The Mystery of the Visionary Boyan: Facts, Research, Hypotheses
Boyan, a character in The Lay of Ihor’s Campaign, who used to “pluck the living strings with his prophetic fingers,” is a highly mysterious historical personality. His name, activities, and milieu seem to be shrouded in “a dark haze.” Many a spear was broken in the mist of ancient times. His name was Boyan, also known as Bayan, which meant “one who reigns over spirits” in the Turkic language. The author of the Lay called Boyan “the grandson of Veles,” while commentators dubbed him “the grandson of Volos,” the god of cattle. By all accounts, the mysterious Boyan’s creative lifetime spanned from 1022 until the early 12th century. He was considered a “court singer,” who served the princes of Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Tmutorakan, sang together with a certain Khodyna, and was an “organizer of pagan feasts.”
The Lay of Ihor’s Campaign was first published in 1800. As time went by, the work of translators and commentators did not become any easier owing to the lack of historical evidence. It was impossible to link Boyan to a specific time period. For a long time historians were not sure if the visionary songwriter Boyan had ever existed and if he had, then what was the real name of this person who became the prototype of the prophetic Boyan — Boyan’, Boyan, or Bayan? To discover his real name, the etymology of the word “boyan” had to be traced. So Boyan remained a mythical character. “I cannot believe,” Prof. V. V. Yaremenko wrote in 1990, “that the authors of the Tale of Bygone Years, who lavished praises on and exalted every writer, could have overlooked the glorious Boyan and not said a single word about him. They did immortalize him, but only under a different, real, name, not the name that was invented or artificially coined by 18th- and 19th-century researchers. Chronicles use the particle ‘bo’ in a now unusual sense: “Se bo iest’ bo batoh’.” The name “Boyan” consists of the name Yan and the particle “bo,” i.e., according to the original source: “bo Yan bo vishchy” [for Yan’ is prophetic’]. So the real name is ‘bo Yan,’ not ‘ba Yan’.”
Interestingly, back in 1842 the ancient Rus’ literary scholar A. F. Weltmann suggested for the first time that Boyan was the Yan’ of the chronicles. In search of Boyan’s identity, scholars also studied the 1106 chronicle of Nestor, which records two events connected with the name of Yan’: “The Polovtsians invaded near Zarechesk, and Sviatopolk (Iziaslavych — Author) sent Yan’ Vyshatych and his brother Putiata... That same summer Yan’ (Vyshatych, as Prof. Dmitry Likhachev maintained — Author), an old, kind, and venerated person, who lived to be ninety, died: he lived according to the Law of God, not worse than the first righteous men, from him I heard many words that I recorded in my chronicle. His tomb is in the Cave Monastery, where his body lies, placed on the 24th day of June.”
Prof. Yaremenko suggests an interesting hypothesis, “This is obviously the biography of Boyan, in fact, Yan’, our first known songwriter. If Yan’ died in 1106 at the age of 90, he was therefore born in 1016.” Later, preference was given to Prof. Likhachev’s theory that the poet Yan’, also known as Yan’ Vyshatych, was a Kyiv voivode and a descendant of Dobrynia, brother of Malusha.
We can only unravel this conundrum if we find the date of Yan’ Vyshatych’s birth using the family tree of Dobrynia’s descendants, not the date of death for the historian Yan’. Over a period of five generations of voivodes (Dobrynia, Kosniatyn, Ostromyr, Vyshata, and Yan’) — from 970 to 1113 — there is not a single date of birth. There are just two dates of death (Kosniatyn and Ostromyr) and 15 dated records of the voivodes’ concrete deeds. Yet, by adopting an integrated approach to all this data, we can find the approximate birth dates of each voivode. Leaving aside the calculations this writer has done, let us give the final result: Vyshata Ostromyrovych was born some time around 1012-1016 and Yan’ Vyshatych before 1043. In this case, in 1106 Yan’ Vyshatych was no older than 63, a not so advanced age for a voivode. He could not have been born in 1016 because his father would have been four years old at the time. Therefore, Yan’, who died in 1106 at age 90, could be neither the son of Vyshata, nor the grandson of Ostromyr, nor a descendant of Dobrynia.
The absence of a patronymic next to the name of Yan’ the historian does not mean that the chronicler was negligent: it merely means that he was distinguishing between Yan’ Vyshatych and Yan’ “not Vyshatych.” That the chronicler uses just the first name is proof of Yan’’s (“bo Yan’”) extreme popularity because the name alone was enough for everyone to recognize who was meant. So, to recap, The Lay’s hero bore the real name of Yan’, he was not Vyshatych, and he lived between 1016 and 1106. Still, this is not yet a biography but only a small part. Let us try to find some more brushstrokes to the historical portrait of “bo Yan” in the chronicles.
