Boris Pasternak und Shakespeare

Boris Pasternak überlistet Stalin
wenn's nicht stimmt, so ist doch einleuchtend

At the height of Stalin’s dictatorship, Boris Pasternak was invited to an official writers’ conference in Moscow. Pasternak knew that if he attended and spoke, he would be arrested for what he would say; if he attended and didn’t speak, he would be arrested for contempt; if he didn’t attend, he’d be arrested for disobeying the Dictator’s invitation. Pasternak attended. The conference lasted three days. During the first day Pasternak said nothing. His friends begged him to speak, since he would be arrested anyway, and urged him to profit at least from the presence of an audience. Pasternak remained silent. He also remained silent on the second day. On the third day, however, he rose to his feet. The audience held its breath. At last, Pasternak opened his mouth and said ‘Thirty-two’. And the audience, recognising that he meant Shakespeare’s

thirty-second sonnet which Pasternak had brilliantly translated, roared out the words they knew by heart, and which across three centuries Pasternak had transformed into a promise of hope addressed to the reader, far beyond the will of Stalin:
‘If thou survive my well-contended day, When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover.’
Alberto Manguel, Craig Stephenson (1996): "Dangerous subjects", INDEX on Censorship 25.6

Fast genau 2000 Jahre früher hatte der politisch verfolgte

Marcus Tullius Cicero ein ähnliches Erlebnis:
"Ich aber - äußere ich mich politisch, wie sich's gebührt, so gelte ich als verrückt. Rede ich den Umständen entsprechend, bin ich eine Sklavenseele, halte ich den Mund, so heißt es, ich trage Knebel und Fesseln."
Ad Atticum IV 7 (6), zitiert nach Marion Giebel (1985): Cicero. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

Sonnet 32
1 If thou survive my well-contented day
2 When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover,
3 And shalt by fortune once more resurvey
4 These poor rude lines of thy deceasèd lover,
5 Compare them with the bett’ring of the time,
6 And though they be outstripped by every pen,
7 Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme
8 Exceeded by the height of happier men.
9 O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
10 “Had my friend’s muse grown with this growing age,
11 A dearer birth than this his love had brought
12 To march in ranks of better equipage;
13 But since he died, and poets better prove,
14 Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.”

Links

Zitate von Boris Pasternak

weitere Sonnets vom Billy aus Stratford

Cicero