Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow in 1890. He grew up in an atmosphere of creativity. His first hobby was music. Boris composed musical compositions since childhood, but soon lost interest in music.

Pasternak began his studies at the Moscow gymnasium, then he continued his studies at Moscow University at the Faculty of History and Philology. In addition, he studied for a semester in Germany in order to improve his knowledge of philosophy. After completing his studies, Boris lost interest in philosophy and began to engage in poetic activity.

In 1922, the book “Sister is My Life” was published, which helped Pasternak enter the circle of writers of that time.

In the 20s, several collections of poetry were published, after which he focused his work on prose.

In the 30s, Boris was alienated from official literature because he did not agree to create within the boundaries dictated by the authorities. The writer began to engage in translations, which were the only means of earning money at that time.

Boris begins working on Doctor Zhivago in the 50s, a novel that brought him the Nobel Prize. The work was received critically and was published only in 1988.

The writer dies of lung cancer in 1860.

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Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born January 19 (February 10), 1890 in Moscow. B. Pasternak is the son of academician of painting L.O. Pasternak and the talented pianist R.I. Kaufman.

Growing up in a professional artistic family, Pasternak early discovered his artistic passions. As a child, he drew well; under the influence of A.N. Scriabin studied musical composition. In 1909 abandoned the profession of musician and in the same year entered the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Moscow University; spring 1912 goes to Germany, studies in the summer semester at the University of Marburg, studies with Professor Hermann Cohen, head of the Marburg neo-Kantian school. However, Pasternak breaks just as sharply with philosophy as a subject of professional studies, although philosophical issues remained the focus of Pasternak’s attention - from his early work “Symbolism and Immortality” right up to the novel and letters recent years. In the almanac "Lyrics" ( 1913 ) Pasternak's poems were published for the first time. Summer 1913, after passing university exams in Moscow, he completes his first book of poems, “Twin in the Clouds” (1914 ). In the pre-revolutionary years, Pasternak was a member of the futuristic group “Centrifuge” (I. Aseev, S. Bobrov, etc.). His early experiments were marked by the influence of A. Blok. But Pasternak organically does not accept the symbolist supermundaneity and supersensibility. Stronger ties connect it with futurism. V. Mayakovsky is a figure close to him both in the feeling of kinship and in the acute ongoing dispute. At the same time, Pasternak is alien to futuristic slogans about a break with the past, with the “old times” of culture. The poetry of young Pasternak already reveals a connection with the traditions of Russian philosophical lyrics 19th century (M. Lermontov, F. Tyutchev) and German (R.M. Rilke).

Summer 1917 written “My Sister Life” (publ. 1922 ), in which almost the most important feature Pasternak's poetry is its inseparable unity with the natural world, with life in general. The atmosphere of revolutionary change entered Pasternak's poetry indirectly, expressed in an increase in poetic tone, in a whirlwind collision of images. Pasternak breaks with descriptiveness, with external picturesqueness, landscape, refuses traditional forms poetic narration, breaks the usual syntactic connections. The poet strives to find a special form, where the “persons” are displaced and mixed, and subjectivity comes not only from the narrator, but, as it were, from the world itself. Already in the pre-revolutionary poems (“Above the Barriers,” “My Sister Life,” “Themes and Variations”), the first entrances into the epic were outlined (the poems “Bad Dream,” “Decade of Presnya,” “Disintegration”).

In 1921 Pasternak's family left Russia. He actively corresponds with them, as well as with other Russian emigrants, among whom was Marina Tsvetaeva.

In 1922 B. Pasternak marries the artist Evgenia Lurie, with whom he is visiting his parents in Germany in 1922-1923. A September 23, 1923 They have a son, Evgeniy (died in 2012).

Having broken up my first marriage, in 1932 Pasternak marries Zinaida Nikolaevna Neuhaus. With her and her son in 1931 Pasternak traveled to Georgia. In 1938 they have a common son, Leonid (1938-1976). Zinaida died in 1966 from cancer.

In 1946 Pasternak met Olga Ivinskaya (1912-1995), to whom the poet dedicated many poems and considered him his “muse.”

New steps by Pasternak the lyricist towards the epic were made in the poem “High Disease” (first edition 1923 , second - 1928 ), in the poems “Nine hundred and fifth year” ( 1925-1926 ) and "Lieutenant Schmidt" ( 1926-1927 ) Pasternak makes a bold attempt to speak in a new, not yet mastered language.

In the following years, Pasternak turns to the dilemma: the paths of poetry and the paths of history, their relationship and dispute - the story “Airways” ( 1924 ) and the novel in verse "Spektorsky" ( 1931 ), depicting human destinies during the era of war and revolution.

In 1930-1931 Pasternak creates a book of poems “The Second Birth” (ed. 1932 ). It opens with the lyrical cycle “Waves”, filled with a sense of breadth and suddenly opening sea space. As before, in Pasternak home and world, everyday life and existence are fused. The poet wants to look at life “without shrouds.” He is too keen-sighted and intently soulful to be content with a romantic haze, vagueness, and interest in the exceptional outside of the everyday.

In the 20s Pasternak translated Hans Sachs, Kleist, and Ben Jonson. Since the early 30s. he often visited Georgia, translated a lot of Georgian poets - N. Baratashvili, A. Tsereteli, G. Leonidze, T. Tabidze, S. Chikovani, P. Yashvili. At the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers ( 1934 ) the controversy surrounding Pasternak's poetry is intensifying. His position in literature is gradually becoming more complicated, which is largely due to his departure into the field of translation. In the pre-war years and during the Great Patriotic War Pasternak translated a lot of Western European poets. Excellent command of English, German, French languages, he undertakes a large series of translations from Goethe, Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Verlaine, Petofi.

