Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA | CANADA B3H 4R2 | +1 (902) 494-2211

Marina Glazov (Rafalskaya)

Adjunct Professor

Email: Glazov@dal.ca

Phone: 494-3473

Office: Room 3010, McCain Building

Bio: Only an eyewitness and a courageous participant is able to give a clear testimony about a historical event. Only a person dedicated to study and thought can become a scholar.  Only a true student of literature and poetry can become a writer and a poet. Marina Glazova's intellectual life has been informed by all three of the above experiences, and examining their fruits, she often repeats to her friends, in the words of T.S. Eliot, " A condition of complete simplicity. (Costing not less than everything).

Born in 1938, the time of the never-ending purges under Stalin, Marina Rafalskaya remembers her childhood as deeply affected by the Second World War which took the life of her beloved father and turned little Marina and her brother into evacuees separated from their mother who was at the time struck down with typhoid fever. Upon their return to Moscow, Marina so excelled in her studies that she was chosen to present flowers to Stalin during the May parade in 1946, an honour swept away from her one day before the celebrations because of her Jewish last name. Her name non-withstanding, she graduated from high school with the golden medal and was accepted into the Institute of  Oriental Studies in Moscow University.

Upon graduating from the university and the subsequent defence of her Ph.D., she  served as a professor of Vietnamese language and culture, working and teaching as a linguist, semiotician and cultural scholar. However, 1968 was a year of great turbulence in Marina's life. Together with her husband Yuri Glazov, she signed letters of protest against a new wave of political repressions in Russia; she also participated in typing and distributing samizdat (underground literature) which included Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memoirs, Andrei Sacharov’s treaty “On the Intellectual Freedom”, Valentin Turchin’s The Enertia of Fear, and other authors. Marina continued working at the university (but was denied promotion) until 1972 when she joined her husband in imposed immigration. In 1973 she began teaching in the Slavic dept., Harvard University, but once again she followed Yuri to Halifax in 1975 when he received a permanent position at Dalhousie.

Halifax became Marina's home; here her children grew up, received their education, and finally left home. Here she worked, wrote, and taught. Her many friends around the world treasure Marina's writing, her work, and even more simply her presence. We all look forward to the completion of her novel First Love and Final Pity on which she has been working, among so many other projects, for the last 10 years. 

- Composed by Elena Glazov-Corrigan and Tomas Venclova

Publications

A: Scholarly

  1. “Mandel’shtam i Dante: “Bozhestvennaya komediya” v poezii Mandel’shtam tridtsatykh godov” [Reprint in Russian translation of “Mandel’shtam and Dante: The Divine Comedy in Mandel’shtam’s Poetry of the 1930’s”], in Sokhrani moju rech’: Zapiski Mandel’shtamskogo obschestva [Preserve my speech: Notes of the Mandel’shtam Society]. Moscow, 2000.  pp. 73-100.

  2. “The symbolism of folk Vietnamese Prints”, Traditional Vietnam, Collection of  Articles, Vol. II Institute of Asian and African countries in Moscow State University, Moscow, 1996, pp.325-334.

  3. “The Artist as a Transgressor in Mandel’shtam’s Poetry”, Studies in Soviet Thought, Kluwer Academic Publishers, vol. 36 (1988): 1-61.
  4. “Dante’s Divine Comedy and Mandel’shtam’s Poetry of the 1930s”, Studies in Soviet Thought, Reidel Publishing, December, vol. 28 (1984): 281-335.    
  5. “On the Language Contact and Genetic Kinship of the Languages of Southeast Asia”, Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association, Halifax, 1984: 51-60.
  6. “Word, Morpheme and Symbol in the Vietnamese Language”, Proceedings from the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland, 1982: 194-203.
  7. A Syntagmatic Characterization of the Segmental Phonemes of the Southeast Asian Languages Compared with Chinese”, Proceedings from the Fourth Annual Conference of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, 1980: 95-107.
  8. “A Typological Characterization of the Phonological Systems of the Southeast Asian Languages”, Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, 1978: 99-114.
  9. “K opisaniju fonologicheskikh sistem nekotorykh yazykov Yugo-Vostochnoj Azii”, Yazyki Yugo-Vostochnoj Azii, Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1970: 283-303. [“Towards a Description of the Phonological Systems of Some Languages of Southeast Asia”, Languages of Southeast Asia, Moscow: “Science” Publishers, 1970: 283-303].
  10. “Glagol’nye konstruktsii v yazykakh indokitaiskogo areala”, Yazyki Yugo-Vostochnoj Azii, Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1970: 257-275. [“Verbal Constructions in the Languages of Indochina”, Languages of Southeast Asia, Moscow: “Science” Publishers, 1970: 257-275].
  11. “Opyt sopostavlenija fonologicheskikh I grammaticheskikh sistem nekotorykh yazykov Indokitaya’, Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1966. 18 stranits.  [“A Comparison of the Phonological and Grammatical Systems of Several Languages of Southeast Asia”, Moscow: Moscow University Publishers, 1966.  18 pages].
  12. “Nekotorye sluzhebnye morfemy glagol’noj paradigmy vo v’etnamskom yazyke”, Voprosy filologii stran Yugo-Vostochnoj Azii, Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1965: 232-244.  [“Auxiliary Morphemes of the Verb Paradigm in Vietnamese”, Problems of Philology of the Countries of Southeast Asia, Moscow: Moscow University Publishers, 1965: 232-244].
  13. “Sredstva vyrazheniya vida I vremeni vo v’etnamskom yazyke”, Voprosy filologii stran Yugo-Vostochnoj Azii, Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1965: 179-191.  [“Means of Expressing Aspect and Tense in Vietnamese”, Problems of Philology of the Countries of Southeast Asia, Moscow: Moscow University Publishers, 1965: 179-191].
  14. Accepted for Publication: “On the Language Contact and Genetic Kinship of the Languages of Southeast Asia” in Vietnam, Collection of Articles, vol. III, Institute of Asian and African countries in Moscow State University, Moscow, 2000.

