Olga Nikolaevna Anstej

Olga Nikolaevna Anstej ( Russian Ольга Николаевна Анстей, originally Штейнберг / Steinberg * February 29 ^{. Jul} / 13. March  1912 ^greg. In Kiev , † thirtieth May 1985 in New York ) was a Russian writer , poet and translator .

life and work

After completing her training at the Foreign Language Institute in 1931, Olga Nikolajewna Anstej worked as a secretary and translator in the chemical industry. She had been writing poetry since she was a child, but had never believed that her poems would be published in the Soviet Union . In 1943 she left Kiev with the poet Ivan Elagin , whom she married in 1937. Via Prague and Berlin she came to Munich in 1946 , published her first poems in Grani that year and in 1949 brought out her only volume of poetry for a long time, “Dwer w stene” (A door in the wall), although it was very well received. From then on, her poems appeared regularly in magazines and almanacs .

In May 1950, Olga Nikolaevna Anstej moved to New York, where her marriage to Ivan Yelagin was divorced. From 1951 to 1972, Olga N. Anstej worked as a secretary, from 1960 as a translator at the UNO , but at the same time worked at the Chekhov Publishing House on the Klujew edition by B. Filippow , which she had been married to since 1949 and which was completed in 1954 was. In addition to her own poetry, she also made poetic translations (inter alia, she translated Rilke , Chesterton and Tennyson and the stories by Stephen Vincent Benét " The Devil and Daniel Webster " from 1960). Her second volume of poetry " Na Juru " (Exposed to the Wind) from 1976 contains carefully selected poems from all of her oeuvre. As the most important of her literary scientific essays she named " Mysli o Pasternake " from 1951 (thoughts on Pasternak).

Olga N. Anstej managed to translate her inner experience into clear and balanced verses. For her there can be “no painless joy on this earth”, but she is able to absorb the beautiful and valid through suffering and ugliness. The basic idea "We are in the hands of the living God" gave her the opportunity not only to endure the loneliness of the abandoned woman, the loss of her home and the ugliness of many people, but to interpret it positively. Overall, her poetry is descriptive, remembering, reflective, and uses repetition and images sparingly.

Works

• Dwer w stene
• Mysli o Pasternake

Individual evidence

• Ju. Bolshuchin, in: Literatura zarubeschja, Munich 1958
• F. Zverev (B. Filippow), in: Russkaja lit. w emigrazii, Ed. N. Poltorackij, Pittsburgh 1972
• John Glad, "Russia abroad: writers, history, politics". Foreword by Victor Terras. - Tenafly, NJ: Hermitage Publishers; Washington, DC: Birchbark Press, 1999. ISBN 1-55779-115-5 (Hermitage Pr.)