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Boris Pasternak

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For other people named Pasternak, see Pasternak (disambiguation).
Boris Pasternak
File:Boris Pasternak cropped.jpg
Born(1890-02-10)February 10, 1890
Moscow, Russian Empire
Died30 May 1960(1960-05-30) (aged 70)
Peredelkino, USSR
Occupationpoet, writer
Notable worksMy Sister Life, The Second Birth, Doctor Zhivago
Notable awardsNobel Prize in Literature
1958

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (Template:Lang-ru) (10 February 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Russian language poet, novelist, and translator of Goethe and Shakespeare. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Outside his homeland, Pasternak is best known for authoring Doctor Zhivago, a novel set during the last years of the House of Romanov and the earliest days of the Soviet Union. Banned in the USSR, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to the West and published in 1957. Pasternak received the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, an event which both humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Early life

The bard's parents, Leonid and Rosa Pasternak

Pasternak was born in Moscow on 10 February, (Gregorian), 1890 (Julian 29 January) into a wealthy Russian-Jewish family which had been receieved into the Russian Orthodox Church.[1] His father was the famous artist, Leonid Pasternak, professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and his mother was Rosa (Raitza) Kaufman, a concert pianist. Pasternak was brought up in a highly cosmopolitan and intellectual atmosphere: family friends and regular visitors to his childhood home included pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer and mystic Alexander Scriabin, existentialist Lev Shestov, poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and writer Leo Tolstoy. Pasternak aspired first to be a composer, turned next to philosophy and then eventually to writing as his vocation.[2]

Boris (left) with his brother; painting by their father, Leonid Pasternak.

Inspired by his neighbour Alexander Scriabin, Pasternak resolved to become a composer and entered the Moscow Conservatory. In 1910 he abruptly left the conservatory for the University of Marburg, where he studied under Neo-Kantian philosophers Hermann Cohen and Nicolai Hartmann. Although invited to become a scholar, he decided against making philosophy a profession and returned to Moscow in 1914. His first poetry collection, influenced by Alexander Blok and the Russian Futurists, was published later the same year.

Pasternak's early verse cleverly dissimulates his preoccupation with Kant's ideas. Its fabric includes striking alliterations, wild rhythmic combinations, day-to-day vocabulary, and hidden allusions to his favourite poets such as Rilke, Lermontov and German Romantic poets.

During World War I, he taught and worked at a chemical factory in Vsevolodovo-Vilve near Perm, which undoubtedly provided him with material for Dr. Zhivago many years later. Unlike many of his relatives and friends, Pasternak did not leave Russia after the revolution. Instead, he was fascinated with the new ideas and possibilities that revolution brought to life.

Several of Pasternak's relations moved to Lithuania after the October Revolution and there are 4 direct descendants left there. Several cousins are buried in Rokantiškės cemetery, in Vilnius.

Another cousin, the Polish Communist poet Leon Pasternak, was imprisoned in Poland because of his revolutionary poems at the Bereza Kartuska detention camp. Leon Pasternak defected to the USSR at the beginning of the Second World War, were he enlisted in the Soviet Army. He further wrote the lyrics to several Soviet military marches, and fought in the People's Army of Poland against the German Wehrmacht.

Another relative of Boris, a much older namesake of Leon Pasternak, emigrated at about 1890 from Odessa to Zurich, were he became a Mathematics professor in the Polytechnic. His daughter Eliza is the mother of the famous Bulgarian composer Pancho Vladigerov.

My Sister Life

Pasternak spent the summer of 1917 living in the steppe country near Saratov, where he fell in love. This passion resulted in the collection My Sister Life, which he wrote over a period of three months, but was too embarrassed to publish for four years because of its novel style. When it finally was published in 1921, the book revolutionised Russian poetry. It made Pasternak the model for younger poets, and decisively changed the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetayeva and others.

Following My Sister Life, Pasternak produced some hermetic pieces of uneven quality, including his masterpiece, the lyric cycle Rupture (1921). Authors such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Andrey Bely, Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Nabokov applauded Pasternak's poems as works of pure, unbridled inspiration. In the late 1920s, he also participated in the much celebrated tripartite correspondence with Rilke and Tsvetayeva.[3]

After the ascension of Joseph Stalin in 1929, Pasternak increasingly felt that his colourful style was at odds with the dictator's demand for Socialist Realism. He attempted to make his poetry more comprehensible to the censors by reworking his earlier pieces and starting two lengthy poems on the Revolution. He also turned to prose and wrote several autobiographical stories, notably The Childhood of Luvers and Safe Conduct.

