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

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)

Lot 146
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 2 520
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1108945
Lot 146 | Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
Estimate value
£ 2 000 – 3 000
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
Autograph letter signed (‘B. Pasternak’) to his English publishers and Stefan Szymanski, Moscow, July 1945
In English and Russian. Four pages, 203 x 311mm, bifolium, a number of sentences and words cancelled.

Expressing heartfelt thanks to his English publishers: ‘If I knew English as I need it, I would write volumes and volumes to express my emotions’. Pasternak lists a number of individuals, thanking them for their contributions and assistance, including Mr. and Mrs. Read, the latter ‘whose name heads the noble group, so dear to me’ and Mr. Lindsay Simmonds for his ‘kindness, editing my book with so great an outlay of care and elegance’. He laments over the earlier ‘stupid pretensions of a late beginner, uncontinued and left without completions in a hard and distorted time, look so insignificant’. Exclaiming, ‘But let us not despair!’, he continues ‘Things that I hope to write at a better time will amend and justify the pitiful picture that makes me ashamed for the splendid light you unmeritedly throw on it’. Pasternak concludes with ‘Endless, endless thanks to you, dear friends!...Be happy and do not forget your affectionate’.

In Russian, to Stefan Szymanski, thanking the recipient and his wife ‘for everything you have done for me’ and congratulating Szymanski’s recent articles in Transformation, ‘a tremendous joy which infused courage into me has been the emergence of personalism on your horizon’. Commenting on his poor knowledge of English by declaring his English letter ‘barbarian mumbo jumbo’, he thanks Szymanski as ‘your introduction is very profound and captivatingly written but it exceeds the requirements of the subject matter which with such comprehensive and detailed analysis should have been infinitely grander in meaning and scale’. Concluding, ‘Do not take to heart the fact that all of this stuff of mine is so ugly and dwarfish. I have a project ahead of me – broader and simpler. You will see. But it is still too early to discuss it’.

Szymanski was a Polish-born publicist and translator, and a prominent member of the ‘escapist’, or ‘personalists’, literary movement in England. The group published the almanac Transformations and generally treated Pasternak with admiration, this both surprised and delighted the poet, who considered himself to be half-forgotten.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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