Serge Elisséeff

Serge Elisséeff
Native name Sergei Grigorievich Eliseyev
Born 13 January 1889
St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died 13 April 1975 (aged 86)
Paris, France
Citizenship French (from 1931)
Nationality Russian
Fields Japanese studies
Institutions Petrograd Imperial University
École pratique des hautes études
La Sorbonne
Harvard University
Education University of Berlin
Tokyo Imperial University
Doctoral students Edwin O. Reischauer
Other notable students James Robert Hightower
Spouse Vera Petrovna Eikhe (m. 1914-71, her death)
Children 2
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 葉理綏
Simplified Chinese 叶理绥
Japanese name
Kanji 英利世夫

Serge Elisséeff (born Sergei Grigorievich Eliseyev; 13 January 1889 – 13 April 1975) was a Russian-French scholar and professor who specialized in Japanese and Chinese.[1] He began studying Japanese at the University of Berlin, then transferred to Tokyo Imperial University in 1912,[2] becoming the first Westerner to graduate in Japanese as well as its first Western graduate student.[3]

Elisséeff served in 1916 as Privat-Dozent at Petrograd Imperial University (modern Saint Petersburg State University), and in 1917 as Professor in the Institute for the History of Foreign Affairs in Petrograd.[4] Many years later, his émigrée memories of chaos and fear during the Russian Revolution were stirred by the effects of pernicious McCarthyism at Harvard.[5] Fluent in eight languages, including Chinese and Japanese, Elisséeff was one of the foremost Japanologists of his time, both in the West and in Japan. He had close personal ties to many of the greatest literary names of the first half of the century and wrote occasional articles for the Asahi Shimbun.

Life and career

Early life

Serge Elisséeff was born "Sergei Grigorievich Eliseyev" (Russian: Сергей Григорьевич Елисеев) on 13 January 1889 in St. Petersburg. Elisséeff's great-grandfather, Pyotr Eliseyev (1775–1825), was a gardener in serfdom to the Sheremetev family who started a wine and fruit import business that later became a large economic empire. Elisséeff's father, Grigori Eliseyev (1858–1949), inherited the family business, and was one of the builders of the Eliseyev Emporium in St. Petersburg.

Due to the great wealth of Elisséeff's family, his parents spared no expense in educating him and his brothers. When Elisséeff was six years old, he began regular lessons in German with his mother's private secretary.[6] His parents also had a custom of only speaking French at their dinner table in order to prevent their butlers and servants from eavesdropping on their conversations, a practice that was augmented by the boys' French private tutor.[6] In 1899, at age 10, Elisséeff began attending Larinsky College, a gymnasium in St. Petersburg, where he received a traditional education in the Latin and Greek Classics.[6] When he was 11, his parents added private English tutoring to his education, so that by his teenage years Elisséeff was already fluent in Russian, French, German, English, Latin, and Ancient Greek.[6]

As a youth, Elisséeff initially desired to pursue a career in oil painting, but was convinced by his Russian literature teacher that his wealthy background would prevent him from "[knowing] the suffering that any creative art requires", and that he should become a scholar of the humanities instead.[7] His teacher arranged for Elisséeff to meet with Sergey Oldenburg, the secretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russia's preeminent scholar of East Asia.[8] Elisséeff told Oldenburg that he wanted to begin studying Chinese, but Oldenburg advised him to focus on Japanese instead, as there were already a number of well-trained sinologists in Europe at that time but only one expert Japanologist – the British scholar Basil Hall Chamberlain.[8] Oldenburg advised Elisséeff to enter the University of Berlin (modern Humboldt University of Berlin) and begin studying Japanese and Chinese, and then to move to Japan for further study.

