Gethsemani Abbey
Trappist P.O. Ky.

Dec o 15 ,1958.

My Dear Pasternak:

For a long time I have been holding my breath in the midst of the
turmoil of incoppara‘ole nonsense that has surrounded your name in every part
of the world. It has been a tremendous relief to hear from you indirectly and
to learn that things are once again beginning to regain some semblame of
sanity. You,like Job, have been surrounded not by three or four misguided
comforters, but by a whole world of madman, some of them reproaching you with
reproach/es that have been compliments, others complimenting you with compli-
ments that have been reproaches, and seemingly very few of them have under-
stood one word of what you have written. Fbr that could be more blind and absurd
than to make a political weapon, for one side or another, out of a book that
declares clearly the futility and mlignity of tendencies on every side which
team to destroy man in his spiritual substance? Perhaps it is the destiny of
every free man to bring out, like a poultice, the folly and theputmscence of
our world: but such a vocation is not always pleasant.

One of the first things I did when I heard about the Nobel affair ww to
write a letter to Surkov of the Writers' Union declaring that I Spoke for all
those who were fully aware that your book was not a political pamphlet and was
not intended to be taken as such, and that it was a great work of art of which
Soviet Russia should have the sense to be proud.l do not know if it did any
good. Incidentally, since wehave here no newspapers or radios, it was quite
"accidental" or rather providential that I heard so pmch about the case so soon.

I do not know what the latest deve10pments my be. fit the question of
mating Dr Zh into a movie in Malice should arise and become an issue with you
over there, I would strongly advise that you attach no importance to my movie
but rather that you should, if the case arises to make a decision, rather
o nose in: yourself to it. The movies here are quite bad, and I have always finn-
Iy resisted any attempt to use one of my books in a film. If a refusal on this
point, by you, would aid your position with your government, then I would ad-
vise making such a refusal. Of course, remember I am perhaps not the wisest
judge. But certainly a Hollywood production of Dr Zh would do more harm than
good in every respect.

I have indeed been praying for you, and so have my young novices, young and
pure souls, who know of you and who have been touched by your worrierful poem
on Christ in the Garden of Gethsemani. we shall continue our prayers.

Do not let yourself be disturbed too much by either friends or enemies. I
hope you will clear away every obstacle and continue with your writing on the
great work that you surely have in store for us. May you final again within
yourself the deep lifegiving silence which is 39mins truth and the source
of truth: for it is a fountain of life and a window into the abyss of eternity
and God.m1t is the wonderful silence of the winter niglt inwhhoh it Yurii
sat up in the sleeping house and wrote his poems while the wolves howled out-
side: but it is an inviolable house of peace, a fortress in the depths of our
being, the virginity of our soul where, like the Blessed Mary, we give our
brave and humble answer to life, the "Yes" which brings Lst into the world.

I cannot refrain from speaking to you of Abraham, his laughter and
prostration when he was told by God that he, a hundred years old, should be
the father of a great nation and that from his body, almst dead, would some
life to the whole world. The peak of liberty is in this laughter, which is a
resurrection and a sacrament of the resurrection, the sweet and clean folly of
the soul who has been liberated by God from his own nothingness. Here is what
Philo of Alsmmiaia has said abOut it:

" To convict us, so often proud and stiff—necked at the smallest cause,