Second Birth

Pasternak (second from left) with friends including Lilya Brik, Eisenstein (third from left) and Mayakovsky (centre).
File:Chukovski Pasternak.jpg
Boris Pasternak (in the foreground) and Korney Chukovsky at the first Congress of the Soviet Union of Writers in 1934.

By 1932, Pasternak had strikingly reshaped his style to make it acceptable to the Soviet public and printed the new collection of poems aptly titled The Second Birth. Although its Caucasian pieces were as brilliant as the earlier efforts, the book alienated the core of Pasternak's refined audience abroad, which was largely composed of anti-communist White emigres. He simplified his style and language even further for his next collection of verse, Early Trains (1943), which prompted his former patron, Vladimir Nabokov, to mock Pasternak as a "weeping Bolshevik" and "Emily Dickinson in trousers."

Translator

Reluctant to conform to Socialist Realism, Pasternak turned to translation. He soon produced acclaimed translations of Sandor Petőfi, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust), Rilke (Requiem für eine Freundin), Paul Verlaine, Taras Shevchenko, Nikoloz Baratashvili, and Rabindranat Tagore. Pasternak's translations of William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear) remain deeply popular with Russian audiences because of their colloquial, modernised dialogues. Paternak's critics, however, accused him of "pasternakizing" the English playwright.

In a 1942 letter, Pasternak declared,

"I am completely opposed to contemporary ideas about translation. The work of Lozinski, Radlova, Marshak, and Chukovski is alien to me, and seems artificial, soulless, and lacking in depth. I share the nineteenth century view of translation as a literary excericise demanding insight of a higher kind than that provided by a merely philiogical approach..."[4]

Great Purge

File:Portrait of Stalin in 1936.gif
"Don't touch this cloud dweller..." -- Joseph Stalin

During the Great Purge of the later 1930s, Pasternak became increasingly disillusioned with Communism. He remained a close friend of Anna Akhmatova, as well as Osip Mandelstam. Mandelstam publically recited the Stalin Epigram to Pasternak soon after its composition in 1934.

According to Pasternak,

"In 1937, at the time of the trial of Yakir, Tukhachevsky and others, the writers were asked to put their signature to a statement endorsing the death sentence. They came to try and get mine as well. I refused to give it. This caused a tremendous hue and cry. The chairman of the Union of Writers at that time was a certain Stavski, a great scoundrel. He was scared stiff that he would be accused of not watching things more closely, the Union of Writers would be called a hotbed of opportunism, and he would have to pay the price. They tried to put pressure on me, but I wouldn't give in. Then the whole leadership of the Union of Writers came out to Peredelkino -- not to my dacha but to another one, where they summoned me. Stavski began to shout at me and started using threats. I said that if he wouldn't talk to me calmly, I wasn't obliged to listen to him, and I went home. At home there was a painful scene. At that time, Zinaida Nikolayevna was pregnant with Lionia, and was soon going to give birth. She threw herself at my feet, begging me not to destroy her and the child. But there was no arguing with me. It later turned out that an agent was sitting in the bushes under our window, and he heard every word we said... We expected I would be arrested that night. But, just imagine, I went to bed and at once I fell into a blissful sleep. Not for a long time had I slept so well and peacefully. This always happens after I have taken some irrevocable step. My close friends urged me to write to Stalin -- as though we were regular correspondents and exchenged cards at holiday seasons! But I actually did send him a letter. I wrote that I had grown up in a family with very strong Tolstoyan convictions, which I had imbibed with my mother's milk, and that my life was at his disposal, but that I could not consider I had the right to be a judge in matters of life and death where others were concerned. To this very day I cannot understand why I was not arrested there and then..."[5]

Joseph Stalin is said to have crossed his name off an execution list during the 1930s Purges. According to persistant rumors, Stalin declared, "Do not touch this cloud dweller..."[6]

According to Stalin's biographer, Simon Sebag Montefiore,

"He recognized that Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Bulgakov were geniuses, but their work was suppressed. Yet he could tolerate whimsical maestros: Bulgakov and Pasternak were never arrested. But woe betide anyone, genius or hack, who insulted the person or policy of Stalin -- for the two were synonymous."[7]

Doctor Zhivago

File:Olga Ivinskaia.jpg
Olga Ivinskaya (1912-1995)

Several years before the start of the Second World War, Pasternak and his wife settled in Peredelkino, a village for writers several miles from Moscow. He was filled with a love of life that gave his poetry a hopeful tone. This is reflected in the name of his autobiographical hero Zhivago, derived from the Russian word for live. The character of Zhivago's mistress, Lara Antipova, has long been rumored to have been modeled on Pasternak's mistress, Olga Ivinskaya.[8] However the elder of Pasternak's sisters stated that on a visit to her in Germany in the late 1930s, Pasternak told her of the nascent character of Lara, years before he met Ivinskaya in 1946.

