Nobel Prize Winners (1958)
Man is born to live, not to prepare for life. Life
itself, the phenomenon of life, the gift of life, is so
breathtakingly serious!
-Boris Pasternak
Most of us are only familiar with Doctor Zhivago from the epic
David
Lean film version (indeed this is one of the books I come across most
frequently at book sales, almost always unread). The movie is beautiful
but strangely inert, has a somewhat disjointed narrative and conveys no
clear philosophical message--flaws which I always assumed were a function
of the difficulty of converting a Russian novel to film and the inexplicable
casting of two really awful actors (Omar Sharif & Julie Christie) in
the lead roles. But now, having reread the novel, it seems to me
that these weaknesses are inherent in the novel. Just as Lean seemed
most interested in the story as a vehicle for presenting cinematic images,
the real life in Pasternak comes less from the narrative itself than from
the poetry that Zhivago produces. And the message of the novel, assuming
that there is one, is presented awfully subtly.
Zhivago himself, the name means "life" in Russian, is a pretty docile
leading man. The story follows him as he is buffeted by the winds
of change in Russia from 1903 to his death sometime after WWII.
We can take at least a twofold message from the novel. Pasternak
seems first of all to be speaking out, however obliquely, against a system
which denies life and destroys artists, as the Soviet regime had.
However, he also seems to be saying that the artist is relatively helpless
against the tides of history. It is ironic in light of this that
Pasternak became such a cause celebre. A good deal of this novel's
reputation surely rests on the Western reaction to Soviet efforts to quash
it. Perhaps I've simply lost the ability to read between the lines
of samizdat, but I thought the condemnation of Communist Russia in the
book was exceedingly mild, almost too much so. And there is one section
in particular, right at the end of the book, where Pasternak waxes optimistically
over how the nation may be entering a period of renewed freedom now that
the war has been won. This kind of wishful thinking comes across
as incredibly naive. I guess I too will have to fall back on the
reaction that the novel provoked and assumed that even such feathery criticism
as the book contains was important in crystallizing opposition to the regime.
But Doctor Zhivago is understood to be semi autobiographical
and to the extent that Zhivago is acted upon rather than acting himself,
perhaps he is intended to convey Pasternak's own ambivalence about the
role he had played by remaining in Soviet Union and continuing to work.
Indeed, there is a really poignant moment in Isaiah
Berlin's piece on the author, where Pasternak, near desperation, seeks
to solicit Berlin's opinion on whether people believe that he has collaborated
with the government because he remained in the USSR or whether they instead
accept that he felt compelled to stay. In fairness to Pasternak,
it should not be necessary to leave a country (as did Solzhenitsyn) or
be disappeared (as was Isaac Babel) or be imprisoned (as were countless
others) in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of your opposition to an
evil government.
To be honest, the subtlety of Pasternak's message and our increasing
distance from the time when even such subtleties could prove incendiary,
served to deaden the effect of a novel which already suffers from being
a tad too episodic. In the final analysis, I guess I respected the
book more than enjoyed it and found it more interesting as a key artifact
of an age that is quickly receding from memory than compelling as a novel.
(Reviewed:08-Feb-00)
Grade: (B-)
Websites:
Boris Pasternak Links:
-OBIT: Pasternak Is Dead; Wrote 'Dr.
Zhivago': Pasternak Dead; Soviet Writer, 70 (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, May 31, 1960)
Book-related and General Links:
-Encyclopedia
Britannica : Your search: "Boris Pasternak"
-POETRY:
Boris Pasternak
"Winter's Night"
"There'll be noone in the
house..."
"February. Get ink, shed
tears..."
-Portrait
of Boris and Alexander Pasternak by Leonid Pasternak (1862-1945)
-Boris
Leonodovich Pasternak (Nobel Site)
-Boris
(Leonidovich) Pasternak (1890-1960)(kirjasto)
-Pasternak,
Boris Leonidovich (Britannica Guide to the Nobel Prizes)
-Boris
Leonidovich Pasternak Winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature
(Nobel Prize Internet Archive)
-BORIS
PASTERNAK (1890-1960)
-EXHIBIT:
Poetry in Revolution: The Pasternak Family Papers (Herbert Hoover Memorial
Exhibit Pavilion)
-ARTICLE:
The hard life of Boris Pasternak: Russian writer who was forced to
turn down the 1958 Nobel Prize is focus of new exhibit at Stanford
(Therese Lee, Palo Alto Weekly)
-ARTICLE:
SOVIET WRITERS REINSTATE PASTERNAK (PHILIP TAUBMAN, NY Times)
-ARTICLE:
PASTERNAK LETTERS TELL OF WORK ON 'ZHIVAGO' (AP, Boston Globe)
-ARTICLE:
30 YEARS LATE, SOVIET'S UNION OF WRITERS HONORS PASTERNAK (FELICITY
BARRINGER, NY Times)
-ARTICLE:
