Sonny, Adolf Izrailevich

Born in the family of a Lutheran pastor. He received his higher education at the Russian Historical and Philological Seminary at the University of Leipzig (opened in 1878 ), in which teachers of classical (ancient) languages ​​were trained for Russian gymnasiums (he graduated in 1882 ). Since July 1882 he began teaching activities at the 5th Gymnasium in St. Petersburg, teaching ancient Greek and Latin. Then, after spending two years on a foreign scientific business trip, on June 6, 1887, he defended at the University of Derpt the dissertation “De Massiliensium rebus quaestiones [On Massilian Controversial Things]” (Derpt, 1887 ) for a master's degree in ancient classical philology.

From 1.07.1887 Sonny began to work at the Imperial University of St. Vladimir in Kiev, giving lectures on the department of classical philology as a privat-docent (with a fee of 1200 rubles per year), and soon, on March 2, 1889 , by the Highest Command, he was appointed acting extraordinary professor in the same department. On May 20, 1897 , A. I. Sonny defended his doctoral dissertation “Ad Dionem Chrisostomum analecta [To fragments of Dion Chrysostom]” (Kiev, 1897 ), which, like the master's, was written in Latin, for which he was awarded Doctorate in Classical Philology. July 26, 1897 The Highest Order for the Civil Department (No. 61) is appointed full professor of the University of St. Vladimir , December 21, 1898 approved the rank of state councilor . In 1907, Sonny received a business trip abroad “for scientific purposes”, in February 1909 , after 25 years of service under the Ministry of Public Education (in accordance with the Charter of Russian Universities in 1884 ), he remained in office for another 5 years, in March 1909 - delegate from the University of St. Vladimir at the International Archaeological Congress in Cairo. Since January 1, 1911, “for excellence”, he has been approved as a full state adviser . On July 1, 1912, the Minister of Education approved the title of Honored Ordinary Professor, and in February 1914 a ministerial pension was awarded for the 30-year length of service in the amount of 3,000 rubles. in year. He was awarded the orders of St. Vladimir 3rd art (1914) and 4th art. ( 1908 ), St. Anne 2nd ( 1904 ) and 3rd art. ( 1896 ), St. Stanislav of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries ( 1891 , 1900 , 1917 ).

For many years, A. I. Sonia was dean of the Faculty of History and Philology and professor of the Department of Classical Philology of Higher Women’s Courses in Kiev, taught a course in the history of ancient Greek literature at the historical and philological department of Evening Higher Women’s Courses Adelaide Zhekulina (current school No. 138), headed Kiev branch of the Society of Classical Philology and Pedagogy.

Spouse A.I. Sonny - Marta Alexandrovna Fidler (wedding: Transfiguration Cathedral in Vyborg , 04.29.1891). Children: Ada (1892), Eugene (1895), Nina (1900), George (1902). He died of typhus in Kiev, was buried in the Lutheran section of the Baykovsky cemetery in Kiev (the grave was not preserved).

The main focus of Sonny's scientific activity was the elucidation of textual particularities (readings and discrepancies) in the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors. These particulars at one time made it possible to clarify and thereby deepen subject knowledge in the field of classical philology, the centers of which were located mainly at universities in Germany and Italy. It cannot be said that Russian classical professors enriched classical philology in these countries: they enriched the world classical philology, which is unimaginable without the contribution of Russian scientists. The number of specialists of such a level as A. I. Sonny was few in Russia (Moscow School of Classical Philology: F. F. Sokolov, P. V. Nikitin, S. A. Zhebelev, etc.). His master's and doctoral dissertations, written and published in Latin, are a painstakingly compiled list of private but witty textual observations (either on heretical movements of the Massilians, or on the speeches of Dion Christostom), which in total allow publishers to clarify certain difficult places in published texts (the famous Berlin Teibner Publishing House - Bibliotheca Teubneriana - used the services of Sonny, publishing Dion, and this indirectly indicates the quality of his research), comment on their more not meaningful than before. In this - scientific and practical - sense, his works on classical philology remain relevant.

