Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
Autograph manuscript poem signed, 'Зимняя ночь' [Winter Night] from Doctor Zhivago, n.d.
In Russian. Complete. In violet ink, eight four-line stanzas on two pages, 179 x 116mm, bifolium, on paper watermarked with double-headed eagles within a chequerboard pattern. Provenance: by repute, copied for Alexei Kruchonikh on paper gifted by the widow of the Georgian poet Titian Tabidze (according to the catalogue note at:); Sotheby's, 20 November 1990, lot 485.

One of Pasternak's most famous poems, from Doctor Zhivago.

Мело, мело по всей земле
Во все пределы.
Свеча горела на столе,
Свеча горела.

[Snow, snow, all the world over,
Snow to the world’s end swirling,
A candle was burning on the table,
A candle burning.]

The earliest surviving autograph of the poem (now at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art) is dated December 1946, and was sent in the following month to Pasternak's friend, the poet Vera Zvagintseva; a pencil copy also survives, dated 1947. The poem was intended to feature in a collection of Pasternak's verse published in 1948 but the edition was suppressed after being condemned by the Union of Soviet Writers. Doctor Zhivago, including 'Winter Night', was first published in 1958 in Milan.