In examining the writing of Boris Pasternak an attempt was made to demonstrate in what relationship his artistic stance stood to the Western intellectual tradition, and in particular, how it had grown organically out of the ninteenth-century traditions and values of the old Russian intelligentsia. Pasternak's literary attitudes, his artistic raison d"être, were a logical extension of this view of himself as a poet with an individual vision of the world, a duty and a responsibility to bear witness to history in a style and manner which would assert eternal values in as fresh and meaningful a way as possible.