On the Integrity and Variability of the Medieval Text: On the Material of the Translated Church Slavonic Hymnography of the Triodion Cycle

The aim of the present study is to determine the limits to the applicability of the concept of text in the way it was formulated in the modern text linguistics for the analysis of phenomena of medieval literature. More specifically, the author studied how the units of the Church Slavonic hymnographic discourse correspond to the characteristics of the original author's text according to their integrity and identity of the form. The investigation was performed on the material of a number of hymns of the Triodion and Pentecostarion cycle from the South Slavonic and East Slavonic manuscripts of the Lenten Triodion and the Pentecostarion dating from the 12th to the 14th centuries. The following three hierarchical units of hymnographic discourse were consecutively discussed: a liturgical hymnbook, a multi-stanza hymn, and a stanza-troparion. Regarding the first two units, it was concluded that they lack integrity, which is a necessary characteristic of the text in the modern understanding of the term. These structures were created by a more or less free combination of small hymnographic forms, and their constituent elements could have different origins and different textual history. On the other hand, the stanza-troparion, which is characterized by textual integrity, did not have textual identity, while the variation of the form is observed not only between the manuscripts, but also in the case when the same stanza-troparian is repeated in the same manuscript as part of different services. A comparative analysis of repetitive troparia in the services of Great and Holy Thursday and Great and Holy Friday showed significant differences between them, often going back to different translations of a certain hymn. Such differences indicate that the variability of the form did not prevent the identification of these troparia by the medieval scribes, and was not recognized as a result of the contamination of the authentic “correct” text, but used to be a natural way of its existence in the tradition. Thus, the concept of the author's authentic text up to the 14th century is irrelevant for the Church Slavonic hymnography, which is based on the variability of combinations of variable stanza, not evaluated by scribes in the categories of “correct” and “incorrect”. Following on from the results of the study, the author comes to the conclusion of the incorrectness of application to the old Church Slavonic literature of concepts and categories theoretically developed on the basis of modern literature and language, without significantly rethinking them from the point of view of the world picture of a medieval man.

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