PASTERNAK, BORIS LEONIDOVICH

PASTERNAK, BORIS LEONIDOVICH (1890–1960), Soviet Russian poet and novelist. A son of the painter Leonid *Pasternak, the younger Pasternak ultimately became one of the very few Soviet writers whose work is essentially Christian in spirit. Born and educated in Moscow, he also studied at the University of Marburg, Germany. He is chiefly remembered as one of the truly great Russian poets of all time, his exquisitely polished verse being highly intellectual, erudite, and occasionally obscure. His prose, too, is essentially poetic in nature, emphasizing language, structure, and style. Among Pasternak's favorite subjects are the wholesomeness of nature, the artificiality of man-made ideas, and the futility of ideologies. A recurrent theme is the irrelevance of politics to human happiness, and the inability of truly sensitive and intelligent men to choose sides at times of political upheaval because unquestioning allegiance to any political grouping requires renunciation of one's intellectual and ethical independence and a willingness to condone violence perpetrated in the name of a noble cause. Pasternak's verse collections include Poverkhbaryerov ("Over the Barriers," 1917, 1931²), Sestra moya – zhizn ("My Sister–Life," 1922), Devyatsot pyaty god ("The Year 1905," 1927), and Vtoroye rozhdeniye ("Second Birth," 1932). After World War ii he published a number of outstanding translations of world classics, mainly drama.

Pasternak's abhorrence of violence and consequent flight from political realities in search of individual happiness forms the leitmotif of his most famous work, the novel Doctor Zhivago, which was smuggled out of the U.S.S.R. and first published in Italy in 1957 (Eng. tr., 1958). The event became a major political, as well as literary, sensation. In 1958 Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but the political storm in the U.S.S.R., during which it was suggested that he be expelled from the country, forced him to decline the award. After his death, he was halfheartedly reinstated into the pantheon of Soviet poetry, and some of his verse was reprinted. Doctor Zhivago, however, continued to be banned. The novel reveals Pasternak's total estrangement from Judaism and his faith in the superiority of Christianity. The best Soviet appreciation of Pasternak was written by Andrei Sinyavsky (see Yuli *Daniel).

bibliography:

P.S.R. Payne, The Three Worlds of Boris Pasternak (1962), incl. bibl.; G. Ruge, Pasternak: a Pictorial Biography (1959); G.R.A. Conquest, The Pasternak Affair; Courage of a Genius; a Documentary Report (1962); J. Stora, in: Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique (July–Dec., 1968), 353–64.

[Maurice Friedberg]