Born in St. Petersburg, I was lucky
enough to study Classics in Switzerland:
in Berne,
Zurich, and Basel. After graduating in
Greek and Latin in Berne in 1999, I moved
to Germany, where I have served as lecturer
in Classics at two different places,
first at the University of Halle, and
since 2001
at the University of Göttingen. In
Göttingen, I had the great fortune
to teach some very talented and enthusiastic
students, which made me a better teacher
and scholar. I submitted my PhD thesis
at the University of Berne in 2001. By
the time the revised version of my doctoral
work was published as a book in 2004, I
was ready for a change and a new academic
experience. Thus, I went to Oxford with
a grant from the German Research Foundation
(2004–2005) and then for the following
year to the Center for Hellenic Studies
in Washington DC, before finally coming
to Edinburgh in September 2006. St Petersburg
to Edinburgh – it has been a long
journey.
My main research interests lie in three
different, though partly interconnected,
areas. First, it is the Greek literature
and thought of the Archaic and Classical
ages, especially (though not exclusively)
what Plato called ‘tragic poetry’,
i.e. Homer and Greek tragedy. Secondly,
I am interested in Ancient literary criticism,
especially in ancient theories of tragedy,
in particular in Platonic attitudes to ‘tragic
poetry’ and Aristotle’s Poetics.
Closely connected to this are my persistent
forays into the reception history of
Greek tragedy (and ancient theories of
tragedy), in particular the history of
interpretation of Greek tragedy between
1500 and 1900, which seems to me to be
one of the central intellectual contests
in the cultural history of Europe.
Another
and quite different area of interest
is literature, philosophy and religious
thought of late antiquity. I have
worked on Jewish-Christian magic texts
of
the late Roman Empire, on Iamblichus’ On
Pythagoreanism, and on some issues of
the dialogue between pagan (mainly Neoplatonist)
philosophers and Christians in the 3rd
and 4th centuries. This complex intellectual
encounter – and the resulting cultural
amalgam that gave to the world of late
antiquity its distinctive shape – represents,
in my view, one of the most important
foundations of European culture.
|
