Yarho, Boris Isaakovich

Born in the family of a pediatrician. Graduated from Moscow University , internship at Heidelberg and Berlin universities. In 1915-1921 he was a teacher at Moscow University, first a privat-docent, then a professor. Member of the Moscow Linguistic Circle (1915).

He began his scientific career as a folklorist-comparativist: “The Legend of Sigurd and its Reflection in the Russian Epic” (1913-1916), studied the poetry of the Skalds . The dissertation, written in German, is dedicated to the rhymed prose of the German medieval poetess Hrosvita , who wrote in Latin. He worked on the dissertation for 10 years, developed detailed methods for the exact analysis of the verse to describe the material. The dissertation remained unprotected for political reasons; to date, it remains unpublished (like many other works of Yarho).

From 1922 to 1930 he worked at the State Academy of Arts, head of the literary translation commission, and for some time also replaced the head of the subsection of theoretical poetics. A group of philologists-poetologists with the participation of Yarkho was formed, adhering to exact methods - L. I. Timofeev , M. P. Shtokmar and others, she opposed both the group of “intuitionists” in the ranks of the State Academy of Arts and the vulgar-sociological movement in the then literary criticism. During this period, Yarho taught foreign languages ​​at various universities, worked at the Supreme Economic Council , translated medieval and new literature (poets of the Carolingian Renaissance , Song of my Side , Song of Roland , Saga of the Wolsungs , Moliere , Goethe 's Reineke-Lis , Schiller ), not everything is published. In the same period he wrote the main works on the theory of literary criticism: “The simplest foundations of formal analysis” ( 1927 ) and “The boundaries of scientific literary criticism” ( 1925 ), as well as the fundamental monograph (26 printed pages) “Methodology of exact literary criticism”, fully published by M. I Shapir and colleagues only in 2006 .

Arrested in 1935 in the "case of the Great German-Russian Dictionary" together with a group of Moscow intelligentsia. ^{[2] He was} exiled to Omsk , in 1940 he moved to Kursk and was a professor there. In prison and exile, he continued to work on the “Methodology of Exact Literary Studies”. In recent years, he studied the Word of Igor’s regiment with exact methods in comparison with the Western medieval epic. Evacuated to Sarapul in 1941, died of miliary tuberculosis.

B. I. Yarkho was a versatile and deeply educated and erudite scientist. At the age of 25, preparing for the post of privat-docent, he offered Moscow University materials for 18 special courses, and subsequently the monographs Mansang and Young Roland corresponded to each section of two such courses. Translated from about 20 new and old languages. After exile (1938) he provided the People's Commissariat of Education with a list of his specialties: Latin, French, Provencal, German, Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse medieval literature, stylistics, metrics, poetics, Russian and Slavic folklore, Serbo-Croatian literature, history and theory of drama. Work had to wait a year. According to M. O. Chudakova , Yarkho, “mainly in relation to his academic biography”, was a possible prototype of the scholar Fesi (the prototype of the “master”) in the early version of Bulgakov ’s novel “The Master and Margarita ” ^[3] .

Yarho also owns original dramatic and poetic works reflecting his interest in medieval Europe (some of them, under the pseudonym Lünel, are an “off-guard” version of the name Yarho, meaning Hebrew for “moon”). In the collection Poetae poetae dedicated to Maximilian Voloshin, Yarkho contains congratulations to the hero of the day, stylized in the manner of various poets - from ancient Indians and Scandinavians to the peasant poet Spiridon Drozhzhin.

The main principle of Yarkho's theory is that literary criticism should become an exact science and study its objects with mathematical methods; the statement about the “spirit of freedom that pervades the entire work”, “sense of color” or “artsy style” should be supported by a quantitative analysis of certain parameters of the work, both relatively easily formalized (for example, a verse ), and complex, but in principle, with his point of view, accessible formalization (figurative system, system of motives - Yarkho belongs to the terminological distinction of image and motive , ideology). Yarho adhered to the point of view according to which all literary works to one degree or another go back to the previous literary tradition and do not appear out of the blue only by creative effort. His scientific thinking and style is characterized by comparing the facts of fiction with biological phenomena.

The scientific heritage of Yarkho, not timely evaluated and, above all, far from completely published, was forgotten in the 1940-1960s. The works of the scientist returned from oblivion by the efforts of M. L. Gasparov , who felt himself to be a follower of the theory of Yarkho. Published by Gasparov in 1969, the article “Works by B. I. Yarkho on the Theory of Literature” is a short but very informative essay on the main works of the scientist.

• Young Roland. L., 1927
• Metric reference to poems by A. S. Pushkin (together with N. Lapshina and I. Romanovich), M., Academia , 1934
• Methodology of exact literary criticism. Selected articles on the theory of literature. M., 2006. ISBN 5-9551-0113-6

Translations:

• Skalds love lyrics. M., 1917.
• Petronius "Satyricon", M.-L., 1924
• The Saga of the Wolsungs (1934),
• The Song of Roland (1934),
• “A Song of Side” (1959, posthumous),
• Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (2010, posthumous).

• “People increasingly seem to me books, and sometimes I get stuck in front of the plan of their creator” ^[4] .

One of the streets in the city of Sarapul is named after B. I. Yarkho.

At the house where B. I. Yarkho spent the last months of his life, at the address: Udmurt Republic, the city of Sarapul , st. Pervomayskaya, house 34, a memorial plaque is open.

• Boris Yarkho on the website “The Century of Translation” (medieval Latin poetry)
• Yarho Boris - article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
• Biography in the FEB database
• Yarkho Boris Isaakovich (neopr.) . Chronicle of Moscow University . Date of appeal October 19, 2017.