Fearful sun, menacing sun,
Like the mad face
Of God going through space,
Burn the present, oh! sun,
That the future may last,
But protect the past.
N. Gumilyov: Pearls, 1912

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov, with his pale face, small black moustache, slightly slanting eyes, and drooping eyelids, with a frail body but a will of steel, might have been, if he had happened to be born in a different age, a Moses, a Mohamed, or a St. Ignatius Loyola. But he was born at the end of the “stupid nineteenth century” in Kronstadt, Russia, the son of a naval doctor, and he was a “poet by the grace of God,” a militant, fighting poet, a crusader about whom another poet said “You never once in life took off your armor.”

Gumilyov's place in Russian literature as a poet, as a writer of prose “excellent in its formal perfection,” as a critic who “felt the leaning of his epoch,” as the acknowledged leader and master of a new literary school — “Acmeism” — has not been evaluated as yet.

A Short Time prior to the outbreak of World War I a group of scholars in St. Petersburg proposed plans to explore Alaska to rediscover the sites of the early Russian settlements. The outbreak of war, however, put an end to the effort, and it was not until ten years later that the subject of early Alaska was revived in America. About that time a report was received of the alleged founding by refugees from Novgorod, in approximately the year 1571, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, of a colony in Alaska all trace of which had been lost.

The Army Specialized Training Program brought to the fore numerous problems connected with Russian instruction which, on the basis of the new experience gained, may now be profitably discussed, with some thought of formulating a standard or at least generally applicable procedure. Over the last fourteen years, I have taught beginner's Russian to some twenty-five classes, ranging from the conventional three hours per week schedule to intensive courses with one, two, or three class hours daily for periods of six to twelve weeks and, finally, to the nine months’ Army program with fifteen contact-hours per week. At first glance this might seem like a respectable body of practice on which to generalize. But while the subsequent professional performances of many of our students during this period have been encouraging, I do not wish the present article to be regarded as unduly dogmatic. Looking backward, I think we should have been more ingenious in innovation, and certainly more productive of useful textbooks and other teaching aids. But here, until very recently, lack of time, money, equipment, publisher's interest, and competent assistance may serve in some sense as a valid excuse for defects in performance.

Slavic Languages became a part of the curriculum of the University of California in 1901, when I was called there as Instructor in English and Russian. President Wheeler announced that instruction in Russian was established because trade relations between California and the Russian Empire were likely to develop. Whether that consideration was foremost in his mind I have some doubts, for less than five years later he established instruction in Sanskrit. Whatever his purposes may have been, commercial considerations proved of small consequence in the development of his Department of Slavic Languages.

Because of the great transformation of Asiatic Russia in recent years, and the rapid development of Alaska during the present war, the Pacific Northwest is so placed geographically that it should occupy a prominent place in the field of Russian studies in the years to come. Even before this war began, there was every indication here of increased interest in the Russian field, particularly as it pertained to the Far East.

Although, academically speaking, there were several desultory attempts to begin the study of Russian here in the Northwest at an earlier date, the permanent foundation of Russian studies was laid at the University of Washington in 1931 – significantly enough, the year the Japanese entered Manchuria. In the academic year 1931–1932, during the Winter and Spring Quarters, a course in Russian literature was offered in the English Department at the University. From the beginning it attracted a good enrollment. Since that time, including the Summer Session and Extension Service, in round figures, nearly 1000 students have taken Russian literature.

The Story that Christoph Willibald Gluck was of Czech extraction is an old one and goes back to Gluck himself. The learned librarian of the Premonstratensian Monastery on Strahov hill in Prague, Bohumír Jan Dlabacz, in his Lexicon of Bohemian Artists, which is based for the most part on reliable information, says that Gluck, “the famous reformer of French music,” was born on July 4, 1714, in Weydenwang, Upper Palatinate, not far from the Bohemian frontier; and that “in Bohemia, especially in Prague, he laid the foundations of his musical education. Excelling in his ability to play different instruments, he found, in aristocratic Czech circles, some benefactors who supported him — as he often mentioned — in a lavish way. For this reason everywhere and through all his life he called the Czechs his compatriots and benefactors.” The first biographer of Mozart, František Xaver Nêmeček (Niemetschek) mentions in 1798 that Mozart met Gluck, “a Bohemian by birth” in Vienna. Also in Italy, Gluck was called, like Mysliveček, “il divino Boemo” — “the divine Czech.”

The Purpose of this paper is to fill out, with items found in the United States, the portion of Professor Max Vasmer's chronicle, “Bausteine zur Geschichte der deutsch-slavischen geistigen Beziehungen, I,” published in the Proceedings of the Berlin Academy of Sciences for 1939, which deals with the German translator Talvj.

The Bausteine of Professor Vasmer's study are, of course, the members of the first, and so far the greatest, generation of European scholars and men of letters, German and Slav, to take a serious interest in Slavic matters, especially in Slavic philology, antiquities, and and folk poetry. To this generation, it is unnecessary to point out, belonged on the Slavic side such figures as Dobrovský and Kopitar, Šafařík and Karadjich, on the German the brothers Grimm, the historian von Ranke, and even Goethe himself.

The Loud Noise of applause sounded through the room. The improvisor's success exceeded the expectations of his hearers, and even his own. A theme had hardly been assigned him when exalted ideas and touching sentiments, expressed in sonorous verse, burst from his mouth like fantastic apparitions from a magic altar. The artist did not pause to think even for a moment: in one instant the idea came to birth in his head, went through all its periods of growth, and was transmuted into expression. The ingenious form of the piece, the poetic images, the elegant epithet, and the obedient rhyme, all appeared simultaneously. And this was not all: he was given two or three completely different subjects at once: he dictated one poem, wrote a second, and improvised a third. Each was beautiful in its own genre: one evoked rapture, a second moved to tears, a third made one die of laughter. But he seemed hardly interested in his work — he constantly made jokes and talked with the audience. All the elements of poetic composition were at his fingertips like men on a chess-board, which he moved carelessly, with only a perfunctory glance.