The Formation of the Polish State: The Period of Ducal Rule, 963-1194 by Tadeusz Manteuffel;Andrew GorskiReview by: E. B. FrydeThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Jul., 1983), pp. 444-445Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4208715 .

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444 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Stravinsky's development of small works which, when they appeared, passed almost unnoticed (particularly the Three Pieces for String Quartet) and he rightly insists on the fact that a considerable number of the major works are, if not unintelligible, at least only superficially intelligible to non- Russians. These include not only Pribautki but Histoire du soldat, Renard and above all Mavra and Les Noces, in which references to the Russian past and associations with the Russian language form an integral part of the work. The non-Russian's attempt to grasp the essential quality of these works can, in fact, be no more successful than his attempt to grasp the essential quality of Russian poetry merely in translation, without a profound knowledge of the language, and resembles Westerners' easy assumption of the superficial characteristics ofJapanese Noh theatre.

Despite a mostly excellent translation there is one concept of Asaf'yev's that figures largely throughout and remains obscure even when defined by him. This is intonatsiya, which he defines as 'the totality of sounds from whatever source, not only the audible music but the whole phenomena (sic) of sound, actually or potentially audible as music' (p. 7). Elsewhere he says that 'to intone is to define a system of sound relationships' and speaks of 'intonational kinetics, an 'intonation of the body' (Les Noces), and 'intonational sphere' and 'constants'. I confess that I have read a long essay by one of his pupils on 'Asaf'yev's concept of intonatsiya' and am still none the wiser. Indeed Asaf'yev's own definition, with its reference to 'poten- tially audible' music, remains obscure. This is no fault of the translator's. The only small criticisms of his work that I would make are the translation of raskol'niki as 'dissidents' ('non-conformists' or 'sectarians' would be less misleading); the spellings of the (Russian) 'pope' with a capital; and the confusion on p. I I of a (volcanic) 'crater' with the original Greek xQaT9Q kratir (wine-mixing bowl) from which the modern sense is derived.

Although the book was never intended to contain biographical material about the composer, readers might have been given a fuller account of the author and the position that he came to hold in Soviet musical life. His subsequent career - he died in I 949, twenty years after the first appearance of this book - would throw an interesting retrospective light on his extraordinary achievement in writing this book and might also explain some of Stravinsky's instinctive hostility to what was, in actual fact, the first (and brilliant) attempt to understand his musical personality and the extraordinary variety of his work. Richmond MARTIN COOPER

Manteuffel, Tadeusz. The Formation of the Polish State: The Period of Ducal Rule, 963-I194. Translated by Andrew Gorski, with an introduction by Paul W. Knoll. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1982. I 71 PP. Appendixes. Tables. Maps. Index. $I6.95.

IN reviewing the first volume of the Cambridge History of Poland (Cambridge U.P., 1950) I have described it as 'a valuable addition to the very scanty English literature on this subject' (English Historical Review, LXVIII, London, 1953, P. 266). The deplorable scarcity of publications in English on

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REVIEWS 445

medieval Polish history still persists thirty years later. Any new, competent study is most welcome, especially when it is a translation of a work by the late T. Manteuffel (1902-70), one of the most distinguished Polish historians, a man greatly respected for his immense learning and scholarly integrity. It provides a good summary of the information contained in chronicles and other written records, Polish and foreign, about the political history of Poland from the first clear mention of the Polish state in written sources (in 963 ) to the end of the twelfth century. The most serious doubt arises over Manteuffel's treatment of the so-called last will of the dying Duke Bolestaw Krzywousty (I I 38) partitioning Poland between his sons. The author accepted the hypothesis of T. Wojciechowski (I9I7) that the testament had constituted the province of the senior prince stretching right across Poland from the Carpathians to Pomerania and including the metropolitan cathedral and city of Gniezno. This has been denied by some of Wojciechowski's leading contemporaries (especially 0. Balzer, I9I9 ), as the documentary evidence is very unconvincing. It is much more probable that the province of the senior prince had consisted originally only of Malopolska, coinciding virtually with the boundaries of the diocese ofCracow.

This brings out two main weaknesses of the publication here under review. It lacks almost completely bibliographical references and seldom even alludes to controversies surrounding many of its statements. Secondly, it is a translation of a study written c. 1943-44 (first printed posthumously among the author's collected works in I 976 ). It takes, therefore, no account of the very considerable post-war progress in the study of the early Polish state and the translator has added virtually no corrections. If one returns to the example of the testament of I I 38, Manteuffel's account of it has been authoritatively contradicted by G. Labuda in Opuscula Casimiro Tymieniecki, Septuagenario Dedicata (Poznan', 1959, pp. I 71-94) .

The work of the Polish archaeologists since I945 has confirmed most convincingly that the origins of the Polish state centred on Gniezno must be pushed back to at least the middle of the ninth century and this makes plainly incomplete any history of it that begins in 963. The very short sketch of the institutions and society of early Poland (pp. I44-50) provides a particularly inadequate account in comparison with the present state of our knowledge.

The maps and the tables of rulers of Poland and of the neighbouring states provided by the translator are very useful. But the translation itself is awkwardly worded and can give no pleasure to a reader who expects to enjoy a work of history. Aberystwyth E. B. FRYDE

Kosztolnyik, Z. J. Five Eleventh Century Hungarian Kings: Their Policies and Their Relations with Rome. East European Monographs, Boulder, no. LXXIX, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, I 98 I. xv + 237 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliographical Essay. Bibliography. Index. $26.oo.

PROFESSOR Kosztolnyik has set himself more than just the task of reconciling the conflicting and often misleading source accounts of this

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