And he said to it: “What good are you?
Is your stupor of any earthly use to me?
“I hunger and thirst, and you are a sterile blossom.
Meeting with you is more cheerless than with stone.
Oh, how galling you are and how ungifted!
Stay that way until the end of time.”
A shudder of condemnation ran down the tree,
Like a flash of lightning down a lightning rod,
And the fig tree was reduced to ashes.
If the leaves, the branches, roots, and trunk
Had found themselves a free moment at that time,
Nature’s laws might have managed to intervene.
But a miracle is a miracle, and a miracle is God.
When we’re perturbed, in the midst of our disorder,
It overtakes us on the instant, unawares.
21
The Earth
Spring comes barging loutishly
Into Moscow’s private houses.
Moths flutter behind the wardrobe
And crawl over the summer hats,
And fur coats are put away in trunks.
Pots of wallflowers and stock
Stand on the wooden mezzanines,
There’s a breath of freedom in the rooms,
And the garrets smell of dust.
And the street enjoys hobnobbing
With the nearsighted window frame,
And the white night and the sunset
Can’t help meeting by the river.
And in the corridor you can hear
What’s happening in the wide outdoors,
What April says to the dripping eaves
In a random conversation.
He can tell a thousand stories
About the woes of humankind,
And dawn feels chilly along the fences,
And draws it all out endlessly.
And that same mix of fire and fright
Outside and in our cozy dwellings,
And the air everywhere is not itself,
And the same transparent pussy willows,
And the same swelling of white buds
At the window and at the crossroads,
In the workshop and in the street.
Then why does the distance weep in mist,
And why does the humus smell so bitter?
In that precisely lies my calling,
So that the expanses won’t be bored,
So that beyond the city limits
The earth will not languish all alone.
It is for that my friends and I
Get together in early spring,
And our evenings are farewells,
Our little feasts are testaments,
So that the secret stream of suffering
Can lend warmth to the chill of being.
22
Evil Days
When in the last week
He was entering Jerusalem,
Thundering hosannas met him,
People ran after him with branches.
But the days grow more grim and menacing,
Love will not touch hearts.
Brows are knitted scornfully,
And now it’s the afterword, the end.
The sky lay over the courtyards
With all its leaden weight.
The Pharisees sought evidence,
Twisting before him like foxes.
And the dark powers of the temple
Hand him to the scum for judgment.
And with the same ardor as they praised him
Earlier, they curse him now.
The crowd from the lot next door
Peered in through the gates,
Jostling and shoving each other
As they waited for the outcome.
And a whisper crept through the neighbors,
And rumors came from all sides,
And childhood and the flight into Egypt
Were recalled now like a dream.
He remembered the majestic hillside
In the desert, and that height
From which Satan tempted him
With power over all the world.
And the marriage feast at Cana,
And the miracle that astonished the guests,
And the misty sea he walked on
To the boat, as over dry land.
And a gathering of the poor in a hovel,
And the descent into the dark cellar,
Where the candle died of fright
When the raised man stood up …
23
Magdalene
I
At nightfall my demon’s right here
In payment for my past.
Memories of depravity
Come and suck at my heart,
Of when, a slave of men’s fancies,
I was a bedeviled fool,
And the street was my only shelter.
A few minutes remain,
And then comes sepulchral silence.
But, before they pass,
Having reached the brink, I take
My life and smash it before you
Like an alabaster vessel.
Oh, where would I be now,
My teacher and my Savior,
If eternity had not been waiting
By night at the table for me,
Like a new client, lured
Into the nets of my profession?
But explain to me what sin means,
Death, hell, and flaming brimstone,
When, before the eyes of all,
I’ve grown into you like a graft on a tree
In my immeasurable anguish.
When I rest your feet, Jesus,
Upon my knees, it may be
That I am learning to embrace
The four-square beam of the cross
And, feeling faint, strain towards your body,
Preparing you for burial.
24
Magdalene
II
People are tidying up before the feast.
Away from all that fuss,
I wash your most pure feet
With myrrh from a little flask.
I feel for and do not find your sandals.
I can see nothing for my tears.
Loosened strands of hair
Fall over my eyes like a veil.
I rested your feet on my skirt
And poured tears over them, Jesus,
I wound them in a necklace of beads,
Buried them in the burnous of my hair.
I see the future in such detail
As if you had made it stop.
I am now able to predict
With a sybil’s prophetic clairvoyance.
