This is a literary hoax text or fragment of text, the author of which attributes its creation to a figurehead, real or fictitious. Literary mystification is the opposite of plagiarism: the plagiarist borrows someone else’s word without citing the author; the hoaxer, on the contrary, attributes his word to someone else. The main difference between a literary hoax and an ordinary text is the creation of an image of the author, within the imaginary boundaries of whose mental, social and linguistic world the work appears. the dummy author is embodied in the style of the text, therefore literary hoax always involves stylization, imitation literary language a specific author or imitation of the style of an era, within the boundaries of which the social and cultural idiolect of a fictional author is created. Literary mystification, therefore, is a convenient form both for experimentation in the field of style and for inheriting a stylistic tradition. From the point of view of the type of false authorship, literary hoaxes are divided into three groups:
- Imitating ancient monuments, the name of the author of which has not been preserved or has not been named (“Kraledvor Manuscript”);
- Attributed to historical or legendary persons (“Wortingern and Rowena”, 1796, issued by W. G. Ireland for a newly discovered play by W. Shakespeare; continuation of Pushkin’s “Rusalka”, performed by D. P. Zuev; “The Poems of Ossian”, 1765, J. Macpherson );
- Forwarded to fictional authors: “deceased” (“Tales of Belkin”, 1830, A.S. Pushkin, “The Life of Vasily Travnikov”, 1936, V.F. Khodasevich) or “living” (Cherubina de Gabriak, E. Azhar); for the sake of credibility, the fictional author is provided with a biography, and the real author can act as his publisher and/or executor.
Some works, which subsequently gained worldwide fame, were performed in the form of literary hoaxes (“Gulliver’s Travels”, 1726, J. Swift, “Robinson Crusoe”, 1719, D. Defoe, “Don Quixote”, 1605-15, M. Cervantes; "History of New York, 1809, W. Irving).
An important property of a literary hoax is the temporary appropriation of someone else's name by its author.. The hoaxer literally creates the text on behalf of another; the name is the prototype of language and the only reality of the imaginary author. Hence the increased attention to the name and its internal form. The name in a literary hoax is connected, on the one hand, with the language and architectonics of the text (for example, the testimony of E.I. Dmitrieva about the rootedness of the name Cherubina de Gabriak in the poetic fabric of works written in her name), and on the other hand, with the name of the real author (anagram , cryptogram, double translation effect, etc.). The misconception of the reader and the discovery of a forgery, two stages of the reception of a literary hoax, follow not from the gullibility of the reader, but from the very nature of the name, which does not allow, within the boundaries of literary reality, to distinguish between its real and imaginary bearers. The goal is an aesthetic and/or life-creative experiment. This is what distinguishes it from forgeries, the authors of which are guided solely by mercantile considerations (for example, Guttenberg’s companion I. Fust sold the first Mainz Bibles at exorbitant prices in Paris, passing them off as handwritten books), and intentional distortions historical event or biography of a historical figure. Forgeries of historical monuments (“A Tale of Two Embassies”, “Correspondence of Ivan the Terrible with Turkish Sultan" - both 17th century) and biographical perjury ("Letters and notes of Ommer de Gell", 1933, composed by P.P. Vyazemsky) are quasi-mystifications.
History of the study literary hoaxes began with their collection. The first attempts to catalog literary hoaxes date back to the period late Middle Ages- the beginning of the Renaissance and are associated with the need for attribution of ancient texts. Attribution experiments of ancient and medieval monuments laid scientific basis textual criticism and textual criticism both in Europe (criticism of the “Donation of Constantine”) and in Russia, where partial examinations of manuscripts have been carried out since the 17th century. By the beginning of the 19th century, extensive material had been accumulated for compiling reference books and classifying types of fictitious authorship: literary hoaxes, pseudonyms, plagiarism, forgeries. At the same time, it became clear that compiling an exhaustive catalog of literary hoaxes is impossible, the science of literature is powerless to verify its entire archive, and philological methods for determining the authenticity of a text, especially in the absence of an autograph, are extremely unreliable and can produce contradictory results. In the 20th century, the study of literary hoax ceased to be exclusively a problem of textual criticism and copyright law; it began to be considered in the context of the history and theory of literature. In Russia, E.L. Lann first spoke about literary mystification as a subject of theoretical research in 1930. Interest in literary mystification was stimulated by attention to the problem of dialogue, “one’s own” and “alien” words, which in the 1920s became one of the central philosophical and philological topics; It is no coincidence that in Lann’s book the influence of M. M. Bakhtin’s ideas is noticeable. The central problem of literary mystification in its theoretical coverage is someone else's name and word spoken on someone else's behalf. Literary mystification is subject not only to changing literary eras and styles, but also to changing ideas about authorship and copyright, about the boundaries of literature and life, reality and fiction. From antiquity to the Renaissance, and in Russia until the beginning of the 19th century, the history of fictitious authorship is dominated by forgeries of ancient manuscript monuments and literary hoaxes attributed to historical or legendary figures.
