The Marsh of Gold: Pasternak's Writings on Inspiration and Creation

Boris Pasternak

Open Access Published by Academic Studies Press 2008

The Marsh of Gold

Pasternak's Writings on Inspiration and Creation

Boris Pasternak
With contributions by: Angela Livingstone
Translated by: Angela Livingstone
Funded by: National Endowment for the Humanities and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program

In the series Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781618116987

Overview
Contents

About this book

Major statements by the celebrated Russian poet Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) about poetry, inspiration, the creative process, and the significance of artistic/literary creativity in his own life as well as in human life altogether, are presented here in his own words (in translation) and are discussed in the extensive commentaries and introduction. The texts range from 1910 to 1946 and are between two and ninety pages long. There are commentaries on all the texts, as well as a final essay on Pasternak’s famous novel, Doctor Zhivago, which is looked at here in the light of what it says on art and inspiration. Although universally acknowledged as one of the great writers of the twentieth century, Pasternak is not yet sufficiently recognized as the highly original and important thinker that he also was. All his life he thought and wrote about the nature and significance of the experience of inspiration, though avoiding the word “inspiration” where possible as his own views were not the conventional ones. The author’s purpose is (a) to make this philosophical aspect of his work better known, and (b) to communicate to readers who cannot read Russian the pleasure and interest of an “inspired” life as Pasternak experienced it.

Author / Editor information

After one book on a German literature topic, Lou Andreas-Salome, Her Life and Writings, Angela Livingstone (Ph.D. Cambridge University) went on to focus on Russian literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As a researcher, Dr. Livingstone has specialized mainly in the work of Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva and Andrei Platonov. For more than thirty years she taught in the Department of Literature at the University of Essex, Colchester, U.K. with which, now retired, she is still closely affiliated, holding the title of Research Professor.

Reviews

Sasha Dugdale:
'Lucid and full commentaries are interspersed between the pieces, making this an indispensable volume for any student of Pasternak or early twentieth-century Russia."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	x
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND DATES Publicly Available Download PDF	xii
ABBREVIATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY Publicly Available Download PDF	xiv
NOTE ON PASTERNAK’S CONNECTIONS WITH LITERARY GROUPS Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
INTRODUCTION Open Access Download PDF	1
I. EARLY PROSE (1910–1919) Open Access Download PDF	13
II. A SAFE-CONDUCT or “THE PRESERVATION CERTIFICATE” (1928–1931) Open Access Download PDF	77
III. FIFTEEN POEMS (1912–1931) Open Access Download PDF	169
IV. SPEECHES AND ARTICLES 1930s and 1940s Open Access Download PDF	215
V. An Essay on Pasternak‘s Novel DOCTOR ZHIVAGO Open Access Download PDF	257
NOTES Open Access Download PDF	277
SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY Open Access Download PDF	295
INDEX Open Access Download PDF	301

Language: English
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 330

eBook

Published: December 17, 2017
ISBN: 9781618116987