Nina Berberova (1901–1993)
Author of The Accompanist
About the Author
Born in 1901 in pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Russia, Nina Berberova emigrated in 1922, living in several European countries before settling in the United States. She wrote frequently for the leading journals and anthologies of the first wave of the Russian emigration. The Italics Are Mine show more (1969), her autobiography, is an important record of that period. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Nina Berberova on the set of French literary television show "Apostrophe", 3 mai 1989
Works by Nina Berberova
Three novels: The Resurrection of Mozart, The Waiter and the Slut, Astachev in Paris (1990) 21 copies
Récits de l'exil, tome 1 : L'Accompagnatrice - Roquenval le laquais et la putain - Astachev à Paris - La Résurrection de Mozart (1993) 11 copies
Récits de l'exil: Volume II - De cape et de larmes; Le Roseau révolté; Le Mal noir (1993) 7 copies, 1 review
Les pommes 2 copies
U nas doma lev 1 copy
Nabokov i ego "Lolita" ;: Chaikovskii ; Zheleznaia zhenshchina ; Rasskazy v izgnanii (Russian Edition) (2001) 1 copy
"Rasskazy v izgnanii". 1 copy
Borodine 1 copy
O Lacaio e a Puta 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Berberova, Nina
- Legal name
- Berberova, Nina Nikolayevna
- Other names
- Бербе́рова, Ни́на Никола́евна
- Birthdate
- 1901-07-26
- Date of death
- 1993-09-26
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Rostov University
- Occupations
- writer
professor
critic
translator - Organizations
- Princeton University
Poslednye Novosti(Russian-language daily) - Awards and honors
- Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (by the French Government in 1989)
- Relationships
- Khodasevich, Vladislav (partner - but never married)
Kochevitsky, George (2nd husband) - Short biography
- Nina Berberova was brought up in St. Petersburg. She and her companion Vladislav Khodasevich, a poet, lived in the household of Maxim Gorky for some years before leaving Russia in 1922 and eventually settling in Paris. She became part of a distinguished literary circle, and wrote short stories and novels about Russian émigrés such as herself. Khodasevich died in 1939, and in 1950 Nina Berberova moved to the USA, where she taught herself English and worked as a clerk before becoming a professor of Russian literature at Princeton University. Her autobiography is titled (in English) The Italics Are Mine. In 1985, her novel written in French were rediscovered by Hubert Nyssen, director of the publishing house Actes Sud, which began to re-issue her works.
- Nationality
- Russia (birth)
USA (naturalized) - Birthplace
- St Petersburg, Russian Empire
- Places of residence
- St Petersburg, Russia
Paris, France
Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Berlin, Germany
Prague, Czechoslovakia - Place of death
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Members
Reviews
I was ready to give this five stars but the tone of the book started changing towards the end; the stories lost their hard edge and became dreamy (the change starts somewhere in the middle of "The Dark Spot"). They were still well written, but to my taste not nearly as affecting. "The Waiter and the Slut" is as cutting as a George Grosz drawing, but "In Memory of Schliemann" is perhaps more akin to the sentimental art of Ben Shahn--not bad, but far from great.
The Book of Happiness, although apparently written in the 1990s, at the end of Berberova’s long life, reads like a modernist novel of the early 20th century. (Both Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson come to mind). This despite the author’s own references to Russian writers such as Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Garshin as well as to Jules Verne. The Book of Happiness is divided into three sections each of which is an account (although not in any reportorial sense) of a love affair/ show more relationship. Three sections, but four men with whom the protagonist Vera becomes involved in some way. Each man stands, in a sense, for an aspect of the old Russia of memory, story and childhood dreams. In fact it is their storytelling that creates a common denominator among the four men in Vera’s life (five if one counts Vera’s father).