In Greece from the 3rd century BC. known genre of fictitious letters created on behalf of famous authors past: the “seven” Greek sages, philosophers and politicians(Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, Hippocrates, etc.). The purpose of the forgery was often pragmatic: apologetic (giving current political and philosophical ideas greater authority) or discrediting (for example, Diotima composed 50 letters of obscene content on behalf of Epicurus); less often didactic (exercises in rhetoric schools to acquire skills good style). Literary mystification had the same meaning in literature medieval Europe and in ancient Russian literature. During the Renaissance, its character changes significantly. Literary hoaxes appear and begin to predominate, attributed to fictitious authors, for which the hoaxer composes not only the text, but also the author, his name, biography, and sometimes a portrait. In modern times, the history of literary mystification consists of uneven bursts, the main of which occur in the eras of Baroque, Romanticism, and Modernism, which is associated with the feeling of the world as linguistic creativity inherent in these eras. Literary hoaxes in modern times can be deliberately humorous and parodic in nature: the reader, according to the author’s plan, should not believe in their authenticity (Kozma Prutkov).
Thirty years ago, experts and archival workers determined that Adolf Hitler's sensational personal diaries turned out to be a fake. However, this is far from the only hoax that has affected literature, both fiction and non-fiction. Here are the most famous deceptions, which denigrate the history of world literature, starting from the Middle Ages.
The Fuhrer's personal diaries
In 1983, the Stern newspaper published an article about a unique find - 60 small notebooks, which are the personal diaries of Adolf Hitler from the formation of his party in the 30s until the end of World War II. The newspaper paid journalist Gerd Heidemann, who discovered the diaries (in the supposedly crashed plane), a fortune. As soon as fragments of the diaries were published and presented to the German archive workers for consideration, it turned out that the entries were not only forged, but also extremely crudely forged - the Fuhrer’s handwriting was not similar, pieces of text were stolen from previously published materials, and the paper and ink turned out to be too modern. The fate of the fortune received for the diaries is unknown, but Heidemann and his accomplice were convicted and sent to prison.
The story of Little Tree, a Cherokee orphan boy
The story of a Cherokee orphan who survived a poor childhood under the care of his grandparents was first published in 1976. Presented as a memoir, the story received praise from critics and readers and began to be studied in schools. The first edition sold 9 million copies. In 1991, it turned out that the author of the book was not Forest Carter, but Asa Carter, a famous member of the Ku Klux Klan and ally of George Wallace. Wallace's famous racist line, "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation always," was written by Carter. Not only the name of the author turned out to be a fiction, but also the language and culture of the Cherokee tribe, the descriptions of which were criticized by its true representatives.
The Last Adventures of the King of the Wild Lands
The legendary officer, traveler and politician Davy Crockett became the hero of myths and co-author of his own biography. However, a small description of it takes pride of place in this list. latest adventures before his death while defending the Alamo. The prologue to the book states that the events were copied directly from personal diary Colonel Crockett, which only contributed to the approval of his status folk hero and a legendary Texas quarterback. Published immediately after Crockett's death, the book became very popular. In 1884, it turned out that the author of the adventures, Richard Penn Smith, wrote them in just 24 hours, consulting with historical documents, oral legends and your own imagination.
In 1794, William Henry Ireland, the son of publisher and Shakespeare fan Samuel Ireland, presented his father with a unique paper - a mortgage letter signed by the hand of William Shakespeare himself. The shocked father was full of delight, because to this day few documents written by the master’s hand have survived. The younger Ireland announced that he had discovered the document in a friend’s collection and subsequently provided many more documents authored by Shakespeare. Among them were correspondence with Queen Elizabeth I, with the author’s wife, manuscripts of tragedies and even new, unpublished plays: “Henry II” and “Vortigern and Rowena”.
Father and son became popular among London's elite, but not for long. In 1796, Edmond Mellon revealed evidence that the documents were not originals and forced Airend Jr. to admit to forging documents that he created to attract the attention of his strict and cold father.
Autobiography of an eccentric billionaire
In 1971 little-known writer named Clifford Irving told McGraw-Hill that the famously reclusive billionaire businessman, filmmaker and aviator Howard Hughes, who went into recluse more than ten years ago, asked him to co-author his autobiography. The publisher could not refuse this opportunity and signed a contract with Irving. Irving almost managed to deceive everyone if Howard Hughes himself had not decided to break his many years of silence. In a telephone interview with a journalist, he said that he had nothing to do with his “autobiography” and did not know Clifford Irving. After exposure, Irving went to jail for 2.5 years.
Deadly fake
Consisting of 24 chapters revealing a secret plan to take over the world's governments by the Jewish elite, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ranks as perhaps the most dangerous and influential literary forgery in human history. It turned out that the forged document was drawn up by someone working for the secret police. Russian Empire journalist Matvey Golovin. Scholars trace the influence of several unrelated sources in the Protocols, from a pamphlet by Wilhelm Marr and the work of Jewish author Theodor Herzl to an anti-Semitic pamphlet by Hermann Goedsche and a satirical work by a French author ridiculing Napoleon III. Written as the actual minutes of a secret meeting of Zion's leaders in the Swiss city of Basel in 1897, the Protocols reveal a non-existent secret plan to seize power over financial, cultural and government organizations led by Jews.
The impact of the Protocols on history
The publication of these "Protocols" led to brutal repression against the Jewish population in Tsarist Russia and continued during the formation of the Communist Party. The connection between Zion's leaders and the threat of communism led to the fact that the Protocols gained popularity overseas. Automotive magnate Henry Ford, who had previously published anti-Semitic articles more than once, ordered the publication of half a million copies of the Protocols in America. Despite the fact that evidence of the forgery of this collection of documents appeared almost immediately after publication, the popularity of the Protocols only increased. The Protocols were an integral part of Nazi propaganda, and Hitler even quoted them in his book. To this day, many still mistake this literary hoax for a genuine work.
