Editing Boris Pasternak (section)

==== Thoughts on poetry ====
According to [[Olga Ivinskaya]]:
{{blockquote|In Pasternak the "all-powerful god of detail" always, it seems, revolted against the idea of turning out verse for its own sake or to convey vague personal moods. If "eternal" themes were to be dealt with yet again, then only by a poet in the true sense of the word—otherwise he should not have the strength of character to touch them at all. Poetry so tightly packed (till it crunched like ice) or distilled into a solution where "grains of true prose germinated," a poetry in which realistic detail cast a genuine spell—only such poetry was acceptable to Pasternak; but not poetry for which indulgence was required, or for which allowances had to be made—that is, the kind of ephemeral poetry which is particularly common in an age of literary conformism. [Boris Leonidovich] could weep over the "purple-gray circle" which glowed above [[Alexander Blok|Blok]]'s tormented muse and he never failed to be moved by the terseness of [[Pushkin]]'s sprightly lines, but rhymed slogans about the production of tin cans in the so-called "poetry" of [[Surkov]] and his like, as well as the outpourings about love in the work of those young poets who only echo each other and the classics—all this left him cold at best and for the most part made him indignant.<ref name="Ivinskaya 1978, p 145">[[#Ivinskaya|Ivinskaya]], p. 145.</ref>}}

For this reason, Pasternak avoided literary cafes where young poets regularly invited them to read their verse. According to Ivinskaya, {{qi|It was this sort of thing that moved him to say: 'Who started the idea that I love poetry? I can't stand poetry.'}}<ref name="Ivinskaya 1978, p 145"/>

Also according to Ivinskaya, {{qi|'The way they could write!' he once exclaimed—by 'they' he meant the Russian classics. And immediately afterward, reading or, rather, glancing through some verse in the ''Literary Gazette'': 'Just look how tremendously well they've learned to rhyme! But there's actually nothing there—it would be better to say it in a news bulletin. What has poetry got to do with this?' By 'they' in this case, he meant the poets writing today.}}<ref>[[#Ivinskaya|Ivinskaya]], p. 146.</ref>