The Last Summer [antikvár]

introduction TO THE PENGUIN EDITION When, with the publicatíon of Doctor Zhivago in the West, and more particularly after the award to Boris Pasternak of the Nobel Prize in October 1958, his name became a household word, and the hysterical sensation-mongers of East and West made him the centre of a violent and ugly political campaign, they completely misunderstood and misinterpreted his book and its message. True, there was enough genuine recognition and scholarly appreciation too, but it was constantly being drowned by the unbearable buzz of the loudest and cheapest of professional bluebottles, whose aim in life it is to con vince their public of the myth that it appreci-ates only filth, money-talk, and scandal, and accordingly to feed it nothing else. How much all this hullaballoo must have hurt and astonished Pasternak is easy to understand if one remembers his own views on fame, on 'fireworks' and 'circus-smelT, and, in contrast, on 'silence, best of sounds on earth'. I think that the following extracts suíüciently illustrate his attitűdé: It is not seemly to be famous; Celebrity does not exalt To give your all - this is creation And not - to deafen and eclipse. How shameful, when you have no meaning To be on everybodys lips. . . k Into obscurity retiring Try your development to hide, As autumn mist on early momings Conceals the dreaming countryside.