Testament of the Emperor of Byzantium
During the Middle Ages, the conflict between the church and European rulers over power on the continent began to heat up. The Church managed to gain the upper hand thanks to an ancient, but extremely fortunate document that was at hand at the right time. Veno Konstantinovo turned out to be a deed of gift from Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester, which tells of the emperor’s miraculous cure of leprosy and his conversion to Christian faith. In connection with the acquisition of faith, the emperor bequeathed lands, wealth and control over the empire to Sylvester and the church. Constantine was ready to give up the crown, but the pope graciously renounced worldly power, however, accepting the highest church rank and control over for the most part western empire.
Despite the fact that nothing was known about the Donation of Constantine until the 8th century, the church managed to maintain control over power in Western Europe. In the end, the clergy themselves made public the status of this document as fake, although not earlier than the 16th century.
The problem of literary mystification is one of the most pressing in modern literature. According to the classification proposed by E. Lann, all literary hoaxes are divided into two types: forgeries of works of impersonal creativity; forgeries of copyrighted works attributed to: a) writers, b) historical figures, c) fictitious authors (Lani E. Literary mystification. M.. 1930, P. 67).
A special place among hoaxes is occupied by forgery of folklore texts. The most famous was the “Kraledvor Manuscript”, authored by the Czech philologist V. Hanka (1817). For about 50 years it was considered one of the most valuable sources for the reconstruction of Slavic mythology. An example of literary hoax Scottish folklore The Songs of Ossian by J. Macpherson (1760-1763) can also serve. Of the hoaxers of Russian folklore, I.P. Sakharov (1807-1863) gained the greatest popularity; his “Tales of the Russian People” are still republished and cited by many researchers.
The most striking literary hoaxes of the 19th - early 20th centuries, created by Russian writers and poets, are the following: “Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” by A. Pushkin, “Letters and Notes of Ommer de Gehl” by P. Vyazemsky, “Egyptian Nights” by A. Pushkin, completed by V. Bryusov (included in the collected works of Pushkin in 1919), Kozma Prutkov, and in fact A.K. Tolstoy and the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Cherubina de Gabriac, invented by M. Voloshin, poet Vasily Shishkov, “familiar” of V. Nabokov, poetry poet XIX V. V. Travnikov from the archive “found” by Vl. Khodasevich, “The Diary of A. Vyrubova”, created by P. E. Shchegolev and A. N. Tolstoy, N. Nekrasov’s poem “Lights”, “discovered” by E. Vashkov.
A sensation of the 20th century. became a hoax of the French writer of Russian origin Romain Gary (Roman Kasev). In 1956, he received the Goncourt Prize for his novel The Roots of Heaven. In 1974, Gary published the novel "The Big Weasel" on behalf of the writer Emile Azhar. Azhar's second novel, The Life Ahead, wins the Prix Goncourt. Thus, Gary became the only winner of two Goncourt Prizes (it is not awarded twice).
Postmodernism takes literary mystification to a new level, realizing in literature the statement: “nobody writes books,” since “all books are written by no one” (Max Frei / Svetlana Martynchik). The realization that “can there be literature without mystification” gives rise to literary mystifications proper (the “great Euro-Chinese humanist” Holm van Zaichik / writer Vyacheslav Rybakov and orientalist Igor Alimov) and literary projects, based on a hoax: Boris Akunin (individual project of Grigory Chkhartishvili), Marina Serova (publishing project carried out by a group of authors).
A hoax in a number of ways coincides with the concept of a pseudonym. The possibilities for using a pseudonym are undoubtedly wider, but it does not have the main specific difference between hoaxes - stylization. Brilliant examples of stylization can be found in the works of Felix Salten, the author of “Bambi the Fawn,” who created memoirs on behalf of the famous Viennese prostitute Josephine Mutzenbacher, and the Norwegian writer and philosopher Jostein Gorder, who published a letter from St. Augustine’s beloved Floria Emilia, allegedly discovered by the author in Argentina, at bookstores.
The history of world literature, knowing about the falsification of many of its monuments, tries to forget about it. There is hardly a single researcher who would argue that the classics of Greece and Rome that have come down to us were not mutilated by copyists.
Erasmus complained bitterly back in the 16th century that there was not a single text from the “Church Fathers” (i.e., the first four centuries of Christianity) that could be unconditionally accepted as authentic. The fate of literary monuments is perhaps equally unenviable. At the very end of the 17th century, the learned Jesuit Arduin argued that the ancient world belong only to Homer, Herodotus, Cicero, Pliny, Horace’s “Satires” and Virgil’s “Georgics”. As for the rest of the works of antiquity... they were all created in the 13th century AD.
It is enough to raise this question about the authenticity of the manuscripts of the classics in order to recognize the complete impossibility of establishing where in the past the “genuine” classic ends and the falsified one begins. In essence, the true Sophocles and Titus Livius are unknown... The most subtle and strict criticism of the texts is powerless to detect the later distortions of the classics. The traces that would lead to the original texts are cut off.
It is also worth adding that historians are extremely reluctant to part with even works whose apocryphal nature has been proven by themselves. They classify them in the category of so-called pseudepigraphic literature (pseudo-Clement, pseudo-Justus, etc.) and do not hesitate to use them. This position is absolutely clear and is only logical development general attitude to “ancient” monuments: there are so few of them that it would be a pity to exclude even the dubious ones from circulation.
