Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Born	Boris Leonidovich Pasternak; 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1890; Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	30 May 1960 (aged 70); Peredelkino, USSR
Occupation	Poet, writer
Nationality	Russian, Soviet
Notable works	My Sister, Life, The Second Birth, Doctor Zhivago
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature ; 1958 ;

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak ^[1] (10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. His parents were Jewish Ukrainians. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister, Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Furthermore, Pasternak's translations of plays by Goethe, Schiller and Shakespeare are deeply popular with Russian audiences.

Outside Russia, Pasternak is best known as the author of Doctor Zhivago, a novel which takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. Due to its independent minded stance on the socialist state, Doctor Zhivago was refused publication in the USSR. The typescript of Doctor Zhivago was smuggled out of the country to Milan and published in 1957.^[2]

Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year, an event which humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the midst of a massive campaign against him by the CPSU and the Union of Soviet Writers, Pasternak reluctantly agreed to decline the prize. In his letter to the Nobel Committee, Pasternak stated the reaction of the Soviet State was the only reason for his decision. He is still listed as the winner for that year.

By the time of his death from lung cancer in 1960, the campaign against Pasternak had damaged the international credibility of the U.S.S.R. He is still a major figure in Russian literature. Furthermore, the samizdat methods were later continued, expanded, and refined by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet dissidents.

Books by Pasternak

Poetry collections

Twin in the Clouds (1914)
Over the Barriers (1916)
Themes and Variations (1917)
My Sister, Life (1922)
On Early Trains (1944)
Selected Poems (1946)
Poems (1954)
When the Weather Clears (1959)
In The Interlude: Poems 1945–1960 (1962)

Books of prose

Safe Conduct (1931)
Second Birth (1932)
The Last Summer (1934)
Childhood (1941)
Selected Writings (1949)
Collected Works (1945)
Goethe's Faust (1952)
Essay in Autobiography (1956)
Doctor Zhivago (1957)

Boris Pasternak Media

Boris (left) with his brother Alex; painting by their father, Leonid Pasternak
Борис Пастернак в гимназической форме
Boris Pasternak in 1910, by his father Leonid Pasternak
Pasternak (second from left) in 1924, with friends including Lilya Brik, Sergei Eisenstein (third from left) and Vladimir Mayakovsky (centre)
Pasternak with Evgeniya Lurye and son
Press Photo Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak's dacha in Peredelkino, where he lived between 1936 and 1960
Pasternak at Peredelkino in 1958
Pasternak at Peredelkino in 1959
Pasternak on a 1990 Soviet stamp

Related pages

References

↑ Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к
↑ During Soviet times, copies of banned publications were spread through the Soviet Union by multiple typescript copies. The practice was called samisdat, a key method of dissidents in the Soviet Union.

[1] Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к

[2] During Soviet times, copies of banned publications were spread through the Soviet Union by multiple typescript copies. The practice was called samisdat, a key method of dissidents in the Soviet Union.

[1]

[2]