Easter motifs in the “Ural poems” by Boris Pasternak

The problem of the meaning of Christian holidays in the poetic world of B.L. Pasternak is studied on the example of the cycle “Uralpoems'”. The issue of the special functional symbolic meaning of holidays in Pasternak’s work which had previously only indirectly interested researchers is raised. An attempt is made to formulate the main functional characteristics of holidays in Pasternak’s poetry, such as the breaking of space-time relations, the semantic connection of any holiday with all other events in the life of Christ, the opening of the borders of the gospel history and the entry of a lyrical hero into it. The purpose of the work is to show how these principles can help in interpreting specific texts of Pasternak and, on the other hand, to expand the understanding of the functional meaning of the festive aspect in the poet’s lyrics using the example of the cycle “Uralpoems”. The article presents the experience of reading the poems of the cycle in the 1929 edition of the book “Over the barriers” and offers an explanation of further changes in the composition of the cycle. The complex of biblical motifs is tried to be identified in the poem, a possible correlation of “Station” with specific texts is suggested, for example, with the “First Catholic Epistle of the Apostle Peter”. The study suggests a relationship of Easter motifs with the space of the Urals in Pasternak’s worldview. We interpreted the cycle through the prism of Easter stories, such as the descent of Christ into hell. The Easter substratum is fundamentally linked to the poet’s ideas about his own lyrics and art in general. The metaphor of involvement “everything into everything”: nature, people, the poet and his poetry into the original gospel story makes significant adjustments to our ideas about Pasternak’s artistic aesthetics. These observations prove that the idea of the Bible as a “notebook of humanity” (expressed in the “Security certificate”) was with the poet long before the “Second birth” of the 1930s. The results of the research show that further study of the festive aspect of Pasternak’s poetic world will make it possible to get a more complete picture of the poet’s basic ideas about Christianity and art relationships which crystallize in holidays.