It was partly the war, the revolution did the rest. The war was an artificial break in life-- as if life could be put off for a time-- what nonsense! The revolution broke out willy-nilly like a sigh suppressed too long. Everyone was revived, reborn, changed, transformed. You might say that everyone has been through two revolutions-- his own, personal revolution as well as the general one. It seems to me that socialism is the sea, and all these separate streams, these private, individual revolutions, are flowing into it-- the sea of life, the sea of spontaneity. I said life, but I mean life as you see it in a great picture, transformed by genius, creatively enriched. Only now people have decided to experience it not in books and pictures, but in themselves, not as an abstraction but in practice.

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About Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak was a 19th-century Russian and soviet writer. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, and literary translator. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Art — Creativity, expression, and the role of art in society
  • Beauty — Appreciating aesthetics, grace, and the sublime
  • History — Lessons from the past and the arc of human civilisation
  • Life — Reflections on the meaning, challenges, and beauty of life

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