Biography of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was of Jewish ancestry and of Russian nationality but larger part of her life lived in the United States where became popular as a writer, philosopher, originator of objectivism movement and strong adherent to values of capitalism. Born on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg with a name of Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum she was a daughter of an ordinary merchant. Having started to read and write at the very early age, when she was 9 she realized that she would like to be a writer. Alisa`s childhood passed in fantasizing, writing of short stories, inventing of her own delusional world.
At the age of 11, she became interested in politics, and in 1917, after the February Revolution, political themes appeared in her stories for the first time. By that year, she had already become acquainted with the literature works of Victor Hugo, that influenced her greatly.
At the age of 21 this lady stepped on the shore of America, without knowledge of English, with fifty dollars in her pocket and a dream to change the world with the power of words. Other things she possessed with were her strong character and her strong will of becoming a writer. Those years she took a new name, started to write screenplays and plays, though without any success in this sphere, worked as a waitress, cloakroom attendant, and at the age of 24 she married quite-known actor Frank O 'Connor (1897—1979).
Ayn Rand – is an author of three novels, a novella, several short stories and screenplays. In 1930, she started working on her first novel "We the Living" that was designated to be a protest against the life order in Russia and expressed her anti-communist position in details. With publishing this novel in 1936 she ended with the “Russian” period of her oeuvre, but Russia remained in it, only at a new, more abstract level, as a symbol of "collectivism" and as an idea of destruction. The turning point of her career as a literary figure was 1957 when her novel “Atlas Shrugged” saw the world. It was her most important and is considered to be her best literature work, having written which she stopped writing belles-letters till the end of her days.
Starting from the late fifties Ayn devoted her talent to a social philosophy which was enriched with a range of her philosophic works: For the New Intellectual (1961), Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966), The Romantic Manifesto (1969), Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982) and others. Despite her castaway`s position in the world of literature and philosophy, Rand is one of the most widely read and studied philosophers of the twentieth century. Her books have influenced the choice in lives of many Americans. All her admirers recognize that essentially Rand was a Russian thinker, whose Russian descent resulted in originality of her literary craft, in a tendency to "overthrow the well-known and long-existing foundations" in a very specific form of idealism, and in great ambitions together with the most prominent feature of her character – an extreme intolerance to everything that she did not consider to be right.
Heart of this great philosopher of the XXI century stopped on March 6, 1982 in her beloved city of New York, but the fame of her talent lives till today, and her literature and philosophic heritage will be read and discussed long after today, till the day when the interest to philosophy of human nature fades away.
References
Sciabarra, C. M. (1995). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. University Park: Penn State University Press
