Anthony Hippisley, Lydia Sazonova, Editors» Editors’ Note
The present critical edition of Simeon Polockij's Vertograd mnogocvetnyj is based on a textological study of the following three manuscripts which contain the text: 1. An autograph, undated (Gosudarstvennyj Istoričeskij muzej [Moscow], Sinodal'noe sobranie, No. 659), designated A in the present edition; 2. A scribal copy dated August 1678 (GIM, Sin. 288), designated B; 3. A scribal copy dated August 1678 (Biblioteka Rossijskoj Akademii nauk [St Petersburg], No. PIA 54, formerly Biblioteka Akademii nauk SSSR [Leningrad], No. 31.7.3), designated C. The editors decided to adopt C as the base copy because, although it is not in the author's hand, it represents the final recasting of the text. It was Simeon's own wish that the work be fundamentally re-designed so that the poems would appear under an alphabetised series of titles, and it may reliably be assumed that C displays the form in which he hoped his work would appear in print.
What is presented here is a critical edition of the literary rather than linguistic or historical kind[102]; consequently the editors have in general followed the guidelines laid down in 1955 by the Sector for Old Russian Literature of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR for their projected series of scholarly monographs and editions of works of Old Russian literature[103]. In accordance with these guidelines, the orthography of C has been altered by replacing
obsolete letters by their equivalents in the modem Russian alphabet, as follows:
i /ï ) и
oy )y
ω ) o
ѩ/ѧ ) я
ѵ ) и
ѕ ) з
ѯ ) кс
ѱ ) пс
ѳ )ф
In words of Greek origin the diphthongs aѵ and eѵ have been rendered as ав and ев (Август, Еваггелие, Евва). The words Паѳмос and ѳрон have been rendered as Патмос and трон in accordance with modem spelling conventions. The letter е (jatˊ) has been retained because it conveys a sound of diphthongal origin midway between i and e; in literary Russian jat» denoted the sound e , in Ukainian it denoted i. In the poetry of Simeon Polockij the letter е occurs in rhymes paired sometimes with e, as in the rhymes море : горе, прийде : виде, рече : человече, and somteimes with и, as in the rhymes толице : человеце and превелика: человека. The short vowel й is reproduced as it occurs in C. This letter is written as и in the autograph, though a syllable count shows that the author regarded it as short. The line Авеля праведнаго достойно хвалити ( Авель 3’, 1:1) appears to have 14 syllables as it stands in