White Night
July 5, 2023The Linden Avenue
July 5, 2023The Wind (Four fragments on Blok)
1
The most influential of nitwits,
The sycophant toadies are used
To rule who should live and be lauded
And who should be dead and abused.
Thus no one, maybe, could be certain,
Is Pushkin a poet or not,
Without their elaborate theses
Explaining to us what is what.
But Blok is, thank Heaven, another,
A different matter for once.
He did not descend from Sinai
And did not accept us as sons.
Eternal and not manufactured,
Renowned not according to plan,
Outside schools and systems, he has not
Been foisted upon us by man.
Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. He is best known for his epic novel "Doctor Zhivago," which explores the life of a poet during the Russian Revolution and the Soviet era. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, but was forced to decline the award due to pressure from the Soviet government. Some of his other notable works include the poetry collections "My Sister, Life" and "Themes and Variations," as well as the plays "Aerial Ways" and "The Blind Beauty."