The Tale of Bygone Years mentions Yan’ seven times. Let us focus on the pre-1106 entries, in which the chronicler does not specify whether his Yan’ is Vyshatych or a voivode. What aroused our interest was an entry for the year 1091 describing certain events that had occurred 18 years earlier.
1073. “Feodosiy came to the house of Yan’, who lived in keeping with the Law of God... and preached to him about the Kingdom of Heaven that was accepted by the righteous ones.”
There is something familiar about the words that characterize the spiritual world of Yan’, who was visited by Feodosiy in 1073 and that of Yan’ the historian, a friend of Nestor’s, who died in 1106. It is known how the monk Nestor characterized the people of his milieu:
On Feodosiy in 1073: “A good pastor, our blessed father, who overcame the devil and his schemes, and became a conqueror ... was laid to rest with the righteous ones ... and his remains were laid to rest in his native church.”
On Yan’ in 1073: “He lived by the Law of God, a wise sheep of a good shepherd. Feodosiy taught him mercy toward the wretched as well as about the Kingdom of Heaven, which the righteous will enter.”
On Yan’ in an entry dated 1106: “A good monk, a good, meek and modest man ... worthy of the first righteous ones, his tomb is in the Cave Monastery, in the atrium,” Nestor wrote about his historian friend in this chronicle “obituary.”
Two points should be emphasized:
* The word “righteous” (in 1073: the righteous Feodosiy preaches righteousness to a certain Yan’; in 1106: the righteous Yan’, a disciple of the righteous Feodosiy, dies);
* The place, the Cave Monastery Church (the burial place of the remains of Feodosiy, who taught righteousness to a certain Yan’ in 1073, and the body of the “meek” Yan’, who died in 1106).
There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the individual whom Feodosiy visited and Nestor’s historian friend is one and the same person. The only thing is that the Yan’ of 1106 is the 90-year-old “meek bo Yan’,” while the Yan’ of 1073 is the same “bo Yan’” as the 57-year-old disciple of the righteous Feodosiy. We were therefore lucky to find another pre-1106 chronicle article that mentions “bo Yan’” the historian, which makes it clear why “bo Yan’,” who lived in the Assumption Church, was buried in the Cave Monastery.
A page discovered in the chronicle complements Boyan’s life story with almost mystical details: in 1073 (according to a 1091 entry), “when Feodosiy held the office of hegumen, he took special care of his spiritual sons, sometimes visiting their homes and blessing them there. Once he came to the home of Yan’ to see him and his wife Maria, for Feodosiy loved them for living in love and observing God’s commandments, and he began to teach them about mercy toward the wretched, about the Kingdom of Heaven that the righteous will enter, while sinners will be doomed to ordeals, and about the time to die. But when he was saying this and about the way their bodies would be laid into the graves, the wife of Yan’ asked them, ‘Who knows where I will be laid?’ And Feodosiy said to her, ‘In truth, you will be buried where I will be lying’.”
What Feodosiy prophesied came true:
* On August 14, 1091, “The relics of Feodosiy, who died on May 3, 1074, were removed from the cave and laid to rest in his own church, on the right side of the atrium.”
* On August 16, 1091, “The wife of Yan’, named Maria, departed this world. Monks brought and laid her to rest in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, opposite Feodosiy’s tomb, on the left side. Thus did our Feodosiy’s prophecy come true.”
The study of the Tale of Bygone Years broadened the scope of the chronicles’ knowledge about Boyan-Yan’, a character in The Lay of Ihor’s Campaign: he was born in 1016; in 1073 St. Feodosiy visited (at age 57) the home of the righteous Yan’ and Maria; he became a widower on April 16, 1091 (aged 75); on June 24 (July 7), 1106, (at the age of 90) the chronicler died and was buried next to his wife and Feodosiy on the left side of the atrium of the Assumption Church of the Cave Monastery, “where his body is still lying,” Nestor recorded 888 years ago.
This more than amply proves that Boyan, a friend of St. Feodosiy and St. Nestor, was neither a pagan nor an “organizer of pagan feasts” because the monk Nestor himself called the venerated Yan’ a righteous person, while St. Feodosiy wished him to be laid next to him in the Cave Church.
In the 1960s the archeologist V. V. Vysotsky found graffiti on a wall of St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv, which said that Prince Vsevolod’s widow purchased Boyan’s land for 700 hryvnias. Could anybody other than a prince or a voivode have owned this much land? Yes, he could, says The Lay of Ihor’s Campaign, for “Boyan created songs” comparable to the texts of chronicles. This means that in the times of Kyivan Prince Yaroslav the Wise and his sons (1054-1074) this unique creative effort of Boyan, disguised in the chronicle as “Yan’,” was held in high esteem.
So let us also pay a fitting tribute to this illustrious Kyivan. In two years’ time we will be marking two red-letter dates: the 900th anniversary of Boyan’s death and the 990th anniversary of his birth.