Tomorrow the veil in the temple
Will fall, we will huddle in a circle
To one side, and the earth will sway underfoot,
Perhaps out of pity for me.
The ranks of the convoy will reform,
The cavalry will begin their departure.
Like a whirlwind in a storm, this cross
Will tear into the sky overhead.
I’ll throw myself at the foot of the crucifix,
Go numb and bite my lip.
For the embrace of all too many
You have spread your arms wide on the cross.
For whom on earth is there so much breadth,
So much torment and such power?
Are there so many souls and lives in the world?
So many villages, rivers, and groves?
But three such days will go by
And push me down into such emptiness,
That in this terrible interval
I’ll grow up to the Resurrection.
25
The Garden of Gethsemane
The bend of the road was lighted up
By the indifferent glitter of distant stars.
The road went around the Mount of Olives,
Down below it flowed the Kedron
.
The little meadow broke off halfway,
Beyond it the Milky Way began.
The gray, silvery olive trees tried
To step on air into the distance.
At the end was someone’s garden plot.
Leaving his disciples outside the wall,
He said, “My soul is sorrowful unto death,
Tarry here and watch with me.”
He renounced without a struggle,
As things merely borrowed for a time,
His miracle-working and omnipotence,
And was now like mortals, like us all.
Now night’s distance seemed the verge
Of annihilation and nonbeing.
The expanse of the universe was uninhabited,
And the garden only was the place for life.
And, peering into those dark gulfs,
Empty, without beginning or end,
And sweating blood, he prayed to his Father
That this cup of death might pass.
Having eased his mortal anguish with prayer,
He went back out. There, on the ground,
His disciples, overcome with sleep,
Lay about among the roadside weeds.
He woke them: “The Lord has granted you
To live in my days, but you lie sprawling.
The hour of the Son of Man has struck.
He will give himself into the hands of sinners.”
He had barely said it when, who knows from where,
A crowd of slaves and vagabonds appeared,
Torches, swords, and at their head—Judas,
With a treacherous kiss upon his lips.
Peter rushed the cutthroats with his sword
And lopped off the ear of one. He hears:
“Disputes can never be resolved with iron.
Put your sword back in its place, man.
“Could my Father not provide me
With hosts of winged legions? Then,
Having touched not a hair upon my head,
My enemies would scatter without a trace.
“But the book of life has reached a page
Dearer than all that’s sacred.
What has been written must now be fulfilled.
Then let it be fulfilled. Amen.
“For the course of the ages is like a parable,
And can catch fire in its course.
In the name of its awful grandeur, I shall go
In voluntary suffering to the grave.
“I shall go to the grave, and on the third day rise,
And, just as rafts float down a river,
To me for judgment, like a caravan of barges,
The centuries will come floating from the darkness.”
NOTES
The notes that follow are indebted to the commentaries by E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak in volume 4 of the Complete Collected Works in eleven volumes published by Slovo (Moscow, 2004). Biblical quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from the Revised Standard Version.
Book One
PART ONE
1. Memory Eternal: The chanted prayer of “Memory Eternal” (Vechnaya Pamyat), asking God to remember the deceased, concludes the Orthodox funeral or memorial service (panikhida) and the burial service. Pasternak places it here to introduce the central theme of the novel. Psalm 24:1 (“The earth is the Lord’s …”) and the prayer “With the souls of the righteous dead, give rest, O Savior, to the soul of thy servant” come at the end of the burial service.
2. The Protection: Dating events by church feasts was customary in Russia (as elsewhere) until the early twentieth century, and even later. Pasternak alternates throughout the novel between civil and religious calendars. The feast of the Protective Veil (or Protection) of the Mother of God falls on October 1. The Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian state until 1917, followed the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, which have a difference of thirteen days between them. Thus October 1 by the Julian calendar is October 14 by the Gregorian calendar, and the October revolution of 1917 actually broke out on November 7.
3. The Kazan Mother of God: This feast, which commemorates the miracle-working icon of the Virgin found in Kazan in 1579, is celebrated on July 8/21.
4. zemstvo: A local council for self-government introduced by the reforms of the emperor Alexander II in 1864.
5. Tolstoyism and revolution: “Tolstoyism,” an anti-state, anti-church, egalitarian social doctrine of the kingdom of God on earth, to be achieved by means of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance, was developed in the polemical writings of Leo Tolstoy and his disciples in the last decades of the nineteenth century. A number of revolutionary movements appeared during the same period in Russia, some more or less Marxist, others populist.
