The Concept of ‘Reality’ in the Aesthetic Thinking of Boris Pasternak and Virginia Woolf
The Concept of ‘Reality’ in the Aesthetic Thinking of Boris Pasternak and Virginia Woolf

Summary/Abstract: The changes that were taking place in art in the 1910s were essentially related to a shift in the perception of ‘reality’, art’s major point of reference. This paper aims to explore some of the stages of Pasternak’s and Woolf’s development of their concepts of ’reality’, which, despite the differences in the routes taken, are strikingly similar. As it is impossible to look closely at each phase of their artistic self-exploration in this paper, my intention was to look at the major influences on the development of their views of ‘reality’. For both writers it was crucial to look at the literary tradition of previous ages, and at contemporary tendencies to clarify their stances towards them, which then helped them define their own types of sensibility. Pasternak, in several of his early theoretical writings, examined his relationship with Symbolism and Futurism with the help of different categories that also assisted his own self-definition. Woolf, although less systematically, and in a very different style, looked for tendencies in the literary past that advanced her own interpretation of ‘reality’, which in return served as a measuring rod, helping her make judgments of predecessors and contemporaries as well.

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