Boris Pasternak Research Articles

Образ Маркела Щапова в романе Б.Л. Пастернака «Доктор Живаго»

Образ Маркела Щапова в романе Б.Л. Пастернака «Доктор Живаго»

Приемы словесной живописи Юрия Анненкова (на примере литературного портрета «Борис Пастернак»)

The article analyzes the ways of creating a verbal portrait in the memoirs of Yu. Annenkov’s „Boris Pasternak” with the substantiation of genre and style features of the considered verbal image which allows to take a fresh look at the already textbook image of the writer. Capturing the image of the poet and prose writer B. Pasternak, the painter creates both a self-portrait and the portrait of the era. Thus, Yuri Annenkov’s literary heritage turns out to be the second portrait gallery, for which the artist once again paints his relatives and dear people, who remained on his canvases. The purpose of this work is an attempt to show the features of verbal image in Yuri Annenkov’s book of memoirs “Diary of my meetings”, “Cycle of tragedies” on the example of the essay “Boris Pasternak”, to enrich the image of the writer through the prism of perception of his contemporary artist. This study is based on comparative historical and functional methods and is based on the works of contemporary literary scholars engaged in the theory and history of prose portrait.

«Оживающие картины» в «Детстве Люверс» Б. Пастернака

We consider the features of the images’ construction in the story “The Adolescence of Luvers” by Boris Pasternak. In this regard, we turn to the analysis of individual episodes in the story, which, in our opinion, become key for revealing the theme of the main character’s growing up. The narrative itself in the poet’s prose texts is constructed in such a way that all its components are endowed with special internal dynamics, owing to which the images lose their outlines, transform, receive additional, not always decipherable meanings. We dwell on three points in detail: the collision of Zhenya Luvers with Motovilikha – the moment of the end of her infancy – and the two meetings of the heroine with Tsvetkov, an “stranger” whose figure influences Zhenya’s consciousness, her transition to growing up. In the episodes under consideration, there is a hint of an “ecphrastic mark”: the images and objects in the story seem to add up to a kind of description of the picture, although there are no direct references to pictorial or sculptural images in the story. We analyze how the similarities of the ecphrase appear in Pasternak’s text and how they transform the space of the story. The pictures appearing in the story are often enclosed in a kind of frame (visual or symbolic, for example, acoustical), they freeze for a moment, but then come back into motion. The objects that appear in these descriptions and the boundaries between them become unsteady, everything in the space of the text oscillates between static and dynamic. We dwell in detail on the analysis of images and motives that accompany the turning points for the heroine of the transition from infancy to childhood, and then to adulthood, and we come to the conclusion that they are filled with pictorial allusions, all objects are in a complex relationship: objects lose their outlines and endow internal dynamics – paintings “come to life”. Thus, we can speak of an “ecphrasis mark” that supports the internal dynamics of the text of the story “The Adolescence of Luvers”, and “reviving pictures” become an important element of the artistic world of the story by Boris Pasternak.

Письма Ивара Иваска Б. Л. Пастернаку [Letters of Ivar Ivask to Boris Pasternak

This is a prefaced publication of three drafts of the letters that an American critic, a university professor, and a multilingual poet Ivar Ivask sent to the author of “Doctor Zhivago” during the last year of Pasternak’s life (1959—1960). While Pasternak’s answers to Ivask were first published half a century ago in the addressee’s translation into English, the letters of Ivask, who initiated the correspondence, are published for the first time. All three letters are reproduced both in the original German, and in the Russian translation by Fedor Poljakov. KEYWORDS: Weltliteratur , Ivar Ivask (1927—1992), Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), Correspondence, History of Literature.

