Understanding Boris Pasternak

the long version

With this introduction to the life and work of Boris Pasternak, Larissa Rudova corrects the narrow Western view of the Russian writer who is known outside his homeland almost exclusively for his novel, Doctor Zhivago. Though the epic won Pasternak the Nobel Prize in 1958 and made him a cold war celebrity, Rudova contends that it alone does not reflect the breadth of Pasternak's literary achievements. She presents a more balanced view of the writer by analyzing, in addition to his famous novel, the poetry that defined his long career and established him as one of Russia's greatest twentieth-century writers. Rudova examines the influence of Russia's cultural environment on the early phases of Pasternak's writing, and she explores his later distance from his country's cultural life. She also speculates on a mystery that continues to puzzle scholars of twentieth-century Russian literature - how Pasternak survived the political and cultural purges of the Stalin era and managed to publish virtually uninterrupted throughout his career. In addition to his one novel and many poems, Rudova underscores the range of Pasternak's literary interests with her analysis of his short stories, critical essays, translations, and two autobiographies. She comments on the stylistic complexity of his writing and discusses in detail the thematics, structure, and imagery that distinguish his work.