Before the first printing press was operational in Italy in 1465, a few years later the history of literature registered the forgery of Latin authors.
In 1519, the French scientist de Boulogne forged two books by V. Flaccus, and one of the remarkable humanist scientists, Sigonius, published in 1583 previously unknown passages from Cicero. This simulation was made with such skill that it was discovered only two centuries later, and even then by accident: a letter from Sigonius was found in which he confessed to the falsification.
In the same century, one of the first German humanists to introduce Germany to the Roman classics, Prolucius wrote the seventh book of Ovid's Calendar Mythology. This hoax was partly caused by a scientific dispute about how many books this work of Ovid was divided into; despite indications on behalf of the author that he has six books, some Renaissance scholars, based on compositional features, insisted that there should be twelve books.
At the end of the 16th century, the issue of the spread of Christianity in Spain was poorly addressed. To fill the annoying gap, the Spanish monk Higuera, after a lot of difficult work, wrote a chronicle on behalf of the never-existing Roman historian Flavius Dexter.
In the 18th century, the Dutch scholar Hirkens published a tragedy under the name of Lucius Varus, supposedly the tragic poet of the Augustan era. Quite by accident, we managed to establish that the Venetian Corrario published it in the 16th century on his own behalf, without trying to mislead anyone.
The Spaniard Marchena in 1800 amused himself by composing on Latin arguments of a pornographic nature. From them he fabricated a whole story and linked it to the text Chapter XXII Petroniev "Satyricon". It is impossible to distinguish where Petronius ends and Marchena begins. He published his excerpt with Petronian text, indicating in the preface the imaginary location of the find.
This is not the only forgery of Petronius' satires. A century before Marchen, the French officer Nodo published the “complete” Satyricon, supposedly “based on a thousand-year-old manuscript he bought from a Greek during the siege of Belgrade,” but no one had seen either this or the more ancient manuscripts of Petronius.
Also republished was Catullus, forged in the 18th century by the Venetian poet Corradino, who allegedly found Catullus's list in Rome.
German student XIX century Wagenfeld allegedly translated from Greek into german history Phenicia, written by the Phoenician historian Sanchoniaton and translated into Greek by Philo of Byblos. The find made a huge impression, one of the professors gave a preface to the book, after which it was published, and when Wagenfeld was asked for the Greek manuscript, he refused to submit it.
In 1498, Eusebius Zilber published in Rome on behalf of Berosus, “a Babylonian priest who lived 250 years before Christ,” but “wrote in Greek,” an essay in Latin, “Five Books of Antiquities with Commentaries by John Anni.” The book went through several editions, and then turned out to be a forgery of the Dominican monk Giovanni Nanni from Viterboro. However, despite this, the legend of the existence of Berosus did not disappear, and in 1825 Richter in Leipzig published the book “The Extant Chaldean Stories of Berosus,” allegedly compiled from “mentions” about Berosus in the works of other authors. It is surprising that, for example, academician. Turaev has no doubts about the existence of Beroz and believes that his work is “highly valuable to us.”
In the twenties of our century, the German Sheinis sold several fragments from the Leipzig Library classical texts. Among others was a leaf from the works of Plautus, written in purple ink; the curators of the manuscript cabinet of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, completely confident in the authenticity of their purchase, praised it: “The beautiful handwriting bears all the features characteristic of a very long period. It is clear that this is a fragment of a luxurious book; the use of purple ink suggests that the book was in the library of a wealthy Roman, perhaps in the imperial library. We are confident that our fragment is part of a book created in Rome itself.” However, two years later there followed a scandalous revelation of all the manuscripts presented by Sheinis.
Scientists of the Renaissance (and later times) were not content with the “finds” of manuscripts of writers already known to them; they informed each other about their “discoveries” of new, hitherto unknown authors, as Murea did in the 16th century when he sent Scaliger his own poems under the name of the forgotten Latin poets Attius and Trobeus. Even the historian J. Balzac created a fictional Latin poet. He included in an edition of Latin poems, published in 1665, one praising Nero, allegedly found by him on half-decayed parchment and attributed unknown contemporary Nero. This poem was even included in anthologies of Latin poets until the forgery was discovered.
In 1729, Montesquieu published a French translation of a Greek poem in the spirit of Sappho, saying in the preface that the seven songs were written unknown poet, who lived after Sappho, and were found by him in the library of a Greek bishop. Montesquieu later admitted to the hoax.
In 1826, the Italian poet Leopardi forged two Greek odes in the style of Anacreon, allegedly written by hitherto unknown poets. He also published his second forgery - a translation of the Latin retelling of the Greek chronicle, dedicated to history church fathers and the description of Mount Sinai.
A famous forgery of ancient classics is the hoax of Pierre Louis, who invented the poetess Bilitis. He published her songs in Mercure de France, and in 1894 he published them as a separate edition. In the preface, Louis outlined the circumstances of his “discovery” of songs by an unknown Greek poetess of the 6th century BC. and reported that a certain Dr. Heim even found her grave. Two German scientists - Ernst and Willamowitz-Müllendorff - immediately dedicated articles to the newly discovered poetess, and her name was included in the “Dictionary of Writers” by Laulier and Gidel. In the next edition of the Songs, Louis placed her portrait, for which the sculptor Laurent copied one of the terracottas of the Louvre. The success was enormous. Back in 1908, not everyone knew about the hoax, since that year he received a letter from an Athenian professor asking him to indicate where the originals of Bilitis' songs were kept.
