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Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic by Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

T >> Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson >> Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic




From these introductory remarks, we turn again to the historical part
of our essay, referring the reader back to our division of the whole
Slavic race into Eastern and Western Stems. We have, first of all,
that most remarkable Old or Church Slavonic, the language of their
Bible, now no longer a living tongue, but still the inexhaustible
source of the sublimest and holiest expressions for its younger
sisters. Then follow the _four_ languages, perfectly distinct from
each other, spoken by the Eastern Slavic nations, viz. the Russian,
Illyrico-Servian, Vindish, and Bulgarian. Three of them possess a
literature of their own; and one of them, the Illyrico-Servian, even a
double literature; for political circumstances and the influence of
the early division of the oriental and occidental churches, having
unfortunately split the nation into two parts, caused them also to
adopt two different methods of writing one and the same language, as
we shall show in the sequel. And lastly, among the Slavic nations of
the Western stem, we find either _three_ or _four_ different
languages, according as we regard the Czekhish and Slovakian idioms as
essentially the same or distinct, viz. the Bohemian, [Slovakian,]
Polish, and Sorabic in Lusatia. Of these, the first and third have
each an extensive literature of its own.[25]


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See Schlegel's _Sprache und Weisheit der Indier_,
Heidelb. 1808. Von Hammer's _Fundgruben des Orients_, Vol. II. p. 459
sq. Murray's _History of the European Languages_, Edinb. 1823. F.G.
Eichhoff, _Histoire de la Langue et de la Literature des Slaves etc.
considerees dans leur origins Indienne, etc._ Paris, 1839.--Frenzel,
who wrote at the close of the seventeenth century, took the Slavi for
a Hebrew tribe and their language for Hebrew. Some modern German and
Italian historians derive the Slavic language from the Thracian, and
the Slavi immediately from Japhet; some consider the ancient Scythians
as Slavi. See Dobrovsky's _Slovanka_, VII. p. 94,]

[Footnote 2: _Krivitshi_. The Greek is _Krobuzoi_, Herodot 4. 49.
Comp. Strabo VII. p. 318, 319. Plin. H.N. IV. 12.]

[Footnote 3: The first writers, who mention the Slavi expressly, are
Jordan or Jornandes, after A.D. 552; Procopias A.D. 562; Menander
A.D. 594; and the Abbot John of Biclar before A.D. 620. See
Schaffarik's _Geschichte der Slavischen Sprache und Literatur_, Buda,
1826. Dobrovsky's _Slovanka_, V.p. 76-84.--Schaflarik, in his more
recent work on _Slavic Antiquities_, 1838, and in his _Slavic
Ethnography_, 1842, supposes he has found the first Slavi already
three centuries B.C. in the Veneti or Wendi on the Baltic. But as
every connecting link between them and the _historical_ Slavi is
wanting, the fact seems of little importance.]

[Footnote 4: Schaffarik in his work on _Slavic Antiquities_ attempts
to prove that the Sarmatae were no Slavi, but a Perso-Median nation;
remnants of which, he thinks, he has discovered in the Alanes and
Osetenzes in the Caucasus.]

