In the following excerpt, Mossman outlines Pasternak's "prose vision, " discussing thematic and stylistic aspects of Pasternak's short fiction. Mossman notes in particular Pasternak's focus on history, the individual, causality, estrangement, and the relationship between art and reality.

In the essay below, which was originally published in German in 1935, Jakobson delineates how Pasternak's poetic disposition affected his prose works, lending insight into Pasternak's short fiction. Jakobson concludes, "Pasternak's prose is the characteristic prose of a poet in a great age of poetry."

In the excerpt below, in which he discusses stylistic and thematic aspects of Pasternak's short fiction, Gifford claims there is a strong thematic relationship between Pasternak's verse and fiction, and that this fiction is often characterized by a focus on artistic and childlike sensibilities.

Pasternak's claim for art is that of simplicity and clarity. The right choice of rhyme, rhythm, and meter, the right poetic techniques in general: all this he recognizes as of great importance. But of even greater consequences are the powers of language. (p. 56) The forces which control the artist cannot always be explained, and Pasternak's protagonist, Yury Zhivago, had experienced, in Varykino, that during the creative moment "the ascendancy is no longer with the artist or the state o...

In the essay below, Livingstone analyzes "The Childhood of Luvers "from a stylistic and thematic perspective, claiming that this tale is "the most mature and perfect of [Pasternak's early stories." Livingstone's views on Pasternak have developed considerably since the first publication of this essay; however, the position presented below is important to Pasternak scholarship.]

[Although] Pasternak's earliest images of life are feminine images, they are not associated with human incarnations of life, but rather with the personification of abstract forces: Nature …, the Life Force or Life …, both feminine nouns. Indeed, in [My Sister, Life], personification is a favorite device used to emphasize the poet's sense of personal involvement with Nature and Life. It comes as no surprise to find love poems and nature poems addressed to Life, for Pasternak...

In the essay below, Aucouturier analyzes Pasternak's focus on actors, the "legend of the poet, " and ideas associated with these professions in "The Mark of Apelles," A Tale, and "Letters from Tula."

Although the Zhivago poems of the American edition of Pasternak's novel are not numbered, it is interesting to note that "Fairy Tale" ("Skazka" in the original), central as it is to both the Appendix and the events of the novel, is the thirteenth of twenty-five poems left by the hero, Yuri Zhivago, as his testament. It is in fact at Lara's urging that the poet decides to record some of the work she has heard him recite. This takes place on the second and third night...

Whom does Pasternak address? Pasternak speaks to himself. One even wishes to say, in his own presence, as in the presence of a tree or a dog, that is in the presence of one who does not betray. The reader of Pasternak is prying, he is peeping. This is felt by everyone. The reader is peeping not into Pasternak's room (what is he doing there?) but under his very skin, under his ribs (what is being done to him there?). Try as he might (as Pasternak already did for many years) to come out of himself, to ...

According to Yevgeny Pasternak, the writer's son, the manuscript of "The Story of a Counter-Octave" came with a bundle of odd papers his father had asked him to burn for firewood in 1945. This unfinished story was written in 1913, at about the same time as "The Twin in Clouds," and it is a companion piece to the early prose works "The Sign of Apelles" (1915) and "Letters From Tula" (1918). It tells of a church organist, Amadeus Knaur, in a ficti...

Pasternak in The Blind Beauty has sought to adjust the native laws of Shakespearean drama to the Russian historical stage. The adaptation is evident in the central importance accorded theatricality in The Blind Beauty, in the weight given to political and historical parallelism, in the range of characters from noble to peasant, in the themes of genealogical taint, institutional corruption, unchecked violence and predetermined restraints on freedom of action. It is all the more evident the closer one looks a...