Serge Elisseeff

Serge Elisséeff ( Russian Сергей Григорьевич Елисеев , Sergei Grigorievich Yeliseyev , Elisseeff Jap. Onomatopoeic: 英利世夫 ; born January 1 ^{. Jul} / 13. January  1889 ^{. Greg} in St. Petersburg ; † 13. April 1975 in Paris ) was a Russian Orientalist who worked at Harvard University , but preferred Paris as his place of residence.

Youth and education

Serge Elisseeff was born - the third son - into a wealthy St. Petersburg merchant family. His grandfather, originally a farmer from central Russia, had made a fortune by importing wine. At the table, the family spoke French, and Serge was taught German for the first time when he was six. This knowledge was enhanced by a private tutor and lessons at a private school (with four students). At the age of 10 he began to attend Larinsky High School , where instruction in Latin and Greek followed. At the age of 12, he received private lessons in English. He was consistently an excellent student. He graduated from high school in 1907 as the best in his class.

He spent the summer of 1900 in Neuilly , where his family ran an estate. He also attended the World Exhibition in Paris.

Initially interested in painting, he was turned down by a teacher because his background as a bourgeois would prevent true creativity. Together with other family members, he received acting lessons. As a result of the 1905 revolution , he began to be enthusiastic about the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels at times .

Education

Berlin

On the advice of the orientalist Serge Oldenburg , after graduating from high school, in 1907/1908 he studied Japanese for three semesters in Berlin (under Hermann Plaut ) and Chinese with Wilhelm Grube , and after his death with Otto Franke . He also made first acquaintances with Japanese, e. B. the philologist Shimmura Izuru ( 新村 出 ), the philosopher Kuwaki Gen'yoku and Hara Katsurō ( 原 勝 郎 ), a historian. He also took courses on psychology, aesthetics and social issues. Through the intermediary of the lecturer in the last-mentioned course, he made the acquaintance of the chairman of the Social Democrats , August Bebel, and the representative of the right wing of the party, Friedrich Ebert .

Tokyo

In August 1908, armed with excellent letters of recommendation, he traveled to Japan via St. Petersburg and Siberia with the will to enroll at the Imperial University of Tokyo . This turned out to be difficult because he was the first foreigner who wanted to be accepted as a regular student without first having attended a Japanese high school ( kōtō gakkō ). The necessary recommendations and applications also required that he had a personal seal made. This gave his name onomatopoeically as 英 利 世 夫 ( ei-ri-se-fu ). He used this romanization for life.

He rented a house in Tokyo, which he shared with a Japanese family for two years. To compensate for his weaknesses in the Japanese language, he took private lessons, including Kanbun and calligraphy . From the second year of his studies he began to be accepted by his fellow students. He studied under Karl Florenz , Haga Yakai ( 波 賀 失 一 ), among other things, aspects of classical and modern Japanese, general linguistics under Fujioka Katsuji ( 富 岡 勝 二 ) and philosophy with Raphael von Koeber . He specialized in Japanese literature, in particular on the Haiku Bashōs , the subject of his thesis. During the holidays he traveled extensively in the Japanese Empire. Instead of the usual three, he voluntarily studied for four years. His exam in June 1912 passed with a good grade (82/100).

Elisseeff developed an interest in Japanese ceramics, the nō and kabuki, and often attended humorous yose presentations by professional storytellers. Through the mediation of Tomiya Toyokata he was invited to the circle of the poet Natsume Sōseki . He became a friend of the future Prime Minister Ashida Hitoshi ( 蘆 Ein 均 ). In order to have contact with modern poets, he began to hold weekly meetings in his house. He stopped this in the spring of 1912 when it was told that the police considered these meetings to be a left circle.

After spending the summer with Higashi Arata ( 東 新 ) in Obama in Fukui Prefecture , he enrolled at the university's graduate school ( 大 学院 , Daigakuin ). At the same time, he began to develop his Manchu language skills, studied Buddhist art on Mount Kōya and began to occasionally publish in magazines. a. The theater in Japan in 1913 for the communications of the OAG . At the end of the second year he decided, on the advice of economics professor Heinrich Wänting , to complete his doctorate in Europe.

St. Petersburg

On November 22, 1914, he married Vera Eiche , with whom he then had two sons, Nikita and Vadime.

Due to his singularly unusual education, he had problems with recognition within the European academia throughout his life. This became evident when he needed a special dispensation from the Tsar in 1914 to return to the University of St. Petersburg , where he had been promised a position as a private lecturer. However, he did not have to do his doctorate until 1916. The oral examination showed that his knowledge exceeded that of his professors in many ways. For his dissertation on Basho he went back to Japan in 1917. The documents that were sent as part of the diplomatic mail were lost because the great October proletarian revolution had now taken place.

