Danylenko, Andrii From the Bible to Shakespeare: Pantelejmon Kuliš (1819–1897) and the Formation of Literary Ukrainian (review)

Abstract

Slavonic and East European Review, 95, 3, 2017 Reviews Danylenko,Andrii.FromtheBibletoShakespeare:PantelejmonKuliš(1819–1897) and the Formation of Literary Ukrainian. Ukrainian Studies. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2016. xxiii + 447 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. $89.00. This volume offers a historically contextualized and meticulous linguistic study of Pantelejmon Kulish’s prolonged efforts, from the 1860s until his death in1897, to developa literaryUkrainian standardthatwould embrace Ukrainian speakers divided between the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian Empires. The need for a high style literary language remained an issue throughout the nineteenth century as Ukrainian authors sought to develop an alternative to the lowbrow style and genres typical of kotliarevshchyna. As a Kulturträger Kulish sought to develop a style appropriate for translating the Holy Bible and Shakespeare, texts of high culture, to prove that Ukrainian was, indeed, capable, and to gradually acculturalize the people (p. 374). Danylenko traces Kulish’s translation efforts from the publication of various psalms, the book of Job, and the Pentateuch in the late 1860s to the final version of the Bible in 1903. At each stage he offers side-by-side comparisons with other translators’ works and subjects both texts to a thorough linguistic analysis, examining morphology, syntax, orthography/phonetics and the provenance of lexemes. The crucial question in translations of Holy Scripture, notes Danylenko, was the mix of the vernacular and Church Slavonic (CS)/bookish elements to convey the dignity of the Bible and still make it accessible to the people. Danylenko’s analyses show that whereas many translators tended to overemphasize some particular aspect — CS or a regional vernacular that made the text more homogenous — Kulish’s approach stands out for its historical and regional fusion. In a comparison of Kulish’s 1860s translations of psalms and those by Hulak-Artemovs’kyi, Shevchenko and Maksymovych, Danylenko shows that Hulak, for example, relied much more heavily on the vernacular of Southeastern Ukrainian (SE U) while Kulish more broadly incorporated CS along with vernacular elements, the point being that early on Kulish had already conceived of literary Ukrainian as a synthesis of various linguistic elements. The push toward a synthetic approach became more pronounced with Kulish’s acquaintanceship with Ivan Puliui in Vienna in 1869, which led to their lifelong cooperation on the Bible translation. Puliui was from Galicia, knew Greek, and had himself translated religious texts. In 1871 the first translation of the New Testament was sent for review to the British and Foreign Bible Society, the eventual publisher. Criticized for paraphrasing rather than basing their translation on a close reading of the Greek original, Kulish and SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 530 Puliui (K/P) undertook a new translation. One of Danylenko’s main theses is that Kulish sought to linguistically unite both parts of Ukraine by including elements of Old Rusian (strarus’ka mova), Middle Ukrainian, the dominant nineteenth-century Ukrainian SE U dialect, N U, and SW U elements that also include some Polonisms. He sought to distinguish his version of a Ukrainian literary language from Russian and Polish. In the former case he introduced a spelling based on phonetic principles (kulishivka) in contrast to the Russian principle of etymological spelling. Danylenko compares the K/P work with translations of parts of the Scripture made by other Ukrainian figures such as Shashkevych, Aleksandrov, Lobodovs’kyi, Morachevs’kyi, Nechui, Bachyns’kyi, Fed’kovych, and Kobylians’kyi. He concludes that K/P’s high style is the only one that established a pan-Ukrainian language incorporating both parts of the linguistic divide and the historical richness of Ukrainian. A critical furor erupted over this language mixture and spelling after the publication of their translation of the New Testament in Lviv in 1880 and the entire Bible in 1903. After Kulish’s death in 1897 Puliui took over the editing and introduced more Galician features and de-poeticized Kulish’s original manuscript. Leading figures from both parts of Ukraine — the Ruthenian clergy, Franko, Nechui, Kostomarov, Zhytets’kyi and others — found the translations artificial, uneven, inconsistent, with peculiar spelling, and not the Ukrainian spoken by the people, and both sides insisted on the legitimacy of their claims. In addition to the Bible Danylenko examines Kulish’s...