“I turn to you as I would turn to Nauck”: Correspondence of Viktor Jernstedt (1854–1902) and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848–1931)

Abstract

While working on the correspondence of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff with Russian scholars in the summer of 2021, the author discovered two letters of Viktor Jernstedt to Wilamowitz in the mss. collection of Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. Wilamowitz’ part of this correspondence, three letters under the shelfmark call number 733.2.44 1r–6r, dated between June 1894 and August 1895, was likewise preserved among the papers of Jernstedt in the St Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Jernstedt’s letters and Wilamowitz’ two replies are transcribed for the first time and published here. Some details that should aid understanding of the letters are offered in the notes. The transcription of Wilamowitz’ notoriously difficult hand is, even in the most hopeless cases, possible, and, apart from minor abiding problems, unequivocal. While abstaining from a full critical commentary on the problem of intrusive stage directions discussed in the letters, and not wishing to take sides, the author would like to draw the readers’ attention to the way in which the gulf between the two approaches to criticism is wont to be left unbridged, however sound and convincing the arguments coming from the opposite side are.