Credo che non ti amerei tanto se in te non ci fosse nulla da lamentare, nulla da rimpiangere. Io non amo la gente perfetta, quelli che non sono mai caduti, non hanno inciampato. La loro è una virtù spenta, di poco valore. A loro non si è svelata la bellezza della vita. Ho conosciuto Jurij Andrèeviĉ Zivago e Larisa Fëdorovna Guichard diversi anni fa attraverso i volti affascinanti di Omar Sharif e Julie Christie, protagonisti di un film che vinse cinque Golden Globe e cinque Oscar. Non ricordo quasi nulla della trama di quel film, ma è piacevolmente impresso nella mia memoria come uno dei più bei film d’amore che abbia mai visto. Ed è uno dei film preferiti di mia madre, l’abbiamo visto insieme e l’ho pure registrato per lei. Insomma, un’aura di positività circonda nella mia memoria “Il dottor Zivago”Qualche tempo fa, in una delle mie spedizioni in libreria, ho visto su uno scaffale il libro: era un periodo di sconti e il libro mi chiamava con voce suadente, promettendo di farmi rivivere le piacevoli emozioni del film. Potevo tirarmi indietro? Ovviamente no e così l’ho comprato. La lettura non è stata delle più semplici, soprattutto le prime cento pagine sono state abbastanza difficili da digerire e la tentazione di abbandonare Jura e Lara al loro destino molto forte. Troppi personaggi, troppe vicende che corrono parallele senza apparente rapporto tra loro. Inoltre trovo snervante la consuetudine degli scrittori russi di descrivere le città citando continuamente i nomi delle strade, come se fosse ovvio sapere dove si trovi il Mercato Smolènsk a Mosca oppure ritenere che l’esatta ubicazione di una farmacia all’angolo del vicolo Starokoniùsenny sia un’informazione rilevante. (Ho provato la stessa irritazione con “Il Maestro e Margherita” e “Anna Karenina”, quindi se qualcuno conosce la motivazione per questa ossessione odonomastica degli scrittori russi, ebbene si faccia avanti e me la spieghi!) L’inizio faticoso ben si coniuga con il tono minore degli ultimi due capitoli: mi piace pensare che Pasternak avesse tutta l’intenzione di continuare le vicende appena accennate nella parte finale ma non ci sia riuscito.Non mi sono data per vinta e ho continuato a leggere: senza accorgermene ho iniziato a camminare per le strade di Mosca, a riconoscere i luoghi (ma i nomi delle vie continuano a non dirmi proprio nulla), a seguire tutti i personaggi che popolano la vicenda del Dotto Zivago, conosciuti ancora bambini per poterne meglio cogliere i cambiamenti sopravvenuti con il tempo e le esperienze. E le vite di tutti, come dei fili, hanno iniziato a intrecciarsi tra loro per tessere una trama che a pieno diritto si inserisce nella grande tradizione epica russa, come riporta la motivazione per l’attribuzione nel 1958 del premio nobel per la letteratura. Tutti, infatti, svolgono un ruolo nella vicenda del dottor Zivago e di Lara: non c’è n’è uno per cui Pasternak spende più parole del necessario, basta aspettare e con pazienza gli eventi si dispiegheranno davanti agli occhi del lettore e ciascuno avrà la sua parte. Le vite di Jurij e Lara scorrono parallele e si sfiorano sin dalla loro adolescenza: il giovane a Jurij Andrèeviĉ Zivago rimane subito colpito da Lara. Dopo essersi sfiorate più volte, le loro vite si allontanano e tornano a correre parallele. […]erano tutti insieme, vicini, e alcuni non si riconobbero, altri non si erano mai conosciuti, e certe cose rimasero per sempre ignote, altre attesero per maturarsi una nuova ccasione, un nuovo incontro. Vite normali che devono affrontare eventi eccezionali, la guerra e la rivoluzione, che li fanno nuovamente incontrare e amare. Il loro era un grande amore. Ma tutti amano senza accorgersi della straordinarietà del loro sentimento. Per loro invece, e in questo erano una rarità, gli istanti in cui, come un alito d’eternità, nella loro condannata esistenza sopravveniva il fremito della passione, costituivano momenti di rivelazione e di un nuovo approfondimento di se stessi e della vita. Ho amato Jura e Lara per le loro mancanze, per i loro errori, per l’incapacità di cambiare nonostante tutto intorno a loro cambiasse a velocità vertiginosa. Pasternak non ce li