Nina Berberova
Nina Berberova was a notable Russian writer and poet, born in St. Petersburg on August 8, 1901. Coming from a family with Armenian and gentry roots, she was raised in an environment that fostered her literary aspirations. Berberova's early life was marked by a desire for independence, leading her to pursue a career in writing rather than conforming to traditional female roles. Following the upheaval of the Russian Revolution, she and her family fled Russia, eventually settling in Berlin, where she connected with a community of Russian émigrés and prominent writers.
In the 1920s, after a period of notable literary engagement and personal challenges, including a significant romance with poet Vladislav Khodasevich, Berberova moved to Paris. Her experiences during this time profoundly influenced her writing, including her later collection of short stories. Over the years, she faced various personal and professional obstacles, including a contentious divorce and controversies over her poetry. After moving to the United States in 1949, she continued her literary career and became a respected educator in Russian literature at several universities, including Yale. Berberova remained an active writer until her later years, passing away in 1993 after sustaining injuries from a fall. Her life reflects a profound connection to the cultural and historical currents of the 20th century.
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Nina Berberova
Writer
- Born: August 8, 1901
- Birthplace: St. Petersburg, Russia
- Died: September 26, 1993
- Place of death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Biography
Nina Nikolaevna Berberova was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on August 8, 1901. Her father, Nikolai Ivanovich, was a civil servant of Armenian descent whose family had Russified its name. Her mother, Natal’ia Ivanovna Berberova, née Karaulova, was the daughter of country gentry. Berberova’s grandfather was a possible model for the eponymous protagonist of Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov’s novel, Oblomov (1859).
Berberova was an only child, and she later described herself as having grown up in a world of dreams and comfortable domesticity. However, at a young age she realized that women who were full-time wives and mothers were boring, while professional women were not, and she was determined to have a profession. Not long after, she began to write verse and realized she had the calling to become a poet, which in Russian literary society has always been a quasi-religious vocation, with overtones of being a prophet.
Berberova attended a progressive school. When Czar Nicholas II was overthrown in March, 1917, she was hopeful his ouster would result in a democratic, parliamentary form of government for Russia. However, her hopes were soon dashed by the Bolsheviks, and her family was forced to flee across Russia and ultimately settle abroad. In Berlin, Germany, she found a lively community of Russian emigrés, and she associated with several expatriate Russian writers. She and her lover, the poet Vladislav Khodasevich, found shelter with writer Maxim Gorky. However, when she and Khodasevich denounced their Soviet citizenship in 1925 as a protest against the Soviet Union’s repressive government, they alienated themselves from Gorky, and the they soon moved to Paris.
In Paris, Berberova met a group of exiles who had fought with the White Army in the Russian Civil War. This encounter inspired her later collection of short stories, Biiankurskie prazdniki: Rasskazy v izganii (1997; Billancourt Tales, 2001). During the second half of the 1920’s and the 1930’s, Berbervoa had to end her contact with many friends left in the Soviet Union to prevent them from being subjected to government oppression.
In 1938, she married Nikolai Makeev, an artist, and they lived in a German-occupied area of France during World War II. In 1947, their marriage ended in an unpleasant divorce and Berberova returned to Paris, where she became active as a critic. After a flap over alleged pornographic content of some of her poems in 1949, she left France for the United States, where she worked at an emigré publishing house while studying English. In 1954, she married her second husband, musician Georgii Kochevitsky. She taught Russian literature at Yale University, and in 1959 she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Berberova taught at several American universities in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In 1983, her marriage to Kochevitsky ended in divorce. She continued to write prolifically throughout the 1980’s, but by 1991 age was diminishing her strength. In September, 1993 she suffered a fall, and she subsequently died as a result of her injuries.