“Persian Miniature” from the Lev Gumilev’s Museum-apartment: the riddle of textual decor
Abstract
Abstract: the “Persian miniature” was the gift by A. A. Akhmatova to her son after his return from the concentration camp. The sheet includes the painting and the textual decor placed around it. There is no documentary evidence of the history of the present, a donator or the symbolical meaning of the donation. This article discusses the problem of the textual decor and its connection with the content of the picture. The textual decor is presented by extended cartouches with oriental inscriptions. The most frequent are the quotations from Jami’s “Yusuf and Zuleikha”. This helps to correlate the textual decor with the meaning of the scene presented in the picture. Since professor A. Boldyrev was invited to interpret the textual decor of the picture on Akhmatova’s request, there might be a hypothetical connection between Akhmatova’s awareness of the meaning of the text and her donation of the miniature to her son.
About the Authors
A. V. Bondarev
Herzen State Pedagogical University;
Memorial museum of Lev Gumilev
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Alexey V. Bondarev, Ph. D. (Culturol), Associate Professor of the Department of theory and history
senior researcher
N. I. Prigarina
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation
Natalia I. Prigarina, PhD habil (Philol), Professor, Head Research Fellow at the Department of Oriental Written Sources
Russian Federation
Natalia I. Prigarina, PhD habil (Philol), Professor, Head Research Fellow at the Department of Oriental Written Sources
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Acknowledgments: the authors are very grateful to a number of people for their kind help provided during the process of investigation: our gratitude to the Evgeniy Evgenyevich Stepanov, the outstanding specialist in the field of Nikolay Gumilev’s biography; our thanks to Yefim Anatolyevich Rezvan, Deputy-Director of the of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera), to the Professor Elena Yuryevna Raskina (Moscow), and Anna Genrihovna Kaminskaya, who was close to know A. A. Akhmatova (Saint Petersburg). We are especially indebted to Professor Dinora Sadyqovna Azimova (Tashkent) for her suggestion in February of 2015 about the characters of the painting as presumably Yusuf and Zukeikha; the study of the textual decor has verified this suggestion. We are especially obliged to Professor Marzieh Yahyapoor (Tehran University), Firuza Melvill-Abdullaeva, Director of the Centre of Persian Studies, Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK, and to Leyla Gasemovna Lahuti, the researcher of the Department of Oriental Written Sources, Institute of Oriental Studies RASc. We express our special gratitude to the administration of Lev Gumilev Memorial museum for the opportunity to publish the “Persian Miniature”, included in the exposition of Museum.
For citation:
Bondarev A.V., Prigarina N.I. “Persian Miniature” from the Lev Gumilev’s Museum-apartment: the riddle of textual decor. Orientalistica. 2019;2(1):159-188. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31696/2618-7043-2019-2-1-159-188
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