After the death of Joseph Stalin on March 5, 1953, Pasternak was unimpressed by Khrushchev thaw. He confided in Ivinskaya, "For so long we were ruled over by a madman and a murderer -- and now by a fool and a pig. The madman had his occasional flights of fancy, he had an intuitive feeling for certain things, despite his wild obscurantism. Now we are ruled over by mediocrities..."[9]

Ivinskaya further recalled,

"At this period, B[oris] L[eonidovich] was reading George Orwell's Animal Farm in the English original and he hugely enjoyed this merciless satire about a society of animals which mutiny against their human masters, and then gradually revert to a wretched caricature of their original condition. The animals were presided over by a fat hog who vividly reminded B[oris] L[eonidovich] of our head of state. Sometimes he said laughingly that Khrushchev put his collar around the wrong part of his anatomy."[10]

After his own novel was denied publication by the Soviet State, Pasternak arranged for Doctor Zhivago to be smuggled abroad by Sir Isaiah Berlin. In 1957, the novel was printed by the multi-billionaire Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. To the outrage of the Politburo, the novel became an instant sensation throughout the non-Communist world. As retaliation for his role in Doctor Zhivago's publication, Feltrinelli was expelled in disgrace from the Italian Communist Party.

Between 1958 and 1959, the English language edition spent 26 weeks at the top of The New York Times' bestseller list. Although none of his Soviet critics had the chance to read the proscribed novel, several officials of the Writer's Union publicly demanded, "kick the pig out of our kitchen-garden," i.e., expel Pasternak from the USSR. This led to a humorous Russian saying, "I did not read Pasternak, but I condemn him".

Nobel Prize

Boris Pasternak's house in Peredelkino, where the poet died.
Boris Pasternak, Nobel stamp, USSR

Meanwhile, as the novel topped international bestseller lists, the British MI6 and the American CIA commenced an operation to ensure that Pasternak's novel was correctly submitted to the Nobel Committee. This was done because it was known that a Nobel Prize for Pasternak would seriously harm the international credibility of the Soviet Union. As a result, British and American operatives intercepted and photographed a manuscript of the novel and secretly printed a small number of books in the Russian language. These were submitted to the Nobel Committee's surprised judges just ahead of the deadline.[11][12]

Soon after, on 23 October, 1958, Boris Pasternak was announced as the winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature. On 25 October, Pasternak sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy:

Immensely thankful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.[11]

Acting on direct orders from the Politburo, the KGB surrounded Pasternak's dacha in Peredelkino. Pasternak was not only threatened with arrest, but the KGB also vowed to send his beloved Olia back to the GULAG.

As a result, Pasternak sent a second telegram to the Nobel Committee:

Considering the meaning this award has been given in the society to which I belong, I must refuse it. Please do not take offense at my voluntary rejection.[11]

The Swedish Academy announced:

This refusal, of course, in no way alters the validity of the award. There remains only for the Academy, however, to announce with regret that the presentation of the Prize cannot take place.[13]

Despite his obedience in declining the award, the Soviet State and the Union of Writers continued to denounce Pasternak in the Soviet press. What is more, he was threatened at the very least with formal exile to the West. In response, Pasternak wrote directly to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev,

"Leaving the motherland will equal death for me. I am tied to Russia by birth, by life and work."[14]

[15] As a result, Pasternak was allowed to remain in his homeland.

Despite this, a famous Bill Mauldin cartoon at the time showed Pasternak and another prisoner in the GULAG, splitting trees in the snow. In the caption, Pasternak says, "I won the Nobel Prize for literature. What was your crime?" The cartoon won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1959.[16]

Death and legacy

File:Pasternak grave landscape.png
Boris Pasternak's grave in Peredelkino in October 1983.

Pasternak's post-Zhivago poetry probes the universal questions of love, immortality, and reconciliation with God.[17][18]

Pasternak died of lung cancer on 30 May 1960. Despite only a small notice appearing in the Literary Gazette,[citation needed] thousands of people traveled from Moscow to his funeral in Peredelkino. "Volunteers carried his open coffin to his burial place and those who were present (including the poet Andrey Voznesensky) recited from memory the banned poem 'Hamlet'."[19]

Legacy

USSR, 4 kopeck stamp, 1990

The poet and bard Alexander Galich wrote a politically charged song dedicated to Pasternak's memory.

