Nicola Chiaromonte
PASTERNAK'S MESSAGE
Here is Russia, once again speaking out freely. That is the
one gets from the very first pages of
Dr. -?,iuagho,
a feeling
hich is confirmed as one continues to read, becoming so strong that
the end one shuts the book with an emotion not far from reverence.
In the second introductory lesson to his great course in Russian
tory, Kliucevski used to deny that cultural and artistic manifestations
uld in themselves assume the character of historical events. "Insofar
it is just an idea," he would say,
remains personal elan, poetic ideal, scientific discovery.
An
idea be–
mes an historic factor only when it possesses itself of some practical
rce or power, either in the form of a popular mass or of capital, which
en transforms it into laws, institutions, industrial or other enterprises,
d custom, that is, proposes it to the general admiration by making
a work of art available to all: as when, for example, the pious image
Heaven is moulded into the shape of the dome of the cathedral of
int Sophia.
So, first of all, Boris Pasternak's novel "proposes to the general
iration" this event: a Russian writer has resumed his freedom of
ech in order to make "available to all" what he thinks of the history
ed through and suffered by his people during the last forty years.
·s is obviously an act which has ripened for a long time in silence
d solitude and which would have been impossible if Pasternak was
t sure of testifying as much for the others as for himself, and, even
re, of having reached just the right moment when one could no
ger do without such testimony. His novel, which we now have be–
use it was, in effect, smuggled out of Russia, tells us, quite simply,
·s news: after so much turmoil, so much pain and terror, so much
uman violence--the sense of truth, the love of life, even the feeling
hope, and, finally, as firm and unshaken as in Pushkin's day, the
·th in literary communication, have remained intact in the spirit of
Russian writer. This is indeed an historic event.
Pasternak attaches a great importance to this novel. To the editor
