Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (????? ?????????? ?????????) (February 10, 1890 – May 30, 1960) was a Russian poet and writer best known in the West for his monumental tragic novel on Soviet Russia, Doctor Zhivago (1957). It is as a poet, however, that he is most celebrated in Russia. My Sister Life, written by Pasternak in 1917, is arguably the most influential collection of poetry published in Russian in the 20th century.

"Doctor Zhivago"

Several years before the WWII, 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 him hope through the dark years of communist Russia and gave his poetry a hopeful tone. Pasternak?s love of life is reflected in the name of his autobiographic hero Zhivago, derived from the Russian word for "live". Another famous character, Lara, is said to have been modeled on his mistress Olga Ivinskaya.

Related Topics:
WWII - Peredelkino - Moscow

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As he could not find a publisher for his novel inside the country, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled abroad and released in Italy in 1957. This led to a wide-scale campaign of persecution within the Soviet Union up until his death. Although nobody of his critics had a chance of reading the proscribed novel, some of them publicly demanded to "kick the pig out of our kitchen-garden", i.e., to expel Pasternak from the USSR.

Related Topics:
Doctor Zhivago - Italy - 1957 - Soviet Union

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Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but he declined to accept it, probably under pressure from the Soviet authorities. Pasternak died on May 30, 1960 and was buried in Peredelkino in the presence of several devoted admirers, including the poet Andrey Voznesensky. Doctor Zhivago was eventually published in the USSR in 1987.

Related Topics:
Nobel Prize for Literature - 1958 - May 30 - 1960 - Andrey Voznesensky - 1987

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Pasternak's post-Zhivago poetry probes the universal questions of love, immortality, and reconcilation with God. The poems from his last collection, which he wrote until his death, are probably his best loved and best known.

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