Pasternak’s own story surrounding the writing of this novel, which won the Nobel after the manuscript was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published in Italy, and the consequences that led to his ignominious death a couple of years ago later, it reflects the fictional life of Dr. Zhivago, and is more attractive than the novel.

This is a difficult novel to follow, for although Pasternak was a celebrated poet and translator, he seems to have been quite an amateur novelist. Either this book was written in fragments over a long period without continuity checks, or pages were lost in translation, or the translators tried too hard to translate the original Russian into English and failed. The result is a jumble of characters and viewpoints that get lost in even minor characters who disappear soon after, and naming conventions that defy comprehension: Lara is alternately known as Lara, Larochka, Larissa Fyodorovna, Raissa Komarova, Antipova, and Strelnikova. ; and when you transpose that to the myriad others with variations of her name, first name and patronymic, last name, nickname, pseudonym, etc., she becomes one big maze. The descriptions of the landscape during war and peace and of the seasons are well interpreted from the poetic stance of the author, but the plot is often artificial and the dialogues are reduced to forced speeches that extend for paragraphs, often for the same length. speaker. The much-vaunted romance between Zhivago and Lara, so evocatively highlighted in the film and its theme song, is confined to a few brief pages, again more concerned with the other’s political stance than emotional. There is more feeling expressed in their loss in sharing than in being together.

The span of the story begins with the dispersal of Zhivago, his family, and their privileged upper-middle-class associates from Moscow with the start of World War I, follows their travels to the Urals and Siberia during the time of the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed. between 1917-22, he traces the good doctor’s return to Moscow at the height of that turbulent period, and concludes with the end of his impoverished life in that city eight years later. There is also an extended epilogue during World War II, when two of his colleagues try to rebuild the Zhivago diaspora. During this time, the characters randomly cross paths with each other in different circumstances; Lives are changed and loves are lost by most incidents. In one such incident, Zhivago, who is on a surreptitious visit to his mistress Lara, is kidnapped by Red soldiers to serve as a doctor on the Siberian front and never sees his official family again. Contribution or real life?

The strength of this novel – yes, despite its flaws there is great strength – lies in the fact that it was written by a writer who lived through and witnessed the period of the Russian revolution and civil war, untainted by propaganda which symbolized the Soviet era. . Pasternak is outspoken in portraying the White Russians and the Bolsheviks as equally guilty of patronage, corruption, and cruelty. Zhivago’s (and Pasternak’s) own political stance is revealed when he says, “I used to be in a very revolutionary mood, but now I think we will gain nothing by violence. People must be drawn to good for good.” The other powerful force in this book is its symbolism: Lara is the embodiment of Mother Russia, corrupted at a young age by her ruling class mother’s lover Komarowsky, and then deprived of her idealistic, revolutionary husband Antipov, and her beloved man. of science and art, Dr. Zhivago. Lara regrets that she is left with a reinvented Komarowsky, “a monster of mediocrity.”

Historical notes help marry fictional events with real-life background. I wish there had been a glossary of names too. And Zhivago’s (Pasternak) poetry at the end reveals much more of the doctor’s character and his spiritual development in this crucible of devastation that was the early years of the Soviet empire, much more than is revealed in the novel itself.