Boris Pasternak was born on February 10, 1890 in Moscow, in the family of a Jewish artist and art teacher. In 1905 he entered the Moscow Conservatory. In 1909 - 1913. Boris was a student of the philosophical department of the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University.

In 1912, for one semester, the young man studied at the German University of Marburg. In the same year, Pasternak felt a penchant for literature, he was especially attracted to poetry. After returning to Moscow, the young man joined the Centrifuge circle of young futurist writers. In 1913, his collection Lyrica was published. A year later, the book "Twin in the Clouds" was published. However, Pasternak for some time still hesitated between writing and commercial careers. He spent the winter and spring of 1916 in the Urals, where he worked in the office of the manager of the Vsevolodo-Vilvensky chemical plants.

AT Stalinist For years, Pasternak, loyal to the authorities, managed to bypass the vent of repression. Sometimes he timidly tried to stand up for the repressed intellectuals, but mostly without success. His own poems have almost ceased to be published. Since 1936, Pasternak lived in a dacha in the literary village of Peredelkino, doing not his own work, but almost exclusively translations. His translations of Goethe and Shakespeare are considered exemplary.

Geniuses and villains. Boris Pasternak

During Great Patriotic War Pasternak and his family were evacuated to the city of Chistopol. During this period, Pasternak was still able to publish new collections of his poems - "On Early Trains" (1943) and "Earthly Space" (1945). After the war, he harbored a shaky hope for a humanistic degeneration of the Stalinist regime.

The writer considered the novel Doctor Zhivago, on which he worked from 1946 to 1955, to be the result of his work. In the USSR, this book was not published, but with the beginning Khrushchev thaw Pasternak gave it to an Italian communist publisher. In 1957, Doctor Zhivago was published in Italian, and then in many others. In the USSR, Doctor Zhivago was published only in 1988.

In 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel."

The awarding of the prize to Pasternak was perceived in the USSR as a political action. dedicated to events civil war novel "Doctor Zhivago" was recognized as anti-Soviet. After the Nobel Prize was awarded, at the behest of the Kremlin leaders, the persecution of Pasternak began. He was expelled from the Writers' Union, wanted to be expelled from the country, accused of treason. As a result, the writer refused the prize.

“I was born in Moscow on January 29, according to the old style of 1890. He owes much, if not all, to his father, academician of painting Leonid Osipovich Pasternak, and to his mother, an excellent pianist, ”this is how Boris Pasternak’s brief autobiographical note of 1922 begins.

Artists, musicians, writers - Pasternak (years of life - 1890-1960) got used to such an environment from childhood. Russian and world culture was a home for his soul, it saved him from despair in the most terrible years. He had to go through a lot, but, according to the memoirs of many contemporaries, he was a happy and free man.

The future writer and poet did not immediately find his calling. According to L. O. Pasternak, dissatisfied with his throwing and the final choice of profession, Boris had the talent of a painter and "could become an artist if he worked." The famous composer A. N. Scriabin highly appreciated his musical abilities, especially as a composer and improviser. In a letter to his friend K. Locks, Pasternak called the break with music and the rejection of the musician's fate "an amputation, the taking away of the most vital part of existence."

In the summer of 1912, while a student at the Faculty of History and Philology at Moscow University, Pasternak went to Marburg to study with the famous philosopher G. Cohen. However, despite the fact that, according to the teachers, he showed extraordinary abilities, the future poet left "philosophy". In his autobiographical essay "Protective Letter" he explained this decision by rejected love and wrote that "all love is a transition to a new faith." Pasternak became a poet.

This most important moment of his spiritual biography is captured in the poem " Marburg ” and called the “second birth”. The lyrical hero, experiencing the rejection of his beloved, learns to live again, gains new vision through suffering. He looks at the world as if in a mirror, and everywhere he sees reflections, “similitudes” of his state of mind, and love becomes the “precursor” of creativity.

Admired by the scale of Mayakovsky's talent and personality, and noticing some similarities between his poems and his own, Pasternak dramatically changes his style. In an attempt to find his own style and his place in fiction, the poet briefly became a member of the futuristic group "Centrifuge" and at one time "played group discipline", "sacrificed her taste and conscience", as stated in the "Certificate of Conduct". The unwillingness to "sacrifice face for the sake of position" in 1927 led B. Pasternak to break with the LEF.

