Posted Wednesday night, February 10, 2021.
Detail from “In a lesson of credence with the sexton” by Ivan Vladimirov. 1913. Via Wikiart.
Today would have been the 121st birthday of Boris Pasternak, the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature winning Russian poet and author of the novel “Doctor Zhivago”. Yura is the boy who will grow up to be the title hero of the book.
Yura realized how much he owed to his uncle for the general qualities of his character.
Nikolai Nikolaevih was living in Lausanne. In the books he published there in Russian and in translation, he developed his long-standing notion of history as a second universe, erected by mankind in response to the phenomenon of death with the aid of the phenomena of time and memory. The soul of these books was a new understanding of Christianity, their direct consequence a new understanding of art.
Even more than on Yura, the circle of these notions had an effect on his friend. Under their influence, Misha Gordon chose philosophy as his specialty. In his department, he attended lectures on theology and he even had thoughts of transferring later to the theological academy.
The uncle’s influence furthered Yura and liberated him, but it fettered Misha. Yura understood what role in Misha’s extreme enthusiasms was played by his origins. From cautious tactfulness, he did not try to talk Misha out of his strange projects. But he often wished to see an empirical Misha, much closer to life.
---from “Doctor Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak.
Comments