Before the war, Pasternak created a cycle of poems “On Early Trains”, which outlined a departure from previous poetics and a striving for a classically clear style. More clearly than before, a “new” dimension, a new facet emerges: the people are like life itself, its basis (the “Artist” cycle, 1936 ). In August 1943 Pasternak took a trip to the front as part of a brigade to prepare a book about the Battle of Oryol. The poet turns to reportage, essays, poems, reminiscent diary entries. In 1943 The collection “On Early Trains” is published, which includes poems from the pre-war and war years, in 1945– collection “Earthly space”. The poet consistently and persistently strives to “clarify” the language and simplify the figurative system.

Almost all of my creative life Pasternak also writes prose. In the almanac “Our Days” ( 1922, No. 1) the story “Childhood of Eyelets” was published. Already here the deep kinship between Pasternak’s prose and poetry was revealed.

After the war, Pasternak decides to return to the prose novel, conceived long ago. The poet gave him great value. At the center of the novel “Doctor Zhivago” is an intellectual, akin to Spectorsky, standing at a tragic crossroads between the personal world and social existence associated with active action. The novel expresses deep disappointment in the idea of ​​revolution, disbelief in the possibility of social restructuring of society. The hero of the novel rejects the cruelty of the White Guard camp and does not accept revolutionary violence and the sacrificial subordination of the individual to the fate of the revolution. The pages of the novel are written with great force about the life of nature and the love of the heroes.

Transferring the novel abroad, publishing it abroad in 1957 and award to Pasternak Nobel Prize in 1958- all this caused sharp criticism in the Soviet press, which resulted in Pasternak’s expulsion from the Writers’ Union and his refusal of the Nobel Prize.

In 1952 Pasternak suffered a heart attack, but despite this, he continued to create and develop. Boris Leonidovich began a new cycle of his poems - “When it clears up” ( 1956-1959 ) It was last book writer. Incurable disease– lung cancer, led to the death of Boris Pasternak May 30, 1960 in Peredelkino.

1890 , January 29 (February 10) - born in Moscow into a creative family. His father, artist, academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts Leonid Osipovich Pasternak, and his mother, pianist Rosalia Isidorovna Pasternak (née Kaufman, 1868–1939), moved to Moscow from Odessa in 1889, a year before his birth.

1901 - entered the 2nd grade of the 5th Moscow gymnasium (now Moscow school No. 91).

1905–1906 – Pasternak’s family lives in Berlin (from December to August).

1908 , May – graduated with honors from the 5th Moscow Gymnasium.
Entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow University.

1909 , spring-summer - the first poetic and prose experiments.
Transferred to the Philosophy Department of the Faculty of History and Philology.

1911 , first half of the year - meeting Sergei Bobrov in the Serdard literary circle.
April - the family moves to Volkhonka, 9, where Pasternak lived intermittently until 1938.

1912 , April 21–August 25 – trip to Marburg.
Autumn – transformation of “Serdardy” into the literary group “Lyrika”.

1913 , February 10 – Pasternak’s report “Symbolism and Immortality” in the circle for the study of aesthetics at the Musaget publishing house.
The end of April - debut in print: the release of the almanac "Lyrics" with the first publication of five poems by Boris Pasternak.
December – book “Twin in the Clouds”.

1915 , May - release of the collection “Spring Contract of Muses”, where Pasternak was first published together with Mayakovsky.
October 24 – trip to Petrograd. Meet the Brik family.

1916 , autumn – work on a translation of Swinburne’s tragedy “Chatelard”. Pasternak serves as a tutor in the family of the director of the Karpov chemical plant in Tikhye Gory on the Kama.
December – collection “Over Barriers”.

1917 , February - Pasternak returns to Moscow.
Summer – most of the poems of the future book “My Sister is My Life” were written.

1918 , January – meeting Larisa Reisner.
February - first meeting with Marina Tsvetaeva at an evening with M. Tseitlin (Amari).
March – marriage of Elena Vinograd. Cycle "Break".
Autumn is the beginning of work on the novel “Three Names”, the first part of which will become the story “Childhood of Eyelets”, and the ending will be destroyed. Policy article “Several provisions” (published 1922).

1919 , spring–autumn – work on a book of poems “Themes and Variations” and a collection of articles “Quinta essentia”.

1921 , August - meeting Evgenia Lurie, Pasternak's future wife.
September 16 – Pasternak’s parents leave Russia forever and settle in Berlin.
December 27 – Pasternak sees Lenin, having arrived with a guest ticket to the IX Congress of Soviets.

1922 , early January - meeting Osip Mandelstam and his wife.
January 24 – Pasternak and Evgenia Lurie register their marriage.
April – “My Sister is My Life” is published by Grzhebin’s publishing house.
June 14 – beginning of correspondence with Marina Tsvetaeva.
August 17 – Pasternak and his wife sail to Berlin from Petrograd.

1923 , January – publication of the book “Themes and Variations” in “Petropolis” (Berlin).
February – short visit to Marburg with my wife.
March 21 – Pasternak in last time sees his parents before returning to Russia.
September 23 – birth of son Evgeniy.
September–November – the first edition of the poem “High Disease”.
December 17 - Pasternak reads the first edition of the poem “To Valery Bryusov” at the celebration of Bryusov on the occasion of his 50th birthday.