descrive come due eroi, duri e puri, che sacrificano tutto per i loro ideali; no, nulla di tutto ciò nella descrizione di Lara e Jura. Sono due persone colte la cui sensibilità stride fortemente con la vuota retorica dell’ideologia rivoluzionaria e questo è la causa di tutte le loro difficoltà: continuare a vedere la realtà così com’è e non come dovrebbe essere secondo la propaganda sovietica. Non sono certo gli unici a trovarsi in difficoltà, ma a causa delle loro vicende personali si trovano al centro dell’attenzione e quindi nella necessità di dimostrare la loro fedeltà alla rivoluzione o, in caso contrario, di mimetizzarsi in mezzo a tutti gli altri. Sul versante opposto di Jurij e Lara ci sono Tonja (la moglie di Zivago) e Pavel Antipov (il marito di Lara). Tonja è pragmatica, sin dai primi disordini capisce che la situazione sta precipitando, che la loro vita deve cambiare soprattutto per garantire la sopravvivenza dei figli. Rinuncia senza lamentele alla sua casa e alle comodità a cui è sempre stata abituata, spinge il marito ad andare in Siberia (nella vecchia tenuta di famiglia) con la speranza di coltivare la terra per non patire più la fame e il freddo dell’inverno. E’ una donna forte che non si abbandona a lamentele o al ricordo del passato e ha chiaro il suo dovere: salvare la sua famiglia. Si rende subito conto, ancora prima di Jurij, dell’attrazione del marito verso Lara, di cui loderà sempre la disponibilità ma metterà in guardia Zivago: ”Devo sinceramente riconoscere che è una brava persona, ma non voglio fingere: è proprio il mio opposto. Io sono venuta al mondo per semplificare la vita e cercare il giusto cammino, lei per complicare la vita e far sbagliare strada ”Pavel Antipov, invece, sacrifica tutto per la rivoluzione: sente che soltanto negli ideali rivoluzionari troverà quell’autenticità che manca nella sua vita familiare. A differenza di Zivago, non riesce a trovare l’appagamento nelle piccole cose della vita e sente che la famiglia limita le sue possibilità. Incapace di rendersi conto dei particolari, colse l’essenziale, intuendo che Patulja interpretava erroneamente il suo sentimento per lui. Non apprezzava il senso materno che in lei faceva una cosa sola con l’amore, senza comprendere quanto fosse più grande quell’affetto del comune amore di una donna E’ un personaggio triste e insoddisfatto verso cui non riesco a provare antipatia. Il suo errore è quello di non avere fiducia negli esseri umani e di riporre tutte le sue speranze negli ideali rivoluzionari, che presto verranno traditi dalle stesse azioni messe in atto per garantire la supremazia della Rivoluzione.Leggendo delle vicende del dottor Zivago, che, nonostante le sue grandi e molteplici capacità, preferisce vivere ai margini della nuova società che si va costruendo, mi è venuto spontaneo pensare che dietro questo personaggio si nascondesse Pasternak, che rifiuta il Nobel per la letteratura e preferisce continuare la sua vita lontano dai riflettori, nonostante tutti i vantaggi che quel premio avrebbe comportato. E ho anche dato a Jurij Andrèeviĉ Zivago il volto di Boris Pasternak perché è così che viene descritto: un volto dal naso camuso, un tipo come tanti altri ma ricco di fascino per il senso di libertà e di naturalezza che si sprigionava continuamente da lui . E da chi, del resto, Jurij può aver preso le sue idee, entusiaste prima e deluse poi, sulla rivoluzione se non dal suo creatore? Da chi gli viene la visione profondamente religiosa della storia e del ruolo dell’uomo nel mondo? Chi lo ha aiutato a mettere in versi le vicende più salienti della sua vita? Chi gli ha inculcato il rifiuto di giudicare le persone non per le loro azioni ma per la loro appartenenza religiosa ed etnica?Ovviamente le risposte non le so con certezza, ma mi piace immaginare che Zivago sia l’alter ego di Pasternak. Questo è il vantaggio di leggere un libro di uno scrittore morto che non ha mai fatto grandi proclami. Posso fargli le domande e darmi le risposte, tutto da sola: nessuno verrà a smentirmi. Adesso dovrei scrivere della Rivoluzione e della grandezza di Pasternak di far diventare fatti quotidiani i grandi eventi storici