My introduction to Boris Pasternak came when I read "The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers" in an anthology of Russian novellas. That was several years ago. Then, roaming the stacks in the Chapel Hill Public Library, I came across "Selected Poems."
The forward by his son Yevgeny Pasternak invites the English reader to love Boris Pasternak through the work of translators Jon Stallworthy and Peter France. After reading the forward, I felt, "OK, it's alright for me to appreciate Pasternak even though I don't read Russian.
The introduction by Stallworthy and France is a brief biography of Pasternak, leading me to want to read more about this great author and thinker who grew up in Soviet Russia but was never bound by the constricting character of communism. Reading their English renditions of his brilliant poetry has me now thirsting for more of Pasternak. If I weren't neck-deep in several other books, I would begin "Dr. Zhivago" tonight.
As it is, I am deeply moved by the poems of Pasternak I have read. I still struggle with poetry as a genre (and probably always will), but Pasternak makes the struggle worth the effort.
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