Yury Tynyanov

Yury Nikolaevich Tynyanov (Russian: Ю́рий Никола́евич Тыня́нов, IPA: [ˈjʉrʲɪj nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ tɨˈnʲænəf]; October 18, 1894 – December 20, 1943) was a Soviet writer, literary critic, translator, scholar and screenwriter. He was an authority on Pushkin and an important member of the Russian Formalist school.

Yury Tynyanov
Native name	Ю́рий Никола́евич Тыня́нов
Born	Yury Nasonovich Tynyanov (1894-10-18)October 18, 1894 Rezhitsa, Russian Empire
Died	December 20, 1943(1943-12-20) (aged 49) Moscow, USSR
Resting place	Vagankovo Cemetery, Moscow
Occupation	Writer, screenwriter, translator, literary critic, scholar
Language	Russian
Alma mater	Petrograd State University
Years active	1921 - 1943
Notable works	Lieutenant Kijé
Spouse	Leah Abelevna Zilber ​ ​ (m. 1916)​
Children	1

Born in a Jewish community in the Russian Empire in modern-day Latvia, he moved to Saint Petersburg where he completed his education. During the 1920s in the Soviet Union, he published numerous novels, works, and movie scripts, as well as working as a translator. However, his health declined during the 1930s and he died in 1943 from multiple sclerosis.

Early life and education

Yury Tynyanov as a child (middle) with his older brother Lev and his father

Yury Nikolaevich Tynyanov was born on 18 October 1894 in Rezhitsa, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire - modern day Latvia. Tynyanov was born in a Jewish community, but would go on to have little connections with his Jewish heritage. His father, Nikolai Arkadyevich Tynyanov, was a doctor while his mother, Sofya Borisovna Tynyanova (née Epshtein), was a co-owner of a tannery.

At age nine in 1904, Tynyanov attended the Pskov Provincial Gymnasium after he passed the entrance exams. With his brother, Tynyanov lived primarily in Pskov when he was attending the school, returning to Rezhitsa during the holidays via train to see his mother and sister, Lydia. He graduated in 1912 with a silver medal. Tynyanov then entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Saint Petersburg University.

In 1916, he married Leah Abelevna Zilber, the elder sister of his friend and well-known Russian author Veniamin Kaverin. During his time in university, Tynyanov frequented the Pushkin seminar held by a venerable literary academic, Semyon Vengerov.

Russian Civil War

When the February Revolution began in 1917, Tynyanov was in Petrograd with his wife and daughter, Inna Yuryevna Tynyanov. Leah and Inna went back to Pskov, while Tynyanov remained in Petrograd to continue his studies. In summer 1918, he went to Yaroslavl to visit his parents who been living in the city since 1915. The Yaroslavl Uprising and subsequent bombing by the Bolsheviks, destroyed parts of Yaroslavl, including Tynayanov's library where he collected books since his time in Pskov and his diploma work on Küchelbecker. To see his wife and daughter, he crossed into lands occupied by Germans.

During the Civil War, he worked in several jobs. Along with his university studies, he began teaching literature at a school. He also lectured at the House of Arts and the House of Writers. He also served as a French translator and head of the Information Department of the Petrograd Bureau of the Commintern. In 1919, he graduated from university and found employment at the Department of Russian Literature.

Career

At age 27 in 1921, Tynyanov became a professor at the Petrograd Institute of Art History. During this time, he also began teaching 18th to 20th century Russian poetry while also being part of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language. In 1921, he published his first book titled "Dostoevsky and Gogol" where he drew connections between the works of Dostoevsky and Gogol. In 1925, Tynyanov released his first novel called "Kukhlya". He would then in 1927 publish another piece of historical fiction titled “The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar”. "Archaists and Innovators" was released in 1929.

Aside from writing novels, Tynyanov wrote the scripts of The Overcoat (1926), Asya (1928) and The Club of the Big Deed (1927) in collaboration with Y.G. Oksman. As a translator, he translated the poems of Heinrich Heine from German to Russian.

