Illustrious author of Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak was born in 1890 into a family of artists with a painter father and a musician mother. Boris Pasternak quickly turned to poetry. His first poem was published in 1913 by supporters of the futurist movement. However, he will quickly break away from this movement.
They have hunted me down and trapped me,
At home they have taken me prisoner.
The snarling pack besieges me.
However, I know freedom. [1]
Boris Pasternak is marked by the revolution, and essentially directs his poetry towards the place of the individual in a revolutionary period. He also wonders about the place of the poet in the world, and comes to the conclusion that he is and will remain cursed. He published several collections of poetry. The great Terror slows him down to the point of stopping him in his poetic production.
You, for example, wonder with concern if you are going to be resurrected, when you were already resuscitated when you were born, without even realizing it. [2]
Once the end of the war, in 1945, while we believe in a certain liberation of expression with victory, Boris Pasternak undertakes the writing of the famous great novel which will allow him to obtain, in 1958, the Nobel Prize of literature. Doctor Zhivago retraces the Soviet period. His sensitive hero goes against the ideal of the Soviet hero. He finished the novel in 1955, two years before it was published.
And earth and sky, forest and plain
Waited for this intermittent noise
These rhythmic fragments of pain,
Of joy, of drunkenness and torment. [3]
Boris Pasternak died on May 31, 1960. He represents, in the eyes of the country, the sacrificed poet.