Anthology of Russian literature from the earliest period to the present time, volume 1 (of 2) : $b From the tenth century to the close of the eighteenth centuryWiener, Leo
General
Anthology of Russian literature from the earliest period to the present time, volume 1 (of 2) : $b From the tenth century to the close of the eighteenth century
Wiener, Leo
Russia -- Literary collections; Russian literature -- Translations into English
Me and my brother George, of blessed memory, they brought up like
vagrants and children of the poorest. What have I not suffered for
want of garments and food! And all that against my will and as did
not become my extreme youth. I shall mention just one thing: once in
my childhood we were playing, and Prince Iván Vasílevich Shúyski was
sitting on a bench, leaning with his elbow against our father’s bed,
and even putting his foot upon it; he treated us not as a parent, but
as a master ... who could bear such presumption? How can I recount all
the miseries which I have suffered in my youth? Often did I dine late,
against my will. What had become of the treasure left me by my father?
They had carried everything away, under the cunning pretext that they
had to pay the boyár children from it, but, in reality, they had kept
it back from them, to their own advantage, and had not paid them off
according to their deserts; and they had also held back an immense
treasure of my grandfather and father, and made it into gold and silver
vessels, inscribing thereupon the names of their parents, as if they
had been their inheritance.... It is hardly necessary to mention what
became of the treasure of our uncles: they appropriated it all to
themselves! Then they attacked towns and villages, tortured the people
most cruelly, brought much misery upon them, and mercilessly pillaged
the possessions of the inhabitants....
When we reached the age of fifteen, we, inspired by God, undertook to
rule our own realm and, with the aid of almighty God, we ruled our
realm in peace and undisturbed, according to our will. But it happened
then that, on account of our sins, a fire having spread, by God’s will,
the royal city of Moscow was consumed. Our boyárs, the traitors whom
you call martyrs, whose names I shall purposely pass over in silence,
made use of the favourable opportunity for their mean treachery,
whispered into the ears of a stupid crowd that the mother of my mother,
Princess Anna Glínski, with all her children and household, was in
the habit of extracting men’s hearts, and that by a similar sorcery
she had put Moscow on fire, and that we knew of her doings. By the
instigation of these our traitors, a mass of insensate people, crying
in the manner of the Jews, came to the apostolic cathedral of the holy
martyr Dimítri of Selún, dragged out of it our boyár Yúri Vasílevich
Glínski, pulled him inhumanly into the cathedral of the Assumption,
and killed the innocent man in the church, opposite the metropolitan’s
place; they stained the floor of the church with his blood, dragged his
body through the front door, and exposed him on the market-place as a
criminal,--everybody knows about this murder in the church. We were
then living in the village of Vorobévo; the same traitors instigated
the populace to kill us under the pretext (and you, dog, repeat the
lie) that we were keeping from them Prince Yúri’s mother, Princess
Anna, and his brother, Prince Mikhaíl.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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