European colonialism, the authors show public awareness of the “unpacified” highlanders expressed by the travellers in the image of “a Circassian”. We traced features of Russian literature Romanticism in the travellers depicture of a Highlander as a “noble savage” did for a living by robs and plunders. The authors came to the conclusions that images, elaborated by Russian travellers and righters were utter vivid and influenced on the perception of the region by Russian layman until the early XX c.
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This article offers a comparative study of two fragments from Constantine of Preslav’s Didactic Gospel (Uchitel’noe evangelie) that go back to the same Greek catena text. The analysis of correspondences and differences in them – at the levels of textual completeness, grammar, and vocabulary – leads to the conclusion that the fragment found in Sermons 13 and 14 was translated before the one in Sermon 33, but also that, when producing the latter, the translator had both the earlier version and an identical Greek source in his hands. There is no fundamental difference in the translation approach of the two fragments, and this fact is consistent with the attribution of the Didactic Gospel to a single Old-Bulgarian man of letters based on literary-historical grounds. The editing process of the Slavonic text went in parallel with consultation of the original, resulting in differences at all textual and linguistic levels, most notably in the choice of lexical correspondences and in the word order. The tendency towards greater independence from the Greek source text in the fragment of Sermon 33 can be explained by the combined effect of two factors: the editing of the already existing Slavonic text and some accumulated translation experience, which led to a certain emancipation from the formal aspect of the source text and a more creative attitude towards its elements.
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This article serves as the introductory part to the first text-critical analyses of the three Miracula Theclae (MT1–3) in their Old Church Slavonic translation. The current investigation is based on a hypothesis, formulated and confirmed on evaluating the textual transmission of the Passio Theclae (PT): since the MT accompany the PT in this translation process, the question arises whether the same hypothesis can be proposed for the textual transmission of the MT as well. According to this hypothesis, the PT is translated once into Old Church Slavonic, soon after which it is revised again with the help of the Greek source text material. I deliberately present this analysis separately from the main text-critical analyses of these texts, since it focuses on non-stemmatologically grounded arguments for the evaluation of the textual transmission. In other words, the Slavic transmission is solely looked at from the perspective of and its relation towards the Greek source text material. The two biggest challenges in this analysis are: 1) the lack of extant South Slavic text witnesses preserving the redacted version of the translation of the PT and the MT; and 2) the lack of text witnesses preserving MT2 in the original version of the translation. My carefully formulated conclusion consists of a confirmation of the abovementioned hypothesis for all the MT, which includes MT2, thus, suggesting the probable appearance of all the MT in both versions of the translation, although no direct or concrete textual evidence can be presented for this thesis.
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This article examines how Late Antique and Byzantine education is presented in hagiographic texts. The educational topos is attested in a great number of saints’ lives. In these texts, the continuity between Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the organization of the educational process and the disciplines studied is evident. The article explores the efforts of authors, translators, and copyists of hagiographic texts to adapt the pagan elements of the educational system of Antiquity to the Christian context. The Life of St. Gregory of Agrigento (BHG 707) presents an interesting example in which the disciplines studied by the young Gregory (which can be subsumed under the quadrivium) are presented descriptively. This created difficulties in understanding these disciplines for the Greek copyists, as well as for the Slavonic translator and Slavonic copyists. Within the Slavonic tradition of the text, the phrase τῶν ὑψηλῶν στερεῶν stands out as the most confusing and problematic, remaining untranslated in the initial Slavonic translation. Consequently, the Slavonic copyists employed various editing approaches to restore meaning to the text. Even for modern scholars, the educational topos presented in the Life of St. Gregory of Agrigento remains somewhat obscure. This article attempts to correct Berger’s inaccurate interpretation of two phrases in the text (τῶν ὑψηλῶν στερεῶν and τοὺς κύκλους τῶν ἐνιαυτῶν) as referring to disciplines of the quadrivium.
