Boris Pasternak's Life And Poetic Relationships

Boris Pasternak, heralded as a master who “held undisputed sway over Russian poetry,” began his long and arduous journey to literary infamy in a very cosmopolitan Moscow family, severely drenched in high-class Russian culture. His father a prominent Russian painter, and his mother a former concert pianist, there was a considerable amount of influence that washed over him from his parent’s notable social life. Consisting of rich cultural surroundings and significant figures of the time, such as Leo Tolstoy and Rainer Maria Rilke, his parents’ social life is what initially inspired Pasternak to pursue a field in the fine arts. Initially beginning in music, he transitioned to philosophy, and finally, after suffering rejection at the hands of a lover, settled on literature, mainly poetry. Over the course of his life and his career literature and poetry, his sway and impact on Russia grew, which not only spiked his popularity, but also generated some negative attention from the Soviet government. This later had a prodigious effect on him, His life was at times extremely contained, but this negative relationship he held with the government also sprouted some of the best poetry he had ever written, and it brought much attention to himself as a writer. Becoming one of the most eminent poets to live and die by the motherland, was both a blessing and a curse. Pasternak’s significance to Russian literature led him to influence a multitude of writers and artists of his
generation and future generations alike.
Of all those under Boris Pasternak’s tutelage and influence, no one must have been more affected by him than his mentoring of close friend and protégée, Andrey Voznesensky. In 1947, Pasternak received a letter and a book of poems by the young Voznesensky, who at that time was only 14 years old. Shocked by the promising young poet’s work, Pasternak offered Andrey a visit, and Pasternak soon became his mentor. Pasternak’s friendship and guidance of the poet had a strong influence on both of them. Pasternak remained a constant mentor and close friend of Voznesensky throughout his life, and when Pasternak died in 1960, Voznesensky recited one of Pasternak’s most famous poems, “Nobel Prize”, which was banned at the time, at Pasternak’s funeral. Even thirty years past his death, Voznesensky stayed loyal to the late Pasternak, fighting for Pasternak’s reinstatement into the Union of Soviet Writers, (of which Pasternak was ejected from for winning the Nobel Prize) a “move that gave his work legitimacy” and finally allowed the publication of “Doctor Zhivago”, Pasternak’s most famous work, a novel which had been banned in the Soviet Union in 1956. As well as leading Pasternak’s reinstatement into the Union of Soviet Writers, Voznesensky, who was now the head of the review board, turned Pasternak’s Peredelkino home into a museum.
Around 1926, Pasternak began a correspondence with two of the era’s greatest poets, Rainer Maria Rilke and Marina Tsvetaeva....