IN MEMORIAM: JOHN FIZER, 1925-2007

Naydan pays tribute to writer John Fizer, who died on Aug 28, 2007 because of several illnesses. Fizer earned two advanced degrees, one in psychology from the Ukrainian Free University of Munich in 1949, and another in Comparative and Slavic Literatures from Columbia University in 1960. With his native command of German, Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian, he had unparalleled mastery over several languages and subjects in a wide array of fields. His book Alexander A. Potebnja's Psycholinguistic Theory of Literature: A Metacritical Inquiry marks his greatest scholarly accomplishment. In addition to his books, he published some 128 articles in Ukrainian, English, Polish, and Russian as well as 98 book reviews. The articles ranged from the topics of literary theory, to Alexander Potebnja, the Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden, phenomenology, Ukrainian, and comparative literature.