Boris Pasternak

Russian poet and novelist, author of Doctor Zhivago and Nobel laureate.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union compelled Pasternak to refuse the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature after he was awarded it.^[1][2]

Quick Facts

Birth name: Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
Born: 10 February 1890
Birthplace: Moscow, Russian Empire
Died: 30 May 1960
Place of death: Peredelkino, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Partner: Olga Ivinskaya
Children: 2, including Evgeny
Parents: Leonid Pasternak (father), Rosalia Isidorovna Kofmann Pasternak (mother)

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

Pasternak was born in Moscow into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family; his father was the painter Leonid Pasternak and his mother was concert pianist Rosa Kaufman.^[3][4] The family claimed descent from the 15th-century philosopher Isaac Abarbanel.^[4] Novelist Leo Tolstoy was a close family friend, and Pasternak's father illustrated Tolstoy's works.^[5][6] He joined the Russian Futurist group Centrifuge as a pianist, and his earliest poems appeared in their journal Lirika.^[7]

During World War II, he served as a fire warden on the roof of his building and later visited soldiers at the front.^[8] Doctor Zhivago was rejected for publication in the USSR, smuggled to Italy, and first published there in 1957 as part of a CIA operation.^[9] During the late 1920s, Pasternak took part in a well-known three-way exchange of letters with Rilke and Marina Tsvetayeva.^[10][11]

What the cited sources add

The same source notes that Pasternak worked as a librarian after the 1917 Revolution and later became a translator of Shakespeare, Goethe, and others when unable to publish his own poetry.^[2] John Bayley's 1985 review describes how Pasternak met Rilke as a ten-year-old schoolboy in 1900 and treasured Rilke's letters in his wallet until his death.^[11] Bayley also reports that Pasternak had trouble with his long poem "Lieutenant Schmidt," a celebration of a pre-revolutionary hero.^[11]

References

Wikipedia, "Boris Pasternak" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: «Не читал, но осуждаю!»: 5 фактов о романе «Доктор Живаго» 18:17, 23 October 2013, Елена Меньшенина. (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
"Boris Leonidovich Pasternak Biography", Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. facts only, no text reused. jewishvirtuallibrary.org
Wikipedia, "Boris Pasternak" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Boris Leonidovich Pasternak Biography", Jewishvirtuallibrary.org (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Boris Pasternak" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography", Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 2 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Boris Pasternak" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Pasternak (1959), p. 25. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Boris Pasternak" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Pasternak (1959), pp. 27–28. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Boris Pasternak" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Christopher Barnes, "Boris Pasternak: a Literary Biography", Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 166; Vladimir Markov, "Russian Futurism: a History", University of California Press, 1968, p. 229–230 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Boris Pasternak" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ivinskaya, pp. 72–73. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Boris Pasternak" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "CIA Declassifies Agency Role in Publishing Doctor Zhivago", Central Intelligence Agency, 14 April 2014 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Boris Pasternak" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: John Bayley, "Big Three", The New York Review of Books, 5 December 1985 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
John Bayley, "Big Three", The New York Review of Books, 5 December 1985. facts only, no text reused. nybooks.com

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Boris Pasternak (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.