Let us note that almost all exposed hoaxes of this kind belong to modern times. This is understandable, because it is almost impossible to catch the hand of a Renaissance humanist who invented a new author. By all accounts, we should therefore expect that at least some of the “ancient” authors were invented by humanists.
Fakes of the new era
Closer to modern times, not only ancient authors were invented. One of the most famous falsifications of this kind are the poems of Ossian, composed by Macpherson (1736-1796), and the poems of Rowley Chatterton, although these forgeries were quickly exposed, but they artistic merit provide them with a prominent place in the history of literature.
There are known forgeries of La Fontaine, letters of Byron, Shelley, Keats, novels by W. Scott, F. Cooper and plays by Shakespeare.
A special group among modern forgeries consists of writings (mainly letters and memoirs) attributed to some celebrity. There are several dozen of them known (only the most famous).
In the 19th century, “antique” forgeries continued, but, as a rule, they were no longer associated with antiquity. So, in late XIX century, a sensation was caused by the “found” by the Jerusalem merchant Shapiro of a manuscript supposedly from the 1st millennium, telling about the wandering of the Jews in the desert after the exodus from Egypt.
In 1817, the philologist Vaclav Hanka (1791 -1861) allegedly found a parchment on which were written in ancient letters in the church of the small town of Kraljevo Dvor on the Elbe. epic poems and lyrical songs of the XIII-XIV centuries. Subsequently, he “discovered” many other texts, for example, an ancient translation of the Gospel. In 1819 he became curator of literary collections, and from 1823 - librarian of the National Czech Museum in Prague. There is not a single manuscript left in the library to which Ganka did not have a hand. He changed the text, inserted words, pasted in sheets of paper, crossed out paragraphs. He came up with a whole “school” of ancient artists, whose names he wrote down in the original ancient manuscripts that fell into his hands. The exposure of this incredible scale of falsification was accompanied by a deafening scandal.
The famous Winckelmann, the founder of modern archaeology, became a victim of a hoax by the artist Casanova (brother of the famous adventurer), who illustrated his book “ Ancient monuments"(But Winckelmann was an archaeologist - a professional!).
Casanova supplied Winckelmann with three “ancient” paintings, which, according to him, were taken directly from the walls in Pompeii. Two paintings (with dancers) were made by Casanova himself, and the painting depicting Jupiter and Ganymede was by the painter Raphael Menges. To be convincing, Kazakova composed an absolutely incredible romantic story about a certain officer who allegedly secretly stole these paintings from the excavations at night. Winckelmann believed not only in the authenticity of the “relics”, but also in all of Casanova’s fables and described these paintings in his book, noting that “Jupiter’s favorite is undoubtedly one of the most striking figures inherited from the art of antiquity...”.
Kazakova's falsification has the character of mischief, caused by the desire to play a trick on Winckelmann.
Has a similar character famous hoax Merimee, who, fascinated by the Slavs, decided to go to the East to describe them. But this required money. “And I decided,” he himself admits, “to first describe our journey, sell the book, and then spend the fee on checking how right I am in my description.” And so in 1827 he released a collection of songs called “Gusli” under the guise of translations from Balkan languages. The book was a great success, in particular, Pushkin in 1835 made a pseudo-back translation of the book into Russian, proving to be more gullible than Goethe, who immediately sensed the hoax. Mérimée introduced the second edition with an ironic preface, mentioning those whom he managed to deceive. Pushkin later wrote: “The poet Mitskevich, a keen-sighted critic and a subtle connoisseur Slavic poetry, did not doubt the authenticity of these songs, and some German wrote a lengthy dissertation about them.” In the latter, Pushkin was absolutely right: these ballads had the greatest success among specialists who had no doubt about their authenticity.
Other falsifications
Examples of forgeries, hoaxes, apocrypha, etc. etc. can be multiplied indefinitely. We talked only about the most famous ones. Let's give a few more scattered examples.
In the history of the development of Kabbalah, the book “Zohar” (“Radiance”) is well known, attributed to Tanai Simon ben Yochai, whose life is shrouded in the thick fog of legend. M.S. Belenky writes: “However, it has been established that its author was the mystic Moses de Leon (1250-1305). The historian Gren said about him: “One can only doubt whether he was selfish or a pious deceiver...” Moses de Leon wrote several works of a Kabbalistic nature, but they brought neither fame nor money. Then the unlucky writer came up with the right means to open hearts and wallets wide. He began writing under a false name, but one that enjoyed authority. A clever forger passed off his Zohar as the work of Simon ben Jochai... The forgery of Moses de Leon was a success and made a strong impression on the believers. The Zohar has been deified for centuries by advocates of mysticism as a heavenly revelation.”
One of the most famous Hebraists of modern times is L. Goldschmidt, who spent more than twenty years on the critical edition of the first full translation on German Babylonian Talmud. In 1896 (when he was 25 years old), Goldschmidt published a supposedly newly discovered Talmudic work in Aramaic, “The Book of Peacemaking.” However, it was almost immediately proven that this book was Goldschmidt’s own translation of the Ethiopian work Hexameron, pseudo-Epiphanius.
Voltaire found a manuscript commenting on the Vedas in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. He had no doubt that the manuscript was written by Brahmins before Alexander the Great went to India. Voltaire's authority helped publish in 1778 French translation this essay. However, it soon became clear that Voltaire had fallen victim to a hoax.
