Lara
Page 33
‘I begged Marina’: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 344.
‘We knew that the end’: Author interview Irina Emelianova.
‘CONDITION UNCHANGED’: Slater (ed.), Family Correspondence, pp. 417–18.
‘27th May 1960, MOSCOW’: ibid., p. 418.
‘He complained how hard it was’: Boris Pasternak, Biographical Album, p. 395.
‘On the day of his death’: Author interview Natasha Pasternak.
‘Everything I possess of value’: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 415.
‘Lydia, that’s good’: Josephine Pasternak, Indefinability: An Essay in the Philosophy of Cognition, Museum Tusculanum Press, 1999, p. ix.
‘He is dead,’ Marfa said: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 348.
‘Farewell, great span’: extract from Pasternak poem ‘August’ inscribed on Pasternak gravestone in Wolvercote cemetery, Oxford.
‘Yes, it had all come true’: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 348.
‘So here we are again: Doctor Zhivago, p. 448.
‘Goodbye, Lara, until we meet’: ibid., p. 404.
‘[Mama] was a lot calmer’: Emelianova, Légendes, p. 169.
‘The death of Pasternak’: Finn and Couvée, Zhivago Affair, p. 234.
‘The board of the Literary Fund’: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 350.
‘From the early morning’: Boris Pasternak, Fifty Poems, p. 23.
Lydia, who finally got her visa: Lydia was granted a visa two days after Boris died. Forty years after she left she travelled back to Russia, and slept that night in the bed where her beloved brother had died.
‘What Pasternak’s views’: Clowes (ed.), Critical Companion, p. 43.
‘People began passing flowers’: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 354.
‘Sometimes death strips the face’: Emelianova, Légendes, p. 174.
‘There is no death’: Boris Pasternak, Biographical Album, p. 397.
‘The place chosen for the burial’: Gladkov, Meetings with Pasternak, pp. 179–81.
‘The procession with the coffin’: ibid.
‘We have come to bid farewell’: Mallac, Boris Pasternak, p. 271.
‘a thousand pairs of lips’: Finn and Couvée, Zhivago Affair, p. 241.
‘The noise is stilled’: Doctor Zhivago, p. 467.
‘And suddenly the dazed’: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 356.
‘For a moment she stood still’: Doctor Zhivago, pp. 446–7.
An official came forward: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 357.
A couple of days after the funeral: ibid., pp. 359–60.
‘It was clear that they had decided’: Emelianova, Légendes, p. 214.
‘Pasternak was too outstanding a figure’: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 366.
‘an honest poet’: ibid., p. 366.
‘Obviously justice was less important’: Newsweek, 30 Jan 1961.
‘You have probably never loved a woman’: Ivinskaya, Captive, p. 366.
‘The point is that Pasternak’: ibid., p. 370.
‘Not only was the case itself a sham’: ibid., p. 376.
‘The truth was that Pasternak’: from the HarperCollins Publishers archives.
‘You have always hated Pasternak’: ibid.
They were both sent: Feltrinelli, Senior Service, p. 246.
‘I still cannot think without horror’: Ivinskaya, Captive, pp. 382–3.
‘One day Lara went out’: Doctor Zhivago, p. 449.
EPILOGUE: THINK OF ME THEN
‘dying slowly right in front of my eyes’: Finn and Couvée, Zhivago Affair, p. 257.
‘Had Boris Pasternak’: ibid., p. 253.
‘France has helped repair’: Author interview Irina Emelianova.
‘left a bad aftertaste’: Mallac, Boris Pasternak, p. 235.
‘It was not out of necessity’: Doctor Zhivago, p. 447.
