Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (January 29, 1890, Moscow - May 30, 1960, Peredelkino, Moscow region) - Russian writer, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, laureate Nobel Prize on literature (1958).
The creative path of Boris Pasternak was very difficult and extraordinary. Today he is rightfully considered one of the brightest Russian poets of the 20th century. However, their most famous works, including the novel “Doctor Zhivago,” which brought the author a Nobel Prize, Parsnip wrote during the era of the formation and development of the USSR. Naturally, in order to become a famous writer in a country with a totalitarian regime, it was necessary to have not only a bright and original talent, but also to be able to hide one’s true feelings both in public and in his works. Parsnips were never able to learn this, so they were periodically subjected to disgrace by the ruling elite. Nevertheless, he was popular, and his poems, novels and plays, which periodically disappeared from sale and were rejected by censorship, were published abroad and copied by hand. The author was really famous, but he was embarrassed to be recognized on the street and tried in every possible way to belittle his own contribution to literature. However, not all Soviet writers behaved this way. Many of them, not having even a hundredth part of Pasternak’s talent, considered themselves real geniuses and emphasized this in every possible way. Moreover, in those days it was not so much a literary gift that was valued as a loyal attitude to party politics.
Among the creative intelligentsia, Pasternak, for all his fame, had few friends. The poet himself explained this by saying that he was unable to maintain warm and trusting relationship with hypocrites and careerists. Those who were treated kindly by the authorities could afford to live in luxury, although from the pages of newspapers they called on the people for equality and brotherhood. Therefore, in 1956, Parsnip wrote his famous poem“Being famous is ugly,” which was addressed to colleagues in the literary workshop.
Pasternak knows that history is created by people and interpreted by them to serve their own interests. Therefore, he is convinced that everything in this world is relative, and one should not revel in one’s achievements, which may be perceived completely differently after many years. The author believes that a real poet should not distinguish “defeats from victories”, because time will still judge everyone in its own way. And the only value that is for Pasternak absolute value, is the ability to “be alive” to the end, i.e. be able to sincerely love, despise and hate, and not portray these feelings to please someone in your works.
“Being famous is ugly” Boris Pasternak
Being famous is not nice.
This is not what lifts you up.
No need to create an archive,
Shake over manuscripts.
The goal of creativity is dedication,
Not hype, not success.
Shameful, meaningless
Be the talk of everyone.
But we must live without imposture,
Live like this so that in the end
Attract the love of space to you,
Hear the call of the future.
And you have to leave spaces
In fate, and not among papers,
Places and chapters of a whole life
Crossing out in the margins.
And plunge into the unknown
And hide your steps in it,
How the area hides in the fog,
When you can't see a thing in it.
Others on the trail
They will pass your path by an inch,
But defeat comes from victory
You don't have to differentiate yourself.
And should not a single slice
Don't give up on your face
But to be alive, alive and only,
Alive and only until the end.
Don't sleep, don't sleep, artist,
Don't give in to sleep.
You are a hostage to eternity
Trapped by time.
Being famous is not nice.
This is not what lifts you up.
No need to create an archive,
Shake over manuscripts.
The goal of creativity is dedication,
Not hype, not success.
Shameful, meaningless
Be the talk of everyone.
But we must live without imposture,
Live like this so that in the end
Attract the love of space to you,
Hear the call of the future.
And you have to leave spaces
In fate, and not among papers,
Places and chapters of a whole life
Crossing out in the margins.
And plunge into the unknown
And hide your steps in it,
How the area hides in the fog,
When you can't see a thing in it.
Others on the trail
They will pass your path by an inch,
But defeat comes from victory
You don't have to differentiate yourself.
And should not a single slice
Don't give up on your face
But to be alive, alive and only,
Alive and only until the end.
Analysis of the poem “Being Famous is Ugly” by Pasternak
The creative fate of B. Pasternak was very difficult. His works did not fit into the standards of Soviet ideology. The poet and writer was constantly subjected to devastating criticism. His work was under an unspoken ban. Only a small part of the works was published in their homeland, subjected to the strictest censorship corrections and distortions.
Despite this, Pasternak always remained true to his convictions. He never conformed to official requirements, believing that the duty and sacred responsibility of a real writer is to remain extremely sincere and express real, and not thoughts imposed by someone. Best works Pasternak was illegally distributed in lists and published abroad.
Few writers shared the beliefs of Boris Pasternak. The majority preferred to create mediocre works, the main criteria for which were loyalty to the authorities and praise of the leaders. Such waste paper was declared “masterpieces” of world literature, and its authors enjoyed artificial honor and respect.
