Stenography and Literature: What Did Western European and Russian Writers Master the Art of Shorthand Writing For? *

Studia Slavica Hung . 64 / 1 ( 201 9 ) 1 – 11 DOI : 10 . 1556 / 060 . 201 9 . 641 0 1 Stenography and Literature: What did Western European and Russian Writers Master the Art of Shorthand Writing For? * IRINA ANDRIANOVA Web - лаборатория Института филологии, Петрозаводский государственный университет, пр. Ленина, д. 33, RU - 185910 Петрозаводск E - mail: [email protected] (Received: 3 March 201 9 ; accepted: 2 June 2019 ) The word stenography is of Greek origin ( στενός ‘ narrow, compact ’ and γράφω ‘ to write ’ ). This is the name of fast handwriting made by means of special signs and acronyms, permi tting a person to listen to oral spee ch and record it simulta - neously, and also to improve writing techniques. Stenography is often taken for steganography , created when the first personal computers appeared ( from Greek στεγανός ‘ covered, concealed , or pro tected ’ and γράφω ‘ to write ’ ), a way of secret conveyance of information by means of keeping the fact of communication secret . At the moment , the latter one is widely in use and studied all over the world (linguistic, digital, network steganography , etc . ) whereas , in contrast, stenography in the age of technological progress is essential for only few numb er of people and became a “ dying art ” (S UMMERS 2011). Two centuries ago , being in fact a “photo” of true speech , stenography caused a revo - lution in the wo rld but its history did not last forever… Having a ppear ed in Ancient Egypt , stenography is already more than 2 , 000 years of age. However, the first public use of stenography in history occurred in 63 B . C. in Ancient Rome. Then , the Senate in Sessions used “Tironian notes” in - vented by Tiro, a personal assistant of the orator Cicero. It was back in the 17th century that the symbolic, word or syllabic stenographic writing changed into a sound, alphabetical writing. Initially, stenography became widespread in England, France, Italy, Germany, and Austria – Hungary at the end of the 18th and the first third of the 19th century. 1 In Russia , stenography found practical use only in the 1860s when the judicial reform was implemented. Bar and jury associations as well a s public hearing were established , and therefore , “specialists in stenography were in demand for keeping records of hearings [ … ] in courts of justice” ( Ю РКОВ - 2 СКИЙ 1969: 56). * The paper was funded by RFBR, project number 17 - 34 - 01075 “ Anna Dostoevska y a ’ s Steno - graphic Records: new materials and findings ”. 1 About the history of stenography in European countries see A NDERSON 1882, B UTLER 1951. 2 About the history of stenography in Russia see Е РШОВ 1880, L OVELL 2015. 0039 - 3363 / $ 2 0 . 00 © 201 9 Akadémiai Kiadó , Budapest 2 Irina Andrianova All over the world , stenography was primarily used at meetings, sessions of stat e and public organizations, legislative, judicial , and other institutions. The in - vention of stenography was “comparable to the invention of printing , which gave an opportunity for the rapid spread of education by accelerating the exchange of ideas” ( Д ЛУСС КИЙ 1874: 25). For European and Russian public of that time , steno - graphy was not just a manner of rapid writing but art and science as well. In the 19th century , it was believed that “in more or less distant future , common writing would be replaced by sho rthand” ( Е РШОВ 1880: 4). “For the first time ever , human beings had a technology that allowed the written word to keep pace with speech and accurately record it” (L OVELL 2015: 291). It significantly saved time and ren - dered invaluable support to people in various activities. Many of those mastered shorthand or engaged professional stenographers to work. For example, the popular English memo i rist Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703), the physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727), the prominent poli - tician, di plomat, and philosopher of the Age of Enlightment Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826), the German zoologist Alfred Brehm (1829 – 1884), the Russian chem - ist Dmitri I. Mendeleev (1834 – 1907), the father of Russian aviation Nikola i Ye . Zhukovsky (1847 – 1921), the geolo gist and paleontologist Vladimir О. Kovalevsky (1842 – 1883), the physiologist Ivan P. Pavlov (1849 – 1936), the agrochemist Dmitri N. Pr y anishnikov (1865 – 1948), theatre directors Konstantin S. Stanislavsky (1863 – 1938) and Nikola i М. Gorchakov (1898 – 1958) , and others. Authors faced a seemingly impracticable task “ to write down everything you think o f ” . They were manual labourers as far as their thoughts “were hanging” at the tip of the pen. The perfection of writing process had an effect on such char - acteristic s of their work as the minimization of physical efforts, time , and paper. M. I. Ivanin ( 1801 – 1874), an inventor of the