Nina Nikolaevna Berberova

Nina Nikolayevna Berberova and her husband Vladislav Khodasevich in Sorrento (1925)

Nina Nikolajewna Berberowa ( Russian: Нина Николаевна Берберова ; born July 26 / August 8, 1901 in Saint Petersburg , † September 26, 1993 in Philadelphia ) was a Russian writer.

Life

Her father came from Armenia and worked in the Ministry of the Treasury, her mother comes from Russian landowners. In 1919/20 she began studying at the University of Rostov-on-Don . By publishing her poetry a short time later, she had the chance to come into contact with poetry circles in Petrograd . In 1922 she left the Soviet Union with her husband Wladislaw Chodasewitsch and, after living with Maxim Gorky in Berlin and Italy , settled with him in Paris in 1925 .

In Paris, Nina Berberova worked for the liberal-conservative daily Poslednije Novosti for 15 years . There, under the title Biankurskije prasdniki (Holidays in Billancourt), her first stories about Russian emigrants who u. a. in Renault -Werk of Billancourt worked in Paris. With Poslednjie i Pervyje (The Last and the First, 1930), Powelitelnitsa (Her Majesty, 1932) and Bes sakata (1938), she published three novels that met with reluctant reception. Her stories from 1934 to 1941, which were summarized in 1949 as the book Oblegtschenie utschasti (Relief of Fate), were rated much more successful and highly valued . The background to all of these works is the sometimes tough everyday life of the largely impoverished Russian emigrants in France.

Her greatest success was a book about Pyotr Tchaikovsky , published in 1936 , which has also been translated into several other languages.

She separated from Khodasevich in 1932, her second marriage ended in 1947 after she had stayed in the German-occupied part of France during the war .

In 1950 she moved to the USA and worked there as a lecturer at various universities , most recently in Princeton , NJ. From 1958 to 1968 she was part of the editorial team of the Russian-language literary almanac Mosty (New York). In addition to literary reviews, she continued to publish short stories and poems.

In 1972 her autobiography was published under the title Kursiv moj in Munich, which was translated into English a little later ( The Italics are mine ). This autobiography sparked a debate among émigré circles because it sarcastically and ironically impaled the human weaknesses of other writers, and the like. a. by Andrej Bely , Maxim Gorki, Boris Pasternak , Viktor Schklowski and Marina Tsvetaeva . It also provided the very first detailed description of the Russian writers' colony in Berlin from 1921 to 1923. This work could not be published until 1988 in perestroika in the Soviet Union. In Germany it was published in 1990 under the title I come from Saint Petersburg .

It was only from the end of the 1980s that her fictional work received attention abroad thanks to several translations, especially into French and German .

literature

Elena Bakunina, in Tchisla , 6, 1932
Leonid Savel'ev, in: Sovremennye Zapiski , 67. 1938
Dowid Knut, in: Russkie Zapiski , 10. 1938
Gleb Struve: Russkaja literatura v izgnanii . New York 1956, pp. 292-294
Nadya L. Petersen: "The Private 'I' in the Works of Nina Berberova", in: Slavic Review , 60: 3 (2001), pp. 491-512.
Ulrike Goldschweer: "Existence and Exile: The Motive of Life Insurance in Marina Cvetaevas Strachovka žizni (1934) and Nina Berberovas Oblegčenie učasti (1938). A contribution to the self-image of Russian culture abroad", in: Anne Hartmann, Christoph Veldhues (ed. ): In the drawing room. Festschrift for Karl Eimermacher for his 60th birthday . Bochum 1998, pp. 107-131.
Thomas Urban : Russian writers in Berlin in the twenties . Nicolai Verlag, Berlin 2003, pp. 147-153.

Web links

Commons : Nina Berberova - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

personal data
SURNAME	Berberova, Nina Nikolaevna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Берберова, Нина Николаевна (Russian); Berberova, Nina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian author, emigrant
DATE OF BIRTH	August 8, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH	St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH	September 26, 1993
Place of death	Philadelphia