An Evening with Pasternak; An Evening With Pasternak

It is something surely Tolstoy would never do but then twisted NOK is not Tolstoy. No value judgment one is not the other just a knock is a poet. And this brings me to the before last point. We did beat them both influences to come through the controversy is already upon us whether Plus third knock is more like Tolstoy or more like the state you have ski and who cares. But surely the question is only one of affinities Plus the knock is much more than the septic call for influences which means that he which doesn't mean that he doesn't live in the tradition. And in terms of affinities it struck me that there are as many the story your skin moments and elements is that our total story is. Lara indeed has something in common with Goosen can I start to feel leap of not being alone to her injury that horrid Judy that

was ministered to her by a villain who has almost to think of torts King the idiot in one of the lessons and isn't the nocturnal dialogue between Zavada and the leak of the two men who so desperately alog Lara this masculine encounter. So very much deprived of jealousy. Isn't it inflection of the tormented the union of that are Gordon and the prince Miskin song and as to Tolstoy not only is that in the book of obliteration an echo of cut out of this and whatever the Russians mean by that but that would take a couple of our them very. But some details are Tolstoi young the young partizan treater who was accidentally shot in the foot just before the execution and glimpse into his own grave. Tolstoy has done this for they almost intolerable description of a child murdering their steel clamp down cellar. Surely echoes the

gruesome scene from the power of darkness but once we are on that very shaky topic of opinion to use I for one felt very strongly that from the moment the superbug becomes a martyr from the moment she has altered resilience it's cracked his own ear to the source is to drift into. Another affinity just to drift closer to concerto. Is to drift into all the wrong movies and they're claiming surrender but the one of wisdom and honesty that are numerable passages to that effect. Toward the end of the book if you just read two lines. He is in Moscow. He knows he must do something he wants to find his family maybe there would be a way to get out. But your young dream seemed always to be in a hurry to decide that he was not getting anywhere and he spoke with too much conviction and

almost with satisfaction of the futility of undertaking anything for her. I'm just about through. I think my critics will soon decide that it is not a historical novel after all. Not a historical novel within your reach in the tools sense. What it lacks that historical midstream in some sense it is preferable to the historical events in some sense. Survival lives he is counting on that he moved from the center of the action in Siberia and maybe of the critics this side of the stem the portrait of this man who lost out and serve him that everything. Too destructive outside forces except his integrity will become even more significant. Thank you

Ira. Professor Deborah Dunham of Wayne State University has been heard speaking on the poetry and prose of Boris Pasternak. This discussion of the author of Dr. Zhivago continues with a personal reminiscence by Robert Magee doff of the University of Michigan. Mr. McGee doff served as foreign correspondent in Moscow from one thousand thirty five to one thousand forty eight. Is the author of two books on Russia and two biographies of musical figures. Here is Mr. Magee off. We've just heard a most fascinating and knowledgeable as well as witty account of the creative work of body space that not. I'd like to share with you some of my impressions of

Buddy's bustard NOK. Whom I met in Moscow a number of times and also share with you some of my ideas and thoughts on the significance and the background of the foster NOK case of these days. But not as a man of average height. He's well built with a long swarthy face so long that pastor not himself jestingly speaks of it that it creates a horse light impression and the Russian friend of mine and that Mayor of Boston not once described him to me as the Arab and his horse. Buster knockers always intense and concentrated. He looks at you with some part of him aged

green brown eyes as though he was taken by surprise at the sight of a few and is a den leader at the sight of the whole wide world. And talking to you Buster not is he's all yours is design Armenian his gratitude for your attention and the same time he keeps listening forever listening to something that's going on within him. A strange and mysterious process out of which words and thoughts and moods and images are born filling him with the same longer and the same gratitude with which he looks at you and the world around him. And all my life I've met only two other people like that who can be with you and talk and laugh with you and who are at the same

time listening to something going on within themselves. One of these men is the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. And the other is the great contemporary American writer William Faulkner. There is great difference hope and there always seems miles away from you even as he addresses you. His large dark brooding eyes seem to be unseen even as he looks at you. Just talk of each alternates between sardonic and rather sophisticated outbursts of jokes or he breaks out into singing or does Street Songs of rather questionable taste. And then come complete with draws and to himself as though he had just indulged

in the prank and is now back at the school band doing his homework. Listening to the music. It's something to his own amazement is making him with Pasternak it's different. It's a kind of a child's naivete and a child's wonderment about the external world around him and about the world that is inside him. There is something very boyish in his eagerness with which he reacts to both. I noticed this when I talked to him three times in the 30s and then again when I talk to him soon after the war was over I'm 46 and it seems that he has retained his boyishness to this day because only last summer I read an article in a French magazine which the Italian writer out there had written about with his visit with

