The article studies the first editions of Mikhail Lomonosov’s “Kratkoe ruko vodstvo k krasnorechiiu” (A Short Manual in Rhetoric), issued by the Academy of Sciences in 1748 and 1765. The textual variants help us demonstrate that the...
moreThe article studies the first editions of Mikhail Lomonosov’s “Kratkoe ruko vodstvo k krasnorechiiu” (A Short Manual in Rhetoric), issued by the Academy of Sciences in 1748 and 1765. The textual variants help us demonstrate that the common view of the history of these texts, as descending directly from the only extant set of proofs, is false. Through textual and codicological analysis (including the presentation of three unique copies of the first edition), and using the records of the Academy Chancellery and Typography, we argue that the creation of the unique variant copies of the first edition were caused not only by the fire in the Academy building (December 5, 1747), but also by the lack of paper in the Typography’s stock and the fact that the greater part of the book had not yet been writ ten by the time the printing process began. For more than a year, Lomonosov had provided the Typography with only small portions of the text; thus when, in the spring of 1748, the portion of the print run that had been damaged by the fire was reprinted, it coincided with the creation of the last chapters. This made it possible for Lomonosov radically to rewrite the first paragraphs of an early chapter, “On fictions,” turning it into a theoretical text, legitimizing the fiction genres that became a crucial part of the Academy’s publications in 1747/48 (Volchkov’s translation of Aesop’s Fables; the translations of Fenelon’s Telemaque and Barclay’s Argenis; Sumarokov’s tragedies). The article concludes with a verified stemma of the print sources of the “Kratkoe rukovodstvo” issued during Lomonosov’s lifetime, and the Moscow edition (1759–1765) is argued as representing the presentation of the latest authorized text.