Tag Archives: Boris Pasternak

‘The Women’ (after Pasternak)

Garden real, not real, mere real, unreal, indivisible for them, their being. Green-gilt catkins hang — then shudder, hurl angelstruck: ‘He is not dead, but living!’ And everything they knew is put aside. A rock may move. Myrrh is not … Continue reading

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‘Ages will pass…’

Where Russia is concerned, I often think of this text by Boris Pasternak, written by him in German. I have only ever seen it in Gerd Ruge’s illustrated biography of Pasternak (Hachette, 1959), where it is described as ‘une dédicace’. … Continue reading

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Russia (to be continued)

  There is something I dread at dinner parties: being asked about ‘Russia’. I hope and pray, pray and hope, that no-one has heard I was a ‘Russianist’ in another life, lived in Russia under the Communist regime, smuggled for … Continue reading

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Checking my wiring

To reprise a motif of my last post, ‘the first pancake was a lump’, in the admirable Russian phrase (pervyi blin upal komom). That’s to say in English that my carefully prepared approach to a group of publishers went off at half-cock. … Continue reading

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Ruth Scurr’s exhilarating experiment

In my post of 6 March I discussed an essay by Ruth Scurr about biography that had just appeared in the Guardian Review. Her essay stirred up a whole hive of issues that the modern biographer should be aware of and needs … Continue reading

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