Our Notes & References

An impressive, very unusual example of innovative transliteration, typographical play, and political use of a foreign language – “an undoubtedly interesting attempt to record Russian pronunciation scientifically at the close of the 17th century” (Bykova, our translation here and elsewhere); one of “the earliest experiments in syllabic verse by [rare] European authors writing in Russian at the time” (Liustrov).

Extremely rare: the only other copy whose holding we could confirm is at Uppsala University Library. In her seminal study of the text, the Soviet scholar Tatiana Bykova refers to two surviving physical copies in addition to the digital copy donated by Uppsala University to the Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in St Petersburg — without, however, indicating the location of the second holding, which is possibly at the Swedish Royal Library. Apparently no physical copy in Russia nor in the USA.

Johan Gabriel Sparwenfeld (1655–1727), a Swedish diplomat and later master of ceremonies at the Swedish royal court, composed this oration in Russian on the occasion of the death of King Charles XI of Sweden on 5 April 1697. It was delivered at a memorial ceremony in Stockholm six months later, on the king’s birthday, 24 November 1697. The edition does not name the author, yet the final poetic line, “Jstinnym Gorkogo Serdsa Finikom”, contains Sparwenfeld’s emphasised initials.

In 1684, Sparwenfeld arrived in Moscow as part of a Swedish diplomatic mission. After the mission concluded, he was granted permission to remain there for three years as a royal scholar to study the Russian language. On his return, he brought back a number of publications from the Moscow Cyrillic press, now held in the Uppsala University Library. He continued his studies in Slavic subjects and compiled four Slavic–Latin dictionaries and one Latin–Russian dictionary (Bykova), none of which was published in his lifetime; these manuscripts are also preserved at Uppsala University.

Placzewnaja recz comprises a title page, six pages of funerary oration, and a final eighth page containing a poem that both extols the deceased king and calls for an end to mourning, as “the wounds of the heart” will be healed by the new monarch, Charles XII (who, interestingly, will lead famous wars against Peter the Great). Addressed directly to the late king, the text enumerates his virtues, detailing his political achievements at home and abroad.

As Sweden lacked Cyrillic type at the time, the oration was unusually printed in Latin characters, with an effort to reproduce the Russian pronunciation, a language in which the text was originally written. The reasons for this unusual choice of language continue to be debated by scholars. Bykova suggested that Sparwenfeld was in fact addressing the Russian-speaking population of the Baltic coast (Narva, Ivangorod), which had passed from Russia to Sweden after the Treaty of Stolbovo in 1618. “This Russian population played a prominent role in Swedish political life […] Some of Charles XI’s decrees restricted the rights of the Russian population, especially the Orthodox Christians […] This oration may have been intended to show the Russian subjects in Sweden the virtues of the deceased king” (Bykova).

Ulla Birgegard, a scholar at Uppsala University and a researcher of Sparwenfeld’s life and work, offers a similar explanation, adding that the funerary oration was likely “intended for distribution (although this may not have happened). Of course, it is also possible that the text was printed solely for the solemn occasion, for documentation purposes. Or perhaps the fact that the oration was delivered in Russian had only symbolic significance, reminding those present that the mighty Swedish state had Russian-speaking subjects within its borders” (quoted by Grot).

The contemporary Russian scholar Lidiia Grot suggests that Sparwenfeld composed the oration, addressed to the late king “on behalf of the loyal, ‘love-repaying’ Slavic-Russian inhabitants of Ivangorod and Narva,” as a means of appealing to the new authorities for support in publishing his Slavic–Latin dictionaries. Shortly after the presentation of this text, “Charles XII indeed gave orders to purchase Cyrillic type. However, the treasury was empty, and the type was never acquired [until 1708 – N.B.]” (Grot).

“This is the third known poem by Sparwenfeld in Russian” (Bykova). The other two are much shorter and were printed later. One, a student exercise in verse for foreigners learning Russian (1684), was not intended for publication; a facsimile of the manuscript was published only in 1911. The other, a translation of a verse from the Gospel of Luke (in Latin script) placed alongside the Latin text, appeared in Nicolaus Bergius’s treatise Exercitatio historico-theologica de statu ecclesiae et religionis Moscoviticae in 1704.

Curiously, this edition’s Latin transliteration of Russian words permits multiple variations in the spelling of the same words and letters. Magdalena Janas suggests that the typesetting and execution of Sparwenfeld’s original text were carried out by others: “a specialist in Slavic languages and a pedant in his scholarly work, such as Sparwenfeld, could hardly have allowed such a large number of discrepancies” (Janas).

Bibliography

Bykova, Tatiana. “K istorii russkogo tonicheskogo stikhoslozheniia (Neizvestnoe proizvedenie I. G. Sparvenfelda)” // Seriinoe izdanie “XVIII vek”, III Vyp., Sbornik 3, pp. 449-453, IRLI (Pushkinskii Dom), AN SSSR, 1958; Grot, lidiia. “Russkoiazychnaia “Plachevnaia rech” o shvedskom korole” // Pereformat, 14 March 2014; Janas, Magdalena. “Ob osobennostiakh latinskoi transliteratsii kirillicheskogo teksta “Plachevnoi rechi Karlu XI” Iiukhana Sparvenfelda” // Rozprawy Komisji Językowej, t. LXVI, 2018, pp. 171-183; Liustrov M. “Russko-shvedskie literaturnye sviazi v XVII-XVIII vv.” // GDL, 2008, #13.