Bìblìotečnij vìsnik (Jan 2022)
Moliиriana in the fund of the early printed and rare book department of the V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine: on the 400th anniversary of the birth of the great comediographer
Abstract
The purpose of the paper is to characterize Moliиriana, that is the collection of imprinted works of Moliиre, kept in the early printed and rare book department of the V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine. To achieve the goal, the synthetic, descriptive, biographical, bibliological and comparative methods are applied. For the first time, all Moliиre editions from the holdings of the department were regarded as a certain unity, which constitutes the point of novelty in the research. Conclusions. The paper demonstrates that the analyzed set of books is a precious part of the library collection. It consists of old-printed works and rarities dated from the 17th to 19th centuries. The holdings comprise about thirty titles of prints of Moliиre, and most of them are multivolume editions. They are product of different publishing houses from all over Europe, e.g. of French, Dutch, German, Austrian, Belgian, Polish publishers. These exemplars have usually small format (12°, or the duodecimo) to make the process of reading or their transporting more comfortable. A lot of books from the Moliиriana are decorated with engravings (viz., with a portrait of the author or illustrations to the text). Inscriptions on engravings reveal names of those artists who prepare illustrations for editions. For example, the first Belgian publication of Moliиre’s plays (1694) was illustrated by Jacob Harrewijn. Italian translation of Moliиre’s works printed in Leipzig in 1698 has a series of engravings prepared by Daucher (the first name of the artist is unknown). Some prints from the Moliиriana collection have bookplates, autographs or other marks indicating previous owners of exemplars. These provenance evidences make books more valuable, especially when their owners are well-known personalities in the history of Ukraine. For instance, among the booklovers in whose possession certain editions of Moliиr’s plays were there are the prominent historian Volodymyr Antonovych, the Ukrainian philologist Pavlo Biletskyi-Nosenko and the famous countess Sofia (Zofia) Pototska after whom the Uman park Sofiivka was named.