Bust of Tynyanov near his childhood home in Rēzekne, Latvia, 2016

Later life and death

During the 1930s, Tynyanov began to slowly experience multiple sclerosis. In 1932, he began to write "Pushkin". However, multiple sclerosis began to take it toll and he then required a cane to walk. By 1940, Tynyanov lost his ability to walk. He however continued writing on Pushkin and finished the 3rd part in 1943. Tynyanov died on 20 December 1943 in Moscow, aged 49.

Legacy

On 28 May 1981, a museum dedicated to Tynyanov opened in his hometown in Rezekne Secondary School No.6. The museum was supported by Tynyanov's friend Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin, his sister Lydia and his daughter Inna. The museum continues to operate in Latvia.

Major works

In 1928, together with the linguist Roman Jakobson, he published a famous work titled Theses on Language, a predecessor to structuralism (but see Ferdinand de Saussure), which could be summarised in the following manner (from ref.):

1. Literary science had to have a firm theoretical basis and an accurate terminology.
2. The structural laws of a specific field of literature had to be established before it was related to other fields.
3. The evolution of literature must be studied as a system. All evidence, whether literary or non-literary must be analysed functionally.
4. The distinction between synchrony and diachrony was useful for the study of literature as for language, uncovering systems at each separate stage of development. But the history of systems is also a system; each synchronic system has its own past and future as part of its structure. Therefore the distinction should not be preserved beyond its usefulness.
5. A synchronic system is not a mere agglomerate of contemporaneous phenomena catalogued. 'Systems' mean hierarchical organisation.
6. The distinction between langue and parole, taken from linguistics, deserves to be developed for literature in order to reveal the principles underlying the relationship between the individual utterance and a prevailing complex of norms.
7. The analysis of the structural laws of literature should lead to the setting up of a limited number of structural types and evolutionary laws governing those types.
8. The discovery of the 'immanent laws' of a genre allows one to describe an evolutionary step, but not to explain why this step has been taken by literature and not another. Here the literary must be related to the relevant non-literary facts to find further laws, a 'system of systems'. But still the immanent laws of the individual work had to be enunciated first.

Tynyanov also wrote historical novels in which he applied his theories. His other works included popular biographies of Alexander Pushkin and Wilhelm Küchelbecker and notable translations of Heinrich Heine and other authors.

Selected bibliography

In English

Works by Yury Tynyanov

• Formalist theory, translated by L.M. O'Toole and Ann Shukman (1977)
• Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar, translated by Susan Causey (edited by Vera Tsareva-Brauner), Look Multimedia (2018)
• The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar, translated by Anna Kurkina Rush and Christopher Rush, Columbia University Press, 2021 (The Russian Library)
• Lieutenant Kijé / Young Vitushishnikov: Two Novellas (Eridanos Library, No. 20), translated by Mirra Ginsburg (1990)
• Lieutenant Kizhe, translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater, Look Multimedia (2021)
• "Permanent Evolution: Selected Essays on Literature, Theory and Film" translated and edited by Ainsley Morse & Philip Redko (2019, Academic Studies Press)

Works edited by Yury Tynyanov

• Russian Prose, edited by Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum and Yury Tynyanov, translated by Ray Parrot (1985)

In Russian

Novels:

• Кюхля, 1925
• Смерть Вазир-Мухтара, 1928
• Пушкин, 1936

Novellas and stories:

• Подпоручик Киже, 1927
• Восковая персона, 1930
• Малолетный Витушишников, 1933
• Гражданин Очер

On Pushkin and his era:

• Архаисты и Пушкин, 1926
• Пушкин, 1929
• Пушкин и Тютчев, 1926
• О "Путешествии в Арзрум", 1936
• Безыменная любовь, 1939
• Пушкин и Кюхельбекер, 1934
• Французские отношения Кюхельбекера, 1939

1. Путешествие Кюхельбекера по Западной Европе в 1820 – 1821 гг.
2. Декабрист и Бальзак.

• Сюжет "Горя от ума", 1943

External links

• A brief article on Tynyanov's historical novels
• a Russian site with links to several online texts
• Question about Tyutchev