Olga Freidenberg In 1910 Pasternak was reunited with his cousin
Olga Freidenberg (1890–1955). They had shared the same nursery but had been separated when the Freidenberg family moved to
Saint Petersburg. They fell in love immediately but were never lovers. The romance, however, is made clear from their letters, Pasternak writing: The cousins' initial passion developed into a lifelong close friendship. From 1910 Pasternak and Freidenberg exchanged frequent letters, and their correspondence lasted over 40 years until 1954. The cousins last met in 1936.
Ida Wissotzkaya Pasternak fell in love with Ida Wissotzkaya, a girl from a notable Moscow Jewish
family of tea merchants, whose company
Wissotzky Tea was the largest tea company in the world. Pasternak had tutored her in the final class of high school. He helped her prepare for finals. They met in Marburg during the summer of 1912 when Boris' father,
Leonid Pasternak, painted her portrait. Although Professor Cohen encouraged him to remain in Germany and to pursue a Philosophy doctorate, Pasternak decided against it. He returned to Moscow around the time of the outbreak of the First World War. In the aftermath of events, Pasternak proposed marriage to Ida. However, the Wissotzky family was disturbed by Pasternak's poor prospects and persuaded Ida to refuse him. She turned him down and he told of his love and rejection in the poem "Marburg" (1917): as a pianist; poetry was still only a hobby for him at that time. It was in their group journal,
Lirika, where some of his earliest poems were published. His involvement with the Futurist movement as a whole reached its peak when, in 1914, he published a satirical article in
Rukonog, which attacked the jealous leader of the "Mezzanine of Poetry",
Vadim Shershenevich, who was criticizing
Lirika and the
Ego-Futurists because Shershenevich himself was barred from collaborating with Centrifuge, the reason being that he was such a talentless poet. Another failed love affair in 1917 inspired the poems in his third and first major book,
My Sister, Life. His early verse cleverly dissimulates his preoccupation with
Immanuel Kant's philosophy. Its fabric includes striking alliterations, wild rhythmic combinations, day-to-day vocabulary, and hidden allusions to his favourite poets such as
Rilke,
Lermontov,
Pushkin and German-language Romantic poets. During World War I, Pasternak taught and worked at a chemical factory in
Vsevolodo-Vilva near
Perm, which undoubtedly provided him with material for
Dr. Zhivago many years later. Unlike the rest of his family and many of his closest friends, Pasternak chose not to leave Russia after the
October Revolution of 1917. According to
Max Hayward, ,
Sergei Eisenstein (third from left) and
Vladimir Mayakovsky (centre) When it finally was published in 1922, Pasternak's
My Sister, Life 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). Both Pro-Soviet writers and their
White émigré equivalents applauded Pasternak's poetry as pure, unbridled inspiration. In the late 1920s, he also participated in the much celebrated tripartite correspondence with
Rilke and
Tsvetayeva. As the 1920s wore on, however, Pasternak increasingly felt that his colourful style was at odds with a less educated readership. He attempted to make his poetry more comprehensible by reworking his earlier pieces and starting two lengthy poems on the
Russian Revolution of 1905. He also turned to prose and wrote several autobiographical stories, notably "The Childhood of Luvers" and "Safe Conduct". (The collection ''Zhenia's Childhood and Other Stories'' would be published in 1982.) In 1922 Pasternak married Evgeniya Lurye (Евгения Лурье), a student at the Art Institute. The following year their son Yevgeny was born. Evidence of Pasternak's support of still-revolutionary members of the leadership of the Communist Party as late as 1926 is indicated by his poem "In Memory of Reissner" presumably written upon the premature death from typhus of Bolshevik leader
Larissa Reissner aged 30 in February of that year. By 1927, Pasternak's close friends
Vladimir Mayakovsky and
Nikolai Aseyev were advocating the complete subordination of the arts to the needs of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In a letter to his sister Josephine, Pasternak wrote of his intentions to "break off relations" with both of them. Although he expressed that it would be deeply painful, Pasternak explained that it could not be prevented. He explained: By 1932, Pasternak had strikingly reshaped his style to make it more understandable to the general 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 émigrés. In 1932, Pasternak fell in love with Zinaida Neuhaus, the wife of the Russian pianist
Heinrich Neuhaus. They both got divorces and married two years later. Pasternak continued to change his poetry, simplifying his style and language through the years, as expressed in his next book,
Early Trains (1943).
