The Secret History of the Mongols by Francis Woodman Cleaves (PDF)

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Text: English (translation)

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐exactly as described.

⭐A valuable resource for those who are interested in the history of the Mongols, but you had better be really interested! The author was one of the best of the mid-20th century linguists and did a monumental job of tracking down the best version and then meticulously translating it into English. However, he is a Harvard antiquarian and it shows. The 50+ page introduction goes into excruciating detail on just how he determined which was that version, while promising even more details in volume two. Apparently it was never published, although since he waited twenty-five years after the first book was typeset to have it published, this may be a small mercy. He assumes that the reader is fluent in not only English, but also Chinese, French, Greek, Japanese and Russian as he quotes numerous lengthy passages in all these languages. He also goes to some length about selecting the King James 1611 version of English as the most appropriate one to use. Once you get into the book, it really does start out like the Old Testament with page after page after page of geneologies of the various tribes. It also shows what the Mongols thought was important, so you will hear all about how one of the predecessors of Genghis rode a white horse with a black stripe down its back and captured a grey falcon with a snare made from the horse’s tail hairs and trained it to hunt ducks, and later they devote an entire sentence to the destruction of the Khwarizim empire. If you’re fascinated by linguistics and the history of the Mongols, go for it. Just don’t expect a real page turner.

⭐Creation of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century represents an exeptional historical event for a number of reasons: a vast territory it spread to; dynamics and way how it was carried out; the persons involved who planned and realized it.Although many elements of this feat are without presedan and inimitable. The most amazing fact is that it has been done by generation of relatively not numerous nation, with completely modest technical tradition and of simple social level of organization. They were successful in achieving domination over many numerous nations on by far developed level of state-owned organization and technical promtitude.Except the narrow circle of specialists, it is widely believed that the members of this simple society only followed their herds for pasture, seizing new territories. Systematic analyses of these events indicate that everything was planned according simple but firm scheme, even from the early youth of the creator, strategist and the main realizer – Genghis Khan.”The Secret History of the Mongols” indicates that the creators were aware of greatness and the importance of the exploit, and the way of its realization, what had been one of the basic conditions for one generation to create and rule the greatest continued empire in the history. Therefore, “The Secret History of the Mongols” belongs to a rare jewel of recorded history, so the reader, who is not particularly acquainted with the Altaic adventures, can get satisfaction from rummaging in the intimate happenings of the milieu Genghis Khan grew up from, to a great and sacrosanct leader.Societies in the early stage of development of the organized cultural life are successful in communication with a very modest vocabulary. They use it very rationally with fine distinction, so they succeed to express very complex ideas, feelings and volitions in direct verbal contact. Developed societies replaced this way of expression with new-word and phrase-formation. Therefore, it is almost impossible to translate such a compact text for the narrow field of experts and for a broader reading audience.”The Secret History of the Mongols” contains a secret of Dantean strength that integrated and set in motion the scattered Mongolian hordes to change the World in its entirety, and they considerably succeeded in it. This strength can be comprehended or not. It can be only understood from the original thoughts of the creators themselves, and that’s what F W Cleaves unselfishly left to the reader. Being aware of problems complexity, where nuances express the quality, the translator decided to present the text in a scientific-spontaneous way, leaving the reader to reach the key-conclusions.The work represents in its entirety a glittering jewel in the crown of positive mediaeval historical literature.

⭐A fascinating subject but a painfully dry read. Cleaves’ translation, done in 1956, I believe, was obviously based on the arcane English grammar you’d find in the bible. Perhaps that was the way a lot of English translations were done in the 50s, or perhaps it was intentional to make his work seem more superficially scholarly or “lofty.” Whatever the reason, it was a mistake. It effectively makes this book take much longer to read than it would if rendered in more digestible everyday English, and the story becomes opaque when mired in this unwieldy language. It definitely could have been done better. I’m not sure how many other translations there are, but if they’re done like Cleaves’ is, this history is guaranteed to remain “secret” for generations to come.

⭐Cleaves translation of this work is very turn of the century, reminiscent of many of the early translators who attempted to totally reformat both the words and meter in order to presumably make them more readable to English speaking audiences. Unfortunately this ends up as a bastardized version of the original, and leaves the reader feeling as though they had just read a fairy tale, rather than a history.If you are seriously intersted in this book, buy the Paul Kahn translation instead. He retains the prose style of writing, as well as keeping closer to the original spelling and grammar.

⭐If you are interested in the Mongols and Mongolia this is one of the absolute musts!

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