‘Many years’: translation from the German original, reproduced in facsimile in Gerd Ruge, Pasternak, Munich, 1958, p. 125.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnes, Christopher, Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography, Volume 2, 1928–1960, Cambridge University Press, 1998
Clowes, Edith W. (ed.), Doctor Zhivago, A Critical Companion, Northwestern University Press, 1995
Cornwell, Neil, Pasternak’s Novel: Perspectives on ‘Doctor Zhivago’, Department of Russian Studies, Keele University, 1986
Emelianova, Irina, Légendes de la rue Potapov, Fayard, 1997
Feltrinelli, Carlo, Senior Service: A Story of Riches, Revolution and Violent Death, Granta Books, 2013
Finn, Peter, and Petra Couvée, The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book, Harvill Secker, 2014
Gladkov, Alexander, Meetings with Pasternak, Collins and Harvill Press, 1977
Ivinskaya, Olga, A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak, Collins Harvill, 1978
Mallac, Guy de, Boris Pasternak: His Life and Art, University of Oklahoma, 1981
Mancosu, Paolo, Inside the Zhivago Storm: The Editorial Adventures of Pasternak’s Masterpiece, Milan, Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 2013
—Smugglers, Rebels, Pirates: Itineraries in the Publishing History of Doctor Zhivago, Hoover Institution Press, 2015
Montefiore, Simon Sebag, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003
Museum Guidebook: Museum of Private Collections, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, 2004
Pasternak, Alexander, A Vanished Present, Oxford University Press, 1984
Pasternak, Boris, Biographical Album, Moscow, Gamma Press, 2007
—Doctor Zhivago, translated by Max Hayward & Manya Harari, Harvill Press, 1996
—An Essay in Autobiography, Collins and Harvill Press, 1959
—Family Correspondence 1921–1960, translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater, Hoover Institution Press, 2010
—Fifty Poems, translated and with an introduction by Lydia Pasternak Slater, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1963
—The Last Summer, Penguin Books, 1959
—Zhenia’s Childhood, Allison & Busby Ltd, 1982
Pasternak, Evgeny, Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years 1930–1960, Collins Harvill, 1990
Pasternak, Josephine, Indefinability: An Essay in the Philosophy of Cognition, introduction by Michael Slater, Museum Tusculanum Press, 1999
—Tightrope Walking: A Memoir, Slavica Publishers, 2005
Pasternak, Leonid, Memoirs of Leonid Pasternak, translated by Jennifer Bradshaw, with an introduction by Josephine Pasternak, Quartet Books, 1982
www.pasternakbydangelo.com
Slater, Maya (ed.), Boris Pasternak: Family Correspondence 1921–1960, translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater, Hoover Institution Press, 2010
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND NOTE ON SOURCES
Two events precipitated my initial interest in Boris and Olga’s love story. The first, in 1990, was when I wanted to progress my fledgling career in journalism. To commemorate the centenary of Pasternak’s birth, I pitched an article to the Spectator magazine, in which I would reveal the real Lara. Knowing embarrassingly little about my family history, I then went to visit my ninety-year-old grandmother, Josephine Pasternak, in her Oxford home. Fifty-five years after she saw her brother Boris for the last time, she vividly brought alive to me that final meeting with him. She died three years later. Josephine also introduced me to her friend, Sir Isaiah Berlin. He invited me to lunch, also in Oxford, and I felt honoured to listen to his fascinating recollections of Boris and the saga surrounding the publication of Doctor Zhivago.
When Olga Ivinskaya died in Moscow in 1995, the London Evening Standard asked me to research and write her obituary. Having filed the article, I was left with a great feeling of sadness, moved by her story and the haunting sense that there was so much left unsaid about her love affair with Boris.
Fifteen years later I knew that I wanted, and was ready, to write Lara. In February 2010 I travelled to Moscow with my father, where Evgeny Pasternak, aged eighty-seven, and his wife, Elena, entertained us. Over homemade lemon digestif, Evgeny patient
ly agreed to answer my questions about his father, even though he had written extensively on the subject during his life. As I left he presented me with an amazing ‘Biographical Album’ – a compilation of Boris’s life in words, letters and photographs – which their son, Petr, had complied and had privately published, and to which Evgeny had contributed an introductory essay. Later, at Peredelkino, Natasha Pasternak, who was married to Boris’s son Leonid, spoke at great length about her father-in-law, his death, and the difficulties for Olga at the end of her life. These are precious memories for me because both Natasha and Evgeny have since died.