1924 , February – work on the story “Air Routes”.
November - with the help of historian and journalist Yakov Chernyak, Pasternak gets a place at the Lenin Institute under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and works for three months on compiling a “foreign Lenignana”.

1925 , March – start of work on the novel in verse “Spektorsky”.
Autumn - the first chapters of the poem “Nine Hundred and Five.”

1926 , February–December – work on the poem “Lieutenant Schmidt”.

1927 , May – final break with LEF.
August – publication of “Lieutenant Schmidt” in “New World” with an acrostic dedication to Tsvetaeva.

1928 , July - publication of “Nine Hundred and Five” and “Lieutenant Schmidt” as a book.
Summer is a reworking of early poems and “High Disease.”
Autumn is a continuation of the novel “Spektorsky”. Work on the "Tale".

1929 , the first half of the year - work on the first part of the “Safety Certificate”.
July - “The Tale” is published in Novy Mir.
August - the first part of the “Safety Letter” is published in “Zvezda”.
Autumn – work on finishing Spektorsky. Meeting Heinrich Neuhaus and his wife Zinaida Nikolaevna Neuhaus (nee Eremeeva).
December 30 is the last attempt to reconcile with Mayakovsky.

1930 , August–October – work on the second and third parts of the “Safety Certificate”.

1931 , May–June – publication of the end of the “Safety Certificate” in Krasnaya Novy.

1932 , mid-February - The Writers' Union provides Pasternak and Zinaida Nikolaevna Neugauz with a two-room apartment on Tverskoy Boulevard, 7.
March – “Safety Certificate” is published as a separate book.
April 6 – Pasternak’s evening at FOSP and a heated discussion of poems from the future book “The Second Birth”.
August – publication of the book “Second Birth” by the publishing house “Federation”.
October 11–13 – triumphal evenings of Pasternak in Leningrad.
October – return to Volkhonka. Evgenia Pasternak and her son move to an apartment on Tverskoy Boulevard.
November 10 – Mandelstam’s evening at Literaturnaya Gazeta. A dispute between two poets about the freedom of the artist.

1933 , November – Trip to Georgia as part of a writing team.

1934 , May 22 - speech at the discussion “On Lyrics” in the debate on Aseev’s report.
Second week of June - telephone conversation Pasternak and Stalin.
August 29 – Pasternak’s speech at the First Congress of the USSR Writers’ Union. The audience greets Pasternak standing.
Autumn – the second edition of “The Second Birth” with the dedication of “Waves” to Nikolai Bukharin.

1935 , February - publication of the book “Georgian Lyricists” in Pasternak’s translations.
June – trip to Paris for the anti-fascist congress in defense of culture.
June 24 – speech at the congress calling on writers “not to unite.” Meeting with Marina Tsvetaeva, meeting Sergei and Alya Efron.
July 6 – sailing to Leningrad from London.

1936 , February 16 – Pasternak’s speech against templates and unification in literature.
March 13 – Pasternak speaks in a discussion on formalism with sharp attacks on official criticism.
June 15 – article “New Age” about the Stalinist Constitution in Izvestia.
July - meeting with Andre Gide, who came to the USSR to work on a book about the world's first socialist state. Pasternak warns Gide about “Potemkin villages” and official lies.
October – cycle “From Summer Notes” in the “New World”.

1937 , January - speech at the Pushkin Plenum of the Board of the Writers' Union.
June 14 - Pasternak refuses to sign a letter approving the execution of Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Eideman and others.

1938 , February–April – work on the first version of the translation of “Hamlet”.

1939 , spring–autumn – work on the novel “Notes of Zhivult,” drafts of which were lost in Peredelkino during the war.

1940 , spring-summer - the first poems of the Peredelkino cycle.
June – publication of the translation of “Hamlet” in the “Young Guard”.

1941 , July–August – Pasternak extinguishes lighters on the roof of his house in Lavrushinsky and learns shooting at military training.
October 14 – Pasternak’s departure for evacuation to Chistopol, in the same carriage with Akhmatova.

1942 , January–April – work on the translation of “Romeo and Juliet”.
Summer – the last drafts of the drama “This Light” and the destruction of what was written.

1943 , June 25 – return with family to Moscow.
July – publication of the collection “On Early Trains” by the publishing house “Soviet Writer”.
Late August – early September – trip to liberated Oryol. Essays “A Trip to the Army” and “The Liberated City.”
November is the prologue of the poem “Glow” in “Red Star”.

1944 , January–March – work on the poem “Glow” and war poems.

1945 , February – release of the collection “Earthly Space”.
May-December - a series of poetry evenings by Pasternak at the House of Scientists, Moscow State University and the Polytechnic Museum.
September – meeting British diplomat Isaiah Berlin.

1946 , January - the beginning of work on the novel, which later received the name “Doctor Zhivago”.
February – Alexander Glumov’s solo performance “Hamlet”, the first Moscow production of Pasternak’s translation.
April 2 and 3 – joint poetry evenings with Anna Akhmatova.
September - sharp attacks on Pasternak in the press and at writers' meetings.

1947 , May - Konstantin Simonov’s refusal to publish Pasternak’s poems in Novy Mir.
Summer - working on a translation of King Lear.

