The Nobel Prize in Literature 1958 was awarded to Boris Pasternak for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the Great Russian epic tradition.
Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow on 10th February, 1890. His father was an artist and professor, and his mother was a concert pianist.
Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, an event which both humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His novel ‘Doctor Zhivago’ helped him win the Nobel Prize. He accepted the prize initially, but he was forced by the authorities of his country to decline the prize. Later, his descendants were to accept it in his name in 1988.
His most important works are ‘Twin in the Clouds’, ‘Over the Barriers’, ‘On Early Trains’, ‘Poems’, ‘Themes and Variations’, ‘Safe Conduct’, ‘Second Birth’, and ‘Doctor Zhivago’. Pasternak’s translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderon de la Barca and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences.
Outside Russia, Pasternak is best known as the author of ‘Doctor Zhivago’.
Boris Pasternak died on 30th May, 1960.
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