Big changes take place in his poetic world in 1940, dividing his "early" and "late" work. The first period includes books of poems " twin in the clouds"(1914)," Over the barriers"(1917)," My sister is life"(1922)," Themes and variations"(1923)," Second birth"(1932); original prose (" Childhood Lover s”, 1922; " Certificate of protection", 1931, etc.), poems" high sickness"(1924)," year nine hundred and five"(1927)," Lieutenant Schmidt" (1927), a novel in verse " Spektorsky"(1924 - 1930) - most of what he created, the fruits of twenty-five years of work.

Dissatisfaction with himself often prompted the poet to edit and even rewrite his early works. Such a radical revision was subjected, in particular, to his first, "immature" book " twin in the clouds". From it, Pasternak selected and substantially revised only eleven poems for the cycle “ Start time”, opening many of his collections and collected works. Among them are the famous (precisely in the later edition) poems “February. Get ink and cry...”, “Like a bronze brazier...”, “Venice”, “Feasts”, “I grew up. Me, like Ganymede..." and others. The myth of Ganymede, ascended to heaven by Zeus the Eagle, symbolizes the transition from childhood to youth, spiritual and creative growth.

Each of Pasternak's subsequent poetic books represents a new stage in his work. In itself, the poem in his eyes was of no value and acquired the right to exist only in the context. In this, Pasternak consciously followed the tradition of the Symbolists. Among his collections, one should especially highlight the books of poems " My sister is life" (1922) and " Second birth"(1932).

"My sister is life"

“My sister is life” testified to the creative maturity of the poet and brought him fame. Pasternak retained a special relationship to this book for the rest of his life. The book is dedicated to Lermontov. Composed for the most part of poems from 1917, it is subtitled "Summer 1917"; in a letter to M. Tsvetaeva, Pasternak called this time "the summer of freedom." For Pasternak himself, it was a summer of love and unfulfilled hopes for happiness. The feeling of universal spirituality and anxious expectations fills the book.

The pathos of "My sister - life" - in unity with the world, harmony with the Universe - both in happiness and in suffering. In this sense, the love plot, which reflected the poet's trips to his beloved in the south of Russia, and even more so the political vicissitudes fade into the background. Plants: willows, willows, celandine symbolize the kinship of man with the entire universe, aphoristically expressed by the title of the entire book. Poetic creativity is interpreted by Pasternak as "the voice of life that sounds in us."

The book still strikes with the freshness and novelty of the vision of the world, with an unprecedented expansion of the poetic vocabulary: the poet “nothing is small”, creating his poetic universe, he admiringly imitates the one “Who is immersed in the decoration of a maple leaf”, about whom he writes: “The almighty god of details , / The almighty god of love, ”- unusual syntax, rhythmic looseness, fresh rhymes, sudden transparent aphorisms in a chaotic stream of images.

"Second birth"

The book of poems "The Second Birth" appeared after a rather long break. In the 1920s, the feeling of "uselessness", the untimeliness of the lyrics prompted Boris Pasternak to create lyrical epic genres: he writes poems and a novel in verse.

In The Second Birth, his poetry takes on a new breath. It was connected both with the desire to see the creation of a new harmonious world order in the construction of socialism, and with an inspiring trip to Georgia, where he met the Georgian poets T. Tabidze, P. Yashvili, S. Chikovani, and with love for Zinaida Neuhaus, who dramatically changed his life. As in "My Sister - Life", all this is experienced in unity. The collection organically coexists with masterpieces of love lyrics (“There will be no one in the house ...”, “To love others is a heavy cross ...”, the second “Ballad”, etc.) - and an imitation of Pushkin's Stanzas - “More than a century - not yesterday ... ”, a response to Mayakovsky’s suicide“ The Death of a Poet ”, the tragically enthusiastic“ Summer ”, from which it follows that only high communion of souls gives a breath of air in the suffocating atmosphere of the era. The poem "The Waves" with which "The Second Birth" opens is a kind of poetic prospectus for the book.

