Details
PASTERNAK, Boris Leonidovich (1890-1960). Autograph letter signed, in English, to Mrs Olson, [n.p.], 25 February 1960, 1 1/2 pages, 4to, in purple ink; with envelope, addressed in Swedish, bearing 3 stamps and postmarks.
From the author of Doctor Zhivago. Written to a new acquaintance a month before his death, Pasternak's letter comprises a comparison of his situation with that of Salvatore Quasimodo, who won the nobel prize for literature in the year following Pasternak (1959). He feels Mrs Olsson has an idealistic picture of him; Quasimodo 'is a subject of a state with quite other laws and orders. He is free to treat with whom he pleases in the whole world, interfere, make agreements'. In contrast, for Pasternak, who won the Nobel Prize in 1958 but declined to accept it (fearing that if he travelled to Stockholm to receive it he would be stripped of his Soviet citizenship) 'all those things are shut to me and declared as being lawless'. Pasternak has not finished writing his play, but asks Mrs Olsson to deal with his Italian publishers should it pass censureship and be published abroad. Pasternak's faltering command of English results in a rather appealing style 'the threads of all these questions and affairs will run together to my Italian publisher Feltrinelli...'.
From the author of Doctor Zhivago. Written to a new acquaintance a month before his death, Pasternak's letter comprises a comparison of his situation with that of Salvatore Quasimodo, who won the nobel prize for literature in the year following Pasternak (1959). He feels Mrs Olsson has an idealistic picture of him; Quasimodo 'is a subject of a state with quite other laws and orders. He is free to treat with whom he pleases in the whole world, interfere, make agreements'. In contrast, for Pasternak, who won the Nobel Prize in 1958 but declined to accept it (fearing that if he travelled to Stockholm to receive it he would be stripped of his Soviet citizenship) 'all those things are shut to me and declared as being lawless'. Pasternak has not finished writing his play, but asks Mrs Olsson to deal with his Italian publishers should it pass censureship and be published abroad. Pasternak's faltering command of English results in a rather appealing style 'the threads of all these questions and affairs will run together to my Italian publisher Feltrinelli...'.
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