Pasternak

My father used to say that everything important that had ever happened to him was foretold, in one way or another in Shakespeare. I dare say a Christian could draw the same sort of comfort from the Bible, or a Muslim from the Koran, but I have just read that young Russians of the cold war era were, it seems, more of my father's persuasion, being much drawn to Pasternak's translation of the 66th sonnet, a lament from and for someone who has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. There may also be, although I somehow doubt it, some added link to the number 66, important to some exoticeria.

The text of the sonnet follows, with thanks to http://www.shakespeare-online.com/. See particularly line 9.

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
   Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
   Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.