Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography - Essay Example

In the writings of these two poets, readers can see a true reflection of the “shifting biographical, cultural, historical, and sociopolitical circumstances” (Hasty, 591) within which they developed their relationship. Ciepiela based his book on numerous authentic materials that have given the picture of how the two poets immensely influenced each other’s creativity along with the complexities in their relationship. Ciepiela has explored the way gender has been illustrated by the poets in their writing which provides a new perspective in the manner that the poets can be understood like their traditions and cultural backgrounds.

      One work of Boris Pasternak that was published in the year 1929 was The Tale. This prose is considered as one of the most complex short proses of Pasternak and hence has not been much studied by scholarly articles. While in the views of the scholar A. Livingstone the work is considered as “unfinished, untidy and confusing”, in the views of M. Aucouturier it is one of the most cleverly written works of Pasternak. However, the complicated structure of the prose is emphasized when it is studied in the backdrop of its literature and history. It was initially conceived under the title Revolution and the story was set in the period between the pre-war summer of 1914 and before the beginning of 1917. The Tale is written in the style of “triple-frame narrative” in which there are two inner tales that act as a counterpoint to the outer story. In the innermost tale, the story revolves around a young man who sacrifices all comforts of life as a protest against all injustices in the world. Such careless sacrificial gesture of the protagonist “anticipates the compromised idealism of the coming era” (Swift, 114). In this way, Pasternak has made the novel a reflection of the Russian revolution.

      One of the most popular works of Boris Pasternak outside Russia is Doctor Zhivago which was published in the year 1957. The story is based on the titular character of Yuri Zhivago who is both physician and poet, and it is set in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and World War I. In this novel, Pasternak has depicted women as beings familiar with God and therefore women have a divine role to play in this world. Also, Yuri’s equality with God is reflected in the comparison made between his reactions to his adopted mother’s death and his biological mother’s death that occurred long ago. After the death of both mothers, Yuri gets liberated from all kinds of fears about life and death. Through this novel, Pasternak has indicated that people, even after death, live on through their works (Sendelbach, 140). Many events in Doctor Zhivago strangely coincided with the events in Pasternak’s own life like the death of Yuri happened due to a heart attack in August 1929 when he was in a streetcar. In a similar manner, Pasternak’s younger son Leonid died due to a heart attack on 11 October 1976. Leonid was also in a car at the time of his death (Barnes, 2).