Zapiski o Moskovii. (Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii) [Notes about Muscovy]

[HERBERSTEIN, Sigismund] Sigizmund GERBERSHTEIN and I. N. ANONIMOV (transl.)

Published by Bezobrazov i komp., Skt. Peterburg,, 1866

About this Item

Authorised, but censored, with three pages in one --- First book edition in Russian of "the most important historical and ethnographical work on early 16th c. Russia." (Dr Rima Greenhill, Stanford University), famously banned there during centuries. This is also the first correct printed Russian translation, the second overall. A lovely copy in contemporary Russian binding, coming from the library of the celebrated Cossack poet and émigré Nikolai Turoverov (1899-1972), with some leaves showing his typical reading notes. Anonimov, a history teacher in St. Petersburg, chose to translate a Latin edition published in 1556 in Basel, close to the first 1549 edition. His work followed the "erroneous" (Nazarenko, our translation here and elsewhere) and therefore "completely unusable" (Malein) translation published by Stepan Russov in the issues #2-12 of his magazine Vospominaniia na 1832 god [Memories for 1832]. There were also fragments from "the beginning of a Russian translation" (Anonimov) published in the Biblioteka inostrannykh pisatelei o Rossii [Library of Foreign Writers about Russia] (Kalistratov and Semenov, vols. I-II, 1847). Before that, the Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii was translated several times but was never published for censorship reasons: upon completing his translation in 1748, the poet Kiriak Kondratovich personally asked the office of the Academy of Sciences to keep this translation "in a secret place, for the sake of the many secrets it contains" (Malein). This work was however forgotten, and in 1785, another Russian translation was created under the guidance of the bibliographer Login Bakmeister at Catherine II's request; it also remained in a single manuscript perhaps because of Catherine's fluctuating attitude to Herberstein's work (Sharkova. We can add here as a note that Catherine's personally ordered the very unusual and remarkable production of a facsimile edition of Herberstein's work in German). The 1818 unpublished translation by F. Fovitskii is thought by some scholars to have been used in Russov's edition of 1832 (Nazarenko). Slightly more liberal than its predecessors, Alexander II's regime progressively allowed for some such texts to see the light in Russia. Anonimov actually worked on his translation in the 1850s, and published parts of it in a 'Sbornik' in 1857-60 together with the Latin text; still, about 50 pp. were denied by the censor (cf. Ulianinskii 4004). But a few years further into the tsar's reign, this full book edition could be considered again. However, after Anonimov's translation was printed, the censor required to reprint the book without the pages 59-62 containing an uncensored translation of the papal bull of Alexander IV on baptism of Russians. As a result, the book shows an interesting and very unusual feature, where the page 60 is labelled "60-61-62" to preserve the original pagination. As Smirnov-Sokolskii underlines, uncensored copies are of extreme rarity, suggesting that most of the original printrun must have been destroyed (Ulianinskii doesn't mention any). The first comprehensive description of pre-Petrine Russia, Herberstein's fundamental work "surpasses everything that existed in European literature on this subject before in terms of completeness, faithfulness of views, and critical attitude to the facts presented. Herberstein, it may be said, created the geography of Eastern Europe; he was also the first to acquaint the European public with Russian history in his truthful, though not infallible, extracts from our chronicles. He presented the present situation of Russia with such detail and distinctness that few of the subsequent descriptions can bear comparison with his book" (Anonimov's preface). An uncommon edition outside Russia, as we couldn't find any copy offered at auction or on the market in recent decades. Copies can be traced in public institutions, with 7 in the USA (Columbia, UPenn, NYPL, Cornell, Library of Congress, Illinois University, Stanford).

Seller Inventory # 2776

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Zapiski o Moskovii. (Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii) [Notes about Muscovy]
• Publisher: Bezobrazov i komp., Skt. Peterburg,
• Publication Date: 1866
• Binding: Soft cover
• Seller catalogs:
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