Pastor now and there he speaks of him several times as an adolescent with gray hair and we have heard Dr. Dunham quote the poetess are not mocked about. Who wrote to Pastor not about Pastor not that he is blasted with an eternal childhood. But are not marketable does not stop there. In that same poem she has something else to say about the astronaut and what she has to say makes all the difference between him and the many other men who have retained their boyishness. She has a whole unique world is his alone but he has gone ahead and shared this shared it with us all. Dr. Don Imus given you a fascinating glimpse at that

world of astronaut in which he expressed in his poetry and in his prose. And now this rare poet and this rare human being. Has been has been given world recognition and the Nobel Prize recognition everywhere except in his own fund over there he has been all but crucified. He's been call counterrevolutionary baby Judas a snake. Well I mean you'll stand with 800 writers practically all of whom never read Dr Zhivago signed a letter condemning him for the novel and he is an outcast and his own land. And I think it's a very legitimate question to ask why is it so. Why did this

crucifixion and this martyrdom. I don't understand it fully. We cannot be satisfied by only taking a look at the Soviet Union today and at the jaw line this minute. To understand the full significance of this case we must go all the way back into the history of Russian literature and Russian history itself because Buster not is not the first nor is he I'm afraid not the last of the martyred writers and poets and Russia. Let's go to the one for the story of the one who is generally known as the first of the martyred Russian writers. The year is seventeen hundred and ninety and the obscure civil servant by the name of Alexander. All right the ship

published that year and his own printing press his own printing press a book called A journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg. And this book was a truly fearless noble indictment of serve them in Russia and of Czarist autocracy. Catherine the Great. Read the book. And she ordered every copy collected and burned. She ordered the author arrested and condemned to death. And he was actually sentenced to death. But then blissfully peace with Sweden of us signed and an amnesty was declared. And so the sentence was changed to 10 years of Siberia. Catherine died six years later and but I was free.

But the shock of the experience the terrible reality of the rush of his day his helplessness and the face of Zoroaster talk prosy the bitter lot of the searchers. All this lad that I dished to suicide and in his journey in that book he wrote what is an explanation of his suicide although at the time he wrote it he probably did not think of resorting to this extreme measure. There he gives advice to his sons in the book and he says if there is no refuge left on earth for your virtue if you find no sanctuary from oppression then remember that you are a man die as a legacy I leave you the words of the dying Cato and Cato as you will recall.

Sad just as he was about to destroy himself. Now I am my own master committing suicide became more than his own master. He became the blessed doom the master of the thoughts the shaper of ideas that inspired the younger generations and which eventually led to the abolition of Sirte. And the significance of that book was so great in shaping the freedom loving ideas of the future generations that his journeys sometimes referred to as the Uncle Tom's Cabin of Russian literature. I think that this is not exactly correct but the journey certainly paved the way for the acceptance of to Gania Hunter's diary

which had an impact comparable with that of fungal Cap'n he. He is frequently spoken of. As the first of the writers who are called not only blessed to do the shaper of thoughts but also as the Saudis to cover not all the conversations the voice of the Russian people. And he is also the first martyr among the writers and poets so many of whom were sentences executed or imprisoned or exiled to set theory or abroad or were hounded into insanity and suicide. The tragically long list includes such immortals as Pushkin. Yeah I'm a dog I'm just a UFC and in our times the two poets who were mentioned earlier in the evening and my of course.

And now we are witnessing the martyrdom of Buster knock. And they are coming back to the same place. But why why now. Why does the Kremlin refuse to reap the harvest of the power that goes without progress. There are so anxious men in the Kremlin to take advantage of every recognition by the outside world of Soviet achievements. And here they are discarding it. And the answer is simple because Pastor knock has remained faithful to the tradition of the great writers who voiced the hopes and the dreams of the people. He writes of man and not of the state. The rights of the dignity of man and not of the might of the state. The rights of the in repeatable miracle that is each man's life.

He writes of mood and color and smell and love and caress. Mr Knox worked. And most tellingly Doctor Zhivago his novel. Underscored the greatest and the most crucial failure of the Soviet system. The failure to reshape man. In such a way as to make him make to love the state as to crush his ability to think for himself. And to destroy his dreams of being his own master. Buster not under scores the face after more than 40 years to create what the communists have proudly hailed as the coming new Soviet man who would wholeheartedly of his own free will gave elite Jews to the Kremlin and ask no questions. The Russian people have been asking many questions even though they are

still in the PTA. They've been asking questions in books and books like dude in service by Brad not by bread alone. Like Dr Zhivago by Pastor not. Asking questions in university classrooms as during the Hungarian Revolution when students in the mosque University walked out and a professor. Went in response to their questions he began to throw slogans at them rather than discuss the root of the matter. And one must bear in mind. At the same time the pastor not is not an Communist he's not a political man at all. He is just a man with a capital. He is a poet. And he like Dr. Zhivago in the novel. When the revolution came he saw its logic and its inevitability.