Adolf Izrailevich is best known for participating in the translation together with Yu. A. Kulakovsky of “Roman History” (Res gestae) by Ammianus Marcellinus (Kiev, 1906-1908, reprints: St. Petersburg: Aleteya, 1994 and reprints). However, it is not entirely correct to call this translation, published in three parts in Kiev, the translation of “Kulakovsky and Sonny”: Kulakovsky translated the text of Ammianus on his own, and Sonny only helped in the translation of the first six books (out of eighteen), and then only advised Kulakovsky on some dark issues. Kulakovsky himself denotes the degree of participation of Sonny in their joint re-endeavor efforts: “When I published the first issue, I had an active employee in the person of my esteemed colleague prof. A.I. Sonny. The second issue is published under my only name, as the current training sessions and other works did not allow my friend to find time to participate in the final processing of my translation and preparing it for printing. But in some of my difficulties and doubts A. I. willingly came to my aid, for which I bring him my sincere gratitude here ”( Y. Kulakovsky Foreword // Ammian Marcellin . History / Translated from Latin by Y. Kulakovsky. Kiev, 1907. Part 2.P. IX). Sonny's works devoted to mythological (“On the issue of the cult of Egyptian deities on the northern Black Sea coast”) and ethnographic (“Woe and share in a folk tale”) issues remain of interest.

In 1910, Sonny was one of the initiators of the organization of the Archaeological Institute in Kiev: an invitation was signed, signed by him as the secretary of the group of founders of this institution, addressed to Academician V. S. Ikonnikov. At the end of December 1911, Sonny, together with Yu. A. Kulakovsky and I. A. Lezius, was a delegate to the First All-Russian Congress of Teachers of Ancient Languages ​​in St. Petersburg, but, unlike Lecius and Kulakovsky, he did not speak at the congress. In 1912, the state of teaching classical languages ​​at the University of History and Philology was as follows: “In the department of classical philology, teaching was provided by full-time professor A. I. Sonny (Greek literature) and freelance professor Yu. A. Kulakovsky and privat-docents: V. I. "Peter and A. O. Pospischil (Roman literature) ..., and privat-docent V.P. Klinger (Greek literature)." It was this state of teaching that persisted at the beginning of the revolutionary events of 1918-1919 , even during the evacuation of the University in Saratov during the war ( 1915 ). In the spring of 1917, Sonny (together with Kulakovsky, T. D. Florinsky and other professors) took part in the examination committee of the Faculty of History and Philology.

Sonny's pupil (and V.P. Klinger) was Yakov Emanuelovich Golosovker (1890-1967), a philosopher, translator from ancient languages ​​and a writer. It was Sonny who was the professor who had a significant influence on the formation of the worldview of Golosovker-philologist, and after the Great Patriotic War between Golosovker and Klinger, who was a professor of classical philology at the University of Poznań, correspondence began. As N.V. Braginskaya notes, relying on Golosovker’s recollections, Sonny was a philologist of the old German school, who recognized facts, not speculation, as a serious textologist, and wrote mainly in Latin; Klinger was interested in Greek folklore, antique tales, and this interest was passed on to Golosovker.

The historian G.V. Vernadsky according to M.I. Rostovtsev, who studied at the University of St. Vladimir in 1888-1890, wrote that Rostovtsev, whose teachers in classical philology were A. I. Sonny, I. A. Lezius and Yu. A. Kulakovsky, characterized them as "decent, but lackluster scientists." Taking into account the character traits of M.I. Rostovtsev and his sometimes unweighted assessments of colleagues in the specialty (in particular, Kulakovsky and his archaeological research of the Kerch catacombs), this response can be ignored. In 1897, a 27-year-old Rostovtsev wrote in a letter from Paris to S. A. Zhebelev about Sonny: “I was here the other day Sonny, jumped for three days, left a mark in my room in the form of his [doctoral] dissertation and left for Russia. A very nice man, but mercilessly boring. "