His father's Nobel medal was ultimately presented to Yevgeny Borisovich Pasternak in Stockholm during the Nobel week of December 1989.[20] At the ceremony, acclaimed Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich performed a Bach serenade in honor of his deceased countryman.

In 1988, after decades of circulating in Samizdat, Doctor Zhivago was finally published in the author's homeland.[21]

In 2007, The Times at last revealed that the involvement of British and American intelligence officers in ensuring Pasternak's Nobel victory. When Yevgeny Borisovich Pasternak was questioned about this, however, he responded that his father was completely unaware of the involvement of the actions of Western intelligence services. Yevgeny further declared that the Nobel Prize caused his father nothing but severe grief and harassment at the hands of the Soviet State.[11][12]

The Pasternak family papers are stored at the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. They contain correspondence, drafts of Doctor Zhivago and other writings, photographs, and other material, of Boris Pasternak and other family members.

Cultural influence

A minor planet 3508 Pasternak, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina in 1980 is named after him.[22]

Russian-American singer and songwriter Regina Spektor recited a verse from "Black Spring", a 1912 poem by Pasternak in her song "Apres Moi" from her album Begin to Hope.

Translations

The first English language translation of Doctor Zhivago was hastily produced by Max Hayward and Manya Harari in order to coincide with Pasternak's Nobel victory. It was released in August 1958, and remained the only edition available for more than fifty years.

In October 2010, Random House released Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation of Doctor Zhivago.[23]

Adaptations

Movie Poster from 1966

The first screen adaptation of Doctor Zhivago, adapted by Robert Bolt and directed by David Lean, appeared in 1965. The film, which toured in the roadshow tradition, starred Omar Sharif, Geraldine Chaplin, and Julie Christie. Concentrating on the love triangle aspects of the novel, it quickly became a worldwide blockbuster, but was unavailable in Russia until Perestroika.

In 2002, the novel was adapted as a television miniseries. Directed by Giacomo Campiotti, the serial starred Hans Matheson, Alexandra Maria Lara and Keira Knightley.

The Russian TV version of 2006, directed by Alexander Proshkin and starring Oleg Menshikov as Zhivago, is considered more faithful to Pasternak's novel than David Lean's 1965 film.

Further reading

  • Olga Ivinskaya, Captive of Time; My Years with Pasternak, Doubleday, 1978. Translated by Max Hayward.

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Pasternak.html Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
  2. ^ "Sister My Life" Boris Pasternak. Translated by C. Flayderman. Introduction by Robert Payne. Washington Square Press, 1967.
  3. ^ Bayley, John (5 December 1985). "Big Three". The New York Review of Books. 32. Retrieved 28 September 2007.
  4. ^ A Captive of Time, page 28.
  5. ^ '"A Captive of Time, pages 132-133
  6. ^ Olga Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak, page 133.
  7. ^ Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar, page 98.
  8. ^ "Today in Literary History". Salon. 30 May 2002. Retrieved 28 September 2007.
  9. ^ Olga Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak, Doubleday and Company, 1978. Page 142.
  10. ^ Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, page 142.
  11. ^ a b c d How the CIA won Zhivago a Nobel
  12. ^ a b The Plot Thickens A New Book Promises an Intriguing Twist to the Epic Tale of 'Doctor Zhivago'
  13. ^ Frenz, Horst (ed.) (1969). Literature 1901-1967. Nobel Lectures. Amsterdam: Elsevier. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help) (Via "Nobel Prize in Literature 1958 - Announcement". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 24 May 2007.)
  14. ^ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Pasternak.html
  15. ^ Pasternak, Boris (1983). Pasternak: Selected Poems. trans. Jon Stallworthy and Peter France. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-042245-5.
  16. ^ Bill Mauldin Beyond Willie and Joe (Library of Congress)
  17. ^ Hostage of Eternity: Boris Pasternak (Hoover Institution)
  18. ^ Conference set on Doctor Zhivago writer (Stanford Report, 28 April 2004)
  19. ^ Pasternak, Boris (1983). Pasternak: Selected Poems. trans. Jon Stallworthy and Peter France. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-042245-5.
  20. ^ Boris Pasternak: The Nobel Prize. Son's memoirs. (Pravda, 18 December 2003)
  21. ^ Contents of Novy Mir magazines Template:Ru icon
  22. ^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2003). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (5th ed.). New York: Springer Verlag. p. 294. ISBN 3540002383. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  23. ^ "Doctor Zhivago", by Boris Pasternak, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Reviewed by Masha Karp.
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