Early creativity, which certainly had the right to exist, was assessed by the poet himself as "immature", not "resting", and for this reason less perfect. Although in other letters the poet made an exception for the best early poems (“February. Get ink and cry ...”, “There was a matinee, jaw cramped ...”), recognized “fresh notes” in “My Sister - Life”, compared work on the novel "Doctor Zhivago" with the "days around" this book of poems and the time of writing "Childhood Luvers" and "Certificate of Conduct".

1940-50s

Under the sign of the search for "unheard of simplicity" passed the second half of the creative path of Boris Pasternak - 1940-1950s. During this period, books of poems were written On early trains" (1943) and " When it roams"(1956-1959, not published during the life of the poet), the second autobiographical essay -" People and positions» (1956). For the sake of daily bread, Pasternak had to do a lot of translations, in particular, he translated Goethe's Faust, several Shakespeare's plays, including the tragedy Hamlet. But the main work of this period, and according to the poet, and of his whole life was the novel " Doctor Zhivago».
One of the first examples of the new style, Pasternak considered the pre-war cycle " Peredelkino included in the book On early trains". The source of images and inspiration in it was simple life on earth, harmoniously built in accordance with natural rhythms, ordinary people, to whom a person of an “artistic fold” is always drawn, everyday conversations, the “prose” of language and life.

The researchers pointed to the spiritual reasons for the dramatic change in the style of an already mature artist. In one of the articles about Pasternak, V. Veidl noted the far from accidental opposition of simplicity to complexity, realism to romanticism, modesty to the spectacularity of a biography, “inconspicuous” style to a brilliant and pretentious style. “Only religion heals art from the religion of art that cripples art,” the critic wrote aphoristically. Actually, Pasternak frankly wrote about this spiritual and creative revolution in the poem "Dawn".

"War Poems"

All this manifested itself even before the start of work on Doctor Zhivago. In Pasternak's cycle War Poems”, placed in the book “On Early Trains” (1943), the national color, the feeling of Russia is enhanced, Christian motives sound, a philosophical and religious approach to the assessment of historical events is developed, which is so consistently carried out in the novel. At the end of the poem "The Death of a Sapper" the gospel idea of ​​life as a sacrifice sounds. In one of the best poems of the cycle - "Winter is coming" - Russia is called a "magic book", on its provincial houses "it is written:" By this you conquer "".
The deepest meaning of the Great Patriotic War in the understanding of Pasternak is that it restored the broken connection of times, gave a sense of the continuity of the historical path of Russia.

"Doctor Zhivago"

Work on the novel Doctor Zhivago"began immediately after the war, on a wave of enthusiasm and lasted about ten years (1946-1955). She brought the poet a sense of happiness and the fullness of existence. Having finally decided in the novel "to negotiate everything to the end", he was ready to sacrifice a lot for the sake of his main book. Pasternak's correspondence of these years can be read as the history of the creation of the novel, as an exciting commentary on it.

Great prose becomes a "justification" not only for the 17th part of the second book of the novel - the cycle "Poems of Yuri Zhivago", but for all of Pasternak's poetry. A letter to D. Maksimov (October 25, 1957) contains a striking admission that “by chance, without premeditated intent” the poet managed to convey in the novel the spirit of all his poetic books, as well as (we will add) prose, poems and even translations. “Doctor Zhivago” sums up his path and puts everything in its place: “Everything is unraveled, everything is named, simply, transparently, sadly” (from a letter from B. Pasternak to N. Tabidze).

In the text of the novel, one can find echoes of various books by Pasternak: the chronicle poem "The Nine Hundred and Fifth Year", which so delighted V. Shalamov, the poem "Lieutenant Schmidt", the hero of which is a Russian intellectual who was guided in his actions and decisions by the gospel idea of ​​"life as a victim ".

In the novel Doctor Zhivago, Ancient Rome is opposed to a new era in the history of mankind - Christianity. Pagan Rome is described by one of the heroes of the novel, Nikolai Nikolayevich Vedenyapin, as a kingdom of complete depersonalization, painful for a person and requiring human sacrifice. The poetic spirit of "My sister - life" reigns on the pages of the novel dedicated to the summer of 1917 and the acquaintance of Yuri Zhivago and Lara. Stars, night sounds and summer smells of flowering plants involuntarily evoke the poems “Stars in Summer”, “Sample”, “Balashov”, “Summer”, etc. "Thunderstorm, instant forever." Looking for her husband at the front, Lara becomes a sister of mercy and, like the heroine of My Sister - Life, organizes zemstvos in volosts.

