Canadian Slavonic Papers

Postwitzscher Tauf Stein oder Christliche und einfältige Teutsch-Wendische Predigt von derHeiligen Taufe. Budißin: Andreas Richter, 1688 Mitteldeutsche Forschungen. Vol. 109 byMichael Frentzel; H. Schuster-ŠewcReview by: Gunter SchaarschmidtCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 36, No. 1/2, Centenary ofIsaak Babel (March-June 1994), pp. 274-275Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40870803 .

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274 BOOK REVIEWS

the interaction of Macedonian and English in Canada; the use of dialect and standard language. Kramer refers in her analysis to data gathered from informants of different ages and different places of birth, which provide direct access to the problem of self- identification by Macedonian immigrants. An issue of special interest is the role of standard Macedonian for Macedonians in Toronto. The influence of Serbo-Croatian on the present standard Macedonian and its use in the Republic of Macedonia is found unacceptable or is not understood by certain members of the community in the diaspora. This, together with the use of English, may be understood as the main factors for Kramer's conclusion that "within Toronto it seems that Macedonian identity is often more closely allied with a certain cultural iconography rather than with language use per se" (p. 176).

Language Contact-Language Conflict is a contribution mainly to sociolinguistic studies. The contributors and editors are to be commended for their comprehensiveness. For Balkanists and Slavists, linguists and anthropologists, scholars and classroom use this book is a worthy contribution to further discussions and comparative studies of language problems within a social and cultural context.

Zoya Valkova, University of Alberta

Michael Frentzel. Postwitzscher TaufStein oder Christliche und einfältige Teutsch- Wendische Predigt von der Heiligen Taufe. Budißin: Andreas Richter, 1688. Ed. H. Schuster-Sewc. Mitteldeutsche Forschungen. Vol. 109. Köln/Weimar/ Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1993. 371 pp. Introduction. Map. Transcription. Illustrations. DM176, cloth.

With this reprint, Böhlau Verlag has made another text available to scholars interested in the history of the Upper Sorbian literary language. The author of this text, Michael Frentzel (Michal Frencel), is already known to Sorabists by his translation in 1670 of part of the New Testament (the Matthew and Mark gospels), an excerpt of which was included in Heinz Schuster-Sewc' s anthology Sorbische Sprachdenkmäler: 16.-18. Jahrhundert (Bautzen, 1967, pp. 115-27). The present text is not a translation but the German-Upper Sorbian version of a sermon (possibly of several sermons) that Frentzel read on the occasion of the commemoration of the new baptismal font in the church at Postwitz (today Großpostwitz/Budestecy, approximately seven kilometers south of Bautzen/BudySin). Its title, expansive as was the tradition in those days, translates as "The Postwitz Baptismal Font or a Christian and Simple German-Sorbian Sermon on Holy Baptism." The only two extant copies of the text are located in the library of the Sorbian Institute in Bautzen/BudySin, Germany. In fact, the Böhlau edition reprints the entire text, all 180 pages of it, in easily legible illustrations. The first half of the volume is entirely the work of its editor, Heinz Schuster-Sewc, Professor Emeritus and former Head of Sorbian Studies at Leipzig University. In what easily amounts to a separate monograph, Schuster-Sewc provides a detailed textological and linguistic introduction, a map of Frentzers dialect, and a transcription of the entire Sorbian text in contemporary Upper Sorbian orthography.

In terms of the cultural history of Sorbian, the Postwitz Baptismal Font was another significant step forward in the difficult struggle by Sorbian and, for that matter, German clergymen and teachers to introduce Sorbian as a church language. Frentzel had to finance the printing of his New Testament translation all by himself (a considerable sacrifice in light of his large family: he had 12 children), only to see his book confiscated by the Bautzen Town Council. The ban on the book was eventually lifted; 18 years later, Frentzel had considerably less difficulty in having his Postwitz Baptismal Font printed, although, most likely, he still had to do all the financing himself. Frentzel's efforts had

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BOOK REVIEWS 275

succeeded in convincing the German nobility and the clergy that church texts in Sorbian were not only a good thing, but a downright necessity in order to prevent Sorbian Protestants from reconverting to Catholicism, since the Prague diocese had been busy providing Sorbian books for the Catholic population. As a result, a commission was formed to oversee the preparation of further translations of church texts and to arrive at some orthographic norms. Schuster-Sewc calls this commission "the first Sorbian language commission" (p. 20); he also points out that Frentzel was not invited to be a member probably because his uncompromising stand had antagonized the Landstände (body of representatives in Lusatia).

The significance of the Postwitz Baptismal Font for historical Slavic linguistics and dialectology lies in the fact that 1) this text is written in an archaic dialect at the southern periphery of Upper Sorbian, a dialect that is extinct today due to the Germanization of the area; and 2) since the text is not a translation, but a sermon or set of sermons, it contains relatively little German or Czech ecclesiastic loan vocabulary and may represent a fairly close approximation of late 17th century colloquial Upper Sorbian. As Schuster-Sewc points out (p. 49), there are a number of features linking Frentzel' s dialect with Lower Sorbian, an indication that the two languages may have been closer at one time than the present-day differences between Upper and Lower Sorbian would seem to indicate.

As one has come to expect from Böhlau Verlag' s Mitteldeutsche Forschungen, the typographical layout of the present volume is very attractive. The price of the volume is somewhat prohibitive, making it difficult, in all likelihood, even for some libraries to acquire this work. There are few misprints if one ignores the consistently misspelled Supperlativ instead of Superlativ ("superlative"). It is interesting that Schuster-Sewc (or Böhlau?) has opted for the West German v in slavisch as opposed to the vv still prevalent in the states of the former GDR {Lëtopis, the Journal for Sorbian Studies, still uses slawisch) and, for that matter, used by Böhlau in previous reprints (e.g., in Ernst Eichler's postscript to Gustav Hey 's Die slavischen Siedlungen im Königreich Sachsen, 1893 [1981]). The spelling with w seems to the present reviewer to constitute part of the cultural substance of the former GDR, substance that, according to the Unity Treaty, is supposed not to have suffered any damage (Article 35.2).

Gunter Schaarschmidt, University of Victoria

Helena Goscilo, ed. Fruits of her Plume: Essays on Contemporary Russian Women's Culture. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. xxiii, 278 pp. Notes. Index. $49.95, cloth. $18.95, paper.

Helena Goscilo, of the University of Pittsburgh, is becoming almost as well-known for her expertise in punning as she is for her acumen as a critic; no doubt we can soon expect a sequel to this new collection under the title Les Plumes de Leur Tantes. That said, there is nothing facetious in the thirteen essays that are collected here, many of which are thoughtful, and thought-provoking, meditations on aspects of contemporary women's writing in Russia, and also (though to a lesser extent) upon the context in which literature produced by women is generated.

As Goscilo points out in her brisk introduction, the approaches adopted by the contributors vary quite widely. Some essays more or less confine themselves to unadorned factual reportage of recent developments on the literary scene. Nicholas Zekulin's "Soviet Russian Women's Literature in the Early 1980s," is a useful addition to the burgeoning numbers of surveys on this theme; it takes in the lesser-known Bashkirova and Iunina as well as Tolstaia, Grekova and Katerli. Similar in their introductory aims and straightforward style are Jerzy Kolodziej's "Iulia Voznesenskaia's Women: with

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