In this paper I argue that the expression "zhivaja struny" (living chords) in the prooemium to the Slovo o Polku Igoreve is a literal translation of νεύροι ἔμψυχοι found in John Chrysostom's homily on the Holy Week (PG 55, 519ff.). In Chrysostom's text King David is playing a kithara that has no soul (ἀπὸ νευρῶν ἀψύχων); he is contrasted with the Church that has a kithara the chords of which are animated (ἔμψυχοι): these chords are the tongues of the faithful. (Further analysis of this metaphor in the patristic texts has shown that it goes back to the opposition Old Testament vs. New Testament expressed through the contrast of "body" and "soul" encoded by different musical instruments). In the "Slovo" it is the poet Bojan who strikes the "living chords"; the author of the "Slovo" thus placed a pagan singer in a Christian context. Chrystostom was one of the most widely read church fathers in the medieval Rus and even though no Old Russian translation of this homily has yet been discovered, it is very likely that it was the source of the otherwise enigmatic expression in the beginning of the Slovo o Polku Igoreve.

The subject of this note is a pseudonym of Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), a scholar of Roman history and Greek religion, a major Russian poet, a Kulturträger and a mystagogue. The word Ζακλης that has puzzled the biographers is of course a literal rendition of the Slavic name Vyache-slav "whose fame is far and wide, very famed" into Ancient Greek; the real question is what made the poet choose an obscure Aeolic version of the intensifying prefix δια. Interestingly, as the note shows, in his private correspondence prior to 1903 Ivanov used another pseudonym with the same meaning, Ἀριστοκλῆς. The year 1903 was a turning point in Ivanov's career - it is then that he started publishing prolifically on Greek religion and in particularly on Dionysus. Moreover, in letters to his partner, L. D. Zinovjeva-Annibal, Ivanov associates himself with the figure of Zagreus (Ζαγρεύς), the chief deity of the "Orphic religion" as it was understood by the Altertumswissenschaft of the time. Clearly, changing his nom de guerre from Ἀριστοκλῆς, potentially loaded with undesirable associations, to Ζακλῆς that had an Orphic ring to it (Ζακλ-ῆς ~ Ζαγρ-εύς) was just one more step in Ivanov's forging himself a new, mystical identity.