How Does Art Think? Boris Pasternak's (Post-)Philosophical Poetry

The objective of this paper is to examine the profound ties that link philosophy and poetry in Boris Pasternak's theoretical and poetical works in the perspective of a broader problematic of relations between philosophy and poetry. I argue that Pasternak's writings do not simply bear the imprints of his prior engagement with philosophy, but that his poetry as such can be interpreted, at least in some of its aspects, as a result of his philosophical vision of the world shaped back in Marburg, in his readings of Kant and Cohen. In his poetic work he manages to redefine the limits between philosophy and art and to elaborate a new approach to some poignant philosophical problems.