Poetry
The Song of Igor's Campaign
Слово о полку Игореве
Anonymous · 1185
Synopsis
In the spring of 1185, Igor Sviatoslavich, prince of Novgorod-Seversk, sets out with his men against the Polovtsians, nomads of the Don steppe, without waiting for the other princes. Victorious on the first day, he then suffers a complete defeat and falls into enemy hands with his sons. In Kiev, the grand prince Sviatoslav sees the disaster in a dream and urges the divided Russian princes to unite for the Russian land; on the ramparts of Putivl, Yaroslavna, Igor's wife, laments and appeals to the wind, the river and the sun.
Context
The text survives only through the edition of 1800 and a copy made for Catherine II: the collection that contained it, acquired in the last years of the eighteenth century by the collector Aleksey Musin-Pushkin, burned in the fire of Moscow in 1812. This loss, and the absence of any equivalent in the literature of the time, fed the hypothesis of a forgery, which the historian Aleksandr Zimin supported in the twentieth century; Andrey Zaliznyak's linguistic demonstration, in 2004, leads to its authenticity now being held as established. The date and the author remain unknown; most scholars place it in the last years of the twelfth century.
Who it is for
A short and highly allusive poem, alternating narrative, monologues, laments and returns to the history of the Rus'; it is read with notes.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the masterpiece of the literature of Old Rus' and claimed by both Russian and Ukrainian literatures; it inspired Borodin's opera and poets.