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This article discusses the dissemination of biblical content in the South Slavic repertoire from about the mid-fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, during a period when the End of the World was expected (by the end of the year 7000 or AD 1492). The specific subject of research is the dissemination of biblical writings and rewritings through historiographical works based on translations from Greek, along with a case study. The main purpose of the article is to analyze the historiographical part of manuscript No. 105 from the Zographou Monastery on Mount Athos (Zogr. 105), which contains a reworked version of the Chronicle of John Zonaras in its Slavonic translation, two accompanying texts related to the Legend of Constantine the Great, and an original Slavonic composition of predominantly historical content – the Life of the Serbian Despot Stefan Lazarević. This manuscript, dating from 1433, is an autograph of the famous South Slavic man of letters Konstantin of Kostenets, a translator, diplomat, and philosopher at the court of the despot Stefan Lazarević (1389–1427), and the author of his Life.As an introduction, the article provides a brief overview of the South Slavic repertoire from the mid-fourteenth century to the 1430s that is related to the topic, including Old Testament biblical books, Byzantine chronicles, and a specific repertoire of parabiblical and apocalyptic texts, all influenced by the advance of the Ottoman invasion and the spiritual atmosphere of the Last Times. After presenting MS Zogr. 105, special attention is paid to the main text of its historiographical part – the so-called “abridged Zonaras”. The study reveals that this text is a unique version prepared by Konstantin of Kostenets based on his summary of the Slavonic translation of John Zonaras’ Ἐπιτομὴ Ἱστοριῶν, interpolated with fragments of other sources. The analysis focuses on the composition of the Old Testament section of this new text, where interpolations, predominantly deriving from the Prophethologion, transformed World History into Sacred History. The article then examines the Life of Despot Stefan Lazarević, tracing its modeling as an end-of-times narrative through quotations of the Old Testament and imitations of significant stories from it and from apocalyptic narratives. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the historiographical part of Zogr. 105 followed a coherent concept, aiming to present the Sacred History from its very beginning to its end and to “register” the Serbs and their “last righteous ruler” within it, while Konstantin’s version of the Slavonic Zonaras was designed to support the integration of the Life of Despot Stefan into the overall narrative and to ensure its correct understanding. In conclusion, attention is also drawn to the fact that Konstantin’s concept of Sacred History is similar to that of Archivski Chronograph, which was also composed in anticipation of the End of the World but about the mid-seventh millennium, i.e. by the end of the tenth century. The analogy between them suggests that living in the Last Times actualizes the topic of God’s plan and activates a reinterpretation of Sacred History. In both cases, the substitution or expansion of biblical retellings with original texts from the Bible, combined with the inclusion of the “own people” in Sacred History, appears to be decisive in the process.
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While working on the texts for December in the Verse Prologue, my attention was drawn to a cycle of commemorations with verses dedicated to the forefathers, celebrating Adam and Eve and other earthly ancestors of Jesus Christ. Two prologues from the Hilandar Monastery – Hil. 424 and Hil. 427 – show familiarity with both the Bulgarian and Serbian translations of the Verse Prologue. Hil. 424 was created in the 1420s–1430s, while Hil. 427 was written in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. Both copies reflect the Serbian recension of Church Slavonic. In these Verse Prologues, the extensive cycle of commemorations of the righteous, accompanied by short verses, is included in the readings for December 16. The verses dedicated to the forefathers in Hil. 424 reflect the Bulgarian translation, whereas in Hil. 427 texts from both translations are found. My research focused on ninety-five verses dedicated to the holy forefathers in Hil. 427, with comparative analysis involving twenty verse prologues from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries that also contain the cycle of verses dedicated to Old Testament forefathers. The analysis revealed that more than half of all the verses in Hil. 427 can be traced back to the Serbian translation. In fourteen instances, the verses follow the Bulgarian translation. In other cases, the scribes used an elegant technique of compiling both translations within the same verse. The verses from the Bulgarian translation and the compiled Serbian-Bulgarian and Bulgarian-Serbian versions in Hil. 427 almost certainly resulted from a collation with the manuscript Hil. 424.
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This article examines the Pseudo-Athanasian Questions and Answers to Antiochus the Duke (Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem; CPG 2257; hereinafter QAD) in Old Believer manuscripts. The authors provide a brief overview of the erotapocritic genre in Byzantine literature, the range of questions-and-answers in Greek and Slavonic texts, the contents of this work, and the textual division of the Slavonic translation of QAD into two groups of manuscripts. The article emphasizes the problem of the limited availability of manuscript evidence and notes that this is the first attempt to study QAD in the late Old Believer book tradition. The analysis of QAD is based on seventeen manuscripts from the North Russian Old Believer tradition, housed in the collections of the Repository of Old Documents at the Institute of Russian Literature, the Scientific Library of Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University, and the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. The study of the manuscript material allowed the authors to identify four different types of how QAD was used in Old Believer collections. Each of these types is discussed separately and illustrated with proper examples from manuscript material.
