 | 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.
T H I S
IN MEMORIAM
In Memoriam: Victor Erlich
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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