It is Berberova’s treatment of time, I believe, that places her writing in the camp of the 20th century Moderns. In Part Three, Vera notes that she is “alone with time, which was passing, making her neither mortal nor immortal” and that “she felt not that time was flowing through her but that she herself was time. Berberova’s prose is hallucinatory and dream-like throughout; she segues from image to image, episode to episode, as if splicing frames in a film.” The novel opens with the image of a suicide. A young man, a concert violinist named Sam, has been found dead in his Paris hotel room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He has left the address and telephone number of Vera, his closest childhood friend, on his night stand for the hotel staff to find. Here, from the very beginning, Berberova explicitly invokes cinematic techniques: “Through the window [of her dead friend’s hotel room:] she could see the Place de l’Opéra and the beginning of the Boulevard des Capucines, as if someone had started some director’s old film running on the screen of the window.” Gazing at Sam’s dead body, Vera muses that “It was like trying to lay a negative over a printed photograph so that they coincided.” In his last letter, Sam wrote, “I’m bored. I wanted something I couldn’t have, and everything I did get bored me.” For Sam, despite love, “life is the enemy.” For Vera, life is the experience of happiness, a happiness that she defines as that which lasts. Part I of the novel concerns itself with Vera and Sam’s childhood and adolescent friendship: Vera and Sam meet in St. Petersburg when Vera is 10 and Sam is 9 (circa 1911). Sam is Jewish, Vera, Christian. Sam’s father is a lawyer and Vera’s an engineer. From the day they meet, Vera and Sam spend every free moment together. Sam’s world is that of the imagination. He is a fanciful teller of tales and the two children create an almost hermetic world together, one that lasts until Sam’s family must emigrate in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian revolution. Vera remains behind in Petersburg to endure the hunger and scarcity as well as the change in social conditions brought about by the political turmoil of the era. Soon, she too leaves Russia for Paris, along with her newly-wed, tubercular, and soon-to-be dead husband Alexander Albertovich (Alexander’s father was French, although a naturalized Russian citizen). Part II accounts for the love story (if it is one) between Vera and Alexander and the first years of Vera’s life as a Russian émigré in Paris. Part III takes place after Alexander’s death and involves two subsequent relationships: one between Vera and Daskovsky, one of Vera’s beautiful mother’s four former lovers. Daskovsky becomes something of a flawed (perhaps even suspect) mentor or confidante to Vera. A second relationship links Vera and Karelov, whom Vera encounters in the south of France after her also-widowed sister-in-law Lise whisks her away following Alexander’s funeral. Vera returns to Paris a year and a half later, freshly determined to experience, and thus to know, the fullness of life and happiness, She is soon followed there by Karelov, who appears without notice at her door. They resume their affair in what appears to be a blissful state of matter-of-factness. Upon this note, the novel ends. show less
It is Berberova’s treatment of time, I believe, that places her writing in the camp of the 20th century Moderns. In Part Three, Vera notes that she is “alone with time, which was passing, making her neither mortal nor immortal” and that “she felt not that time was flowing through her but that she herself was time. Berberova’s prose is hallucinatory and dream-like throughout; she segues from image to image, episode to episode, as if splicing frames in a film.” The novel opens with the image of a suicide. A young man, a concert violinist named Sam, has been found dead in his Paris hotel room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He has left the address and telephone number of Vera, his closest childhood friend, on his night stand for the hotel staff to find. Here, from the very beginning, Berberova explicitly invokes cinematic techniques: “Through the window [of her dead friend’s hotel room:] she could see the Place de l’Opéra and the beginning of the Boulevard des Capucines, as if someone had started some director’s old film running on the screen of the window.” Gazing at Sam’s dead body, Vera muses that “It was like trying to lay a negative over a printed photograph so that they coincided.” In his last letter, Sam wrote, “I’m bored. I wanted something I couldn’t have, and everything I did get bored me.” For Sam, despite love, “life is the enemy.” For Vera, life is the experience of happiness, a happiness that she defines as that which lasts. Part I of the novel concerns itself with Vera and Sam’s childhood and adolescent friendship: Vera and Sam meet in St. Petersburg when Vera is 10 and Sam is 9 (circa 1911). Sam is Jewish, Vera, Christian. Sam’s father is a lawyer and Vera’s an engineer. From the day they meet, Vera and Sam spend every free moment together. Sam’s world is that of the imagination. He is a fanciful teller of tales and the two children create an almost hermetic world together, one that lasts until Sam’s family must emigrate in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian revolution. Vera remains behind in Petersburg to endure the hunger and scarcity as well as the change in social conditions brought about by the political turmoil of the era. Soon, she too leaves Russia for Paris, along with her newly-wed, tubercular, and soon-to-be dead husband Alexander Albertovich (Alexander’s father was French, although a naturalized Russian citizen). Part II accounts for the love story (if it is one) between Vera and Alexander and the first years of Vera’s life as a Russian émigré in Paris. Part III takes place after Alexander’s death and involves two subsequent relationships: one between Vera and Daskovsky, one of Vera’s beautiful mother’s four former lovers. Daskovsky becomes something of a flawed (perhaps even suspect) mentor or confidante to Vera. A second relationship links Vera and Karelov, whom Vera encounters in the south of France after her also-widowed sister-in-law Lise whisks her away following Alexander’s funeral. Vera returns to Paris a year and a half later, freshly determined to experience, and thus to know, the fullness of life and happiness, She is soon followed there by Karelov, who appears without notice at her door. They resume their affair in what appears to be a blissful state of matter-of-factness. Upon this note, the novel ends. show less
One should beware a Russian author who puts the word happiness in their novel’s title; irony is afoot. In case you doubt my assertion – simply open to the first page of Nina Berberova’s The Book of Happiness and read the first paragraph:
Sam lay on his back, his eyes closed, right at the edge of the broad, low bed. The slightest movement and it seemed he might slip off like a sack onto the goatskin rug that was spread out over a red carpet. Jerked back by the recoil, clutching a show more revolver, Sam’s stilled hand reached toward the shaggy gray fur. His face, staring up at the ceiling, was calm, and only his black punctured temple (which had stopped bleeding a long time ago) lent something extraordinarily sad to the wave of ginger hair and paleness of the freckled forehead.
