中世ロシア文学図書館 (VI) : プスコフの歴史と文学1, ステファン・バトーリイのプスコフ来襲についての物語

摘要

The author in this bulletin provides a translations of and a commentary on a literary work supposed to have been written in 1580’s in Pskov, a city located in the western edge of the territory of Moscovite State. The work depicts the Pskov’s heroic defiance to the assault by Stephan Bathory, king of Poland and Lithuania, at the final stage of so-called the Livonian War. The Livonian War began with the seizure of Livonia from the reign of Teutonic Knights by Ivan IV, which provoked the entry into war of the Polish-Lithuanian united kingdom and Sweden, ended by the desperate resistance of Pskov, which resulted in the armistice. The siege stood for 5 months and eventually the Moscovite State could not get the entrance to the Baltic sea. The author of this story, the Pskovian icon-painter Vasily, has a clear patriotic inclination and makes no disguise of his loyalty to Moscovian Tsar’ Ivan IV and his hostility to the enemies, particularly to Stephan Bathory, whom the author calls “savage beast”, “virulent cobra”, “eater of vomit” etc. On the other hand, he always celebrates Ivan IV, who was in fact a tyrant, as a merciful sovereign and incarnation of justice. In spite of this monochromatic characterization, the real scenery of the besieged city and its rising patriotic emotions provide artistic value to this literary work, which is one of the masterpieces of military stories of Medieval Russia.