От Кибирова до Пушкина

Columbia University

in the City of New York

New York 27, N.Y.

Department of Slavic Languages

January 14, 1958

Mr. Uno Willers

The Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy:

Börshuset

Stockholm C, Sweden

AIR MAIL

Dear Mr. Willers:

I have your invitation to nominate a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 1958.

I would like to propose as a candidate the greatest living Russian poet, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (born 1890).

Pasternak began his long literary career with a volume of poetry in 1913, Bliznets v oblake (A Twin in a Cloud). There then followed a series of volumes of verse: Poverkh barryerov (Over the Barriers, 1917), Sestra moya zhizn’ (My Sister Life, 1922), Temy i variatsii (Themes and Variations, 1923); two long narrative poems, Spektorsky, 1926, and 1905 god (The Year 1905, 1927); and subsequent collections of verse: Vtoroye rozhdenie (The Second Birth, 1932), Na rannikh poezdakh (On Early Trains, 1943) and Zemnoy prostor (The Terrestrial Expanse, 1945). He has also published several small volumes of prose — short stories and autobiographical writing: Okhrannaya gramota (The Safe Conduct, 1931) and Vozdushnye puti (Aerial Ways, 1933). Of late years he has been devoting himself mostly to poetic translations, among which are his brilliant translations of Shakespeare’s plays: Hamlet, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet.

Pasternak came from a highly cultured family — his father was a celebrated painter — and he was educated at the University of Moscow and at Marburg, Germany. In poetry he began as a Futurist but quickly developed his own individual style. It is a fresh, innovating, difficult style, notable for its extraordinary imagery, elliptical language and associative method. Feeling and thought are wonderfully blended in his verse which reveals a passionately intense bur always personal vision of life. His prose likewise is highly poetic, perhaps the most brilliant prose to emerge in Soviet literature, and in fiction, as in his long short story, Detstvo Luvers (The Childhood of Luvers), he displays uncanny powers of psychological analysis.

One can best charaterize Pasternak’s literary flavor by describing him as the «T. S. Eliot of the Soviet Union». When a purely objective history of Soviet Russian literature can be written, I have no doubt that Pasternak will take his place among the greatest poets Russia has produced, a place beside Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tyutchev.

Among serious students and critics of literature in the West, especially in England, Pasternak’s greatness is slowly coming to be recognized. Chancellor Bowra of Oxford University, a student of Russian literature, is one of these, and he has translated a fair amount of Pasternak’s difficult verse. A volume of his verse and prose in English has appeared in England and America, and a number of critical articles about him have also been published in these two countries. It has also been reported to me that Harvard University seriously contemplated inviting him to offer its distinguished Norton Lectures a year ago, a position that T. S. Eliot, among other great artists, has held.

The originality and difficulty of Pasternak’s verse, as well as his own aloofness in political and ideological matters, have naturally stood in the way of his popularity in the Soviet Union. On several occasions he has been the victim of official criticism, which no doubt has played its part in his recent concentration on translation. Nor has his position been improved by the recent report that a full-length novel of his, «Dr. Zhivago», which had been banned from publication in the Soviet Union in its original manuscript form, would appear in an Italian translation. Publication of this novel is also promised in England, France, and America My prediction is that it will be a remarkable performance, and will serve to increase the literary prestige of Pasternak in the West, as well as in his own country. For despite the official attitude toward him in the Soviet Union, it should be realized that all Russian writers competent to judge recognize the great stature of Pasternak.

For all these reasons, but particularly because he is one of the two or three greatest living poets, I wish to place in nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature the name of Boris Leonidovich Pasternak.

Faithfully yours,

Ernest J. Simmons

Executive Officer

EJS: mll