Simon Franklin: The Russian graphosphere

Simon Franklin’s book piques the reader’s curiosity from the very beginning: What is a graphosphere? What happened between 1450 and 1850 to make it a period of Russian (cultural) history? A title like this raises high expectations and the monograph fully lives up to them. It takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the world of letters and words in Russia, to imagined places filled with known and unknown objects.

In the first of eight chapters (“Concepts and Contexts”, pp. 1–18), the author resolves the puzzles presented by the title of the book. A graphosphere is a “space of the visible word”, it is “formed wherever words are encoded, recorded, stored, disseminated and displayed through visible signs” (p. 1). It is “a thing, not a theory” (p. 5), i.e., it exists in time and space, is subject to change and can be an object of description. Unlike the term “linguistic landscape”, it also includes non-public writing. It is more concrete, more physical than Lotman’s semiosphere, which has a rather “abstract character” (Lotman 1984: 6). The time frame Franklin chose for his study seems at first glance rather odd. The period from 1450 to 1850 is not one that traditionally occurs in periodisations of Russian history or culture. Yet, if we follow the author and look at it from a graphospheric perspective, the time frame makes sense. The mid-15th century saw a slow emergence of the early modern graphosphere in Russia, indicated not by one landmark event or innovation, but by a cluster of less tangible developments, such as the replacement of parchment by paper, the disappearance of birch-bark communication, the emergence of a public graphosphere (pp. 12–13). The transition from early modern graphosphere to modern Russian graphosphere was marked by the appearance of the first electric telegraph in Russia (1852), an innovation that “de-materialised” the word (p. 14) and enabled immediate long-distance communication in writing.

In Chapter 2 (“Production in the Graphosphere, I: Primary Writing”, pp. 19–60), Franklin describes the development and interrelation of objects of “primary writing”, i.e., manuscripts and printed texts, ecclesiastical and secular writing, books and “non-books”. The latter include primary ephemera and handwritten products that one would not consider a book, such as bureaucratic handwriting. The author discusses in detail the belated arrival, bumpy start and delayed spread of moveable type printing in Russia. He convincingly argues that one of the reasons that printing did not really take hold until the late 18th century was that printing was a near monopoly until the decree on free press (“O vol’nyx tipografijax”) issued by Catherine II in 1783, when the printing presses were owned or controlled by the state. This situation, so Franklin’s argument, prevented the emergence of a market for printed goods driven by competition and the mechanisms of supply and demand.

Chapter 3 (“Production in the Graphosphere, II: Secondary Writing”, pp. 61–101) is devoted to the description and classification of objects of “secondary writing”, that is writing “which is produced as part of an object, but is not its prime purpose” (p. 61).^[1] The diversity of secondary writing is enormous and the author does not claim to be exhaustive. Still, we get a very good picture of the various objects that bear inscriptions, their material, their function, the technologies used. Products of secondary writing include metal objects such as coins, medals and beard tokens, inscriptions on cannons and bells, stone plaques, as well as devotional embroidery, amongst others.

The fourth Chapter (“Scripts and Languages of the Graphosphere”, pp. 102–142) is about the linguistic aspects of the graphosphere. Franklin meticulously describes the dynamics of the interaction between the Cyrillic and the Latin scripts, which got even more complex after the introduction of the civil typeface (graždanskij šrift) in the early 18th century by Peter I, as well as the varying impact of languages other than Russian or Church Slavonic with Greek, Latin, German and French as the most important ones. The focus of this chapter lies on primary writing, but we also learn a good deal about multiple scripts and languages on artifacts such as bilingual Russian-German travel documents and Russian-German St Petersburg street signs in the 18th century (pp. 133–134).

In “Places and Times of Graphosphere” (chapter 5, pp. 143–183), the author not only discusses where and when which scripts and languages were visible but also how the words were perceived by potential readers and what functions the graphospheric objects fulfilled. The multiple semiotic dimensions of a graphosphere become evident in the section on the public graphosphere. In a public space, a potential addressee does not necessarily seek the graphic signs out, he or she often comes across them involuntarily. He or she might read them carefully, just browse them or ignore them completely. He or she might even not be able to decipher or understand them, but can relate to the graphospheric objects not for their contents but for other reasons, e.g., their aesthetic qualities. When discussing domestic graphospheres, Franklin emphasizes the paradox that books, although they carry more words than other graphospheric objects, add, in fact, only little to a graphosphere since they are usually closed and the words are not visible.

