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Книга воспоминаний
Игорь Михайлович Дьяконов (1914-1999) - советский и российский востоковед, историк, лингвист, специалист по шумерскому языку, сравнительно-исторической грамматике афразийских языков, древним письменностям, истории Древнего Востока. Историко-философские идеи Дьяконова наиболее последовательно изложены в КНИГЕ ВОСПОМИНАНИЙ.
766 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
2 people want to read
About the author
Игорь Михайлович Дьяконов
18 books1 followerИгорь Михайлович Дьяконов — советский и российский историк-востоковед, лингвист, специалист по шумерскому языку, сравнительно-исторической грамматике афразийских языков, древним письменностям, истории Древнего Востока.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 29, 2021
This was a disappointment.
I don’t remember why I included this book to my “list” but considering the biography of the author, I expected some interesting memoirs. In addition, the book is VERY fat, really long, so I thought that he had many important things to write about, right?
And indeed, when I started reading, I was fascinated. All the details about his childhood in Norway, and then return to Soviet Russia, and then relocation to Norway again, and the final settlement of the family in the USSR again — with all the associated cultural aspects and observations about everyday life here and there — all this was incredibly interesting (I already quoted and discussed some things from this part of the book on the blog). However, after that, most of the book was very “meh” for me.
Игорь Дьяконов was definitely a very intelligent and decent person, and he was raised in a good family and had seen many unusual people among his friends, colleagues and other acquaintances. Still, his thorough retelling of all the events and people often reminded me of endless lists of names and facts. Reading all this would have been OK if the book had been three or, better, four times shorter; instead, I had a long, long period of reading Игорь Дьяконов’s memoirs from which I could learn not much interesting stuff from my personal point of view. Somehow even quite dramatic events, like the arrest of his father and, especially, years of World War Two (his participation in the evacuation of the Hermitage Museum, and then his work in military propaganda during the war, and then his stay in Norway again — this time with occupying Soviet army forces) — all this was pretty boring for me and not much informative. And, of course, I was completely indifferent regarding his professional interests, the Ancient Near East and its languages, about which he talks a lot (but not in such a way that an outsider would feel engaged and curious).
Also, I was bewildered by the structure of the memoirs. You read, and read, and read, and you already have read a volume that exceeds most other people’s memoirs about their whole life, but Игорь Дьяконов is still talking about his childhood! And then a similar amount of the text is dedicated to his school and university, and then a large part of the book is dedicated to World War Two, and then he just wraps up the memoirs very quickly in the middle of nowhere. He started writing the memoirs shortly after the war but finished and published them in the 1990s, just several years before his death in 1999. So he had a long and probably interesting life and he really could say a lot about it, but he deliberately limited himself to certain periods and events not even trying to describe anything else. You feel these gaps even in the process of reading but hope to the very end that such a large book would eventually tell you about his real life more than all those lists of names. Nope, it does not make much effort to do this.
So I cannot really recommend it, although, as I already said, there were many interesting details, especially at the beginning of the book. It’s not bad but I consider the ratio “interestingness/volume” too low for me.
I don’t remember why I included this book to my “list” but considering the biography of the author, I expected some interesting memoirs. In addition, the book is VERY fat, really long, so I thought that he had many important things to write about, right?
And indeed, when I started reading, I was fascinated. All the details about his childhood in Norway, and then return to Soviet Russia, and then relocation to Norway again, and the final settlement of the family in the USSR again — with all the associated cultural aspects and observations about everyday life here and there — all this was incredibly interesting (I already quoted and discussed some things from this part of the book on the blog). However, after that, most of the book was very “meh” for me.
Игорь Дьяконов was definitely a very intelligent and decent person, and he was raised in a good family and had seen many unusual people among his friends, colleagues and other acquaintances. Still, his thorough retelling of all the events and people often reminded me of endless lists of names and facts. Reading all this would have been OK if the book had been three or, better, four times shorter; instead, I had a long, long period of reading Игорь Дьяконов’s memoirs from which I could learn not much interesting stuff from my personal point of view. Somehow even quite dramatic events, like the arrest of his father and, especially, years of World War Two (his participation in the evacuation of the Hermitage Museum, and then his work in military propaganda during the war, and then his stay in Norway again — this time with occupying Soviet army forces) — all this was pretty boring for me and not much informative. And, of course, I was completely indifferent regarding his professional interests, the Ancient Near East and its languages, about which he talks a lot (but not in such a way that an outsider would feel engaged and curious).
Also, I was bewildered by the structure of the memoirs. You read, and read, and read, and you already have read a volume that exceeds most other people’s memoirs about their whole life, but Игорь Дьяконов is still talking about his childhood! And then a similar amount of the text is dedicated to his school and university, and then a large part of the book is dedicated to World War Two, and then he just wraps up the memoirs very quickly in the middle of nowhere. He started writing the memoirs shortly after the war but finished and published them in the 1990s, just several years before his death in 1999. So he had a long and probably interesting life and he really could say a lot about it, but he deliberately limited himself to certain periods and events not even trying to describe anything else. You feel these gaps even in the process of reading but hope to the very end that such a large book would eventually tell you about his real life more than all those lists of names. Nope, it does not make much effort to do this.
So I cannot really recommend it, although, as I already said, there were many interesting details, especially at the beginning of the book. It’s not bad but I consider the ratio “interestingness/volume” too low for me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review