che hanno portato alla creazione dell’Unione Sovietica, senza sminuirne la vastità. La sua capacità di tratteggiare personaggi fittizi che incarnano le diverse forme che ha assunto la Rivoluzione sovietica: l’esaltazione degli inizi per la promessa di libertà e la disillusione degli anni successivi, quando la retorica dei rivoluzionari di professione si allontanava sempre di più dalle reali esigenze delle persone, che finivano per pagare un prezzo troppo alto per delle speranze mai realizzate. Ma questo va ben oltre le mia capacità di lettrice appassionata e lascio a ciascuno di voi la curiosità di leggere le parole di Zivago. Allora sulla terra russa venne la menzogna. Il male peggiore, la radice del male futuro fu la perdita della fiducia nel valore della propria opinione. Si credette che il tempo in cui si seguivano le suggestioni del senso morale fosse passato, che bisognasse cantare in coro e vivere di concetti altrui, imposti a tutti.
AUGUST 2 REVIEW:After finishing the book last night, I immediately wrote my review. I always do that because I right away start reading the next book. Also, writing what I learned from the book and what I felt while reading it are easier if the story is still fresh in my mind.However, for almost the whole day, I thought that I missed the whole point of the story. My August 1 Review below definitely was too weak for a beautifully told forbidden love story of Yuri and Lara.While driving from the office, I asked the usual questions that I ask myself after reading a book: Did I learn something from it? from its characters? from the events? Is there something in the story that can make me a better person? Is there some lesson in it that I can learn from? Is there something that the book wants to tell me?I always believe that a book, just like a person, crosses one's path for a reason. There is no chance encounter. From the many, many books that we see when we walk into a bookstore or a library, we pick up the ones that we think we like. We browse, we read blurbs, we ask around, we select. From the many, many people we encounter in our life's journey, there are those people who we smile at and say our first hello hoping to win them over and have them as friends.Doctor Zhivago is one of those books that I chose to read from the 400+ books that are in my to-read pile. Yes, it is the suggested book for August 2010 in our 1001 Group. Yes, it is part of my quest of finishing all the 1001 books before I die. But, I have the choice not to read it. But I chose to start it early last week, read through the whole week and chose to finish it last night. Had I read this book when I was still single, i.e., before I turned 29 years old, it would have been just another illicit love affair. Illicit because Yuri and Lara are both married. Yuri has Tonya and they are living happily. Lara is separated from his husband who is a soldier. One day, Yuri sees (again) Lara and he decides to spend a night in Lara's place. He tells his wife, Tonya an alibi for not going home that night. And so, that's the Day 1 of their forbidden love affair. If I were single, I would just brush it off as just another story and there is no lesson whatsoever because I was single and still in the lookout for the right person to spend the rest of my life with.However, now that I am married and happily at that, the story has a different meaning. The way Pasternak described it is that the love between Yuri and Lara is one true beautiful love. Is it possible that a married man might still encounter his one true love, his real soulmate, when he is already married? Is it possible that a married man only committed a mistake of marrying his wife who is not really the person for him? Those are the questions that this book brought into my mind while driving home tonight. You must have heard the beautiful song "Lara's Theme" that exactly captures this same sentiment. The dream of fulfilling the right love that came at the wrong time (when a person is or both persons are already married): Somewhere, my love, there will be songs to singAlthough the snow covers the hopes of SpringSomewhere a hill blossoms in green and