lexicography/pher as a literary/philosophical motif

[Vitalich, Kristin]

Dear Toma,

This sounds like a very interesting project --  dictionaries are a tremendous, unexplored resource for understanding the intellectual spirit of the times in which they were compiled.

Thanks to Ellen for mentioning my dissertation. I also have an article on Dal' you may find interesting in Ab Imperio 2/2007.

I'm still working on dictionaries -- currently their creative political uses in a comparison of the Petrashevtsy's lexicographical projects and a couple of contemporary examples (both Russian and non-).

Drop me a line if you want to chat about approaching the dictionary as literature!

Best wishes and good luck with the project,

Kristin 



-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of Toma Tasovac
Sent: Sat 6/21/2008 1:34 AM
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] lexicography/pher as a literary/philosophical motif
 
Many thanks to Olga, Alexandra, Frank, Jan, Russel, Bob and William  
for excellent suggestions. I am getting giddy with possibilities that  
the works mentioned in this thread offer.

A lexicographer is, in many ways, like Benjamin's collector: somebody  
who takes objects (in this case -- words) out of their natural  
context and in doing so clears a space for a different kind of  
meaning. The dictionary is surely a model for the organization of  
knowledge that may be  driven by an innate fear of infinity, but it  
is also a text like any other, which means that it has its own  
remainders, i.e. moments which are left out by the analytic mapping  
of language. If a lexicographer is a madman -- figuratively and  
sometimes, quite literally -- there is, of course, method to this  
madness, and that's what makes his whole enterprise so fascinating.

Ellen Elias-Bursac also suggested to me yesterday off-list an  
interesting dissertation by Kristin Vitalich, "Lexicographic doxa:  
The writing of Slavic dictionaries in the nineteenth century" (UCLA,  
2005) -- available on ProQuest -- about Karadzic, Dal' and Linde.  
It's about how three important Slavic dictionaries in the 19th  
century suggested a common Romantic ideology and forged a common,  
Greater Slavic cultural identity, without necessarily elaborating or  
fully committing to either.

I have no doubt that I will die a fool (durakom pomriu), but for the  
time being I'll keep reading them dictionaries... :)

All best,
Toma

On 21.06.2008., at 07.01, Olga Meerson wrote:

> I forgot the most important, near contemporary book by Mikhail  
> Leonovich Gasparov-- Zapiski i vypiski (arranged alphabetically and  
> deliberately selectively). It is so much fun to read other people's  
> suggestiions! You live and learn, or as the Russian say, vek zhivi-- 
> vek uchis'--durakom pomresh'. But seriously, even the discussion  
> itself is very instructive.
> o.m.

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