Manufacturing a Past for the Present National Cultivation of Culture
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Manufacturing a Past for the Present National Cultivation of Culture Edited by Joep Leerssen Editorial Board John Breuilly, Ina Ferris, Patrick J. Geary, John Neubauer, Tom Shippey, Anne-Marie Thiesse volume 7 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ncc Manufacturing a Past for the Present Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Europe Edited by János M. Bak, Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Baublys. Photograph, early twentieth century. © Lithuanian National Museum (ATV 15339) with the kind permission of the museum. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Manufacturing a past for the present : forgery and authenticity in medievalist texts and objects in nineteenth- century Europe / edited by János M. Bak, Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay. pages cm. — (National cultivation of culture ; volume 7) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-27680-2 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-27681-9 (e-book) 1. Literary forgeries and mystifications—History. 2. Forgery of manuscripts—History. 3. Forgery of antiquities—History. 4. Forgery—History. 5. Medievalism—Europe—History—19th century. I. Bak, János M., editor. II. Geary, Patrick J., 1948- editor. III. Klaniczay, Gábor, editor. PN171.F6M36 2015 809’.020722—dc23 2014030588 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1876-5645 isbn 978-90-04-27680-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-27681-9 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Acknowledgements vii The Long Shadow of Ossian. Editors' Preface viii List of Figures xxv Notes on Contributors xxviii part 1 Searching for the Voice of the Nation 1 The Manuscripts of Grünberg and Königinhof: Romantic Lies about the Glorious Past of the Czech Nation 3 Pavlína Rychterová 2 To Authenticate a Manuscript: The Case of Toldy and Hanka, Hermeneutically Reconsidered 31 Péter Dávidházi 3 The Kalevala and the Authenticity Debate 56 Pertti Anttonen 4 János Arany’s Csaba Trilogy and Arnold Ipolyi’s Hungarian Mythology 81 László Szörényi 5 From the Anonymous Gesta to the Flight of Zalán by Vörösmarty 96 János M. Bak part 2 Inventing a Past 6 Forging the Cuman Law, Forging an Identity 109 Nora Berend 7 Invented Middle Ages in Nineteenth-century Hungary. The Forgeries of Sámuel Literáti Nemes 129 Benedek Láng vi Contents 8 Excellent Scholar—Excellent Forger: The Case of Karl Benedict Hase 144 Igor P. Medvedev 9 On Firkowicz, Forgeries and Forging Jewish Identities 156 Dan D. Y. Shapira part 3 “Ancient” Objects: Fakes and Fantasies 10 Wisest is Time: Ancient Vase Forgeries 173 János György Szilágyi 11 Agilulf, “The Nonexistent Knight” and the Forging of the Italian “Germanic” Past 224 Cristina La Rocca 12 Imagining the Real: Material Evidence and Participatory Past in Nineteenth-Century Lithuania 267 Giedrė Mickūnaitė 13 Time Stopped. The Open-air Museum Skansen of Artur Hazelius 287 Johan Hegardt 14 The New York Cloisters: A Forgery? 307 Sándor Radnóti Index of Proper Names 317 Acknowledgements The present volume is the second volume of the products of a research group (“focus group”) organized in the Collegium Budapest—Institute for Advanced Study in 2008/9 on the theme “Medievalism, archaic origins and regimes of his- toricity,” convened by the editors of this volume and generously sponsored by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Stockholm. (The first volume Manufacturing the Middle Ages. Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe, was published by Brill in 2013). These volumes are also indebted to the international academic network of Collegium Budapest and the support of its last director, Andrew Sors, and the acquisitions of the multi-annual research focus of this institute, titled “Multiple Antiquities—Multiple Modernities,” centered around the topic of how European humanities have been using and frequently constructing, inventing classical and medieval traditions for foster- ing a set of alternative modernities. These previous focus groups (mentioned in detail in the Introduction) have benefited from the renewed support of the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Getty Foundation. And the most substantial support, the framework of the fellowships and the excellent work conditions in the former city-hall building of Buda were provided by the internationally- sponsored Collegium Budapest, the first institute for advanced study that has been founded in post-communist East-Central Europe in 1992, and existed until 2011. This