Artikkelit Maaliskuu 3/98

Harri J. Kettunen

Relación de las cosas de San Petersburgo: An interview with Dr. Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, Part I

St. Petersburg is located 87 miles from the Finnish eastern border, and six hours by train from my home town Helsinki. St. Petersburg also accommodates the key figure in the modern decipherment of the Ancient Maya script, Dr. Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov. Living in the neighborhood, I thought of paying this Russian Champollion a visit. The following is the outcome of that sojourn.

Born in a village near Kharkov, Ukraine, some 400 miles south of Moscow, in the year 1922, Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov entered the world of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics led by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov a.k.a. Lenin, who soon died and was replaced by one Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili a.k.a. Stalin.

Serving in the Soviet forces as an artillery spotter during the Great Patriotic War from 1943 until 1945, Knorozov was also one of the soldiers to enter the capital of the Thousand Year Reich, Berlin. There he, among other comrades, visited the National Library, where they ran into boxes full of books waiting in vain to be sent somewhere else in Germany as ordered by the "fascist command", as Dr. Knorozov put it.

The boxes were eventually sent to Moscow, where Knorozov continued his studies and research after the war (he already had joined in at the University at the age of 17, when he was, among other things preoccupied with Egyptology). In one of the boxes they found a reproduction of the three then known Maya codices: Códices mayas by J. Antonio and Carlos A. Villacorta (1930).

The initiative for studying the Maya script came from Knorozov's professor Sergei Aleksandrovich Tokarev, who suggested that he should read the 1945 article in Ethnos by a German Paul Schellhas, entitled: "Die Entzifferung der Mayahieroglyphen: ein unlösbares Problem?" Knorozov's viewpoint was at that time, and still is, that "any possible system made by a man can be solved or cracked by a man".

Soon after the war Knorozov finished his studies at the University of Moscow and was driven to search for a job: "After the war there was not really a place to go, the situation was similar to the conditions now: there simply was not too many posts available.". However, the Museum of Ethnography in (at that time) Leningrad, lacked working force, so Knorozov moved to the former capital of Russia, the whilom town of Landskrona and Nyenskans of the Swedish Empire.

By the early 1950's, Knorozov had accomplished to get acquainted with the Maya glyphs from the research done by other scholars in the past decades. He also studied Diego de Landa's work on the Maya Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (ca. 1566), which was to be the topic for his doctoral dissertation (Diego de Landa: Soobshchenie o delakh v Yukatani, 1566), and used the "Landa alphabet" as a point of departure for cracking the system (for more detailed account of the Knorozovian method see "Relación de las cosas de San Petersburgo: An Interview with Dr. Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, Part II"; in Revista Xaman 4/98 (forthcoming) or "Landan 'aakkoset' ja mayahieroglyfitutkimus" in Kertomus Jukatanin asioista, LIKE, Helsinki 1997).

The article entitled "Drevniaia Pis'mennost Tsentral'noi Ameriki" ("Ancient Writing of Central America") was published in the Sovietskaya Etnografiya in October 1952, and soon caused the "Establishment" to quake. However, The "Establishment", led by John Eric Sydney Thompson, did not collapse for another twenty years. The reason for this was mostly political, and can be further studied in Michael Coe's superb Breaking the Maya Code (Thames & Hudson 1992). Knorozov sums up: "He [Thompson] dominated and nobody objected to him. It was like with Marx: you couldn't oppose. The same goes [went] with Thompson.".

Knorozov's endeavors in the field of ethnology and linguistics, and his revolutionary breakthrough in Maya epigraphy and life-long dedication to the Maya studies have not, however, financially paid off: the roughly 20 square meter apartment in the suburbs of St. Petersburg was so cold (in early February) that he had to wear an overcoat and a beret inside the house to keep warm. When he regretted that we (I and the interpreter) had to carry out the interview in such cold conditions, I thought of comforting him with a comment that it does not matter since it is always cold in Finland (which, of course, is not true), and he replied: "Yes, but it is supposed to be cold in Finland.".

Knorozov did not seem to mind the circumstances, or at least did not say he did. The only complaint was aimed at the papers and books on the floor and a missing desk: "The papers used to be on the table, but it was taken away.". Otherwise, the room was full of books - predominantly on Maya related topics - and most of them piled up on a book-shelf constructed out of plank.

Books and articles on Maya covering the majority of the material in Knorozov's house led to the aforethought question: whether the Maya research has been a favorite topic of his or merely a field among others. Knorozov replied: "Truly a field among others. My interest has always been in traveling: I have traveled from one place to another. I started with taking an interest in the Middle-Asia, where I have participated in numerous excavations. Also, I have directed an expedition in the Kurile Islands for ten years. After that I had to [NB] go to Mexico.".

When asking about the visit to Mexico, and whether it was an interesting experience, Knorozov replied: "As a matter of fact, no: I think back it with horror. There I was attacked by a German woman, and not any woman but a millionaire woman, who took me for a famous scientist and wanted to make a film about me, which she would then sell to Russia. We all have various conceptions. This way she managed to keep one third of my group occupied with the film-making. I tried to convince her to make the film at one go, but it did not happen. I thought they will keep on shooting for as long as I live, and possibly thereafter as well. One big joke the whole trip.".

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The second part of "Relación de las cosas de San Petersburgo: An interview with Dr. Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov" will be released in Revista Xaman's April edition.

The interview took place in the city of St. Petersburg on the 7th of February 1998.

Interpreter on-site: Jorma Turpeinen, a prominent authority of Russian language and culture.