Chopin on the Dnieper: The Musician-Poet and Boris Pasternak’s Search for the Transnational

Abstract

When the Soviet State forced Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) to decline the 1958 Nobel Prize for his masterpiece Doctor Zhivago, an international scandal ensued. The poignant moments of anti-Soviet self-reflection on identity within the novel, which can be read as splinters of Pasternak’s own autobiography, had been evolving since the 1930s. Its catalyst can be traced to Pasternak’s friendship with the pianist Heinrich Neuhaus (1888–1964), and their collaborative reimagination of a figure both considered their doppelganger—the composer Fryderyk Chopin. Bonded through their quest to displace Chopin from customary nationalist narratives, and present him as a free spirit embodying true internationalism, this chapter explores how Doctor Zhivago evolved from Pasternak’s literary cycle of 1930–1931, ‘Vtoroe rozhdeniye’ (‘Rebirth’/‘Second Birth’), capturing that friendship.