Bookvica

[AUTOGRAPH BY BORIS PASTERNAK] Poverkh bar’erov [i.e. Over the Barriers]

Pasternak, B.

Item #1690

Moscow: Tsentrifuga, 1917. 94 pp.+ 2 pp. of ads. 23x15 cm. In original wrappers with title mounted. Slightly faded, some foxing on front cover, minor tear of spine, otherwise very good.

Signed by the author on a leaf inserted: “To dear sister Olya, with regular for relatives feeling of tenderness, guilt and disarray about swiftness of life. From Borya. 15.XI.40. Peredelkino”. By 1940, the Soviet authorities changed their attitude towards Boris Pasternak. He was criticized for “detachment from life” and “worldview that didn’t correspond to the era”. They unconditionally demanded an ideological restructuring of his poetry. In 1936, he settled in a dacha in Peredelkino where he lived intermittently until his death. Pasternak began signing his earlier publications, since he was banned from printing new ones.
First edition. One of 500 copies produced.
The second book of poetry by Boris Pasternak (1890-1960). The collection includes poems written in 1914-1916, under influence of futurism. The year 1917 was indicated on the title page for commercial reasons.
In the early 1910s, Pasternak first attended gatherings of symbolists, then joined the post-symbolist group “Lirika” [Lyric] whose members were tending toward futurism. In 1914, Pasternak was among those members who ranked others insufficiently radical and left the group. He wrote later: “In the summer of 1914, a clash of two literary groups was to take place in a coffee shop on the Arbat street. From our side were me and Bobrov. Tretyakov and Shershenevich were supposed to be on the other side. Yet, they brought Mayakovsky and Aseev with them... ”. So Pasternak fell into the clutches of an extreme left wing of contemporary poetry and joined the futuristic group “Tsentrifuga” [Centrifuge]. This society existed until the late 1917, but Pasternak was in touch with former futurists throughout the 1920s.
Some poems from this collection (including substantially revised works) made up an eponymous section of the 1929 book of poems, also called ‘Over the Barriers’. Once Pasternak explained his choice of this title: “After years, the concept of “Over the Barriers” changed for me. From the title of the book, it became the name of a period. Under the headline, I subsequently combined things [poems] written later if they suited”.
No paper copies found in Worldcat.

Price: $6,500.00