Mikhail Gasparov
Encyclopedia
Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov ' onMouseout='HidePop("92644")' href="/topics/Moscow">Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 – November 7, 2005, Moscow) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n philologist and translator, renowned for his studies in classical philology
Classical philology
Classical philology is the study of ancient Greek and classical Latin. Classical philology has been defined as "the careful study of the literary and philosophical texts of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds." Greek and Latin literature and civilization have traditionally been considered...

 and the history of versification
Versification
Versification may be*the art of making verses, see poetry*the theory of the phonetic structure of verse, see meter *the rendition of a prose work into verse, especially of classical works during the Middle Ages, see medieval poetry...

, and a member of the informal Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School
Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School
Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School is a scientific school of thought in the field of semiotics that was formed since 1964 and led by Juri Lotman. Among the other members of this school were Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Mikhail Gasparov, Alexander Piatigorsky, Isaak...

. He graduated from Moscow State University
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...

 in 1957 and worked at the Institute of World Literature, the Russian State University for the Humanities
Russian State University for the Humanities
The Russian State University for the Humanities , is a university in Moscow, Russia with over 5500 students. It was created in 1991 as the result of the merger of the Moscow Public University and the Moscow State Institute for History and Archives The Russian State University for the Humanities...

 and the Russian Language Institute
Russian Language Institute
The V.V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences is the language regulator of the Russian language. It is based in Moscow and it is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.It was founded in 1944.-See also:* The V.V...

 in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. In 1992 Gasparov was elected a full member of the Russian Academy of Science.

In 1995 Mikhail Gasparov was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation
State Prize of the Russian Federation
State Prize of the Russian Federation is a state honorary prize established in 1992 as the substitute for the USSR State Prize. In 2004 the rules for selection of laureates and the status of the award was significantly changed making them closer to such awards as Nobel Prize or the Soviet Lenin...

.

In 1997 he shared the Little Booker Prize with Aleksandr Goldstein for their publications analysing Russian literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...

 from a historical-philosophical point of view.

In 1999 Gasparov was awarded the Andrei Bely Prize
Andrei Bely Prize
The Andrei Bely Prize is the oldest independent literary prize awarded in Russia. It was established in 1978 by the staff of Hours, the largest samizdat literary journal in Leningrad, to recognize excellence in three categories: prose, poetry, and theory...

 for his essay collection Notes and excerpts .
Gasparov was also a poet. He published translations of classical and modern European poetry, yet only one of his own poems was published during his lifetime.

Gasparov was a member of the editorial board of Literary Monuments book series, journals Journal of Ancient History
Journal of Ancient History
The Journal of Ancient History is a Russian bulletin founded in 1937. It publishes articles mainly on Ancient Orient, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and recent archeological digs. It comes out four times a year. Circulation: over 3,000 copies...

, Literary Research , Elementa (USA), Rossica Romana (Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

).

Mikhail Gasparov published about 300 articles, translations and other works, including the monographs Fable in Antiquity , Modern Russian Versification , Overview of the History of Russian Versification , Overview of the History of European Versification .

During his last years Gasparov was actively engaged in publishing the collected works of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam
Osip Mandelstam
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...

.

Commemorating Mikhail Gasparov, the Russian State University for the Humanities organises annual conferences dedicated to the main fields of Gasparov's academic research -- classical philology
Classical philology
Classical philology is the study of ancient Greek and classical Latin. Classical philology has been defined as "the careful study of the literary and philosophical texts of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds." Greek and Latin literature and civilization have traditionally been considered...

 and Russian literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Publications

  • Gasparov M. L. A History of European Versification (transl. by G. S. Smith & Marina Tarlinskaja
    Marina Tarlinskaja
    Marina Tarlinskaja is a Russian-born American linguist specializing in the statistical analysis of verse. She uses the Russian linguistic-statistical method which, at the most basic level, counts the occurrences of word-stresses in ictic and non-ictic positions in lines of verse...

    ). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. ISBN 0198158793.
West, M. L. Review of A History of European Versification by M. L. Gasparov; G. S. Smith; M. Tarlinskaja. The Classical Review,%3AAHOEV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0 Review of A History of European Versification by M. L. Gasparov; G. S. Smith; M. Tarlinskaya]. The Modern Language Review, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Jan., 1999), pp. 284-285.

External links

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