Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum (1886-1959) was a prominent Russian and Soviet literary scholar and historian. He is a representative of the formalist approach to art. Eichenbaum was born in Voronezh, the grandson of the Jewish mathematician and poet Jacob Eichenbaum. After completing elementary school in 1905, Eikhenbaum went to Petersburg and enrolled in the Military Medical Academy, soon after in 1906 he enrolled in the biological faculty of P. F. Lesgaft’s Free High School.
He studied music in parallel, developing both his musical skills and knowledge simultaneously. In 1907, Eichenbaum left the school to study at E. P. Raprof’s Conservatory of Music and St. Petersburg State University’s Department of Historical Linguistics. In 1909, Eikhenbaum abandoned his professional aspirations in music, choosing instead to study Philology.
Eikhenbaum’s involvement with the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOJAZ) was a key moment in his life. Eikhenbaum joined OPOJAZ in 1918 and participated in their research until the middle of the 1920s. Eichenbaum provided a definition and interpretation of the group, with articles such as “formal method” theory that helped define their approach to literature. Eikhenbaum was targeted by a campaign against “rootless cosmopolitanism” in 1947 and 1949. He managed to continue his work as a researcher, however, it wasn’t until 1954 that he could officially work.
Between 1922 and 1931 Eichenbaum published nine books that are generally considered classics, almost all of which were reprinted in the West. Eichenbaum attempted to synthesize the two different approaches to literature—the purely intrinsic and the sociological—in the late 1920s. However, the attempt and Eichenbaum’s earlier books have met with official criticism, which has found some support in retrograde academic and literary circles.
Eichenbaum’s decision to abandon his research in theoretical linguistics led him to concentrate on textual work, such as preparing exemplary critical editions of Russian authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Lev Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, and Ivan Turgenev. In 1933, Nikolai Makarov published a novel, Marshrut v bessmertiye (“A Route to Immortality”), about the lexicographer N. Makarov. In his diary, the author mentioned that his spiritual-genetic ties to his Jewish grandfather had an impact on him. After publishing several similar works, Eikhenbaum died in 1959, in Russia.
