Analysis of It is not seemly to be famous...
Boris Pasternak 1890 (Moscow) – 1960 (Peredelkino)
It is not seemly to be famous:
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.
To give your all-this is creation,
And not-to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful, when you have no meaning,
To be on everybody's lips!
Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses,
And hear the call of future years.
Leave blanks in life, not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.
Into obscurity retiring
Try your development to hide,
As autumn mist on early mornings
Conceals the dreaming countryside.
Another, step by step, will follow
The living imprint of your feet;
But you yourself must not distinguish
Your victory from your defeat.
And never for a single moment
Betray your credo or pretend,
But be alive-this only matters-
Alive and burning to the end.
Scheme | XABA XCDC XXXX EFEF DGBG XHXH XIEI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (86%) |
Metre | 11111110 01001101 111111110 01011001 111111010 01110001 110111110 1111001 111110010 11110101 111111010 01011101 110110110 0111010 110111110 11010111 010100010 11010011 110111010 0101010 010111110 01001111 110111010 11001101 010101010 01110101 110111010 01010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 901 |
Words | 167 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 104 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 50 sec read
- 319 Views
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"It is not seemly to be famous..." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4507/it-is-not-seemly-to-be-famous...>.
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