Diana Lewis Burgin is an author, and Professor of Russian at the University of Massachusetts Boston; she received her B.A. in Russian from Swarthmore College, her M.A. & Ph.D. from Harvard University's Slavic Languages and Literatures Department. She has been teaching Russian at University of Massachusetts, Boston since 1975. [1]
She is the daughter of Richard Burgin and Ruth Posselt, who married on July 3, 1940. She has published a narrative poem "Richard Burgin: A Life in Verse" (Slavica Pub, 1989; ISBN 0-89357-196-2) describing her father's biography. [2]
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was a Russian poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from starvation, she placed her in a state orphanage in 1919, where she died of hunger. Tsvetaeva left Russia in 1922 and lived with her family in increasing poverty in Paris, Berlin and Prague before returning to Moscow in 1939. Her husband Sergei Efron and their daughter Ariadna (Alya) were arrested on espionage charges in 1941; her husband was executed. Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. As a lyrical poet, her passion and daring linguistic experimentation mark her as a striking chronicler of her times and the depths of the human condition.
Woe from Wit is Alexander Griboyedov's comedy in verse, satirizing the society of post-Napoleonic Moscow, or, as a high official in the play styled it, "a pasquinade on Moscow."
Havlík's law is a Slavic rhythmic law dealing with the reduced vowels in Proto-Slavic. It is named for the Czech scholar Antonín Havlík (1855–1925), who determined the pattern in 1889. While Havlík's law was a precursor to the loss of the yers, that process is part of the individual history of the various Slavic languages. Havlík's law was already in effect at the end of the Common Slavic period, and ended the era of the "law of open syllables", a major phonological innovation of the Common Slavic period.
Sophia Yakovlevna Parnok was a Russian poet, journalist and translator. From the age of six, she wrote poetry in a style quite distinct from the predominant poets of her times, revealing instead her own sense of Russianness, Jewish identity and lesbianism. Besides her literary work, she worked as a journalist under the pen name of Andrei Polianin. She has been referred to as "Russia's Sappho", as she wrote openly about her seven lesbian relationships.
Valentin Yakovlevich Parnakh (1891–1951) was a Soviet musician and choreographer, who was a founding father of Soviet jazz. He was also a poet, and translated many foreign works into Russian, notably Spanish poetry and plays.
Ruth Pierce Posselt was an American violinist and educator.
Richard Burgin was a Polish-American violinist, best known as associate conductor and the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO).
Christopher Whyte is a Scottish poet, novelist, translator and critic. He is a novelist in English, a poet in Scottish Gaelic, the translator into English of Marina Tsvetaeva, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Maria Rilke, and an innovative and controversial critic of Scottish and international literature. His work in Gaelic appears under the name Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin.
Ellendea Proffer Teasley is an American author, publisher, and translator of Russian literature into English.
Yuliya Lazarevna Veysberg was a music critic and composer.
Sergei Yakovlevich Efron was a Russian poet, White Army officer, and the husband of fellow poet Marina Tsvetaeva. While in exile, he was recruited by the Soviet NKVD. After returning to the USSR from France, he was executed.
Elena Borisovna Frolova is a Russian singer-songwriter, composer, and poet. She is author and performer of songs based on poems by many Russian poets of twentieth century, including Marina Tsvetaeva, Sophia Parnok, Joseph Brodsky, Anna Barkova, Andrei Belyi, Varlam Shalamov, Maria Petrovykh, Veniamin Blazhenny, Bulat Okudzhava, and many others, as well as her own poetry. Frolova is one of few performers who uses Russian folk instrument gusli and ancient harp, along with classical six-string guitar for the accompaniment. During 25 years of work she created more than 630 songs and published more than 40 music albums.
Nina Yevgenyevna Vedeneyeva was a physicist involved in the study of mineral crystals and their coloration. Heading numerous departments at such institutions as the All-USSR Institute of Mineral Resources, the Institute of Geological Sciences and the Institute of Crystallography, she conducted research into color variants of clay minerals and classifying clays which occurred in organic dyes. She was noted for development and design of instruments to improve the methods of optical crystallography. She was the last partner-muse of the poet Sophia Parnok and was awarded the Stalin Prize and Order of Lenin for her scientific studies and inventions.
Sofia Polyakova was a Soviet classical philologist, Byzantine specialist and scholar of ancient Greek and Byzantine authors. She published the first collection of the works of the Russian poet Sophia Parnok and was the first scholar to unravel the relationship of Parnok and Marina Tsvetaeva. Her work on Parnok, revived scholarly interest in the poet.
Olga Tsuberbiller was a Russian mathematician noted for her creation of the textbook Problems and Exercises in Analytic Geometry. The book has been used as a standard text for high schools since its creation in 1927. Sophia Parnok, noted Russian poet dedicated her verses in the Half-voiced cycle to Tsuberbiller, and the educator cared for Parnok during her final illness, later becoming her literary executor. She later became the partner of the noted opera singer, Concordia Antarova. Tsuberbiller was designated as an Honored Scientist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1955.
Adelaida Gertsyk was a Russian translator, poet and writer of the Silver Age. Her literary salons of the 19th and early 20th century brought many of the poets of the age together. Almost forgotten after her lifetime, scholarship renewed on Gertsyk at the end of the Soviet era and she is now deemed one of the significant poets of her age.
Lyudmila Erarskaya, was a Russian actress who performed from the pre-revolutionary period until her death in Moscow in 1964. She was an associate and friend of some of the most noted intellectuals of her era and was most known for her relationship with and inspiration of poems by Sophia Parnok.
Eugenia Gertsyk was a noted Russian translator and literary figure from the Silver Age. Since the demise of the USSR, she has become noted for her memoirs and extensive letter correspondence, which provides a unique glimpse into the interwar years of Russia's past.
Ilma Rakusa is a Swiss writer and translator. She translates French, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Hungarian into German.
Vera Klavdievna Zvjaginceva or Zvyagintseva was a Russian actress, poet, translator and memoirist. She translated poetry from Armenian to Russian including the poetry of Gevorg Emin, and that of Rachiya Ovanesyan.