Nina Berberova | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1901-07-26)July 26, 1901 St. Petersburg,Russian Empire |
| Died | September 26, 1993(1993-09-26) (aged 92) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Occupation | writer |
Nina Nikolayevna Berberova (Russian:Ни́на Никола́евна Бербе́рова; 26 July 1901 – 26 September 1993) was a Russian writer who chronicled the lives of anti-communist Russian refugees inParis in her short stories and novels. She visited post-Soviet Russia. Her 1965 revision of theConstance Garnett translation ofLeo Tolstoy'sAnna Karenina withLeonard J. Kent is considered the best translation so far by the academic Zoja Pavlovskis-Petit.
Born in 1901 to anArmenian father and a Russian mother, Nina Berberova was brought up inSaint Petersburg.[1][2] She emigrated fromSoviet Russia to theWeimar Republic in 1922 with the poetVladislav Khodasevich (who died in 1939). The couple lived inBerlin until 1924 and then settled inParis. There, Berberova became a permanent contributor to theWhite émigré publicationPosledniye Novosti ("The Latest News"), where she published short stories, poems, film reviews and chronicles ofSoviet literature. She also wrote for many other Russian émigré publications based in Paris, Berlin andPrague. The stories collected inOblegchenie Uchasti ("The Easing of Fate") andBiiankurskie Prazdniki ("Billancourt Fiestas") were written during this period. She also wrote the first book-length biography of composerPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1936, which was deeply controversial at the time for its openness about the composer'shomosexuality. In Paris, she was part of a circle of poor but distinguished literary Russian refugees that includedVladimir Nabokov,Boris Pasternak,Marina Tsvetaeva andVladimir Mayakovsky. From its inception in 1940, she became a permanent contributor to the weeklyRusskaia Mysl’ ("Russian Thought").
After living in Paris for 25 years, Berberova emigrated to theUnited States in 1950 and became anAmerican citizen in 1959. In 1954, she married George Kochevitsky, Russian pianist and teacher.[3] She began her academic career in 1958 when she was hired to teach Russian atYale. She continued to write while she was teaching and published severalpovesti (long short stories),literary criticism and some poetry. She left Yale in 1963 forPrinceton, where she taught until her retirement in 1971. Berberova moved fromPrinceton, New Jersey, toPhiladelphia in 1991.
Berberova's autobiography, which details her early life and her years in France, ending with her move to the United States and her first few years there, was written in Russian but published first in English asThe Italics are Mine (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969). The Russian edition,Kursiv Moi, was not published until 1983.
(in Russian)