Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) - photo 1
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) - photo 2
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) - photo 3

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)

Lot 145
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 100
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
Buyer Premiumsee on Website%
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Archive
ID 1108944
Lot 145 | Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
Estimate value
£ 5 000 – 8 000
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
Autograph letter signed with initials ('B.P.') to Boris Livanov, [Moscow], 5 September 1941
In Russian. In purple ink on four pages, 226 x 181mm, bifolium. Provenance: Sotheby's, 5 December 1991, lot 547.

'Who needs Shakespeare now?': Pasternak in wartime. Pasternak reports on his 'crazily busy' life between Moscow and his dacha at Peredelkino: 'I have two empty apartments, a dacha, other people's unpaid housekeepers, the most contradictory household chores'. On top of this he has 'night duty' (as a fire warden) and 'daily military training. Every day in the morning I'm in Moscow, where I run around with my tongue hanging out ... only to return to Peredelkino to eat something in a hurry (I can only imagine what it would be like if I looked at it in daylight)'. As for writing, 'At dawn (I have at my disposal only 1½-2 hours in the morning before the train) I scribble something (I was again reduced to doing translations, from Latvian, from Georgian) for a ten-kopeck piece, for a five-kopeck piece, which they then don’t pay. But I'm not complaining ...'. He reports the 'astonishing' news that from Mikhail Khrapchenko (Chairman of the Committee for Arts) that the production of Hamlet (in Pasternak's translation) will go ahead in Novosibirsk, and Khrapchenko urges him to continue with his translation of Romeo and Juliet: 'to my words, who needs Shakespeare now? he responded with something like “stupidity”'.

Boris Livanov (1904-1972) was a celebrated Soviet actor and director. Pasternak was evacuated from Moscow to Chistopol in Tatarstan in the following month, and remained there for the next two years. Published in Vasily Livanov. Nevydumannyy Boris Pasternak (1997), pp. 25-6.
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