“It’s stupid to wait for the end of stupidity” – Weekend
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65 years ago, on October 23, 1958, the Nobel Committee announced the award of the Literature Prize to Boris Pasternak “for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel.” A week later, under pressure from the authorities and fearing expulsion from the country, Pasternak refused the prize. We re-read his texts to understand how Pasternak saw the role of the poet in history and the role of history in the fate of the poet.
1
It’s stupid to wait for the end of stupidity. Otherwise the stupidity would be consistent and complete and would no longer be stupidity. Stupidity has no end and never will: it will simply break off at one of its stupid links when no one is waiting for it.
Letter to parents, December 12, 1916
2
I am not looking for a light in the darkness that is still ongoing because the darkness is not able to highlight it. But I know that there will be no light because there will be light right away. There is no possibility or point in looking for him now in what we know: he himself is looking for and groping for us and tomorrow or the day after tomorrow he will shower us with himself.
Letter to parents, December 12, 1916
3
No true book has a first page. Like a forest noise, it originates God knows where, and grows, and rolls, awakening the reserved wilds, and suddenly, in the darkest, most stunning and panicky moment, it speaks with all the peaks at once, having rolled.
“Several Positions”, 1919
4
The only thing in our power is to be able not to distort the voice of life that sounds within us. The inability to find and tell the truth is a shortcoming that cannot be covered by any ability to tell a lie.
“Several Positions”, 1919
5
A book is a living being. She is in memory and completely sane: the pictures and scenes are what she took out from the past, remembered and does not agree to forget.
“Several Positions”, 1919
6
Soviet power gradually degenerated into some kind of philistine atheistic almshouse. Pensions, rations, subsidies, but the intelligentsia are not yet in capes and do not go out in pairs, otherwise they are a perfect shelter for orphans, they are kept from hand to mouth and forced to confess unbelief, praying for salvation from lice, to take off their hats when performing the International, etc. Portraits of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee , couriers, present and non-present days. Here it is.
Letter to Dmitry Petrovsky, April 6, 1920
7
Our time is not an outbreak of nature, not a Scythian fairy tale, not the point of application of red mythology. This is a chapter in the history of Russian society, and a wonderful chapter, immediately following the chapters about the Decembrists, Narodnaya Volya and the year 905. When she settles down and becomes enlightened in style, when she leaves her own to posterity, she will turn out to be higher and more serious than the current stylization cliches.
Letter to Marina Tsvetaeva, February 23, 1926
8
I realized that I had underestimated fate. And I’m glad. It would be worse if I overestimated her. I didn’t know that she was so gloomy and melancholic because she was so happy. By underestimating her, I suppressed the child and poet within me.
Letter to Marina Tsvetaeva, March 27, 1926
9
I’m not writing my biography. I turn to her when someone else demands it. Together with its main person, I believe that only the hero deserves a real biography, but the story of the poet in this form is completely unrepresentable. It would have to be collected from non-essentials, indicating concessions to pity and coercion.
“Safety certificate”, 1930
10
The poetry of my understanding flows in history and in collaboration with real life.
“Safety certificate”, 1930
eleven
The rest fought, sacrificed their lives and created, or suffered and were perplexed, but they were still natives of the past era and, despite the difference, fellow countrymen from it. And only this one (Mayakovsky.— Weekend) the novelty of the times was climatically in the blood. He was all strange with the oddities of the era, half as yet unrealized.
“Safety certificate”, 1930
12
Nothing I wrote exists. That world has ceased, and I have nothing to show this new one. It would be bad if I didn’t understand this.
Letter to parents, December 25, 1934
13
I could say the same thing another way. I became a part of my time and state, and its interests became mine.
Letter to parents, December 25, 1934
14
It is impossible, after people have smelled gunpowder and death, looked danger in the eyes, walked along the edge of an abyss, etc., etc., to maintain them on the same stupid, mediocre and obligatory lack of substance, which not only plays into the hands of the authorities, but also to the soul the writers themselves, people who are mostly untalented and creatively weak, with insignificant appetites, who are not even aware of the taste of immortality and are satisfied with sandwiches, “zises” and “emkas” and tartines with two orders.
Letter to his wife, August 26, 1941
15
Self-knowledge is not a task with a ready answer. We have to take risks. Mental risk is the poet’s professional duty, or rather, this is the field of his activity, the same as height for a steeplejack, a mine for a sapper, depth for a diver…
Speech at the Teacher’s House in Chistopol, January 28, 1942
16
This is what makes life so scary. What does it stun with, thunder and lightning? No, sidelong glances and whispered slander. It’s all tricky and ambiguous. You pull a separate thread, like a cobweb, and it’s gone, but if you try to get out of the network, you’ll only get more entangled.
Doctor Zhivago, 1945–1955
17
You cannot, day after day, act contrary to what you feel without health consequences; crucify yourself in front of what you don’t like, rejoice in what brings misfortune. Our nervous system is not an empty phrase, not a fiction. She is a physical body made of fibers. Our soul takes up space and fits into us like teeth in our mouth. She cannot be raped endlessly with impunity.
Doctor Zhivago, 1945–1955
18
I was at the plenum and listened. You can get used to voice exercises of this kind in two years. They sit and repeat like a spell: “We need good drama!” We need good dramaturgy.” It’s like this: a young man is walking down the street and everyone wishes him good grandchildren, and he repeats that he wants good grandchildren. And he needs to think about children, not grandchildren.
Quote by: Varlam Shalamov. “About contemporaries”, 1960s
19
Since childhood, I was surprised by this passion of the majority to be typical in some way, to necessarily represent some category or category, and not to be themselves. Where does this come from, such a strong worship of typicality in our time? How can one not understand that typicality means the loss of soul and face, the death of fate and name.
Letter to Varlam Shalamov, June 4, 1954
20
In any case, I can repeat after Heine that even if I do not deserve to be remembered as a poet, I will at least be remembered as a simple soldier in the ranks of the army of human freedom.
Quote by: Isaiah Berlin. “Meetings with Russian writers (1945 and 1956)”, 1980
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