Boris Pasternak is my history crush. He lived and worked in Soviet Russia, a country he loved so much that he even declined the Nobel Prize when the government told him he would not be allowed to come back home if he went to Stockholm to accept it. Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan the year before, in 1957, and published there. It is one of the most magical books in existence. He also published other works of fiction and heavenly poetry, translated Shakespeare, Goethe and Verlain, and even composed music. And I mean, just look at him. Look at that face, those eyes and cheekbones, those lips. That is poetry, right there.