Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (10 February 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, and translator whose lyric poetry is among the finest produced in any language in the twentieth century and whose novel Doctor Zhivago (1957) — smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published in Italy — became the centre of a political scandal, a Cold War weapon, and one of the most widely read novels of the century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958 and forced to decline it — a capitulation that broke him and contributed to his death two years later.

Early Life and Artistic Background

Pasternak was born in Moscow into one of the most culturally distinguished families in Russia. His father, Leonid Pasternak, was a prominent painter and friend of Leo Tolstoy; his mother, Rosa Kaufman, was a concert pianist. The young Boris grew up surrounded by artists, writers, and musicians — Tolstoy, Rilke, and Scriabin were visitors to the household.

He initially studied music (under Scriabin’s influence) and then philosophy at the University of Marburg in Germany before turning to poetry. His early intellectual formation — in music, philosophy, and the visual arts — gave his poetry a density of reference and a synaesthetic quality that distinguish it from the work of his contemporaries.

My Sister, Life (1922) and Early Poetry

Pasternak’s early poetry collections — A Twin in the Clouds (1914), Above the Barriers (1917), and above all My Sister, Life (1922, written in the summer of 1917) — established him as one of the most original voices in Russian poetry. My Sister, Life is a collection of love poems written during the revolutionary summer of 1917, in which the revolution is experienced not as a political event but as a natural upheaval — weather, season, landscape — that mirrors the poet’s inner life.

The poems are characterised by startling metaphors, rapid associative leaps, and a breathless syntactic energy that captured the excitement of both erotic love and historical transformation. Marina Tsvetaeva called My Sister, Life “a downpour of light,” and the collection made Pasternak the most admired young poet in Russia.

The Stalin Era

Pasternak’s relationship with Soviet power was complex and tormented. He was never a political poet in the manner of Mayakovsky, and his work — lyrical, personal, metaphysically inclined — was increasingly out of step with the demands of Socialist Realism. He survived the purges that destroyed many of his contemporaries (Mandelstam, Meyerhold, Babel) partly through luck, partly through his fame, and partly through a series of carefully ambiguous gestures of compliance.

During the worst years of the Terror, Pasternak largely stopped publishing original poetry and devoted himself to translation — producing Russian versions of Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, and the Georgian poets that are considered masterpieces of the translator’s art. His Shakespeare translations, in particular, became the standard Russian versions and are still performed in Russian theatres.

Doctor Zhivago (1957)

Pasternak spent over a decade writing his only novel, which he considered his most important work. Doctor Zhivago follows the life of Yuri Zhivago — a physician, poet, and thinker — through the Russian Revolution, the Civil War, and the early Soviet period. The novel is not a political tract but a lyrical meditation on the fate of the individual in the catastrophe of revolution: Zhivago is neither a hero nor a dissident but a man who wants only to live, to love, to write poetry, and to understand the world — desires that the revolution renders impossible.

The novel was rejected for publication in the Soviet Union and smuggled to Italy, where it was published by Feltrinelli in 1957. It became an international sensation. The CIA subsequently arranged for Russian-language editions to be distributed to Soviet citizens — a Cold War operation that complicated the novel’s reception.

The Nobel Scandal

Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958 “for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition.” The Soviet government was furious. Pasternak was denounced in the Soviet press, expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers, and threatened with exile. Under intense pressure, he declined the prize — writing to Khrushchev: “Leaving the motherland will equal death for me.”

The episode was a humiliation from which Pasternak never recovered. He lived his final years in relative isolation at his dacha in Peredelkino, outside Moscow, and died of lung cancer on 30 May 1960.

Poetry of the Final Period

Pasternak’s late poems — collected in When the Weather Clears (published posthumously) and the poems embedded within Doctor Zhivago itself — represent a shift toward greater simplicity, clarity, and directness. The Zhivago poems, which form the novel’s final chapter, include some of his finest work, including “Winter Night” and “Hamlet.”

Legacy

Pasternak’s reputation rests on twin achievements: the lyric poetry, which places him alongside Mandelstam, Akhmatova, and Tsvetaeva in the great quartet of twentieth-century Russian poets; and Doctor Zhivago, which, whatever its formal imperfections, remains one of the most powerful meditations on the human cost of revolution.

Collecting Pasternak

The first edition of Doctor Zhivago (1957, Feltrinelli, Milan, in Russian) is one of the most important and sought-after books of the twentieth century, valued at $5,000–$30,000. The first Italian translation (also 1957, Feltrinelli) is also highly collectible. English first editions (Collins Harvill, 1958) are more available but still valuable. Pasternak’s earlier poetry collections in Russian are rare and of great scholarly interest.