served, maintained, and exhibited toncontinue its existence — yet Lydia andnJosephine disagree on the methods bynwhich Leonid’s heritage is to be perpetuated.nLydia envisions a Pasternaknfamily museum in Park Town, tonwhich all the heirs would donate theirnshares of the collection, run by herndaughter Ann and Ann’s husband, thenpoet Craig Raine. Josephine soberlyndescribes her sister’s plan as anpipedream and favors selling some ofnthe paintings to established private collectors.nLydia sees this rival plan asnmercantile and outrageous — despitenthe fact that it was just such an acquisitionnthat started Pasternak on the waynto fame in 1888 when TretyakovnDought his “Letter From Home.”nWith good reason, Josephine believesnthat today’s collectors — a few amongnthem, at any rate — are as discriminatingnand powerful as Tretyakov was innhis own day, and their “mercantile”nattention is the best way of restoringnLeonid Pasternak to the ranks of thenknown.nIt is difficult to argue with thesenPasternak women. Both write poetryn(although, in this writer’s opinion, onlynJosephine’s approaches her brother’sngenius), both have a strong and originalnperspective on Russian culture andnhistory, both have witnessed firsthandnthe rise and fall of men and civiliza­ntions. They love each other like sistersnand, like sisters, they quarrel—mostnoften, about the world’s capriciousnjudgments and the ways of appealingnthem for posterity. Despite these differences,ntheir efforts have not been innvain. In 1958, a memorial retrospectivenwas organized by the Ashmolean Museum;nanother, also in Oxford, tooknplace in the winter of 1982, three yearsnafter a retrospective exhibition at thenState Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.nThe last exhibition’s critical success,nand the English publication of Leonid’snmemoirs, paved the way for thisnyear’s Smithsonian show, and bothnsisters now hope that, in some way,ntheir differences will be amelioratednby the American reception of thenretrospective — and that a futurencourse of action they and their childrenncan all agree on will somehow bencharted. Along with them, we can onlynhope that the wicked Diaghilevian firebirdnof recognition can be captured fornLeonid Pasternak by the Smithsonian,nand that — if it cannot look deeper intonthe nature of things — the world will atnleast know this artist as a RussiannImpressionist who was the father ofnBoris.nAndrei Navrozov is poetry editor ofnChronicles.nDr. Joseph Kaufmann, 1897.n”»*^«»{inTwo Women Seated by the Black Sea, 1896. Winter View of the Kremlin, 1917.nnnOCTOBER 19881 5Sn