Indexing Anti-Nihilism: Vladimir Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great-Russian Language

• In Event: Masks of Reality: The Many Faces of Russian Realism

Abstract

This paper explores Dahl's infamous Explanatory Dictionary as a hybrid of genres -- as a traditional reference work, on the one hand, and an anti-nihilist "novel" on the other. I further develop a literary reading of the dictionary proposed by Ilya Vinitsky in “Lord of the Words: Vladimir Dahl’s Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great-Russian Language as a National Epic.” While Vinitsky compares the dictionary to the family drama, I compare the dictionary to the anti-nihilist novel of the 60s, a national epic in its own right, as yet another apt and potentially revealing literary form. I examine how Dahl's definitions are part of a broader project of anti-nihilist ideology, and how certain words reveal, by their inclusions or omissions, what does and doesn't belong within the worldview represented by the dictionary.

Author

• Taisia Crowley, Princeton U