Two months after my trip to Moscow, I went to Stanford University in California. The Hoover Institution, which houses all the archive papers donated by my grandmother, Josephine Pasternak, was hosting an international symposium entitled ‘The Pasternak Family: Surviving the Storms’. I was invited to give a talk on ‘Josephine Pasternak and her Last Meeting with Boris: Berlin 1935’. It was wonderful to meet so many other family members here, especially Petr Pasternak, Boris’s grandson. Also, Jacqueline de Proyart, who met regularly with Boris and translated Zhivago into French. The conference coincided with the book launch of Boris Pasternak, Family Correspondence 1921–1960 (edited by Maya Slater), the first English translation of Boris’s letters to his family by his nephew, Nicolas Pasternak Slater. I am indebted to Nicolas, as I have drawn heavily on these letters in Lara and without them the book would be far poorer. They are a beautifully written and moving account of the writer’s life during the forty-two-year separation from his family.
I wish that I had met Olga Ivinskaya, but I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have spent time with Irina Kosovoi, née Emelianova, Olga’s daughter. At first, she was reticent about meeting me. She had already written her own account in Légendes de la rue Potapov and was sceptical of my motives in writing Lara. As a Pasternak, she did not expect me to be sympathetic to her mother. We met twice in Paris and my time spent interviewing her in her apartment is especially meaningful to me. Both Légendes de la rue Potapov and her mother’s memoir, A Captive of Time, have been principal sources of my research.
Another fascinating and valuable source was the fifteen files that the archivist at HarperCollins Publishers found in their Glasgow vaults marked ‘Pasternak Correspondence’. Unpublished, these include copies of all the correspondence surrounding the publication of Doctor Zhivago in the UK, between the then Collins Publishers and Pantheon Books in the US. There are also many detailed memos and accounts of efforts to free Olga once she was interned in the gulag for the second time, in the 1960s.
My research also took me to Milan, where Carlo Feltrinelli showed me around the exceptional Feltrinelli Foundation. It was an emotional and thrilling moment when he took the original manuscript of Doctor Zhivago out of a vault and allowed me to look at it. I felt touched by the care with which the Feltrinelli Foundation has archived the correspondence between Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and Boris Pasternak. These two courageous men had much in common and although they never met, across their many letters their affection for each other is laid bare.
Finally, I feel tremendously blessed and am appreciative of the following who have given so much love, time, help, wisdom, expertise and support during the research and writing of Lara. My heartfelt gratitude to all:
Audrey Pasternak, Charles Pasternak, Daisy Pasternak, Josephine Pasternak, Irina Kosovoi, Evgeny Pasternak, Natasha Pasternak, Carlo Feltrinelli, Eugenie Furniss, Arabella Pike, Kate Johnson, Laura Brooke, Lottie Fyfe, Dawn Sinclair, Liz Trubridge, Michael Engler, Betsy Bernardaud, Linda Bernard, Marlene Brand-Meyer, Rafaella de Angelis, Richard Cohen, Ross Clarke, Tina Campbell, Jane Stratton, Jenny Parrot, Neil Cornwell, Minna Fry, Ala Osmond, Daisy Finer, Lucy Cleland, Mark Palmer, Anna Dickinson, Victoria Fuller, Lara Fares, Yvonne Williams, Judith Osborne, Richard Furgerson, Monika Barton, Katya Pilutsky and Linda Matthews-Denham.
PICTURE SECTION
l-r: Rosalia, Boris, Leonid and Alexander in the dining room of their Moscow apartment, 1905.
l-r: Boris, Leonid and Alexander, with Lydia and Josephine in front, 1906.
l-r: Leonid, Lydia, Rosalia, Josephine, an unknown friend and Boris in 1916 at Molodi, the estate where they spent their summers before the Revolution.
Boris with his first wife Evgenia and their son Evgeny, Moscow, 1924. (© Mondadori Portfolio/Getty)
Portrait, Tolstoy against a Stormy Sky, painted by Leonid. Yasnaya Polyana, 1901.
Frederick, Evgeny, Evgenia and Josephine on a lake near Munich, 1931. (Courtesy of the Estate of Boris Pasternak)
Leonid and Rosalia with (1-r) Charles and Helen Pasternak and Evgeny, at a picnic in the German countryside, 1931. (Courtesy of the Estate of Boris Pasternak)
Leonid’s drawing of his grandson Charles, aged 2, Munich, 1932.
Olga aged 25, Moscow, 1937.
