Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature – serie

Born in Poltava in 1722, Paisij Velyčkovs’kyj attended the Kievan Mohyla Academy. After four years, he renounced secular studies to become a monk. He lived in various monasteries in the Ukraine (including the Kievan Caves Monastery), on Mt. Athos, and in Moldavia and Wallachia, where he died in 1794. In or about 1748 a Moldavo-Slavic brotherhood began to gather about Velyčkovs’kyj and to revive the Hesychast traditions of the “cult of the elder” (starecestvo) and the Jesus prayer.Throughout his life Velyčkovs’kyj avidly collected and translated Byzantine texts into Church Slavonic, especially works pertaining to Hesychasm. This volume contains the first English translation of Velyčkovs’kyj’s unfinished autobiography, as well as a biography of the elder by his disciple Mytrofan. Anthony-Emil Tachiaos’s introduction discusses both works against their historical and generic background. Included are a map, an annotated index, and an index of Biblical citations.

The Tale of Bygone Years (Pověst’ vremennykh lět) is the most important source for the history of early Rus’. Full of stories of grand princes and saints, monks, and knightly retinues, this chronicle compilation has been the bedrock of modern interpretations of the history, ethos, and religious traditions of Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians alike. It also has been a source of controversy, with competing redactions and interpretations of the Old East Slavic language in which it was written. This massive undertaking provides scholars and general readers with the first fully legible text that includes all of the known redactions of the Pověst’. The text consists of an intercollation of the five oldest redactions, three more modern redactions, three later interpolations, and Donald Ostrowski’s own final interpretation. The intercollated texts are nested line-by-line. This three-part set will be of fundamental importance to Slavic philologists and historians of early Rus’.

Lev Krevza’s A Defense of Church Unity (1617), on the Uniate side, and Zaxarija Kopystens’kyj’s Palinodia (1621), a monumental defense of the Eastern Church, are arguably the most erudite, comprehensive, and persuasive works on the ecclesiastical debate between these two groups. This two-volume work illuminates the intense struggle ignited when, at the time of the Union of Brest (1596), a large part of the Ruthenian ecclesiastical hierarchy declared itself in communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Bohdan Struminski provides English translations from the original Ruthenian and Middle Polish texts.

The Kievan Caves Monastery was for centuries the most important Ukrainian monastic establishment. It was the outstanding center of literary production, and its monks served throughout the territory of Rus’ as bishops and monastic superiors. The most detailed source for the monastery early history is its Paterik, a thirteenth-century compilation containing stories reaching back to the monastery’s foundation in the mid-eleventh century. Muriel Heppell now makes available the first complete English translation of the Paterik. With an introduction, map, and several appendices, Heppell discusses the work’s Byzantine background and also sets it in its historical context.The Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature is one portion of the Harvard Project in Commemoration of the Millennium of Christianity in Rus’-Ukraine sponsored by the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. The Library encompasses literary activity in Rus’-Ukraine from its beginning in the mid-eleventh century through the end of the eighteenth century. Included are ecclesiastical and secular works written in a variety of languages, such as Church Slavonic, Old Rus’, Ruthenian (Middle Ukrainian), Polish, and Latin. This linguistic diversity reflects the cultural pluralism of Ukrainian intellectual life in the medieval and early-modern periods. The Library consists of three parts: Texts, which publishes original works, in facsimile whenever appropriate; English Translations; and Ukrainian Translations. Each volume begins with an introductory essay by a specialist. The two translation series also include maps, appendices, and indices. A cumulative index to the entire Library is planned.