Word: jakobson
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...Czech capital Jakobson built his reputation as a linguist and his researches resulted in scores of important monographs. He mixed crudite dissertations with vitriolic polemic against the rising Nazi Party. Later, when the Germans invaded his adopted country, Jakobson, who was then living in Brno, became a refugee for the second time. "Few people knew the Germans were going to invade the next morning," he says. "The news was announced on the radio and we left Brno for Prague the same night. This time we didn't walk, however, for there was no time. I had to burn my valuable...
When the Germans overran Norway in April of 1940, Jakobson field to Sweden and finally to the United States. In this country he received a teaching position at Columbia and continued his work on the Igor Tale, the focal point of all his study. He has been devoting virtually all his research time to this Russian epic, and it is the main concern of his seminars...
When the University enlarged its Slavic department in 1949, Jakobson and his wife came to Harvard-he as a professor of Slavic and she as a lecturer in Czechoslovakian. But Harvard got more than two new additions to its Slavic staff since most of the devoted graduate students who were working with Jakobson at Columbia followed the scholar up to Cambridge...
...Cambridge, Jakobson and his wife have settled in an apartment on Prescott Street. Typical of a scholar's living quarters, the flat's living room is dominated by a massive desk littered with papers. Books scattered through the room are beginnings to collect under the windows. At night, all the local Slavic students trickle into the apartment for little chats with Jakobson; they stop in with a question, to solicit encouragement, or to draw Jakobson into an illuminating discussion. Employing his unbelievable energy even in conversation, he gesticulates constantly, emphasizing his remarks with a stab of his hand...
When not doing research or conversing with friends, Jakobson usually retreats to an overstuffed chair with a book of poetry or a portfolio of primitive art reproductions. Although he occasionally spends an evening writing or chucking through a Marx Brothers movie, he feels most contented with his research. Jakobson, an Indefatigable and painstaking worker, attributes hard work to the nature of his field. "Philology," he says, "is the art of reading slowly...