[Footnote 5: The name of the _Slavi_ has generally been derived from
_slava_, glory, and their national feelings have of course been
gratified by this derivation. But the more immediate origin of the
appellation, is to be sought in the word _slovo_ word, speech. The
change of _o_ into _a_ occurs frequently in the Slavic languages,
(thus _slava_ comes from _slovo_) but is in this case probably to be
ascribed to foreigners, viz. Byzantines, Romans, and Germans. In the
language of the latter, the _o_ in names and words of Slavic origin
inmany instances becomes _a_. The radical syllable _slov_ is still to
be found in the appellations which the majority of the Slavic nations
apply to themselves or kindred nations, e.g. Slovenzi, Slovaci,
Slovane, Sloveni, etc. The Russians and Servians did not exchange the
_o_ for _a_ before the seventh century. See Schaffarik's _Geschichte_,
p. 5. n. 6. The same writer observes, p. 287. n. 8, "It is remarkable
that, while all the other Slavic nations relinquished their original
_national_ names, and adopted _specific_ names, as Russians, Poles,
Silesians, Czekhes, Moravians, Sorabians, Servians, Morlachians,
Czernogortzi, Bulgarians; nay, when most of them imitating foreigners
altered the general name _Slovene_ into _Slavene_, only those two
Slavic branches, which touch each other on the banks of the Danube,
the _Slovaks_ and the _Slovenzi_, have retained in its purity their
original national name."--According to Schaffarik's later opinion, as
expressed in his _Antiquities_, the appellation Slavi, Slaveni, or
Slovenians, is derived from one of their seats, that is, the country
on the Upper Niemen, where the _Stloveni_ or _Sueveni_ of Ptolemy
lived. It is said to be called by the Finns _Sallo_ (like every
woodland); by the Lithuanians, _Sallawa, Slawa_; in old Prussian,
_Salava_; by the neighbouring Germans, _Schalauen_; in Latin,
_Scalavia_. But it seems a more natural conclusion, that _vice versa_
the name of the district was rather derived from Slavic settlers
living in the midst of a German, Russian, and Finnish population--For
the derivation from _slovo_, word, speech, the circumstance seems to
speak, that in most Slavic languages the appellation for a German (and
formerly for all foreigners) is _Njemetz_, i.e. one dumb, an impotent,
nameless, speechless person. What more natural, in a primitive stage
of culture, than to consider only those as speaking, who are
_understood_; and those who seem to utter unmeaning sounds, as dumb,
impotent beings?]

[Footnote 6: The earliest Slavic historian is the Russian monk Nestor,
born in the year 1056. See below, in the History of the _Old Slavic_
and of the _Russian_ languages. The reader will there see, that even
the authority and age of this writer has been in our days attacked by
the hypercritical spirit of the modern Russian Historical school.]

[Footnote 7: See Goerres' _Mythengeschichte der Asiatischen Welt_,
Heidelb. 1810. Kayssarov's _Versuch einer Slavischen Mythologie_,
Goetting. 1804. Dobrovsky's _Slavia_, new edit. by W. Hanka, Prague
1834, p. 263-275. Durich _Bibliotheca Slavica_, Buda 1795. J.
Potocki's _Voyages dans quelques parties de la Basse Saxe pour la
recherche des antiquites Slaves_, Hamb. 1795. J.J. Hanusch,
_Wissenschaft des Slavischen Mythus_. Lemberg, 1842.]

[Footnote 8: _Glagolita Clozianus_, Vindob. 1836.]

[Footnote 9: Vol. II. p. 1610 sq.]

[Footnote 10: Schaffarik in his _Slavic Ethnography_, published nearly
twenty years after his "History of the Slavic Language and
Literature," omits the word "North," and divides the Slavi into the
"_Western_," and "_South-Eastern"_ nations. He must mean the
_Western_, and the _Southern_ AND _Eastern_.].

[Footnote 11: We acknowledge, however, that even this latter
appellation admits of some restriction in respect to the Slovenzi or
Windes of Carniola and Carinthia; who, notwithstanding their rather
Western situation, belong to the Eastern race.]

[Footnote 12: By Kopitar; see the _Wiener Jahrbuecher_, 1822, Vol. XVII.
Kastanica, Sitina, Gorica, and Prasto, are Slavic names. There is even
a place called [Greek: Sklabochori], _Slavic village_. Leake in his
Researches observes that Slavic names of places occur throughout all
Greece.]

