About "Doctor Zhivago" Home
Life and work
Nobel prize
Photo Album
Creation
Bibliography
Hosting from uCoz The novel "Doctor Zhivago" was created for ten years, from 1945 to 1955.
Being, according to the writer himself, the pinnacle of his work as a prose writer, the novel is a broad canvas of the life of the Russian intelligentsia against the background of the dramatic period from the beginning of the century to the Civil War.
The novel is imbued with high poetics, accompanied by poems of the main character — Yuri Andreevich Zhivago.
During the writing of the novel, Pasternak repeatedly changed its name.
The novel could be called "Boys and girls", "The candle was burning", "The Experience of Russian Faust", "There is no Death".
The novel, which touches on the innermost issues of human existence — the secrets of life and death, questions of history, Christianity, and Jewry, was sharply negatively met by the authorities and the official Soviet literary environment, rejected for publication because of the author's ambiguous position on the October revolution and subsequent changes in the life of the country.
For example, E. G. Kazakevich, after reading the novel, said: "It turns out, judging by the novel, the October Revolution is a misunderstanding and it was better not to do it," K. M. Simonov, the editor in chief of Novy Mir, also reacted with a refusal : "You canot give a podium to Pasternak!".
The publication of the novel in the West — first in Italy in 1957 by the pro — communist publishing house Feltrinelli, and then in the UK, through the mediation of the famous philosopher and diplomat Sir Isaiah Berlin led to a real persecution of Pasternak in the Soviet press, his exclusion from the USSR Writers ' Union, outright insults against him from the pages of Soviet newspapers, at meetings of workers.
The Moscow organization of the Union of Writers of the USSR, following the Board of the Union of Writers, demanded the expulsion of Pasternak from the Soviet Union and the deprivation of his Soviet citizenship.
Among the writers who demanded expulsion were L. I. Oshanin, A. I. Bezymensky, B. A. Slutsky, S. A. Baruzdin, B. N. Polevoy and many others (see the transcript of the meeting of the All Moscow Meeting of Writers in the section "References").
It should be noted that a negative attitude to the novel was also expressed by some Russian writers in the West, including V. V. Nabokov.
And THE SOIL AND FATE BREATHE Two years after the completion of the novel "Doctor Zhivago" Boris Pasternak wrote: ..
"I think, despite the familiarity of everything that continues to stand before our eyes and that we continue to hear and read, there is nothing more of this, it has already passed and taken place, a huge, unheard of period worth of forces has ended and passed.
An immensely large, empty and unoccupied place has been freed up for the new and not yet experienced, for what will be guessed by someone's brilliant independence and freshness, for what will inspire and prompt the life of new numbers and days.
Now the torment of artists will not be whether they are recognized and whether they will be recognized by the stagnant, belated political modernity or the government, but the inability to completely break away from the concepts that have become familiar, forget the imposed skills, break the continuity.
We must understand that everything has become the past, that the end of what we have seen and experienced was already, and not yet to be.
We must abandon the idea that everything will continue to be announced before it begins to exist, and allow the possibility of a time when everything will move and change again without prior announcement.
This difficulty exists for me as well.
"Zhivago" is a very important step, it is a great happiness and luck, which I did not even dream of.
But this is done, and together with the period that this book expresses most of all written by others, this book and its author go into the past, and before me, still alive, a space is released, the unused and purity of which must first be understood, and then filled with this understood."
The author of these lines did not have to fulfill the new task formulated by him during the two years that, by the will of God, he had to live in the world.
What is surprising is that his work, and especially "Doctor Zhivago", continue to remain the greatest artistic evidence in the new conditions, not only of the way of life that has gone into the past and the destruction of several generations of outstanding thinking people, but also of the right way of liberation from the consequences of this period of oppression and hatred.
The extreme manifestations of unrestricted freedom in our time are somewhat reminiscent of the pre war years of the beginning of the century, described in the first chapters of Doctor Zhivago, but at the same time we are completely deprived of the moral and material basis that then nourished and restrained them.
