SOURCE: "The Childhood of Luvers: An Early Story of Pasternak's," in Southern Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1963, pp. 74-84.

In the essay below, Livingstone analyzes "The Childhood of Luvers "from a stylistic and thematic perspective, claiming that this tale is "the most mature and perfect of [Pasternak's early stories." Livingstone's views on Pasternak have developed considerably since the first publication of this essay; however, the position presented below is important to Pasternak scholarship.]

'The Childhood of Luvers' was written in 1917 but, like nearly all of Pasternak's early work, it shows no sign of the political and social upheavals of that year in Russia. Pasternak had been working in factory towns in the Urals and there are some fine descriptions of the life and landscape there: this is the only obvious reflection in the story of his actual circumstances.

It is almost the only one of Pasternak's early prose works which...