Метасюжетные функции орфического кода в нарративах постсимволизма

The paper deals with the Orphic code of Russian Post-Symbolist prose, discussing the meta-poetical context of the immortal head motif and the plot situations of “a poet’s sacrifice” or “a poet in the underworld.” The Orphic code is viewed as correlating with an author’s reflec-tion of the interplay between the epic and the poetical in a work of prose. In Konstantin Vaginov’s novel The Goat Song, Orphic motifs punctuate the clash between the two narrative instances – the protagonist (a poet) and the narrator. Orpheus, finding himself in the new So-viet world, loses his abilities to change the world with his art, to descend into the underworld, and to charm its goddess. The motif of a failed rescue of Eurydice (i.e., the art) becomes prominent. In Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, with the narrator and the lyrical persona having a dialogical relationship, the “Orphic code” provides an essential layer of the novel’s “intertextual palimpsest” (the Silver Age references) and becomes a way of reflecting on the unity of the epic and the lyrical. In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, the metaphor of the underworld becomes dominant, and the Orphic code serves as s a minus-priem, a semantic field that needs to be disavowed. A conclusion is made that the Orphic meta-plot typically in-volves a clash between the perspectives of an artist protagonist and a narrator, reflected both in the diegetic world (the “dying poet” motif) and in the narrative structure (the hybrid nature of the voices of both narrator and the protagonist).

THE THEME OF BESIEGED LENINGRAD IN THE LETTERS OF OLGA FREINDENBERG TO BORIS PASTERNAK IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 1940S

The theme of besieged Leningrad contained in the letters of scholar-philologist, culture scientist Olga Freindenberg to her cousin Boris Pasternak is analysed in the paper. Since the correspondence was published relatively recently, its introduction to scientifi c circulation, determination of the subject and intentions of the correspondents seem to be important and topical. The article is intended for specialists-philologists, for all those interested in epistolary heritage of the 20th century. The correspondence between Boris Pasternak and Olga Freindenberg referring to the period of the siege is represented by the author as a specifi c type of combined discourse which unite social and communicative, everyday, signifi cant and symbolic functions. It is a part of the single artistic and semantic canvas, the whole creative heritage of the cousins, the whole of their correspondence which lasted for more than half a century and was based on «everlasting» themes like creative work, meaning of existence, love, faith, humanism. The image of besieged Leningrad is represented in the letters as a starting point for correspondents’ philosophic considerations about such categories as existence, time and space, about meaning of existence. At the same time, the letters demonstrate their authors’ artistic talent and virtuous possession of the word, the ability to say important between the lines. The stylistics of Olga Freidenberg’s epistolary heritage, when syntax, along with lexical fi gurative, gives rise to vivid, tragic paintings of what is described, is analysed in the work.

Nótaí na nEagarthóirí: Editor’s Notes

Nótaí na nEagarthóirí: Editor’s Notes David Gardiner Bob Dylan, Minnesota’s sometime favorite son, wrote “Blind Willie McTell” in 1983. Had he put this song on Infidels, music as we know it may have packed itself up, handed over the award, and stopped. Given the rabid rights management of the Dylan estate, I cannot quote a single full line from the song for fear of New Hibernia Review being sued to two inches less than its life. Still, it seems we have all been staring out windows of our own St. James Hotels. When Dylan wrote that song in Red Wing, Minnesota, he reflected on isolation, a condemned land, racism, the presence or absence of God, and (toward which those all lead) the blues. Evident in the writings we have gathered from all over the globe in recent months, those same themes provide a common bass note. This, our summer issue, seems to be the issue for the “summer that wasn’t.” In that vein, Boris Pasternak’s The Last Summer provides a melancholy, though not the same sort of isolation that some of us have felt, especially in some places in the United States. He looks backward, like Stefan Zweig, to earlier European times—a myth of romance and class harmony and love. We know that those times were no “summer of love,” but at the moment it seems that perhaps those gods have been slain. Hopefully not. And hopefully you’ll indulge us as we introduce the present volume. Another European author well attuned to Pasternak and Zweig, Gaston Bachelard wrote in The Poetics of Space (1958), his groundbreaking study of our interiors and how we encounter them, “our house is the corner of our world.” He continued: “the house shelters the daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” Obviously, Bachelard did not have twenty-four-hour news networks. Snide comments aside, the house has provided these things for all of us, sometimes lately in spite of ourselves. Since the beginning of this year, we have often heard that “we are all in this together.” That is only partly true. We are all individuals. Our physical positions are amazingly similar. We have all, at some point, been staring out windows. Rather than “we are all in this together,” “we are all alone together” might be more appropriate. [End Page 5] Not only does that phrasing mirror the human condition of radical selfness—we are, after all, the center of every experience that we have—but it unites us in a very different way. New Hibernia Review ’s contributors come from all over the world. All over the world each one of us, at one point or another, has stared out the window at our environs. The view is different from each place, but each of us stands in the same position. About the cover piece, Harry Clarke’s frontispiece for Origin of John Jameson Whiskey: Containing Some Interesting Observations Thereon Together with the Causes of Its Present Scarcity (1924), Angela Griffith has written: “a single figure stands defiantly on deck, neck scarf flying in the wind, resolved to meet journey’s end. The monumentality of the scene is belied by the delicacy of its rendering.” Beneath the ship, the viewer will note a surprisingly benevolent force of nature. Defiance, delicacy, and providence seem to be combined in our summer issue, as we hope they are in all of our readers’ lives. Vincent van Gogh, well acquainted with this triumvirate, told us long ago that “it is indeed worthwhile to devote one’s life to the task of expressing the poetry.” We hope that you experience the poetry of dance, cinema, literature, spirituality, history, and music that has been gathered in this issue. We are again pleased to offer a wide mixture of works in Irish studies. First is the appropriately titled “A Door Opening.” We then dance in Australia, watch The Informer through many lenses, dive into the gothic, enjoy an important new series of poems, explore charity during a forgotten famine, make sense of the Pogues (which is quite a task), and, referring back to Dylan, focus...

