У російській версії “Чорної ради” П. Куліш твердив, що наведені в романі епітафії з надгробків
Успенського собору Києво-Печерської лаври він узяв із книжки Атанасія Кальнофойського
“Тератургіма” (1638) і сам їх переклав. Однак порівняння текстів показує, що переклади взяті з
праць Михайла Максимовича та Євгенія Болховітінова. Так само Куліш не посилається на працю
Максимовича, використану в київських епізодах роману. Цей факт треба розглядати в контексті
системи покликань, яку письменник вибудовує в “Чорній раді”: між історичним романістом і
зображеною епохою не повинно бути посередників.
Both in the magazine publication of 1846 (“Kyivan Pilgrims of the 17th Century”) and in the
Russian 1857 version of “The Commoners’ Council” Panteleimon Kulish claimed that the epitaphs
from the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra were taken from Afanasii Kalnofoyskyi’s
“Teraturgema” (1638) and translated into Russian. However, the comparison of the texts shows that
the translations were actually taken from Mykhailo Maksymovych’s paper “On Tombstones in Pechersk
Monastery” (1840). Other quotations with references to the “Teraturgema” were borrowed from the
work of metropolitan bishop Yevhenii (Bolkhovitinov) “Description of Kyiv Perchersk Lavra” (1826).
The Kyivan episodes of “The Commoners’ Council” were mainly based on two Maksymovych’s
papers from “Kiievlianin” (“The Kyivan”) almanac (1840), the aforementioned one and “Overview
of Old Kyiv”. Kulish did not mention any of these sources in the novel’s footnotes. This fact should
be considered in the context of the system of references that the writer built in “The Commoners’
Council”. Unlike many authors who worked in Walter Scott tradition, Kulish didn’t use footnotes in “The
Commoners’ Council” in order to acknowledge and justify certain anachronisms and time distortions.
The writer referred to the testimonies of the witnesses of historical events, even after he had received
an information from the people of the 19th century (Shevchenko, for instance), to the folkloric texts, and
his own observations. The works of historians were important for him as far as they offered published
collections of the authentic documents, but not as the sources of concepts. No intermediaries could
stand between the historian novelist and the depicted age.