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This study highlights the links between the Romanian, South Slavic, and Greek ascetic miscellanies from a twofold perspective: sources involved (in translation and revision) and patterns of compilation (selection and order of texts). An introduction to ascetic literature in Romanian is offered, focusing on the flourishing of the genre of anthologies with mystical and ascetic content in the multi-ethnic and multilingual community of Paisius Velichkovsky (1722–1794). The case of the Romanian rendering of Capita de temperantia et virtute by Hesychius of Sinai is examined in comparison with the South Slavic translation (14th century) and the Greek text. The Romanian translator used a Greek source (ca. 1761/1763–1766), but also a South Slavic version (for revision), which led to the insertion of the Enarratio in prophetam Isaiam at the beginning of the eleventh chapter. The reliance on both the Greek and the Slavic tradition is detailed in the description of Rom MS BAR 2597 (1769), known as the Philokalia of Dragomirna. The source language of the writings gathered in this sbornik is mentioned (mostly Slavic, but also Greek), followed by a close look at some patterns of compilation which can be paralleled to South Slavic and Greek ascetic miscellanies with typical content. Careful attention is also paid to how the formula of the Jesus Prayer was written (ink and position on page) in the Romanian ascetic collections from the 18th century and in the South Slavic ascetic sborniks from the 14th century.
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The main topic in the article is a question about the place and role of literature and different technics of interpretation, practiced by the readers. In the focus of the study are 4 novels very popular and representative about Bulgarian mass literature – and especially – about chick lit. The Za edna nosht, Yoga, lyubov i drugi mitove, Triumfat na kuchkite, Triumfat na kuchkite (Prodalzhenieto) provoke wide discussions in social networks. A new term – the social resemblance principle – is forged and used to explain the communicative position of big fan groups of readers, which in the process of literary texts explanation recognize chick lit novels as a description of reality. From that position they argue with the critically oriented readers, raising up fictional models to socially and moral valid norms in the battles for cultural categories interpretation.
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In the chapter “Contemporary Myth-Making and Myth-Unmaking” from the book “Between Deadlock and Humanism. On Some Phenomena of Modern Western Literature”, published postmortem in 1967, Minko Nikolov delineates two divergent trends in Bulgarian critical thought during the 1960s in the Eastern Bloc. These tendencies constitute a good prism through which to interpret the critical debate on Zhechev’s “The Myth of Odysseus”. The trend of myth-making relates completely to Toncho Zhechev who constructs a modern myth of “return to homeland”, encompassing ancestors, family, village, tradition, or more broadly, a mythological, cyclical conception of time. The reverse trend of myth-unmaking in this context is attributed to Iskra Panova, Minko Nikolov, and the intellectualist vein in general. This article focuses on the debate between “intellectualism” (modern critical thinking) and “impressionism” (essayistic creative thinking) as preceding the structuralists/impressionists polemic in the 1970s. The basis of the intellectualists-impressionists conflict is an authentically Bulgarian-European axis that continues haunting our public discourse.
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The review of Miroslav Dachev's book “Miraculous Icons of the Theotokos on Mount Athos” (Athoniada Library Series, Volume 9, 2023) is focused on the semiotic analysis of the miraculous images of the Mother of God in the Theotokos on Mount Athos. To explain the essence of the miracle, the place, time, name, and voice of the miraculous icons of the Holy Mother are examined individually. Additionally, their photographic images are included in the dialogue among all of them – one of the greatest achievements of Dachev's analysis.
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U romanu Milosrđe Toni Morison ispisuje traumatsko iskustvo, kao i stvaranje i rastvaranje veza pet žena u nemilosti američkog kontinenta u sedamnaestom vijeku. Putem bliskog i intimnog iskaza toka svijesti, ona vodi čitaoce u svijet prednacionalne i predrasne Amerike, u svijet beskrajne divljine Novog kontinenta, kada su nacionalni i rasni identiteti kao osjećaji i pojmovi tek nastajali, a žene, bez obzira na boju kože i status u društvu, uvijek bile u nekoj vrsti nepovoljnog i po život opasnog položaja. U često citiranom intervjuu za National Public Radio, gdje je razgovarala sa Lin Nir, Morison ističe da je „željela odvojiti rasu od ropstva, da vidi kako je to moglo izgledati, kako je moglo biti, biti rob, ali van konteksta rasizma, odnosno rasne inferiornosti” (Morrison, 2013). Radnja romana ukazuje na činjenicu da ropstvo i rasizam u Americi nisu postojali od samog nastanka, od njezinih kolonijalnih početaka, već da su, zapravo, nastali tako što su bili konstruisani, podmetnuti, institucionalizovani i na kraju ozakonjeni, a autorka kroz male, lične priče marginaliziranih osoba iscrtava taj put i to s naglaskom na ženskom iskustvu.
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