Ryan , W. F. Taube , Moshe The ‘Secret of Secrets’: The East Slavic Version. Introduction, Text, Annotated Translation, and Slavic Index (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 547 Ryan, W. F. and Taube, Moshe. The ‘Secret of Secrets’: The East Slavic Version. Introduction, Text, Annotated Translation, and Slavic Index. Warburg Institute Studies and Texts, 7. The Warburg Institute. London, 2019. xiii + 528 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Indexes. £52.65 (paperback). The collaboration of W. F. Ryan, our leading expert for medieval and early modern East Slavic para-science and magic (viz. his magnum opus The Bathhouse at Midnight, Stroud, 1999), and Moshe Taube, current premier scholar of the late medieval East Slavic translations from Hebrew, has produced this splendid work, which will be of great use for the study of regional modern cultural history. The likely ninth- or tenth-century, originally Arabic Secret of Secrets (Kitāb Sir al-Asrār), a purported letter from the superprestigious Aristotle to Alexander the Great on kingship — that is: statecraft, character strengthening and throne preservation — supplemented by medical, astrological, physiognomic and other pseudo-scientific data, circulated widely in late medieval and early modern Europe. It was translated from the short and long versions into Latin more than once, and thence into numerous major and minor European vernaculars. Not so for the East Slavic, for which a Hebrew translation from the shorter Arabic, supplemented by the longer and by the Latin, and with additional extensive interpolations from Rhazes (physiognomy) and Maimonides (medicine), and also brief inserts from other works, served as the base. In light of the complexities of the still not fully explained textual history of the Hebrew convoy, a critical publication cum modern translation of the East Slavic presents a major challenge. And this one succeeds with flying colours, just as did Taube’s The Logika of the Judaizers (Jerusalem, 2016), with Hebrew originals, Slavic texts, English translations and targeted Hebrew and Slavic glossaries. Now the most important of such translated works are at our fingertips. The meticulously organized, detailed introduction squeezes into eighty-two pages an immense amount of information concerning content, recensions, translations, interpolations, affinities of the Slavic to related contemporary writings, later history, historiography and the manuscripts consulted — Arabic, Hebrew and Slavic. The actual work — a critical edition of the Slavic Tainaia Tainykh on the left of facing pages, with the English translation on the right — constitutes the main body, if only 53 per cent (286 of 542 total pp.). It utilizes italics for changes and additions, thus allowing the reader to identify what is original to the Slavic version. The copious footnotes to the Slavic render the variant forms found in six manuscripts from the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The likewise numerous notes to the translation provide explanations of the relationship to the Hebrew and even Arabic, as well as identifications of names and discussion of scholarly interpretations. The ‘Slavic SEER, 99, 3, JULY 2021 548 Index’, a thorough glossary of the 2,000-odd words found in the Slavic text, with the Hebrew originals supplied for most, occupies another 24 per cent of the book and should be of immense utility for other researchers. The earliest extant manuscript (Belarus National Library No. 096/276K), penned on paper from the 1540s and 1560s, contains linguistic similarities and other textual affinities indicating that the translator was the same Zechariah ben Aharon ha-Kohen of Kiev (the ‘Judaizer’ ur-heresiarch Skharii according to Iosif Volotskii’s invective narrative), who translated the Logika and related philosophical pieces in the 1470s–80s. One might add supporting evidence here that the accompanying Planetnik in this codex, where the relevant political geography of Saturn’s astrological domain is nad Rusiiu, nad Novym gorodom, nad Moskvoiu, i nad Litvoiu (fol. 61v), was likely if not assuredly composed before Moscow swallowed Novgorod in 1478. Readers already familiar with Taube’s and other Hebraio-Slavicists’ work will recognize the speculation that at least some of the corpus of Hebrew literature translated into Slavic was connected with contemporary, regional Jewish messianism. Some mystery surrounds the initial legitimacy of the Slavic Secret of Secrets in Russia, since the Stoglav synod of 1551 condemned Aristotelian Gates (Aristotelevy vrata), an alternative name, which our authors surmise the synod applied only to a predictive extract from the translation. At any rate, the general consensus is that readers...