In India, in the library of missionaries, forged commentaries of the same religious and political nature on other parts of the Vedas, also attributed to the Brahmins, were found. The English Sanskritologist Joyce was misled by a similar forgery, when he translated the verses he discovered from the Purana, outlining the story of Noah and written by some Hindu in the form of an ancient Sanskrit manuscript.
The discovery of the Italian antiquarian Curzio caused a great sensation at the time. In 1637, he published Fragments of Etruscan Antiquity, allegedly based on manuscripts he found buried in the ground. The forgery was quickly exposed: Curzio himself buried the parchment he had written to give it an antique look.
In 1762, chaplain of the Order of Malta Vella, accompanying to Palermo Arab ambassador, decided to “help” historians of Sicily find materials to cover its Arab period. After the ambassador's departure, Vella spread a rumor that the diplomat had given him an ancient Arabic manuscript containing correspondence between the authorities of Arabia and the Arab governors of Sicily. In 1789, an Italian “translation” of this manuscript was published.
Three Indias. In 1165, a Letter from Prester John to Emperor Emmanuel Komnenos appeared in Europe (according to Gumilyov, this happened in 1145). The letter was allegedly written in Arabic and then translated into Latin. The letter made such an impression that Pope Alexander III in 1177 sent his envoy to the presbyter, who was lost somewhere in the vastness of the east. The letter described the kingdom of Nestorian Christians somewhere in India, its miracles and untold riches. During the Second Crusade, serious hopes were placed on the military assistance of this kingdom of Christians; no one thought to doubt the existence of such a powerful ally.
Soon the letter was forgotten, and they returned to the search for the magical kingdom several times (In the 15th century they searched for it in Ethiopia, then in China). So it was only in the 19th century that scientists came up with the idea to deal with this fake.
However, to understand that this is a fake, you don’t have to be an expert. The letter is full of details typical of European medieval fantasy. Here is a list of animals living in the Three Indies: “
“Elephants, dromedaries, camels, Meta collinarum (?), Cametennus (?), Tinserete (?), panthers, forest donkeys, white and red lions, polar bears, white whiting (?), cicadas, eagle griffins, ... horned people , one-eyed, people with eyes in front and behind, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, pygmies, giants, cyclops, the phoenix bird and almost all breeds of animals living on earth ... "
(quoted from Gumilyov, “In Search of an Imaginary Kingdom)
Modern content analysis has shown that the letter was composed in the second quarter of the 12th century in Languedoc or Northern Italy.
Protocols Elders of Zion . “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is a collection of texts that appeared at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia and became widespread throughout the world, which was presented by its publishers as documents of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Some of them claimed that these were minutes of reports of participants in the Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. The texts set out plans for the Jews to gain world domination, penetrate the government structures of states, take non-Jews under control, and eradicate other religions. Although the Protocols have long been proven to be an anti-Semitic hoax, there are still many supporters of their authenticity. This point of view is especially widespread in the Islamic world. In some countries, the study of the Protocols is even included in the school curriculum.
The document that split the church.
For 600 years, the heads of the Roman Church used the Deed of Constantine (Constitutum Constantini) to maintain their authority as stewards of Christendom.
Constantine the Great was the first Roman emperor (306-337) to convert to Christianity. It was claimed that he donated half of his empire in 315 AD. e. in gratitude for gaining new faith and miraculous healing from leprosy. The deed of gift, a document in which the fact of the donation was attested, gave the Roman diocese spiritual authority over all churches and temporary authority over Rome, all of Italy and the West. Those who try to prevent this, it is written in the Deed of Dedication, “will burn in hell and perish with the devil and all the wicked.”
The 3,000-word deed of gift first appeared in the 9th century and became a powerful weapon in the dispute between the Eastern and Western churches. The dispute culminated in the split of the church in 1054 into the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Church.
Ten popes quoted the document, and its authenticity was not in doubt until the 15th century, when Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), the greatest theologian of his time, pointed out that the Bishop of Eusebius, a contemporary and biographer of Constantine, did not even mention this gift .
The document is now almost universally accepted as a forgery, most likely fabricated by Rome around 760. Moreover, the falsification was not well thought out. For example, the document transfers power over Constantinople to the Roman diocese - a city that did not yet exist as such!
It is not surprising that the French philosopher Voltaire called it “the most shameless and astonishing falsification that has dominated the world for many centuries.”
Hoaxer and joker Leo Taxil
In 1895, Taxil’s essay “The Secrets of Gehenna, or Miss Diana Vaughan *, her exposure of Freemasonry, the cult and the appearances of the devil” caused a lot of noise. Taxil, under the fictitious name of Hermanus, reported that Diana Vaughan, the daughter of the supreme devil Bitru, was engaged for ten years to the commander of 14 demonic regiments, the voluptuous Asmodeus, committed with him Honeymoon to Mars. Soon Dr. Hux demonstrated Diana Vaughan to a large clerical audience.
Repentant of “error” and returned to the fold catholic church, “the devil’s wife,” Vaughan corresponded with major church figures and received letters from Cardinal Parochi, who gave her the blessing of the pope.
September 25, 1896 at Italian city In Triente, on the initiative of Taxil, an international congress of the Anti-Masonic Union, created by Leo XIII, took place. There were 36 bishops and 61 journalists at the congress. Taxil's portrait hung on the podium among the images of saints. Diana Vaughan spoke at the congress as living proof Masonic Lucifernism.