Chapter six bears the somewhat enigmatic title “Aspects of the Ecology of the Graphosphere” (pp. 184–225) but it is maybe the most exciting chapter in this extraordinary book. It is an insightful analysis of the interrelation between handwriting and printing, of how the technologies coexisted and competed. The author shows that the expansion of printed texts into the domain of handwriting was not a linear development but a complicated process that went back and forth. This becomes particularly clear when looking at “Reverse Technology Transfer” (pp. 199–205), as e.g., in the case of the West European newspapers that, in the 17th century, were translated and digested to manuscripts, which served, in turn, as an intelligence source for the government and had no other readers (p. 200 and passim). Franklin points out that technology reversal often goes along with a functional shift of the genre in question, the newspaper digests being a case in point (p. 204). Handwriting and printing meet in so-called hybrids, most typically represented by a printed blank form filled or to be filled with handwritten text. Franklin outlines the history of this “generally under-appreciated product of human civilisation” (p. 214), thereby giving important input for the research of a text type not only under-appreciated but also under-researched (pp. 214–225).

Chapter seven (“Aspects of Authority and Status in the Graphosphere,” pp. 226–267) is concerned with the social implications of graphosphere, in particular with the relation between technology and power as well as the role of fashion and taste. While handwriting was the “main technology of power” (p. 241), print was also an instrument of power used by the state, e.g., for exerting control over the mobility of the subjects when demanding printed passports for domestic travel.

In the short concluding chapter (“(In)conclusion”, pp. 268–274), the author muses about the possibility and possible merits of writing a history of the Russian graphosphere. He perceives his book as a collection of “mini-histories” without a “master-narrative”. However, even if we agree that there is no master-narrative, the volume treats several central recurring themes which, if taken together, form if not a master narrative, but a strong coherent frame: the intricate interaction of handwriting and print, the interaction of the various scripts and, last but not least, the “false starts” on several levels, most notably the many “non-Gutenberg moments” in the history of printing technology in Russia.

A graphosphere is a complicated, multi-layered semiotic system. Potentially multiple linguistic systems combine with the semiotics of the scripts and the social indexing of the graphospheric objects as wholes. Simon Franklin presents an in-depth analysis of all aspects of the Russian graphosphere across the four centuries. He brings together phenomena that have, at least to my knowledge, not been discussed as elements of the same conceptual space before and thus places them in a completely new perspective. Some of it has been described in other contexts, such as the socio-linguistic history of Russia, or printing in the 16th century, others, however, have only marginally, if at all, been the object of systematic and scientific description, for example the typology of printed forms, or the “non-books” and the objects of secondary writing, which Franklin systematically included in his investigation. Many of the objects and documents he describes do not exist anymore. In such cases a researcher must turn to indirect evidence e.g., catalogues and records, descriptions in documentary and literary texts, legislative documents, illustrations, paintings or contemporary meta-graphospheric discourse. Franklin is well aware of this fact and reliably names his sources and explains his reasoning, which could get somewhat speculative, e.g., when it comes to the graphospheric settings in private homes (pp. 168–183) or to calculating “fantasy statistics” to gauge the number of the forms of administrative writing across the four centuries (pp. 187–188). The material the author worked through is overwhelming, the interrelation of objects and facts at times quite intricate. This richness of matter naturally poses the risk of overburdening the reader. Franklin prevents a potential confusion that could arise from such density by portraying one or two exemplary cases that stand metonymically for the whole issue, cf. the short outline of the history of medical books to illustrate the history of printed learned books (pp. 190–191), the case of biblical albums that show the mechanism of reverse technology transfer (pp. 202–204) or the story of the Russian Bible Society, which caused considerable conflicts by issuing “Russian-only” translations of the Bible at the beginning of the 19th century (pp. 261–266), an episode that not only represents one of Russia’s “non-Gutenberg moments”, but also demonstrates how culturally and emotionally charged the choice between Russian and Church Slavonic was.

Franklin’s book is an outstanding contribution to the cultural history of Russia. It makes a captivating read not only for those concerned with Russian history, culture, sociolinguistics or multilingualism, but for anyone interested in visible words.