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HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

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484 DAVID A. FRICKzywi bqdzcie. M Could Smotryc'kyj's choice to include the colon containingthe phrase krolowac bgdziecie, and, more importantly, to place it at the end,have been motivated, at least in part, by rhythmic considerations?The general conclusion, then, is hardly surprising, given Smotryc'kyj'sintellectual formation and the culture within which he worked: Latin rhetoricalmodels hold important keys to an understanding of the structure andmeaning of the first chapter of Threnos. In emphasizing the importance ofLatin models, however, it is important not to exclude the possibility thatother elements might be present. One curious syntactic construction leadsme to suspect that Smotryc'kyj himself consciously attempted to create anOrthodox Ruthenian version of a Latin-based Polish oratory. I am referringto what can be termed a genitive of exclamation, of which I have found sixexamples:O bolesci dusze moiey (2r [18]). 65O godney pochwaley wiary waszey o wielomyslnego w milosci serca (4v [21]).O zagnilego gnusney wody zrzodta O iadowitey trucizna. napefnionych wod studnice(lOr-v [26-27]).O nieporzadnego, o przewrotnego, o niezboznego rak wkfadania obyczaiu (14r[30]).As far as I am aware, there was no such genitive of exclamation in "standard"sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Polish. Nor can it be traced to aLatin model, where we find the accusative of exclamation instead. It is afeature, however, of Greek and Church Slavonic. And we know thatSmotryc'kyj was aware (at least in 1618) that it belonged to Church Slavonicgrammar, since he included it in his discussion of the syntax of thatlanguage. 66It is now widely accepted that Smotryc'kyj wrote his Threnos in Polish;he attempted, however, to give the work a more Orthodox pedigree byclaiming on the title page that it had been written in Greek, and thentranslated from Greek into Church Slavonic and from Slavonic into Polish.The use of genitives of exclamation may thus be seen as an effort onSmotryc'kyj's part to include a few "Orthodoxisms" in his Polish oratory.64<strong>See</strong>Septuaginta, vol. 2, ed. Alfred Rahlfs (Stuttgart, 1965), p. 197.65In light of the other clear cases of the use of the genitive in similar contexts, it seems likelythat bolesci should be read as genitive and not vocative.66<strong>See</strong> Smotryc'kyj, Grammatiki Slavenskija pravilnoe Sintagma (Vevis, 1619), p. SC 7v:"O Socinenij mezdometija: Pravilo/ a. ole, i/ o, Setovanija: i/ o, Oudivlenija: Roditelnomusocinjajutsja: jako, o mene okojannaho clvka: o premudryx sudebt tvoix xse: i proc."

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