Olga and her baby daughter Irina, Moscow, 1939.
Olga aged 30, Moscow, 1942.
Irina with her grandmother Maria and grandfather Dimitri Kostko on the day Maria was sent to the gulag, Moscow, 1943.
Olga’s release papers from the gulag, 4 May 1953.
Boris's dacha at Peredelkino, taken by the author.
Boris and Irina at Peredelkino, 1957.
Olga’s ‘glass house’: her first rental on the shores of Lake Izmalkovo where she spent her happiest summer of 1955.
The bridge to the Little House across Lake Izmalkovo. The Little House is in the background.
Olga and Boris in the Little House, summer 1958.
Olga, Boris and Irina, Peredelkino, 1958. (© Ullstein Bild/Getty)
Boris reading the Nobel Prize telegram, with his wife Zinaida sitting on his left, and friend Nina Tabidze on his right. Peredelkino, 23 October 1958. (© Bettmann/Getty)
One of Boris’s last letters to Olga on 30 April 1960. Boris was ill, lying in bed, writing to Olga ‘in defiance of the doctor's orders’.
Boris leaning out of the window in Peredelkino after renouncing the Nobel Prize, 1958.
Boris’s son Leonid, Charles Pasternak and Rosa, the wife of Alexander Pasternak’s son Fedia, at Alexander Pasternak’s dacha, Peredelkino, 1961.
The funeral procession, Peredelkino, 2 June 1960.
Olga at the funeral, 2 June 1960.
Olga just before her second arrest and deportation, 1960.
Olga’s identification photograph taken at the Lubyanka during her second incarceration in 1960.
INDEX
The page numbers in this index relate to the printed version of this book; they do not match the pages of your ebook. You can use your ebook reader’s search tool to find a specific word or passage.
Abakumov, Viktor 91–3, 94, 109, 118
Afinogenov, A. N. 51
Afron, Adriana 204
Akhmatova, Anna 55–6, 72
Altman, Georges 214
Antokolsky, Pavel 1
Asmus, Irina 38
Asmus, Valentin 38, 246–7
Astapovo 22
Auden, W. H. xxiv, 28
Austria 31
Bancarella Prize 216
Bannikov, Nikolai 156–7
Baranovich, Marina 125, 126
Bedford Publishing Company, New York 180
Beek, Ruud van der 181
Berlin (city) xvii, 26, 27, 30, 35
Berlin, Isaiah 43, 94, 162–3
Bianchi, Natasha 1
Big House, Peredelkino 143, 144–5, 156, 218, 230, 233, 235–7, 241, 244
Bloch, Ernst 28
Bogatyrev, Konstantin 236
Bolsheviks (or ‘Reds’) 24, 28, 160
Bolt, Robert xxi
Bonham Carter, Mark 178
Borodkina, Militsa 43
Bowra, Maurice 163, 179, 203
Brecht, Bertolt 28
Brik, Lili 206
Brik, Osip 206
Brown, Anthony 220
Brussels World’s Fair (Expo ’58) 181, 182
Buinaya (prisoner at Potma) 112–13, 114
>
Bukharin, Nikolai 47–8, 49
BVD (Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst) (Dutch intelligence service) 181
Cambridge 4
Camus, Albert 185, 214
Carver, David 252
Catherine II 23
Caucasus 45–6
Central Committee of the Communist Party 172, 199, 207–11, 220
Central Committee Culture Department 160, 161
Chaliapin, Feodor 27
Cherdyn 48
Chopin, Frédéric 244
E-minor Concerto 39
Marche funèbre 245
Christie, Julie xxi, xxiv
Chukovski, Nicolai 1
Chukovsky, Kornei 49, 186, 187, 188
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) 179–82
Cini, Walter 181
Cocteau, Jean 28
Collins (publisher) 178
Collins Harvill (publisher) 130
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) 160
Congress for the Defence of Culture (1935) 28
Conrad, Joseph 36
Corriere della Sera 173
CPSU see Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Crimea 23
Culture and Life 99
Daily Mail 220
D’Angelo, Giulietta 158
D’Angelo, Sergio 231
acts as agent for Feltrinelli 150–3, 158, 164–5
visits Boris at Peredelkino 151–3, 159, 164–5