Initial Period: Diaries. Correspondence

The book publishes documentaries from the archive of Academician Viktor Maximovich Zhirmunsky (1891-1971), an outstanding domestic scientist, a specialist in a wide range of philological disciplines: in German philology, poetics, Russian literature, comparative literary critic, folklore. The first part of the book contains the youth diaries of Zhirmunsky, relating to the period of his training in the famous St. Petersburg Tenishevsk School. The diaries make it possible to look into the inner world of the future scientist, to get acquainted with his then literary hobbies that have formed his personality and further circle of interest. The diaries also reflect the weekdays of Tenishevsky School, the turbulent events of the first Russian revolution of 1905 and the impressions of the trips of the Zhirmun family to Germany. Two further parts of the book contain the correspondence of Zhirmunsky with famous domestic literary criticism - professors of the St. Petersburg-Leningrad University V.V. Hippius (1894-1942) and A.A. Smirnov (1883-1962) The letters reflect the scientific and literary life of Russia of the 1910s and 1920s. All documentary materials are equipped with an extensive scientific apparatus (comments and articles) All documents are published for the first time