Dedicatory Inscriptions and Notes from P. Rovinski’s Personal Library (On the Materials of the Serbo-Croatian Branch of the Slavic Literature Fund of the Russian Academy of Sciences Library)

Abstract

Several editions from the personal library of Pavel Rovinski were revealed during documentary verification in the Slavic Literature Fund of RASL. Most of them contain dedicatory inscriptions from Serbian and Montenegrin persons of science, culture and politics. For ease of reading, the text of this article is divided into two parts: the first is a commentary on the discovered inscriptions and notes, and the second is an appendix which provides a list of all identified editions from Rovinski’s library containing inscriptions or notes. Dedicatory inscriptions in Serbian were translated and are, if possible, described in the appendix. The appendix contains a list of records with a description of the book, the text of the dedicatory inscription indicating its location in the book, a list of pages with notes from the library’s owner, and a list of pages with attachments or stickers. At the end of each record, the code of the edition is given, which corresponds to the book’s location in the storage of the Slavic Literature Fund of RASL. Each record is numbered. Among the dedicatory inscriptions is a poem by the governor Shako Petrović-Negosh, written on the book and dedicated personally to Rovinski, as well as other personal messages. The text of the poem by Petrović-Negosh is published for the first time, as well as its translation. In addition to dedicatory inscriptions, the article describes notes on the books made by Rovinski himself. We were not able to decipher or attribute some inscriptions, so they are published in the appendix without any comment. Messages on the title pages, notes, and comments on the margins of the pages are important for Slavic Studies.