Winter night read. Pasternak "Winter Night"

Series "Poems about love"

The publishing house expresses its sincere gratitude to Evgeny Borisovich Pasternak for his help in preparing the collection

The cover design features a reproduction of Gustav Klimt's painting "Love"

And the hug never ends...

February 10, 1890 in the family of the artist Leonid Osipovich Pasternak and pianist Rosalia Isidorovna (née Kaufman) was born the first child. The son was named Boris.

The childhood of the future poet passed in an atmosphere of art. The family lived in the premises of the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where Leonid Osipovich taught. In the house of the Pasternaks, home concerts were often held, there were conversations about painting, music and literature. They were visited by great musicians, writers, artists. Leonid Osipovich was friendly with I. I. Levitan, V. A. Serov, V. D. Polenov, N. N. Ge. In 1893, at the exhibition of the Association of the Wanderers, he met Leo Tolstoy.

One of the most important events of the poet's adolescence was the meeting with A.N. Scriabin, which took place in 1903. The Pasternaks spent their summers at their dacha, on the Obolensky estate, near Maloyaroslavets. The Scriabins lived not far from them. And you could hear someone composing music in the neighboring dacha.

“God, what was that music! The symphony was constantly collapsing and collapsing, like a city under artillery fire, and everything was built and grew from debris and destruction, ”Pasternak recalled.

Leonid Osipovich made acquaintance with the famous composer, and they became friends "at home". Although Boris began to “talk musically” even before meeting Scriabin, it was his acquaintance with him that most decisively influenced his desire to devote his life to music. Since 1903, from the first meetings with Scriabin, Pasternak could not imagine his life outside of music. “More than anything in the world, I loved music,” wrote Pasternak, “more than anyone else in it, Scriabin.”

In 1908, Pasternak graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal. As a medalist, he was enrolled in the first year of the law faculty of Moscow University without entrance exams. The choice of the faculty was due in large part to the fact that the classes there were not too burdensome and there was enough free time to study music, which he studied privately. In 1911, Pasternak intended to take exams for completing the conservatory course.

However, these plans were not given to be realized. In 1909, Pasternak decided to abandon the musical field. There were many reasons, one of them was his lack of absolute pitch, that is, the ability to recognize the pitch of any arbitrarily taken note. However, he did not leave musical improvisation until 1930.

On the advice of Scriabin, Pasternak was transferred from the Faculty of Law to the Philosophical Department of the Historical and Philological Department. His area of interest is phenomenology and philosophy of history. He studies Kant, Hume and Husserl. His first poetic experiments also date back to this time. Pasternak never included poems from this period in his books, and they were published from drafts only in the 1970s.

Pasternak considered the first successful poem “February. Get ink and cry…”. It was written in 1912. Subsequently, the poet opened his first poetic cycle “The Beginning Time” to them, and then all his collections were opened with this particular poem.

In the spring of 1912, Pasternak went to Germany - this was his first independent trip abroad. The purpose of the trip was Marburg, a small university town, where for three months he had to improve in the field of philosophy, and at the same time check whether his soul really lay with it. It turned out that it was not. During his stay in Germany, he completely lost interest in philosophy and parted with it as decisively as he parted with music three years ago. Another break occurred in Marburg - his platonic romance with Ida Vysotskaya, with whom Pasternak had been in love since his gymnasium years, ended.

She was the daughter of the tea manufacturer Vysotsky, whose family lived in Chudov Lane, not far from Myasnitskaya, where the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was located. The Pasternaks were friends with the Vysotskys, and Boris met Ida when she was still a teenager.

The memory of this love turned out to be long. Years after the breakup, Pasternak turned to Ida Vysotskaya in his lyrics. He dedicated to her the famous "Marburg" (1916) and one of the best poems of this period, "An Excerpt from a Poem" (1916).

In 1913 he made his debut in print. Five poems ("February ...", "Today we will fulfill his sadness ...", "Twilight", "I am in a deaf thought about myself ..." and "Like bronze ash brazier ...") were included in the almanac "Lyric", the first book of the publishing house of the same name .

The Almanac was published in April with a circulation of 300 copies, and a month later, Pasternak graduated from the university, submitting a work on Cohen's theoretical philosophy as a candidate essay. It is noteworthy that Pasternak never showed up for his diploma, and it is still kept in the archives of Moscow University.

At the end of the same year, the first book of his poems, Twin in the Clouds, was published. The book went almost unnoticed. The few reviews were mostly critical. It was only in Bryusov's review article that Pasternak's book was mentioned quite favorably. Pasternak carried the feeling of gratitude to Bryusov through his whole life.

The First World War began, and Pasternak decided to sign up as a volunteer, but he was dissuaded by Sergei Listopad, the son of the philosopher Lev Shestov, who arrived from the front for a short time. With "sober positivity" he told him about the war, warning that Pasternak "will find there something directly opposite to what he expects to see." Sergey Listopad died in the first battle upon his return to the position. In Moscow, he left a bride, Elena Vinograd, to whom, a few years later, Pasternak would dedicate a book of wonderful love lyrics, My Sister, Life. However, already in the book “Over the Barriers”, published in 1916, Pasternak declared himself as a fully accomplished poet. Here, for the first time, a poetic declaration was made, which Pasternak followed throughout his life:

For six months, Pasternak experienced the whole gamut of feelings that accompanies love dramas: from hope for reciprocity and a passionate desire for intimacy to complete despair due to the irresistible coldness and alienation of his beloved.