Andrić and Pasternak: Two Novels about Creativity (the problems of winter's semantics)

313Андрич и Пастернак: два романа о творчестве...Jasmina VojvodićUniversity of Zagreb (Zagreb, Croatia)Andrić and Pasternak: Two Novels about Creativity (the problems of winter's semantics)This paper compares the poetics of two novels: The Bridge on the Drinaby Ivo Andrić and Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Both historical novels are “atypical” (chronicle / vita sacrum), and relate to time (linear time / overcoming of linear time; long period of time / moment) and space (Vishegrad / “throughout Russia”; statics / movement) diff erently. Both novels, however, narrate about an indestructible artistic creation that transcends all ideas of time, and about a work of art, made of stone (the bridge) or of language (poetry), which surpasses the present and creates a sense of being beyond time and in eternity. While winter and the cold in Andrić’s novel mark the end of the work on the bridge, in Pasternak’s novel winter presents a time of inspired creativity. The pa-per off ers an analysis of motifs of winter and the cold not only through climatological and geographical prisms, but also from the perspective of the game and the relationship between the warmth on the inside and the cold on the outside, through the prism of folklore and sacral elements.

ПО ПРОЧТЕНИИ «ГАМЛЕТА»: ТРИ ВЗГЛЯДА НА ШЕДЕВР У. ШЕКСПИРА

This article is devoted to modern interpretations of W. Shakespeare's famous play in Russian music at the turn of the XXth — XXIst centuries on the example of R. Shchedrin's "Hamlet Ballad" — an instrumental work for the cello ensemble (2004), operas of the same name by S. Slonimsky (1991) and V. Kobekin (2006). Little-known pages from the history of creation and stage fate of "Hamlet Ballad" by R. Shchedrin are opened. The main emphasis in the publication is placed on the work of Vladimir Kobekin as the most radically read domestic version of the classic tragedy of the English playwright. The author defines the historical preconditions and reasons explaining the genre transformation of the opera into a comedy. Moreover, the author considers the distinctive features of Arkady Zastyrets's play, on which V. Kobekin relies in his libretto, from the "classical" Russian translation by Boris Pasternak, which is the basis of the opera by S. Slonimsky. The facts of the creative biography of contemporary Russian playwright and translator Arkady Zastyrets (1959–2019) are more fully revealed. The article also touches upon the musical dramaturgy of V. Kobekin's opera "Hamlet".

Семантика вымышленного черновика: еще раз о стихотворении Б. Л. Пастернака «Сказка»

The article deals with the fictional creative story of Boris Pasternak’s poem “The Fairy Tale” (“Skazka”), described in the novel “Doctor Zhivago”. It is fundamentally different from the real story: if Pasternak changed the plot and partly the genre of “The Fairy Tale”, as evidenced by his letter to Nina Tabidze, Yuri Zhivago in the novel changes the poetic meter twice – and at the same time comprehends its semantics. The differences between the real and the “novelistic” creative history focus on the semantic halo both of trochaic trimeter – the meter of “The Fairy Tale”, and of trochaic pentameter and trochaic tetrameter, used at starting of the first and intermediate edition. The article shows how the first edition, written in pentameter (trochaic or iambic), connects “The Fairy Tale” with “Hamlet” and “The Gethsemane Garden”. The assumption of a genetic link between the three texts and a few significant plot coincidences enables to find invariant embodiments of one lyrical plot in different genres in them. The triangle: “Hamlet” – “The Fairy Tale” – “The Gethsemane Garden” built within the cycle varies the most important topic of the cycle and the novel – the strategy of individual, personal confrontation with “the twilight of night” and “the years of timelessness”. The study of the second stage of the fictional story “The Fairy Tale” clarifies a number of Pushkin’s contexts, not only in the “Poems of Yuri Zhivago”, but also in the novel as a whole. The study of semantic halos arising at different stages of Zhivago’s work on “The Fairy Tale” allows including it in the context of Russian lyrics.

