Boris Pasternak (1890 – 1960)
Russian poet and writer famous for his novel Doctor Zhivago (1957).
Page 1 of 1
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
Even so, one step from my grave,
I believe that cruelty, spite,
The powers of darkness will in time
Be crushed by the spirit of light.
"How wonderful to be alive," he thought. "But why does it always hurt?"
Snow, snow over the whole land
across all boundaries.
The candle burned on the table,
the candle burned.
I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats of any kind, whether of jail or retribution, then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer, not the prophet who sacrificed himself.... What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.
Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one’s stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life.
A candle burned on the table, a candle burned ... he whispered to himself — the beginning of something confused, formless; he hoped that it would take shape of itself. But nothing more came to him.
It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.
Am I a gangster or a murderer?
Of what crime do I stand
Condemned? I made the whole world weep
At the beauty of my land.
Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.
Like a beast in a pen, I’m cut off
From my friends, freedom, the Sun.
But the hunters are gaining ground;
I’ve nowhere else to run.
Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel.
If it is so painful to love and to be charged with this electric current, how much more painful must it be to a woman and to be the current, and to inspire love.
I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.
Page 1 of 1