"My Dear, Close and Distant Friend" : Nina Berberova's Letters to Sergej Rottenberg (1947-1975) / edited with an introduction by Magnus Ljunggren

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.

Nina Berberova (1901-1993) was a significant exponent of Russian exile literature in the twentieth century. She emigrated from St. Petersburg in 1921 and eventually worked first in Berlin, then in Paris and finally - as a slave professor - in the United States. She is primarily responsible for a sparse short story writing and a memoir - "With my underlines" - which has been translated into a number of languages. Berberova was united in a unique friendship with Sergei Rittenberg, who emigrated from the same St. Petersburg, senior lecturer in Russian at Stockholm University. She had arrived in Stockholm in 1946 to collect a fee for her Tchaikovsky biography translated into Swedish. Here she became acquainted with Rittenberg. A conversation began - about the homeland, about Russian literature, about the deepening crisis of emigration - which lasted until Rittenberg's death in 1975. Berberova describes in her detailed comments around 150 letters to Rittenberg about reading fruits and resin impressions. She looks back and looks ahead. She makes political comments and conveys moods from the various exile environments. She has her eyes on Russia all the time. In the early 1960s, she felt that Soviet ideology was crackling. "In 20 years we will be released over there," she writes triumphantly. She's only wrong in a few years. In 1989 she returned in triumph to Leningrad and Moscow. She is now hailed as a living link to the great Russian modernism, with personal memories of both Aleksandr Blok and Anna Achmatova. Berberova's letter reflects a central life of exile in Europe and the United States. They are an important complement to her classic memoir.

In Russian

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