And like Dr. Zhivago he was prepared to accept it. There is one poem of his in which he actually speaks of his readiness to accept the revolution. It does it in his own inimitable pastor not way in a poem called The Kremlin and the blizzard at the end of the year 1918 where he describes the storms and the surge raging that time. At the end of December 19 18. And he completes the poem of course you can see here if you want to a symbol of the raging storms of the revolution and the civil war. And at the end of this poem he says through these seas of blizzards and stones I foresee how the coming new year will take me by the hand. How all broken up and shattered I shall

be remain. And so the doctor Dunham does not. Object to my distorting this beautiful verse. I shall read it to you in the original. So you can sense the beauty of the rhythm of the sound of the skies more dear god. Pretty visual cut rez beat of. Us to be free of God. Was notes. These never speak the way. I shall be remade by you but then as the years went by. And he witness. The cruelties of the revolution and the civil war. Of the industrialization and collectivization. The purchase. He was repelled. He was repelled chiefly by the loss of dignity. The loss of individuality of

man and it is of this that he speaks in Doctor Zhivago and it is this that the Soviet leaders could not bear especially as the completion of publication abductor's revival happened to coincide. With the restlessness all over the Soviet empire. After Stalin's death. Culminating in the Hungarian Revolution and the new revolution in Poland. And mind you that in both revolutions the writers of these lines. Played a very very active part. And this is why the harshness and the home they would like to deed Buster not to leave Russia. I believe that they're sincere when they say that he can go and stab in the outside world. Because then. They could call him a desert. And a traitor. They could discredit him.

But he refuses to go and I'm sure that he will not go unless he's driven out by force. You might also ask why then wouldn't he go because he is an outcast. He is deprived of anything that resembles citizenship. He cannot even work. He's expelled from the union of writers from the union of translators. You cannot. Do anything you cannot make a living. You cannot have friends. And why won't he leave. And there are many Russians and other Slavs who could give you an answer. The risk resists the Polish young Polish writer Mark Glasgow who recently went to Paris and he made very strong statements against the communist regime in Poland. But then when he was asked. I asked why does he plan to go back. He will be persecuted. He said Yes I know. But as a writer of

without his homeland is nothing. And the rock man you know I have written very little of value since I left Russia. I cannot compose anywhere else. Is it the air in Vons homeland. And once I interviewed Brokaw Feo the great composer. And I asked him why did you come back to Russia he had left Russia in the 20s and after several years he came back. And he said to me I could not compose when I was in exile. I had. To come back. And to me writing music is sheer physical necessity. In addition to everything else this must be a thought. Plaguing pastor not as he thinks of the possibility of his being expelled. There is also that age old. Mystical and yet almost physical bond between Russia. Between the Russian and his

none too tender motherland a feeling of belonging nowhere else. And it's very interesting that Id share your member the first of the martyrs. He had the same feeling. He wrote an ode called liberty. And owed and which he glorified the American nation. And George Washington. And he said wistfully. I have no part of your glory but says The Soul is subject to no one allow at least my ashes to rest in your soil. But in the very next line very Russian like he says. But no. Let me end my days where fate decided that I should be born. Let my cold ashes be overshadowed by the glory of which I sing so that the young man may come to my deserted grave and say

he who was born here under the yoke of tyranny was the first to proclaim liberty to us. Bust a knock is the first Soviet right here and if police say he years since Stalin came to power. Who dared to raise his voice on behalf of liberty and not liberty in general with a capital L.. But liberty from Soviet tyranny. And because he said it in the quiet voice of a poet and philosopher. His voice rings the louder and the concluding passage of his novel. The main theme the theme of which I would define as the integrity of man. The HIM permissibility for any person party or government to stand between man and himself.

Or man and God or man and and his conscience Pasternak writes. Although victory had not brought their relief and freedoms that were expected at the end of the book. Nevertheless the poor sense of freedom filled the air throughout the post-war period and they alone define its historical significance. This is. Us tonight wrote that so enraged the man in the Kremlin. It is for these words about the lack of freedom and about the hope for freedom that Buster NOK is now being condemned to live out his last years of life. He is now 68 years old. And his home near Moscow. Which is like the deserted grave of which Id ships both. The other day I met a young Hindu poet just on the campus and she showed me a poem that she had

written. And which she spoke of the undefeated loneliness of truth. And to paraphrase I paraphrase the line slightly one can say that Pastor Knox now lives in the loneliness of undefeated. True. You have been listening to talks by Professor Vera Dunham of Wayne State University and Mr. Robert to get off of the University of Michigan on the Russian author Boris Pasternak an evening with Pasternak was recorded on the University of Michigan campus by WUOM the University of Michigan Broadcasting Service. This is d n ABC Radio Network.