Tadeusz Stefan Zieliński

He was born on 14 September 1859 in Skrzypczyńce, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) to father Franciszek and mother Ludwika (née Grudzińska), both of them of Polish descent.[3] Between 1869 and 1876 he attended secondary school in Saint Petersburg and subsequently in the years 1876–1881 he studied in Leipzig, Munich and Vienna. In 1880 he earned his doctorate from the University of Leipzig for his dissertation, Die Gliederung der altattischen Komoedie.[3] He was author of works on the history of ancient Greek culture and religion, classical education, and popularization of classical studies (published largely in Russian and German).

In 1884 he became a professor at the University of St. Petersburg, and following Polish independence he held the chair of Classical Studies at Warsaw University for 17 years (1922–1939) during the interwar period.[4] He was the recipient of honorary doctorates from the Jagiellonian University, Kraków (1930), and twelve western European universities. Between 1933 and 1939 Zieliński was a member of the prestigious Polish Academy of Literature.[5]

His daughter became the wife of Prof. Vladimir Beneshevich, executed by the Soviet regime in 1938. Adrian Piotrovsky, his natural son, was arrested by the NKVD in November 1937 and executed.[6]

After the outbreak of World War II, Zieliński left Poland to live with his son in Bavaria, where he lived until he died in 1944 after completing Religions of the Ancient World, which he considered to be his magnum opus.[7]

Although Zieliński was active in many areas of classical scholarship, one of the studies for which he is best known in the West is his investigation of the prose rhythm of Cicero, published in 1904, which is still often referred to today.[8] (See Clausula (rhetoric)). He was also an early mentor to Mikhail Bakhtin. Zieliński's concept of pliaska, in which logocentricism is challenged by incorporating gesture and dance into speech, is referenced in Bakhtin's communication theories that emphasize group participation in the interpretation of meaning between self and other.[9]

His work Tragodumena: De trimetri Euripidei evolutione is a primary reference work for chronology, style, and resolution within Euripides' individual plays as well as across Euripides' body of work, and employs an early narratological methodology.[10]

In 1903, he held a series of lectures to the graduates of St. Petersburg gymnasia and Realschulen about the educational significance of classical antiquity. At that time, public attacks on classical education, not only in Russia but also in central and western Europe, reached a peak, and its dominant position in the school system was shaken. Zieliński structured his lectures as defense speeches and showed with many vivid examples that classical education not only serves the idea of progress, but that its values are quite compatible with those of the natural sciences and even Darwin's theory of evolution. Based on these lectures, Zieliński's book "Our Debt to Antiquity" (in Russian: "Drevnij mir i my") has been published in 1905 and instantly became an intellectual bestseller. By 1911, it was translated into French, English, Czech and Italian, and its German translation appeared in the third edition.[11]

• Cicero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte. (Leipzig 1897, 2nd ed. 1908)
• Das Clauselgesetz in Ciceros Reden. Grundzüge einer oratorischen Rhythmik (1904)
• Der Constructive Rhythmus in Ciceros Reden. Der oratorischen Rhythmik zweiter Teil (1913)
• Rzym i jego religia (1920, Polish) OCLC 119328185
• Chrześcijaństwo starożytne a filozofia rzymska (1921, Polish)
• Grecja. Budownictwo, plastyka, krajobraz (1923, Polish)
• Literatura starożytnej Grecji epoki niepodległości (1923, Polish)
• Rozwój moralności w świecie starożytnym od Homera do czasów Chrystusa (1927, Polish)
• Filheleńskie poematy Byrona (1928, Polish)
• Kleopatra (1929, Polish)
• Zieliński, Tadeusz. "Homeric psychology" (PDF).
• Zieliński, Tadeusz (1971) [1909]. Our debt to antiquity. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press. ISBN 978-0-8046-1205-0. LCCN 75113317. OCLC 109089.
• Zielinski, Thaddeus (1970) [1926]. The Religion of Ancient Greece: An Outline [from original in Polish: Religya starożytnej Grecji]. Translation by Noyes, George Rapall. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press. ISBN 978-0-8369-5222-3. LCCN 76107838. OCLC 61443. OCLC-number for the translated edition: OCLC 753279017