Doctor Zhivago • Boris Pasternak

Doctor Zhivago has been on my to-be-read pile for quite some time, and after having a bit less time to read in recent weeks, it was exactly the right book to dive back in properly. My last truly substantial classic was a while ago. Moreover, Doctor Zhivago is a winter book, so it had to wait for the gray and cold season. Since early November, Arte has been running a documentary about the novel, and almost simultaneously a newly published book from Aufbau Verlag about the making of the novel landed on my desk. There were, in other words, plenty of reasons to turn to the book. In any case, I love watching a well-made documentary about a book I’ve just read. Today I’ll share a bit about what Doctor Zhivago is all about and the turbulent history behind it.

I mainly knew Pasternak’s book because of the famous 1965 epic film adaptation, even though I’ve never actually seen it—only the trailer. Once I decide on a book, I keep all information about it at arm’s length and don’t even read the blurb. The risk of spoilers is too great. Only afterward do I look things up, and I was surprised to learn just how politically charged the background of this book is.

The novel centers on Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago and tells the story of his life. It begins with ten-year-old Yuri, who has just lost his mother and goes to live with his uncle. With larger leaps in time, Pasternak traces Yuri’s development and his life during the revolutions, the First World War, and the Russian Civil War, spanning the years from 1905 to the summer of 1943. In addition to Yuri’s life, there are further plotlines that repeatedly intersect. While Yuri initially looks favorably on the revolution, the suffering and misery lead him to reconsider the political movement of communism. A key part of the story is Yuri’s love for Lara, which is severely tested amid the turmoil of war. Doctor Zhivago thus covers a broad spectrum: it is a Bildungsroman, a love story, rich in historical elements, at times philosophical, and also highly political.

I’ve always gotten a great deal out of Russian authors—whether Tolstoy, Goncharov, or Turgenev. I like the tales of Russian society and people, which in many respects are quite distinctive. I also love that search for meaning in the Russian soul—the posing of the big questions and the stirring of faith, philosophy, and metaphysics—that has resonated in every novel I’ve read. That’s the case here as well. In Gaito Gazdanov’s books, too, the Russian Civil War has its fixed place, only there it lies in the past and its political and historical significance plays no role. Between Tolstoy and Gazdanov, there’s a gap that Pasternak fills very well with Doctor Zhivago. After the fall of the tsars with the February Revolution of 1917 came the October Revolution in the same year and thus the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power. They aimed to establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat” and formed the communist Red Army. Opposing them stood the heterogeneously oriented White Army. In between there were also partisans and non-aligned military forces. These currents clashed in armed conflict.

Doctor Zhivago covers this entire period, depicting people’s lives, the famine and poverty in Moscow, Yuri’s service in the war, the living conditions, and the political controversy among the population with great skill. While numerous characters become increasingly radical, Yuri Zhivago questions the dogmas of the new political order and particularly doubts the violent imposition of such a dictatorship.

The novel is told in a strongly episodic manner and divided into numerous short sections, which are grouped into larger chapters and then into two parts. A third section contains the poems of Doctor Zhivago, intended to lend the events greater authenticity—though you won’t win much with me through lyric poetry, and I only skimmed them. The appeal of these poems lies in mapping them back to the novel’s events and figuring out which poem Doctor Zhivago wrote in which situation.

I found the beginning of the novel quite difficult, because early on there are repeated large leaps in time, and the first sections are only loosely connected and don’t manage to build a continuous picture of the main figures. While reading, I felt I only knew the characters in patches and, accordingly, felt little connection to them. That improves toward the middle of the novel. The love story also only really gets going in the middle, and it was only then that Yuri and Lara’s story truly gripped me. The ending impressed me less again; I couldn’t understand some of the characters’ decisions and they seemed somewhat arbitrary—chosen for dramatic effect. Some of the encounters are highly improbable too; in those moments I often didn’t quite buy what Pasternak was selling. That said, those choices do move the plot along.

I found the book’s style very plain and thus a bit dry—almost humdrum. But Pasternak becomes beautifully poetic and resonant when he writes about nature and love, or when he turns philosophical. I really liked those passages, and it would have been even better had that tone carried through the entire book.

He sensed the promise of her nearness, her austere coolness, bright as the night of the North and belonging to no one, like the first wave of surf one runs toward in the dark across the sandy shore. (p. 371)

The love story moved and touched me a great deal—I’m simply susceptible to that, and I’m in immediately. But as mentioned, I found some twists contrived, and some of Yuri’s decisions were, to me, incomprehensible. I think that someone who truly loves would act differently. The conclusions Pasternak then has his characters draw, the way he connects back to political ideology, and how he aligns his characters with this sociocultural setting—that, of course, is highly masterful and won me back over.

