- Person
- Boris Pasternak
- Lived
- 1890–1960
- Field
- Poetry and fiction
- From
- Russian
The story
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Boris Pasternak was fifty-one. He had been unable to serve in the First World War because a childhood fall from a horse had left one leg shorter than the other, and he was far too old for front-line service now. He contributed in other ways.
When the German air force began bombing Moscow, he immediately volunteered as a fire warden, standing watch on the roof of the writers' apartment building on Lavrushinsky Street. According to Olga Ivinskaya, he repeatedly helped to get rid of German incendiary bombs that landed there. From 1941 to 1943 he lived for long periods in evacuation in the town of Chistopol, where the house he stayed in is now a museum.
He kept writing throughout, producing poems on war subjects and translating Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello and Henry IV. His wartime poetry, in a simpler and clearer style than his early work, was gathered in the collection On Early Trains.
In 1943 he was finally given permission to visit the troops at the front. Despite his weak leg and the hardships of the journey, he wanted to go to the most dangerous places. He read his poetry and talked at length with soldiers in the line and with the wounded. Letters from soldiers at the front showed him how far his voice carried, and at readings in Moscow audiences would prompt him if he forgot a line. That contact with ordinary readers strengthened his wish, after the victory, to write a large novel for them.
The result was Doctor Zhivago, whose epilogue is set during the Second World War. Pasternak later said that the suffering Stalin inflicted on the country after the victory was far worse than anyone had imagined during the war. His wartime service and readings remain a reminder that poetry offered comfort and dignity to soldiers and civilians in one of history's most brutal wars.
Why it matters
Pasternak's wartime service and readings offered comfort and dignity to soldiers and civilians in one of history's most brutal wars.
About Boris Pasternak
Russian poet and author of Doctor Zhivago, smuggled to the West in 1957, who was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature and forced by the Soviet state to decline it.
More about Boris Pasternak
- Pasternak sent Doctor Zhivago into the worldRejected at home, Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago was published in Italy in 1957, and its English edition spent 26 weeks at the top of the New York Times list.
- Pasternak's My Sister, Life transformed Russian poetryBoris Pasternak wrote My Sister, Life in the revolutionary summer of 1917; published in 1922, it changed the course of Russian poetry.
- Boris Pasternak translated Goethe's Faust and Georgian poetsBoris Pasternak's translations ranged from Goethe's Faust and Schiller to the poets of Georgia, bringing world literature to Russian readers.
- Boris Pasternak's Shakespeare is still loved in RussiaBarred from publishing much of his own work under Stalin, Boris Pasternak translated Hamlet and other Shakespeare plays into Russian versions still widely performed.
- Doctor Zhivago has been taught in Russian schools since 2003Once banned in the Soviet Union, Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago has been part of the Russian school curriculum since 2003.
- Boris Pasternak refused to endorse Stalin's death sentencesIn 1937, at the height of Stalin's Great Purge, Boris Pasternak refused to sign a Writers' Union statement supporting death sentences for Red Army commanders.
- Boris Pasternak interceded for the arrested Osip MandelstamWhen his fellow poet Osip Mandelstam was arrested in 1934 for a poem mocking Stalin, Boris Pasternak appealed to Nikolai Bukharin to intervene on his behalf.
Sources
- Boris Pasternak Wikipedia
- Boris Pasternak Academy of American Poets (Poets.org)
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.