“MY DEAR, CLOSE AND DISTANT FRIEND”: Nina Berberova’s Letters to Sergej Rittenberg (1947–1975)

Nina Berberova (1901–1993) almost appears to have lived several lives. First, she was a young writer in the revolutionary Russia. Then she witnessed the hectic 1920s in Berlin and achieved her literary breakthrough in interwar Paris with psychologically finely-honed novels and short stories set in the Russian émigré community. Finally, she went on in the latter half of the century to a career as a Slavist in the United States. She had her eyes on Russia the whole time. As an academic she studied the cracks in the ideological wall and seems early on to have foreseen her return to her homeland. At last, as she approached the age of ninety, she had vanquished the Soviet Union and could go back in triumph in the “revolutionary” year of 1989. In addition to everything else Berberova was an avid letter writer who maintained a great many correspondences. For nearly thirty years she was friends with her Russian – and Petersburgian –countryman Sergej Rittenberg (1899–1975) in Stockholm, to whom she sent more than 150 letters and postcards between 1947 and 1975. A reflection of her thoughts and reading interests, they also provide a glimpse into the genesis of her huge memoir The Italics Are Mine (Kursiv moj). This volume presents Berberova’s letters with an introduction and extensive commentaries by Professor Magnus Ljunggren.

Образ города в прозаическом творчестве Нины Берберовой

Nina Berberova – a representative of the first wave of Russian emigration – is known primarily as the author of the famous autobiography Kursiv moy. Berberova’s prose of the 1920s and 30s is the main topic of this article, in which the author refers to the tradition of Russian literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The urban text created by Nina Berberova is considered in the paper as a hypertext; the author distinguishes the features of this textual formation and provides the exam-ples. This urban text is interpreted not as scattered fragments but as an integrated whole. The researcher tries to identify the interpreting code of a “Parisian text” of the first emigration wave closely associated with the myth which organizes this urban text.

Biographical features of Vladislav Khodasevich in Gulliver’s chronicle

The main source of information about Vladislav Khodasevich’s life is his memoirs, which he published as separate essays on the pages of émigré outlets. The article discusses several cases when biographical information appears in the chronicle of Soviet literature, which the critic published together with Nina Berberova in the newspaper “Vozrozhdenie” (1927 – 1939) under the common pseudonym Gulliver. In addition to documentary evidence of work on the chronicle, as well as the existence of an ideological community of pseudonymous notes and authorized publications, Khodasevich’s authorship can be established when biographical details of the chronicler’s life are interwoven in the notes. Until now, such cases have been considered as supporting material for the attribution of certain chronicle issues. The article highlights notes that are of independent value for studying both Khodasevich’s work and his biography, which allows us to significantly correct the traditional approach to such a material. The most interesting and voluminous examples from the entire corps of “Literary Chronicle” are used for research. The thematic scatter is quite large: from the reception of plans for 1935 on the redevelopment of Moscow streets to references to Khodasevich’s unpublished poetic legacy

The concept of personality of Vasily Shukshin in the biography novel by Aleksey Varlamov "Shukshin"

The article discusses the concept of personality of Vasily Shukshin in the biography novel by Aleksey Varlamov in the context of the tradition of this genre in Russian literature, formed in creative work of Boris Zaytsev, Vladislav Khodasevich, Nina Berberova etc. The aim of the study is to analyse the characteristic of the typological principles of the genre in the artistic world of the modern writer and literary critic Aleksey Varlamov. The subject of study is the representation of the conceptual components of Vasily Shukshin's personality in the biography novel genre. The main attention is paid to the theme of Vasily Shukshin's dramatic fate, the motives of the writer's opposition to that time's power. The author's version of the "reading" of Vasily Shukshin's personality, which is slightly different from the textbook one, is analysed. As a result of the study, the conclusions about the specifi cs of the development of the biography novel genre in the works of Aleksey Varlamov, about the author's method of artistic research of the writer's biography in the system of "code of fate" of a Russian, the main motives of his life.