6. Dr. Zhivago

by Boris Pasternak, Rated A++

This is going to be a long entry because this book made me think a lot so therefore I have a lot I want to write down.

This an epic story of Dr. Zhivago, his family, friends and acquaintances over the background of Russia's transition from Czarist rule to Bolshevism, passing through the First World War, Revolution and Civil War.

It’s really funny how much my perspective and feelings about this novel have changed since I first read it in 1969 or 1970. Back then I got all caught up in 1) the love story and 2) how much the Russian people suffered. The politics of it all sort of flew right past me. This time I have spent a lot of time thinking about this book and trying to figure out whether I saw the book as a historical novel that focused on the politics of the country at that time or as a story that put the spotlight on how the people of Russia survived them. I seem to remember that Pasternak got into a whole lot of trouble with the Soviets when he published this novel so presumably they saw it as a non flattering look at the politics. But I am going to stand by my original feeling that it is primarily a novel of survival. I sort of saw Yurii as a universal man, caught up in circumstances way beyond his control and trying in his way to point out the absurdities of war. A kind of poet journalist in a way.

And since this is my Journal and I can write anything I want I will stoop to cherry picking bits of Yurii's dialog and mention that some of Yurii's words ring true today:

"Don't they remember their own plans and measures, which long since turned life upside down? What kind of people are they to go on raving with this never cooling feverish ardor year in, year out on nonexistant, long vanished subjects, and to know nothing, to see nothing around them?",

The writing in the book is very lyrical but then Pasternak was primarily a poet so that is not surprising. But he did not do so well in plotting it in places. It bothered me how many coincidences there were in it. Russia is a vast country but yet the main secondary characters (I think I just did an oxymmoron) kept running into each other and crossing Zhivago's path. I really had to stretch a couple of times to shrug them off. But overall, a really marvelous book.