Philologists on TV

• In Event: How to Be a Scholar

Abstract

Iraklii Andronikov (1908-1990) was a literary historian better known in the late socialist period for his participation in several TV broadcasts. Andronikov, who in the late 1940s conducted bibliographic research for an edition of Lermontov’s collected writings, used his scholarly findings as material for a curious publication, the Tales of a Literary Scholar (Rasskazy literaturoveda); originally meant for a young public and published for the first time in 1949, the Tales were well received and were reprinted in several expanded editions from the 1950s to the 1970s. The short stories included in the volume recounts in a very lively tone some of the bibliographical problems that Andronikov encountered (who is the addressee of a poem, what is Lermontov concretely referring to in his passages) and present them as almost as mysteries that the scholarly “detective” Andronikov skillfully solves. Starting from the late 1950s, Andronikov also started collaborating with television, and was the protagonist of several broadcasts (telefil’m), like “Zagadka N.F.I” (1959), “Iraklii Andronikov rasskazyvaet” (1964), and “Slovo Andronikova” (1974). The content of the broadcast was sometimes taken from the Tales (as in the case of “Zagadka N.F.I”), other times it was biographical, with Andronikov recounting his meeting with personalities like Gorky and Alexei Tolstoy. By analyzing this material, my presentation will reflect on the interplay between scholars and television in the Soviet Union, and the possibilities afforded by empirical genres to Soviet philologist in the post-stalinist era.

Author

• Lidia Tripiccione, Princeton U