Another sonny's student, Pavel Petrovich Blonsky (1884-1941), a well-known teacher in Soviet times, and among the philosophers of philosophy and as the author of one of the best monographs on the neo-Platonist Plotinus, “The Plotinus Philosophy” (Kiev, 1918), wrote about Sonny: “This there was a small, plump man with great bass. Outwardly, he made a rather semi-commercial impression. But there was a strong sense of poetry in him, his seminar on the Roman poet Catullus gave me considerable pleasure. One of the deformities of Russian life in tsarist Russia is that such a connoisseur of language, literature and poetry, like A. I. Sonny, left almost nothing behind. ” The last point should be protested: Sonny's scientific legacy is significant.

If other Russian classical philologists were at the same time both archaeologists and historians, A.I. Sonny was a classical cabinet scientist and a classical university professor of a good German-Austrian school: teaching, science and family. It seems that nothing else interested him, he “rested” not at archaeological sites, looking for unknown Greek and Latin inscriptions in the earth (like, say, Kulakovsky), but at prestigious resorts with his wife and children. He read the same lecture courses for thirty years, printed an average of one scientific publication per year: the normal, measured rhythm of life of a professor of classical philology, who was better criticized than he wrote. His reviews cumgrano salіs much more than his own writings. But he criticized expertly, erudite, with enthusiasm. His profound erudition was spent not on science, but on upbringing and critical publications, which can hardly be credited to Sonny as a laborer in science.

Students appreciated Sonny the teacher. On February 1, 1914 , the University of History and Philology honored A.I. Sonny on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his teaching activities. Almost all the professors of the faculty gathered with honors. about. Dean prof. Yu. A. Kulakovsky and students at the head. Prof. Kulakovsky greeted the jubilee on behalf of the faculty members, after which the participants in the seminary of Russian philology, students and people left at the university presented the jubilee with the following address: “Dear Adolf Izrailevich! At your anniversary lecture, we, your former and current students, are pleased to welcome you on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the tireless service of philological science and the preaching of its principles among students. We cannot be judges of your scholarly merits, but we know that your works are never interrupted, and sometimes they are transferred from the field of classical philology to the world of our interests, highlighting the genesis of the mysterious phenomena of ancient Russian literature. We owe your inspired lectures to acquaintance with the largest phenomena of Greek literature, with which Old Russian is bound by bonds of albeit distant continuity. Under your leadership, we have been assimilating the principles of the philological method as applied to the interpretation of Roman authors - for all this we bring you heartfelt and sincere gratitude. In your person, dear A [dolph] And [zrailevich], we also welcome the true humanist, the faithful follower of self-sufficient science, the representative of genuine noble academism that existed in the days of your youth in universities. As a humanist, in love with science and the beautiful, bequeathed to us by antiquity, you always carried the banner of science, without making it an instrument of extraneous goals - you did not try to make a blind crowd submissive to fashionable slogans of the current political moment from the youth who went to the sources of knowledge. We have not yet entered the boiling abyss of worldly struggle of conflicting egoistic aspirations, but from afar we can already see how easy it is to drown in the dirty maelstrom of life; that is why we especially value that proud independence and nobility of thought that you always felt in you. We are happy that we had such a mentor during our stay at the university, we allow ourselves to express our wish that the generations of students following us should not be deprived of your leadership in the field where the value of true enlightened humanism and a rigorous scientific philological school is most valued. ”

The scientific work of A.I. Sonny needs a special historical and philological study.

