Home > Boris Pasternak

In the West, Pasternak is best known for his monumental tragic novel on Soviet Russia, Doctor Zhivago, first published in Italy in 1957. It is as a poet, however, that he is most celebrated in Russia. He is one of a quartet of truly great poets to emerge in the years of Stalin's reign, the others being Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam.

The son of a Jewish professor at the Moscow School of Painting , and a mother who was a famous concert pianistPiano is a common abbreviation for pianoforte a large musical instrument with a keyboard (see keyboard instrument). Its sound is produced by strings stretched on a rigid frame. These vibrate when struck by felt-covered hammers, which are activated by the, Pasternak was brought up in a cosmopolitan atmosphere. He studied philosophy at the University of Marburg in GermanyThe Federal Republic of Germany ( German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland is one of the world's leading industrialized countries, located in the middle of the European Union. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to the east, with Hermann CohenHermann Cohen ( 4 July 1842 4 April 1918) was a German- Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, and he is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century" (Jewish Virtual and Nicolai HartmannNicolai Hartmann ( February 20, 1882 October 9, 1950) was a German philosopher. Hartmann was born, of German descent, in Riga, now Latvia and then capital of the Russian province of Livonia. He studied Medicine at the University of Tartu (then Jurjev), th, but although invited to become a scholar, decided against philosophy as a profession. He returned to Moscow in 1914Events January 4 77 seal hunters freeze to death on ice near Labrador January 5 Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day's labor February 13 Copyright: In New York City the ASCAP (for American Society of Compos and published his first collection of poetry in that year.

During World War IWorld War I (also known as the First World War , the Great War the War of the Nations and the "War to End All Wars") was a world conflict occurring from 1914 to 1918. No previous conflict had mobilized so many soldiers, or involved so many in the field of he taught and worked at a chemical factory in the Urals; this undoubtedly provided him with material for Dr. Zhivago many years later.

The revolution of 1917 led to Pasternak quickly garnering fame as a poet.

He fell out of favour with the Soviet authorities in the 1930s; accused of subjectivism, he somehow managed to escape the gulags. He made a living as a translator of classics, which included Georgian works that Stalin himself liked. This led to a story that Stalin crossed Pasternak's name off of an arrest list during the purges, quoted as saying "Don't touch this cloud dweller".

Boris Pasternak 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 the principal idea in all of his works.

Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, however he declined to accept it, probably under pressure from the Soviet authorities.

The publication of Doctor Zhivago, with its harsh criticism of the communist regime led to his persecution within the Soviet Union up until his death. Doctor Zhivago was eventually published in the USSR in 1987.