In 1956, Pasternak wrote the poem “It’s Ugly to Be Famous,” in which he expressed his opinion about true calling writer. The main goal He considers the writer not the achievement of fame and success, but maximum dedication and selfless service to art. IN Soviet time voluminous memoirs of no artistic value were very common. The “cult of personality” is deeply rooted in the consciousness. In a country that officially proclaimed universal equality and brotherhood, works were popular in which the authors endlessly exalted their role and merits in life.
Pasternak sharply criticizes this position. He believes that a person is not able to appreciate eigenvalue. His assessment will always be subjective. Therefore, we must not stick out our affairs, but, on the contrary, “plunge into the unknown.” Only the future is capable of passing a final verdict on a person and fairly considering his life path.
At the end of the work, Pasternak consolidates his idea. Instead of creating for himself a false aura of fame that can deceive his contemporaries, but not future generations, the writer must remain a living person and admit that he has human vices and weaknesses.
Time has proven the writer right. Many “masters” of Soviet prose have been thrown into the dustbin of history. Pasternak is recognized as a global figure, a worthy winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Composition
“In the field of words, I love prose most of all,
but he wrote mostly poetry. Poem
Regarding prose, this is the same as a sketch
regarding the picture. Poetry seems to me
a large literary sketchbook."
B.L. Parsnip
The work of Boris Leonidovich Pasternak stands apart in the history of Russian literature. He lived and worked in a very difficult time for Russia. The old canons collapsed, the old life, people and destinies were broken... And in the midst of all this - a wonderful poet with subtle soul and a unique vision of the world. Born at a turning point in fate, Boris Pasternak managed to become one of the symbols of his century.
Poems occupy a special place in his work. Many wonderful lines came from his pen. The last collection of poems, never published during Pasternak’s lifetime, entitled “When it clears up,” includes selected works author. The theme of renewal and hope is clearly heard in the book, which is a reflection of the changes taking place in the country. It was in this collection that the poem “Being Famous is Ugly...” was published, which can be called a kind of set of rules for a real poet. It is in this work that Pasternak reveals his attitude towards creativity.
The poem has a programmatic meaning, as if continuing Pushkin’s appeal to the “Poet”. The lyrical hero, continuing the great poet’s thought about the artist’s independence from “people’s love,” introduces a moral assessment into his judgment:
Being famous is not nice. This is not what lifts you up. There is no need to start an archive, to tremble over manuscripts.
The goal of creativity is dedication,
Not hype, not success.
Shameful, meaningless
Be the talk of everyone.
We see that Pasternak does not accept empty, undeserved fame; it is easier for him to sink into obscurity than to be on everyone’s lips without doing anything for it. This position deserves only respect. The artist makes his lonely path “in the fog,” where “you can’t see a thing,” hearing only “the call of the future” ahead. He must leave a “living trace” in modernity, which will be continued by “others”.
The unique fate of the poet is understood by Pasternak as a link between the past and the future in a single chain of art, loyalty to his calling:
And should not a single slice
Don't give up on your face
But to be alive, alive and only,
Alive and only until the end.
Once having chosen this path, the poet should never deviate from it.
Also important work To reveal the image of the poet in Pasternak’s mind, the poem “In everything I want to get to the very essence...”, written in the same year as the first and included in the same collection, can serve.
I want to reach everything
To the very essence.
At work, looking for a way,
In heartbreak.
From this quatrain follows the aspiration of the lyrical hero, who can conditionally be equated to Pasternak himself. The desire for life, for knowledge of its secrets and mysteries, the thirst for activity and feelings. In this poem lyrical hero sets himself an almost impossible task - to penetrate into the secret essence of life, to deduce its laws, to unravel its secrets... He tries to grasp the “thread of destinies and events.” But the task is complicated by the fact that he strives not only to understand, but also to express in words the general law of existence:
Oh if only I could
Although partly
I would write eight lines
About the properties of passion.
Discarding empty words, he looks for the main, fundamental ones. Isn’t this the task and goal of poetry in general and each poet in particular?.. Pasternak always believed that what is meaningful does not have to be complex. The truth of things and phenomena lies precisely in their simplicity. Hence the poet’s desire to express in eight lines the properties of passion, which for Pasternak is life, because only when a person feels does he really live. This is the recipe for penetrating the mystery of life.
The role of nature in Pasternak’s work in general and in this poem in particular is interesting. It miraculously comes to life, but not as an accumulation of living and inanimate objects of the world around us, but as embodied poetry:
I would plant poems like a garden.
With all the trembling of the veins the linden trees in them would bloom in a row,
Single file, to the back of the head.
The world of poetry and the world of nature are intertwined, and it is not entirely clear where one ends and the other begins, and the poet’s linden trees line up in orderly rows, like words in a line...
