Russian writer and translator (1890-1960) whose novel Doctor Zhivago takes a place among the central works of twentieth-century literature. ALS in English, signed “B. Pasternak,” one page both sides, 8 x 10, May 30, 1959. Handwritten letter to "Miss De Cruz," in part: "Have I not answered your former letter? A lot of my writing must have gone lost but it may be also that unfortunately I omitted to reply you for lack of time…I warmly thank you for the generosity and greatness of soul you put in your flattering praises to me. You oblige me enormously, I am touched beyond measure.
'The Last Summer' (in Penguin Books?) is one of the shapeless, fragmentary unripe pieces of prose I wrote in the late twenties, without much purport, without beginning and end. The chief merit of 'Dr. Zh.' lay exactly in the succeeded overcoming of the mannerisms and incompleteness of those modern experiments and attempts of myself and of others, that deprived our best, too refined and too detailed writings of a more general value and meaning. 'The Last Summer,' one of my early failures will disappoint you. It isn't my fault that after the novel has thrown distinction on me, publishers fell on all it was to be found of written by me to have it translated and printed.
The calamity is that whole decades (not less than thirty years in sum) I have off in translating Goethe, Shakespeare, Schiller, the Hungarian poet Petofi, Georgian poetry…endless poets, playwrights, Kleist, etc. etc. There is very little or almost nothing of my original writings (except the recent ones, which are so scandalously few in number and size) that would be worth the trouble to be found, translated, offered and read. Isn't it a heavy tragedy of my fate? Yes, but this tragedy is so closely interwoven with all sorts of events and conditions of my time! There was no choice on hand." In fine condition, with tiny fold splits to edges and some dampstaining to one corner. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope, addressed in Pasternak's hand, and incorporating his signature (in Cyrillic) in the return address.
Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, one year after the publication of Doctor Zhivago, and his seminal novel is recognized as one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century.
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