‘Dr
Zhivago' is a book I have been intending to read for years - inspired by David
Lean's cinematic adaptation - but never got round to until this year. It
was the cover, I have to confess, of this Fontana Books edition of 1969 that I
found in a second-hand bookshop that finally galvanised me into action.
I really don't want to dwell here on Lean’s film of 1965.
It, after all, deserves a blogpost all to itself, but I will say that at times the
film differs markedly from the book. That is inevitable in any film
adaptation and perhaps it's best to think of the film as a riff on Pasternak's
novel. I don't think those changes matter too much, however I have to
register a disappointment that the book does not contain the line 'The personal
life is dead in Russia. History has killed it.' It appears the
screenwriter Robert Bolt has to be thanked for that.
Like Shostakovich's 13th Symphony, 'Dr Zhivago' is a product of
the so-called 'Khrushchev Thaw' - a time in the Soviet Union, post WWII, post
Stalin, when there was a loosening of the state’s control of the arts (amongst
other things). Both the symphony and the novel challenged the limits of
that 'thaw'. The premiere of the symphony, December 18th, 1962, took place
against a background of intimidation by the authorities. Six years earlier when
Boris Pasternak (1890-1970) had submitted the manuscript of Dr Zhivago to the
literary journal 'Novy Mir' for publication it was rejected. It was just too
critical of the Soviet regime. For a while it was circulated between
Pasternak’s friends and then in 1957 it was smuggled out to the West, where its
publication caused a sensation, and some literary critics were driven to
hyperbole. These two examples are taken
from the back cover of the Fontana edition:
‘Doctor Zhivago will, I believe, come
to stand as one of the great events in man’s literary and moral history.’ Edmund Wilson in The New Yorker
‘The first work of genius to come out
of the Russia since the Revolution.’
V S Prichett in The New Statesman.
With exception of the Epilogue, ‘Dr Zhivago’ is set during the
first quarter of the 20th century in Russia, opening when Yuri
Zhivago is a child of 10 and concluding with his death at the age 0f
approximately 35. The majority of the
novel is, however, concerned with the nine years of conflict between 1914,
where Russia entered WWI, and the end of the Russian Civil War in 1922/23. With Revolution of 1917 the external enemy is
replaced with the internal, as Russia went
to war with herself. The Civil War that followed, alone, claimed between 5-7 million
lives, mainly civilian.
Against this almost apocalyptic historical
process Zhivago attempts to find space to form a stable family life, first with
Tonya and then Lara. To insulate
themselves from the titanic events grinding away like tectonic plates beneath
them. (The third attempt, which happens
later in Moscow, is given a much briefer account.) Their happiness is fleeting, and Yuri is defeated
in each attempt. He loses everything each time and in that process of erosion is
reduced to a husk of a man. A man
destroyed. The personal life was, indeed, dead in Russia. Towards the end of the novel are two extraordinary
passages when this broken man, still grasping at life, makes two epic journeys on
foot through a decimated land, almost bereft of another living being. Quite haunting, if not disturbing - one can
almost feel as sense of evil abroad. This
is a strongly evocative book that seems to gather in strangeness as it
progresses, and the everyday is shredded by conflict and the new authorities. Though in the Realist tradition of the 19th
century, there is a deep sense of the 'other' particularly when we leave the city
and venture out deep into the Russian countryside.
I
can’t help feel that the influence of Dostoevsky is close at hand – though as
my knowledge of Russian literature is somewhat limited I may be wrong, but it seems
to be there in the way the characters talk and interact and those philosophic
discursions that pepper the book. Tolstoy
too in the vast scale and ambition. Pasternak
is attempting to convey the entirety of Russia – hence, I suppose the vast
geographical and historical scope of the novel, one that suggests some sort of
metaphysical intent. Hence also the
great number of named minor characters, which can be confusing.
Much is
made in the film adaptation of Yuri’s adulterous relationship with Larissa (Lara) Antipova, and the critic Stuart Hampshire reviewing the book in ‘Encounter’ called
it ‘One of the most profound descriptions of Love in the whole range of modern
literature.’ Yes, what unfolds is a love story. And perhaps it is a
strand of this novel that is most easy to pick up on in a novel that one critic rightly called 'elusive'. Dr Zhivago is, however, much more than that. It is the story of a nation, a people,
descending into madness and barbarism. Whole communities were wiped off the
face of the earth. There were biblical scale plagues of vermin, and famine, and
there were the 'Besprizorniki' (translated on wiki as 'The Unattended') - millions of abandoned
children whose lives were lived on the streets, surviving by begging, stealing
and prostitution. It could be that some of those who were forced by
circumstance into the latter were under the age of ten.* It is beyond comprehension.
* They were the children of those killed in WWI,
the Civil War, the famines and the purges.