Never, not even in moments of mindless happiness, did the deepest and most moving feeling leave them: the blissful awareness that they, too, helped form the beauty of the world, that between them—as part of the whole—and the universe in its beauty there prevailed a profound correspondence. This harmony was the principle of their lives. The exaltation of humankind over the rest of nature—the fashionable humanitarian arrogance and the deification of the human—therefore did not touch them. The principles of a mendacious cult of society, transferred to politics, seemed to them pitiful and incomprehensible. (p. 606)

What I liked very much were the descriptions of nature, of the Russian hinterland—Zhivago traveling by train or settling down in the wilderness. They are highly atmospheric and easy to picture while reading. Equally well conveyed is life during the civil war: how full of privation it is, how a country and society decay under it, and how torn people are—on a search for meaning that has seized the entire society and runs like a fissure through the population.

Philosophical, political, and religious reflections recur throughout. In particular, on the transformation of society—the uprising of the working class, the radical revolution driven by the Bolsheviks, and the accompanying compulsion to adopt the party’s ideology without question—Pasternak returns again and again, clearly calling this dictatorship into question. He especially criticizes the sacrifice of the individual to society. In this context, the Arte documentary is a wonderful complement to the reading. It shows just how politically incendiary Pasternak’s novel was and the fierce resistance he faced in order to publish it.

Pasternak knew from the outset that the book would not be published in the Soviet Union. Numerous writers—even close acquaintances—were shot by the regime, or preempted it by taking their own lives. So he had the manuscript smuggled out of the country and ensured it reached Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a communist publisher in Milan. Feltrinelli published the book in Italy in 1957, at which point the Soviets lost their heads and tried everything to prevent it. The government exerted great pressure on Pasternak and did everything in its power to stop publication. They sent forged telegrams to the Italian publisher, but Pasternak had agreed with him that only messages in French would be valid—something the Soviets didn’t know. So they sent Russian instructions to Feltrinelli, who, despite the forged “Pasternak” signature, recognized them as fakes. The U.S. intelligence agency, the CIA, recognized the book’s political explosive power and wanted to use it as a weapon against the Soviet Union. They had it printed in the Netherlands in a small paperback format and smuggled into Russia on a large scale, to influence the population and weaken communist ideology.

The book was translated into 18 languages and became a major success, appearing all over the world. It was not until 1988—three years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union—that it was published in Russia. In 1958 Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and only in 1989 could his son accept the prize on his behalf in Stockholm. The regime took revenge on his lover Olga Ivinskaya and her daughter, who were imprisoned in a gulag for eight years. The book thus has a turbulent history, and knowing it allows one to look at the text with different eyes.

To capture all the subtleties that make this book what it is, you would, in my view, have to read it more than once. The links to the time period and ideology, and the bridge Pasternak builds with Yuri’s character and love story, are very delicate; I noticed that I skimmed too quickly over some passages. Many different characters appear—interrelated, some only marginal, yet influential on the story and representing certain social types. The book is thus very rich and offers a wide spectrum for reading and analysis. That said, for me it wasn’t exciting enough to merit multiple rereads, and a single reading suffices.

One book I will definitely read next is the novel The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott, which was published only recently. According to the blurb, it deals with the novel’s publication history—also the subject of the Arte documentary—though Prescott has turned it into a thrilling espionage tale. Since Pasternak modeled the character of Lara on his lover Olga Ivinskaya, the topic certainly has potential, especially as the author apparently invested considerable research.

My edition of Doctor Zhivago is from Büchergilde and was published in 1961. The first German edition appeared with S. Fischer Verlag in 1958 and, according to the small-print legal notes, my Büchergilde book is based precisely on that first edition. If you don’t want to spend much, you can get a solid classic here for less than four euros (shipping included), with sturdy thread binding and a thick linen cover. Especially when there’s no attractive current edition, I’m fond of such antiquarian books. It’s unusually thick, though, and at 660 pages it’s not actually as extensive as its appearance suggests.

Conclusion: Taken on its own, I found Doctor Zhivago quite good, but it didn’t blow me away and couldn’t sustain my enthusiasm throughout. The large leaps in time and the episodic structure repeatedly kept me from fully inhabiting the characters. Only the love story—which gains momentum from the middle—really won me over. The outlook on nature, philosophy, art, and love is rendered in wonderfully lyrical language, while the book’s underlying tone is rather plain. The portrayal of the Russian landscape, the inner rift of society and of individuals during the civil war, and the living conditions of the time are all excellently conveyed. The book becomes truly fascinating when viewed in its historical context—when you learn the background of its creation and gain insight into Pasternak’s struggle with himself and with the Soviet government. For me it isn’t a masterpiece, but it is nonetheless very much worth reading—and, in combination with the Arte documentary, an absolute recommendation.

Book information: Doctor Zhivago • Boris Pasternak • Büchergilde • 664 pages • 1961, based on the 1958 S. Fischer edition • Translation: Reinhold von Walter