Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born in Moscow, and was the son of talented artists. His father a painter and illustrator of Tolstoy's works, his mother a well-known concert pianist. Pasternak's education began in a German Gymnasium in Moscow and was continued at the University of Moscow. Under the influence of the composer Scriabin, Pasternak took up the study of musical composition for six years from 1904 to 1910. By 1912 he had renounced music as his calling in life and went to the University of Marburg, Germany, to study philosophy. After four months there and a trip to Italy, he returned to Russia and decided to dedicate himself to literature.

( In courtesy of nobelprize)

Pasternak's first books of verse went unnoticed. With //Sestra moya zhizn// and //Temy i variatsii,// Pasternak first gained a place as a leading poet among his Russian contemporaries. In 1924 he published //Vysokaya bolezn//, which portrayed the 1905 revolt as he saw it, and //Detstvo Lyuvers//, a lyrical and psychological depiction of a young girl on the threshold of womanhood. A collection of four short stories was published the following year under the title //Vozdushnye puti// (Aerial Ways). In 1935 he published translations of some Georgian poets and subsequently translated the major dramas of Shakespeare, several of the works of Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, and Ben Jonson, and poems by Petöfi, Verlaine, Swinburne, Shelley, and others. //Na rannikh poyezdakh//, a collection of poems written since 1936, was published in 1943 and enlarged and reissued in 1945 as //Zemnye prostory//. In 1957 //Doktor Zhivago//, Pasternak's only novel - except for the earlier "novel in verse", //Spektorsky// - first appeared in an Italian translation and has been acclaimed by some critics as a successful attempt at combining lyrical-descriptive and epic-dramatic styles. An autobiographical sketch,//Biografichesky ocherk// ), was published in 1959, first in Italian, and subsequently in English. Pasternak lived in Peredelkino, near Moscow, until his death in 1960. (In courtesy of earthightbooks)

Bibliogaphy

"Masterpiece Theatre | Doctor Zhivago | Essays Interviews | Boris Pasternak." //PBS: Public Broadcasting Service//. Web. 27 May 2011. . I used this source for the information on his life. This website informed me on his life and how his parents were artists.

"Boris Pasternak - Biography." //Nobelprize.org//. Web. 27 May 2011. . This website helped give me information on his accomplishments. It talked about all the books he wrote.