[Footnote 13: The affinity of the Slavic and Greek languages it has
recently been attempted to prove in several works. Dankovsky in his
work, _Die Griechen als Sprachverwandte der Slaven_, Presburg 1828,
contends that a knowledge of the Slavic language is of the highest
importance for the Greek scholar, as the only means by which he may be
enabled to clear up obscure passages and to ascertain the
signification of doubtful words. Among the historical proofs, he
furnishes a vocabulary containing 306 Slavic and Greek words of
striking analogy. "Of three sisters," he observes, "_one_ kept
faithful to her mother tongue--the Slavic language; the _second_ gave
to that common heritage the highest cultivation--the Greek language;
and the _third_ mixed the mother tongue with a foreign idiom--the
Latin language." A work of the same tendency has been published in the
Greek language, by the Greek priest Constantine, Vienna 1828. It
contains a vocabulary of 800 pages of _Russian_ and Greek words,
corresponding in sound and meaning.--That these views are not new, is
generally known; although they hardly ever have been carried so far,
except perhaps by the author of the History of Russia, Levesque, who
considers the Latins as a Slavic colony; or by Solarich, who derived
all modern languages from the Slavic. Gelenius in his _Lexicon
Symphonum_, 1557, made the first etymological attempt in respect to
the Slavic languages. In modern times, great attention has been paid
to Slavic etymology by Dobrovsky, Linde, Adelung, Bantkje, Fritsch,
and others. An _Etymologicon Universale_ was published in 1811, at
Cambridge in England, by W. Whiter.--Galiffec, in his _Italy and its
Inhabitants_, 1816 and 1817, started the opinion, that the _Russian_
was the original language, and that the Old Slavonic and all the rest
were only dialects.]

[Footnote 14: Or rather some writers in Lusatia and the Austrian
provinces comprised in the kingdom of Illyria.]

[Footnote 15: The t' signifies the _Yehr_, or _soft sign_ of the
Russians in addition to the _t_. This letter not existing in the
English language, we have endeavoured to supply it in the best
possible way by the aspirate of the Greek language, which when it
follows [Greek: t], is not very unlike it; e.g. [Greek: _nukht
emeron_], written [Greek: _nuchthhemeron_]. The real sound, however,
is more like the German soft _ch_ after _t_, as in _Staedtchen,
Huetchen_.]

[Footnote 16: They are to be compared with the Latin verbs
frequentative, as _factitare_ instead of _facere, cursitare_ instead
of _currere_, etc.]

[Footnote 17: With the exception of the Slovakish dialect.]

[Footnote 18: Pronounce the _i_ as in the word _machine_.]

[Footnote 19: To make, in writing, the different shades in the
pronunciation of the same letters in Polish, is absolutely impossible.
They must be caught with the ear; and, even then, cannot be imitated
by the tongue of a foreigner.]

[Footnote 20: The English _a_ in _father_.]

[Footnote 21: Like the English _e_ in _they_.]

[Footnote 22: Compare the smooth breathing of the Greeks, and the
Shemitish _Aleph_ or _Elif_.]

[Footnote 23: There is e.g. a single letter in Old Slavonic and
Russian for _shish_. The Pole writes _szez_.]

[Footnote 24: Schaffarik in his _Geschichte_, p. 40 sq.]

[Footnote 25: We abstain here from giving any historical references,
as it would swell the volume beyond all due proportion; and historical
notices, with the exception of those circumstances in immediate
connection with the _language_, cannot properly be expected. All
philological sources have been faithfully mentioned.]

* * * * *




PART 1.

HISTORY OF THE OLD OR CHURCH SLAVIC (COMMONLY CALLED SLAVONIC)
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.


