Pasternak: A Collection of Critical Essays

206 Pages·1978·7.929 MB·English

by  Victor Erlich

TWENTIETH CENTURY VIEWS
The aim of this series is to present the best in con­
temporary critical opinion on major authors, pro­
viding a twentieth century perspective on their
changing status in an era of profound revaluation.
Maynard Mack, Series Editor
Yale University

PASTERNAK

PASTERNAK
A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS
Edited by
Victor Erlich
Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Pasternak.
(Twentieth century views) (A Spectrum Book).
Bibliography: p.
1. Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890-1960.
— Criticism and interpretation —Addresses, essays,
lectures. I. Erlich, Victor (date).
PG3476.P27Z747 891.7’1’42 77-21223
ISBN 0-13-652834-1
ISBN 0-13-652826-0 pbk.
©1978 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. A SPECTRUM BOOK. All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permis­
sion in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
10 987654321
Prentice-Hall International, Inc. (London)
Prentice-Hall of Australia Pty. Limited (Sydney)
Prentice-Hall of Canada, Ltd. (Toronto)
Prentice-Hall of India Private Limited (New Delhi)
Prentice-Hall of Japan, Inc. (Tokyo)
Prentice-Hall of Southeast Asia Pte. Ltd. (Singapore)
Whitehall Books Limited (Wellington, New Zealand)
Acknowledgments
Quotations from Modern Russian Poetry by Vladimir Markov and Mer­
rill Spacks are used by kind permission of The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc. and
MacGibbon and K,ee Limited/ Granada Publishing Limited. Copyright©
1966, 1967 by MacGibbon and Kee Limited.
Quotations from In the Interlude: Poems 1945-1960 by Boris Pasternak,
translated by Henry Kamen, are used by kind permission of A. D. Peters
& Co., Ltd.
Quotations from The Poetry of Boris Pasternak, translated by George
Reavey, are used by kind permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. © 1959 G. P.
Putnam’s Sons.
The quotation from “Hamlet” by Boris Pasternak from The Penguin
Book of Russian Verse, edited and translated by Dimitri Obolensky (1965),
pp. 335-36, is used by kind permission of Penguin Books Ltd. Copyright ©
Dimitri Obolensky, 1962, 1965.
Quotations from Boris Pasternak, Poems, 2nd ed., and for scattered
quotes of poetry from “The Poems of Doctor Zhivago,” by Dimitri Obolen­
sky, are used by kind permission of the Estate of Eugene M. Kayden. Mr.
Kayden translated these works.
Quotations from Dale L. Plank, Pasternak’s Lyric are used by kind per­
mission of Mouton Publishers, The Hague.
Quotations from the Pantheon Books version of Doctor Zhivago, by Boris
Pasternak, translated by Max Hayward and Manya Harari, are used by kind
permission of the publisher. Copyright © 1958 by Pantheon Books, Inc.
Pantheon is a division of Random House, Inc.
Quotations from Boris Pasternak, Poems 1955-1959, translated by Michael
Harari, are used by kind permission of Collins Publishers.
Quotations from the Russian edition of Boris Pasternak, Doktor Zhivago
(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1958) are used by kind
permission of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milan. Copyright © Giangiacomo
Feltrinelli 1961.
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Boris Pasternak’s “Marburg,” translated by Yakov Hornstein, is used by
kind permission of Mr. Hornstein.
The quotation from “If Only When I Made My Debut,” translated by
Babette Deutsch and Maurice Bowra, from Boris Pasternak’s Safe Conduct
is reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Copyright 1949 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Contents
Introduction: Categories of Passion
by Victor Erlich 1
Language and Reality in the Early Pasternak
by Yury Lotman 21
Words and Things in Pasternak
by Yury Tynyanov 32
The Energy of Pasternak
by Isaiah Berlin 39
The Metonymous Hero or the Beginnings of Pasternak the Novelist
by Michel Aucouturier 43
Life as Ecstasy and Sacrifice: Two Poems by Boris Pasternak
by Nils Ake Nilsson 51
Pasternak’s Poetry
by A ndrey Sinyavsky 68
Boris Pasternak
by Fyodor Stepun HO
Doctor Zhivago: As from a Lost Culture
by Stuart Hampshire 126
A Testimony and a Challenge: Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago
by Victor Erlich 131
Doctor Zhivago: Liebestod of the Russian Intelligentsia
by Robert Louis Jackson 137
The Poems of Doctor Zhivago
by Dimitri Obolensky 151
Pasternak’s Last Poetry
by A ngela Livingstone 166
The End of the Journey
by Vladimir Weidle
ix