The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький
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blunted on Polovtzi helmets.
O Russian band, still art thou this side the hill!
There blew the Wind (Stribog’s grandchild)30 bolts from the sea against Igor’s brave fighters; the Earth shuddered, mournfully flowed the rivers, dew-drops spangled the fields, the banners rustled.
Forth from the Don, from the sea, and from all sides around came the Polovtzi; they surrounded the Russian troop, with yells the children of the devils filled the plain, but the brave Russians guarded themselves behind the purple shields. Thou Wild-Bull Vsevolod, thou art in the rank that is foremost, slinging thy arrows at the fighters, and with thy sword of steel batterest the helmets, and where thou chargest, there where thy golden helmet glitters, there lie the heads of the Heathen and the Avaric helmets, smashed by thy hardened sabre, thou Wild-Bull Vsevolod, and there was thy grief so great at the wound of thy brother, thou hadst both honour and life forgotten, and the town of Tchernigov, and the throne of thy fathers, even as the caresses of thy sweet and beauteous wife Glebovna.... So is it ever in the time of fighting and war, but never yet has been heard of such a battle as this; from early morn till the even, from eve to red dawn, nought but flying arrows, and the clashing of sabres on helmets, and steel lances splintering in the far plain of the Polovtzi-land. The black earth under the hoofs of the horses is with bones emplanted, which spring up from the Russian soil watered with blood amid stress of grievous sorrow. What is the stamping I hear? What is it I hear ringing in the morning early before the red Dawn?...
So for a day they fought, and for two days, but on the third, towards mid-day, sank the banner of Igor.
There on the banks of the rapid Kayala the brothers were sundered....
The grass drooped its head in mourning and the tree bowed sorrowfully earthward....
The war of the princes against the Heathen had ceased, for one brother saith to another, “That belongeth to me, and this belongeth also to me.” And of each little thing the princes say, “A great matter,” and stir up strife with one another, while on all sides of the Russian land the warlike heathen press forward.
But Igor’s brave war-men shall never wake again.... Loudly weep the Russian women, “Alas! that never more can our thoughts to our dear husbands be wafted, that our eyes shall never, never again behold them, and gold and silver never more be stored.” And therefore, brothers, Kiev groaneth aloud in sorrow and Tchernigov in grief; woe streameth through the land, and pain, in full flood, through Russia, but ever more and more were the princes growing in hatred, while the warlike Heathen raged through the land, and from every holding had as tribute a squirrel pelt....
(The despairing lamentations of the saga are changed to rejoicing over the unexpected return of Igor, who had made his escape from the Polovtzi land.)
The Sun shines in the heaven since Prince Igor is on Russian land. The maidens sing on the Danube, and their voices reach over the sea to Kiev. Prince Igor rides through the Boritchev-ford to the Holy Mother-of-God of Pirogosha. The country is gladsome and the towns rejoice.31
This folk-song, apart from its intrinsic beauty, is valuable as a relic of Russian thought and feeling at a time when the old pre-Christian ideas were still blended with the sentiments of the newer traditions, and it is interesting to mark how the ghosts and gods of old Slavonic myth are mixed up with the saints and virgins of the Orthodox faith. Not unworthy of notice, too, are the sage strictures on the political evils of the day, the perpetual quarrelling among the Princes of the Blood, which, however, continued with unabated vehemence despite the common bond which existed in a common enemy. On the north and north-east the armies of Novgorod and Souzdal extended the Russian influence in the lands of the Finns and Bulgars, but on the south-east, south, and west occurred encroachments which the princes were too enfeebled by internal feuds to resist. The Kuman (Polovtzi) hordes held the banks of the Dniepr almost up to the walls of Kiev and Biel-gorod, as the Petchenigs had done before them; amid the dense forests of Lit’uania, on the border of Polotzk, was rising into importance the Lettish State which was to become a formidable factor in Russian and Polish annals; and the kings of Hungary cast greedy eyes on the fair province of Galitz, held in the feeble and precarious grasp of Vladimir, unworthy successor of a line of valiant Red Russian princes.
