Arkady Gornfeld
| Arkady Gornfeld | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 30 August [O.S. 18 August] 1867 Sevastopol |
| Died | 25 March 1941 (aged 73) Leningrad, USSR |
| Occupation | translator, literary critic, essayist |
| Ethnicity | Jewish |
| Literary movement | “Reasonable Maverick" |
Arkady Georgievich Gornfeld (Russian: Арка́дий Гео́ргиевич Го́рнфельд; IPA: [ɐrˈkadʲɪj ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪɪvʲɪtɕ ˈɡornʲfʲɪlʲt]; 30 August [O.S. 18 August] 1867 – 25 March 1941) was a prominent Russian essayist, literary critic and translator, best known for a feud with dissident poet Osip Mandelstam.
Arkady G. Gornfeld was born in 1867 in Sevastopol, the son of a notary. After his childhood in Ukraine, he went on to study philology, literature and psychology at Kharkov University (Ukraine) and Berlin University. He then embarked on a career writing for various publications, including Russkoye Bogatstvo (Russian Wealth).
His books dealt with foreign and Russian literature, as well as music. In his assessment of Jewish-Russian literature, he argued that the shtetl writings so far had failed to reach the greatness of Tolstoy. He contributed to the Jewish Encyclopedia, which lists him as a counselor of law.
In 1922, Lenin personally listed Gornfeld among a list of thinkers harmful to the Revolution, writing to his successor:
Comrade Stalin!
On the matter of deporting the Mensheviks, Popular Socialists, Kadets and the like from Russia, I would like to ask several questions in view of the fact that this operation, initiated before my leave, has not been completed to this day.
But unlike 120 other intellectuals deported in the summer of 1922 under Lenin’s orders, Gornfeld remained in the Soviet Union.
In 1916, Gornfeld published a translation of Till Eulenspiegel, a retelling of German fables by Charles De Coster. Several years later, the publisher Land and Factory assigned the dissident poet Osip Mandelstam the task of revising it.
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