The lyrical diary of this story was the book of poems "My sister, life." In it, as the poet wrote, they found the expression “not at all modern sides of poetry”: “... it became completely indifferent to me what the name of the force that gave the book was, because it was immeasurably larger than me and poetic concepts,

"Winter Night" B. Pasternak

Melo, melo all over the earth
To all limits.
The candle burned on the table
The candle was burning.

Like a swarm of midges in summer
Flying into the flame
Flakes flew from the yard
to the window frame.

Snowstorm sculpted on glass
Circles and arrows.
The candle burned on the table
The candle was burning.

On the illuminated ceiling
The shadows lay
Crossed arms, crossed legs,
Crossing fates.

And two shoes fell
With a knock on the floor.
And wax with tears from the night light
Drip on the dress.

And everything was lost in the snow haze
Gray and white.
The candle burned on the table
The candle was burning.

The candle blew from the corner,
And the heat of temptation
Raised like an angel two wings
Crosswise.

Melo all month in February,
And every now and then
The candle burned on the table
The candle was burning.

Boris Pasternak is rightfully considered one of the brightest Russian poets and writers of the 20th century. It was he who came up with the idea to combine prose and poetry in one work, which caused a flurry of criticism from contemporaries, but was duly appreciated by descendants.

We are talking, in particular, about the famous novel "Doctor Zhivago", the last part of which is devoted to the poems of the protagonist. The fact that Yuri Zhivalo is a subtle lyricist and a lover of rhyming phrases, the reader will learn in the first chapters of the novel. However, Boris Pasternak tries not to distract readers with lyrical digressions, so he decides to combine all of Yuri Zhivago's poems into a separate collection.

The first poem attributed to the authorship of the protagonist is called "Winter Night". Later, it was often published as an independent literary work called "The Candle" and was even set to music, adding to the repertoire of such performers as the pop queen Alla Pugacheva and the ex-leader of the Gorky Park group Nikolai Noskov.

Boris Pasternak worked on the novel Doctor Zhivago for 10 years, from 1945 to 1955. Therefore, it is already impossible to establish exactly when the poem “Winter Night” was written. Although some researchers of Pasternak's work claim that the immortal lines were born during the war, which their author spent in evacuation, having lived for more than a year in the city of Chistopol. However, given the style of writing and the maturity of thoughts, critics are inclined to believe that the poem was nevertheless created shortly before the end of work on the novel, when Boris Pasternak, like the main character, already had a premonition of his death.

It is the theme of death and life that is the key moment of the poem “Winter Night”. It should not be taken literally, but should be read between the lines, since each quatrain is a vivid metaphor, so contrasting and memorable that it gives the poem an amazing grace. Considering the "Winter Night" in the context of the struggle for survival, one can easily guess that the blizzard, the February cold and the wind symbolize death. And the flame of the candle, uneven and barely glowing, is synonymous with life, which leaves not only the terminally ill doctor Zhivago, but also Boris Pasternak himself.

In favor of the version that the poem was written in 1954-55 is also evidenced by the fact that in 1952 Boris Pasternak experienced his first heart attack, having experienced from his own experience what it means to be between life and death. However, it is possible that, possessing the gift of foresight, Pasternak in "Winter Night" predicted to himself not only physical, but also creative death. And he turned out to be right, because after the publication of the novel “Doctor Zhivago” abroad and the award of the “Nobel Prize” to the work, the famous writer was persecuted. He stopped publishing and was expelled from the Writers' Union of the USSR. Therefore, the only source of livelihood for parsnips during this period was literary translations, which still remained in demand and fairly well paid.

The author himself wrote letters several times addressed to the Secretary General of the CPSU Nikita Khrushchev, trying to convince the head of state of his political reliability, but this did not help. Moreover, Pasternak's opponents appealed not to the novel itself as a whole, but to its poetic part, and, in particular, to "Winter Night", calling the poem an example of decadence, decadence and vulgarity.

Only a few decades later, when in 1988 the novel Doctor Zhivago was first published in the USSR, the poem Winter Night was recognized as one of the most successful and heartfelt works of love lyrics written by Boris Pasternak.

The first poem attributed to the authorship of the protagonist is called "Winter Night". Later, it was often published as an independent literary work called "Candle" and was even set to music, adding to the repertoire of Alla Pugacheva and ex-leader of the Gorky Park group Nikolai Noskov.

It is the theme of death and life that is the key moment of the poem "Winter Night". It should not be taken literally, but should be read between the lines, since each quatrain is a vivid metaphor, so contrasting and memorable that it gives the poem an amazing grace. Considering the "Winter Night" in the context of the struggle for survival, one can easily guess that the blizzard, the February cold and the wind symbolize death. And the flame of the candle, uneven and barely glowing, is synonymous with life, which leaves not only the terminally ill doctor Zhivago, but also Boris Pasternak himself.

"Winter night". B. Pasternak

Melo, melo all over the earth
To all limits.
The candle burned on the table
The candle was burning.

Like a swarm of midges in summer
Flying into the flame
Flakes flew from the yard
to the window frame.

Snowstorm sculpted on glass
Circles and arrows.
The candle burned on the table
The candle was burning.

On the illuminated ceiling
The shadows lay
Crossed arms, crossed legs,
Crossing fates.

And two shoes fell
With a knock on the floor.
And wax with tears from the night light
Drip on the dress.

And everything was lost in the snow haze
Gray and white.
The candle burned on the table
The candle was burning.

The candle blew from the corner,
And the heat of temptation
Raised like an angel two wings
Crosswise.

Melo all month in February,
And every now and then
The candle burned on the table
The candle was burning.