The connection between the novel and Pasternak's translations is undeniable. At one time he even thought of naming his novel The Experience of Russian Faust. The first of the "Poems of Yuri Zhivago" is called "Hamlet". Pasternak's hero - a "thinking hero", according to V. Shalamov's definition - is a rarity in modern Doctor Zhivago literature. His "Hamletism" is in the desire to comprehend the events of history and his life on a spiritual level, to guess and fulfill his destiny, and not at all in "passivity", as they wrote in Soviet times. Hamlet's monologue "To be or not to be", according to Pasternak, "by the power of feeling rises to the bitterness of the Gethsemane note."

The lyrical hero of the poem "Hamlet", such a many-sided hero of Shakespeare's tragedy - an actor on the stage in the role of Hamlet - Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane - the fictional author of the poem Yuri Zhivago - its real author Boris Pasternak - is the hero of the "drama of duty and self-denial", ready to "create the will of him who sent him.

And finally, the last book of poems " When it roams”, written mainly after the end of the novel, is undoubtedly associated with him. In it, Pasternak sums up his life, he is happy to state that he fulfilled his destiny.

The poems "Nobel Prize" and "God's Peace" are directly related to the scandalous history of the publication of the novel, which was given to the Italian publisher Feltrinelli, was published abroad in 1958 and instantly became a world bestseller. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize. This caused a fierce persecution of the poet at home. However, the success of the main work, extensive correspondence, as if opening the doors to a vast world, outweighed the flurry of offensive publications, the betrayal of friends and acquaintances. The publication of the novel "Doctor Zhivago" was, according to Pasternak, a strong-willed conclusion to fate, from his point of view, too prosperous for that time.

The life and work of Pasternak briefly outlined in this article.

Pasternak biography short

Russian writer, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1958).

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born February 10, 1890 in Moscow, in the family of academician of painting L. O. Pasternak. Musicians, artists, writers often gathered in the house, he grew up in a creative atmosphere.

AT 1903 A young man fell off his horse and broke his leg. Because of this, Pasternak remained lame for life, although he hid his injury as best he could.

Boris becomes a student of the Fifth Moscow Gymnasium in 1905 year. He continues to study music and tries to write works himself. In addition, the future poet is engaged in painting.

AT 1908 year Boris Leonidovich becomes a student at Moscow University. He is studying philosophy. The first timid poetic experiments came in 1909, but then Pasternak did not attach any importance to them. After graduation, he joined the Musagetes, then the futuristic association Centrifuge. After the revolution, he only kept in touch with LEF, but he himself did not join any circles.

The first collection comes out in 1916 year and is called "Above the Barriers".

AT 1921 year, the family of Boris Leonidovich emigrated to Berlin. After that, the poet actively maintains contact with all creative figures who left the country. A year later, he marries Evgenia Lurie. They had a son, Eugene. At the same time, a book of poems “My sister is life” was published. In the twenties, a number of collections were published, and the first experiments in prose appeared.

The next decade is devoted to work on autobiographical essays "Protective Letter". It was in the thirties that Pasternak received recognition. In the middle of the decade, the book "Second Birth" appears, in which Boris Leonidovich tries to write in the spirit of the Soviet era.

AT 1932 divorces Lurie and marries Zinaida Neuhaus. Five years later, the couple has a son, named after his grandfather Leonid.

Initially, the attitude of the Soviet authorities and in particular Joseph Stalin towards the poet was favorable. Pasternak managed to achieve the release from prison of Nikolai and Lev Gumilyovs (husband and son of Akhmatova). He also sends a collection of poems to the leader and dedicates two works to him.

However, closer to the forties, Soviet power changes its location.

In the forties he translated foreign classics - the works of Shakespeare, Goethe and others. This is what makes a living.

The pinnacle of Pasternak's work - the novel "Doctor Zhivago" - was created for ten years, from 1945 to 1955. However, the homeland forbade the publication of the novel, so Doctor Zhivago was published abroad - in Italy in 1957 year. This led to the condemnation of the writer in the USSR, expulsion from the Writers' Union and subsequent persecution.