Stalin Epigram In April 1934
Osip Mandelstam recited his "
Stalin Epigram" to Pasternak. After listening, Pasternak told Mandelstam: "I didn't hear this, you didn't recite it to me, because, you know, very strange and terrible things are happening now: they've begun to pick people up. I'm afraid the walls have ears and perhaps even these benches on the boulevard here may be able to listen and tell tales. So let's make out that I heard nothing." On the night of 14 May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested at his home based on a warrant signed by
NKVD boss
Genrikh Yagoda. Devastated, Pasternak went immediately to the offices of
Izvestia and begged
Nikolai Bukharin to intercede on Mandelstam's behalf. Soon after his meeting with Bukharin, the telephone rang in Pasternak's Moscow apartment. A voice from
the Kremlin said, "Comrade
Stalin wishes to speak with you." Soon after, Pasternak appealed directly to Stalin, describing his family's strong
Tolstoyan convictions and putting his own life at Stalin's disposal; he said that he could not stand as a self-appointed judge of life and death. Pasternak was certain that he would be arrested, Pasternak's close friend
Titsian Tabidze did fall victim to the Great Purge. In an autobiographical essay published in the 1950s, Pasternak described the execution of Tabidze and the suicides of
Marina Tsvetaeva and
Paolo Iashvili. Ivinskaya wrote, "I believe that between Stalin and Pasternak there was an incredible, silent
duel."
World War II When the
Luftwaffe began bombing Moscow, Pasternak immediately began to serve as a fire warden on the roof of the writer's building on Lavrushinski Street. According to Ivinskaya, he repeatedly helped to dispose of German bombs which fell on it. In 1943, Pasternak was finally granted permission to visit the soldiers at the front. He bore it well, considering the hardships of the journey (he had a weak leg from an old injury), and he wanted to go to the most dangerous places. He read his poetry and talked extensively with the active and injured troops.
Olga Ivinskaya In October 1946, the twice-married Pasternak met
Olga Ivinskaya, a 34 year old single mother employed by
Novy Mir. Deeply moved by her resemblance to his first love Ida Vysotskaya, Pasternak gave Ivinskaya several volumes of his poetry and literary translations. Although Pasternak never left his wife Zinaida, he started an extramarital relationship with Ivinskaya that would last for the remainder of Pasternak's life. Ivinskaya later recalled, "He phoned almost every day and, instinctively fearing to meet or talk with him, yet dying of happiness, I would stammer out that I was 'busy today.' But almost every afternoon, toward the end of working hours, he came in person to the office and often walked with me through the streets, boulevards, and squares all the way home to Potapov Street. 'Shall I make you a present of this square?' he would ask." She gave him the phone number of her neighbour Olga Volkova who resided below. In the evenings, Pasternak would phone and Volkova would signal by Olga banging on the water pipe which connected their apartments. When they first met, Pasternak was translating the verse of the Hungarian
national poet,
Sándor Petőfi. Pasternak gave his lover a book of Petőfi with the inscription, "Petőfi served as a code in May and June 1947, and my close translations of his lyrics are an expression, adapted to the requirements of the text, of my feelings and thoughts for you and about you. In memory of it all, B.P., 13 May 1948." Pasternak later noted on a photograph of himself: "Petőfi is magnificent with his descriptive lyrics and picture of nature, but you are better still. I worked on him a good deal in 1947 and 1948, when I first came to know you. Thank you for your help. I was translating both of you." Ivinskaya would later describe the Petőfi translations as "a first declaration of love". According to Ivinskaya, Zinaida Pasternak was infuriated by her husband's infidelity. Once, when his younger son Leonid fell seriously ill, Zinaida extracted a promise from her husband, as they stood by the boy's sickbed, that he would end his affair with Ivinskaya. Pasternak asked Luisa Popova, a mutual friend, to tell Ivinskaya about his promise. Popova told him that he must do it himself. Soon after, Ivinskaya happened to be ill at Popova's apartment, when suddenly Zinaida Pasternak arrived and confronted her. Ivinskaya later recalled, In 1948, Pasternak advised Ivinskaya to resign her job at
