Viktor Maksimovich Zhirmunsky (; 2 August 1891 – 31 January 1971; also ''Wiktor Maximowitsch Schirmunski, Zirmunskij, Schirmunski, Zhirmunskii;'' ) was a Soviet and Russian literary historian and

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

Life

Born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

in 1891 to a

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

family, Zhirmunsky was a professor at universities in

Saratov Saratov ( , ; , ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River. Saratov had a population of 901,361, making it the List of cities and tow ...

and

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. He was a representative of Russian formal studies, though in certain respects he was less inclined to accept formalism as sufficient for all literary analysis. His critique of the ahistorical nature of formalism, in the introduction to his translation of Oskar Walzel′s ''Die künstlerische Form des Dichtwerkes'' (1919) helped speed the end of Russian formalism's initial phase, as critics began to accommodate their work to the developing ideology of the Soviet regime. Though originally trained in German

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

, he started to research the

epics Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film defined by the spectacular presentation of human drama on a grandiose scale Epic(s) ...

of the Asian people of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

after he was settled in

Tashkent Tashkent (), also known as Toshkent, is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uzbekistan, largest city of Uzbekistan. It is the most populous city in Central Asia, with a population of more than 3 million people as of April 1, 2024. I ...

following the evacuation of

. In particular, he studied the aqyn of Kazakh and Kyrgyz culture. This research created a foundation that allowed

Yeleazar Meletinsky Eleazar Moiseevich Meletinskii (also ''Meletinsky'' or ''Meletinskij''; ; 22 October 1918, Kharkiv – 17 December 2005, Moscow) was a Russian scholar famous for his seminal studies of folklore, literature, philology and the history and theory of ...

to make his considerations on the relations between

myth Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

and epos. In April 1948, Zhirmunsky was among the scholars and critics who recanted their supposed "comparativism" and " Veselovskyism" in

Andrei Zhdanov Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov ( rus, Андрей Александрович Жданов, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪdʑ ˈʐdanəf, a=Ru-Андрей Жданов.ogg, links=yes; – 31 August 1948) was a Soviet politician. He was ...

′s purge of that year. "Comparativism," or the study of possible borrowing and dissemination of motifs and stories among cultures, was deprecated. In response, Zhirmunsky developed a historical-typological theory, according to which such similarities arose not from historical influence but rather from a similarity of social and cultural institutions. He died in Leningrad in 1971.

Works

*''Skazanie ob Alpamise i bogatirskaya skazka'', Moskva 1960 *''Narodnij geroicheskiy epos'', Moskva 1962 Related works: * E.M. Meletinskij, ''Proischoždenie geroičeskogo eposa'', Moskva 1963

Notes

References

External links

Viktor Maksimovic Zirmunskij
*
V.M. Žirmunskij: Russian Literature: A special issueThe Lyrical Heritage of the Young V.M. Zhirmunskii
1891 births 1971 deaths 20th-century Russian historians 20th-century Russian male writers Corresponding fellows of the British Academy Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin Members of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters Academic staff of Saratov State University Recipients of the Order of Lenin Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Dialectologists Russian Germanists Russian formalism Russian textbook writers Linguists from Russia Linguists from the Soviet Union Russian literary historians 20th-century Russian Jews Soviet literary historians Soviet male writers {{russia-linguist-stub Soviet Jews Academic staff of Herzen University Soviet textbook writers Jewish Russian writers