The huge wealth accumulated in Russia by that time was squandered, looted and thrown to the wind.
The realm of historical necessity and continuity has been destroyed.
Spiritual conquests have always been acquired at the price of tragedies and victims that are inaccessible to a reasonable assessment.
The beginning of the history of Christianity in this sense suggests comparison with the events of the twentieth century.
The World War, pharisaically unleashed by the states of Europe, ostensibly in defense of small nationalities, was the beginning of the destruction that put humanity before the prospect of universal destruction.
During these years, few people managed to remain true to the life affirming provisions of their youth in their free and natural development.
Such is the creatively gifted Yuri Andreevich Zhivago, who, by virtue of his talent, knows that "the only thing in our power is to be able not to distort the voice of life that sounds in us."
He cannot give up this and, without giving up professional medical, scientific and literary work, nevertheless, he gradually loses the possibility of productive, independent activity.
His friends and peers adapt, change and are proud that they managed to maintain their external intelligence and resist.
And he gradually descends, suffers, reproaching himself for lack of will, gets sick and dies early.
For others, he is a wasted and socially superfluous person.
"You didnot turn out well," says the janitor Markel about him.
I studied, studied, and my work went to waste."
He, without deceiving his soul and without losing the clarity of perception, sees the terrible price of the spiritual perversion that his enslaved contemporaries pay.
It is in this sense that the phrase should be understood: "Dear friends, how hopelessly ordinary you are and the circle that you represent, and the brilliance and art of your favorite names and authorities.
The only living and bright thing about you is that you lived at the same time with me and knew me."
This precise statement of the difference between a creatively free artist and a person who idealizes his captivity caused many people to be offended at the time and largely caused the thirty year ban imposed on the printing of the novel at home.
But at the same time, a whole generation of future dissidents read Doctor Zhivago in banned lists and foreign publications, were brought up on it and found life support in it.
In" Doctor Zhivago", the pictorial (plastic) and musical (compositional) beginnings are strongest.
Even in philosophical topics that Pasternak wants to express with sufficient concreteness, he does not reach the unambiguity of journalistic or preachy determinism.
Its purpose is to allow the reader to see and think through the pictures of the transformed reality for himself.
In this way, he complements the probabilistic interpretation of the course of history given by Leo Tolstoy with observations of nature, arguing that the existence of humanity has not yet lost its living possibilities, that, to our joy, it has remained as unpredictable and unexpected as the life of the forest.
Pasternak writes that "history is what is called the course of history", Yuri Andreevich saw history as a kind of" vegetable kingdom": ... "
In winter, under the snow, the bare twigs of a deciduous forest are skinny and pathetic, like the hairs on an old man's wart.
In the spring, in a few days, the forest is transformed, rises to the clouds, you can get lost and hide in its leafy wilds.
This transformation is achieved by a movement that is faster than the movements of animals, because an animal does not grow as fast as a plant, and which can never be spied on.
The forest does not move, we cannot cover it, lie in wait for a change of place.
We always find him motionless.
And in the same immobility we find the ever growing, ever changing, untraceable in its transformations, the life of society, history.
Tolstoy did not bring his thought to the end when he denied the role of the instigators behind Napoleon, the rulers, the generals.
He was thinking exactly the same thing, but he did not finish it with all clarity.
No one makes history, you canot see it, just like you canot see how the grass grows."
The Russian Revolution seemed to Pasternak to be the main event of the century, an experimental test of the social utopias of the past.
He was interested in its moral foundations – the response of life to the imposed restrictions, rebellion as a reaction to the trampled beauty and dignity of man.
At first, it seemed to him a retribution for the perversion of the ability to love, admiring God's plan, fruitfully and independently participate in it.
At the same time, Pasternak from the very beginning strongly condemned the political pharisaism, violence and hatred that had replaced public hopes.
