Our Notes & References

Scarce first edition, presenting mostly new Ukrainian proverbs and other popular phrases, including curses and spells: “a valuable primary source for studying the folklore process of the late 19th and early 20th centuries” (Yatsun).

A pleasant copy in its original boards, from the remarkable collection of a Russian-born US Jewish spy.

The renowned Ukrainian ethnographer Mikhail Komarov (1844–1913) has been described as the “founder of the new Ukrainian bibliography [… and] advocate for Ukrainian literature” (Odesa National Scientific Library, our translation here and elsewhere). He presents here new ethnographic material of over 1,300 Ukrainian folk proverbs, sayings, riddles, and incantations. In the preface, Komarov refers to earlier extensive collections of Ukrainian proverbs by Matviy Nomys and Pavlo Chubynskyi and states that for this collection, he included only those proverbs that had never been previously published, along with “completely new proverbs about new phenomena of social life: military duty, a new court, a shtunda” [Evangelical Protestant groups popular among Ukrainian peasants]. Additionally, he incorporates some proverbs that had been recorded earlier but are now “written more fully or more clearly than in those collections, or when the proverb has a different meaning” (our translation). Beyond proverbs, Komarov’s collection presents folk greetings, wishes, and curses, along with two distinct sections dedicated to riddles and spells, all systematically arranged by subject.

In addition to proverbs from his own fieldwork, Komarov integrates also new material from the collections of his colleagues and friends, including Olena Pchilka — a prominent Ukrainian publisher, ethnographer, and mother of the poet Lesya Ukrainka — as well as the writers and political activists Borys Hrinchenko (pseud. of Vasyl Chaichenko) and Oleksandr Konysky, among others. Most of the proverbs were recorded in remote villages across diverse regions, from Sloboda Ukraine, Volhynia, and Tavria to Galicia and Podolia.

These expressions were recorded “exactly in the same form and wording as they were written down, preserving all the phonetic, lexical, and grammatical differences found across various regions of Ukraine” (preface). Each proverb is accompanied by an abbreviated indication of the region where it was collected. At the end of the collection, Komarov includes a valuable bibliographic index of earlier materials — 73 titles and their journalistic reviews from 1829 to 1888 — that he consulted for his work.

With interesting provenance: this example belonged to one of the most prominent collections of books of proverbs and aphorisms gathered by Lieutenant Colonel Victor Samuel M. de Guinzbourg (1906–76), a distinguished Special Agent of the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps during World War II—described by colleagues as “one of the best agents in Europe” (Black).

Born into a Jewish family in Russia, Guinzbourg’s family settled in France after the Bolshevik Revolution. He moved to the United States around 1931; his mother died at Auschwitz, and his father survived the Holocaust hiding in the Pyrenees. By the time Guinzbourg joined the U.S. Army, he “spoke almost every European language except for Finnish and Swedish” (Black). After the war, he served as the American military attaché to the UN and published a book of proverbs among contemporary diplomats.

A rare Odesa production, when Ukrainian books weren’t favoured: Tsar Alexander II signed indeed the Ems Ukaz in 1876, a secret decree banning the use of the Ukrainian language in print, with the exception of reprinting of old documents.

We couldn’t trace any copy at auction worldwide in recent years, and could locate only one copy in the US, in Harvard, next to three copies outside the US (Slovanska Knihovna (Prague), Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna (Lublin), and Scientific Library of I. Mechnikov Odesa National University).

Provenance

V. S. M. de Guinzbourg (modernist ex-libris on upper pastedown).

Bibliography

Black, Justin. Espionage History (online); Yatsun N. “Folklorno-Etnografichna skladova arkhivu Mikhaila Komarova”, Zap. istor. fak., 2016 (27), Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University, pp. 221-234.