Россия как «Север»: проблемы цивилизационной идентичности в философии Бориса Пастернака (к 130-летию со дня рождения)

В статье исследуется вопрос о генезисе и эволюции культурно-цивилизационной са­моидентификации крупнейшего русского поэта XX в. Бориса Леонидовича Пастерна­ка (1890‒1960). На основе анализа многочисленных материалов автор доказывает, что Борис Пастернак сформировался как «русский северянин», продолжив плодотворную линию в русской культурной традиции, идущую от екатерининской эпохи (Держа­вин) – через золотой век русской культуры (Вяземский – Пушкин – Тургенев) – к рус­ской пореволюционной литературе XX в. О «северянстве» Пастернака многократно свидетельствует он сам в своих автобиографических произведениях «Охранная гра­мота» и «Люди и положения». «Зимняя тема» доминирует в поэзии и прозе Пастернака, его философии творчества, посвященной его знаменитым современникам – Льву Толстому, Владимиру Маяковскому, Марине Цветаевой.

«Одиночество непостижимого содержания»: С.П. Бобров о Б.Л. Пастернаке

This is a publication of letters from Sergey Bobrov (1889–1971) to Eugeny and Elena Pasternak. The letters were written in the mid-1960s, shortly after the death of Boris Pasternak. They reflect Bobrov’s attempts to parse his archive as well as his reaction to the book entitled Pasternak by a French Slavist Jacqueline de Proyart published in 1964 by Gallimard. Exposing what he calls the myths created by the researcher, in his memoirs he discusses the youth of Boris Pasternak, talks about the probability of his baptism, his first steps in the field of poetry, and moves on to the discussion of his relationship with the “Centrifuge” group and the symbolist circle in general. Bobrov’s letters partly repeat what one might find in his published correspondence with Pasternak’s sisters but partly present an original contribution to the 20th century history of Russian culture.

CULTURAL SPECIFICS OF FICTION TEXTS:

Authors have considered a special stage in the life and its reflection on the works of the world-famous Russian poet, novelist, and the Nobel Prize winner in literature Boris Pasternak in his three year evacuation period during the World War II in Chistopol – a small town on the Kama River. During that time Boris Pasternak was mostly translating. The study is focused on the cultural specifics of fiction texts, i.e. texts translated or created by B. Pasternak. Within the first two months staying in Chistopol the poet translated the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Shakespeare, and then the great cycle of poems by Juliusz Slowacki, poems and the tragedy ‘Mary Stuart’ written by Shiller. At the same time he implements a great idea he had planned long before – he translates ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. The study highlights cultural peculiarities of Pasternak’s translations and his own style reflected in fiction. The research states the ambiguous attitude of critics to Pasternak's translations. He was both considered as the brilliant translator and criticized for liberty, inadequacy and excessive individuality.

O translokacji nomina propria w dziele literackim (na przykładzie polskiсh tłumaczeń powieści Doktor Żywago Borisa Pasternaka)

This paper analyzes problems involved in the Polish translation of proper names contained in Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago. Empirical material was collected from two Polish translations published in book form: by Jerzy Stempowski (Paris: Instytut Literacki 1959) and by Ewa Rojewska-Olejarczuk (Warsaw: PIW 1990). The study aimed to analyze translatorial equivalents taking into account the following criteria: consistency with the named object, informativeness of the name, and retaining the cultural ambience. The following research methods were applied: descriptive, com-parative analysis as well as functional and stylistic analysis. The comparative analysis focused on the adequacy of the applied translation methods.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya – Grunja Friedrich – Christina Orletsova: transformation of the Soviet myth in the drama and in the novel of Boris Pasternak

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya – Grunja Friedrich – Christina Orletsova: transformation of the Soviet myth in the drama and in the novel of Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak wobec przemian cywilizacyjnych

Boris Pasternak made use of available means of transport and communication on a daily basis. This fact, however, was not reflected in his autobiographical writings, correspondence and his oeuvre. The sole exception was the railway, playing a significant role in the life of the author and his protagonists as well as in the contents and form of his works.

