The Presidential Library marking the anniversary of the great master of the word

November 22, 2021 Russia marks the 220th anniversary of the birth of the compiler of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, an outstanding lexicographer and ethnographer, Vladimir Dal. The Presidential Library’s portal publicly provides digitized rare editions of the famous scientist, which are of great importance for Russian science, culture and education.

Vladimir Dal was distinguished by an amazing versatility of talents, which was noted by many of his contemporaries. He could go down in the history of medicine. Dal, who studied medicine at the University of Tartu, during the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829, being a military doctor, proved himself to be a skilled surgeon, especially distinguished himself in the field of ophthalmology. The famous doctor Nikolai Pirogov, with whom Dal studied at the university, lamented that he preferred literary activity to medicine.

Dal could have made a brilliant military career, having an award from the Emperor Nicholas I. The feat of the military doctor Vladimir Dal, who during the Polish uprising, using engineering skills, mined the crossing of the Vistula and blew it up after the retreat of the Russian division across the river, is described in the book Description of the bridge built on the Vistula River for the passage of the detachment of Lieutenant General Ridiger (1833).

Dal was a brilliant storyteller. Thus, Russian Fairy Tales. The first five by Dal were published in 1832. This publication not only brought him literary fame, but also introduced him to Pushkin, whose friendship lasted until the poet's death. “Pushkin liked Dal's fairy tales so much, - writes Nikolai Modestov in his essay Vladimir Ivanovich Dal in Orenburg (1913), - that under the influence of the first heel of the Cossack Lugansky's fairy tales (Dal’s pseudonym) he wrote the best fairy tale About the fisherman and the goldfish and presented it to Vladimir Ivanovich in a manuscript with the inscription: “Yours from yours. To storyteller Cossack Lugansky - Storyteller Alexander Pushkin"".

Dal could become a professional translator, knowing at least twelve languages. The amazing ability to study them appeared for a reason. He was born in Lugan (now the city of Luhansk) in the family of the Dane Johann Dal, in Orthodoxy Ivan Matveyevich. His father was fluent in eight languages, and his mother spoke five languages ​​fluently. It is noteworthy that the fame of the linguistic talent of Father Vladimir Dal reached the Empress Catherine II herself, who even offered him the position of court librarian.

According to Nikolai Pirogov, Vladimir Dal was a man “...as they say, a jack of all trades. Whatever Dal undertook for, he managed to learn everything".  

However, the main work of Vladimir Dal, which made his name famous, was the monumental Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, the work on which lasted 53 years. At the age of thirteen, Dal entered the St. Petersburg Naval Cadet Corps. It was there that he began to take an interest in the new words he had heard from the cadets, their meaning. The history of compiling an explanatory dictionary began on a frosty evening in March 1819, when, on the way from St. Petersburg to Moscow, the eighteen-year-old midshipman Dal heard from the driver: "He is getting younger!" Surprised by the new word, he immediately writes down: "To rejuvenate - otherwise cloudy...". From that moment on, every day the notebook was filled with more and more new words. Dal collected material for the dictionary until his death - even the last four words, heard by Dal, already seriously ill, from the servant, were given to his daughter for inclusion in the manuscript.

According to Dal's idea, the dictionary was supposed to contain not only words and expressions from the exclusively literary Russian language, but also a wide variety of dialects. With special interest and love, Dal enriched his notes with regional words and local turns of speech. He also wrote down proverbs, sayings, sayings, jokes, with which the speech of an ordinary person was amazingly rich in abundance. They are available on the Presidential Library’s portal in the rare edition of 1904 Proverbs of the Russian people by Vladimir Dal.

Dane by birth, Vladimir Dal unimaginably loved Russia and its great language, the speech of a simple Russian man aroused admiration in him. According to Dal, even as a child, it seemed strange to him that people who have received an education speak Russian differently from the common people.

The Russian language does not stop filling with new words. New editions of explanatory dictionaries which are accompanied by disputes over the inclusion of certain modern words in them are proposed. Composing his multivolume work, Dal, as an unsurpassed master of the word, defended the position that not everything that is in the spoken language should be included in the dictionary, but only that which "gives the language strength, clarity, integrity and beauty". In addition, he always defended Russian literature against the dominance of foreign words, pointing to a number of synonymous words from the Russian language.

Vladimir Dal told about his dictionary the following: “It was not written by a teacher, a mentor, the one who knows the matter better than others, but it was written the one who worked more than others on it; a student who has been collecting all his life bit by bit what he heard from his teacher, a living Russian language".