The Pasternak Affair In Perspective. Reprinted from Thought, Fordham University Quarterly, Vol. XXXIV, No. 135, Winter, 1959-1960.
(N. Y.): Thought, 1960. First separate edition, an offprint, of this important thirty-five page essay on Pasternak's being awarded, and rejecting, the Nobel Prize in 1958. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author at the top of the front wrapper "To Mark (Van Doren) blessings & love for the New Year, Tom." The essay was subsequently published in Disputed Questions (1960). In 1973, the King Library Press at the University of Kentucky published Boris Pasternak / Thomas Merton. Six Letters, documenting the rich but all-too brief correspondence between Merton and Pasternak. In a letter to John Harris, Pasternak had written of Merton: "his precious thoughts and dear bottomless letters enrich me and make me happy. At a better time I shall thank and write him. Now I am not in a position to do so. Say to him his high feelings and prayers have saved my life." For his part, Merton had written that "he had a closer contact with Pasternak on the other side of the world than with people a few miles away, and more in common with him than with monks in his own monastery."- Michael Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), p. 323-325. In a letter to Merton dated December 2, 1960, commenting on Disputed Questions, Van Doren wrote: "I took my time with Disputed Questions... but now I have read it all and want to tell you how living a book it is, from Pasternak to St. Bernard. The Pasternak pieces were valuable to me because of all they straightened out. I had been disappointed in Zhivago as a novel, though I hadn't missed the singular sweetness of the man. But you put both book and man in a powerful perspective, and I find myself agreeing with your vision of them... The rest of the book... is just as strong." - Selected Letters of Mark Van Doren, Ed. by George Hendrick (Louisiana State University Press, 1987), p. 230. Wrappers partially faded at margins, front outer corner bumped, otherwise a very good copy of this rare offprint. Tall 8vo, original printed wrappers.
Price: $2,500.00