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«Зло видучи, а добра не видучи»: поэтика и грамматика древнейшего русского покаянного стиха
The article deals with the graffito inscription No. 206 from St Sophia’s Cathedral in Novgorod. The inscription, dated as stemming from the second half of the 12th century, is the oldest example of original East Slavic non-liturgical poetry. Our analysis of the text takes its sources, language, and poetic organization into account. Refinements have been made to the transcription of the graffito and a reconstruction of the text as a whole is proposed. Features linking the inscription to the genre of penitential verse, found in 16th–17th century Russian literature, are discussed. A special section of the article is devoted to the main point of linguistic interest in the inscription: the formation of the present active participle of the verb viděti using an athematic pattern (vida, viduč-). This feature, which has never been attested before in Old Russian sources, boasts parallels with Old Czech.