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February 1, 2008|Volume 36, Number 16


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Victor Erlich



In Memoriam: Victor Erlich

Helped bring Slavic department to prominence

A memorial service will be held this month for Victor Erlich, one of the foremost specialists in Slavic literary studies, who died at his home in Hamden, Connecticut, on Nov. 29. He was 93 years old.

Erlich, a member of the Yale faculty since 1961, was the B.E. Bensinger Professor Emeritus of Russian Literature. His arrival at Yale is generally credited with beginning the process of transforming the University’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literature into one of the nation’s leading centers in the field. Erlich served as chair of the department twice: 1963-1968 and 1977-1980.

Erlich’s pioneering study “Russian Formalism: History — Doctrine,” first published in 1955, has become a classic in the field, and has been translated into a number of languages and reprinted several times. His other books of criticism, which treat the writings of such authors as Nicolai Gogol, Isaac Babel and Vladimir Mayakovsky, as well as Russian Modernism, continue to earn praise for their erudition and wit.

His many honors include awards for “Distinguished Contributions to Slavic Studies,” conferred by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (1984), and “Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship,” bestowed by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (2006). He was a fellow of Ezra Stiles College.

Erlich was born on Nov. 22, 1914, in Petrograd, Russia, the son of Henryk Erlich, the leader of the Polish Jewish Labor movement known as the Bund, and Sonia Dubnova Erlich, a Russian poet. His maternal grandfather was the renowned Jewish historian Simon Dubnov. Erlich grew up in Warsaw, Poland. When the Nazis invaded Poland, Erlich — together with his mother, his wife, his older brother, Alex, and his family — escaped the Nazis as well as the Soviet NKVD (KGB), by traveling through Russia and Japan, arriving in New York in 1942, after a brief stay in Montreal. Erlich joined the U.S. Army, returning to the European front where he was seriously wounded by sniper fire. Coming back to New York, he started his graduate studies in literature and linguistics at Columbia University, where he studied with the celebrated linguist and literary theorist, Roman Jakobson, and earned his Ph.D. in 1951. Before coming to New Haven, Erlich served on the faculty of the University of Washington from 1948 to 1961.

Erlich’s longtime colleague at Yale and close friend, Professor Edward Stankiewicz, said: “We hit it off right away because of the overlap of our lives, the youth we had spent in pre-war Warsaw and because of our love for Polish and Russian poetry. We could both recite many of the poets by heart and admired the glory of their works (above all, by Adam Mickiewicz and Alexander Pushkin). Now that he is gone, I shall cherish his memory as a teacher, scholar and a lecturer with a splendid gift for a well-turned phrase. I shall treasure his friendship until the end of my way.”

Among his colleagues, students and friends, Erlich was known not only for his literary scholarship, but for his warmth and kindness and his love of language, as exemplified in his vivid recounting of dramatic but often humorous personal stories. He chronicles the arc of his life and career in his memoir, “Child of a Turbulent Century.”

Professor Harvey Goldblatt, one of his students and later a colleague in the Slavic department at Yale, adds: “Victor Erlich was so much more than a remarkable scholar and wonderful teacher. He was a veritable institution and a constant reminder of what is best and must remain constant in the humanistic tradition.”

Erlich was married to Iza Sznerjerson Erlich, a social worker and psychiatrist who died in 1997. He is survived by his sons, Henry of Oakland, California, and Mark of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, seven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held on Sunday, Feb. 24, at 2 p.m., in the lecture hall of the Thomas E. Golden Center at St. Thomas More Chapel, 268 Park St. A reception will follow at the Pierson College master’s house, 231 Park St.


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