The Last Summer (Russian: Povest) was published in journals in 1934 and later collected in book form. The novella is set in the summer of 1916, on the eve of the Revolution, and follows Serezha, a young tutor working at a country estate — a transparent version of Pasternak himself, who spent several pre-revolutionary summers in similar circumstances. The estate is beautiful, the weather is hot, the household is cultivated and comfortable, and the reader knows — as Pasternak’s original readers knew — that all of it is about to be destroyed.
The novella functions as a sketch for Doctor Zhivago. The themes are the same: the fragility of private life, the impossibility of standing apart from history, the way love and art illuminate a world that politics is about to darken. Serezha falls in love with a married woman, writes poetry, and gradually becomes aware that the ordered world of the estate — its libraries, its gardens, its conversations about literature and philosophy — is an island surrounded by rising water.
Pasternak’s prose in The Last Summer is characteristically dense — every sentence carries multiple layers of meaning — but the emotional core is simple: grief for a world that is about to vanish, and the knowledge that beauty does not protect against destruction.
Collecting The Last Summer
First edition in book form (various Soviet publishers, 1930s–1940s): Softcover.
Market values:
- Early Soviet editions: $300–$800
- English translations (various): $20–$60