Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternakwas a Soviet and Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russian, Pasternak's first book of poems, My Sister, Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderon and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 February 1890
CountryRussian Federation
art philosophy philosophical
I don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish." - Lara, from Doctor Zhivago
art rays moments
Art is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.
art two revelations
Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John.
art moving reading
A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways-by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov's crime.
art keys joy
Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.
artist discovery overwhelmed
The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.
death art creating-life
He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.
spiritual art sacrifice
Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
art people ordinary
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
boldness disease draws fall gift good life root
You fall into my arms. / You are the good gift of destruction's path, / When life sickens more than disease / And boldness is the root of beauty- / Which draws us together.
afterwards died forgotten list number vanished
One day Lara went out and did not come back.... She died or vanished somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list which was afterwards mislaid.
angel cast corner draft fever white wings
A corner draft fluttered the flame, and the white fever of temptation, upswept its angel wings that cast , a cruciform shadow.
abstain awarded given ill meet prize refusal view voluntary
In view of the meaning given to this honor in the community to which I belong, I should abstain from the undeserved prize that has been awarded to me. Do not meet my voluntary refusal with ill will.
believe crushed powers spirit step
Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time, Be crushed by the spirit of light.