6. Soloviev: Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900) was a poet, philosopher, and literary critic. His work, of major importance in itself, also exerted a strong influence on the poetry of the Russian symbolists and the thinkers of the religious-philosophical revival in the early twentieth century.
7. the capitals: The old capital of Russia was Moscow; St. Petersburg, founded by the emperor Peter the Great in 1703, became the new capital and remained so until the 1917 revolution. Exclusion from both capitals was a disciplinary measure taken against untrustworthy intellectuals under the old regime and again under Stalin.
PART TWO
1. The war with Japan …: The Russo-Japanese War (February 10, 1904—September 5, 1905), fought for control of Manchuria and the seas around Korea and Japan, ended in the unexpected defeat of Russia at the hands of the Japanese. The Russian situation was made more difficult by increasing social unrest within the country. On January 22, 1905, which came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” the Orthodox priest Gapon led a large but peaceful procession to the imperial palace in Petersburg to present a petition asking for reforms in the government. The procession was fired upon and many people were killed. Further disturbances then sprang up all across the country and spread to the armed forces. In August 1905 the emperor Nicholas II allowed the formation of a State Duma (national assembly). But the Duma’s powers were so limited that it satisfied none of the protesting parties, and in October came a general strike, as a result of which the emperor was forced to sign the so-called October Manifesto, which laid the foundations for a constitutional monarchy. This satisfied the Constitutional Democratic (CD) Party and other liberals, but not the more radical parties.
2. Yusupka … Kasimov bride: It was common until recently for Tartars like Gimazetdin Galiullin to work as yard porters in Russian apartment blocks. Gimazetdin’s son Osip (Yusupka) will play an important role later on. The Kasimov Bride (1879) is a historical novel by Vsevolod Soloviev (1849–1903), brother of the philosopher (see part 1, note 6). In the fifteenth century, the town of Kasimov, now in Riazan province, was the capital of the Kasimov Tartar kingdom.
3. Wafangkou: At the battle of Wafangkou (June 14–15, 1904), the Russian forces of General Stackelberg, who was attempting to relieve Port Arthur, were roundly defeated by the Japanese under General Oku.
4. Your dear … boy: An altered quotation from Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades (1890), with a libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the story by Alexander Pushkin.
5. a manifesto: The October Manifesto of 1905 (see note 1 above).
6. a papakha: A tall hat, usually of lambskin and often with a flat top, originating in the Caucasus.
7. Gorky … Witte: Maxim Gorky (1868–1936), a major figure in Russian literature and in the radical politics of the time, was one of a group of writers who wrote to inform the chairman of the council of ministers, Count Sergei Witte (1849–1915), of the peaceful character of Father Gapon’s demonstration on January 22, 1905 (see note 1 above). Witte, who brilliantly negotiated the peace with Japan in September 1905, was also the author of the October Manifesto.
8. The Meaning … Sonata: Leo Tolstoy’s story The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), a study of sensuality and jealousy, is
a violent attack on the relations between the sexes in modern society. The Meaning of Love (1892–94), by the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev (see part 1, note 6), is an affirmation of the physical-spiritual union of sexual love.
9. fauns … ‘let’s be like the sun’: Vyvolochnov refers to some of the favorite motifs in fin de siècle poetry and book design. One such book was Let’s Be Like the Sun (1903), the best-known work of the symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942).
10. Lev Nikolaevich … Dostoevsky: In his polemical treatise What Is Art?, Tolstoy (Lev Nikolaevich, i.e., Leo) attacks the “all-confusing concept of beauty” in art, and replaces it with the notion of “the good.” The phrase “Beauty will save the world” is commonly but wrongly ascribed to Dostoevsky. In fact, it comes from Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot (1868), where it is attributed to the hero, Prince Myshkin, by Aglaya Epanchina. Vassily Rozanov (1856–1919), philosopher, diarist, and critic, was one of the major figures of the period leading up to the revolution. He was deeply influenced by Dostoevsky.
11. Faust … Hesiod’s hexameters: Faust, a monumental cosmic drama in two parts, is considered the masterwork of the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Part 1 was published in 1808 and part 2 in 1832. Pasternak translated the two parts of Faust between 1948 and 1953, in alternation with his work on Zhivago. The ancient Greek poet Hesiod, author of Works and Days and The Theogony, is thought to have lived in the later eighth century BC.
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