goldAnd there are dreams, all that your heart can holdSomeday we'll meet again, my loveSomeday whenever the Spring breaks throughYou'll come to me out of the long-agoWarm as the wind, soft as the kiss of snowTill then, my sweet, think of me now and thenGodspeed, my love, till you are mine againSomeday we'll meet again, my loveI said "someday whenever that Spring breaks through"You'll come to me out of the long-agoWarm as the wind, and as soft as the kiss of snowTill then, my sweet, think of me now and thenGodspeed, my love, till you are mine again! I am not sure of the answer. Really. I am hoping that Yuri's dilemma will not happen to me. I will not search for it. I will not make myself available for it. But if and when it still comes to me, I will probably do what Yuri did. That's why I rated this with a five-star. This book poses a disturbing (for a married man) question. And luckily also offers an answer. Or an option: what Yuri did. Clever. One hell of a story. AUGUST 1 REVIEW:Doctor Zhivago first submitted for publication in 1956 was rejected for its "libelous" depiction of the Russian Civil War (1917-1921). When it was published finally in English in 1958, it had already been translated to 18 other languages. Its author, Russian poet Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the same year this novel was published in English: 1958. When he learned the good news, he sent back a telegram saying he is "Immensely thankful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed" but after four days, he sent another telegram refusing to accept the award. The Soviet Communist Party said to have pressured him to refuse the award.This novel is about:Love or to be exact, two love triangles. The first triangle is that of Yuri torn between his wife Tonya and his mistress, Lara. The second triangle is about Lara torn between Yuri and her husband Pasha/Sterlnikov. Among the two love triangles, Pasternak focused more on the latter. The most beautiful quote describing the love between Yuri and Lara can be found on page 501:"Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the wide expanses they saw on their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did." Moscow during the two wars: Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Russian Civil War of 1918–1921. In the book's epilogue, there is this evening scene where the two surviving sons of Yuri are looking through the book their father wrote. Pasternak aptly says:"And Moscow, right below them and stretching into the distance, the author's native city, in which he had spent half his life - Moscow now struck them not as the stage of the events connected with him but as the main protagonist of a long story, the end of which they had reach that evening, book in hand." Life during war is, above all, what this novel is all about. However, unlike other war novels, there are no battlefront scenes with soldiers dying in trenches or forests. However, the impact of those wars can be seen on the changes they bring to the characters' lives. So as not to offend the Russian communist, Yuri did not have the usual church burial ceremony. However, there are flowers by the casket that seem to "compensate for the absence of the ritual and the chant (p. 493)." Pasternak continues:"They did more than blossom and smell sweet. Perhaps hastening the return to dust, they poured forth their scent as in the choir and, steeping everything in their exhalation, seemed to take over the function of the Office of the Dead.The vegetable kingdom can easily be thought of as the nearest neighbor of the kingdom of death. Perhaps the mysteries of evolution and the riddles of life that so puzzle us are contained in the green of the earth, among the trees and the flowers of graveyards. Mary Magdalene did not recognize Jesus risen from the grave. "supposing Him to be the gardener...." Another beautiful quote tells us the Pasternak's view on life: "Man is born to live, not to prepare for life"Thank God by giving us to read beautiful novels like Doctor Zhivago that make this life's journey more bearable if not more meaningful.
What do You think about Doctor Zhivago (1997)?
