Notes on Alexander P. Kazhdan: the first years at Dumbarton Oaks

Abstract

Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan became an iconic figure in both Soviet (and later Russian) Byz-antine studies, and in the world, especially in Anglo-American Byzantine studies. His work at Dumbarton Oaks on the “Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium”, the publication of books with English-speaking co-authors, and numerous articles on a wide variety of topics have placed him among the leading Byzantine scholars of our time. The regularity and style of his work (from the legendary card catalogues to his reading and writing techniques), his encyclopae-dic erudition as a mentor and a polemicist, allow us to say that A. P. Kazhdan was a model of how one should be a scholar and how one should live as a scholar. The author overviews his personal experience of co-working and communication with A. P. Kazhdan: his first lecture in Oxford, their co-working during the author’s being a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, and later on the Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries and the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.