As early as January 1916, he was a private lecturer in Japanese at the University of Petrograd. At the same time he was still working as an official interpreter for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was elected Vice-President of the Far East Department by the Chamber of Commerce. He was also an assistant professor at the Institute for Art History (for Chinese art ).

With the revolution he not only lost his private fortune, but also his position in the Foreign Ministry. His lecturer salary was not enough for life. However, he received a subordinate position in the Asian Museum (which was actually the Oriental library of the Academy of Sciences ). In 1920 he was elected secretary (for the Far East) of the reorganized Archaeological Commission. Thanks to Maxim Gorki's support , he was able to publish an essay on Japanese literature.

In the spring he became an assistant professor at the reorganized university, which was still a center of reaction. He himself found it difficult to teach according to the guidelines of the new government. In the summer of 1920 he allowed himself and his family to be smuggled across the Gulf of Finland without papers.

emigration

A one-month stay in Finland was followed by three months in Stockholm.

Paris 1921-1932

The family arrived in Paris in January 1921. There he found a job as a researcher at the Museum Guimet , at the same time he was an interpreter for the Japanese embassy, ​​initially as secretary of the Marquise Maki, dealing with the work of the German-Belgian and German-Danish border commissions. In 1923 he organized an exhibition of modern Japanese painting. He enjoyed working on the magazine Japon et Extrême Orient (1923–24), which published a short story he translated every month. From 1925 he was a liaison man at the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations . 1929-30 he was director for the Maison de Étudiants Japonais .

On the other hand, he tried to continue his academic career. As early as 1922 he had begun to attend lectures by eminent orientalists such as Paul Pellitot and Henri Maspero . In the same year he gave a course on literature from the Tokugawa period at the Sorbonne . At the École de Langues Orientales Vivantes , where he worked until 1930, he explained the grammar of the Japanese literary written language. In 1930 he became Maître de Conférences at the École des Hautes Études of the Sorbonne. Two years later the full professorship ( Directeur d'Études ) followed. During his Paris years he published regularly.

In Stockholm he organized in 1931 an exhibition of Japanese art, what him the Cross of the Order of Polar Star by King Gustav V was awarded. In the same year, the Elisseeff couple took on French citizenship.

Harvard

The Harvard Yenching Institute , founded in 1928, was looking for a director in 1932. The preferred candidate Paul Pellitot declined, but proposed Elisseeff instead. In order to get to know him, he received a visiting professorship from the Department for Eastern Languages at Harvard University from 1932–33 . In the same year he was sent to China to exchange ideas with local academics.

In 1934 he became director of the Harvard Yenching Institute and professor for Far Eastern languages, and later also head of the Department for Eastern Languages . For the next 23 years he devoted himself to the development work along the lines of European Sinology. In 1936 he founded the academic journal Harvard Journal of Asian Studies . During his time there was also the massive expansion of the institute's library - today the most important for oriental studies in the USA.

His Japanese courses for military personnel were particularly important during World War II. He also supported the US intelligence agency Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as a "consultant". The Institute's Asian ties, which had already been broken during the Sino-Japanese War , came to a complete standstill with the Communists' victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. A trip to Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1953 served the purpose of making new contacts. During a second trip to the region in the spring of 1955, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Choshun Christian University . From 1954–55 he was President of the American Oriental Society .

His two textbooks Elementary Japanese for University Students and Elementary Japanese for College Students , published in 1942 and 1944, were standard works in the USA for years.

The École française d'Extrême-Orient and the Royal Asiatic Society made him honorary members in 1940 and 1955, respectively. He had been Chevalier of the Legion of Honor since 1946 .

With his 66th birthday in 1955, he reached the age limit, but was asked to continue to exercise his position. In August 1956 he resigned as director of the institute. He taught at Harvard until the end of the following academic year.

In 1940 Elisseeff was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

After retiring in June 1957, the couple lived again in Paris, where he died in 1975.

Fonts

• Bibliography in: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 1957, pp. 29–35 (93 entries)

literature

• Edwin O. Reischauer : Serge Elisseeff . Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 20 (1957), 1/2, pp. 1-35

Web links

• Biography , Terminological Dictionary (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ As is customary in Japan, in this article the family name comes before the first name. Thus z. B. Shimmura the surname, Izuru the first name.
2. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved September 24, 2015