It can hardly be doubted that in very ancient times the whole Slavic
race spoke only one language. This seems however very early to have
been broken up into several dialects; and such indeed must have been
the natural result of the wide extension of the people. Eginhard, the
secretary and historian of Charlemagne, (ob. 839.) calls the Slavic
nations, whom his hero subjugated, Veletabae, Sorabae, Obotrites, and
Bohemians; and mentions expressly that they did not all speak the
same, but a very similar language. It would be difficult to decide
what portion of the still existing Slavic tongue has kept itself the
purest; the Old Slavic has its Graecisms, the Servian its Turcisms, the
Polish and Bohemian their Germanisms, the Russian its Tartarisms,
Germanisms, and Gallicisms. No language in the world will ever resist
the influence of the languages of its neighbours; and even the lofty
Chinese wall cannot protect the inhabitants of that vast empire from
corruptions in their language. It was formerly the general view, that
the ecclesiastical Slavonic was to be considered as the _mother_ of
all the living Slavic dialects; and there are indeed even now a few
philologians and historians who still adhere to that opinion. The
deeper investigations of modern times, wherever an equal share of
profound erudition and love of truth has happened to be united in the
same persons, have sufficiently proved, that the church Slavonic is to
be considered, not as the mother of all the other Slavic languages,
but as standing to them only in the relation of an elder sister,--a
_dialect_ like them, but earlier developed and cultivated. The
original mother-tongue, from which they were all derived, must have
perished many centuries ago. But _where_ the Old Slavic was once
spoken, and which of the still living dialects has been developed
_immediately_ out of it,--an honour to which all the nations of the
eastern stem, and one of the western, aspire,--is a question which all
the investigations and conclusions of able historians and philologians
have not hitherto been able to answer in a satisfactory manner. The
highest authorities in Slavic matters are divided on this point. The
disputes relating to it have been conducted with a degree of zeal,
little proportioned to its intrinsic importance; nay, recently, with a
passion bordering upon fierceness; and what is still more to be
regretted, without that regard to truth and candour, which ought to be
the foundation of all historical researches. The great political
questions which in the East of Europe have already disturbed the peace
of nations--the idea of Panslavism, the disputed preponderance of
Austria or Russia, the jealousy of the Slavic races against the
Germans and among each other--have been allowed to exert a decided
influence even on this purely historical question.

The claims of the Russians in this matter have long since been given
up as easily refuted; being indeed destitute of any historical
foundation. The circumstance, however, that the language of the Slavic
Bible was, in Russia, until the reign of Peter the Great, exclusively
the language of books, confirmed the natives for a long time in the
belief, that the old Russian and the church Slavic were one and the
same language; and that the modern Russian was the immediate
descendant of the latter; until modern criticism has better
illustrated the whole subject.[1]

The great similarity of the _Slovakish_ language with the Old Slavic,
especially of the national dialect spoken by those Slovaks who live
scattered through Hungary; and the correspondence of their grammatical
forms and flexion, to a degree not found in any other Slavic language;
seemed to decide for the Slovaks. An historical basis is likewise not
wanting to this hypothesis; for the Slovaks belonged formerly to the
great kingdom of Moravia; where, according to all the ancient
historians, Cyril and Methodius lived and taught the longest.[2]

On the other side, the venerable Bohemian Abbot Dobrovsky, who has
examined the opinions of his predecessors with more exactness and
erudition, and investigated the nature of the different Slavic
dialects more deeply than any philologist before him, decides for the
_Servians_. According to him, the Old Slavic was, in the time of Cyril
and Methodius, the Servian-Bulgarian-Macedonian dialect, the language
of the Slavi in Thessalonica, the birthplace of these two Slavic
apostles.[3]

His grounds seemed indeed incontestable, until Kopitar, a name of
equally high authority and importance in Slavic matters, who formerly
agreed with him,[4] proved in a later work,[5] by arguments of no
less weight, that the true home of the language of the Slavic Bible
was to be sought among the _Pannonic_ or _Carantano-Slavi_, the
_Slovenzi_ or _Vindes_ of the present times.[6] The adoption of a
number of _German_ (not _Greek_) words for Christian ideas, as
_tzerkwa_ Kirch, _post_ fast, _chrestiti_ christening, etc., can only
be explained, he asserts, by German neighbourhood and German
influence. These Pannonian Slavi were Methodius' own diocesans; for
their instruction the Scriptures were first translated, and only
carried by the two brethren, at a later period, to the Bulgarians and
Moravians, who easily understood the kindred dialect.