Novy Mir, which was becoming extremely difficult due to their relationship. In the aftermath, Pasternak began to instruct her in translating poetry. In time, they began to refer to her apartment on Potapov Street as, "Our Shop". On the evening of 6 October 1949, Ivinskaya was arrested at her apartment by the
KGB. Ivinskaya relates in her memoirs that, when the agents burst into her apartment, she was at her typewriter working on translations of the
Korean poet Won Tu-Son. Her apartment was ransacked and all items connected with Pasternak were piled up in her presence. Ivinskaya was taken to the
Lubyanka Prison and repeatedly interrogated, where she refused to say anything incriminating about Pasternak. At the time, she was pregnant with Pasternak's child and had a miscarriage early in her ten-year sentence in the
GULAG. Upon learning of his
mistress' arrest, Pasternak telephoned Luisa Popova and asked her to come at once to
Gogol Boulevard. She found him sitting on a bench near the
Palace of Soviets Metro Station. Weeping, Pasternak told her, "Everything is finished now. They've taken her away from me and I'll never see her again. It's like death, even worse." According to Ivinskaya, "After this, in conversation with people he scarcely knew, he always referred to Stalin as a 'murderer.' Talking with people in the offices of literary periodicals, he often asked: 'When will there be an end to this freedom for lackeys who happily walk over corpses to further their own interests?' He spent a good deal of time with
Akhmatova—who in those years was given a very wide berth by most of the people who knew her. He worked intensively on the second part of
Doctor Zhivago."
Translating Goethe Pasternak's translation of the
first part of
Faust led him to be attacked in the August 1950 edition of
Novy Mir. The critic accused Pasternak of distorting
Goethe's "progressive" meanings to support "the reactionary theory of 'pure art'", as well as introducing aesthetic and
individualist values. In a subsequent letter to the daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva, Pasternak explained that the attack was motivated by the fact that the supernatural elements of the play, which
Novy Mir considered, "irrational", had been translated as Goethe had written them. Pasternak further declared that, despite the attacks on his translation, his contract for the
second part had not been revoked. After her release, Pasternak's relationship with Ivinskaya picked up where it had left off. Soon after he confided in her, "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." During this period, Pasternak delighted in reading a clandestine copy of
George Orwell's
Animal Farm in English. In conversation with Ivinskaya, Pasternak explained that the pig dictator
Napoleon, in the novel, "vividly reminded" him of Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev. The author, like his
protagonist Yuri Zhivago, showed more concern for the welfare of individual characters than for the "progress" of society. Censors also regarded some passages as
anti-Soviet, especially the novel's criticisms of
Stalinism,
Collectivisation, the
Great Purge, and the
Gulag. Pasternak's fortunes were soon to change, however. In March 1956, the
Italian Communist Party sent a journalist,
Sergio D'Angelo, to work in the Soviet Union, and his status as a journalist as well as his membership in the Italian Communist Party allowed him to have access to various aspects of the cultural life in Moscow at the time. A Milan publisher, the communist
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, had also given him a commission to find new works of Soviet literature that would be appealing to Western audiences, and upon learning of
