Alexander Nemirovsky ^People

Alexander Nemirovsky was founder of the Department of Antiquities at Voronezh University, author of 70 books of prose, monographs, historical novels, no- vellas, children's books, poetry, popular science and textbooks.He managed to mix being one of the most important scholars of his time in hisfield with writing several best-selling historical novels, translating some of the great European poets and leaving behind an impressive collection of original poetry as well.Nemirovsky introduced the Soviet Union to Rainier Maria Rilke when he pub-lished the first Russian translations of the great German poet in the Voronezh maga- zine Ascent in 1958. But that is barely the start ofthe writer's work as a translator. Fromthe German he translated Rilke, Herman Hesse, Hugo Huppert and Johannes Becher. His translations of writers from antiquity included Virgil, Catullus, Ovid, Martialis, Horatio, the Gilgamesh epic, Song of Songs from the Bible and more. He translated Giogos Seferis from the Greek, and he spearheaded the rediscovery of the forgotten, repressed poet Boris Zubakin, as wel as being one of the first scholars to publish lost poetry by Osip Mandelstam in 1966.He also wrote poetry dedicated to Mandelstam, who coincidentally or not, had, during one of his periods of exile in the 1930s, lived directly across the street from theapartment building Nemirovsky would call home between 1957 and 1978.