Nina Berberova
| Nina Berberova | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
July 26, 1901 St. Petersburg, Russian Empire |
| Died | September 26, 1993 (aged 92) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Occupation | writer |
Nina Nikolayevna Berberova (Russian: Ни́на Никола́евна Бербе́рова) (St Petersburg, 26 July 1901 – Philadelphia, 26 September 1993) was a Russian Empire-born writer who chronicled the lives of Russian exiles in Paris in her short stories and novels. She visited post-Soviet Russia.
Born in 1901 to an Armenian father and a Russian mother, Nina Berberova was brought up in St Petersburg. She left Russia in 1922 with poet Vladislav Khodasevich (who died in 1939). The couple lived in Berlin until 1924 before settling in Paris. There Berberova became a permanent contributor to the Russian emigre publication Poslednie Novosti ("The Latest News"), where she published short stories, poems, film reviews, and chronicles of Soviet literature. She also collaborated with other Russian emigre publications in Paris, Berlin, and Prague. The stories collected in Oblegchenie Uchasti ("The Easing of Fate") and Biiankurskie Prazdniki ("Billancourt Fiestas") were written during this period. She also wrote the first book length biography of composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1936, which was controversial for its openness about his homosexuality. In Paris she was part of a circle of poor but distinguished visiting literary Russian exiles which included Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Nabokov, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Since its inception in 1940, she became a permanent contributor to the weekly Russkaia Mysl’ ("Russian Thought").
After living in Paris for 25 years, Berberova emigrated to the United States in 1950 and became an American citizen in 1959. Since 1954 she was married to George Kochevitsky, Russian pianist and teacher. She began her academic career in 1958 when she was hired to teach Russian at Yale. She continued to write while she was teaching, publishing several povesti (long short stories), critical articles and some poetry. She left Yale in 1963 for Princeton, where she taught until her retirement in 1971. Berberova moved from Princeton, New Jersey, to Philadelphia in 1991.
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