The Instrument of Language: On People and Words
8 hrs. 48 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Eugene Vodolazkin
Author
Eugene Vodolazkin
Narrator
Valery Zakharyev
Narrator
Valery Zakharyev
Description
Evgeny Vodolazkin is a philologist, author of works on Old Russian literature, and... a prose writer, a finalist of the “Big Book” and the Andrey Bely Prize for the novel “Solovyov and Larionov.” He lives in Saint Petersburg.
The reaction of philologists to a fellow scholar who takes up creative writing is often akin to doctors’ reaction to a sick colleague: he was just at the operating table—and there he is already lying down. And yet “to be both ichthyologist and fish at the same time” is not only permissible, but also useful—something his book “The Language Tool” proves. Short witty sketches from the life of scholars, memories of people close to the author, essays and studies—something like Pushkin’s “table-talk” and Yury Olesha’s notes—remind us that the boundary between a person and a text is not as solid as it may sometimes seem.
The reaction of philologists to a fellow scholar who takes up creative writing is often akin to doctors’ reaction to a sick colleague: he was just at the operating table—and there he is already lying down. And yet “to be both ichthyologist and fish at the same time” is not only permissible, but also useful—something his book “The Language Tool” proves. Short witty sketches from the life of scholars, memories of people close to the author, essays and studies—something like Pushkin’s “table-talk” and Yury Olesha’s notes—remind us that the boundary between a person and a text is not as solid as it may sometimes seem.
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