The Tale of Ihor’s Campaign: an Epic Whose Original Was Lost to Fire in 1812

In the spring of 1185, Prince Ihor Sviatoslavych of Novhorod-Siverskyi (Новгород-Сіверський) led troops against the Cumans (Polovtsians), steppe nomads, and was heavily defeated and taken captive. The work that recounts this single defeat is the epic known in Japan under the title The Tale of Ihor’s Campaign. In Ukrainian it is called «Слово о полку Ігоревім» (The Tale of Ihor’s Host).

The author is unknown. The manuscript that was discovered burned in 1812, and the text we can read today is the one preserved in the 1800 printed edition. Because of this, a debate over whether it is truly a 12th-century work has continued for more than 200 years. The following is based on the entries “Slovo o polku Ihorevi” and “Ihor Sviatoslavych” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), University of Alberta, and on bibliographic records from Japan’s National Diet Library (as of September 2026).

The subject: the 1185 defeat

According to IEU, Ihor Sviatoslavych (1151–1202) was born into the princely house of Chernihiv, was prince of Novhorod-Siverskyi from 1178 to 1198, and prince of Chernihiv from 1198. With Cuman raids continuing against southern Rus, Ihor organized a campaign in 1185 without informing the grand prince of Kyiv. He won the first engagement, but was then surrounded and defeated on the banks of the Kayala River; he himself was taken prisoner but later escaped. Following this defeat, the Cumans are said to have ravaged the Pereiaslav region.

The work depicts, in order, the preparations for this campaign, the three days of fighting, the defeat, and Ihor’s escape. IEU, however, holds that the work’s central theme is not the martial exploits of a single prince but “the fate of the land of Rus.” The author reproaches the princes for fighting among themselves and putting their own interests ahead of the whole. The course of the Kyivan Rus period is covered in our article from Kyivan Rus to the 16th century.

What kind of writing is it?

IEU describes the work as combining epic and lyric styles of writing. Between the historical events are woven dreams, laments, nature responding to the fate of the protagonists, and the princes’ soliloquies. At the opening, the work invokes Boian, a bard who praised the princes of the 11th century. Nature often behaves as if human, helping or harming the characters.

One of the best-known passages is “The Lament of Yaroslavna,” in which Ihor’s wife Yaroslavna, thinking of her captured husband, calls out to the wind, the river, and the sun from atop the city wall. According to IEU, this passage alone has been rendered into Ukrainian on its own several times, including by Taras Shevchenko in 1860 (see our article on Shevchenko).

On its language, IEU writes that it is written in the same literary Rus language used in the chronicles of the time, but with many elements of the spoken language mixed in. Its vocabulary runs to just over 900 words. Most researchers consider the author to have come from Kyiv or Chernihiv, though some hold that he came from Halych (Galicia).

From the manuscript’s discovery to its loss

The fact that only a copy and printed editions survived, with no original, became the starting point for the debate that followed. IEU also presents the view of researchers who hold that the manuscript Musin-Pushkin found may itself already have been a copy that had passed through the hands of several generations of copyists — a possibility that, on this view, would explain the passages in the text that are difficult to interpret.

Genuine, or an 18th-century forgery?

According to IEU, from the early 19th century onward, some held that the absence of an original meant the work was a later forgery. In the 20th century, the French Slavist André Mazon believed it was written by either Abbot Joel or Bantysh-Kamensky, and Russia’s A. Zimin also held the forgery theory. More recently, a study by Edward Keenan, published in 2003 by Harvard University’s Ukrainian Research Institute, identifies the author as the Czech scholar Josef Dobrovský. IEU names both Keenan and George Grabowicz as contemporary researchers who consider the work a late-18th-century forgery.

IEU also sums up that most researchers consider the work genuine — a work of the late 12th century. The evidence cited for this is the 1307 marginal note mentioned in the table above, and the fact that the 15th-century Zadonshchina used it as a model. Both are treated as clues that the work was known before 1795.

Views also differ on the date of composition and the author. According to IEU, Omeljan Pritsak, in a study published posthumously in 2008, dated the work to 1202 and identified the author as Volodyslav Kormylchych, a Halych nobleman. Whether the forgery theory or the authenticity theory is correct remains unsettled to this day.

• Forgery theory: the original burned and cannot be verified. Held by Mazon, Zimin, Keenan (who names Dobrovský as the author), Grabowicz, and others
• Authenticity theory (held by most researchers): relies on clues such as the 1307 marginal note and its relationship with the 15th-century Zadonshchina
• Differences among those who consider it genuine: the date of composition (the late 12th century or 1202), and the author’s place of origin (Kyiv, Chernihiv, or Halych)

How it has been read in Ukraine

As a work of Kyivan Rus, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia have each counted it as part of their own literature. IEU writes that, for political reasons, research in this field has been led by Russian scholars, but that no serious researcher has disputed that the work was written on Ukrainian land, and that many of its word usages and poetic expressions have Ukrainian-language features.

The history of scholarship on the work also reflects the circumstances of the Soviet era. According to IEU, in the 1920s Mykola Skrypnyk tried to have the work recognized as a Ukrainian work. But by the end of the 1930s, research on it in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was halted, and it was confined to Russian-language studies commissioned by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Research resumed after Ukraine’s independence, producing Pavlo Salevych’s annotated translation in 1999, Borys Yatsenko’s translation and study in 2000, and Mykhailo Braichevsky’s study in 2005.

In 19th-century Ukraine, Mykhailo Maksymovych demonstrated the work’s connection to Ukrainian folk poetry. Filaret Kolessa is credited with showing the relationship between the work and the lament songs that later developed into dumy (epic songs sung by kobzars) (see our article on kobzars and the bandura).

Ukrainian translations, and works it inspired

IEU’s list of Ukrainian-language translations and adaptations begins with Ivan Vahylevych (completed 1836, published 1884), and continues through Maksymovych (1857), Ivan Franko (1873), Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1923), Maksym Rylsky (1939), and Ivan Ohiienko (1949), among others, totaling 29 people.

In music, the Russian composer A. Borodin used motifs from the work in his opera Prince Igor, and Mykola Lysenko wrote The Lament of Yaroslavna (see our article on Lysenko). In visual art, IEU cites Heorhii Narbut and Yakiv Hnizdovsky, among others, as having drawn on the work for subject matter (see our article on Narbut).

Reading it in Japanese

Bibliographic records at Japan’s National Diet Library list the following Japanese translations. Both have “Igori” in their titles, and Moriyasu Tatsuya’s edition has the subtitle “A Tragic Russian Hero’s Tale.” The titles are given here exactly as published. “Igori” is the Russian-based reading of the name; in Ukrainian it is “Ihor.” The work was written in the land of Kyivan Rus, which includes what is now northern Ukraine.

• Kimura Shōichi (trans.), イーゴリ遠征物語 [The Tale of Ihor’s Campaign], Iwanami Shoten (Iwanami Bunko), 1983
• Moriyasu Tatsuya, イーゴリ遠征物語：悲劇のロシア英雄伝 [The Tale of Ihor’s Campaign: A Tragic Russian Hero’s Tale], Chikuma Shobō, 1987

In Japan too, whether the work is a forgery was debated in 1961 between Nakamura Yoshikazu and Kizaki Ryōhei in academic papers (according to National Diet Library bibliographic records). Where to start reading Ukrainian literature is covered in our article on where to begin with Ukrainian literature.