Методология работы с рукописями. (Из опыта подготовки к публикации материалов из архивных фондов Н.Ф. Финдейзена)

Abstract

The attempts to answer the question of what made outstanding figures of culture and art keep diaries lead to the conclusion that the reason for this systematic daily work was the awareness of fulfilling their own destiny, the search for which began in childhood and resulted in the choice of the main type of activity in adulthood. Recording facts of the times in manuscripts with their initial assessment was a need of soul from youth. It is through strong (though sometimes subconscious) awareness of their path as a mission that the epoch is imprinted on their diary pages. Hence the cornerstone methodological principle in working with manuscripts: the preservation of authentic texts; without notes or improvisation, preserving all the features of the writing (up to cursive explanations). Such careful work creates the possibility of subsequent reprints — corrected and modified. And we, the people of today, are given the opportunity to evaluate historical events from a very distant time perspective. Long-term (since the beginning of the 1980s) work with the diaries of Nikolai Fedorovich Findeizen (1894– 1928) — a scientist, historian and historiographer of Russian music, the creator and permanent editor-publisher of the Russian Musical Newspaper (1894–1918), and in 1920s the organizer and head of the Musical-Historical Museum of the Academic Leningrad Philharmonic Society (now the Museum of Music in the Sheremetev Palace) — has allowed making some generalizations on the problematic aspects of the study of manuscripts by Russian musicians, which is reflected in the main section of the article.