However, articles ridiculing the “devil’s wife” have already appeared in the press. In July 1896, Margiotti broke relations with his comrades, threatening exposure.
A few months later, an article by Hacks, who turned out to be the author of the anti-religious essay “Gesture,” appeared in German and French newspapers, which reported that “all revelations of Freemasonry were pure blackmail.” “When the papal letter appeared, directed against the Freemasons as allies of the devil,” Hux wrote, “I decided that it would help extort money from the gullible. I consulted with Leo Taxil and several friends and together we conceived “The Devil of the 19th Century.”
“When I invented incredible stories, for example, about the devil, who in the morning turned into a young lady who dreamed of marrying a Freemason, and in the evening turned into a crocodile playing the piano, my employees, who laughed until they cried, said: “You are going too far!” You'll ruin the whole joke! I answered them: “This will do!” And it really did." Hux ended the article with the statement that he was now stopping all myth-making about Satan and the Freemasons, and with the money raised from the spread of anti-Masonic fables, he was opening a restaurant in Paris where he would feed sausages and sausages as plentifully as he fed the gullible public with his fairy tales.”
A few days later, Margiotti appeared in print and announced that his entire book, “The Cult of Satan,” was part of a hoax conceived by Taxil. April 14, 1897 in the huge hall of the Parisian Geographical Society» Taxil said that his anti-Masonic writings are biggest hoax modern times, which aimed to ridicule the gullible clergy. "The Devil's Wife" Diana Vaughan turned out to be Taxil's secretary.
The scandal turned out to be huge. Pope Leo XIII anathematized Taxil. Also in 1897, Taxil published a satire on Old Testament- “The Funny Bible” (Russian translation: M., 1962), and soon its continuation - “The Funny Gospel” (Russian translation: M., 1963).
Reasons for falsification
The reasons for falsification are as diverse as life itself.
Little is documented about the incentives to falsify in the Middle Ages. Therefore, we are forced to analyze this issue using materials from modern times. However, there is no reason why the general conclusions obtained from this material cannot be applied to more distant times.
1. An extensive class of forgeries consists of purely literary hoaxes and stylizations. As a rule, if a hoax was successful, its authors quickly and proudly revealed their deception (a striking example is the Mérimée hoax, as well as the Louis hoax).
The passages from Cicero that Sigonius falsified apparently belong to the same class.
If such a hoax is done skillfully, but the author for some reason did not admit to it, it is very difficult to reveal it.
It’s scary to think how many such hoaxes were made during the Renaissance (as a bet, as a joke, to test one’s abilities, etc.), which were later taken seriously. However, one might think that this kind of “ancient” writings belonged only to “small-format” genres (poems, excerpts, letters, etc.).
2. Close to them lie falsifications, in which a young author tries to assert his “I” or test his strength in a genre that guaranteed him protection in case of failure. The forgeries of Macpherson and Chatterton, say, clearly belong to this class (in the latter case the rare pathology of complete identification with beloved ancient authors manifested itself). In response to the theater's lack of attention to his plays, Colonne responded with a fake of Molière, etc.
Let us note that, as a rule, the most well-known falsifiers of this type did not stand out for anything special in the future. Ireland, who forged Shakespeare, became a mediocre writer.
3. Even more malicious are the falsifications made by a young philologist in order to quickly become famous (example - Wagenfeld). More mature men of science falsified in order to prove this or that position (Prolucius) or fill gaps in our knowledge (Higuera).
4. “Filling in” falsifications also include biographies of fantastic personalities like “Saint Veronica”, etc.
5. Many falsifiers were driven (in combination with other motives) by political or ideological considerations (Ganka).
6. A special case of the latest falsifications should be considered the monastic falsifications of the “church fathers”, decrees of popes, etc.
7. Very often a book was apocryphal in ancient times because of its accusatory, anti-clerical or freethinking nature, when publishing it under one’s own name was fraught with grave consequences.
8. Finally, last but not least important is the factor of basic profit. There are so many examples that they need not be cited.
Exposing falsifications
If the falsification is done skillfully, then its exposure presents enormous difficulties and, as a rule (if the falsifier himself does not confess), occurs purely by chance (for example, Sigonius). Since history tends to forget about its falsifications, as time passes, exposing the falsification becomes increasingly difficult (for example, Tacitus). Therefore, there is no doubt that many falsifications (especially humanistic ones) still remain unexposed.
In this regard, information about the circumstances of the finds of certain manuscripts is of particular interest. As we saw with the example of Tacitus and will see later with the example of many other works “discovered” during the Renaissance, this information is very scarce and contradictory. It contains almost no names, and only tells about “nameless monks” who brought priceless manuscripts “from somewhere in the north” that lay “in oblivion” for many centuries. Therefore, it is impossible to judge the authenticity of the manuscripts on its basis. On the contrary, the very inconsistency of this information leads (as in the case of Tacitus) to serious doubts.
