A Safe-Conduct (Masterplots II: Nonfiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Boris Pasternak
- First Published: 1931
- Type of Work: Autobiography
- Time of Work: 1900-1930
- Setting: The Soviet Union
- Principal Characters: Boris Pasternak, Rainer Maria Rilke, Aleksandr Scriabin, Hermann Cohen, An unnamed Woman, Vladimir Mayakovsky
- Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Self-discovery, Memory, Art or artists, Poetry or poets, Creative process, Soviet Union or Soviets
Form and Content
The death by suicide of Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1930, partly a result of that poet’s deep disillusionment with the changes in Soviet society and literature at the rise of Joseph Stalin, precipitated a “second birth” in the artistic activity of Boris Pasternak. Begun before Maykovsky’s death, A Safe-Conduct is the poet’s first autobiography, written when he was under forty. This prose work is an assessment of formative influences on his work as he attempts a new approach to his poetry.
Pasternak said he conceived of the work as...
[The entire page is 2757 words long]
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