Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) was a Russian poet, novelist and translator whose work joined modernist experimentation with an intense concern for nature, spirituality and individual conscience. Born in Moscow into an artistic family—his father was the painter Leonid Pasternak and his mother a concert pianist—he initially studied music and philosophy before committing himself to literature. Pasternak emerged as a major poet during the 1910s and 1920s, particularly through collections such as My Sister, Life and Themes and Variations. His densely figurative, musical verse established him as one of the leading Russian poets of his generation, while his translations of Shakespeare, Goethe and Georgian poetry also became an important part of his literary career.

Pasternak is internationally best known for Doctor Zhivago, his only completed conventional novel. Set between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War, it follows the physician and poet Yuri Zhivago through revolution, civil war and an ill-fated relationship with Lara, contrasting private emotional and spiritual life with the demands of political ideology. Soviet publishers rejected the manuscript, and the novel first appeared in Italy in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature for his achievements in lyrical poetry and the Russian epic tradition, but sustained pressure from the Soviet authorities forced him to decline it. Doctor Zhivago remains both a sweeping historical novel and a defence of personal freedom against systems that attempt to control thought, art and memory.