Vera Inber

Vera Inber
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Born	(1890-07-10)July 10, 1890 Odessa, Russian Empire
Died	Moscow, Soviet Union
Signature	File:Инбер Вера сов.поэт автограф.JPG

Vera Mikhailovna Inber, born Shpenzer, Russian: Ве́ра Миха́йловна И́нбер (July 10, 1890, Odessa, Russian Empire – November 11, 1972, Moscow, Soviet Union) was a Russian-Soviet poet and writer.

Biography

Her father Moshe owned a scientific publishing house "Matematika" (Mathematics). Moshe was cousin to the future socialist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. The nine-year-old Lev (Trotsky) lived with Moshe and his wife Fanni in their Odessa apartment when Vera was a baby.

Vera briefly attended a History and Philology department in Odessa. Her first poems were published in 1910 in local newspapers. In 1910-1914 she lived in Paris and Switzerland; then she moved to Moscow. During the 1920s she worked as a journalist, writing prose, articles, and essays, and traveling across the country and abroad.

During World War II she lived in besieged Leningrad where her husband worked as the director at a medical institute. Much of her poetry and prose during those times is dedicated to the life and resistance of Soviet citizens. In 1946 she received an esteemed government award (Gosudarstvennaya premiya SSSR) for her siege-time poem "Pulkovskij meridian" (Pulkovo Meridian). She was also awarded several medals.

She translated into Russian such Ukrainian poets, as Taras Shevchenko, and other foreign poets, such as Paul Éluard and Sándor Petőfi,and dabbled in cabbala, despite having been forbidden by her elders.

English translations

• Maya, from Such a Simple Thing and Other Stories, FLPH, Moscow, 1959. from Archive.org
• Leningrad Diary, Hutchinson, UK, 1971.
• Lalla's Interests, from Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida, Penguin Classics, 2005.