The Presidential Library’s collections showcase Vladimir Dal - lexicographer, military doctor, sapper, holder of the Vladimir Cross

“Eagerly catching native speeches, words and rhetorical twists, he wrote them down ... How many times during hot conversation, snatching up a notebook, he managed to write down a speech or a word that someone escaped from his tongue - and no one heard him! There was no such a word in the dictionaries, and it was purely Russian”, - we read in the study of J. Groth “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language by V. I. Dahl” from the Presidential Library’s collections.

November 22, 2018 marks the 217th anniversary of the birth of Russian writer, lexicographer and, at the same time, a military surgeon who became famous in the battle on the Vistula, Vladimir Ivanovich Dal (1801–1872). The Presidential Library provides in open access digitized rare editions of a famous scientist that are of great importance for Russian science, culture and education, as well as little-known memoirs of contemporaries about different periods of Vladimir Ivanovich’s life, in which he appears as an enthusiastic collector of words, then a fairy tale writer, or a courageous field surgeon.

Dal's most famous work - the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, is the work of a lifetime, published in 1903–1911 edited by linguist Ivan Alexandrovich Baudoin de Courtenay. Over 53 years of work on it, Vladimir Ivanovich collected and interpreted 200,000 words!

Moreover, the author of the dictionary was not Russian by birth. “Dal's father was a Dane, his mother was not of Russian origin as well”, -  we read in the historical essay by N. Modestov “Proceedings of the Orenburg Scientific Archival Commission. Issue 27. Vladimir Ivanovich Dal in Orenburg" (1913). – Dal initially possessed a very small vocabulary of Russian words. This problem was especially sharply revealed when Dal entered the Naval Cadet Corps and met there with a kind of Cadet jargon and local chatter of his comrades. In order not to fall into an awkward situation, the resourceful Dal began to resort to the simplest means - writing down walking Cadet words and their meanings. In the service, Dal enriched his vocabulary and acquired the habit of recording and collecting words”.

Enjoying the richness of the Russian dialect, its flexibility and expressiveness, Dal further fervently lamented the separation of the written language from the popular basis, the copious clogging of book speech by “foreigners” that is, borrowed words. He wrote: “The language of the people is undoubtedly the main and inexhaustible spring or mine, the treasury of our language ... It’s time to appreciate the popular language and develop an educated language from it”.

In his work, the self-taught scholar used previous works, and above all the “Dictionary of the Russian Academy”, published at the end of the 18th century and represented in the Presidential Library’s collections.                                                                        

The Presidential Library provides rare edition of the 1904 Proverbs of the Russian People by Vladimir Dal in 1904, some of which the author placed in the “Explanatory Dictionary ...”. In addition to the proverbs, the collection includes sayings, conditions, chatter sayings, jokes, riddles that vividly and accurately reflect the customs and customs of the Russian people.  

There was a little-known military episode in Dal’s life. He got to the theater of war as a divisional doctor. In the book of F. Ridiger “Description of the bridge, built on the Vistula River for the transition of the detachment of Lieutenant-General Ridiger” (1833), it is described how in 1831, during the Polish uprising, Dal, who participated in the march as a doctor, applied his engineering skills, having mined the crossing over the Vistula and having blown it up after the retreat of the Russian division beyond the river. On the report to the authorities about the decisive actions of Dal, the corps commander, General F. V. Ridiger, imposed a resolution: “For the feat to submit to the Order. Reprimand for non-fulfillment and evasion of their duties". Emperor Nicholas I awarded Vladimir Dal with the Order of the Vladimir Cross in his buttonhole.

Reediger imposed a resolution: “For the feat to submit to the Order. Reprimand for non-fulfillment and evasion of their duties". Emperor Nicholas I awarded Vladimir Dal with the Order of the Vladimir Cross in his buttonhole.

... Award-winning, on his return to St. Petersburg, Dal has become known as a brilliant surgeon. During this period, the writer has created several articles, sketches for future works. In 1832, Russian Fairy Tales were published. Heels first.

“Dal’s fairy tales were so much liked by Pushkin”, - writes N. Modestov in the above-mentioned essay, “that under the influence of the first heel of Lugansky Cossack tales (Dal’s pen-name) he wrote the best fairy tale“ On the Fisherman and the Golden Fish ” and presented it to Vladimir Ivanovich in manuscript inscription: "To you from yours. To the storyteller Lugansky Cossack - storyteller Alexander Pushkin"".

Vladimir Dal witnessed the last days and minutes of Alexander Sergeevich’s life. Among the papers belonging to Zhukovsky, three Dal’s handwritten notes were found, which recorded the course of Pushkin’s illness and the events following his death.

“At Pushkin’s,” he wrote down in hot pursuit, “I found the crowd in the hall and in the front hall — fear of waiting ran in whispers on pale faces ... I approached the sick person — he gave me his hand, smiled and said: “Bad, brother“ I sat down to the bed of death - and did not leave, until the end of passionate days. For the first time, Pushkin told me „you“. I answered him the same way and fraternized with him a day before his death, no longer for the world here! ”

One of the most profound researchers of Dal’s creative heritage Y. Groth, who wrote several books and articles about him which are now available in the Presidential Library’s Electronic Reading Room, assessed his contribution to Russian literature: “Dal did not lead a biased controversy, did not put this or that another writer was aiming at his attacks, did not blame anyone for disbelief and lack of patriotism for using foreign words, and finally tried to prove his theory more by deed than by reasoning: he wrote novels and narrations in folk language borrowed from the people".