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[PRISON MUSIC] Blatnaia muzyka (“Zhargon” tiur’my) [i.e. Rogue Music (Prison Patter)].

Trakhtenberg, V.

Item #2663

St. Petersburg: [Tip. A. G. Rozena], 1908. XX, 116 pp. 20,5 × 13,5 cm. In contemporary binding. Rubbed and faded, ink note on t.p. (1912), spots on inner and lower margins of some pages, otherwise very good.

This interesting dictionary of Russian prison patter was compiled during the turmoilof the early 20th century.The foreword was written by Polish and Russian linguist Jan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845—1929). In the Russian Empire, he was called Ivan Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay. Born near Warsaw, he worked in St. Petersburg and Kazan Universities, studying Slavic languages. In the 1910s, he was arrested several times for advocating the Polish language. As the scholar, Jan Baudouin de Courtenay proved that the essence of language is in common speech and dialects. He lists foreign and Russian sources on the subject and analyzes materials collected by Trakhtenberg.The dictionary is supplemented with 96 prison proverbs, 17 prison songs and an essay on prison vocabulary. In the latter, Trakhtenberg states that prison patter adapted lexisof extinct layers of society like wandering sellers of icons, ofenyas. Their artificial language fenyais considered the initial Russian cant language.The compiler created an index to the dictionary as an alphabetical list without pages determined.

Status: On Hold