Myth-poetics of snow in the poetry of Boris Pasternak

Myth-poetics of snow in the poetry of Boris Pasternak

Tomas Veclova‘s Poem as a Site of Memory

The article employs Pierre Nora’s concept “a site of memory.” Using the term in the least strict sense, Nora’s metaphorical writing gives way to free interpretations. Tomas Venclova has realized that he lives in post-Auschwitz and post-Gulag time, and that totalitarianism has not yet been defeated. Therefore the poem must become a place to fight off the totalitarianism and a memory site of poet’s generation which disobeyed the system. The latest poetry by Venclova can be characterized by a diverse strategy of securing memory space. Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pasternak are important because of their poetics and resistance to the totalitarian system. The untold events that took place in the Soviet Union, names and destinies, as well as poet’s personal history are important in Venclova’s poetry. Author’s comments enhance a poem as a site of memory. Located at the bottom of the poem, they provide more detailed context.In comments, epigraphs, and dedications, Venclova names true or fictitious people of his generation. The article emphasizes that the history in Venclova’s poetry is illuminated by metaphysical questions.

Literary Intertextuality of Tomas Venclova‘s Poetry

Borrowing from poetry which belongs to another literary epoch or is written in another language is a constituent part of poetic action. According to Thomas Stearns Eliot, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” In semiotic terms, this can be described as transformation of another poetic language. Algirdas Julius Greimas said: “Meaning is nothing else but transposing one level of language into another level, or one language into another, a different one.” This paper aims to describe the traces of interaction of poets who wrote in different languages and to discuss the direction of transformation of poetic language.The most authoritative teacher of the young Tomas Venclova was Boris Pasternak. The early poems of the Lithuanian poet remind us of Pasternak’s poems from his collection Above the Barriers in their metric variations, rhyming schemes, and alliterative clusters. Two poems by Venclova dedicated to the memory of Pasternak were written in 1960 and 1961. What Venclova ‘steals’ from Osip Mandelstam is mostly semantic figures. In a number of poems, Venclova gets very close to the polyphonic language of this Russian poet. Joseph Brodsky is another constant dialogic partner of Venclova. Sometimes Venclova quotes or paraphrases Lithuanian poetic texts. His poems integrate Lithuanian history of the 20th century, and touch upon the themes of the Holocaust, partisan movement, and the victims of the occupational regime.The values paradigm in Venclova’s poetry is supported by Dante and Shakespeare, as well as a number of 19th and 20th century poets, such as Keats, Baudelaire, Rilke, Apolinnaire or Dylan Thomas. Cyprian Norwid’s “A Funeral Rhapsody in Memory of General Bem” and Czesław Miłosz’s “Ars Poetica?” are also used as poetic subtext. In his later period, Venclova wrote five poems on Biblical stories.Venclova’s connections with the Lithuanian poetic tradition can be defined as hyponymous relationship of belonging: the language and the historical memory. The poetic meanings created by Venclova are actualisations of subtexts of poetry written in many languages. Therefore we can consider Venclova to be a European poet who writes in the Lithuanian language.

The Illusion of Socialist Ideology and Russian Revolution: A Marxist- Deconstructive Reading of Doctor Zhivago

The present study investigates the representations of the socialist ideology and Russian revolution of 1917 in Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. The thrust of the study shows the alternative micro narratives, deconstructs socialist ideology and revolution as merely illusionist, foundationalist assumptions. These strands challenge and question the dominant status of socialist ideology and revolution as an absolute and an overarching point of reference. The existence of alternative micro narratives expose the myth of the socialist Russian revolution as an icon of brotherhood, freedom, democracy and the socioeconomic justice. The study also shows absence of transformation in the mere replacement of one kind of totality by another of its kind. It only keeps the binaries of dominance and submission intact. The study is undertaken in the light of an eclectic theoretical framework of Marxism and Deconstruction.