It seems that Russian happiness starts with death, more specifically suicide. The deceased, Sam, is the best childhood companion of Vera, the novel’s protagonist. Vera’s been called away from her husband’s sickbed to Sam’s Paris hotel room by the hotel manager who found her phone number on Sam’s bedside table. Sam’s death invites Vera to revisit her memories of their shared childhood in Russia before the Bolshevik’s sent his family packing. With a sharp eye, Vera sees how sentiment has lead her down paths mixed with blessings and pains, but how happiness has eluded her since her time with Sam. By mid-book, we can’t help but empathize as Vera’s tubercular and dying husband begrudges her even a brief daily stroll through Paris streets. And when he finally dies and her time of caregiver bondage ends, she apologizes for feeling free and we want to gather her up and say, “Celebrate!” Finally, like the slow unfolding of a butterfly from its chrysalis, she moves forward, away from the two deaths that defined her and into a life she defines for herself. Though she again joins her life with a man’s this time she moves into this life with maturity and wisdom. For Vera, happiness is not permanent or an entitlement; it arrives when you least expect it, can depart just as unexpectedly, and can only be appreciated after you’ve had to suffer to find it. Berberova has drawn a moving, yet unsentimental portrait of one modern woman’s path to a future that holds the best prospects for some happiness. By the turn of the last page, I find myself whispering, “Good luck and good night. I’ll think of you often.” show less
Sam lay on his back, his eyes closed, right at the edge of the broad, low bed. The slightest movement and it seemed he might slip off like a sack onto the goatskin rug that was spread out over a red carpet. Jerked back by the recoil, clutching a show more revolver, Sam’s stilled hand reached toward the shaggy gray fur. His face, staring up at the ceiling, was calm, and only his black punctured temple (which had stopped bleeding a long time ago) lent something extraordinarily sad to the wave of ginger hair and paleness of the freckled forehead.
It seems that Russian happiness starts with death, more specifically suicide. The deceased, Sam, is the best childhood companion of Vera, the novel’s protagonist. Vera’s been called away from her husband’s sickbed to Sam’s Paris hotel room by the hotel manager who found her phone number on Sam’s bedside table. Sam’s death invites Vera to revisit her memories of their shared childhood in Russia before the Bolshevik’s sent his family packing. With a sharp eye, Vera sees how sentiment has lead her down paths mixed with blessings and pains, but how happiness has eluded her since her time with Sam. By mid-book, we can’t help but empathize as Vera’s tubercular and dying husband begrudges her even a brief daily stroll through Paris streets. And when he finally dies and her time of caregiver bondage ends, she apologizes for feeling free and we want to gather her up and say, “Celebrate!” Finally, like the slow unfolding of a butterfly from its chrysalis, she moves forward, away from the two deaths that defined her and into a life she defines for herself. Though she again joins her life with a man’s this time she moves into this life with maturity and wisdom. For Vera, happiness is not permanent or an entitlement; it arrives when you least expect it, can depart just as unexpectedly, and can only be appreciated after you’ve had to suffer to find it. Berberova has drawn a moving, yet unsentimental portrait of one modern woman’s path to a future that holds the best prospects for some happiness. By the turn of the last page, I find myself whispering, “Good luck and good night. I’ll think of you often.” show less
Nina Berberova seems, sadly, to have become a largely forgotten writer. Born in St. Petersburg in 1901, she left in 1922, eventually settling in Paris where she became an editor at two different émigré literary journals. She wrote several novels but is better known for her short stories; her works are particularly known for addressing the lives of exiles. She moved to the United States in 1950 where she taught at two major universities (Yale and Princeton); she died in 1993. The show more Accompanist is a novella about the complicated relationship between Maria, a beautiful and ambitious soprano, her bourgeois husband, and the plain young woman who becomes her accompanist and lives in the shadow of her employer’s achievements. Indeed, Sonechka, the accompanist, was destined for some such life. Born an illegitimate child of a spinster piano teacher, ashamed of her background and upbringing, Sonechka’s hope of making a living as a pianist is destroyed by the 1918 revolution. She becomes the accompanist of the title, traveling first to Moscow and then Paris as the soprano’s career takes off. Sonechka hates (and loves) her mistress, a conflict that tempts her to tell Maria’s hisband about her infidelities, a way of damaging Maria’s otherwise flawless life. But before she can act, Maria’s husband acts, leading to a wholly unexpected conclusion. Berberova’s portrayal of the life of exiles is wonderful; her depiction of her characters somewhat less so. Sonechka’s life is boring but sadly, I found it difficult if not impossible to sympathize with her, an obstacle that made the novella less than successful for me. That said, The Accompanist was enormously popular in Europe and very well reviewed in the USA as well. A fascinating view of a lost world but not enough to convince me of Berberova’s talent. show less
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