The author, critic and publicist Yuri Felsen (Fel’zen; the pseudonym of Nikolai Bernhardovich Freudenstein, 1894–1943) entered the pantheon of Russian émigré letters as one of the most interesting and original figures among what Vladimir Varshavskii termed “the unnoticed generation”. Yet Felsen’s literary trajectory ultimately proved paradoxical: despite an almost universal acclaim during his lifetime, his untimely death at Auschwitz precipitated a sharp decline into obscurity, from which he has only begun to emerge in the twenty-first century.
Felsen was born in St Petersburg on 24 October 1894, soon after his Jewish parents moved to the imperial capital from Riga. The son of a …
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Citation: Karetnyk, Bryan. "Iurii Felzen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 September 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13960, accessed 16 April 2024.]