The occupant of the throne of S. Stefan was not the only interested onlooker at the spectacle of misgovernment provided by the Prince of Galitz; his nearest neighbour on the Russian side was Roman of Volhynia, the same Roman who had held Novgorod against the might of Andrei, and who had been thrown over to procure for the city a substantial peace. This prince, whose forefathers in the direct line back to the first Igor had all been sovereigns of Kiev, was possessed of exceptional qualities of energy and enterprise, and saw himself fitted to replace the effete and impolitic Vladimir in the important and Magyar-threatened principality of Galitz. Between the warlike and strenuous efforts of this battle-loving kniaz, who was renowned for the eagle-swoop rapidity with which he was wont to hurl himself upon his enemies, the assiduous intrigues and invasions of Bela III. of Hungary, and the occasional intervention of the princes of Poland, the West Russian lands were kept in a continual ferment; in the words of the saga, “Men’s lives were shortened by the wars of the brother princes. Then seldom in the Russian land was heard the call of the husbandman, but often indeed the ravens croaking as they divided the corpse among them, and the cry of the corbies as they called to each other to come to the banquet.” Long time the clashing factions warred and schemed, but Roman at last broke down all opposition without and within. In dismal plight were then those notables of Galitz who had resisted his incoming; according to Polish accounts he treated the disaffected boyarins with a savagery unworthy of a brave prince. The unfortunate objects of his ill-will were dismembered, flayed, riddled with arrows, buried alive, and done to death in various other barbarous ways.32 “To eat a drop of honey in peace, one must first kill the bees,” was his explanation of this severity. This prince, who, in the words of the Russian Chronicles, “walked in the ways of God,” was soon called upon to defend his “drop of honey” against the Princes of Tchernigov and Kiev—a coalition brought together by jealousy and dislike of the vigorous Roman, for whom, however, it was no match. Gathering together his Galician and Volhynian retainers, and calling to his aid the Tchernie-Kloboukie (“Black-caps,” a name given to the nomads of the western steppes other than the Polovtzi), he threw himself with the famous eagle-swoop upon Kiev, the centre-point of his enemies. In vain did its Grand Prince Rurik and the Kniaz of Tchernigov apply themselves to repel his attack; the Kievians, who had a trained eye for the strongest side, threw open the Podolian Gate, and the redoubtable Roman swirled with his warriors into the lower city. His opponents did not stay to dispute the upper quarter with him, and the victorious Prince of Galitz was able, with the assent of Vsevolod of Souzdal, to bestow the time-worn capital on one of his own kinsfolk. 1202At the request of the Metropolitan, Alexis Comnenus, and on behalf of the Greek Imperial family, the indefatigable Roman made a diversion against the Polovtzi, who were ravaging the Thracian border. Having successfully drawn off their attack and destroyed their camps, he returned in triumph to Galitz. During his absence Kiev, which had betrayed the cause of Rurik, experienced in full measure the resentment of that prince; calling to his assistance the Polovtzi—“children of the devils,” but useful on occasion—he let them loose on the miserable inhabitants. The Kuman warfolk passed over the city like a swarm of locusts over a barley field; nothing escaped their devouring fury except the foreign merchants who defended themselves behind the stone walls of the churches, which became veritable sanctuaries in the midst of a blazing, blood-streaming Kiev. The cathedrals and monasteries suffered as severely from the heathen pillagers as they had done at the hands of the Christians at the previous sacking of the city: “They stripped the Cathedral of S. Sofia, the Church of the Dime, and all the monasteries, monks and nuns, priests and their wives, old and cripple, they killed, but the young and strong they drove into captivity.”33
The death of Roman in battle with the Poles near Zawichwost (1205) left Red Russia once more a prey to domestic strife and foreign