1937, the Soviet Writers Congress. It was the worst year. One of the worst years. Bang in the middle of the Great Purge. People disappeared like flies everyday. Boris Pasternak, the great writer, is told “if you speak they arrest you, and if you don’t speak they arrest you — for ironic insubordination. There are 2,000 people at the event. It is a three day event. Just off stage stands Zjdanov, the Stalinist killer.
Every speech for the three days is thanks to brother Stalin, thanks to Father Stalin, thanks to the Leninist-Stalinist new model of truth — and not a word from Pasternak.
On the third day his friends said, “look, they are going to arrest you anyway, maybe you should say something for the rest of us to carry with us.” He was well over six feet, incredibly beautiful, and when Pasternak got up, everyone knew. You could hear the silence across Russia. And he gives a number. It was the number of a certain Shakespeare sonnet — of which Pasternak had done a translation which the Russians say, with Pushkin, is one of their greatest texts.

Sonnet 30.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.

Когда на суд безмолвных дум своих
Воспоминанья прошлого влеку я,
Скорбя опять о горестях былых,
О дорогих утратах вновь тоскуя, -
Не плакавшие ввек глаза мои
Потоки слез тогда исторгнуть в силе,
И об умершей плачу я любви,
И о друзьях, исчезнувших в могиле.
От горя к горю вновь перехожу,
Печалюсь вновь печалями былого,
Страданьям давним счеты подвожу,
За что платил, уплачиваю снова.
Но только вспомню о тебе, мой друг,
Не станет больше ни утрат, ни мук.

Перевод А.М. Финкеля

Wenn mich verführt ein schmerzlich süßes Denken
und macht mir die Vergangenheit bewußt,
dann will Verlorenes sich wieder schenken
und läßt mich neu erleben den Verlust.

Dann will ein Aug, das lange nicht geweint,
gewahren Freunde, die dahin gegangen,
und manch Gesicht, das längst verblich, erscheint,
und manch verklungner Ton weckt ein Verlangen.

Dann leid ich Leiden, die ich längst gelitten,
dann duld ich mit bewiesener Geduld.
Die Schmerzenssumme, die ich längst bestritten,
bezahl ich neu, als wär' sie neue Schuld.

Doch bin von allem ich, was ich erlitt,
wenn ich an dich, Geliebter, denke, quitt.

Nachdichtung von Karl Kraus