May 2024

Kovalevskaya's autobiographical writings, as well as extracts from her letters and diaries have been centrepieces of my engagement with her papers. Kovalevskaya published the first version of her autobiography, Life in Russia: The Sisters Rajevski in Swedish in 1889. It was written in the third person and was disguised as a novel. Just a year later, in 1890, she published the second version of her autobiography, Memories of Childhood in Russian, in two issues of the journal Vestnik Europy [Messenger of Europe].  

We do not know with certainty what made Kovalevskaya write her life in two versions, first as an autofiction and then as a classical autobiography. Perhaps her reservations of revealing herself in the public arena receded as her fame as an accomplished mathematician rose. Or perhaps the immediate success of the first publication in Sweden made Kovalevskaya bolder and fearless as an author. Her second autobiography was also a literary event of great significance, particularly since only six months after its publication, Kovalevskaya died from pneumonia on 10 February 1891. The autobiography was translated in seven languages: French, Dutch, Danish, Polish, Czech and Japanese within the next few years following her passing, while two English translations appeared in 1895, one in London, and one in New York. Both versions had errors and were incomplete, but the 1974 translation by Beatrice Stillman, Sofya Kovalevskaya: A Russian Childhood is the definite one. While she was still alive, Kovalevskaya knew that her autobiography had already been translated in French, and in this version, she was planning to include sections that had been kept out of the Russian publication.  Kovalevskaya’s autobiography was indeed published in the La Revue de Paris in three parts, August 1 and 15 and September 1, 1894 and one year later it appeared as a book, under the title Souvenirs d'enfance. 

Kovalevskaya’s first biography Sonja Kovalevsky:  what I experienced together with her and what she told me about herself, appeared shortly after her untimely death, in 1892. It was written by her friend and co-author Anna Carlotta Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello. The famous Swedish feminist writer, Ellen Key, who knew Kovalevskaya well, wrote a biographical sketch for Kovalevskaya soon after her death, which was initially published in the Swedish journal Dagny.  

These initial biographies were just the beginning of a series of reminiscences, memoirs and biographical sketches, which started at the time of her death, the turn of the nineteenth century, and have reached our days. Initially written in Russian, Swedish, German, Polish, and French, these biographies and memoirs have been translated in different languages, often with both semantic and stylistic variations, not only between languages, but also within the same language, as it is always the case with translations.

With the exception of her autobiography of her childhood and the autobiographical essay of how she became a mathematician, these edited volumes have not been translated in English, or any other European language, while Kovalevskaya's correspondence with Weierstrass, or rather his letters to her, have been published in German and have only been translated in Russian. 

What has been translated in English from Kovalevskaya's literary writings is her only completed autofictional novella, Nilist Girl, as well as her two theatrical plays and a selection of her poetry. The Nihilist Girl has also been translated in several languages, including French, Italian and Spanish.