Sirkka Havu
The puzzle of a great Russian Library
The year 2011 marks the 300-year jubilee of the first great Russian scientist, polymath, reformer of the Russian language and poet, Mikhail Vasiljevitch Lomonosov (1711–1765). The journey to find all of the missing pieces of this pioneering scientist's library has been long and colourful, and has continued down to the present.
Hidden within Count Orlov's library
In 1961 there came to light a note, written in 1853, which stated that after Lomonosov's death the Russian military officer Count Grigor Grigorevitch Orlov had bought the scientist's library and archives. It was well known that the largest part of Orlov's library had come to Finland in the nineteenth century, as part of a wave of generous gifts from notable individuals and institutions to the newly established Library of the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki.
The largest of these gifts, consisting of 24,000 volumes, was the donation of Paul Alexandroff (1808–1857), a cavalry captain and the son of Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovitch (1779–1831). Paul Alexandroff's gift included two imperial collections inherited from his father: the Great Library of Konstantin Pavlovitch and the Library of the Marble Palace, "ci-devant la Bibliothèque du Comte d'Orloff".
Count Orlov's library was the smaller of these two collections, containing around 2,600 volumes. Orlov had acquired the original library of the Marble Palace from Catherine II, along with the Marble Palace itself. The major part of the library consisted of the collections of senior eighteenth-century Russian officials, and contained books from well-known Russian libraries: those of Andrei Artamanovitch Matveyev and Grigorii Feodorovitch Dolgorukov, and, as it was later discovered, of Mikhail Vasiljevitch Lomonosov.
An international sensation
The discovery in Helsinki of the books belonging to Lomonosov's library in Helsinki caused a minor international sensation for Russian book historians had long been looking those volumes.
The Russian researchers came to Helsinki and together with Finnish librarians undertook to locate the books in the stacks of the Helsinki University Library (renamed the National Library of Finland in 2006).
The joint effort led to the return of 52 volumes from Lomonosov's library, with his autograph markings, to Russia in 1977. In exchange the Helsinki University Library received modern Russian literature. Most of these 52 volumes dealt with physics and chemistry, but there were also texts by classical authors in Latin. In fact, the main language of these books was Latin, along with German, French and Russian.
A new Russian-Finnish search for the books
The year 2009 saw the start of the "Mikhail Lomonosov's Library" project, a new phase in the search to identify more books with Lomonosov's autograph markings in the National Library collections.
The work was carried out by the librarian Linda Tuominen and myself at the National Library, with the help of Dr. Irina Lebedeva from the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who visited the Library twice during the project. The visits were important for the project's success, first, because we could discuss with her the most effective means of searching for the books owned by Lomonosov, and second, because she showed us the kinds of markings that Lomonosov typically made in his books. In addition, the opportunity for her to study the books we had found was essential.
We started our search in the stacks that represented Lomonosov's scientific interests, particular attention to books printed before 1765 in the main thematic sections of chemistry, botany and linguistics. The systematic sections of philosophy, geology, geography, travel accounts, mathematics, physics and natural sciences were searched less methodically.
We compared all the books we found with the kinds of markings made by Lomonosov as recorded in three different catalogues:
G.M. Korovin Biblioteka Lomonosova. Moskva: Izdatel'stvo AN SSSR, 1961;
Catalogue des livres de la Bibliothèque du Palais de Marbre (ci-devant la Bibliothèque du Comte d'Orloff);
Catalogue des livres de la Grande Bibliothèque de son Altesse Impériale Monseigneur le Césarewitch Grand Duc Constantin Pawlowitch.
The most reliable of these catalogues was that of the Marble Palace, but some of Lomonosov's books had also apparently been appropriated by the library of the Gatchina Palace.
D. Joh. Friedrich Henkel, Flora Saturnizans, die Verwandschaft des Pflanzen - mit dem Mineralreich, nach der Naturalhistorie und Chymie aus vielen Anmerkungen und Proben. Neue verbesserte Auflage. Leipzig, Johann Heinrich Gross 1755.
Title page, frontispiece and binding with marbled pastedown. On the frontispiece citation "Quod est Superius" taken from the alchemical text "Quod est inferius est sicut quod est superius" (As above so below).
Enlightening and educational
The process of looking for Lomonosov's books in the National Library has added greatly to our knowledge of the history of the Library's collections.
For instance, we now know that most of the books that could have belonged to Lomonosov have turned out to have belonged to other Russian notables and their magnificent libraries. One of these was Johann Albrecht von Korff (1697–1766), diplomat and former president of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences. There were also books from the library of the princely family Dolgorukii, with the gilt armorial bookplate of the Dolgorukii tooled on bindings of brown leather with gold-tooled spines. Furthermore, the stamp of Moscow University and handwritten ownership markings of Vilnius University or various Polish Jesuit colleges often appeared on the title page of these books. There were also many books with various personal names, such as A. A. Matveev (1666–1728), Christian Gottlieb Jöcher (1694–1758), along with Swedish and Finnish names.
We also learned that there were no special or outstanding features on the books from Lomonosov's library. His books were mostly bound in brown leather or had half-leather bindings with gold-tooled spines and gilt spine titles, typical of an eighteenth century scholarly library.
However, Lomonosov's books do have a special feeling of their own, a certain aura. Perhaps this feeling has something to do with the way Lomonosov marked the important passages he had read or underlined significant sentences in a heavy hand.
Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica.
Editio ultima. Amstelodami: sumptibus Societatis 1723.
Lomonosov's markings in Russian on page 466.
After this rather intensive period of research, which spanned many decades, it has been educational and enlightening to piece together the patchy history of Mikhail Lomonosov's library and to establish that the works of this great Russian scientist have indeed been present in the National Library of Finland since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
It will also be a joy to see the new discoveries from the "Mikhail Lomonosov's Library" project published in an anniversary volume to celebrate his 300-year jubilee.
Sirkka Havu is a Special librarian at the National Library of Finland.
Who was Lomonosov?
A brief history of the National Library of Finland
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HIGHLIGHTS
Mikhail Vasiljevitch Lomonosov (1711-1765)
Gold tooled spine, red leather label with gilt text "DISSERTATIONES" and remains of a paper label.
The marbled leather binding was ordered from a professional book binder by Lomonosov himself and it contains a collection of dissertations by the following physicians and natural scientists: Johann Gottlob Lehmann,
Johann Gottfried Pietsch,
Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein,
Jacob Theodor Klein,
Anton Friedrich Büsching,
Zacharias Theobald.
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