Vladimir Dal — word collector, a sailor, a prominent surgeon, a storyteller and a friend of Pushkin — in the Presidential Library fund

On October 4, 2017, will turn 145 years since the death of a Russian writer, a lexicographer and an ethnographer Vladimir Ivanovich Dal (1801-1872). The Presidential Library presents in open access the digital copies of rare books by a well-known scholar, which are of great importance for Russian science, and memoirs of his contemporaries about different periods of the remarkably productive life of the Russian all-round scholar.

Explanatory Dictionary of the Live Great Russian language is the work of the entire life of V. I. Dal, published in 1903—1911 under the editorship of the Russian and Polish linguist Ivan Aleksandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay. This is not just a reference book, the versions of which are reprinted annually in connection with the updating of the vocabulary of the Russian language. This dictionary is the result of many years of work of a great connoisseur of the Russian folk word, practically an encyclopedia of Russian life of the nineteenth century. More than a hundred years after the first edition, it remains the most famous and widely read in Russia. Vladimir Ivanovich often repeated that the real author of the dictionary is the Great Russian nation, and he himself is only a collector, a student of “his teacher, a living Russian language.”

Dal's talent is multifaceted, which enabled the scientist to take place in several spheres of activity. But the collection of words was in the first place. Thirteen years of age, Dahl entered the St. Petersburg Naval Cadet Corps; it was there that he began to take an interest in words, in their meaning. He was motivated by life itself, which is convincingly shown in the historical essay by N. Modestov Proceedings of the Orenburg Scientific Archive Commission. Issue 27. Vladimir Ivanovich in Orenburg (1913), an electronic copy of which is kept in the Presidential Library's fund: “Dal's father was the Dane, his mother was also of no Russian origin.” Dal, as it is very natural to assume, initially should’ve have a very limited vocabulary of Russian words. This flaw of Dal, in all probability, was particularly sharply revealed when he entered the naval cadet corps and met there with a kind of cadet slang and the local dialect of his new fellows. In order not to avoid getting into an embarrassing situation, the resourceful Dal resorted to the simplest means — writing down common Cadet words and their meanings. While in the service, Dal enriched his vocabulary and acquired the habit of writing and collecting words.”

Thus, the future scientist began gathering words for his vocabulary during adolescence, and the last entries were made literally before the death of the author. In total, Dal worked on the creation of the dictionary for 53 years. He “was writing down everything that he was possible to catch on the go in an oral conversation” of people of all classes, all outskirts. And he collected more than 30 thousand proverbs and about 200 thousand words. “The dictionary is called sensible, because translating one word to another, it interprets, explains the details of the meanings of words and the subjected to words concepts,” — this explanation of the name of the dictionary Dal gives in an epigraph to his glossary.

After several years of military service, Dal, abruptly changing his life, entered the medical faculty of the Derpt (now Tartu) University. With the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war, he had to interrupt his studies. After passing the exams ahead of schedule, Vladimir Ivanovich went to the front. He participated in the battles, helped the wounded, operated in field hospitals… Highly decorated, upon his return to St. Petersburg, Dal became known as a brilliant surgeon. During this period the writer created several articles, sketches for future works. In 1832, the Russian Fairy Tales were published. The first five.”

“Pushkin liked Dal’s tales so much, — N. Modestov writes in the above-mentioned essay, — that under the influence of the first five fairy tails of the Kazak Lugansky (“Cossack from Luhansk”) he wrote the best story “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” and offered it to Vladimir Ivanovich as a gift in a manuscript with the inscription: “Your own from yours. To a storyteller Cossack Lugansky — from a storyteller Alexander Pushkin.”

Friendship with Pushkin was strengthened in Orenburg, where Dal was transferred to the position of official of special assignments under the military governor V. A. Perovsky. The poet in September 1833 as a historian of Emperor Nicholas I came to collect materials on the subject of the Pugachev riot. Together with Dal, Alexander Sergeyevich traveled all the most important places of Pugachev's events. And in just four years, Vladimir Ivanovich will treat him after a duel with Dantes, be near Pushkin at his death, and participate in the autopsy…

“Thus, — N. Modestov makes a point in his study, — in Orenburg, apart from executive official and a prolific writer, Dal also appeared as a philologist, ethnographer, archeologist, historian, statistician, botanist and naturalist. For such a multidimensional activity, one author calls Dal “the Russian Littré,” that means, a kind of Russian all-round scholar.”

The Presidential Library website also features a rare edition of Proverbs of the Russian People by Vladimir Dal (1904), some of which the author added to the explanatory dictionary. In addition to proverbs, the collection includes the sayings, aphorisms, bywords, idioms, jokes, and the riddles that vividly and accurately reflect the customs and a nature of the Russian people.