LIBER AMICORUM IN HONOUR OF E. D. GOY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) https://archive.org/details/SSEES0002 (SOUTH SLAV PERSPECTIVES) Edited by Ljubisa Didic Dragomir Lazic E.C. Hawkesworth and B. S. Johnson School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London LIBER AMICORUM IN HONOUR OF E. D. GOY KRUSEVAC LONDON 1989. SSEES OCCASIONAL PAPERS No. 10 ISBN 0 903425 18 1 © Copyright, 1989: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permision from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism. School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London Senate House Maiet Street London WC1E7HU This volume has been published with the generous assistance of the Administration for International Scientific, Educational, Cultural and Technical Coope¬ ration of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, Yugoslavia Ova knjiga je izasla zahvaljujuci pomoci Republicko CTQ . zavoda za medunarodnu naucnu, prosvetnu, kulturnu 1 tehnicku sradnju SR Srbije, Beograd IS ✓ Ned Goy, Cambridge, February 1989 CONTENTS page E.C.Hawkesworth, B.S.Johnson Foreword vi i M. PavloviC Byzantine Tradition and two Serbian Folk Poems 1 S. KoljeviC MaZuranib, Njego§ the Folk Tradition 11 M. Pavit Simeon Pi § fee vi fc as an Historian 20 P. Herrity The Language of Jovan Sterija Popovifc 37 J. Hristifc Koza£inskij!s Traedokomedija 49 I. Lalie An Old Belgrader 59 P. Palavestra The Modern' and Modernism in Serbian Literature 71 *K. St. Pavlowitch The Vojnovifces as I knew them 78 C. Hawkesworth Two Stories by dersko Polit Kamov 88 D. Norris The Suicide of Prince Rjepnin in Crnjanski’s Roman o Londonu 99 Vasa D. Mihailovich A. Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 and D. tosit's The Time of Death 110 2elimir B. JuriCit Ivo Anorit and Novo Evrope 119 J. Loud Old Lumber, New House: Andrifc as Collector 129 K. Pranjit Style in Partisan Memoir Literature 143 D. PuvaCifc Two Serbian Satirists: V. Bulatovifc-Vib and B. CrnCevifc 151 R. Alexander Mdji and the Stars: a phonological analysis of Vasko Rosa's 7ev nad zevovima6 158 B. Johnson The Poetry of Slavko Mihalifc 172 I. Slamnig Translating Evgeniy Cinegin into Croatian 186 Francis R. Jones A Screw Loose or a Plank Missing? Anecdotes on Translating Serbo-Crostlan Poetry 192 A. G. Cross Pretty as a Picture: Karamzin's Liza and Turgenev's Akulina 204 E. PivCeviC Ned Goy and the British/Croatian Review 217 Bibliography of the works of E. D. Goy 222 FOREWORD Ned Goy's contribution to Slavonic, and especially South Slav studies has been outstanding and when he eventually retires from active teaching at Cambridge, it is hard to see when it will be matched. Throughout his long career he has contributed equally to the closely interlinked fields of teaching, translation and scholarship and in all of them he has set the highest standards and left an enduring mark. The least tangible, but surely the most taxing, of these activities, his teaching, lives on in his students, opening up new areas of knowledge and enriching their lives even when, in the nature of Slavonic studies in this country, there has been little opportunity for its expression. It is perhaps a sad comment that due to a variety of circumstances over the years, only small numbers have been privileged to profit from Ned's knowledge: in any other field students would have flocked to take advantage of a teacher of such expertise and perception. In his endeavours to spread greater understanding of South Slav cultures, his work in translating has been significant. In putting such names as Bulatovifc, Konstantinovifc, and Desnica before an English- speaking public, his skill as a translator stood out amidst a plethora of inferior translations of Yugoslav prose by less gifted individuals in the late '50's and '60's. And for those few of us 'in the trade' his scholarly versions of the complex works of earlier, mainly Dubrovnik, literature have been an invaluable asset in helping and encouraging students to read them with more thorough understanding. The forthcoming VIII publication of his translation of Osman will be of further incalculable value in this area. His writings on many different aspects of the Slav world have always been as he himself is, stimulating, often provocatively original, authoritative and full of insight. As must be evident from the Bibliography included here, the corpus of Ned's work has not achieved the recognition it fully merits: it is in part for this reason that the editors decided to embark on the compilation of a book that aimed to embody in concrete form the wealth of respect that Ned enjoys amongst the colleagues and friends who have contributed to it. There are many more throughout the world who for reasons of space it has not been possible to include. Nevertheless, they wguld all wish to join with us here in dedicating this volume to Ned and his work. Celia Hawkesworth, Bernard Johnson, London, 1989 BYZANTINE TRADITION AND TWO SERBIAN FOLK POEMS ' Miodrag