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Das abenteuerliche Leben des Remus. Ein kaschubischer Spiegel. Vol. 11. Kaschubische Ausgabe: Żëcé i przigodë Remusa by Aleksander Majkowski; Hans Rothe Review by: Gerald Stone The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 1990), pp. 527-528 Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210373 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 05:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic and East European Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 05:49:24 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Das abenteuerliche Leben des Remus. Ein kaschubischer Spiegel. Vol. 11. Kaschubische Ausgabe: Żëcé i przigodë Remusaby Aleksander Majkowski; Hans Rothe

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Page 1: Das abenteuerliche Leben des Remus. Ein kaschubischer Spiegel. Vol. 11. Kaschubische Ausgabe: Żëcé i przigodë Remusaby Aleksander Majkowski; Hans Rothe

Das abenteuerliche Leben des Remus. Ein kaschubischer Spiegel. Vol. 11. Kaschubische Ausgabe:Żëcé i przigodë Remusa by Aleksander Majkowski; Hans RotheReview by: Gerald StoneThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 1990), pp. 527-528Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210373 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 05:49

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 05:49:24 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Das abenteuerliche Leben des Remus. Ein kaschubischer Spiegel. Vol. 11. Kaschubische Ausgabe: Żëcé i przigodë Remusaby Aleksander Majkowski; Hans Rothe

REVIEWS 527

author made use of a sixteenth-century Russian Church Slavonic copy acquired by Stockholm University forty years ago, once the property of the Solovki Monastery.

The work is in four chapters with a summary in English. Chapter one is concerned with the content and form of the Slavonic translation. The numeration of the Stockholm manuscript is compared with five others and shows a wide range of divergence. Unfortunately the remaining fragments of the earliest manuscript play no role here. Chapter two discusses the Greek and Latin texts which may have provided the model for the Slavonic version or versions. Twenty-two puzzling cases are analysed. Agreement with a Latin version may be attributed to a lost Greek model for the surviving Latin text. Here one ponders the possibility of a Slavonic translator having at his disposal both Greek and Latin versions. The possible preference of a Latin model even in the earliest Old Church Slavonic translations is well demonstrated by the rendering s-vrbSix,b for Latin consummavi - not Greek ftEkECWa, inJohn xvii 4. Of particular interest is the list of Slavonic errors attributable to a misreading of the Greek text. In one case this concerns the confusion of two similar prefixes, ?V- and Fx-. Greek eVrAb51JaTO 'he put on' is rendered by sovlece, which presumes Greek Er?8U'oaTo 'he took off'.

Chapter three presents a textological analysis of excerpts from the sparse remnants of an eleventh-century manuscript, known from the place of recovery as the Rila Folia. These are compared with possible Greek and Latin models. The comparison amply demonstrates the key role of the Latin version for the understanding of certain passages in the Slavonic text. A second analysis of chapters 6, 20, and 49 in the six later manuscripts provides the basis for a subtle classification of their interrelationship. No doubt this valuable study will stimulate further research into the missing Greek model for the Slavonic protograph. London H. LEEMING

Majkowski, Aleksander. Das abenteuerliche Leben des Remus. Ein kaschubischer Spiegel. Vol. ii. Kaschubische Ausgabe: Zece' i przigode Remusa. Schriften des Komitees der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zur Forderung der Sla- wischen Studien, io/II. Edited, with a Foreword, by Hans Rothe. B6hlau Verlag, Cologne and Vienna, I988. xxiv + 582 pp. No price available.

ONE of the functions of the literature of a linguistic minority is to show that the language in question is capable of having a literature and that it is, in this respect, the equal of languages of linguistic majorities. It was for this reason that Aleksander Majkowski decided to write his novel The Life and Adventures of Remus in Cassubian. The edition published in Torun' early in 1939 (though the title-page shows I938) is now again made available by Professor Hans Rothe in a series published by the Committee of the German Federal Republic for the Advancement of Slavonic Studies. Part one of this publication (see SEER, 68, I990, p. I37) is a German translation of Majkowski's text.

The novel consists of three parts, the first of which appeared in the journal Zrzesz kaszebsko in I934-35. Part one then appeared as a book in Kartuzy in

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 05:49:24 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 3: Das abenteuerliche Leben des Remus. Ein kaschubischer Spiegel. Vol. 11. Kaschubische Ausgabe: Żëcé i przigodë Remusaby Aleksander Majkowski; Hans Rothe

528 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

I935 (though the title-page shows 1930). In the edition of I939 (938) a printer's error resulted in the omission of five lines from Chapter4 (see Ferdinand Neureiter, Geschichte der kaschubischen Literatur, Munich, I978, p. 98). This omission has been made good in the German translation (p. 42), but not in the reprinted Cassubian text, which reproduces the original typeface (P 39)-

Majkowski chose to write his novel in Cassubian in order to encourage his fellow countrymen to take pride in their linguistic inheritance. He thereby drastically restricted the potential readership. However, in the hope that not only Cassubians would attempt to read his novel, he appended a glossary of some 700 Cassubian words with their Polish equivalents. It is difficult even to guess how many people, whether Cassubian or not, have read the Cassubian version, but there is no doubt that the Polish and German translations have made the work accessible to a far wider audience than Majkowski ever envisaged. For scholarly purposes, however, it is essential to have access to Majkowski's own words. Their renewed availability in this volume facilitates the study of the linguistic and literary history of the Pomeranian region. Hertford College GERALD STONE

Oxford

Cienki, AlanJ. Spatial Cognition and the Semantics of Prepositions in English, Polish, and Russian. Slavistische Beitriige, vol. 237. Otto Sagner, Munich, I989. viii + 172 pp. Bibliography.

ALAN CIENKI presents us with a clearly expressed and well-organized study of a group of English, Polish, and Russian prepositions which express spatial relationships, essentially on/onto, in/into, to, toward(s); na + locative/accusative, w + locative/accusative, u + genitive, do + genitive, ku + dative; na + locative/ accusative, v + locative/accusative, u + genitive, do + genitive, k + dative. It threatened to be rather 'off-beat': 'It is the space [the earthly macrocosm- J IP] in reference to which our languages developed, as opposed to the greater "megaworld" of the universe or the microworld of the atom and elementary particles. These latter worlds, in which the relations between objects are subject to other physical laws, will not be treated here' (p. 2). What a relief!

An Introduction which overviews and evaluates standard approaches and projects hypotheses (pp. 1-25) is followed by an outline of the framework of the study (pp. 26-60), two central chapters, viz. 'Place-functions and Prepositions of Direct Location' (pp. 6I-I30) and 'Path-functions' (pp. 13I-53), and a fifth chapter 'Concluding issues' (pp. I54-65). The work is rounded off with a useful Bibliography (pp. I 66-72).

Overall this book is a good example of making the obvious explicit. It somehow helps us to see, and to formalize in an acceptable way, just how we perceive space through idealization and abstraction. The writer does not despise 'common sense', indeed he values and accepts it. He looks at the variation between the languages under consideration, and appeals to histori- cal and dialectal evidence when necessary (this helps prevent disputes over some of his English examples, though it has to be said that 'The woman walked

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 05:49:24 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions