Osip Felin (Italian: Ossip Félyne; French: Joseph Blindermann; born Osip (Iosif) Abramovich Blinderman) was an Odessa-born writer, aircraft designer, and translator.
Early Life
Osip Abramovich Blinderman was born on 29 December 1882 (11 January 1883 in the Gregorian calendar) to Abram Moiseyevich Blinderman and Polina Zeylikovna Blinderman (née Halperin), the daughter of a merchant. His parents' marriage ended in the early 1890s.
From 1894 to 1900, Blinderman attended the Imperial Commercial School in Odessa. Between 1 September 1902 and 1 February 1906, he studied intermittently at the Agricultural Department of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, passing examinations in eight subjects. He was expelled several times, most recently in February 1906 for failing to pay his tuition fees.
At the time, students were permitted to enrol in several institutions, with the possibility of transferring academic credits between them. Moreover, his father's financial standing afforded Blinderman considerable freedom in choosing his studies and career. Abram Blinderman had become a practising lawyer and legal adviser to the Society of Shipbuilding, Mechanical and Foundry Works. He also served as a member of the Mykolaiv City Duma and owned an apartment building on the city's Central Avenue.
In September 1906, Blinderman enrolled in the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, on the strength of his previous studies at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. Yet by October of the same year, he had paid the enrolment fee at the School of Electrical Engineering in Nancy, France (now the École nationale supérieure d'électricité et de mécanique de Nancy). He completed the institution's three-year programme in 1910.
Aviation
The circumstances that first drew Osip Blinderman to aviation remain unknown. Yet for a man whose intellectual curiosity had already led him through agriculture, chemistry, and electrical engineering, the emerging field of aeronautics must have held considerable appeal.
In 1909, Colonel Jean-Baptiste Roche, an engineer and graduate of France's prestigious École Polytechnique, founded the École supérieure d'aéronautique et de constructions mécaniques (Higher School of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering) in Paris. Among its students were eleven subjects of the Russian Empire, including Osip Blinderman. The precise circumstances of his studies at the institution, however, have yet to be established.
What is known is that, after completing his education in 1910, Blinderman turned his attention to aircraft design and innovation. He established a workshop producing aeroplanes of his own design and even founded a flying school, the École de Pilotage « Monoplans Blindermann », at the Châteaufort airfield in the Yvelines department, approximately 25 kilometres west of Paris.

Russian aviator V. V. Mayorov, who learned to fly at Blinderman's school in 1910, purchased one of his aircraft and brought it to Russia in 1911, where he performed demonstration flights in cities across the country. Drawing on the design of this aircraft, Blinderman and Mayorov went on to build a new model, the Blindermann-Mayeroff.

The Blindermann gull-wing monoplane, designed in France by Odessa-born aviation pioneer Osip Blinderman (France, 1911).

Blinderman's involvement in aviation spanned three distinct fields: aircraft design, teaching, and piloting. He is known to have co-designed and built five types of aircraft, established his own flying school, and qualified as a pilot himself. Despite these achievements, his aviation ventures brought him no financial reward, resulting instead in considerable losses.

Between the Russian Empire, Europe, and Exile

During the First World War, Blinderman worked for the leading American electrical engineering company Westinghouse Electric. Between 1915 and 1916, he was stationed in Vado Ligure, Italy, on a company assignment.

He subsequently returned to Paris, but following the revolutionary upheavals and the collapse of the Russian Empire, he decided to settle permanently in Italy. He lived first in Rome (1917–1923), then in Naples (1923–1925), and Milan (1925–1939), before spending his final years in Bordighera, on the Ligurian coast.
Literary Career

Blinderman made his literary debut in Odessa in 1900 with the short story The Theatre. He later published under the pseudonym Osip Sleptsov in Kyiv newspapers and became literary editor of the magazine Southwestern Week and the newspaper Kyiv News.

His literary breakthrough came in 1910 with the publication of The Curse, a short story exploring the violence and trauma of a pogrom. In 1913, writing under the pseudonym O. Felin, he published a collection of short stories under the same title. The entire print run was confiscated and destroyed. Nevertheless, he continued contributing to Russian-language periodicals until 1916.

In 1919, Blinderman resumed his literary career, this time writing in Italian and publishing under the name Ossip Felyne. The pseudonym was inspired by his wife, Felia Rosenberg (2 July 1883, Odessa – 1964, Bordighera), who was also from Odessa and wrote under the pen name Lia Neanova. He soon established himself as a notable figure in Italian literary life during the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1920, the literary magazine Comoedia published Federico Verdinois's Italian translation of his three-act drama Per la porta! (Through the Door!). The same magazine published his play La tramontana (The North Wind) in 1924, following its staging at Rome's Teatro Argentina the previous year. In 1930, Comoedia published Stelle spente (Extinguished Stars), a drama written in Italian in collaboration with his wife, Lia Neanova.

Together with his wife and their daughter Erna, Felin also devoted himself to translating Russian prose and drama into Italian.

Italy and the Theatre

In 1917, Blinderman lived for a time at Via Sistina 68 in Rome. By 1923, he had moved to Naples, where he worked as a journalist and director of the Impresa Metropolitana di Napoli.

He later settled in Milan, where, from 1925 onwards, he lived at several addresses, including Via Vanvitelli 94, Via Jommelli 3, Via Teodosio 36, and, from 1928, Via Mario Bianco 5.

In 1930, he founded Teatro per tutti: raccolta di commedie (Theatre for Everyone: A Collection of Plays), a theatrical publication issued by the Milanese publishing house Bietti. He directed the magazine, which appeared from 1930 to 1938, and continued to serve as its editor-in-chief in the years that followed.

His comedies, written in collaboration with his wife and daughter, including Stelle spente, Messalina, and La signorina lievito, were staged at Milan's Teatro Manzoni.

His plays were performed by some of Italy's most celebrated theatrical companies and performers, including Ettore Petrolini, Emma Gramatica, and Ruggero Ricci. These productions brought Felin considerable recognition among audiences and theatre critics, establishing his reputation in the Italian theatrical world.

Between 1929 and 1930, he edited the series Volga: versioni originali libri grandi autori for the publishing house Corbaccio. His work as a translator embraced both Russian literary classics, including Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and contemporary writers such as Leonid Andreyev, Boris Zaitsev, Ivan Shmelyov, and Panteleimon Romanov.

Later Years

During the 1930s, three of Felin's plays received approval for performance from the Italian censorship authorities: the comedy Giovinezza (Youth, 1933), the one-act play Chiacchiere in anticamera (Conversations in the Anteroom, 1935), and Chiacchiere in un nido d'amore (Conversations in a Love Nest, 1937).

In 1939, Blinderman was stripped of his Italian citizenship under Royal Decree-Law No. 1728, Measures for the Defence of the Italian Race, adopted on 17 November 1938. Part of Fascist Italy's antisemitic racial legislation, the decree imposed severe restrictions on Jewish citizens, including prohibitions on teaching and employing so-called "Aryan" domestic servants. The legislation was repealed on 20 January 1944.

The circumstances of Blinderman's life during this period remain largely undocumented.

Osip Blinderman died in 1950 in Bordighera, in the province of Imperia, Liguria. He was buried in a Catholic cemetery alongside his wife.
Publications
● The Curse and Other Stories. St Petersburg: Semenov, 1913. 246 pp● Per la porta. Comoedia, 1920, No. 2.● Il bivio. Translated from Russian, with a preface by Federico Verdinois. Rome: M. Carra e C. di Luigi Bellini, 1921; 1923.● La morte della rondine. Rome, 1921.● Maledizione: novelle. Translated from Russian by Federico Verdinois. Rome, 1923.● Il silenzio dei colori. Rome: A. Stock, 1925.● Il tempo di vivere: romanzo. Rome, 1926.● Il sostituto: tre atti. Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1926; 1927.● Two and a Shadow: Memoirs of a Mad Dog. Berlin: Petropolis, 1927. 204 pp.● La donna che mente; I paladini della dama a lutto; Per la porta. Milan: Alpes, 1926.● Il bivio: romanzo. Rome: Casa Editrice Alberto Stock, 1928.● In due con l'ombra: memorie di un cane arrabbiato: romanzo. Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1929.● Stelle spente. Co-authored with his wife. Comoedia, 1930, No. 12.● Cuori inutili: novelle. Milan: G. Morreale, 1931.● Anna Karenina: dramma in 4 atti e 5 quadri tratto dal romanzo omonimo di Leone Tolstoj. Dramatic adaptation by Lia Neanova and Ossip Felyne. Milan: Edizioni Teatro per tutti, 1931.● I paladini della dama in lutto: due quadri senza il terzo. 1934.● Il bivio. Milan: Bietti, 1934; 1937.● Bagliori sull'abisso: romanzo. Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1937.● Il bivio. Milan: Cattaneo & Manara, 1945.
Translations
● Louis Lelasse and René Marc. An Aeroplane for Everyone. Translated from the eighth French edition, with revisions, a preface, and supplementary material by engineers O. Blinderman and M. Bisk. Odessa: Sport i Nauka Printing House, 1909. 112 pp.● Leonid Andreyev. Il valzer dei cani: poema della solitudine, dramma in 4 atti. Authorised Italian translation by I. Neamova, O. Feline, and C. Castelli. Milan: Casa Editrice Sonzogno, 1927.● Fyodor Dostoevsky. Umiliati e offesi. Translated by O. Felyne, L. Neanova, and C. Giardini. Milan: Alpes, 1928; Milan: Oscar Mondadori, 1957, 1987.● Leonid Andreyev. Le belle Sabine: commedia satirica in 3 atti; L'amore pel prossimo: un atto comico. Translated from Russian by Ossip Felyne. Milan: Sonzogno, 1928.● Boris Zaitsev. La vendicatrice: romanzo. Translated from the original by Ossip Felyne. Milan: Bietti, 1930.● Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. Translated by O. Felyne. Milan–Verona: Mondadori, 1937; Milan: Mondadori, 1971, 2007.