В. М. Жирмунский и эпоха сталинизм
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文摘
The Soviet epoch was the period of academician Viktor M. Zhirmunskii's (1891–1971) most prolific creative activity. European literature (mostly German and English literature) became the main subject of his scholarly interests. The most prominent works by Zhirmunskii dealt with two great figures of those literatures: J.W. Goethe and Lord Byron. In 1922 a collection of Byron's dramatic works was edited and prepared by the publishing house “Vsemirnaia Literatura” (“World Literature”) with an introductory article written by Zhirmunskii. (V.M. Zhirmunskii, Zhizn' i tvorchestvo Bairona [Life and Works of G.G. Byron]). The same year Goethe's Faust was also published, translated by N.A. Kholodkovskii, with an introductory article by Zhirmunskii. A distinctive peculiarity of these papers was a deep philosophical understanding of the works by Goethe and Byron. The main problem of Faust, as stressed in the article by Zhirmunskii, was an idea of “the perpetual urge of the human soul which reveals the divine nature of a human being”. In his article about Byron, Zhirmunskii deals with the problem of so-called “Byronism”, as well as the rebelliousness and individualism of Byron's passionate characters. Zhirmunskii deals with the same problems in his later works on Goethe and Byron written in 1940 for two volumes: History of German Literature and History of English Literature. However, in the full swing of Stalin's epoch a scholar had to censor his writings, to change definitions, and to somewhat soften certain descriptive statements remaining, altogether, faithful to his overall uncompromising scholarly credo.