There was no way I could ever escape reading Doctor Zhivago. After all, I'm a proud daughter of a literature teacher; this book earned the Nobel Prize for Boris Pasternak; and it has been staring at me from the top of my to-read pile for years with quiet accusation.And so, reader, I finally read it.Doctor Zhivago is an interesting novel. It is very character-centered but is absolutely *not* character-driven. It is an epochal novel focused on the particularly turbulent, violent and uncertain but yet future-defining era in Russian history - the time frame around the Russian Revolution and the following years of brutality and confusion in the Russian Civil War. The driving forces of the story are the frequently senseless and almost always cruel historical events, a greater force against which the efforts and intentions and agency itself of the characters are pathetically, frustratingly helpless and futile. It is really a story of individual fates trampled under the relentlessly rolling forward bulldozer of history.What may surprise some people who via the phenomenon of 'cultural osmosis' may know of this story as one of the greatest stories of forbidden and doomed love ever written (or something of similar sort, a misunderstanding perhaps perpetuated by the 1960s screen adaptation of this book), the love story is a quite small part of the overall plot. Don't read it for the pangs of unrequited love or the tension of the love triangle - the disappointment is sure to come if those are your expectations.Boris Pasternak, with the bravery not encouraged in the Soviet Union, seemed to be not only acutely aware of the historical forces relentlessly driving the lives of his compatriots but also - which was definitely unacceptable and a few years prior to the completion of the novel, under the ever-increasing paranoia of Josef Stalin's rule, would have been in the best-case scenario punished by quite a few years in GULAG concentration camps in the depths of Siberia - recognized the absolute senselessness of so much if what had happened. His courage in expressing such views paid off in the form Nobel Prize that he was successfully pressured to reject back in 1958; the Nobel Prize that was given as we know now not just for the merits of the novel itself but for what it represented - a daring slap in the face of the Soviet system both despised and feared in the Western world.While I'm at it, I'd like to make sure I get across that while being quite skeptical about the October Socialist Revolution and its consequences, Pasternak was definitely not even close to being starry-eyed or wearing rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia when it came to the old way of living in Russia, the world shattered by the events of the revolution. He never leaves a doubt that the old world order needed to be changed, that the change was both necessary and organically expected; but the direction the change took was painfully brutal and, perhaps, less than ideal, and those who have suffered from such a radical change were perhaps the best people Russia had at that time - but their value has not made them any less vulnerable to the unrelenting march of time and dictatorship of proletariat."It's only in bad novels that people are divided into two camps and have nothing to do with each other. In real life everything gets mixed up! Don't you think you'd have to be a hopeless nonentity to play only one role all your life, to have only one place in society, always to stand for the same thing?"Yes, Pasternak clearly had strong views on what has happened and continued to happen. No surprise he used his novel to express them. Therefore you do get pages and pages of beautifully expressed opinions in the form of passionate speeches. These pages are both wonderful since they are so insightful and interesting and full of understanding of internal and external conflicts that go into the formation of these opinions - as well as actually detrimental to the novel in the way we usually think of novels, since there is little dialog as such, most of it replaced by passionate oration. These speeches hinder the narrative flow and introduce early on the feeling of artificialness, never allowing you to forget that this novel is a construction that serves the author's purpose rather than being an organic story. "No single man makes history. History cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing. Wars and revolutions, kings and Robespierres, are history's organic agents, its yeast. But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track mind, geniuses in their ability to confine themselves to a limited field. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days, the whole upheaval takes a few weeks or at most years, but the fanatical spirit that inspired the upheavals is worshiped for decades thereafter, for centuries."The character development also suffers from the focus on the greater external events. I could never shake off the feeling that the characters were present as merely the vehicles for driving the story to where the author wanted it to go; they never developed into real people for me, instead remaining the illustrations of Pasternak's points and the mouthpieces for his ideas. In short, to me even 600 pages in, they remained little but obedient marionettes. Besides, what I found a bit distracting and ringing of contrivance was the sheer amount of coincidences and unbelievable run-ins into each other that all his characters experienced in the vast reaches of the Russian empire with more frequency that one would expect from neighbors in a tiny village. The web of destiny with these improbable consequences tends to disintegrate into the strings holding up puppets, and that's unfortunate in such a monumental book.And Pasternak's prose - it left me torn. On one hand, his descriptions are apt and beautiful, making scenes come to life with exceptional vividness. On the other hand, his descriptors and sentences frequently tend to clash, marring otherwise beautiful picture. The reason these occurrences stand out so much to me is perhaps the knowledge of Pasternak's absolute brilliance as a poet, so easily seen in the collection of poems accompanying this novel. It's amazing to me to see the level of mastery he shows in his verse - the poem 'A Winter Night' colloquially known as simply "The Candle Burned" after its famous refrain is one of the best poems I know, honestly, and "Hamlet" is made of pure perfection - and therefore a bit disappointing to see it not always repeated in his prose.Sadly, despite my way-too-long obsessive internet search I could not come across a translation of these poems that came even close to doing justice to their brilliance. It's very unfortunate, but I guess some things need to be experienced only in the original. A good reason to learn Russian, right?And yet despite the imperfections and the unevenness there is still something in this novel that reflects the genius talent that created it. There is still something that did not let me put this book aside even when I realized I did not love it as much as I had hoped. The greatness is still there, despite the flaws, and it remains something to be admired.3/5 stars.
