Details
PASTERNAK, Boris Leonidovich (1890-1960). Autograph notebook, n.d. [1943], recording impressions from the front, 5 leaves of notes (detached), the remainder blank, small 4to, card covers, upper cover inscribed. Provenance: Boris Pasternak -- Zinaida Nikolaevna Pasternak -- Zoya Afanas'evna Maslenikova (accompanying note) -- I.V. Zakharov
A NOTEBOOK RECORDING FLEETING IMPRESSIONS AND THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONT: 'I follow... I march with hunger... like 200 years ago in the time of Peter the Great'. Pasternak set-off for the Southern front at the invitation of Krasnaya Zvezda, leaving Moscow by army lorry on 27 August with a literary brigade that included the novelist Serafimovich, and the widow of the revolutionary Nikolai Ostrovskii. The detailed diaries and notes which Pasternak kept during this journey formed the basis of various war poems and articles, and his impressions of the war-shattered city of Oryol figured in chapter 16 of Doctor Zhivago. Pasternak remarked to Valerii Avdeyev that his trip to the front 'did not so much show me what I could not have expected or guessed, as it liberated me inwardly. Suddenly everything was near at hand, natural and accessible, much more in keeping with my usual thoughts than with generally accepted depictions' (quoted in Barnes, p.206). Reproduced in Zoya Maslenikova's Portret Borisa Pasternaka, Moscow 1995, pp.335-36 (a copy of which is included in the lot). Barnes, Boris Pasternak, pp.206-210. (2)
A NOTEBOOK RECORDING FLEETING IMPRESSIONS AND THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONT: 'I follow... I march with hunger... like 200 years ago in the time of Peter the Great'. Pasternak set-off for the Southern front at the invitation of Krasnaya Zvezda, leaving Moscow by army lorry on 27 August with a literary brigade that included the novelist Serafimovich, and the widow of the revolutionary Nikolai Ostrovskii. The detailed diaries and notes which Pasternak kept during this journey formed the basis of various war poems and articles, and his impressions of the war-shattered city of Oryol figured in chapter 16 of Doctor Zhivago. Pasternak remarked to Valerii Avdeyev that his trip to the front 'did not so much show me what I could not have expected or guessed, as it liberated me inwardly. Suddenly everything was near at hand, natural and accessible, much more in keeping with my usual thoughts than with generally accepted depictions' (quoted in Barnes, p.206). Reproduced in Zoya Maslenikova's Portret Borisa Pasternaka, Moscow 1995, pp.335-36 (a copy of which is included in the lot). Barnes, Boris Pasternak, pp.206-210. (2)
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