1948 , January - destruction of the twenty-five thousandth circulation of “The Chosen One” by Boris Pasternak, published in the “Golden Series of Soviet Literature.”
Autumn - translation of the first part of Faust.

1949 , autumn - translation of the second part of Faust.

1950 , summer – the end of the first book of the novel “Doctor Zhivago”.

1952 , October 20 - Pasternak suffers a severe heart attack.
November–December – treatment at the Botkin Hospital.

1953 , summer – the cycle “Poems of Yuri Zhivago” is completed.

1954 , April – publication of ten poems from the novel in Znamya.
May – premiere of “Hamlet” directed by G. Kozintsev in Leningrad.

1955 , October – the novel “Doctor Zhivago” is finished.

1956 , May - after unsuccessful attempts to publish the novel in Russia, Pasternak hands over the manuscript to representatives of the Italian publisher G. Feltrinelli.
June - Petro Tsveteremich begins work on translating the novel into Italian.
September - the editors of Novy Mir reject the novel and send Pasternak a lengthy letter about its ideological and artistic inconsistency.
October – refusal of the editorial board of the almanac “Literary Moscow” to accept the novel for publication in the third (failed) issue.

1957 , February - Pasternak meets the French Slavist Jacqueline de Prouillard and issues a power of attorney in her name to conduct his foreign affairs.
Spring and summer - work on the lyrical cycle “When it clears up.”
November 23 – the novel “Doctor Zhivago” is published in Italy and immediately becomes a bestseller.
December 17 – a press conference for foreign journalists is organized at Pasternak’s dacha, at which he declares that he does not intend to renounce the novel and welcomes its Italian publication.

1958 , October 23 – Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
October 25 – party meeting at the Writers' Union.
October 26 – Literaturnaya Gazeta publishes a letter from the editorial board of Novy Mir about the rejection of the novel.
October 27 - The Presidium of the Board of the Writers' Union discusses the publication of Pasternak's novel abroad.
October 29 – Pasternak is forced to send a telegram to the Nobel Committee refusing the prize. First Secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee Vladimir Semichastny speaks at a ceremonial meeting for the 40th anniversary of the Komsomol with a speech in which he declares the Soviet government’s readiness to expel Pasternak from the country.
Night of October 31 - Pasternak writes a letter to N.S. Khrushchev asking not to deprive him of Soviet citizenship.
October 31 - The All-Moscow Writers' Assembly expels Pasternak from the Writers' Union and petitions the government to deprive him of his citizenship.
November 5 – Pasternak’s letter, edited by the culture department of the CPSU Central Committee, is published in Pravda. The letter contains a statement of refusal of the award and a request for the opportunity to live and work in the USSR.

1959 , end of January - poem “Nobel Prize”.
January 30 – Pasternak hands over the poem “Nobel Prize” to Daily Mail correspondent Anthony Brown.
February 11 – “The Nobel Prize” is published in the Daily Mail.
February 20 - at the request of the CPSU Central Committee, Pasternak and his wife fly to Georgia so that British Prime Minister Macmillan, who came to visit the USSR, could not meet with him.
March 2 – Pasternaks return to Moscow by train.
March 14 - Pasternak, while walking, was summoned from Peredelkino to the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko, taken to Moscow and interrogated. Rudenko threatens to initiate a criminal case and demands to stop communicating with foreigners.
Summer and autumn – work on the play “Blind Beauty”.

1960 , early April – the first signs of a fatal disease.
May 30, 23 hours 20 minutes - Boris Leonidovich Pasternak dies in Peredelkino from lung cancer with metastases to the stomach.
June 2 – Pasternak’s funeral at the cemetery in Peredelkino. Despite the complete lack of official information about the time and place of the funeral, more than four thousand people came to see Pasternak off on his last journey.
The novel “Doctor Zhivago” was published in the magazine “New World” in January–April 1988.

