Pasternak, Boris

Pasternak, Boris (1890–1960),
Russian novelist, poet, and translator. Unable to publish his own poetry under the tyrant Stalin, he became the official translator of Shakespeare into Russian. His Gamlet (Hamlet) and Korol Lir (King Lear) were used in films by Kozintsev. A poem linking Hamlet and Christ is the first of the hero's poems printed at the end of his banned novel Doctor Zhivago (1958).

Tom Matheson