Boris Leonidovich Pasternak Essay Research Paper BORIS

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak Essay, Research Paper

BORIS LEONIDOVICH PASTERNAKBoris Leonidovich Pasternak was known as one of “Russia s greatest living poets” (Kunitz 756). Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow in 1890. He was the son of Leonid and Rosa (Kaufman) Pasternak. He was the eldest son of a cultivated family. His father was a well-known painter and his mother was a concert pianist. Therefore, he grew up in a highly cultivated atmosphere. One of Pasternak s childhood idols was Scriabin, the famous composer, who was a friend of the family. Pasternak says that music was his first love, and he thought for a long time that he would be a composer. However, he describes in his short autobiography Safe Conduct that, “Music with which I was still only postponing a parting, was already becoming interwoven with literature” (Kunitz 756). As Pasternak grew older, he attended a Moscow gymnasium and then entered Moscow University to study law. However, he became so interested in ideas that he finally broke off both his studies of music and law and went to Germany to pursue his study of philosophy. He eventually turned to literature and started writing. When World War I broke out, Pasternak was caught up in the literary fire of the groups of young Futurist and Symbolist poets in Moscow. “The sun beat sweetly on thepavement,” he writes, “twisted like fine mauve sweet peas. It was May 1914. Historic changes were so near! But who thought of them?” (Kunitz 756)Schroeder-3Pasternak had broken his leg as a boy, and he could not serve in the army. So, during the second year of the war, he left for the Urals where he worked in a factory. Soon after the February Revolution, he returned to Moscow and was later employed in the Library of the Commissariat for Education. During the war, he joined avant-garde groups, experimenting in new techniques of rhythm and composition. Few details about Pasternak s life have been published. He married as a young man and his first wife s name was Zhenia. It is clear from his autobiography that they had at least one son. From 1933 on, Pasternak lived a retired life, devoting himself mainly to translations of foreign poets. Pasternak s writings were mostly unpublished and unknown except to poets. He did, however, publish some of his works long after they had been written. His poems and stories gave him an eminent and unique position in the world of literature. Pasternak began publishing in 1913 in the Centrifuga, an association of moderate, scholarly Futurists. The following are only a small fraction of his entire works. Pasternak s first book of poems, Twin in the Clouds, was the first to appear in the world in 1914. However, it was My Sister Life, the series of poems written in 1917 that was perhaps his most important volume of all. It was not published at the time, but it was circulated in many scripts. It was from this book of poems that Pasternak gradually rose to fame. My Sister Life was first published in 1922. Pasternak finished Over the Barriers, his third volume of poems, in1916. Between 1922 and 1930, Pasternak published Aerial Ways, a collection of four short stories, three of which were written during the war. Pasternak wrote The Adolescence ofSchroeder-4Zhenya Luvers in 1925. Pasternak s short autobiography Safe Conduct was written in 1931. In 1942, Pasternak wrote In Early Trains, a small volume of poems. A second volume waspublished in 1954, but has not yet been translated into English. Besides these two small volumes, Pasternak published little original work between 1935 and 1955. One of Pasternak s most popular works was Doctor Zhivago. Pasternak finished the novel in 1956. It was the first real work published by Pasternak after 25 years of silence. Despite its popular reputation all over the world, Doctor Zhivago was rejected by Soviet publishers as anti-Soviet. It is, in fact, apolitical. It was published in the West after being smuggled out of the Soviet Union. It is the story of one man and his mistress who together try to insulate their private lives from the chaos and violence of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War that followed. The book is wistfully sad and full of powerful metaphors lyrically accentuating the breathtaking beauty of life even amidst tragedy. It is a vastly fascinating novel which weaves philosophy and art together into the complex matrix of fate and destiny which make up our human lives (”Boris Leonidovich Pasternak” 2). Pasternak was one of the Soviet Union s most prominent poets and was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize for literature largely as a result of his novel Doctor Zhivago. As the winner of the Nobel Prize, Pasternak won international recognition as a major novelist, although he was much criticized in his native Russia. Pasternak s acceptance of the Noble Prize embarrassed the Soviet Union, because Doctor Zhivago was uncomplimentary in its

portrayal of the Russian Revolution. Pasternak was criticized by the Soviet critics and coerced into retracting the acceptance of the Nobel Prize. Schroeder-5There is hardly a critic who questions the superb quality of Pasternak s art, his originality, the striking freshness of his imagery and smiles, the simplicity and, at the same time, subtly of his words-ordinary conversational speech which acquired under his pen unexpected meaning and precision of shades (Kunitz 756). At a time when most Soviet poets wrote verse designed to inspire ordinary people to work for t