Pasternak Boris

Pasternak Boris (1890–1960), Russian writer. Nobel Prize winner (1958), born in Moscow. In 1909 he entered the Historic-Philological Faculty of Moscow University. From 1912 he continued his studies at the Department of Philosophy of Marburg University in Germany. His first visit to Georgia took place in 1931. Before that, in 1930, Paolo Iashvili met with B. Pasternak in Moscow and invited him to Georgia. P. Iashvili accommodated Pasternak at his house in Tbilisi. B. Pasternak was fascinated with Georgia, with its nature and its people; he was charmed by Tbilisi and by his newly acquired friends: Paolo Iashvili, Titsian Tabidze, Valerian Gaprindashvili, Georgy Leonidze, Simon Chikovani and others. He developed particularly friendly relations with Paolo Iashvili and Titsian Tabidze, whom, later on, ‘he used to remember with tears in his eyes’. As a result of his first visit to Georgia, he wrote the book The Second Birth (1932).

Upon his second visit to Georgia, B. Pasternak undertook translation of Georgian poetry. He translated the poems of Vazha-Pshavela, N. Baratashvili, A. Tsereteli, T. Tabidze, P. Iashvili, G. Leonidze, S. Chikovani, I. Abashidze and others. He devoted two poetic cycles to Georgia – The Artist and Traveler’s Notes (1936).

B. Pasternak was a frequent guest of Tbilisi. He had affable and creative contacts with Georgian writers. Till the end of his life he kept on intensive correspondence with them, which he initiated in 1930s. His last published book was Poems on Georgia, Georgian Poets (1958). 

In 1958 B. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for his book Doctor Zhivago, published abroad in 1957. His candidacy was offered by the previous Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus. Since the novel reflected the author’s negative attitude to the October Revolution, B. Pasternak was induced to decline the award. At the same time, he was expelled from the Writers’ Union. Only at the end of 1989, almost 30 years after his death, the title of the Nobel Prize Laureate and the medal were posthumously returned to him.

B. Pasternak died in Peredelkino (District of Moscow), Russia.