PASTERNAK, BORIS LEONIDOVICH (1890−1960), Russian poet, prose writer, translator. Born on February 10, 1890 in Moscow.
It all started with music. And painting. The mother of the future poet, Rosalia Isidorovna Kaufman, was a wonderful pianist, a student of Anton Rubinstein. Father - Leonid Osipovich Pasternak, a famous artist who illustrated the works of Leo Tolstoy, with whom he was close friends.
The spirit of creativity lived in the Pasternaks’ apartment as the main, idolized member of the family. Home concerts were often held here with the participation of Alexander Scriabin, whom Boris adored. “More than anything in the world I loved music, more than anyone else in it, Scriabin,” he later recalled. The boy was destined for a career as a musician. While still studying at the gymnasium, he completed a 6-year course in the composition department of the conservatory, but... In 1908, Boris left music for the sake of philosophy. He could not forgive himself for not having an absolute ear for music.
The young man entered the philosophy department of the historical and philological faculty of Moscow University. In the spring of 1912, using the money saved by his mother, he went to continue his studies at german city Marburg was the center of philosophical thought of that time. “This is some kind of dull tension of the archaic. And this tension is created by everything: twilight, the fragrant gardens, the neat solitude of midday, foggy evenings. History becomes earth here,” is how Pasternak described the city he loved forever in one of his letters to his homeland.
The head of the Marburg school of neo-Kantian philosophers, Hermann Cohen, suggested that Pasternak remain in Germany to receive his doctorate. The philosopher's career could not have been more successful. However, this beginning was not destined to come true. For the first time, the young man seriously falls in love with his former student Ida Vysotskaya, who came to Marburg with her sister to visit Pasternak. Poetry takes over his entire being.
I shuddered. I went on and off.
I was shaking. I just made an offer -
But it’s too late, I drifted away, and now I’m rejected.
What a pity for her tears! I am more blessed than the saint.
I went out to the square. I could be counted out
Second born. Every little bit
She lived and, without regard for me,
She rose in her farewell significance.
(Marburg)
Poems had come before, but only now their airy element surged so powerfully, irresistibly, so enthusiastically that it became impossible to resist it. Later, in the autobiographical story Safe Conduct (1930), the poet tried to justify his choice, and at the same time define this element that had taken possession of him - through the prism of philosophy: “We cease to recognize reality. She appears in some new category. This category seems to us to be its own, and not our state. Apart from this state, everything in the world is named. Only it is not named and is new. We are trying to name it. It turns out to be art.”
Upon his return to Moscow, Pasternak entered literary circles; several poems that were not subsequently republished by him were published for the first time in the almanac Lyrics. Together with Nikolai Aseev and Sergei Bobrov, the poet organizes a group of new or “moderate” futurists - “Centrifuge”.
In 1914, Pasternak's first book of poems, Twin in the Clouds, was published. The name, according to the author, was “stupidly pretentious” and was chosen “to imitate the cosmological intricacies that distinguished the book titles of the Symbolists and the names of their publishing houses.” The poet subsequently significantly revised many poems from this book, as well as from the next one (Above Barriers, 1917), while others were never republished.
In the same year, 1914, he met Vladimir Mayakovsky, who was destined to play huge role in the fate and work of early Pasternak: “Art was called tragedy,” he wrote in the Safe Conduct. – The tragedy was called Vladimir Mayakovsky. The title hid the ingeniously simple discovery that the poet is not the author, but the subject of the lyrics, addressing the world in the first person.”
“Time and community of influences” are what determined the relationship between the two poets. It was the similarity of tastes and preferences, developing into dependence, that inevitably pushed Pasternak to search for his own intonation, his own view of the world.
Marina Tsvetaeva, who dedicated the article Epic and Lyrics to Pasternak and Mayakovsky modern Russia(1933), defined the difference in their poetics with a line from Tyutchev: “Everything is in me and I am in everything.” If Vladimir Mayakovsky, she wrote, is “I am in everything,” then Boris Pasternak, of course, is “everything in me.”
The actual “non-general expression of the face” was found in the third book - My Sister - Life (1922). It is no coincidence that Pasternak started his poetic creativity from her. The book included poems and cycles from 1917 and was, like the year of their creation, truly revolutionary - but in a different, poetic meaning of the word:
This is a cool whistle,
This is the clicking of crushed ice floes,
This is the night that chills the leaf,
This is a duel between two nightingales.
(Definition of poetry)
Everything in these verses was new. The attitude towards nature is as if from the inside, from the face of nature. An attitude toward metaphor that pushes the boundaries of the subject being described—sometimes to the point of immensity. The attitude towards the woman I love, who... came in with a chair, as if from a shelf, took my life out and blew away the dust.
Like “dusty life” in these lines, all natural phenomena are endowed in Pasternak’s work with qualities that are not characteristic of them: a thunderstorm, dawn, wind are humanized; dressing table, mirror, washstand come to life - the world is ruled by the “omnipotent god of details”:
A huge garden hangs around in the hall,
He brings his fist to the dressing table,
Runs on the swing, catches, flips,
It shakes but doesn't break glass!
(Mirror)
“The effect of Pasternak is equal to the effect of a dream,” Tsvetaeva wrote. – We don’t understand him. We fall into it. We fall under it. We fall into it... We understand Pasternak the way animals understand us.” Every little thing is given a powerful poetic charge, every foreign object experiences the attraction of Pasternak’s orbit. This is “everything in me.”
The emotional flow of My Sister - Life, a lyrical novel unique in Russian literature, was picked up by Pasternak’s next book, Themes and Variations (1923). Picked it up and multiplied:
I don't hold it. Go do some good.
Go to others. Werther has already been written,
And these days the air smells of death:
Open the window to open the veins.
(Break)
Meanwhile, the era made its own cruel demands on literature - Pasternak’s “abstruse”, “obscure” lyrics were not in honor. Trying to comprehend the course of history from the point of view of the socialist revolution, Pasternak turns to the epic - in the 20s he created the poems High Disease (1923−1928), Nine Hundred and Fifth (1925−1926), Lieutenant Schmidt (1926−1927), a novel in poems by Spectorsky (1925−1931). “I believe that the epic is inspired by time, and therefore ... I am moving from lyrical thinking to the epic, although this is very difficult,” the poet wrote in 1927.
