Definition of Poetry by Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak's "Definition of Poetry" is a poem included in his celebrated collection *My Sister, Life*, which is well-regarded among Russian readers. This poem is structured into four stanzas, each containing four lines composed with a rhythmic pattern of three anapestic feet. It presents seven vivid images that culminate in the evocative metaphor of poetry as "two nightingales dueling," suggesting that the act of writing poetry involves a dynamic struggle rather than mere intuition. Pasternak's approach blends solemnity with playfulness, utilizing repetition and contrasting images to explore the essence of poetry.
The poem's rhythm conveys weighty truths, but it can also lead to a sense of monotony, reflecting on the nature of artistic expression. Additionally, Pasternak's use of sound and wordplay challenges translation, as the connections between words often transcend their dictionary meanings and suggest deeper relationships. These linguistic nuances highlight the interconnectedness of nature and poetic inspiration, as seen in his imagery of a pea pod containing sap that symbolizes the tears of the universe. Overall, Pasternak's work invites readers to contemplate the profound and often mysterious relationship between language, nature, and art.
Definition of Poetry by Boris Pasternak
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: “Opredelenie poezii,” 1922 (collected in My Sister, Life, 1964)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
This poem appears in Pasternak’s My Sister, Life, a collection of poems that is among his most popular with Russian readers. It is placed at the beginning of a section of the book called “An Exercise in Philosophy,” but it has little in common with abstract thinking about art.
The outer form of “Definition of Poetry” is conventional: four four-line stanzas. Each line is made up of three anapestic feet, that is, two weakly accented syllables followed by a strongly accented one, as in the word “Montreal.” In the first eight lines of the poem, seven finely chiseled images are arranged in neat verses. At the middle of them, Pasternak sharpens a gentle, timeworn poetic image with the claim that poetry is “two nightingales dueling.” He seems to say that to write poetry is not just to record moments of one’s intuition. Instead, it is the struggle of two equals, a vision that sees new connections.
Pasternak’s methods are not always readily apparent in translation. The rhythm is symbolic in itself, but almost impossible to reflect accurately. To the Russian listener, this particular meter creates an impression of solemn pronouncements, of a finger regularly stabbing the paper while pointing out inescapable truths. It tends, after a time, toward monotony, as does all sententiousness. Pasternak plays a game with the high seriousness of his topic, at times enhancing the solemnity, such as in the repetitions of “it is,” at other times allowing the images to clash with the staid meter. Ambivalent feelings about his theme are hinged neatly at the very middle of the poem, where he concludes that poetry is “Figaro crashing like a hailstorm down from music stands and flutes into a flowerbed below.”
Translation creates another problem for Pasternak’s reader in that the presence of certain words in his poetry is not motivated by logical dictionary definitions. Instead, words appear because they share similar sounds with other words. This similarity suggested to Pasternak and many of his contemporaries that the things such similar words refer to must also be somehow related. The word for “peas” is connected in this way in the poem with the word for “being overgrown” and in turn to “deepness” and then “deafness.” Then the pea pods are opened, where poetry, now tears of the universe, is found. The Russian for “tears” and “universe” are related by sound. Pasternak claimed that nature very often affirmed his intuitions about these secret connections. Indeed, if one breaks open a pea pod freshly picked in the garden, inside one finds a crystalline drop of sap, silently reflecting all that surrounds it.
Bibliography
Ciepiela, Catherine. The Same Solitude: Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Davie, Donald C., and Angela Livingstone, eds. Pasternak. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
De Mallac, Guy. Boris Pasternak: His Life and Art. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981.
Erlich, Victor, ed. Pasternak: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978.
Gifford, Henry. Pasternak: A Critical Study. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Hughes, Olga R. The Poetic World of Boris Pasternak. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974.
Ivinskaya, Olga. A Captive of Time. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978.
O’Connor, Katherine T. Boris Pasternak’s “My Sister—Life”: The Illusion of Narrative. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1988.
Rowland, Mary F., and Paul Rowland. Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago.” Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967.
Rudova, Larissa. Understanding Boris Pasternak. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997.
Weir, Justin. The Author as Hero: Self and Tradition in Bulgakov, Pasternak, and Nabokov. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2002.