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POLACKI'S EARLY VERSE 69inscriptions composed for various icons are found in Vertograd mnogocvetnyj,the enormous collection of didactic and moralistic verse compiled byPolacki during the last decade of his life. Furthermore, the British scholarAnthony Hippisley has demonstrated the formative role of the emblem inindividual poems from this collection and as a significant element in theallegorical poetic style of Polacki's mature verse. Refining some ofHippisley's observations, Jan Baptist Bedaux has commented on the natureof Polacki's emblem verse, using selected texts composed during the poet'scareer in Moscow. Bernd Uhlenbruch has discussed Polacki's emblematicsas illustrative of the antipodal understanding of the significance of immutabletext which the German scholar posits as the root of the controversybetween advocates of the Nikonian reforms (Polacki) and adherents of theOld Belief (Avvakum).manuscript dated 1637, revealing that the composition of emblems and related genres was anintegral part of Kievan poetics. Chapter nine contains the following: "DC. De epigrammateeiusque specibus nempe: a) emblemate, b) symbolis, c) aenigmate, d) logogriphus, e) echone, f)anagramatisimo, g) epitaphio, epicaedo, naenia, h) collosso, pyrimidae, inscriptione vexillorum,obelisco." V. I. Krekoten', "Kyjivsk'a poetyka 1637 roku," in О. V. Mysanyć, ed.,Literaturna spadSćyna Kyjevskoji Rusi i ukrajins'ka literatura XVI-XV1II st. (Kiev, 1981), pp.118 -54, published a Ukrainian translation of the full text of this course of poetics on the basisof a copy of the original (now, again lost) made in 1910 by O. S. Hruzyns'kyj. In Polacki'sown surviving notes on poetics, the Commendatio brevis Poeticae. Anno 1646 (CGADA, fond381, MS. 1791, fol. 14 r ), we read the following:Quae divisio epigramatis?... 3tius modus est emblema, quasi interiectio, vel interpositio alicuisornamenti in epigrammate, et ita pulchre relucet sicut V:G: "Splendent gemmae, aureiclaviculi in aliquo vase reste parute pocula clipio, etc." Constant communiter tribus partibus:Inscriptione, quae est velute anima; Pictura, quae est velute corpus, et Poesis V:G: Si qua[?] insylvam igna portans pingatur, at illie addi epigramma sive lemma, tamquam anima: "Laborinutilis."[What are the types of the epigram?... The third way is the emblem, as if in an inscriptionintermingled with or with some inscription inserted, into the epigram and thus it reflects beautifullyv.g.: "Gold and gems glisten, as with the leaf pattern on some vase and with a rope pattern,as if around a bust or shield-shaped surface." They generally consist of three parts: aninscription, which is to say, the soul or spirit (of the work); a picture, which is so to speak thebody, and an epigram, v.g.; If anyone should be portrayed carrying faggots into a forest, to thispicture should be added the following epigram or motto, its soul, so to speak: "Useless labor."](My thanks to Dr. Robert Buck of the Department of Classics, University of Alberta, for his aidin translating these passages.)Anthony Hippisley, The Poetic Style of Simeon Polotsky, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs,16 (Birmingham, 1985), pp. 37-39, quotes from this text and from another fragment from thesame manuscript, demonstrating Polacki's familiarity with contemporary tripartite emblemstructure, although in his later poetry this structure is not evident; cf. Bernd Uhlenbruch,"Emblematik und Ideologie: Zu einem emblematischen Text Simeon Polockijs," in RenateLachmann, ed., Slavischer Barockliteratur II: Gedenkschrift für Dmitrij Tschiïewskij(1894-1977), Forum Slavicum, 54 (Munich, 1983), p. 118.