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464 DAVID A. FRICKMany general treatments of Threnos have posited the sort of oppositionoften found in investigations of Smotryc'kyj's life: they have askedwhether the work is to be assigned to an Eastern or a Western camp, to beconsidered the product of "Hellenizing" or "Latinizing" tendencies. Forexample, Georges Florovsky influenced by the polemical stance of theauthor and by the fictitious claims that the work had been translated fromGreek and Church Slavonic, insisted on the "Slavonic-Hellenic" nature ofthe work. 8 This kind of characterization suffers from two defects: (1) it istoo general to provide an insight into the rules according to whichSmotryc'kyj composed his work; (2) it poses the question in terms ofexclusive allegiance to one or another camp when, as is becoming increasinglyclear from studies of Ruthenian spiritual and political culture in thelate sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, multiple allegiances werecommon among members of the elite.More detailed evaluations of the first chapter of Threnos have focused ontwo aspects: the model for a personification of the "Mother-Church," andthe model for Smotryc'kyj's rhythmic prose. On both counts, the discussionhas sought to place Smotryc'kyj's work within a "native" literarytradition, citing, on the one hand, the brief complaints of the Eastern churchfound in works by Herasym Smotryc'kyj and Klyryk Ostroz'kyj, and, onthe other hand, the rhythmical patterns of the Ukrainian folk lament (holosinnja),dumy, Jaroslavna's lament from the Slovo o polku Igoreve, or thewritings of Ivan Vysens'kyj. 9It is not certain from these discussions whether the proposed models forSmotryc'kyj's lament of the Eastern church belong to one rhetorical tradition.Nor is it clear what the norms of that tradition (or those traditions)were, and in what way Smotryc'kyj adhered to them. It seems to me thatwe know too little about the specific models commonly proposed forThrenos, and indeed about Smotryc'kyj's familiarity with and attitudetoward them, to say anything definite about his adherence to them.8Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, ed. Richard S. Haugh, trans. Robert L.Nichols (Belmont, Mass., 1979), p. 66.9For some authoritative formulations of what has become a commonplace in treatments ofSmotryc'kyj, see Myxajlo Voznjak, Istorija ukrajins'koji literatury, vol. 2 (Lviv, 1921), p. 229;Myxajlo Hrusevs'kyj, Istorija ukrajins'koji literatury, vol. 5 (Kiev, 1927; rpt., New York,1960), pp. 458-71; V. P. Kolosova et al., eds., Istorija ukrajins'koji literatury, vol. 1 (Kiev,1967), pp. 267-68; P. K. Jaremenko, Meletij Smotryc'kyj: Zyttja ta tvorcist' (Kiev, 1986), pp.14-15. To cite only the most recent example, Jaremenko states categorically: "Sumnivunemaje, sco Smotryc'kyj stvoryv svij obraz stradnyci materi-cerkvy pid vplyvom KlirykaOstroz'koho.. .Pys'mennyk majsterno korystujet'sja formoju narodnoho holosil'nohorecytatyvu, sco zustricajet'sja u narodnyx dumax."