It is very strange that, as a rule, there is no information about the circumstances of the finds of manuscripts even in the 19th century! Either they report unverifiable information: “bought at an oriental bazaar,” “found in the basement of a monastery secretly (!) from the monks,” or they are completely silent. We will return to this more than once, but for now we will just quote the famous scientist prof. Zelinsky:
“The year 1891 will long remain memorable in the history of classical philology; He brought us, not to mention small novelties, two large and precious gifts - Aristotle’s book on the Athenian state and Herodes’ everyday scenes. Which serendipity We owe these two finds - a stubborn and significant silence is observed about this by those who should know: only the very fact of chance remains undoubted, and with the establishment of this fact, any need to ask oneself the question is eliminated ... "
And, really, it wouldn’t hurt to ask “those who should know” where they got these manuscripts from. After all, as examples show, neither high academic titles nor generally accepted honesty in everyday life guarantee against counterfeiting. However, as Engels noted, there are no more gullible people than scientists.
It is worth noting that the above is only very brief an excursion into the history of forgeries (and only literary ones, but there are also epigraphic, archaeological, anthropological and many, many others - several of them will be devoted to further posts), in which only a few of them are presented. In reality, they much more, and these are just the famous ones. And no one knows how many fakes have still not been revealed. One thing is certain - many, very many.
04.08.2017 Under Another Name: Pseudonyms and Literary Hoaxes - Exhibition in the New BuildingAugust 3 in the New building of the Russian national library(Moskovsky Ave., 165) the exhibition “Under a False Name: Pseudonyms and Literary Hoaxes” began its work.
The exhibition presents the work of famous domestic and foreign writers who worked under pseudonyms or deliberately attributed authorship to a real person or passed off their works as folk art.
During the Renaissance, interest in ancient authors and their texts was so high that, together with previously unknown original works, ancient authors Numerous fakes, so-called imaginary translations, began to appear. Many researchers call Homer's poems the first literary hoax. The personality of Homer, in their opinion, was invented, and the works attributed to him were the fruit of collective labor. Today it is difficult to find out which of the ancient works are real and which are Renaissance hoaxes.
The most famous master The English writer and publicist Daniel Defoe passed off his texts as someone else's. Of the 500 books he wrote, only 4 were published under his real name, and the rest were attributed to historical and fictitious personalities. Defoe himself acted only as a publisher. So, for example, three volumes of “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” were written by a “sailor from York”, “The History of the Wars of Charles XII, King of Sweden” - by a “Scottish officer in Swedish service”, “Notes of a Cavalier” were given to him as the memoirs of a nobleman, who lived in the 17th century, during the Great Rebellion, and “The Narrative of All the Robberies, Escapes and Other Deeds of John Sheppard” - for the suicide notes written in prison by the real-life famous robber John Sheppard. The exhibition features Daniel Defoe's richly illustrated two-volume book Robinson Crusoe and His interesting adventures described by himself" (with 200 drawings engraved on stone, 1870).
The literary hoax “The Song of Ossian”, created by the most talented English poet and literary critic George Macpherson, who wrote in 1760-1763 on behalf of the Scottish bard Ossian, who allegedly lived in the 3rd century.
Among the popular hoaxers, it is worth mentioning Prosper Merimee, who secretly published a collection of plays “Gusli” (“Guzla”) with notes and a portrait of the “author”, a collector of folklore, a fictional guslar named Iakinf Maglanovich. The hoax was successful: for real Slavic folklore“Gusli” was also accepted by Adam Mickiewicz and Alexander Pushkin, who translated 11 ballads into Russian for his collection “Songs of the Western Slavs.” Pushkin, by the way, was no stranger to hoaxes, publishing the famous “Belkin's Tales”, the poet himself acted only as a publisher.
In Russia over the past two hundred years, literary hoaxes and hoaxers have been encountered in abundance. The fictional Kozma Prutkov, created by Alexei Tolstoy and the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, was endowed with his own biography, personal qualities and literary reference points and was a parody of the literary official.
The book “Leaving the World Unsolved...” (2009) will introduce exhibition guests to the biography of the Russian poetess Elizaveta Vasilyeva (Dmitrieva) and the image of the mysterious beauty Cherubina de Gabriac, created by her and Maximilian Voloshin and which became the loudest hoax of the Silver Age.
Visitors will also learn about other literary hoaxers, including the American Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), the Frenchman Emil Azhar (Roman Leibovich Katsev), compatriots Andrei Bely (Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev), Sasha Cherny (Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg) and Boris Akunin (Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili) ... What forced these and many other writers, undoubtedly talented and brilliant, to hide their faces behind someone else's mask, giving up the rights to their own works? Visitors to the exhibition will learn about the causes and consequences of such phenomena in world literature from such publications as “The History of Literary Hoaxes: “From Homer to the Internet” by Vitaly Vulf and Serafima Chebotar (2003), as well as from the book “Disguised Literature” by Valentin Dmitriev (1973 d.). Among the publications that also deserve special attention, it should be noted, the book “The illustrated Mark Twain” (2000). The literary mask, which often completely replaces the writer’s personality, is a necessary element of mystification, the authors explain. According to researchers, play, as an unconditional condition for any creativity, takes on exaggerated proportions among hoaxers. The creator of a hoax can often create only in a mask he has invented, creating his own own world and the only inhabitant in it. The mask helps to move away from imposed restrictions - class, stylistic, historical... and the author, as it were, is born again.
Today a virtual reality, settled on the Internet, provides unlimited opportunities for various kinds of hoaxes, putting existing people and fictional characters. Both those and others only have email address and the ability to generate text...
Materials for the exhibition were provided by the Russian Book and Russian Magazine Funds, the Foreign Book and Foreign Magazine Funds, as well as the Central Reference Library, the Printmaking Department and the Microform Fund.
Admission with a library card.