1958 Pasternak received the Nobel Prize for Doctor Zhivago. The persecution caused the poet's nervous breakdown, which eventually led to lung cancer and death. Boris Leonidovich did not have time to finish the play "The Blind Beauty".

Pasternak died at home, in bed, from which he had not risen for a long time, in May 30, 1960.

Contemporaries describe Pasternak as a modest, childishly trusting and naive person. He was distinguished by a competent, correctly delivered speech, rich in interesting phrases and aphorisms.

Born and raised Boris Leonidovich Pasternak in Moscow. His father was an artist and his mother was a pianist. Vivid impressions of childhood and adolescence determined his ability to compose from life, later he called this skill subjective biographical realism.

A creative and active atmosphere dominated the poet's parental home, and none of Pasternak's youthful activities disappeared in vain. Evidence of a thorough poetic upbringing is found in early poetry and prose: professional mastery of musical composition and discipline of thought were successfully combined with innate impressionability and receptivity.

During his university years, Pasternak formed his own views and beliefs, which helped him to endure the years of war and hardship in the future. “Losing in life is more necessary than gaining,” he wrote, “the grain will not sprout unless it dies.

In the spring of 1913, Pasternak brilliantly graduated from the university. At the same time, the publishing house "Lyrika" created by several young people published an almanac on a joint basis, in which five of his poems were printed. During this summer he wrote his first independent book, and by the new year 1914 it appeared in the same edition under the title "Twin in the Clouds." By the end of 1916, Pasternak's second book of poems, Over the Barriers, was published.

In the summer of 1917, the book of lyrics "My Sister - Life" put Pasternak into the ranks of the first literary names of his time. The general creative upsurge of 1917-1918 made it possible to write in one breath the next book of poems "Themes and Variations", but this book, having approved the name of the poet, marked for him an inner spiritual decline, became an object of dissatisfaction with himself.

Poems dedicated to people whose fates were not indifferent to the poet (Bryusov, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Meyerhold), like some others written in the same decade, Pasternak combined with previously published ones and compiled the collection Over the Barriers. The final works of this time were the poems Spektorsky and Safeguards, in which Pasternak outlined his views on the inner content of art and its significance in the history of human society.

Pasternak's early poems are complex in form, densely saturated with metaphors. But already in them one feels a huge freshness of perception, sincerity and depth, the primordial pure colors of nature glow, the voices of rains and snowstorms sound. Over the years, Pasternak freed himself from the excessive subjectivity of his images and associations. Remaining philosophically deep and intense as before, his verse is gaining more and more transparency, classical clarity. However, Pasternak's social isolation, his intellectual isolation from the world of social storms, to a large extent, fettered the poet's strength. Nevertheless, Pasternak took the place in Russian poetry of a significant and original lyricist, a wonderful singer of Russian nature. His rhythms, images and metaphors influenced the work of many Soviet poets.

Pasternak is an outstanding master of translation. He translated works of Georgian poets, Shakespeare's tragedies, Goethe's Faust.

Many of Pasternak's poems are devoted to nature. The poet is not indifferent to the expanses of the earth, to springs and winters, to the sun, to snow, to rain. Perhaps the main theme of all his work is reverence for the miracle of life, a feeling of gratitude for it. For almost a quarter of a century he lived in the village of Peredelkino near Moscow. The poet sang of his winters and snowfalls, spring streams and early trains. Here he is sensitively listening to the coming spring in the poem "Everything came true."

I enter the forest. And I'm not in a hurry.

The crust settles in layers.

Like a bird, an echo will answer me,

The whole world will give me the way.

Most often it is, as in the poem "Pines" - a landscape-reflection. Thinking about time, about truth, about life and death, about the nature of art, about the mystery of its birth. About the miracle of human existence. About the female share, about love. About faith in life, in the future. And how much light, heartfelt passion for the Motherland, for modest people of labor is in these verses! Colloquial vernacular, so-called prosaisms, the most ordinary, everyday landscape, haystacks and arable land, students and locksmiths in a crowded morning Peredelkino train - all this is inspired by a sincere artist.

