Alexander Afanassjewitsch Potebnja

Alexander Potebnja , ( Russian Александр Афанасьевич Потебня , Ukrainian Олександр Опанасович Потебня / Oleksandr Opanasowytsch Potebnja , born 10 ^{. Jul} / 22. September  1835 ^greg. , Gawrilowka , Poltava Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 29 ^jul. / 11. December  1891 ^greg. , Charkow , Russian Empire) was a Russian-Ukrainian philologist.

Aleksandr Potebnja

Life

Alexander Afanassjewitsch Potebnja was born on September 10th (according to the Julian calendar) 1835 in the village of Gavrilowka , Poltava Governorate in today 's Sumy Oblast , Ukraine on the property of a former staff captain and came from a Cossack family ennobled in the 18th century , whose male family members as Officers of the Russian army served. At the instigation of his mother, Potebnja escaped this career and entered a high school in the Polish-speaking Radom at the age of nine. After graduating from school, Potebnja enrolled at the University of Char'kov in 1851 and passed the exam in 1856. In 1860 he published his dissertation O nekotorych simvolach v slavjanskoj narodnoj poėzii ("About some symbols in Slavic folk poetry").

Just two years later, his most powerful work outside of historical linguistics, Mysl 'i jazyk (“Thinking and Language”) followed. In the same year Potebnja was sent to Berlin as a candidate for a chair in comparative linguistics to perfect his knowledge . He broke off his planned two-year stay after just one year. During this time his three younger brothers got into trouble, including Andrej Potebnja , who died in the Polish uprising of 1863. It is not known whether Potebnja was involved in the preparations as a civilian. At that time, however, there were definitely voices that brought him into connection with the anti-subversive activities of his brothers, but could not prevent his return to the university. Nevertheless, his further career did not go smoothly. His habilitation in 1866 initially failed. The stumbling block was, among other things, Potebnja's idea of ​​bringing Christian rites of the Slavs into connection with pagan customs. It was not until 1875 that Potebnja was appointed full professor due to his habilitation the year before. Potebnja was not only a linguist recognized throughout Europe, but also a popular academic teacher whose work led to a regular school education in Kharkov. Potebnja died on November 29th (a. St.) 1891.

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In addition to his linguistic work, his linguistic aesthetic considerations, which he made in chapter 10 of his early work Mysl 'i jazyk (1862), are of importance. They decisively advanced the development of literary aesthetics in the 20th century, of which no small part began in Russia. In the aftermath of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Heymann Steinthal, Potebnja argued against the assumption that it is thinking that determines linguistic utterances. Potebnja, on the other hand, tried to emphasize the importance of language ability for cognitive functions, and attributed not only a creative but also an epistemic potential to language ability. What he called the "poeticity of language" was ultimately nothing more than the ability of language users to convey meanings, to form metaphors and in this way to relate different things to one another based on a common characteristic. Therefore, for Potebnja it was language and a fortiori literature as the art of language that enables knowledge of the world. After his death, his students, the so-called potebniancy , published lecture manuscripts, notes and lecture transcripts that promoted his fame in pre-revolutionary Russia.

effect

It was Potebnja who coined the term poeticism as early as 1862 and thus gave the literary theory of the 20th century a decisive impetus. Potebnja was known only to specialists throughout his life. At the turn of the century, however, ten years after his death, the Russian symbolists Valerij Brjusov and Andrej Belyj referred to Potebnja's ideas and made the literary public familiar with them, so that the Russian formalists who were important for the development of international literary theory also participated in his writings didn't come over. However, they had an ambivalent relationship with him. While they polemicized against him and especially against his students, they also secretly adopted some of his ideas.

Fonts (selection)

• O nekotorych simvolach v slavjanskoj narodnoj poėzii (1860).
• Mysl'i jazyk (1862).
• O mifičeskom značenii nekotorych obrjadov i poverij (1865).
• Iz zapisok po russkoj grammatike (1874).

literature

• Aumüller, Matthias: Inner form and poeticity. Aleksandr Potebnja's theory in its conceptual historical context. Frankfurt / M. 2005.
• Frančuk, Vera: AA Potebnja. Moscow 1986.
• Lachmann, Renate: "The Potebnjasche image concept as a contribution to a theory of aesthetic communication. (On the prehistory of Bachtin's 'dialogicity')". In this. (Ed.): Dialogicity. Munich 1982, pp. 29-50.
• Laferrière, Daniel: Potebnja, Šklovskij, and the Familiarity / Strangeness Paradox. In: Russian Literature 4 (1976), pp. 175-198.
• Potebnja, Aleksandr: Slovo i mif. Moscow 1989.
• Presnjakov, Oleg: AA Potebnja i russkoe literaturovedenie konca XIX - načala XX veka. Saratov 1978.

Web links

Commons : Potebnja  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Entry on Potebnia, Oleksander in the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the origin of Potebnja cf. Vera Frančuk: AA Potebnja. Moscow 1986, p. 7 ff. Matthias Aumüller offers an overview of Potebnja's biography in German: Innere Form und Poetität. Aleksandr Potebnja's theory in its conceptual historical context. Frankfurt / M. 2005, pp. 16-20.
2. ↑ See AA Potebnja: Slovo i mif. Moscow 1989, pp. 285-378.
3. ↑ Ibid., Pp. 17-200.
4. ↑ See Frančuk, pp. 56–58.
5. ↑ See Oleg Presnjakov: AA Potebnja i russkoe literaturovedenie konca XIX - načala XX veka. Saratov 1978, p. 22 f.
6. ↑ See Daniel Laferrière: Potebnja, Šklovskij, and the Familiarity / Strangeness Paradox. In: Russian Literature 4 (1976), pp. 175-198.