Vasily Michailowitsch Alexejew

Vasily Mikhailovich Alekseev ( Russian Василий Михайлович Алексеев ; born January 2 ^{. Jul} / 14. January 1881 ^greg. In St. Petersburg ; † 12. May 1951 ) was a Russian sinologist. He made important research contributions to Chinese folklore and literature.

The worker's son studied Sinology in St. Petersburg from 1898–1902 and then examined coin-like amulets in the numismatic department of the British Museum . In Paris he became a student of the sinologist Édouard Chavannes , whom he accompanied on an archaeologically oriented trip to China from May to October 1907. In China he dealt intensively with the popular nianhua or New Year woodcuts , which had been ignored in the Sinology, which was oriented towards high culture until then. He collected many of the cheap woodblock prints and tried to decipher their symbolism with the help of his Chinese teachers. He also devoted himself to Chinese phonetics . Further ethnographically oriented China trips, this time without Chavannes, followed in January 1909 and from May to July 1912, the year the first Chinese republic was founded after the Xinhai Revolution .

In 1916 his two-volume dissertation A Chinese Poem on the Poet was published in St. Petersburg : Die Stanzen des Sikong Tu (837-908) , later supplemented by treatises on poems about painters and calligraphers as well as numerous translations of classical Chinese literature. Aleksejew translates the Liaozhai Zhiyi from Pu Songling into Russian. One of his most famous works is his travel diary V starom Kitae about his trip to China in 1907, which appeared posthumously in 1958 and was also translated into German.

Works

China in 1907 - A Travel Diary. Ed. By BL Riftin, translated from the Russian by S. Behrsing, with an essay "The Russian Sinologist Alekseev and his trips to China" by MV Bankovskaja u. BL Riftin. Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig / Weimar, 1989; ISBN 3378002484 [ V starom Kitae , German]
The Chinese gods of wealth: a lecture, delivered at the School of Oriental Studies, University of London. London: School of Oriental Studies, 1928
La Litterature chinoise. Six conférences au Collège de France et au Musée Guimet . Annales du Musée Guimet. Bibliothèque de vulgarisation, 52. Paris: Geuthner, 1937
The actor as a hero in the history of China . Asia Major , Volume 10, 1934, pp. 33–58, PDF ( Memento from January 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
Rasskazy Ljao Čžaja o neobyčajnom / Pu Sunlin. V per. s kitaj. VM Alekseeva. Moskva: Chudožestv. Literatura, 1988 (Biblioteka kitajskoj literatury)

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Essay "The Russian sinologist Alekseev and his trips to China" by MV Bankovskaja et al. BL Riftin, in: China in 1907 - A Travel Diary . Edited by BL Riftin, translated from the Russian by S. Behrsing. Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig / Weimar, 1989; ISBN 3378002484 [ V starom Kitae , German]

personal data
SURNAME	Alexejew, Wassili Michailowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Alekseev, Vasilij Michajlovič; Алексеев, Василий Михайлович (Russian); Basile Alexéiev
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian sinologist
DATE OF BIRTH	January 14, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH	St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH	May 12, 1951
Place of death	St. Petersburg

[1] Essay "The Russian sinologist Alekseev and his trips to China" by MV Bankovskaja et al. BL Riftin, in: China in 1907 - A Travel Diary . Edited by BL Riftin, translated from the Russian by S. Behrsing. Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig / Weimar, 1989; ISBN 3378002484 [ V starom Kitae , German]