Why do I like Pasternak? His father Leonid Pasternak did a painting of his son age 20 that makes me cry. A father's proud and poetic depiction of a young man with an intense future ahead of him. February captures some of this. I believe Pasternak's story should be made into a film. It's so incredible.
Pasternak (1890 – 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. His popular translations include the work of Shakespeare. He is the author of Doctor Zhivago (1957), a novel that takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. Growing up, his dad was a post impressionist painter and his mother was a concert pianist. The novelist Leo Tolstoy was a close family friend.
During the Communist purge, Stalin is said to have crossed Pasternak's name off an execution list, reportedly declaring, "Do not touch this cloud dweller" (or, in another version, "Leave that holy fool alone!").
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February
Get the ink and weep
Write in convulsions
While the white snow burns and rumbles
Into black spring
Catch a cab for coins
Through the bell chimes and the clank of wheels
To where the rain is pouring down
Louder than a passion of ink and tears
Where the crows fall in their thousands
Like blackened pears from the skies
Into puddles of rain
To soak up sorrow
From the wells of eyes
The black shows through
And the wind cries
The more random, the more true
Poems are wrought from sighs
BORIS PASTERNAK translated by Christian Furr