Boris Pasternak Biography and List of Works

Russian poet, who's most famous novel DOKTOR ZHIVAGO, brought him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. Pasternak had to decline the honour however, because of protests in his home country. The novel was banned in the Soviet Union and Pasternak was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. After Doctor Zhivago had reached the West, it was soon translated into 18 languages. Pasternak was rehabilitated posthumously in 1987, allowing the publication of his major work in his homeland for the first time.

"We cease to recognize reality. It manifests itself in some new category. And this category appears to be its own inherent condition and not our own. Apart from this condition everything in the world has a name. Only it is new and is not yet named. We try to name it - and the result is art."
(from Safe Conduct, 1931)

Pasternak was born into a prominent Jewish family in Moscow, his father, Leonid Pasternak, was a professor at the Moscow School of Painting. His mother, Rosa Kaufman, was an acclaimed concert pianist. Their home was open to such guests as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Tolstoy. Inspired by Scriabin, Palsternak entered the Moscow Conservatory, but discontinued his studies in 1910. He studied philosophy at the Marburg University in Germany, and returned to Moscow in the winter of 1913-14.

As a poet Pasternak made his debut with his collection BLIZNETS V TUCHAKN (1914). During World War I Pasternak worked as a private tutor and at a chemical factory in the Ural Mountains. His journey to the Urals produced material for Doctor Zhivago.Pastenak supported the Russian Revolution but was horrified by the brutality of the new government.

After the Revolution of 1917 Pasternak worked as a librarian. With the publication of Over the Barriers (1917) and My Sister - Life (1922) he gained fame as a prominent new poet. In the early 1920s Pasternak wrote autobiographical and political poetry, and some short stories, which were collected in The Childhood of Luvers (1922). He married Evgeniia Vladimirovna Lourie in 1922. They hand one son, but the marriage dissolved in 1931. In 1934 he married Zinaida Nikolaevna Neigauz; they too had one son.

From the mid-1920s Pasternak moved away from personal themes. He began to explore historical and moral problems in such works as VOZHUSHNYE PUTI, a prose piece, and in the poem The Year Nineteen Five. When the Writer's Union increasingly imposed the doctrine of socialist realism, he gradually ceased to produce original work. Socialist themes did not attract or inspire Pasternak, who was interested in ethical-philosophical issues.

"The aim of art is self-discharge
And not the clap-trap of success.
It's shameless to be looming large
For merits which are but a guess."

In the 1930s and 40s Pasternak's work was viewed unfavourably by the Soviet authorities and they were not printed. Stalin's respect of Pasternak remains one of the mysteries of the Soviet dictator's behaviour. Unable to publish his own poetry Pasternak became a translator, selecting works from such authors as William Shakespeare (Hamlet), J.W. von Goethe (Faust), Heinrich Kleist (Prinz Friedrich von Homburg), Paul Verlaine and Rainer Maria Rilke. He had a brief correspondence with Rilke, which was cut short by Rilke's death.

During World War II Pasternak wrote patriotic verses, and published a collection of poems, NA RANNIKH POYEZDAKH in 1943. Another collection appeared in 1945, followed by a selection of earlier poetry in 1947. His last book of poetry When the Weather Clears (1960), was written throughout the 1950s. As in his earlier verse, he employs religious motifs and draws parallels with art and death. "With secret trembling, to the end, / I will thy long and moving service / In tears of happiness attend".

Pasternak's disagreement with Soviet Communism was not political but rather philosophical and moral. In a personal letter to the premier Nikita Khrushchev he expressed the hope that he would be allowed to remain in his home country after continuing attacks against his work. "And keep on grinding / Everything that happened to me / For almost forty years, / Into a churchyard compost". Pasternak remained at Peredelkino and continued writing until his death from lung cancer on May 30, 1960. Pasternak's son finally accepted his father's Nobel Prize medal at a ceremony in Stockholm in 1989.

"Pasternak loved Russia. He was prepared to forgive his country all its shortcomings, all, save the barbarism of Stalin's reign; but even that, in 1945, he regarded as the darkness before the dawn which he was straining his eyes to detect - the hope expressed in the last chapters of Doctor Zhivago."
(Isaiah Berlin in The Proper Study of Mankind, 1998)

Doktor Zhivago - rejected by the Soviet journal Novye Mir and first published in Russian and Italian translations by the publisher Feltrinelli in Milan in 1957.An English translation appeared in 1958. The book was banned in the Soviet Union for three decades and was not available until 1988. Doctor Zhivago is considered by many as the greatest Russian novel of the 20th century. It is part autobiography and part epic novel, a many-layered story starting in the year 1903, when Iurii Zhivago's mother dies. His father commits suicide because of the malign influence of his lawyer, Komarovskii. The Gromenko family subsequently brings up the boy. During his childhood Zhivago discovers his call to poetry and decides to become a doctor. At the same time Komarovskii seduces the teenage Lara Guishar, and she marries Pasha Antipov. Zhivago qualifies as a doctor, marries, and has a child. He meets Lara during World War I, and they fall in love. With his family he moves to the Urals where he meets Lara. Zhivago chooses a life with her, but is captured by local partisans. Zhivago escapes and makes his way back to Lara. Meanwhile his family has returned to Moscow. Komorovskii discovers Lara and Zhivago. They are offered safe conduct to the east. Lara leaves with Komorowskii, expecting Zhivago to follow shortly. He meets Lara's husband Pasha, who, disillusioned with the Revolution, commits suicide. Zhivago returns to Moscow. He dies years later of a weak heart. Lara reappears before his burial. Zhivago's friends collect his poetry.

Zhivago was partly modelled on Pasternak and Lara on his companion, Olga Ivanskaya, who was arrested when Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize.

For further reading: Boris Pasternak and Dr. Zhivago by A.g. Gaev (1959); The Pastenak Affair: Courage of Genius by R. Conquest (1962); Boris Pasternak by J.W. Dyck (1972); Pasternak: A Critical Study by H. Gifford (1977); by Olga Ivinskaya (1978); Boris Pasternak's Translations of Shakespeare by Anna Kay France (1978); Boris Pasternak: His Life and Art by Guy de Mallac (1981); Pasternak: A Biography by R. Hingley (1982); Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography, Vol. I: 1890-1928 by Katherine Tiernan O'Connor (1989); Boris Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago by Angela Livingstone (1989); The Poet and His Politics by L. Fleishman (1990); Boris Pasternak: A Biography by Peter Levi (1990); Boris Pasternak: the Tragic Years, 1930-1960 by Evgeny Pasternak (1990): A Literary Biography, Vol. 1, 1890-1928 by Christopher Barnes (1990) Doctor Zhivago: A Critical Companion, ed. by Edith W. Clowes (1995); Understanding Boris Pasternak by Larissa Rudova (1997)

BLIZNETS V TUCHAKH, (1914)