Kopitar's arguments have hitherto failed to convince other eminent
Slavic scholars, especially those of the Bohemian school; who still
accept it as a fact, that the language of the Slavic Bible was, in the
ninth century, the Servian-Bulgarian dialect; and Bulgaria its home.
Schaffarik, another great name in Slavic philological researches,
seemed in an earlier work to adopt the opinion of Kopitar; but, after
continuing his investigations further, he too came to the result, that
Bulgaria was the home of the Old Slavic; and that the language still
spoken in that province, corrupted indeed by foreign influences more
than any other Slavic dialect, is its direct descendant.[7]

Be this as it may, the Old Slavic has long since become the common
property of all the Slavic nations, and its treasures are for all of
them an inexhaustible mine. Dobrovsky counted in it 1605 radical
syllables.[8] Hence, it is not only rich in its present state, but has
in itself the inestimable power of augmenting its richness, the
faculty of creating new forms of expression for new ideas. But its
great perfection does not consist alone in this multiplicity of words.
Schloezer, the great historian and linguist, justly observes: "Among
all modern languages the Slavonic (Old Slavic) is one of those which
are most fully developed. With its richness and other perfections I
have here no concern. How it became so, the history of its cultivation
sufficiently explains. Its model was the Greek language, in those days
the most cultivated in the world; although Cedrenus no longer wrote
like Xenophon. No idiom was more capable than the Slavonic of adopting
the beauties of the Greek. The translators, intending a literal
version, and not like Caedmon the Anglo-Saxon, or Otfried the German, a
mere _poetic metaphrase_, were in a certain measure compelled to
_subdue_ their own language, to make it flexible, to invent new turns,
in order faithfully to imitate the original." [9]

After having ceased for centuries to be a language of common life, the
Old Slavic has of course lost that kind of pliancy and facility, which
only a living language, employed to express all the daily wants of
men, can possibly acquire. But for this same reason it has gained
infinitely in solemnity and dignity. Imposing by its very sound,
exciting in the minds of millions sanctifying religious associations,
it seems to have grown almost unfit for any vulgar use, and to have
become exclusively devoted to holy, or at least to serious and
dignified subjects.

There are, as we have mentioned above, many circumstances, which seem
to justify the opinion, that the Slavi were very early in possession
of a degree of cultivation, which would make it indeed difficult to
believe, that they should not have known how to read and write before
the ninth century. Ditmar of Merseburg, the German, speaks of the
inscriptions with which the pagan Obotrites, the Slavic inhabitants of
Mecklenburg, used to cover their idols. The southern Slavi had much
greater advantages. Neighbours of the Greeks, and in constant
intercourse with them; both as a nation, by war and traffic, and
through individuals who lived at the court of Constantinople; it can
hardly be supposed, that no earlier attempt should have been made to
adapt the Greek alphabet to the Slavic language, or to invent a new
one founded on that basis. There was however not a single
_satisfactory_ proof, that this was ever done with any degree of
success before that time; notwithstanding all the grounds by which
some modern writers, zealous and eloquent advocates of this opinion,
endeavoured to support it.[10] It is only since Kopitar's discovery of
some Glagolitic manuscripts _at least_ cotemporary with the most
ancient Cyrillic documents known, that this question has taken another
aspect. But whether there existed already a Slavic alphabet or not, it
is very doubtful whether Cyril knew it; since the Slavic tribes among
whom he and Methodius lived, were not acquainted with it; for all the
legends and early historical annals agree in calling Cyril the
inventor of the Slavic alphabet.

