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.

"My Sister Life"

Pasternak spent the summer of 1917 living in steppe near Saratov, where he fell in love with a Jewish girl. These passions resulted in the collection My Sister Life, which he wrote for three months and was embarrassed to publish for 4 years. When it finally appeared in 1921, the book had revolutionary impact upon Russian poetry. It made Pasternak the model of imitation for younger poets, and decisively changed the poetic manners of Osip Mandelshtam and Marina Tsvetayeva, to name only a few.

Related Topics:
1917 - Saratov - 1921 - Osip Mandelshtam - Marina Tsvetayeva

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Following My Sister Life, Pasternak produced some hermetic pieces of uneven quality, including his masterpiece, a lyric cycle entitled Rupture (1921). Such various authors as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Andrey Bely, and Vladimir Nabokov applauded Pasternak's poems as the works of pure, unbridled inspiration. In the later 1920s, he also participated in the celebrated tripartite correspondence with Rilke and Tsvetayeva.

Related Topics:
Vladimir Mayakovsky - Andrey Bely - Vladimir Nabokov - Rilke - Tsvetayeva

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By the end of the 1920s, Pasternak increasingly felt that his colourful modernist style was at variance with the doctrine of Socialist Realism approved by the Communist party. He attempted to make his poetry much more comprehensible to mass reader by reworking his earlier pieces and starting two lengthy poems on the Russian Revolution. He also turned to prose and wrote several autobiographic stories, notably "The Childhood of Luvers" and "Safe Conduct".

Related Topics:
Socialist Realism - Russian Revolution

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~