The Slavic Akathistos Hymn
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Slavistische Beiträge ∙ Band 224 (eBook - Digi20-Retro) Antonina F. Gove The Slavic Akathistos Hymn Poetic Elements of the Byzantine Text and Its Old Church Slavonic Translation Verlag Otto Sagner München ∙ Berlin ∙ Washington D.C. Digitalisiert im Rahmen der Kooperation mit dem DFG-Projekt „Digi20“ der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, München. OCR-Bearbeitung und Erstellung des eBooks durch den Verlag Otto Sagner: http://verlag.kubon-sagner.de © bei Verlag Otto Sagner. Eine Verwertung oder Weitergabe der Texte und Abbildungen, insbesondere durch Vervielfältigung, ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages unzulässig. «Verlag Otto Sagner» ist ein Imprint der Kubon & Sagner GmbH. Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access 00060849 Sl a v is t ic h e B eiträge BEGRÜNDET VON ALOIS SCHMAUS HERAUSGEGEBEN VON HEINRICH KUNSTMANN PETER REHDER• JOSEF SCHRENK REDAKTION PETER REHDER Band 224 VERLAG OTTO SAGNER MÜNCHEN Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access 00060849 ANTONINA FILONOV GOVE THE SLAVIC AKATHISTOS HYMN Poetic Elements of the Byzantine Text and Its Old Church Slavonic Translation VERLAG OTTO SAGNER • MÜNCHEN 1988 Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access Ваувгіз^в Staatsbibliothek Mönchen ISBN 3-87690-393-9 ©Verlag Otto Sagner, München 1988 Abteilung der Firma Kubon & Sagner, München Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access 00060849 Dedicated to the memory of my parents Aleksandr Filonov (1901-1975) and Klavdija Andreeva Filonova (1913-1964) Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access 00060849 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The initial research for this monograph was carried out at Harvard University under the direction of the late Roman Jakobson. I am indebted to Horace G. Lunt of Harvard University, who lent me copies of manuscripts containing the Akathistos and read early drafts of my work, suggesting many improvements. Kirill Taranovsky of Harvard and Kenneth J. Levy of Princeton University also read a draft and made valuable comments. The American Association of University Women generously supported my research in its early stages. I am grateful to Henrik Birnbaum of the University of California, Los Angeles, for his recommendation that the study be considered for publication by Slavistische Beiträge and to Professor Dr. Peter Rehder for including my manuscript in the series• Grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Research Council of Vanderbilt University supported revision of the manuscript. Publication is made possible by a subvention of the Research Council of Vanderbilt University. The College of Arts and Science of Vanderbilt University aided the project by granting academic leave and support for the final preparation cf copy. For unflagging encouragement in this and other undertakings I owe thanks to my friend and colleague, the classicist Susan Ford Wiltshire. The debt of love and gratitude due to my husband, Walter R. Gove, cannot be spelled out in full here. Nashville, March 1988 A. F. G Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access 00060849 - VII - CONTENTS PREFACE............................................ IX INTRODUCTION ...................................... XI I. THE SLAVIC AND GREEK TEXTS OF THE AKATHISTOS 1 II. THE GREEK AKATHISTOS ..................... 7 1. Introduction ....................... 7 2. Subject and Stanzaic F o r m ........... 10 3. M e t e r ............... .............. 12 4. The Meter of the O i k o i ............... 17 5. The Meter of the P r o o i m i a ........... 20 6 . The Meter of the Chairetismoi....... 22 7. Formal Devices of Composition other than M e t r i c a l ..................... 22 8 . Parallelism in the Chairetismoi .... 26 III. THE EVIDENCE FOR METRICAL ADAPTATION IN EARLY SLAVIC TRANSLATED HYMNS ........... 44 IV. TEXTUAL VARIANTS AND POETIC STRUCTURE .... 72 1- The Methodology of Textual Reconstruction ..................... 72 2. Time and Place of the Slavic Translation 75 3. Typology of Variants................. 81 4. Metrical Analysis of Variants ....... 85 5. Conclusions Drawn from the Metrical Analysis of Variants ............... 144 V. TRANSMISSION OF POETIC DEVICES IN THE TRANSLATION............................ 15 2 1. Predicted Tendencies of Transmission . 152 2. Poetic Devices, Their Linguistic Definitions, and the Criteria Used in Determining Occurrence of Transmission ....................... 