I Remember Author:Boris Pasternak From: Kirkus Reviews — The importance of this quite accurately subtitled "Sketch for an Autobiography" lies in the revelation of the intellectual and psychological conditioning of an artist. Pasternak, whose Dr. Zhivago is probably today's most discussed book, is extraordinarily objective in reviewing his own childhood and youth, the influences t... more »hat contributed to his choice of a field in the art world, the slow unfolding of genius. Son of a painter, Leonid Pasternak, whose portraits are used as illustrations for this book, and of a musician, Rosa Kaufmann-Pasternak, Boris would seem to have been destined for one or other of these areas, and indeed early began his training as a musician. But other influences intervened, not least of them Tolstoi, and later Marina Tsvetayeva, the poet, who will, he feels, ultimately be a belated gift to the field of Russian literature. Only by indirection, as he was silent when his opinion was asked as to the advisability of her return from abroad to Russia, is there even a shadow of a hint of any political implications throughout this text. Chiefly, after a somewhat brief but vivid personal story of his childhood and youth, this reveals the tragic ends to which some fellow artists came, the climate of emotion in which writing necessarily existed. Names unfamiliar to most in the Western world are integral to the record, and a list of personages, identified in their various roles, is appended. There are rare passages of great beauty of description, which etch themselves sharply on the mind's eye; but the glimpses into the mind of Boris Pasternak are the kernels one seeks here.« less