Along with Mayakovsky, Aseev, Kamensky, Pasternak was a member of the LEF (“Left Front of the Arts”) during these years, which proclaimed the creation of a new revolutionary art, “life-building art,” which should fulfill the “social order” and bring literature to the masses. Hence the appeal to the theme of the first Russian revolution in the poems Lieutenant Schmidt, Nine Hundred and Five, hence the appeal to the figure of a contemporary, an ordinary “man without merit”, who unwillingly became a witness to the last Russian revolution, a participant great history- in Spectorsky's novel. However, even where the poet takes on the role of narrator, one can feel the free breathing of the lyricist, unconstrained by any form:
It was twenty-four. December
It was hard, ground to the display window.
And it grew cold, like the imprint of a copper coin
The tumor is warm and unsteady.
(Spectorsky)
Accustomed to being guided by the correctness of his feelings, Pasternak hardly succeeds in the role of a “modern” and “timely” poet. In 1927 he left LEF. He is disgusted by the society of “people with fictitious reputations and false unjustified claims” (and there were plenty of such figures among Mayakovsky’s inner circle); In addition, Pasternak is less and less satisfied with the Lefovites’ “art for the topic of the day” attitude.
In the early 30s, his poetry experienced a “rebirth.” A book with that title was published in 1932. Pasternak again glorifies simple and earthly things: “the enormity of the apartment, saddening”, “a winter day in the through opening of uncurtained curtains”, “a piercing cry of willow trees”, “our everyday immortality”... However, his language also becomes different: the syntax is simplified, the idea crystallizes, finding support in simple and succinct formulas, as a rule, coinciding with boundaries of a poetic line. The poet radically reconsiders his early work, considering it “a strange mishmash of outdated metaphysics and fledgling enlightenment.” At the end of his life, he divided everything that he had done into the period “before 1940” and after. Describing the first in the essay People and Situations (1956−1957), Pasternak wrote: “My hearing was then spoiled by the frills and disruption of everything familiar that reigned all around. Everything normally said bounced off me. I forgot that words themselves can contain something and mean something, apart from the trinkets with which they were hung... I was looking in everything not for essence, but for extraneous wit.” However, already in 1931 Pasternak understands that: In the experience of great poets there are traits of that naturalness that it is impossible, having experienced them, not to end up in complete muteness. In kinship with everything that exists, being confident, And knowing the future in everyday life, One cannot help but fall towards the end, as into heresy, into unheard-of simplicity. (Waves) “The features of that naturalness” in the Second Birth are so obvious that they become synonymous with absolute independence, which takes the poet beyond any regulations or rules. And the rules of the game in the 30s were such that it became impossible to work normally and at the same time stay away from the “great construction project”. Pasternak is almost never published these years. Having settled in a dacha in Peredelkino in 1936, he was forced to translate in order to feed his family. Shakespeare's tragedies, Goethe's Faust, Schiller's Maria Stuart, poems by Verlaine, Byron, Keats, Rilke, Georgian poets... These works entered literature on an equal footing with his original work. During the war years, in addition to translations, Pasternak created a cycle of Poems about the War, included in the book On Early Trains (1943). After the war, he published two more books of poetry: Earth's Expanse (1945) and Selected Poems and Poems (1945). In the 1930-1940s, Pasternak never tired of dreaming about real great prose, about a book that “is a cubic piece of a hot, smoking conscience.” Back in the late 10s, he began writing a novel, which, without being completed, became the story Childhood of Eyelets - the story of a teenage girl growing up. I received the story highly appreciated critics. The poet Mikhail Kuzmin even put it above Pasternak’s poetry, and Marina Tsvetaeva called the story “brilliant.” And so, from 1945 to 1955, in agony, no writing was done - the novel Doctor Zhivago was born, a largely autobiographical narrative about the fate of the Russian intelligentsia in the first half of the twentieth century, especially during the Civil War. Main character– Yuri Zhivago is lyrical hero poet Boris Pasternak; He is a doctor, but after his death a thin book of poems remains, which forms the final part of the novel. The poems of Yuri Zhivago, along with the later poems from the cycle When it goes wild (1956−1959), are the crown of Pasternak’s work, his testament. Their style is simple and transparent, but this does not make it any poorer than the language of the early books: The snow on your eyelashes is wet, There is melancholy in your eyes, And your whole appearance is coherent from one piece. As if with iron, dipped in antimony, they were cutting you through my heart. (Date) The poet strived for this clear clarity all his life. His hero, Yuri Zhivago, is also concerned with the same searches in art: “All his life he dreamed of originality, smoothed out and muted, outwardly unrecognizable and hidden under the cover of a commonly used and familiar form, all his life he strove to develop that restrained, unpretentious style in which the reader and the listener masters the content without noticing how they acquire it. All his life he cared about an inconspicuous style that did not attract anyone’s attention, and was horrified by how far he was from this ideal.” In 1956, Pasternak transferred the novel to several magazines and to Goslitizdat. That same year, Doctor Zhivago found its way to the West and a year later was released in Italian. A year later, the novel was published in Holland - this time in Russian. At home, the atmosphere around the author was heating up. On August 20, 1957, Pasternak wrote to the then party ideologist D. Polikarpov: “If the truth that I know must be redeemed by suffering, this is not new, and I am ready to accept anything.” In 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize - “for outstanding services in modern lyric poetry and in the traditional field of great Russian prose.” From that moment on, the persecution of the writer began at the state level. The verdict of the party leadership read: “Awarding an award for an artistically wretched, evil work filled with hatred of socialism is a hostile political act directed against the Soviet state.” Pasternak was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers, which meant literary and social death. From honorary award the poet was forced to refuse. In Russia, Doctor Zhivago was published only in 1988, almost 30 years after the death of the author on May 30, 1960 in Peredelkino. Having put an end to the novel, Pasternak summed up his life: “Everything is unraveled, everything is named, simple, transparent, sad. Once again... definitions have been given to the most precious and important things, earth and sky, a great ardent feeling, the spirit of creativity, life and death...”

