Lev Loseff: In Memoriam

[John Kopper]

In Memoriam Lev Loseff (1937-2009)

When Lev Loseff arrived in America in 1974, his arm gently twisted by a totalitarian 
regime with which we are familiar, neither he nor the world knew that the jolt of 
emigration would startle into speech a major creative talent.  That voice was stilled on 
May 6, 2009, when Lev Loseff died following a prolonged illness.  He was 71.  Loseff 
leaves behind grieving friends, colleagues, fellow writers, and legions of readers, 
particularly in Russia, who have devotedly followed the poetry of this Russian Horace.

Lev Loseff received his Ph.D. in Slavic from the University of Michigan in 1981, a school 
to which he was drawn because his good friend Joseph Brodsky was there at the time.  
After teaching for a year in the Department of German and Russian at Michigan State 
University, he embarked upon a career in the Department of Russian Language and 
Literature at Dartmouth College which would last thirty years—an academic post which he 
filled with loyalty and unwavering dedication.  From 2000 till his death, Loseff served as 
department chair, steering us through the turbulent enrollment cycles our field has 
experienced, and building the program through important faculty additions.  

Nearly forty when he emigrated, Lev Loseff came late both to poetry and to academia.  
Perhaps to simplify the inherent complexities of his novel dual career, he kept the poet 
and the professor close.  Those near to Loseff knew a man as arch as his poetry—both 
wry and self-effacing, quietly brilliant, and serenely erudite.  The scholarly world knows 
his innovative study "The Beneficence of Censorship" (1984), "Iosif Brodskii: opyt 
literaturnoi biografii" (2006), several edited anthologies of essays on Brodsky’s poetry, 
and his articles on Akhmatova, Pasternak, and Tsvetaeva, among others. We at 
Dartmouth abused Lev the scholar shamelessly. He was an unbounded encyclopedia of 
Russian letters.

Those who have long tracked his poetic voice recognize Lev Loseff as the author of 
"Chudesnyi desant" (1985), "Tainyi sovetnik" (1987), "Novye svedeniia o Karle i Klare" 
(1996), "Posleslovie" (1998), "Sisyphus redux" (2000), and "Kak ia skazal" (2005).  His 
Dartmouth students, several of them on their way to becoming professors of Russian 
studies in their own right, will best remember Professor Loseff for his course Russian 71, 
an advanced senior seminar in Russian poetry. For more than a generation of Dartmouth 
undergraduates, this class represented their culminating intellectual experience in the 
field of Russian. Lev’s colleagues at Dartmouth, his friends, and his many students and 
former students will miss the unswerving gentility, marvelous humor, and unruffled, self-
contained tranquility with which he lived his rich life. We extend our condolences to his 
wife Nina, and children Dimitry and Marie.

The family will be holding a memorial service in June in New York City, and details will 
be announced on SEELANGS.

Воскресенье. Тепло. Кисея занавески полна
восклицаньями грузчика, кои благопристойны и кратки,
мягким стуком хлебных лотков, т.е. тем, что и есть тишина.
Спит жена. Ей деревья снятся и грядки.

Бесконечно начало вовлечения в эту игру
листьев, запаха хлеба, занавески кисейной,
солнца, синего утра, когда я умру,
воскресенья.  (Novye svedeniia, 1996)

Voskresen'e.  Teplo.  Kiseia zanaveski polna
vosklitsan'iami gruzchika, koi blagopristoiny i kratki,
miagkim stukom khlebnykh lotkov, t.e. tem, chto i est' tishina.
Spit zhena. Ei derev'ia sniatsia i griadki.  

Beskonechno nachalo vovlecheniia v etu igru
list'ev, zapakha khleba, zanaveski kiceinoi,
solntsa, sinego utra, kogda ia umru,
voskresen'ia.

John M. Kopper
Acting Chair of Russian
Dartmouth College

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