University

Elisséeff began his university studies at the University of Berlin in 1907, at age 18, in the Seminar für Orientalischen Sprachen (Seminar for Oriental Languages) led by German scholar Eduard Sachau.[9] He studied Japanese language and history, and also began studying Chinese under German sinologists Wilhelm Grube and Otto Franke.[9]

In 1908, after one year at Berlin, Elisséeff transferred to Tokyo Imperial University (modern University of Tokyo), where, after some initial opposition, he became its its first foreign student who had not come up through the Japanese "higher school" (kōtō gakkō 高等学校) system.[10] In addition to his normal courses, Elisséeff also took a heavy load of private tutoring to make up for his limited background in Japanese.[11] He graduated in 1912, scoring an 82 (equivalent to modern "A-") on his final oral examination and writing a thesis on the haiku of Bashō entitled "Bashō kenkyū no ippen 芭蕉研究の一片" ("An Aspect of Bashō Studies"), and graduated near the top of his class.[12]

Notwithstanding his excellent academic performance, Elisséeff was still racially discriminated against as a foreigner. On the official list of 1912 graduates, Elisséeff's name was printed at the very bottom of the paper, separated from the rest of the students by a wide space, which implied that he graduated last in his class when he had actually been one of the top students.[13] When Elisséeff confronted Haga Yaichi (芳賀失一; 1867–1927), the professor responsible for his low placement on the notice, Haga "simply explained to him that it was impossible to list a foreigner higher than any Japanese."[13] Elisséeff had to make a special request to receive an invitation to join the Alumni Society (Bungakushikai 文学士会) – normally automatically extended to all graduates – and his invitations to their meetings were commonly delivered the day after they had taken place, with the explanation that "the presence of a foreigner at these meetings would inhibit the discussion."[14]

In autumn 1912, Elisséeff returned to Tokyo Imperial as its first ever foreign graduate student.[15] He studied Chinese and Japanese painting, Japanese history, and the drama of Ihara Saikaku. Elisséeff was also interested in Kabuki theatre, and took private Kabuki dancing lessons in his spare time. In addition to Japanese, also began taking private lessons in Mandarin Chinese from a Manchu tutor to improve his knowledge of Chinese. In early 1913, Elisséeff met and interviewed Keiki, the last shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate.[15] Elisséeff's academic accomplishments as a foreigner made him "a kind of legend" in Japan and Japanese scholarship, and earned him connections with notable Japanese literary figures such as the renowned novelist Natsume Sōseki and author Kafū Nagai.[16]

Academic career

Elisséeff became a Professor of Japanese language at the Sorbonne in Paris between 1917 and 1930.[4] From 1921 to 1929, Elisséeff was also the head interpreter at the Japanese Imperial Embassy in Paris.

In 1932, Elisséeff came to the United States to serve as a lecturer in Japanese and Chinese at Harvard University. During the 1933-34 academic year, he returned to Paris to serve as Director of Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He returned to the United States in 1934 when Harvard offered him a professorship in Far Eastern Languages.[4] Elisséeff was the first Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute (HYI), an independent, non-profit organization founded in 1928 to further the spread of knowledge and scholarship on East and Southeast Asia.[17] Under the auspices of the HYI, Elisséeff established the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies in 1936. The journal publishes monograph-length scholarly articles focused on Asian humanities.[17] His wide range of knowledge came to be reflected in the diverse character of the journal during the twenty-one years he served as its editor (1936-57).

There was a small market for copies of Elisséeff's 1932 lecture on the occasion of the Swedish-Japanese Society's exhibition of Japanese art in Stockholm.[18]

In 1957, Elisséeff returned to Paris where he joined the faculty of the Sorbonne.

Personal life

Elisséeff and his wife, Vera Petrovna (née Eikhe) Elisséeff, were married in Russia on 22 November 1914 and had two sons: Nikita Elisséeff (1917–1997), who became a scholar of the Middle East, and Vadime Elisséeff (1918–2002), a noted historian and expert on East Asian art. Vera Elisséeff died in 1971.

Honors

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Serge Elisséeff, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 100+ works in 100+ publications in 10 languages and 1,500+ library holdings.[20]

This is an incomplete list that may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

Notes

References

External links