BOOK NOTES: Oldest chronicle, "Povest Vremennyk Let," published by Harvard (05/30/04)

BOOK NOTES

Oldest chronicle, "Povest Vremennyk Let," published by Harvard

"The 'Povest Vremennykh Let': an Interlinear Collation and Paradosis," edited by Donald Ostrowski. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2004, three volumes, $145.

NEW YORK - The latest addition to the Ukrainian Research Institute's multivolume series The Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature is a monumental edition of the Rus' Primary Chronicle ("Povest vremennykh let"), the oldest of the historical chronicles from Ukraine. The Harvard edition is the first to offer the chronicle in the original language with all variant readings from an edition prepared by a Ukrainian research institution.

For centuries, historians writing about Ukraine, for example, Mykhailo Hrushevsky in his "History of Ukraine-Rus'," cited the "Povest" only from Russian publications because there were no Ukrainian editions. The new 2,357-page compendium from Harvard offers historians an alternative for the first time.

The original chronicle compilation has not survived. Historians believe it was compiled from a number of sources in St. Michael's Monastery in Vydubychi, a village near Kyiv, in 1116. Initially, the Ukrainian Research Institute planned to publish the "Povest" as a facsimile of later chronicles, i.e. texts that began with a copy of the "Povest" text. After much effort in the 1970s, Harvard acquired microfilms of all of the important manuscripts from libraries in Moscow and Leningrad, where almost all documents relating to old Ukrainian history had been moved.

Unfortunately, the Harvard microfilms were found to be unsuitable for publication, so the current edition was prepared by transcribing the texts, word for word, from each microfilm into computer files and later checking the veracity of the transcription by inspecting the original manuscripts. This process, which took over 20 years to complete, was conducted by Dr. Donald Ostrowski, research associate at the Ukrainian Research Institute, research advisor in the Social Sciences and Lecturer in Extension Studies at Harvard.

The Harvard edition is actually an interlinear collation consisting of the five (and, at times, even more) main manuscript witnesses to the "Povest" that date from the late 14th to 16th centuries, as well as three Russian versions published in 1872, 1916 and 1950.

This is followed by a paradosis, or best reading, constructed by Dr. Ostrowski according to a rigid set of principles of textual criticism. In this way he produced a dynamic text of the "Povest" based on all of the main witnesses. His work is a significant improvement over many of the long-accepted but inferior readings of previous editions.

For example, in the traditional scheme of Russian history, the southern Rus' family of Primary Chronicle copies, especially the Hypatian and Khlebnikov copies that end with the Kyivan and Galician-Volhynian Chronicles, is thought to be inferior to (and derived from) the northern line that links ancient Kyiv to Vladimir-Suzdal' and thence to Moscow. This bias has been so pervasive that in some important Russian editions, the southern Rus' line was totally ignored.

Dr. Ostrowski meticulously compared thousands of lines of text from both northern and southern chronicle copies. He noted the various duplications, omissions, spellings, and reworked passages of these manuscripts that later copyists of the Middle Ages made in their copies of the text. In observing these discrepancies, Dr. Ostrowski concluded that the southern Rus' (Ukrainian) manuscripts cannot be ignored and that they have independent authority in determining substantive readings of the "Povest." This is seen from the line-by-line comparisons and forms a sound basis for doubting at least some of the 200 years of Russian scholarship on the "Povest."

The Harvard edition is printed in three parts. The first contains a foreword by Dr. Omeljan Pritsak (Hrushevsky Professor of History Emeritus at Harvard, and former director of the Ukrainian Research Institute), an introduction by D. Ostrowski, a bibliography and a narrative on the technical principles of the transcription. These are followed by the first 690 pages of the "Povest" text.

Publication of this volume has been made possible by the generous $25,000 donation of Vladimir and Helena Shyprykevich from Pennsylvania. Their donation honors Mr. Shyprykevich's parents, Father Petro and Kateryna (nee Abramovych) Shyprykevich. Father Petro was the parish priest for 63 years in Ostrivtsi, a village in the Volyn region of Ukraine.

The second part of the edition contains the aforementioned introductory materials in Ukrainian translation, followed by the next 681 pages of "Povest" text. The Ukrainian front matter is important in that it will allow scholars in Ukraine to understand the methodology of the Harvard work.

This volume was produced with the support of a $25,000 donation from Dr. Paul J. and Irena Dzul, noted benefactors of the Ukrainian Studies Fund from Michigan.

Sample facsimiles of folios from the five main manuscript copies of the "Povest" appear in the third part, followed by the final 793 pages of the text. The folios selected correspond to passages discussed in the introduction and allow readers to better judge the work that previous scholars have done in order to compare passages from the different witnesses. Publication of the final part has been made possible by the generous $25,000 donation of Mychajlo and Maria Kryzaniwsky, noted donors of the Ukrainian Studies Fund from New York, as well as their sons Dr. Yuri and Bohdan Kryzaniwsky.

The three-part set of the "Povest" is priced at $145 (includes shipping) for orders within the U.S., and may be ordered from the Ukrainian Research Institute (telephone, (617) 495-4243; HURI Publications, 1583 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138). This publication is listed as volume 10, text series, of The Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature.

The library encompasses literary activity in Rus'-Ukraine from its beginning in the mid-11th century through the end of the 18th century and is a portion of the Harvard Project in Commemoration of the Millennium of Christianity in Rus'-Ukraine, sponsored by the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, with support of the Ukrainian Studies Fund.

The Ukrainian Studies Fund is currently seeking donations to purchase 100 sets of the "Povest" edition to ship to libraries and scholarly institutions in Ukraine. Support is also needed for exploring various possibilities to bring this huge undertaking online and provide it with search engines and other useful electronic resources.

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