Boris Pasternak

He married Evgeniya Lurye in 1922.

He got involved in a relationship with Zinaida Neigauz in 1932 and later both of them divorced their respective spouses to marry each other.

He had two sons, Evgenii and Leonid.

He was born on 10 February, 1890 (Old Style, 29 January) in Moscow, Russia, in an affluent Russian Jewish family to Leonid Pasternak and Rosa Kaufman as one of their four children.

His father was a Post-Impressionist painter and professor at the ‘Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture’ and his mother was a concert pianist.

His parents were involved in the Tolstoyan Movement. His father created several illustrations for novelist Tolstoy’s books. Tolstoy was a family friend and when Tolstoy escaped home and finally died, Leonid Pasternak along with Boris went to see Tolstoy and created a drawing of the novelist on his deathbed.

Many renowned personalities including philosophers, composer and pianists, poets and novelists visited the Pasternak's household regularly. Some of them were Alexander Scriabin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Lev Shestov.

He began his academic life in a German Gymnasium in Moscow. Inspired by composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin, he joined the ‘Moscow Conservatory’ in 1904 and studied musical composition till 1910.

Though few of his poetry collections including ‘Twin in the Clouds’ (1914), ‘Over the Barriers’ (1916) and ‘Themes and Variations’ (1917) were published, success and recognition eluded him.

He became romantically involved with Ida Wissotzkaya who belonged to a family of wealthy tea merchants. He met her in 1912 in Marburg. When the damsel turned down his marriage proposal due to family pressure, he expressed his emotions in the 1917 poem, ‘Marburg’.

At the time of the First World War, he joined a chemical factory in Vsevolodovo-Vilve and taught as well. When the Russian Revolution of 1917 ended, unlike his other family members, he chose to stay back in Russia and joined the library of the Soviet commissariat of education.

He penned down some Hermetic pieces that included the lyrical masterpiece, ‘Rupture’ in 1921.

His book of poetry collections, ‘My Sister, Life’ was published in 1922. It not only established him as one of the prominent poets of the Russian language, but also made him a new role model among aspiring poets. His revolutionary works in the collection reoriented the poetry of many others.

His novel, ‘Doctor Zhivago’ garnered widespread success internationally and owing to its huge popularity and public demand it was swiftly translated and published in English by Manya Harari and Max Hayward and released in August 1958. The English version of the novel charted at the top of the bestseller list of ‘The New York Times’ for twenty six weeks during 1958 to 1959.