Collectors At Auction Snub Pasternak Love Letters

By Lyndsay Griffiths

LONDON (Reuter) - Boris Pasternak, whose "Doctor Zhivago" is a classic of Russian literature, drew scant interest at a British auction Wednesday when his love letters to the legendary Lara failed to sell.

"Well, what a disappointment!" said a spokeswoman for Christie's auction house.

The manuscripts -- billed as the most important Pasternak archive ever to come to market -- had been expected to fetch $839,500, but the reserve price was not reached.

At the heart of the collection were poems and letters from the author, winner of the 1958 Nobel literature prize, to his mistress Olga Ivinskaya, the inspiration for Zhivago's heroine Lara. It also included notes charting Pasternak's disillusionment with Soviet rule.

"We're very disappointed the manuscripts didn't sufficiently excite Russian libraries or the new generation of Russian collectors, but that's how the auction process works," said Victoria Coode of Christie's.

"The sale continued after the Pasternak lots with a similar amount of letters by Marcel Proust, one of the greatest French writers of this century, and every single one was sold," she said. "It's a problem with the Pasternak market, not the manuscript market."

Set amid the Russian revolution and its tumultous aftermath, "Doctor Zhivago" was to bring Pasternak worldwide fame and years of persecution at home. His epic won a wider audience after the release of the 1965 Academy Award-winning film starring Julie Christie and Omar Sharif, an inspired match that drew huge cinema crowds.

But the writer's own notes and poems failed to stir such passions. One poignant letter Pasternak sent to Ivinskaya three weeks before he died was expected to fetch about $42,000, but bidding petered out at $18,470.

The collection nonetheless showed Ivinskaya was far more than just a mistress to Pasternak in his final years.

"She is the Lara in my book," Pasternak told a close friend shortly before his death. A greying Ivinskaya -- a far cry from Christie's glamorous screen portayal -- died in Moscow last year. Her heirs inherited the collection.

It was the second major disappointment for a London auction house this week. Tuesday, a 16th-century Atlas of Europe by Gerard Mercator, widely regarded as the father of modern map making, was withdrawn from sale at Sotheby's after failing to reach its reserve price.

Reuters/Variety