Zinaida Vengerova

Zinaida Afanasyevna Vengerova (; April 19, 1867 – 1941) was a Russian literary critic and translator. She is considered one of the few women who were highly educated during her time, having studied in universities in Russia, France, and England. For her works, she had been described as "a literary ambassador between East and West". She also influenced the first generation of Russian symbolists through her writings about French symbolism.

Biography Vengerova was born on April 19, 1867, in Sveaborg. Her mother, Pauline, came from a wealthy family and was also a published author.

Vengerova grew up in Saint Petersburg before her family moved to Minsk, where she completed her gymnasium education in 1881. She became acquainted with and was a long-time friend of Olga Petit, the first French woman to become a lawyer.

Vengerova was an émigré in Berlin, then in Paris, and then in London. She went to live with her sister Isabelle Vengerova – a noted pianist – in New York after her husband's death in 1937 and lived there for four years.

Aside from her translation works, she wrote essays on noted literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, H. G. Wells, Ezra Pound, Arthur Schnitzler, and Gerhart Hauptmann, among others. She pioneered Decadence as a "new art" and single-handedly constructed for Russians her interpretation of French Symbolism. A description of this approach was contained in her work, Symbolist Poets in France. The event, which was intended as a bonding ritual, was described in the media as esoteric and anti-Semitic. Sobranīe sochinenīĭ.