Option 2

Pasternak Boris Leonidovich was born on February 10, 1890 in Moscow. His father, L. O. Pasternak, was a famous artist, and his mother, R. I. Kaufman, played the piano professionally. Boris's father closely communicated and collaborated with Leo Tolstoy, illustrating the writer's works. The family often hosted concerts by Alexander Scriabin. In parallel with his studies at the gymnasium, he studied composition at the 6-year conservatory course.

Knowing that he did not have an absolute ear for music, in 1908 he decided to receive a philosophical education at the Faculty of History and Philology at Moscow University. He left for Germany in 1912 to continue his studies in the city of Marburg, where later Hermann Cohen, the head of the school of neo-Kantian philosophers, suggested that Pasternak receive the title of Doctor of Science. But he falls in love with Ida Vysotskaya, his former student, and returns to Moscow.

The first publications of Pasternak’s poems took place in the almanac “Lyrics”. Takes part in the creation of the neo-futurist group “Centrifuge”. The first collection of poetry, “Twin in the Clouds,” was presented to readers in 1914. But Pasternak considered only the third book, “My Sister - Life” (1922), to be the beginning of his creative career. In the 1920s tries to write poems. In 1927, he joined the “Left Front of the Arts” (LEF), which was engaged in distributing literature among the common people, but until the end of the year he refused membership.

In the 30s It was necessary to write about communism, so Pasternak practically did not publish. In 1936, he went to his dacha in Peredelkino and began translating works of foreign writers into Russian for money. During the Second World War, he wrote a collection of poems “On Early Trains” (1943), and at the end of it - “Earthly Expanse” and “Selected Poems and Poems”. Since 1945, over the course of 10 years, Pasternak has been writing the novel “Doctor Zhivago.” In 1956, the novel was published in several magazines and in the Goslitizdat publishing house. This novel is also published in the West, and a year later it is translated into Italian. In 1957, the Russian version of Doctor Zhivago was published in Holland. In the Soviet Union, the novel “Doctor Zhivago” was published in 1988, 30 years after the poet’s death.

Essay on literature on the topic: Brief biography of Pasternak

Other writings:

1. 1) The role of Yu. Zhivago’s poems in the novel. 2) The relationship between man and the revolutionary era in the novel. We were people. We are eras. We were hit and rushing along in the caravan, Like the tundra under the tender's sighs, And the rushing of pistons and sleepers. Pasternak B. L. Pasternak Read More ......
2. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak reflected many events of the 20th century in his work. His fate, like the fate of many poets of this generation, was very difficult. He had to go through ups and downs, victories and defeats. Therefore, perhaps, for Pasternak creativity Read More......
3. B. L. Pasternak reflected many events of the 20th century in his work. His fate, like the fate of many poets of this generation, was very difficult. He had to go through ups and downs, victories and defeats. Therefore, perhaps, for Pasternak creativity Read More......
4. These Pasternak lines look like an epigraph to the novel Doctor Zhivago, on which Boris Leonidovich worked for about a quarter of a century. The novel seemed to have absorbed his most intimate thoughts and feelings. And now, in his declining years, the novel is completed, the final version is prepared for printing, but Read More......
5. It is always difficult to talk about any one poem in the work of any poet: he expressed himself in everything he wrote. But it is even more difficult to talk about a poet who was going to become a musician. Boris Pasternak loved the music of A. N. Scriabin and studied seriously for six years Read More......
6. Lara Characteristics literary hero Lara (Antipova Larisa Fedorovna) is the daughter of a Belgian engineer and a Russified Frenchwoman, Guichard. L. is good, according to Zhivago, “by that incomparably clean and swift line with which the whole of it was circled from top to bottom by the creator in one fell swoop.” Arriving after death Read More ......
7. February! Get some ink and cry... B. Pasternak A student of Scriabin, himself a magnificent musician, Pasternak in his lyrical poems is both musical and simple. If we add to this the main feature of Scriabin - color, then, in addition to color, which is always present, the second characteristic Read More ......
8. The hum died down. I went on stage. Leaning against the door frame, I catch in a distant echo what will happen in my lifetime. B. Pasternak Boris Pasternak's lyrics - beautiful, philosophical, life-affirming, unrestrained - helped me, like many other people familiar with Read More ......

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (January 29, 1890 – May 30, 1960) was a world-famous Russian writer, poet, journalist and translator. The author of the popular novel Doctor Zhivago, as well as the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded to Boris in 1958.

Childhood

Boris Leonidovich was born on January 29 in Moscow, into a large Jewish family. Both of his parents were creative people: his father was an artist and a permanent member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and his mother was a famous pianist who began her career in Odessa, from where the family had to move a year before Boris was born. In addition to him, there were two more brothers and a sister in the family, but since Boris was the eldest among them, the responsibility lay entirely with him.

According to the writer himself, his parents did not pay him enough attention. Since they were both creatively gifted people, their lives revolved around numerous exhibitions, concerts and productions, which they tried not to miss.

The children remained at home, left to their own devices, while their parents had fun at the next evening. But this also had its advantages: musicians, writers, artists and poets often visited the house. So, from early childhood, Boris Leonidovich saw Rachmaninov, Levitan, Ivanov, Scriabin and even Tolstoy himself in his living room.

By the way, it was the constant close relationship between the life of the Pasternak family and other representatives of the elite that became the impetus for Boris’s mastery of music and then literature. According to bibliographers, having become friends with Rachmaninov, Pasternak was so inspired by the idea of ​​composing his own compositions that within a few days he demonstrated a wonderful piano sonata, and a few months later - two more preludes. However, the passion for music quickly disappeared, despite the positive responses from the relatives and friends of the future writer about his work.