161 3. Rates of Transmission of Poetic Devices 168 Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access 00060849 - Vili - VI. PRINCIPLES OF EARLY SLAVIC TRANSLATION, THE RELATIONSHIP OF MUSIC AND TEXT, TRANSLATABILITY FROM GREEK TO SLAVIC, AND THE LITURGICAL FUNCTION OF THE BYZANTINE HYMNS ................................... 201 THE GREEK AND SLAVIC TEXTS OF THE AKATHISTOS 223״ —APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHIC R E F E R E N C E S ........................... 276 Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access PREFACE This study about the hymns of the Byzantine and Slavic liturgy owes its beginning to a happy convergence— Roman Jakobson*s return late in his career to his early interest in the Byzantine heritage of Church Slavonic poetry and my own family heritage in the Old Believer community in the Latvian capital city of Riga. Jakobson's genius as a teacher, espe- cially his flair for dramatic amplification of the archaic poetic texts, brought alive for me the figure of Constantine- as someone not only ״,Cyril, "the first teacher of the Slavs motivated by a religious and educational mission but also s discussion״endowed with a poetic gift. Intrigued by Jakobson of Byzantine poetics, I wanted to learn more about Byzantine hymnography. I was surprised and delighted when I discovered the Greek texts that were the sources of the chants I had heard my mother sing in my childhood— the Christmas troparion Dëva dnesl presuSSestvennago raždaet (‘H napôévoc afiuepov "The Virgin today gives birth to the transsubstantial One"), the Easter troparion, and others. The familiar yet mysterious songs in their somewhat strange language that accompanied my mother's housework in our Riga home in the 1940s— songs which she had learned as a girl— went back to the magnificent sung poems created for the great churches in Constantinople in the sixth and seventh centuries by the master melodes John of Damascus, Andreas of Crete, and the Syrian Romanos. During my explorations, I came upon Wellesz's then recently published transcription of the music of the Akathistos Hymn as well as Meersseman's German translation of the text of this masterpiece of Byzantine hymnody. I became curious about the Slavic translation of this great poem, especially in view of the fact that the akafist was later to become a popular form of church chant for the Russians. Finding a text of the Slavic Akathistos in Amfiloxij's edition of the Tipografskij Ustav, I was surprised to learn that the Slavic translation had Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access 00060849 - X - retained a great deal of the poetic structure of the Greek, including the striking antitheses and grammatical figures that so effectively embody in poetic language the theological doctrines of the mystery of Christ's Incarnation and of Mary's part as ”mother of God" in "salvation history" that form the thematic heart of the Akathistos. My research on the Greek and Slavic Akathistos resulted in the publication of four articles prior to this monograph: "Literalism and Poetic Equivalence in the Old Church Slavonic Translation of the Akathistos Hymn," International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 22.123-35 (1976) "Slavic Liturgical Hymns as a Repository of Byzantine Poetics: The Case of the Akathistos Hymn,” Folia Slavica Vol. 2, Numbers 1-3 (1978): Studies in Honor of Horace G. Lunt on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, Part 1, pp. 130-140. The Evidence for Metrical Adaptation in Early Slavic Translated״ Hymns," Fundamental Problems of Early Slavic Music and Poetry, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Subsidia VI (Copenhagen, 1978), 211-246. "The Relationship of Music to Text in the Akathistos Hymn," Studies in Eastern Chant, Vol. 5, in press. The present work incorporates subsequent research in Byzantino- Slavic hymnographic studies. To the best of my knowledge, the present study of the Akathistos is the only detailed comparative poetic analysis of a complete Old Church Slavonic translated liturgical work. I hope that the reconstruction and analysis of this masterpiece of Byzantinoslavic hymnody will contribute to the growing realization that the liturgical translations of the Slavs constitute an important and insufficiently appreciated part of the history of the Slavic literary languages and Slavic poetics. I offer it in homage to the poetic beauty and power of the Slavic translation of the Akathistos Hymn. Antonina F. Gove - 9783954792160 Downloaded from PubFactory at 01/10/2019 04:06:36AM via free access INTRODUCTION This work offers a detailed analysis of the Slavic trans- lation of a sixth-century Greek liturgical poem that is representative of the poetic genius of the best of the Byzan-