 | Old East Slavic language: Encyclopedia II - Old East Slavic language - Literary language of Kievan Rus
Old East Slavic language - Literary language of Kievan Rus
The political unification of the region into the state called Kievan Rus, from which modern Belarus, Russia and Ukraine trace their origins, occurred approximately a century before the adoption of Christianity in 988 and the establishment of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Documentation of the language of this period is scanty, making it difficult at best fully to determine the relationship between the literary language and its spoken dialects.
There are references in Arab and Byzantine sources to pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia using some form of writing. Despite some suggestive archaelogical finds and a corroboration by the 10th-century monk Khrabr that ancient Slavs wrote in "strokes and incisions" (черты и резы /ʧertɪ i rʲezɪ/), the exact nature of this system is not known. Recent amateur investigations in Russia have proposed that this was a syllabic system that may have survived, possibly into the 20th century, in cryptography (тайнопись /tajnopʲisʲ/), but scholars have reached no consensus beyond undecidability.
Although the Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in Novgorod, it was soon entirely superseded by the Cyrillic. The samples of birch-bark writing excavated in Novgorod have provided crucial information about the pure tenth-century vernacular in North-West Russia, almost entirely free of church influence. It is also known that borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and that simultaneously the literary language in its turn began to be modified towards Eastern Slavic.
The following excerpts illustrate two of the most famous literary monuments.
NOTE. The spelling has been partly modernized. The translations attempt to be as literal as possible; they are not literary.
Old East Slavic language - Primary Chronicle
c. 1110, from the Laurentian Codex, 1377
Се повѣсти времѧньных лѣт ‧ ѿкуду єсть пошла руская земѧ ‧ кто въ києвѣ нача первѣє кнѧжит ‧ и ѿкуду руская землѧ стала єсть.
These [are] the tales of the bygone years, whence is come the land of Rus’, who first began to rule at Kiev, and whence the land of Rus’ has come about.
Early language; Russian and Ukrainian not yet fully differentiated. Fall of the yers in progress or arguably complete (several words end with a consonant; кнѧжит "to rule" < кънѧжити, modern Uk княжити, R княжить). South-western (incipient Ukrainian) features include времѧньнъıх "bygone"; modern R временных). Correct use of perfect and aorist: єсть пошла "is/has come" (modern R пошла), нача "began" (modern R начал as a development of the old perfect tense.) Note the style of punctuation.
Old East Slavic language - Tale of Igor's Campaign
Слово о пълку Игоревѣ. c. 1200, from the Pskov manuscript, 15th cent.
Не лѣпо ли ны бяшетъ братіе, начати старыми словесы трудныхъ повѣстій о полку Игоревѣ, Игоря Святъ славича? Начатижеся тъ пѣсни по былинамъ сего времени, а не по замышленію Бояню. Боянъ бо вѣщій, аще кому хотяше пѣснѣ творити, то растекашется мысію по древу, сѣрымъ волкомъ по земли, шизымъ орломъ подъ облакы.
Would it not be meet, o brothers, for us to begin with the old words the difficult telling of the host of Igor, Igor Sviatoslavich? And to begin in the way of the true tales of this time, and not in the way of Boyan's inventions. For the wise Boyan, if he wished to devote to someone [his] song, would wander like a squirrel over a tree, like a grey wolf over land, like a bluish eagle beneath the clouds.
Illustrates the sung epics. Typical use of metaphor and simile. The apparent (Russian) misreading растекаться мыслью по древу (to effuse/pour out one's thought upon/over wood) has become proverbial in modern Russian with the meaning "to speak ornately, at length, excessively". (The misreading is of мысію, "squirrel-like", taken to be мыслію, "thought-like". It is present in both the manuscript copy of 1790 and the first edition of 1800, and appears to have been aided by a then misunderstood change in the meaning of the word R течь "to flow".)
Other related archives10th, 11th century, 1470, 14th centuries, 17th century, 988, Justice of the Rus, A Journey Beyond the Three Seas, Afanasiy Nikitin, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Belarus, Belarusian, Belarusian language, Book of Veles, Boris and Gleb, Bylinas, Byzantine, Christianity, Church Slavonic, Cumans, Cyril of Turov, Cyrillic, Czech, Daniel, Dmitri Donskoi, Early Russian, East Slavic languages, Glagolitic, Gospels, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Grand Duchy of Moscow, Greek, Hakluyt, Holy Land, Holy Week, Igor Svyatoslavich, India, Judaism, Khrabr, Kiev, Kievan Rus, Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra, Lay of Igor's Campaign, Lithuania, Mongols, Nestor, Nestor the Chronicler, Novgorod, Novhorod-Siverskyi, Old Church Slavonic, Ostromir, Ostromir Codex, Paganism, Poland, Polish, Praying of Daniel the Immured, Primary Chronicle, Proto-Slavic language, Pskov, Putyvl, Rus', Ruska Pravda, Russia, Russian, Russian language, Rusyn, Ruthenian, Slavic languages, Slovak, Song of Igor, South Slavic, Suzdal, Tale of Igor's Campaign, The Tale of Igor's Campaign, Tver, Ukraine, Ukrainian, Ukrainian language, Vladimir Monomakh, Vladimir Nabokov, Vladimir of Kiev, Volhynia, Yaroslav the Wise, Zadonshchina, aorist, battle of Kulikovo, birch-bark writing, diak, dialects, epic, epics, hagiography, homily, laws, metaphors, metropolitan, perfect, posadnik, record of his adventures, successor states, vernacular in North-West Russia, yers
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Literary language of Kievan Rus", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