'Doctor Zhivago' to See Print in Soviet in '88 (FELICITY BARRINGER,
NY Times)
-ARTICLE:
Pasternak Retreat to Be a Museum (FELICITY BARRINGER, NY
Times)
-ARTICLE:
PASTERNAK'S SPIRIT IS EVICTED FROM HIS OLD DACHA (SERGE SCHMEMANN,
NY Times)
-ANNOTATION:
Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago (Medical Humanities)
-ESSAY:
Doctor Zhivago and Khrushchev (About.com)
-ESSAY:
TRANSLATING PASTERNAK (LEV LOSEFF, NY Review of Books)
-ESSAY:
Isaiah Berlin: Conversations with Akhmatova and Pasternak, NY Review
of Books
-Librarians
Choose A Century of Good Books (Library Journal; November 15, 1998)
-REVIEW:
Peter France: Pasternak in Private, NY Review of Books
My Sister, Life and Other
Poems by Boris Pasternak
Pasternak, A Collection
of Critical Essays edited by Victor Erlich
Boris Pasternak's Translations
of Shakespeare by Anna Kay France
-REVIEW:
Helen Muchnic: Pasternak in His Letters, NY Review of Books
Letters to Georgian Friends
by Boris Pasternak and translated by David Magarshack
-REVIEW:
Helen Muchnic: A Somber Theater, NY Review of Books
The Love-Girl and the Innocent
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Five Plays of Alexander
Ostrovsky translated and edited by Eugene K. Bristow
The Trilogy of Alexander
Sukhovo-Kobylin translated by Harold B. Segel
The Complete Plays of Vladimir
Mayakovsky translated by Guy Daniels
The Blind Beauty by Boris
Pasternak
Meyerhold on Theatre translated
and edited by Edward Braun
Notes of a Director by Alexander
Tairov and translated by William Kuhlke
-REVIEW:
John Bayley: Big Three, NY Review of Books
Letters: Summer 1926 by
Boris Pasternak, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marina Tsvetayeva
Letters on Cézanne
by Rainer Maria Rilke, edited by Clara Rilke, and translated by Joel Agee
-REVIEW:
Henry Gifford: Indomitable Pasternak, NY Review of Books
Boris Pasternak: A Literary
Biography Volume I, 1890-1928 by Christopher Barnes
Boris Pasternak: The Poet
and His Politics by Lazar Fleishman
Boris Pasternak by Peter
Levi
Boris Pasternak: The Tragic
Years, 1930-60 by Evgeny Pasternak
-REVIEW:
of A VANISHED PRESENT The Memoirs of Alexander Pasternak. Edited and
translated by Ann Pasternak Slater (Harlow Robinson, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of BORIS PASTERNAK The Poet and His Politics. By Lazar Fleishman (David
Bethea, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
V.S. Pritchett: Private Lives, NY Review of Books
The Correspondence of Boris
Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910-1954
-REVIEW:
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF BORIS PASTERNAK AND OLGA FREIDENBERG 1910-1954.
(Helen Muchnic, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF BORIS PASTERNAK AND OLGA FREIDENBERG 1910-1954.
(John Leonard, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
of THE PARADOX OF HISTORY Stendhal, Tolstoy, Pasternak, and Others.
By Nicola Chiaromonte (Hayden White, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of THE MEMOIRS OF LEONID PASTERNAK Translated by Jennifer Bradshaw.
Introduced by Josephine Pasternak (JOHN BAYLEY, NY Times Book Review)
GENERAL:
-Britannica
Guide to the Nobel Prizes (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
-REVIEW:
of NIGHTINGALE FEVER Russian Poets in Revolution. By Ronald Hingley
(Susan Jacoby, NY Times Book Review)
-Russian
Literature (Baranov Evgeny)
-Russian
Culture (About.com)
-ESSAY:
The Orthodox Content in Slavic Literature ( Andrew J. Sopko, Ph.D.,
Loyola University of Chicago, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America)
-ESSAY:
SUCCESS AND THE SOVIET WRITER (Vassily Aksyonov, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
Helen Muchnic: Coming Up For Air, NY Review of Books
Dissonant Voices in Soviet
Literature edited by Patricia Blake and Max Hayward
Pages from Tarusa: New Voices
in Russian Writing edited by Andrew Field
The New Writing in Russia
translated with an Introduction by Thomas P. Whitney
Half-way to the Moon: New
Writing from Russia edited by Patricia Blake and Max Hayward
Soviet Literature in the
Sixties edited by Max Hayward and Edward L. Crowley
-REVIEW:
Helen Muchnic: Poetry of Loss, NY Review of Books
Poets on Street Corners
by Olga Carlisle
Russia's Underground Poets
translated by Keith Bosley, Dimitry Pospielovsky, and Janis Sapiets
The Italics Are Mine by
Nina Berberova and translated by Philippe Radly
Fever and Other Poems by
Bella Akhmadulina
-REVIEW:
John Willett: Revolutionary Aesthetics, NY Review of Books
Literature and Revolution:
A Critical Study of the Writer and Communism in the Twentieth Century by
Jürgen Rühle and translated and edited by Jean Steinberg
-REVIEW:
John Bayley: The Upper Depths, NY Review of Books
Writers in Russia: 1917-1978
by Max Hayward, edited with an introduction by Patricia Blake, and preface
by Leonard Schapiro
-REVIEW:
John Bayley: Night Mail, NY Review of Books
Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century
Poetry of Witness edited and with an introduction by Carolyn Forché
Comments:
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