Abstract:
One of the most crucial problems in the historical lexicography of the Russian
language is that lexicographers are regularly faced with texts and sources which
often have neither been properly published, if at all, nor properly commented on
from linguistic, philological, and historical points of view. The first part of these
research notes shows that a Greek source of one of the liturgical chants dedicated
to SS. Constantine and Helene has been erroneously identified in the Index of the
Incipita of Old East Slavonic liturgical chants; this made it possible to assume textual
corruption in the Slavonic translation and prevented scholars from establishing a
correct understanding of the hapax legomenon tresadovnyj, which actually means
‘made of three species of wood’ (about the Holy Cross made of the fir tree, the pine
tree, and the box, according to Christian exegesis of Is 60:13). In the second part of
these research notes, the edition and lexicographic interpretation
of one passage
from the Church Slavonic translation of the Homilies by Gregory the Dialogist
have been critically reconsidered. Editorial mistakes and a lack of commentary has
made it impossible to understand and to explain adequately the phrase krotostʹ na
tjažestʹ obratiti lit. ‘to transmute modesty into gravity.’ This phrase is important to
exemplify the rare meaning of the Church Slavonic word tjažestʹ (lit. heaviness,
gravity) ‘dignity,’ which is lexicographically recorded in this meaning only in a few
translated texts, and attests a semantic calque. While the Slavonic translation of
this passage is erroneous, its edition and lexicographic interpretation are corrupted and inadequate, so that on the basis of the edition and of the available dictionaries
one could not understand that the phrase krotostʹ na tjažestʹ obratiti (‘to transmute
modesty into gravity’) actually means ‘to renounce light-mindedness and to return
to (proper) dignity.’ In the third part of the article, the lexical meaning of the words
tščetina, tščetinnyj is analysed. The final part is dedicated to the critical analysis
of some erroneous editorial decisions made by scholars, who ignored the Greek
origin of translated texts.
