MR. VICTOR FRANK on our letters page raises some further
points about the Pasternak poem in the Daily Mail. It occurs to me that the Mail corre- spondent's story contains one major implausibility. Pasternak is a brilliant translator and has turned many English works into Russian. Is it conceiv- able that he would pass over a Russian version of his poem for publication in Britain knowing that it would be at the mercy of one of 'the best poetry translators available in London yesterday'? Surely he would have made careful arrangements for its translation before allowing it to leave his posses- sion. On the other hand, if the poem were in- tended for a Russian friend in Paris it would be perfectly natural to send the original text by the hand of a friendly English journalist. Perhaps it is asking too much for some explanation in the Mail itself, but it is depressing to learn that no national newspaper (apart from the Daily Worker) should have published a word of Paster- nak's side of the argument.
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