This alphabet, as arranged by Cyril, is founded on the Greek. In
adjusting it, Cyril employed all the Greek characters; although a few
of them have so much altered their shape in the course of time, as
hardly to be recognized in their present form, e.g. the _Z_ and the
_H_ of the Greeks. The first has the English, not the Greek
pronunciation of that letter; the latter in its altered shape is the
common _I_ of the Slavic language, and thus corresponds with the
pronunciation of the modern Greeks. The _H_ or _Eta_ in an unaltered
form, on the other hand, is the _N_ of the Slavic alphabet. The Greek
_B_, ss, went over into the still softer sound of _V_, _v_;[11] and
another sign was selected for Buki or _B_. This and all the characters
to denote Slavic sounds, which he did not find in the Greek alphabet,
Cyril took from other oriental languages, wherever he could find
similar sounds; and thus very judiciously avoided that accumulation of
letters to mark a single sound, which occur so often in all the
systems of writing derived from the Latin. In this manner he extended
his alphabet to forty-six characters or signs; some of them indeed
merely signs for expressing shades of pronunciation, which in other
languages are denoted by marks and points. Some others are not
pronounced at all, and seem, at least according to the present state
of the Slavic languages, utterly superfluous. Hence the Russians and
Servians have diminished the number of their letters considerably;
although the Russian has still some which could be amalgamated with
others, or entirely omitted. Whether the Old Slavic actually had, at
the time of Cyril's invention, so many different shades of sound, it
would be difficult to decide at present, after that language has
existed for so many centuries as a mere language of books.

Cyril, or, according to his baptismal name, Constantine, and Methodius
his brother, must be reckoned among the benefactors of mankind; for
it was they who procured for the Slavic nations, so early as the ninth
century, the inestimable privilege of reading the Holy Scriptures in a
language familiar to their ears and minds; whilst the sacred volume
yet remained, for centuries after, inaccessible to all the other
European Christians, the exclusive property of the priesthood. They
were born in Thessalonica, in the early part of the ninth century, of
a noble family; it does not appear whether of Greek or of Slavic
extraction. Macedonia, of which province Thessalonica was in the times
of the Romans the capital, was inhabited by many Slavi at a very early
period. Constantine, who obtained by his learning and abilities the
surname of the Philosopher, could have learned Slavic here, even
without belonging to the Slavic nation. As a flourishing commercial
city, this place was peculiarly favourable for learning languages; and
it was probably here too, that Constantine learned Armenian; for the
introduction of several Armenian letters into the Slavic alphabet
seems to prove, that this language was not unknown to him. When grown
up, his parents sent him to Byzantium, where he entered the clerical
profession.

It is reported that there came ambassadors from the Khazares, a
Hunnic-Tartaric tribe, to the emperor Michael, to ask for a teacher in
Christianity. On the recommendation of Ignatius, Constantine was
chosen for this mission, as being particularly qualified by his
eloquence and piety. On the road he stopped for some time in Cherson
on the Dnieper, where he learned the Khazaric language. The empire of
the Khazares extended from the Volga and the Caspian Sea, across the
Caucasian isthmus and the peninsula of Taurida, as far as to Moldavia
and Walachia. Several Slavic tribes were tributary to them; but about
the middle of the ninth century, at the time of Cyril's mission, their
power began to decline; their vassals became their enemies, and
gradually their conquerors; until towards the end of the tenth and at
the beginning of the eleventh century, their empire became entirely
extinct.[12] Constantine converted and baptized their Khan, whose
example was followed by a great part of the nation. It was probably
after he had returned from this mission, that Cyril went to convert
the Bulgarians. At this time, or just before, according to Dobrovsky's
opinion, he invented the Slavic letters, and translated the Gospels,
during his stay in Byzantium. This however is nothing more than an
hypothesis, against which other hypotheses have been started by other
scholars. Between A.D. 861 and 863, there came another embassy to the
emperor from the Moravian prince Rostislav, who asked for a teacher,
not only to instruct his subjects in Christianity more perfectly than
it had been done before, but also to teach them _to read_. Most of the
Moravians were already baptized. Constantine, accompanied by his
brother Methodius, was sent to Moravia, where the people received them
with expressions of joy. They introduced here the Slavic liturgy, and
preached in the Slavic language.

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