Olga Michailovna Freidenberg. Letters from years 1911-1940

Abstract

The second publication of the selected letters by O.M. Freidenberg (see the first: Vol. 2. № 2. Pp. 172-204) covers years 1925-1940 and includes only two recipients — a gymnasium friend Elena Semenovna Livshits, and a student, later the famous scientist, Sofya Viktorovna Polyakova. In letters to Livshits in 1925-1928 Freidenberg was a novice scientist, in letters to Polyakova (1936–1940) — a professor. However, both there and there, the view on the academic milieu was unlike the “hagiographically solemn” style of memoirs of students and obituaries of colleagues. To the habit of writing parodies and comic texts in the circle of gymnasium friends, the stinging satire of the Swift sample is added. This is a sharp and pointedly subjective, but unexpected sharp-sighted look at the humanitarian academic environment of Leningrad.