Lyrically, these ideas are manifested in the relations of Yuri Zhivago, Larisa Antipova and Pavel Antipov Strelnikov.
Yuri Andreevich obeys love as the highest principle, for him it is the desire to make a person happy, without imposing anything on him, paying the price of his own losses and deprivations, inevitable and conditioned by life.
Understanding his capabilities in front of her face puts a limit to his activity.
His apparent lack of will is the result of a sober assessment of the artist, a witness, a researcher and, finally, a doctor who must correctly diagnose and, if possible, cure, that is, help life cope with the disease.
His creative will talent, as a "child's model of the universe, laid down from an early age" in the heart, makes him incapable of violent manifestations, which, regardless of the goal, lead to perversion and death.
Subordination to the will of life circumstances explains the countless hardships that fell to his lot, the loss of his home, family, Lara.
Although Komarovsky is to blame not only for the crippled fate of Larisa, but also for his own ruin and orphanhood, Zhivago immediately loses the ability to defend the woman he loves, as soon as she voluntarily takes the side of an alien subordinate force.
"Personal interest encourages him to be proud and strive for the truth.
This advantageous and happiest position in life can be a tragedy, this is secondary, " Pasternak wrote, describing the properties of talent.
The only strong willed act of Yuri Andreevich, his risky escape from the partisan camp, escape to Lara, release from captivity, is possible thanks to a favorable combination of circumstances.
Life and nature patronize them and build their love.
"They loved each other because they wanted everything around them so much: the earth under them, the sky above their heads, clouds, trees…
Never, never, even in the moments of the most gratuitous, forgetful happiness, did their highest and most exciting pleasure in the general modeling of the world, the feeling of their own belonging to the whole picture, the feeling of belonging to the beauty of the whole spectacle, to the whole universe"...
Pasternak dreamed of great prose throughout his life, but the attempts he had made earlier, dragging on for years, remained unfinished.
Excerpts published in newspapers and magazines of the 1930s conveyed paintings and everyday sketches of the pre revolutionary years of Russia.
But the author was tormented and stopped by the lack of "unity in understanding things"in his work.
This understanding came at the end of the war, when there was a distinct sense of the presence of God in the historical about the existence of Russia.
It came when the people, not broken by years of terror, found the strength to resist the evil of the fascist plague and at the cost of huge losses, incomparable even with the German ones, to win the Patriotic War.
You meant everything in my life.
You meant everything in my life.
Then came the war, the devastation, And for a long time there was not a word about You, not a spirit.
And after many many years, Your voice again alarmed me.
All night I read Your testament And as if from a faint I came to life.
I want to go to people, to the crowd, To their morning animation.
I'm ready to smash everything into splinters And put everyone on their knees…
During the most severe oppression, Pasternak was sure that changes for the better would certainly begin with the spiritual awakening of society.
"If it pleases God, and I am not mistaken –" he wrote in the summer of 1944, " there will soon be a bright life in Russia, an exciting new century, and even earlier, before the onset of this prosperity in private life and everyday life, an amazingly huge art, as under Tolstoy and Gogol.
The premonition of this obscures everything else for me: the unhappiness and squalor of my personal life and my family, the face of the current reality, houses and streets, the disappointing opposite of the general tone of the press and politics, etc., etc.
By this presentiment I am connected with this future, I do not notice adversity and old age behind it, and for some time I have been serving it with every thought, every deed and movement."
The hopes for the liberalization of society awakened after the victory in the war strengthened Pasternak in his plan and gave him the strength to start working, which he considered his lifelong duty.
Despite the fact that these trends were soon put to an end, the intention to write a novel became an internal necessity.
"Doctor Zhivago" was launched in December 1945, the last changes to its text were made in December 1955.
The consciousness of the inevitability of the way of the Cross as a pledge of immortality is expressed in the poem "Hamlet", which opens the notebook of Yuri Zhivago: The hum has subsided.
