Boris Pasternak: The Poet and His Politics

From Library Journal
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), who won the 1958 Nobel Prize for Dr. Zhivago, has a reputation for being something of a "holy fool," a descendant of the mad Russian wanderers who spoke prophetic truth to tsars when others were silenced. Fleishman, a long-time Pasternak scholar, has written a dense intellectual biography of this "holy fool" that assumes prior knowledge of Russian history and the basic facts of Pasternak's life and career from childhood in a cultured Jewish family and formation as a poet in the heady atmosphere of Russian modernism through revolution, Stalinist terror, and postwar repression. For the reader with this background, Fleishman creates a coherent portrait of Pasternak as a man of moral courage and political sensitivity who consciously accepted the risks of choosing to speak his truth in the face of tyranny.- Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.


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Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), who won the 1958 Nobel Prize for Dr. Zhivago, has a reputation for being something of a ``holy fool,'' a descendant of the mad Russian wanderers who spoke prophetic truth to tsars when others were silenced. Fleishman, a long-time Pasternak scholar, has written a dense intellectual biography of this ``holy fool'' that assumes prior knowledge of Russian history and the basic facts of Pasternak's life and career from childhood in a cultured Jewish family and formation as a poet in the heady atmosphere of Russian modernism through revolution, Stalinist terror, and postwar repression. For the reader with this background, Fleishman creates a coherent portrait of Pasternak as a man of moral courage and political sensitivity who consciously accepted the risks of choosing to speak his truth in the face of tyranny.-- Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.


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