Background
Lida was born to a Jewish family in Lemberg, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Ukraine). There he grew up and received a wholly secular education.
linguist literary historian philosopher university professor
Lida was born to a Jewish family in Lemberg, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Ukraine). There he grew up and received a wholly secular education.
He obtained a university degree in the Department of Philosophy and Literature at the University of Buenos Aires, where he graduated in 1931. He became a philologist under the influence of Amado Alonso, his teacher and mentor.
He specialised in Romance philology, aesthetics, the literature of the Spanish Golden Age and modernist literature. He taught at Harvard University from 1953, where he was chair of the department of Romance Languages. The family spoke Yiddish as a first language, but the children became assimilated.
In 1930 Lida became an Argentine citizen, after studying his high school at the Colegio Nacional Manuel Belgrano.
His interest in philosophy was influenced by Alejandro Korn and Francisco Romero. He gained his doctorate at the University of Buenos Aires with a dissertation on aesthetics and language of Santayana, published in book form in 1943, by the University of Tucumán Press.
In 1931 he began working with Alonso and Pedro Henríquez Ureña at the Instituto de Filología, and was Assistant Editor of the "Revista de Filología Hiispánica". He also collaborated with Victoria Ocampo in "Sur", and in other literary reviews.
Lida taught aesthetics and literature at the National University of Louisiana Plata, and Literature at the Instituto Superior del Profesorado Secundario and at the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores, in Buenos Aires.
In 1947, to escape the conditions under Juan Peron, he took his family into exile in Mexico. He was invited by Alfonso Reyes to El Colegio de México, where he founded the foremost scholarly journal, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, and the Center for Linguistic and Literary Studies. In 1953, Lida succeeded his former professor Amado Alonso, who had been teaching at Harvard University since 1946.
Lida became chair of the department of Romance Languages and held the Smith Chair.
In addition to his own work, he published translations in Spanish of a range of scientific, philosophical and literary works, by such authors as Moritz Geiger, Karl Vossler, Helmut Hatzfeld, George Santayana, West. Dilthey and Leo Spitzer. In 1958 he became a naturalized United States citizen. Lida married Leonor García (1908–1999) in 1935.
1939 and 1960, Guggenheim fellowships.