I went to the stage.
Leaning against the door frame, I catch in the distant echo of What will happen in my lifetime.
The twilight of the night is pointed at me with a thousand binoculars on the axis.
If only it is possible, Abba Father, take this Cup past.
The original plan of the novel was already completely formed from the very beginning, and Pasternak expected to write it quickly.
"Actually, this is my first real work.
In it, I want to give a historical image of Russia for the last forty five years, and at the same time, with all aspects of its plot, heavy, sad and elaborated in detail, like, ideally, Dickens or Dostoevsky – this thing will be an expression of my views on art, on the Gospel, on human life in history and much more…
The atmosphere of the thing is my Christianity, in its breadth a little different from the Quaker and Tolstoy, coming from other sides of the Gospel in addition to the moral ones," Pasternak wrote in October 1946.
"There will be no Death" is the first title of the novel in a pencil manuscript from 1946.
Here is an epigraph from the Revelation of John the Theologian: "And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death; there will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more sickness, for the former has gone."
The interpretation of these words is given in the novel in the scene at the bedside of the dying Anna Ivanovna Gromeko.
The immortality of the soul for the Zhivago is a consequence of active love for one's neighbor: "A person in other people is the soul of a person."
Drawing the time of his youth and the youth of those "boys and girls" who made up the glory of the Russian religious and philosophical renaissance, Pasternak defined its spiritual atmosphere as a mixture of the ideas of Dostoevsky, Solovyov, Tolstoy, socialism and modern poetry, which, quite getting along together, formed "a new, unusually fresh phase of Christianity".
The hopes of this generation were swept away by a historical storm, which was replaced by a new paganism of "smallpox dug Caligulas" (portrait of Stalin), who did not suspect "how incompetent every enslaver is".
The simplicity and truth of the appearance of Christ are contrasted with the pomposity of the Stalinist vampire style.
The author draws how to enter the world of "marble and gold tastelessness" (this is not about Ancient Rome, but about our modernity!)
Christ enters, "light and dressed in radiance, ""deliberately provincial, Galilean," and the world begins anew: "The peoples and the gods have stopped, and man has begun, a carpenter man, a plowman man, a shepherd man in a flock of sheep at sunset, a man who does not sound a bit proud, a man who is gratefully carried to all the lullabies of mothers and to all the picture galleries of the world."
The poems of Yuri Zhivago make up the final chapter of the novel.
Creating them on behalf of his hero, Pasternak found a new freedom and depth of lyrical self expression.
They are freed from the biographical narrowness and the forced metaphoricity inherent in Pasternak's early poetry, thereby becoming a reflection of the generalized experience of the generation.
Pasternak wrote that Yuri Zhivago "will have to represent something between me, Blok, Yesenin and Mayakovsky."
This made it possible to significantly expand the range of topics that primarily relate to the poems of the gospel cycle, written from the point of view of a direct witness to the events of Sacred History.
The novel "Doctor Zhivago" is devoid of any didactic tendencies, which helped him find a grateful response in the souls of people, which his author hoped for when he wrote: "The difference between modern Soviet literature and all the previous ones seems to me most of all that it is established on solid grounds, regardless of whether it is read or not read.
This is a proud, self contained and self sufficient phenomenon that shares with other state institutions their inviolability and infallibility.
But real art, in my understanding, is far from such claims.
Where he can command and prescribe, when there are more weaknesses and sins on him than virtues.
It timidly wants to be the reader's dream, the object of the reader's thirst, and needs his responsive imagination not as a friendly condescension, but as a component element, without which the artist's construction cannot do, as a ray needs a reflecting surface or a refractive medium to play and light up."
The author's hopes were justified.
Pasternak called his novel about Doctor Zhivago pictures of half a century of everyday life.
After the second half of the century and at the turn of the new one, it continues to excite readers and find a lively response in their souls.
