The Russian poet, novelist, and translator Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960) was the foremost writer of the Soviet period. He constantly endeavored to shape the means of artistic expression to the ends of his integrity and concern for mankind.

Boris Pasternak was born on Feb. 10, 1890, in Moscow. His parents and their friends provided an artistic, musical, and literary environment that nurtured Pasternak's creative aspirations. His father, Leonid O. Pasternak, was a prominent painter of the naturalist school, and his mother, Rosa F. Kaufman, was an accomplished concert pianist. Music was Pasternak's first inclination. Under the tutelage of Aleksandr Scriabin, he began to study musical composition at the age of 13. Pasternak soon abandoned music for philosophy. In 1909 he enrolled as a student at the philosophy faculty of Moscow University. Inspired by the thinking of the German philosopher Hermann Cohen of Marburg University, Pasternak traveled to Marburg in 1912 for the summer...