Doctor Zhivagos existence, D'Angelo travelled immediately to Peredelkino and offered to submit Pasternak's novel to Feltrinelli's company for publication. At first Pasternak was stunned. Then he brought the manuscript from his study and told D'Angelo with a laugh, "You are hereby invited to watch me face the firing squad." According to Lazar Fleishman, Pasternak was aware that he was taking a huge risk. No Soviet author had attempted to deal with Western publishers since the 1920s, when such behavior led the Soviet State to declare war on
Boris Pilnyak and
Evgeny Zamyatin. Pasternak, however, believed that Feltrinelli's Communist affiliation would not only guarantee publication, but might even force the Soviet State to publish the novel in Russia. In a rare moment of agreement, both Olga Ivinskaya and Zinaida Pasternak were horrified by the submission of
Doctor Zhivago to a Western publishing house. Pasternak, however, refused to change his mind and informed an emissary from Feltrinelli that he was prepared to undergo any sacrifice in order to see
Doctor Zhivago published. In 1957, Feltrinelli announced that the novel would be published by his company. Despite repeated demands from visiting Soviet emissaries, Feltrinelli refused to cancel or delay publication. According to Ivinskaya, "He did not believe that we would ever publish the manuscript here and felt he had no right to withhold a masterpiece from the world – this would be an even greater crime." The Soviet government forced Pasternak to cable the publisher to withdraw the manuscript, but he sent separate, secret letters advising Feltrinelli to ignore the telegrams. Helped considerably by the Soviet campaign against the novel (as well as by the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency's secret purchase of hundreds of copies of the book as it came off the presses around the world – see "
Nobel Prize" section below),
Doctor Zhivago became an instant sensation throughout the non-Communist world upon its release in November 1957. In the
State of Israel, however, Pasternak's novel was sharply criticized for its
assimilationist views towards the
Jewish people. When informed of this, Pasternak responded, "No matter. I am above race..." According to Lazar Fleishman, Pasternak had written the disputed passages prior to Israeli independence. At the time, Pasternak had also been regularly attending Russian Orthodox
Divine Liturgy. Therefore, he believed that Soviet Jews converting to Christianity was preferable to assimilating into
atheism and
Stalinism. The first English translation of
Doctor Zhivago was hastily produced by
Max Hayward and
Manya Harari in order to coincide with overwhelming public demand. It was released in August 1958, and remained the only edition available for more than fifty years. Between 1958 and 1959, the English language edition spent 26 weeks at the top of
The New York Times' bestseller list. Ivinskaya's daughter Irina circulated typed copies of the novel in
Samizdat. Although no Soviet critics had read the banned novel,
Doctor Zhivago was pilloried in the State-owned press. Similar attacks led to a humorous Russian saying, "I haven't read Pasternak, but I condemn him". During the aftermath of the Second World War, Pasternak had composed a series of poems on
Gospel themes. According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak had regarded Stalin as a "giant of the pre-Christian era." Therefore, Pasternak's decision to write
Christian poetry was "a form of protest". On 9 September 1958, the
Literary Gazette critic Viktor Pertsov retaliated by denouncing "the decadent religious poetry of Pasternak, which reeks of mothballs from the
Symbolist suitcase of 1908–10 manufacture." Furthermore, the author received much
hate mail from Communists both at home and abroad. According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak continued to receive such letters for the remainder of his life. In a letter written to his sister Josephine, however, Pasternak recalled the words of his friend Ekaterina Krashennikova upon reading
Doctor Zhivago. She had said, "Don't forget yourself to the point of believing that it was you who wrote this work. It was the
Russian people and their sufferings who created it. Thank God for having expressed it through your pen."
