Citation

Kuptsova ON, Sergeeva-Klyatis AY. Ural'skij Istoriceskij Vestnik 2020; 68(3): 73-81.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020)

DOI

10.30759/1728-9718-2020-3(68)-73-81

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The article deals with one aspect of the problem of the temptation of suicide and "innate instinct" of survival in Boris Pasternak's works, namely the image of Hamlet and Hamlet's pattern of behaviour in tragic circumstances. Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet" had a significant impact on Pasternak's work long before his work on its translation in 1939-1940. Hamletism first of all meant for Pasternak a borderline state of choice between life and death, withstanding of the individual to suicidal tendencies. Situations of the "second birth" (conditions of actual being on the threshold of death, the end of life and subsequent rebirth), which repeated several times in Pasternak's life and reflected in his work, are somehow connected in his mind with the theme of Hamlet and his choice ("To be or not to be"). Man's awareness of the need to accept a higher will instead of his own is the semantic center of the early poem "Marburg" (1916). The last Pasternak script of the play "Blind Beauty" (an unfinished idea, begun in the spring of 1959), re-reflexed after the novel "Doctor Zhivago", is a person's right "to be": not a suicidal passive sacrifice for a high purpose, but a creation of life (through suffering and trials) as a "concept". © 2020 Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of RAS. All rights reserved.

Language: ru

Keywords

Shakespeare; Hamlet; Hamletism; Pasternak; Second birth; The novel “Doctor Zhivago”; The play “Blind Beauty”; The poem “Hamlet”; The poem “Marburg”