B. Literary work

Books

Ready for publication: Pervaya ljubov’ i   Poslednyaya zhalost. Roman. 400 stranits. [First Love and Final Pity, a novel.  400 pages, single-space].

Published: Razdelenie Okeanom [Divided by the Ocean]. A book of poetry. Preface by Sergei Averintsev.  Moscow: Toza Publishing House, 1991. 80 pages.

Magazine and newspaper publications:

  1. First Love, Final Pity (excerpts from the novel First Love and Final Pity) in Istina i zhizn, no. 1, 48-51. 2003.
  2. Sovetskaya molodezh’ [Soviet Youth], Irkutsk, 11 September 1993: 4.
  3. Literaturnye novosti [Literary News], Moscow, no. 9 (1992): 9.
  4. Vremya i My [Time and We], no. 83 (1985): 111-114.
  5. Russkaja Mysl’ [Russian Thought], Paris, no. 3526 (1984): 9.
  6. Germination, vol. 6, no.1 (1982): 31.
  7. Vremya i My [Time and We], no. 65 (1982): 90-95.
  8. Religija i ateizm v SSSP [Religion and atheism in the USSR], Munich, no.11 (1981): 16.
  9. Atlantis, Nova Scotia, vol. 4, no. 2 (1979): 17-19.
  10. Semiotic Scene, vol. 3, no. 2 (1979): 112-113.
  11. Vremya i My [Time and We], Tel-Aviv/New York, no. 47 (1979): 57-61.
  12. Pozovoe derevo [The Rose Tree], a play, Echo, Paris, no. 1 (1979) 45-65. Reprinted in Russia: Gorizont [Horizon] (1990): 46-64. Broadcast as the play Easter Roses, CBC Radio, 1979. Co-authored by David Jones.
  13. Vremya i My [Time and We], Tel-Aviv/New York, no. 30 (1978): 78-80.
  14. Vremya i My [Time and We], Tel-Aviv/New York, no. 15 (1977): 102-105.
  15. Kontinent [Continent], Paris, no. 9 (1976): 78-79.

C. Historical Testimony

Books:

  1. Editor, with Elena Glazov-Corrigan. Tesnye Vrata [The Narrow Gates] by Yuri Glazov.  St. Petersburg: Zvezda Publishing House. 2001
  2. Editor. V kraiu otcov: Khronica nedavnego vremeni  [In the Country of Our Fathers:  The Chronicle of Not Too Distant Past] by Yuri  Glazov. Moscow: Istina I Zhizn’ Publishing House.

Article-length publications:

  1. “Zolotaja Nit’” [“A Golden Thread”] in Yuri Glazov, The Narrow Gates, St. Petersburg: Zvezda Publishing house, 2001, pp. 359-381.
  2. Editor, “Razgovory Yu. Glazov s A.D. Sakharovym”, Russkaja Mysl’, no. 4319, mai 2000 [Y.Glazov’s Conversations with A.D. Sakharov”, Russian Thought, no. 4319, May 2000].

Grants

  1. Canada Council Research Grant, 1977-1978.
  2. Project: Semiotic Analysis of the Symbolism of Oriental Prints.

Prizes and Honours

  1. Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia -- Poetry – First Prize, 6th Annual Writing Competition, 1980.
  2. ACTRA (Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists). Nominated as Best Dramatic Writer in Radio for Easter Roses, CBC Radio, 1980