Tadeusz Stefan Zieliński (; ; September 14, 1859 – May 8, 1944) was a prominent Polish classical philologist, historian, and

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''trans ...

Sophocles Sophocles ( 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those ...

Euripides Euripides () was a Greek tragedy, tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to ...

and other classical authors into Russian. His most well-known works are ''Die Gliederung der altattischen Komoedie'', ''Tragodumenon libri tres'', and ''Iresione'', the last of which is a collection of essays.

Life and career

He was born on 14 September 1859 in Skrzypczyńce,

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

(present-day Ukraine) to father Franciszek and mother Ludwika (), both of them of Polish descent.Sirotkina, I. (2015). "Conversion to Dionysianism: Tadeusz Zieliński and Heptachor." ''Models of personal conversion in Russian cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries.'' 106. Between 1869 and 1876 he attended secondary school in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

and subsequently in the years 1876–1881 he studied in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

and

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. In 1880 he earned his doctorate from the University of Leipzig for his dissertation, ''Die Gliederung der altattischen Komoedie.'' He was author of works on the history of

ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

culture and

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

, classical education, and popularization of classical studies (published largely in Russian and German). In 1884 he became a professor at the University of St. Petersburg, and following Polish independence he held the chair of Classical Studies at Warsaw University for 17 years (1922–1939) during the

interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...

. He was the recipient of honorary doctorates from the

Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (, UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by Casimir III the Great, King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and one of the List of oldest universities in con ...

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

(1930), and twelve western European universities. Between 1933 and 1939 Zieliński was a member of the prestigious Polish Academy of Literature. His daughter became the wife of Prof. Vladimir Beneshevich, executed by the Soviet regime in 1938. Adrian Piotrovsky, his natural son, was arrested by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

in November 1937 and executed. After the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Zieliński left Poland to live with his son in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

, where he lived until he died in 1944 after completing ''Religions of the Ancient World,'' which he considered to be his ''magnum opus.''

Scholarly work

Although Zieliński was active in many areas of classical scholarship, one of the studies for which he is best known in the West is his investigation of the prose rhythm of

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...

, published in 1904, which is still often referred to today. (See Clausula (rhetoric)). He was also an early mentor to

Mikhail Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian people, Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the phi ...

. Zieliński's concept of ''pliaska'', in which logocentricism is challenged by incorporating gesture and dance into speech, is referenced in Bakhtin's communication theories that emphasize group participation in the interpretation of meaning between self and other. His work ''Tragodumena: De trimetri Euripidei evolutione'' is a primary reference work for chronology, style, and resolution within Euripides' individual plays as well as across Euripides' body of work, and employs an early narratological methodology. Zieliński's defense of the significance of classical antiquity in education in a series of lectures in 1903 resulted in the publication of "Our Debt to Antiquity" (in Russian: "Drevnij mir i my") in 1905. In this work, Zieliński argues for a classically-influenced education's compatibility with the natural sciences and

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

's theory of

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

. By 1911, the work was translated into French, English, Czech, and Italian, and its German translation appeared in the third edition.

Works

* ''Cicero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte.'' (Leipzig 1897, 2nd ed. 1908) * ''Das Clauselgesetz in Ciceros Reden. Grundzüge einer oratorischen Rhythmik'' (1904) * ''Der Constructive Rhythmus in Ciceros Reden. Der oratorischen Rhythmik zweiter Teil'' (1913) * ''Rzym i jego religia'' (1920, Polish) * ''Chrześcijaństwo starożytne a filozofia rzymska'' (1921, Polish) * ''Grecja. Budownictwo, plastyka, krajobraz'' (1923, Polish) * ''Literatura starożytnej Grecji epoki niepodległości'' (1923, Polish) * ''Rozwój moralności w świecie starożytnym od Homera do czasów Chrystusa'' (1927, Polish) * ''Filheleńskie poematy Byrona'' (1928, Polish) * ''Kleopatra'' (1929, Polish) * * * OCLC-number for the translated edition:

Life and career

Scholarly work

Works

Notes

References

Further reading