The name of Boris Pasternak - a peculiar and inimitable Russian lyricist - is inscribed in the history of literature forever. People will always need his soulful, wonderful and full of life poetry, which tells not only about the common good, but, above all, calls to do good to individual people, no matter how small it may be.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960) - Honored Russian poet and writer, whose works were awarded the honorary title of "Russian and foreign literary fund". His famous novel Doctor Zhivago made its author a Nobel laureate, and his translations are still in great demand among readers. The life and work of this man is the pride of all our compatriots.

Boris Pasternak was born on January 29, 1890 in Moscow. We mention that, in addition to Boris, there were 3 more children in the family.

The Pasternak family moved to Moscow from Odessa, which, by the way, did not hit hard on the old acquaintances of creative parents. My father was an artist whose paintings were bought by the Tretyakov Gallery. It is worth saying that Leo Tolstoy, Mr. Rachmaninov and, of course, the family of the composer Scriabin were frequent guests in Pasternak's house - it is from this acquaintance that the literary path of the future writer begins.

Youth and education

Pasternak dreamed of becoming a great musician, so he begins to take lessons from Scriabin. In 1901, Boris entered the second grade of the gymnasium, while simultaneously studying at the Conservatory. In 1909, Pasternak graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal and entered the Faculty of History and Philology at Moscow State University (it was then that Pasternak wrote his first poems), and already in 1912 he entered Margburg University in Germany, where he left with his mother.

He decides to give up philosophy and dedicate himself to literature, referring to the complete lack of an ear for music. As a result, his musical career ended.

Creative way: collections, mugs, success story

The first poems fall on the period 1910-1912, it was then that his lyrical hero was inspired by high feelings. The lines are shrouded in love, but not everything in the poet's personal life was so "smooth". He transfers the impressions of the break with his beloved in Venice into his poems. It was then that he began to be interested in such trends in literature as futurism and symbolism. He understands that in order to expand his path, he needs new acquaintances: he joins the Moscow circle "Lyric".

"Twin in the Clouds" (1914) - the first collection of poems by Pasternak, followed by "Over the Barriers" (1916). However, it was the book My Sister (1922) that made him famous; after its release, he became engaged to Evgenia Lurie.

The books “Themes and Variations”, “Lieutenant Schmidt”, “The Nine Hundred and Fifth Year” were published next - this was an echo of Pasternak’s acquaintance with Mayakovsky and his entry into the literary association “Lef” in 1920-1927. Boris Pasternak is beginning to be deservedly considered the best Soviet poet, but because of his friendship with Akhmatova and Mandelstam, he, just like them, falls under the "sharp Soviet eye."

In 1931, Pasternak left for Georgia, where he wrote poems included in the Waves cycle; in the same year he began to translate foreign books, including the literature of Goethe and other famous foreign writers. Immediately after the Great Patriotic War, Pasternak wrote the famous novel Doctor Zhivago, which became the main work in his work. In 1955 Doctor Zhivago was finished after 10 long years.

Personal life

In personal relationships, the poet had a real confusion. Even in his youth, he gave his heart to the artist Evgenia Lurie, she also gave birth to his first child. However, the woman was distinguished by a strong and independent disposition, often jealous of her husband for numerous acquaintances. The bone of contention was the correspondence from Marina Tsvetaeva. The couple divorced.

Then a long relationship began with Zinaida Neuhaus, a calm and balanced woman who forgave her husband a lot. It was she who gave the creator the serene atmosphere of his native hearth. However, soon the editor of Novy Mir, Olga Ivinskaya, appears in his life. She lives next door and soon becomes the author's muse. He actually lives in two families, and both women pretend that nothing is happening.

For Olga, this relationship became fatal: she gets 5 years in the camps for meeting the disgraced poet. Pasternak feels guilty and helps her family in every possible way.

Bullying and death

The authorities tried in every possible way to expel Pasternak from the country for "false coverage of facts" and "wrong worldview." He was expelled from the Writers' Union. And this played a role: the writer refused the award and expressed his bitterness in the poem "Nobel Prize".

In 1952, he survived a heart attack, and the following years passed under the yoke of the disease. In 1960, Boris Pasternak died.