Boris Pasternak
Overview
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

. Furthermore, his translations of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 remain deeply popular with Russian audiences.

Outside his homeland, Pasternak is best known for authoring Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zhivago (novel)
Doctor Zhivago is a 20th century novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet...

, a novel set during the last years of the House of Romanov and the earliest days of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

.
Quotations

They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

On Soviet bureaucrats, in LIFE magazine (13 June 1960)

Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.

LIFE magazine (13 June 1960)

It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.

Interview in Writers at Work, Second Series (1963) edited by George Plimpton.

Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one’s stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life.

As quoted in The New York Times (1 January 1978)

I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats of any kind, whether of jail or retribution, then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer, not the prophet who sacrificed himself.... What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.

As quoted in The New York Times (1 January 1978)

Like a beast in a pen, I’m cut off From my friends, freedom, the Sun. But the hunters are gaining ground; I’ve nowhere else to run.

Am I a gangster or a murderer? Of what crime do I stand Condemned? I made the whole world weep At the beauty of my land.

Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light.

Snow, snow over the whole land across all boundaries. The candle burned on the table, the candle burned.

As translated by Richard McKane (1985)

Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel.

 
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