• Miscellen: Vergil und Trogus // Rheinisches Museum fur Philologie / Herausgegeben von Otto Ribbeck und Fr. Buecheler. Frankfurt am Main, 1886. Bd XLI. S. 473-480.
• De Massiliensium rebus quaestiones: Dissertatio historica. Dorpat: Karow, 1887. 110 S. (rec .: Cauer Fr. Adolf Sonny, De Massiliensium rebus quaestiones: Dissertatio historica. Dorpat: Karow, 1887 // Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift / Herausgegeben von Chr. Belger und O. Seyffert. 1889. No. 12. Bd IX. S. 380–382).
• A few notes to Eskhilov "Agamemnon" // Journal of the Ministry of Education. 1887. May. Sep. 2, p. 8-18.
• Alexandrism and its influence on Roman literature (Introductory lecture delivered at the University of St. Vladimir on September 12, 1887) // University News. 1887. No. 10. P. 1-12.
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• On the cult of Egyptian deities on the north coast of the Black Sea (Abstract) // Readings in the Historical Society of Nestor the Chronicler. Kiev, 1892. Book. 6. Sep. 1, p. 16-17.
• Review of the essay by the graduate student G. Pavlutsky “Corinthian Architectural Order” with 50th fig. in the text and the 8th phototype. tab., 196 pp., Kiev, 1891 // University News. 1893. No. 4. P. 37-43.
• To Aeschylus (Agam. 1316-1329 W, 1447 W) // Philological Review. 1893.T. IV. Sep. 1, pp. 200-201.
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• Ad Strattidis (fr. 23 K.) // Philological Review. 1893. T. V. Dep. 1, p. 35.
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• Ad Herodam // Philological Review. 1893. T. V. Dep. 1, pp. 108-110.
• To the question of the cult of Egyptian deities on the northern coast of the Black Sea // Philological Review. 1893. T. V. Dep. 1. P. 53-55 (see also review: V.V. Latyshev . Regarding the note by Prof. A. I. Sonny // There Itself. P. 140-142).
• Ad Aeschyli Agamemn (v 589 W = 562 K) // Philological Review. 1894.T. VI. Sep. 1, pp. 17-18.
• Extrema linea (Teren. Eun. 640) // Philological Review. 1894.T. VI. Sep. 1, p. 68-71.
• De libelli [46] περὶ ἀρετῶν καὶ κακιῶν codice Mosquensi // Philological Review. 1894.V. VII. Sep. 1, pp. 97-102.
• [Rec.] IM Stowasser . Lateinisch-Deutsches Schulwörterbuch. Wien, 1894 (XX, 1092 pp.) // Philological Review. 1894.V. VII. Sep. 2, pp. 219–227.
• Ad Herodam (I 78, IV 35 sqq) // Philological Review. 1895. T. VIII. Sep. 1, pp. 108-110.
• Corrigendum (Herodam IV 36) // Philological Review. 1895. T. VIII. Sep. 1, p. 201.
• To Catullus (64, 401) // Philological Review. 1895.T. IX. Sep. 1, p. 26.
• On the name of the Corinthian architectural order // Philological Review. 1895. Т. IX. Отд. 1. С. 40.
• К Катуллу (37, 10; 112) // Филологическое обозрение. 1895. Т. IX. Отд. 1. С. 165—168.
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• Ad Dionem Chrisostomum analecta (Scripsit Athaulfus Sonny) // Университетские известия. 1897. Январь. C. I—VI, 1-48; February. С. 49-72; Март. С. 73-104; Апрель. С. 105—130; Май. С. 133—208; Июнь. С. 209—242, II (отдельный оттиск: Киев, 1897).
• К характеристике Диона Хрисостома // Филологическое обозрение. 1898. Т. XIV. Отд. 1. С. 13-36 («автореферат» докторской диссертации).
• Ad thesaurum proverbiorum Romanorum subindenda // Филологическое обозрение. 1899. Т. XVI. Отд. 1. С. 3-16, 133—146.
• [Рец.] U. Wilcken . Die griechischen Papirusurkunden. Berlin, P. Reimer, 1897 (60 стр.) // Филологическое обозрение. 1899. Т. XVI. Отд. 2. С. 11-16.
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