book is one of the last memorials of that institute. Finally, the authors and editors wish to thank Terrie Bramley and María Mercedes Tuya for their extraordinary editorial assistance in preparing this volume for publication. The Long Shadow of Ossian1 Editors’ Preface The two concepts in the subtitle of this book would in fact demand two essays on their own. However, in this preface we intend only to highlight some aspects relevant to the matters presented in this volume in an attempt to place the studies into context. We will also mention a few similar contemporary artifacts not discussed here in order to round out the “landscape of forgery” mainly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Forgery seems to be a straightforward matter: something that pretends to be (or is presented as) what it is not.2 If we stick to this definition, relatively few items would remain for discussion in the context of “alternative antiquities,” a subject discussed in many aspects in workshops held and volumes produced at the Collegium Budapest.3 In the present project we intended to look at a wider circle of texts and objects, all of which are somehow “not quite” what they claim to be. They are of varied character and could be located at different places on an ascending scale from outright forgery to poetic liberty. Only in some of the cases presented here are texts or objects produced, as it were, from whole cloth, merely based on the creative ideas of its author or authors. Best known among them are the “medieval” manuscripts “discovered” at Königinhof/Králové Dvor and Grünberg/Zelena Hora in early nineteenth- century Bohemia, containing epic and lyric poetry in allegedly Old Czech. Pavlína Rychterová (pp. 3–30) shows the background of the writing and of 1 The copyright for this formulation is held by Dan D.Y. Shapira, see 161, below. 2 The issue in general is discussed with great erudition by János György Szilágyi, below, 173–223. We asked him to permit us to include his essay, even though it is not within the framework of “medievalism,” because of the exemplary character of the theoretical and comparative investigation of the forged Antique vases. See also Umberto Eco, The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1990), 69–82, where a number of vari- ants of “fakes” is outlined in greater and more analytical detail than we can do here. 3 Most of the studies in the present volume are products of a research group (“focus group”) organized in Collegium Budapest—Institute for Advanced Study in 2008/9 on the theme “Medievalism, Archaic Origins and Regimes of Historicity,” convened by Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay. A few additional articles were written at the request of the editors. Another group of these studies was published recently in a companion volume under the title Manufacturing Middle Ages. Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. by Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay (Leiden: Brill, 2013). The Long Shadow Of Ossian ix the reception of these texts: the emergence of Slavic philology,4 the need for a truly “national” past, and the support by Austro-Bohemian aristocratic circles. Václav Hanka, the discoverer of the manuscripts, a respected student of the leading Slavist, Jozef Dobrovský, was not alone in his times with such a project. Another respected scholar, a highly regarded Byzantinist and editor of important Greek texts, “added” an anonymous letter to his edition of Leo the Deacon’s History describing the siege of Kherson in 988 (?) a.d. and its submis- sion to the rulers of Rus’. The possible motives and circumstances for manufac- turing this text, commonly referred to as the Toparcha Gothicus, “discovered” by Karl Benedikt Hase, the authenticity of which remained debated for some 150 years—and beyond—is described here by Igor P. Medvedev (pp. 144–55). There were several other medieval narratives forged in this period, serv- ing different purposes, not all discussed in this volume, but belonging to the same intellectual and political atmosphere. In Poland the Slavic-Sarmatian Chronicle of Przybysław Dyjamentowski (1694–1774) was published around the same time as Hanka’s manuscripts. Its editor pretended that it was written in the early Middle Ages by a certain Prokosz vouching for the name of the Poles well before any other source did and connecting them to ancient peoples, Sarmatians and east Indians.5 Less known are the illustrated “Hungarian chronicles” and ancient Magyar inscriptions in runic, Chinese (!) and other strange characters, sold (and writ- ten?) by Sámuel Literáti Nemes, presented here by Benedek Láng (pp.