Boris Pasternak, Russian poetry, Russian History, Russian Revolution

Kevin Platt () and Konstantin Polivanov ()
Additional contact information
Kevin Platt: University of Pennsylvania
Konstantin Polivanov: National Research University Higher School of Economics

HSE Working papers from National Research University Higher School of Economics

Abstract: The relationship between the individual and historical processes was one of Boris Pasternak’s persistent and central concerns, from his earliest lyrics, to his experiments with long-form poems and prose at mid-career, to his late masterwork, the novel Doktor Zhivago (Doctor Zhivago). Pasternak’s oeuvre poses the questions of what the lyric poet can say about history, and how to say it. Among his earliest, most complex and perhaps least critically understood attempts to answer these questions is the 1920-23 poetic cycle “Bolezn'” (“Illness”). In particular, the third poem of this cycle, “Mozhet stat'sia tak, mozhet inache” (“It can happen like that, or other¬wise”), is among Pasternak’s most dense and enigmatic works. To our mind, it also contains the central keys to reading the cycle “Bolezn'” and to Pasternak’s earliest attempts to make lyric sense of historical experience. The present article is an attempt to read this poem, the cycle that contains it, and through this, the counterintuitive potential of the lyric mode as an instrument for historical thought. Drawing on an examination of the construction of the poem and its web of allusions to Russian and world literature, as well as to the contexts of Pasternak’s biography, as well as recent work on lyric and avant-garde temporality, the article describes “Mozhet stat'sia tak, mozhet inache” as an evocation of the complex fabric of temporal linkages binding Russian culture together at a moment when the temporal sequence itself had been upended in what Pasternak envisioned as a “purga” (“blizzard”) of revolutionary transformation.

Keywords: Boris Pasternak; Russian poetry; Russian History; Russian Revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in WP BRP Series: Literary Studies / LS, March 2015, pages 1-23

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hig:wpaper:14/ls/2015

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HSE Working papers from National Research University Higher School of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Shamil Abdulaev () and Shamil Abdulaev ().