“You Are Welcome, the Boy, to Discover the Wisdom” (Two Early Manuscripts With Jan Amos Komenskii’ Orbis Pictus Russian Translation)

The article focusses on the two little-known manuscripts stored in the Library of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Both manuscripts contain full text of the Orbis Pictus by Jan Comenius in Russian language, some additional texts and many inscriptions in Latin and German. It seems to be the earliest Russian translation of OP in two variants. The author gives preliminary paleographic and textological analysis of these manuscripts and she discusses the role of the German Slavists Ernst Gluck and Johann Paus, who taught in Moscow, in the creation of the Russian translation of Orbis Pictus. In Russian culture of the beginning of the 18th century the question of the relationship between Church Slavonic and the literary Russian language of a secular orientation has become extremely relevant and even political. Ernst Gluck and his follower Johann Paus both leaned towards the peculiar unity of the Church Slavonic and Russian languages and the equal possibility of their use in speech. The reviewed manuscripts have clear traces of the establishment of linguistic Slavic-Russian oppositions, on the one hand, and a parallel translation of Russian words into German and Latin, on the other. This seems to reflect ad hoc, in-depth work on the language, rather than just study notes. The translation lists of the OR retained the elements of the single Slavic-Russian language proposed by him and enriched the students’ speech

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