Pavlovifc. Belgrade Byzantine culture belongs to the phenomenon of so-called 'high civilizations'. Although its beginnings and the first two or three centuries were eclectic, in its long span of a thousand years it achieved a cultural profile uniquely its own. It was a civilization which knew ways and methods of maintaining continuity throughout changing historical circumstances. The Byzantines were able to re¬ formulate their cultural premises when it was necessary, and repeatedly to" continue to be creative in several different directions without compromising their identity. Literature played a prominent part in the pattern of Byzantine 'high culture', and consequently, because of its high style, it was far above the national cultures which existed within the frontiers of the Empire or in its neighbouring territories. Paradoxically enough, Christianity, which was a popular religion in its inspiration and origin gave birth to cultures of the 'high' type in the East, just as in the West of Europe. Obviously Byzantine Christian culture suppressed the pagan character of the underlying national and folk cultures, which were also influenced, stimulated and patronised by its cultural agents: church, schools, administration. Byzantine literature had a courtly, aristocratic, erudite and partly classicist character, although it professed an egalitarian ideology. Its dogmatic and doxological obligations were very contrary to the spirit of folklore cultural patterns, existing as improvised creations, or traditions that had mostly lost their overt meanings. Of necessity, there was socially a clear line of demarcation between Byzantine literature, for the most part written in Greek, 2 and the popular creation of ethnic groups or nations christianized and maintained in permanent contact with the Byzantines. This delineation itself left space for a parallel existence of vernacular, folklore literary production. The missionary activities of Cyril and Methodius indirectly encouraged it. Nevertheless, it is still possible to pose the question: how did Byzantine culture affect the popular, folkore creations of the peoples within its orbit? From the evidence offered by the folklore of the South Slavs the main influence came from a general source: the teaching and practice of the Christian faith. The predominant literary source was inevitably the Bible itself, both the Old and New Testaments, either in Greek, or in Slavonic translation. Liturgical texts were also of some importance, as were Lives of the Saints and some apocryphal writings which left traces of their influence but through channels which are not always immediately apparent. Many legends, stories, proverbs and some parts of oral poetic tradition consist of Biblical motifs. There is a whole range of such combinations to be found: Biblical motifs accepted by oral tradition and retold in a naive way with the addition of picturesque details, or the incorporation of Biblical material in the poetic fabric of pre- Christian or para-Christian content. The example of the Lives of the Saints is a particularly intricate one. Here the line of demarcation between folklore and written literature seems to have become obscured in the intimate combination of the two. Reading the Lives of the Saints from the Prologos and the Synaxar in the Serbian translation, I found instances of reciprocal influences between different folklore traditions and written, canonised Byzantine literature. It is a vast field open to investigation. Some of the lives of the Saints which belong to Serbian Medieval Literature contain descriptions of very old Indo-European usages which were conserved amongst the Slavs in Christian times and documented in their sacred writings. Such instances are passed over unnoticed by the professionals: one example is a moving section in the Biography of Saint Simeon written by his son, the greatest Serbian saint and the founder of the 3 Serbian literary tradition, Saint Sava. On his death-bed, Saint Simeon asks his son Sava, or Sabbas, to carry him off and lay him on a bed of cut grass, ('rogom'). This is a practice known in Vedic ritual and mentioned many times in the Rig-Veda. Amongst several versions of the folk-poem on the theme of Christ's baptism, I have chosen one from Montenegro, published by Vuk KaradZifc ('Opet Krstenje Hristovo', Vukova dela, Vol.1, 1891, pp.128-29). In this translation by the English Slavonic scholar Bernard Johnson it is rendered in octosyllabic instead of the original decasyllabic verse; otherwise it follows very closely the meaning of the Serbian original: THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST Our Holy Lady walked abroad, Walked through the earth and the wide world, And in her arms she bore her son, Jesus Christ, her infant son; There she met the baptist - John, Thus Our Lady spoke unto him: "Come here to me John-godfather, Let us go to Jordan's water, There give baptism to my Christ-son!" From that place they set off walking, And arrived at Jordan's water.