Nobel Prize According to Yevgeni Borisovich Pasternak, "Rumors that Pasternak was to receive the Nobel Prize started right after the end of
World War II." According to the former Nobel Committee head
Lars Gyllensten, his nomination was discussed every year from 1946 to 1950, then again in 1957 (it was finally awarded in 1958). Pasternak guessed at this from the growing waves of criticism in USSR. Sometimes he had to justify his European fame: 'According to the Union of Soviet Writers, some literature circles of the West see unusual importance in my work, not matching its modesty and low productivity...' Meanwhile, Pasternak wrote to Renate Schweitzer and his sister,
Lydia Pasternak Slater. In both letters, the author expressed hope that he would be passed over by the Nobel Committee in favour of
Alberto Moravia. Pasternak wrote that he was wracked with torments and anxieties at the thought of placing his loved ones in danger. On 23 October 1958, Boris Pasternak was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize. The citation credited Pasternak's contribution to Russian lyric poetry and for his role in "continuing the great Russian epic tradition." On 25 October, Pasternak sent
a telegram to the
Swedish Academy: "Infinitely grateful, touched, proud, surprised, overwhelmed." That same day, the Literary Institute in Moscow demanded that all its students sign a petition denouncing Pasternak and his novel. They were further ordered to join a "spontaneous" demonstration demanding Pasternak's exile from the Soviet Union. Also on that day, the
Literary Gazette published a letter which was sent to B. Pasternak in September 1956 by the editors of the Soviet literary journal
Novy Mir to justify their rejection of
Doctor Zhivago. In publishing this letter the Soviet authorities wished to justify the measures they had taken against the author and his work. On 26 October, the
Literary Gazette ran an article by David Zaslavski entitled,
Reactionary Propaganda Uproar over a Literary Weed. According to
Solomon Volkov: Furthermore, Pasternak was informed that, if he traveled to Stockholm to collect his Nobel Medal, he would be refused re-entry to the Soviet Union. As a result, on 29 October Pasternak sent a second telegram to the Nobel Committee: "In view of the meaning given the award by the society in which I live, I must renounce this undeserved distinction which has been conferred on me. Please do not take my voluntary renunciation amiss." 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." According to Yevgenii Pasternak, "I couldn't recognize my father when I saw him that evening. Pale, lifeless face, tired painful eyes, and only speaking about the same thing: 'Now it all doesn't matter, I declined the Prize.'" According to Yevgenii Pasternak, however, author
Konstantin Paustovsky refused to attend the meeting.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko did attend, but walked out in disgust. Meanwhile,
Bill Mauldin produced
a cartoon about Pasternak that won the 1959
Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. The cartoon depicts Pasternak as a
GULAG inmate splitting trees in the snow, saying to another inmate: "I won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What was your crime?"
Last years in
Peredelkino, where he lived between 1936 and 1960 Pasternak's post-
Zhivago poetry probes the universal questions of love, immortality, and reconciliation with God. Boris Pasternak wrote his last complete book,
When the Weather Clears, in 1959. According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak continued to stick to his daily writing schedule even during the controversy over
Doctor Zhivago. He also continued translating the writings of
Juliusz Słowacki and
Pedro Calderón de la Barca. In his work on Calderon, Pasternak received the discreet support of Nikolai Mikhailovich Liubimov, a senior figure in the Party's literary apparatus. Ivinskaya describes Liubimov as, "a shrewd and enlightened person who understood very well that all the mudslinging and commotion over the novel would be forgotten, but that there would always be a Pasternak." In a letter to his sisters in
Oxford, England, Pasternak claimed to have finished translating one of Calderon's plays in less than a week. During the summer of 1959, Pasternak began writing
The Blind Beauty, a trilogy of
stage plays set before and after
Alexander II's abolition of
serfdom in Russia. In an interview with Olga Carlisle from
The Paris Review, Pasternak enthusiastically described the play's plot and characters. He informed Olga Carlisle that, at the end of
The Blind Beauty, he wished to depict "the birth of an enlightened and affluent middle class, open to occidental influences, progressive, intelligent, artistic". However, Pasternak fell ill with terminal lung cancer before he could complete the first play of the trilogy. == Death ==