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It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned.

Boris Pasternak

It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Best Complication Expression Lyrics Poetry Possible Value
How many things in the world deserve our loyalty? Very few indeed. I think one should be loyal to immortality, which is another word for life, a stronger word for it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Deserve Immortal Life Loyalty Strong World
No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Compassionate Feeling Object Ourselves Strong Victim
Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Gift Greatness Life Ourselves
You are eternity’s hostage A captive of mine.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Forever Myself Prison Yourself
What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Man Power Resist Truth
But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?
BORIS PASTERNAK

Conscience Embrace Fear Live
And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Act Circumstance Hope Misfortune Remember
Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Constant Creation Life Meditation Resemble
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Enough Life Order Truth
All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Disappoint Greatness Life Mom
The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Himself Modern Society Survival Writing
The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Moments Oneself
How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?
BORIS PASTERNAK

Alive Hurt Thinking
He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Himself Natural Tragedy
To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Adventure Greatness Hero Madness Woman

It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned.

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It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned.

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