Jakov M. Borovskij: Selected Works
The book includes selected works of Jakov M. Borovskij (1896–1994), a prominent classicist and Neo-Latin poet, who lived in Leningrad–St. Petersburg.
Being a connoisseur of ancient Greek and Latin, J. Borovskij, due to the life circumstances as well as to particular qualities of his research behaviour (which was pretty much similar to that of A. E. Housman), did not write any monograph. His numerous articles and paragraphs often published in editions difficult of access or of limited circulation had been never previously brought together. The book in question for the first time brings the works of J. Borovskij together and is aimed at demonstration of breadth as well as of profundity of his careful studies. J. Borovskij’s files were handed down by the heirs to Bibliotheca classica Petropolitana, which enabled the editors to publish some of his manuscripts and to define more exactly some points in the scholar’s previously published works.
The book includes such sections as “Greek Literature”, “Latin Literature” (with subsections “Lucretiana” and “Horatiana” emphasizing J. Borovskij’s special interest in these authors), “Russian Language and Literature”, “Spoken Latin and Classical Education” (on teaching classics), “History of Philology”. The final part of the book comprises all known to date Latin and ancient Greek poems by J. Borovskij. Some of them had been previously published in “Vox Latina”, “Vita Latina”, “Greece & Rome”, “Atene e Roma”, etc., while the others appear for the first time. The section includes selected translations from Lucretius, Propertius, Martial, and others. The book begins with J. Borovskij’s biography by Natalia Botvinnik, which is followed by an article by Alexander Gavrilov on the scholar’s archives and J. Borovskij’s bibliography (by A. Gavrilov and Tatiana Andronenko).