ROOTS AND WINGS: Vladimir Dal

Vasily Petrov, Portrait of Vladimir Dal, 1872

Vladimir Dal (10 November 1801–22 September 1872), who was destined to become one of the founding fathers of Slavic philology, was born in Luhansk to a Danish father and a German mother.

Although Dal received a medical education, he became famous as the compiler of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. He devoted 53 years to this work.

Vladimir’s father, Johann Dal, a theologian, physician, and linguist, knew eight languages, while his mother, née Maria Freitag, spoke five fluently. Perhaps this was what influenced Vladimir. He surpassed his parents: he spoke 12 languages, collected Ukrainian folklore, and wrote stories under the pseudonym Cossack of Luhansk.

When Vladimir was four years old, the family moved to Mykolaiv, where he spent his childhood and was educated at home. At the age of 13, he entered the Naval Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg and later served as a midshipman on the Black Sea. After completing his service, Vladimir studied medicine at the University of Dorpat. He lived in a cramped little room and earned money by teaching Russian. It was then that Dal began studying Latin seriously, which was essential for a physician, and developed a passion for linguistics.

He achieved considerable academic success, even receiving a silver medal for a scholarly work in philosophy. After passing his examinations ahead of schedule, he went to the front as a military doctor when the Russo-Turkish War broke out. For the courage and resourcefulness he displayed during the war, Nicholas I awarded him the Order of St Vladimir, Fourth Class.

Despite his wide-ranging interests, Dal’s life work was compiling his explanatory dictionary. At the time, it was unprecedented. The dictionary consisted of four volumes and contained around 200,000 words. In his research, Vladimir drew on the living language of ordinary people and sought to avoid foreign borrowings. His dictionary therefore became an essential reference book for many writers, including Nabokov.

More than a century has passed since Vladimir Dal’s death, yet his four-volume dictionary continues to be republished. In honor of the famous native of Luhansk, the Vladimir Dal Literary Museum operates in the house in Luhansk where his family once lived.