M. Tsvetaeva and B. Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born on 29 January 1890 in Moscow into a creative, educated family: his mother was a pianist, his father an artist and member of the Academy of Arts. Lev Tolstoy, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Serov and Vrubel visited their house. He studied at a classical gymnasium, then entered the history-philology faculty of Moscow University and also studied in the composition department of the conservatory. Growing up among musicians and painters shows in his poems: they are full of sound, colour and pictures of nature. Pasternak said that poetry lies underfoot in the grass, and you must bend to see it. His first poems were printed in 1913, and he soon became one of the most popular poets. Speaking German, English and French perfectly, he translated Goethe, Shakespeare and Shelley. After the war he wrote the novel «Доктор Живаго»; he was awarded the Nobel Prize for it, but harshly criticised in the Soviet press he was forced to refuse the prize. The novel was published in his homeland only in 1988. In «Во всём мне хочется дойти до самой сути» (1956) the poet wants to reach the essence and the roots of everything: work, the search for a way, bygone days. If he could, he would write eight lines about the nature of passion and reveal its law. He would lay out his poems like a garden: lime trees would bloom in them, there would be the breath of roses and mint, meadow, sedge, haymaking, thunderclaps. As Chopin put the living wonder of estates, parks, groves and graves into his études, the poet wants to do likewise. In the last lines the triumph reached is like the taut string of a bow: it is both play and torment.