—Nataliya
My first reading of Dr. Zhivago was in high school. At 15, the book was a chore. Impenetrable and numerous Russian names (often for the same character) and endless description of the Russian landscape left me exhausted and unimpressed. After re-reading and enjoying other high school assignments, I came across Dr. Zhivago on my bookshelf and wondered if I would find more appreciation for Mr. Pasternak's novel ten years later.Yes, I did. And no, I didn't.With ten more years of life, a wife and a job I found a connection with the characters. I understood the way outside forces can pull a person in strange directions and the way life can drop a person into unexpected and unwanted situations. I understood that sometimes people are swept into and out of the place they want to be - and why they stay where things are bad and leave where things are good. Dr. Zhivago is at its heart a love story. No 15 year old understands the kind of love Pasternak puts in his character's hearts. Ten years on, I understand Yuri far better than I did in High School. I also had a far greater appreciation for Pasternak's obviously loving descriptions of his homeland. That said, the things that drove my dislike of Dr. Zhivago the first time were still still there. The sprawling story and unending task of keeping the characters straight was still a detraction. I don't know if my problem with character names springs from the fact that, being Russian names, they are unfamiliar to my mind or if Pasternak simply failed to rein in his cast of thousands. Unresolved plot lines rarely bother me but, when combined with extensive background on what ending up being minor characters, Dr. Zhivago felt a bit as if Pasternak let the narrative get away from him. Maybe that was the point. Sometimes life just gets away from you. After all, he's the one with a Nobel Prize. Who am I to criticize?While I actually liked the novel this time, I feel as if I should have liked Dr. Zhivago more than I did. Maybe it's that I can't escape my first impression.
—Griffin Betz
"The time is out of joint"In the mid 90s I was surfing through radio chanells and stumbled across techno music station and 2 Djs were talking. Their idea was that Pasternak somehow prevents their music to succeed, they were convincing their listeners to quit paying attention to Pasternak "and everything like that" and start to admire something more important, which of course was their techno music. Not that I'm going to lecture those people after all these years, especially since they won't ever read this, but back then I was very surprised how they didn't see own inability to concieve their own goals without Pasternak, while bashing him. If he was that NOT important, why even mention him?Nevertheless he was probably last genious Russian novelist after Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, although he wrote only one novel. Here is "Doctor Zhivago" concept as I understand it:the book is about gaining immortallity through art, how to live a life and stay immortal through your own work and creations. Epic story of Yury Zhivago's life is a path for creation of "his" genious poems. You read his life, you see all the turns and choices that he made and by that you see how those poems were made. The book ends with his death which opens last part - poems themselves (I have no idea if they are well translated into English, but they absolutely uneclipsed in Russian). I believe that is the reason why all the film adaptions of "Doctor Zhivago" fail so much - they just re-tell plot-lines, story as it is and loose main concept of the novel - poetry as a path to achieve immortality. No great Russian writer was ever writing in such a simple, clear style since Tolstoy. Whole first half of XX century Russian literature was anything but simple. Symbolism, modernism, absurdism, akmeism etc, etc. Style of this book is hidden behind recognizable, common manner, which gives reader possibility to get all the ideas, thoughts and concepts without even noticing them. In simple words the book is very clever and delicate but page-turner at the same time.Whole Zhivago and Lara story is put into epic context of our tragic history of the first half of XX century. Pasternak obviously was going to name things as they are and he knew he will be hit hard for that. You see everything that communists have done to our country through the eyes of an intellligent man, a doctor, a poet and you see that dark matter that catches those people and most of them died and those who survived - suffered and again - probably the only way for them to leave something behind themselves was to write something that will outlive them and those cruel times. Pasternak recieved Nobel for this book but was humilated in his homeland. "Pasternak is worse then a pig" - it was a motto. In USSR the book was published only in 1988, but yes, as he wanted - it outlived cruel times and provided its creator with immortality.And I'm swithching from 4 stars to 5 of course (and yes, I know that majority of bookish intellectuals think "Doctor Zhivago" is a trash, I don't care".
—Pavel
