Doctor Zhivago | Boris Pasternak | A historic and poetic love epic

Doctor Zhivago | Boris Pasternak | The free poetic mystical spirit under the Soviet system

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Doctor Zhivago

	Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak Pantheon, 1997 - 592 pages average customer review:based on 81 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A historic and poetic love epic

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak is quite remarkably a poet's novel: the writer was a poet, and hence each page is full of beautiful imagery, metaphors and word play. The protagonist is a poet, the novel revolves around his love and life in the first half of twentieth century Russia. The reader, by association, has to be a poet to really relish the saga.

It is one of those novels from last century that everyone must read. The ghosts of socialism and Marxism, the excesses that occured in name of revolution, the transformation of the largest country of the world from ceturies old system into a failed ideal: the novel has enough historical significance. Last century was guided, molded, scarred, decorated and defined by the events and ideas that crop up as part of Doctor Zhivago's life. The literary underpinnings are gigantic: a love story with the Russian Revolution as background score: a Nobel was the least he could have got.

Besides the historical perspective, the story itself is a delightful one. The homely Tonya, Dr Zhivago's wife and first love and mother of his children, the sensuous Lara who weaves into and out of Yuri (Dr Zhivago's) life, her husband Pasha Antipov, who at every junction of his life must fight against ghosts and demons of his wife's past and present and in attempt outclass himself, the Uncle Koyla, the intellectual: the list is unending. Characters are crafted from all sections of society, making this novel a representation of whole society at that time. Like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, the novel provides four or five chief characters, who are immense in their own potrayal, parting with their thoughts, ideas, ideals and philosophies, and possessing unique well-defined characteristics, the novel has another string of about twenty characters who are unforgettable for whatever roles they are assigned.

The harshness of winter, the beauty of forests and fields, the man divided in his love for wife Tonya and lover Lara, the poet in exile, the idealists seeking to change the world, Russian history and customs: such ideas find Pasternak displaying hs poetic prowess. Many passages in the book are sheer poetry, and I am amazed at seeing how powerful they are in translated language: I wish I knew Russian to find out how delightful the original must have been.

It is a long novel, with graphic pleasant and unpleasant sequences and a writing style where its apparent that either because it is a translation or ther writer was a poet attempting prose, the writing is not a easy read. Requires lot of time and effort and most people prefer the movie that was made in 1965 or so. I think reading Doctor Zhivago is an experience in itself, and in this post cold war era, it contains the perspective and historical lessons that we all must know and understand.

An excerpt that presents a preview of all the things this novel incorporates into the love saga of Yuri, where his heart is in strife in his love for two women as is it in strife witnesses changes that challenge every aspect of his being and thinking:

"Even more than what they had in common, they were united by what separated them from the rest of the world. They were both repelled by what was tragically typical of the modern man, his shrill textbook admirations, his forced enthusiam, and the deadly stillness coldly preached and practiced by the countless workers in the field of art and science in order that the genius must remain extremely rare.

They loved each other greatly. Most people experience love, without noticing there is anything remarkable about it.

To them- and this made them unusual- the moments when passion visited their doomed human existence like a breath of timelessnesses were moments of revelation, of ever greater understanding of life and of themselves."

Loved it. Highly recommended.

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The free poetic mystical spirit under the Soviet system

I remember when this book was first published in the West, the great sensation it caused. It became 'required reading' for anyone who wished to learn about the then so- secretive enemy behind the Iron Curtain. Pasternak was condemned by the Kremlin , but nonetheless refused to leave his beloved Russia to accept the Nobel Prize he was given in 1958.
I also found the book a difficult one to read, and could never in my own mind understand exactly what was going on. The main character Zhivago goes through it seems an epic series of adventures, and in the course of this views a vast panorama not only of the Russian landscape but of its character and people. His great love-story with Lara is complicated by both of them having had previous spouses and committments.
When I read this book as an American high- school student it was just all too complicated for me to really grasp.
I have learned since that a major theme of the work is Zhivago's turning away from the Revolution in the realization that instead of bringing equality it is suppressing the spiritual character of the people. His dedication to poetry and to some mystical sense of a spiritual reality are central themes of the work.
And it is no doubt this resistance to the Soviet system which helped make the book so popular in the West.
Others have been attracted by the book's poetic language, by its dramatic images of a world and way of life, unique in its cruelty, and suffering- and its powerful depictions of impossible love and terrible beauty.

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panorama

Zhivago is sensitive and poetic nearly to the point of mysticism. In medical school, one of his professors reminds him that bacteria may be beautiful under the microscope, but do ugly things to people. Yuri Zhivago's idealism and principles stand in brutal contrast to the horrors of the Russian Revolution. A large theme of the book is how the mysticism of things and idealism is destroyed by both the Bolsheviks and the white army.

A Necessity for Tragedy

Doctor Zhivago is a dramatic tragedy that, in a world of disaster and misfortune, reminds humanity of its' most enduring traits and precious ability to endure through catastrophe even when survival may be bleaker than if it could simply put an end to its' endless cycle of futility.
Pasternak's work covers a genre that has been lost in our society's infatuation with apathy for the human condition and sacrifice of self-insight for the comfort of purely optimistic media. The art of tragedy that was so important to our understanding of our selves has been lost in contemporary literature. It is extremely healthy for humanity to be reminded of and critically reflect on tragedy, for it is in catastrophe that humanity reveals its primordial characteristics. Pasternak wonderfully explores this human tragedy by following the life of Yurii Zhivago through the calamity of the Russian revolution. It is a story of a man desperate to hold on to his loves as the world brutally tears them from his grasp. Through relentless misfortune Zhivago loses comfort, home, and love, left bare to confront his changing life but fervently clinging to his past, ripping his soul and dying of a broken heart.
The disaster of Doctor Zhivago makes this novel a tragedy but it is tragedy's tendency not to suffocate humanity but to encourage its' best. Zhivago is survived by his three daughters; the promise of survival, they are the life that springs from tragedy; destined for futility but forever hopeful. Humanity harbors an incredible ability to endure tragedy, and in its grimmest state, not only to survive, but survive with hope. This hope, however foolish, preserves humanity and lets it continue stumbling not forwards, nor backwards, but simply stumbling on. Doctor Zhivago rekindles peoples' love of tragedy so civilization can retain a beautifully romantic faith in fortune's wheel.

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close, but no cigar

this is a an epic that could have been. at times it reaches the intensity of genius and the rythym of great prose, but those times are rare. i'm not sure whether to blame that on the translation of the work or on the work itself, but something is lacking, and it smells fishy.
overall, the novel is enjoyable, though dissapointing at times. pasternak admirably conveys the horrors of the revolutionary years, and asks the proper question regarding man and the history that he makes. this is a novel about great historical forces affecting individuals, and at times i cannot help but to compare it to the grapes of wrath. it is before anything though, a russian novel, and if your taste runs to that far east, this novel will not dissapoint.

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