In 1990, Boris Leonidovich was enrolled in the Fifth Moscow Gymnasium, where a special focus was on mastering musical disciplines. Despite the boy’s protests, his parents wanted to see him become a famous composer in the future, so in an effort to teach Boris they did not listen to anyone but themselves. Thus, Pasternak, for whom a completely different fate is prepared in the future, begins to study theoretical foundations music business and, by the way, achieves considerable success in this area.

Youth

In 1908, having graduated from high school with a gold medal (teachers Glier and Engel help Pasternak successfully pass all final exams), Boris decides to enter the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. In his opinion, this would be the best way to help him create and compose truly strong and deep poems. Unfortunately, Pasternak did not even want to think about a career as a musician, contrary to his parents’ instructions.

However, the young man was never able to enter the Faculty of History and Philology due to excessively high requirements in several disciplines at once. As a result, the composer and, at the same time, a close friend of Scriabin, advises the young talent to enter the law faculty of the same university, and after studying for a year, calmly transfer to the desired direction. Pasternak listens to his friend’s advice and turns out to be a student at the Faculty of Law, from where a year later he is transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology.

Thanks to good parental connections, as well as his own charm and charisma, in the summer of 1912, Boris Pasternak left for Germany for a short time, where he planned to study philosophy with Professor Hermann Cohen, the head of the Marburg Kantian school. Seeing the excellent abilities of his ward, he almost immediately advises him to continue his philosophical studies, since this is how he can achieve unprecedented heights. But, unfortunately, at that time Pasternak again remembered his writing and poetic career, so he left Germany and never returned to philosophy.

Writer's career

After returning from Marburg, Boris Leonidovich begins to seriously think about a career as a writer. He communicates with many former writers and tries to find himself in such groups as Musaget and Lyrics. But all of them are characterized by the future writer and poet as “frivolous”, so Pasternak does not stay there long. At the same time, he meets the futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky and even joins him for a while. creative association“LEF”, but leaves from there too. However, Mayakovsky himself and his poems have an incredibly large influence on the work of the aspiring poet. His works acquire notes of struggle and hatred of the existing government, as well as something new, futuristic.

Since 1913, Pasternak begins to publish his first works. The most famous of them is the poem “Twin on the Clouds,” which was published in the spring of 1913. Later, several more works appear, which Boris combines into the “Initial Time” cycle. Despite the fact that the published poems are perceived extremely positively by the public, the author himself considers them immature and unsuccessful, so after a couple of years he withdraws the entire cycle from publication, completely reworks it (and in some places even rewrites it entirely) and releases it again.

The year 1920, according to many bibliographers, refers to the period of the most fruitful moment in the life of Boris Pasternak. Since the beginning of the year, the collection “Themes and Variations” has been published, immediately followed by the cycle “High Disease” and the novel in verse “Spektorsky. By the end of the year, several more successful and well-received prose works were published.

In the period from 1920 to 1930, Pasternak's work was officially recognized by the Soviet government. He begins to be invited to all kinds of congresses, he is enrolled in the Union of Writers of the USSR and is almost awarded the title of best poet Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Boris Leonidovich’s work soon begins to displease the government, since it “does not correspond to the era” and is “detached from real life" Such comments are followed by an official “request” to change the poetic style to a more appropriate one, which forces Pasternak to reconsider his positive views on power and withdraw even more from the world.

"Doctor Zhivago"

The novel was created by Boris Leonidovich for ten whole years. Initially it was called “Boys and Girls”, then the format changed, and the work was called either “The Candle Was Burning” or “There Is No Death”.

The author himself spoke of the novel as the pinnacle of his writing career. He claimed that he collected an incredibly huge amount of thoughts and ideas in the work, tried to describe the state and development of the era, and also express his point of view on such eternal problems as the mystery of life and death and their role in the history of mankind. There is a separate topic tragic fate Russian intelligentsia, emphasized by Pasternak through the poems of the main character - Yuri Andreevich Zhivago.

However, unlike the author, who spoke enthusiastically about his creation, the press and literary critics The novel was met with hostility. The audience was divided into two groups: those who considered the work a real revelation about the problems present in the world, and others who extremely negatively perceived every word of Boris Leonidovich. In particular, Kazakevich was dissatisfied with the wording that October Revolution not only did it not provide any benefit to existing humanity, but on the contrary, it was the most useless. A editor-in-chief newspapers New World“Simonov, having read the novel, recommended “under no circumstances to give Pasternak a platform!”

The novel was published already in 1957 in Italy. Having received recognition and positive reviews there, it began to spread around the world, being published in Great Britain, Germany, and Holland. Despite numerous attempts Soviet power to seize the manuscript and prohibit its publication, the book not only spread further and further, but also began to be translated into other languages, adding to its author even greater popularity at home and abroad.

Personal life

Pasternak met his first wife in 1921. A year after the meeting, the young people secretly got married, and two years later their son Evgeniy was born. However, by 1965, Evgenia Vladimirovna dies from severe pneumonia, forcing Boris Leonidovich to withdraw into himself for several months.

The writer and poet did not live long with his second wife, Zinaida Nikolaevna Neuhaus. The couple often quarreled and could not find compromises, so in 1948, when Boris met his third and last love– Olga Ivinskaya – he leaves his family and starts new life. By the way, after his death, his wife was accused of treason and was forced to spend four whole years in prison, after which she was released and later acquitted.