1890-1960, Russian poet, novelist, and translator. His
                   first book of poems was The Twin in the Clouds (1914).
                   Over the Barriers (1916) and My Sister, Life (1922)
                   established him as a major poet with a fresh, lyrical,
                   passionate voice.

                   In the repressive intellectual climate of
                   the 1930s he ceased publishing his own work, devoting
                   himself to translating works of SHAKESPEARE,
                   GOETHE, and other major Western poets. Two World
                   War II collections brought only censure.

                   His masterpiece, the novel Doctor Zhivago, an epic
                   treatment of the tragic upheavals of 20th-cent. Russia,
                   was finished by 1955. Denied publication in the USSR, it
                   was first published (1957) in Italy, and soon acclaimed
                   worldwide.

                   Though Pasternak was awarded the 1958
                   Nobel Prize in literature, official Soviet pressure
                   compelled him to refuse it. He spent his last years at an
                   artists' colony near Moscow, where he remained an
                   international symbol of artistic incorruptibility.
 

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