first shorthand system in Russian, rightly pointed out: “There is no such thing as a poet or a writer who at the mo - ments of inspiration would n o t wish to write down on a paper his impressions and ideas but common writing due to its slowness stifles the imagination, the inspira - tion ceases, and he transfers to the paper just a faint outline of the thoughts inspir - ing him; [ … ] whilst shortha nd can follow every idea, passion, feeling , and expres - sion that is catching on every word and expression quickly” ( И ВАНИН 1858: 20) . The purpose of this research is to reveal the role of stenography in the crea - tive process of European and Russian writers and to draw social attention to the problem of the revival of interest in shorthand and the maintenance of this art . Some researchers have uttered a curious opinion that a skilful approach of using shorthand was applied back in the times of the English poet and playwright W illiam Shakespeare (1564 – 1616). 3 To their mind, his plays were written down i n secret by stenogra phers who used to attend the performances in the Globe Theatre. Those people were sent by rivals in order to get the text of the talented playwright ’ s writings and make them performed on stages of other theatres without the author ’ s permission. Later, the scholars detected a large number of mistakes in the publica - 3 This viewpoint is given in S CHMIDT 1886, A DAMS 1933, D AVIDSON 2009. Studia Slavica Hung . 64 , 201 9 Stenography and Literature : Western European and Russian Writers 3 tions of Shakespeare ’ s plays that might be the result of imperfection of shorthand at that time. If this hypothesis is true, it turns out that readers and spectators in the 21st century can enjoy many works of the great Shakespeare thanks to those ste - nographers - “thieves” of the 16 th and early 17th centuries . Nevertheless, “scholars today seem to overwhelmingly favour other explanations for textual inconsisten - cies in some of Shakespeare ’ s early pr inted works” (F LAVIN ). We know four European writers mastering shorthand who lived and worked in different periods: Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731), Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870), George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) , and Astrid Lindgren (1907 – 2002) . Daniel Defoe, t he a uthor of Robinson Crusoe studied stenography at a dissent - ing academy. “He grew up during the period of greatest repression of nonconform - ists, learned to read on the Bible, as a child piously copied out large sections of it in shorthand when a rumor went around that the High Churchmen were going to con - fiscate the dissenters ’ scriptures” ( D OS P ASSOS 1954: 46 ). Shorthand skills helped Defoe in his further professional activities as a spy, 4 a newsman , 5 and a writer . 6 The prominent novelist Charles Dickens le arnt stenography at the age of 16 to 18 years based on the manual by Thomas Gurney. He practiced it while work - ing as a free lance reporter at Doctors Commons courts from 1829 to 1831, and as a parliamentary reporter from 1831 to 1832 ( for more, see B OWLES 2017a) . It is not a coincidence that one of the brightest Dickensian heroes , David Copperfield has autobiographical features and is a parliamentary stenographer. The writer ’ s personal experience underlies David ’ s story about how he mastered stenography: “I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography [ … ] and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the con - fines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which in such a posi - tion meant such a t hing, and in such another position something else, entirely dif - ferent; the wonderful vagaries that were played by circles; the unaccountable con - sequences that resulted from marks like flies ’ legs…” ( D ICKENS 1850: 385) . In the end, David Copperfield (as w ell as his creator) successfully learnt the skills of shorthand: “I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery” ( D ICKENS 1850: 443) . According to Hugo Bowles, “shorthand had become an integral part of his writing practice and although very little of his s horthand survives, he is known to have used it to draft articles, reports, letters, memos, and private notes throughout his writing career” ( B OWLES 2017 a ) . In 1856 , in his letter to Wilkie Collins , Dick - ens wrote: “I daresay I am at this present writing th e best shorthand writer in the world” (H OGARTH – D ICKENS 1893 : 399) . Stenography seems to have helped him in literary activity , too . Researchers believe that stenographic skills had an imp act on Dickens ’ s artistic style character - ized by “orality”, a tendenc y to use a “phonographic turn” , and to prove what they 4 About the activity of Defoe as a spy see, for instance, F URBANK – O WENS 2016. 5 From 1704 to 1713, he alone published the newspaper A Review of the Affairs of Fr ance .

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