PASTERNAK'S MESSAGE
131
sions." And, again: "No sooner had the mass of the humble revolted
and
the advantages of the elite been abolished, how quickly then did
everyone become stale and faded, how soon they laid aside without
regret their original ideas, which they obviously had never had!" When;
in
the Moscow of 1917, Juri Zivagho brings home a duck and his
family enjoys this unheard-of luxury, they are filled by a feeling of
guilt.
The evening seemed to them a betrayal. ... Outside the window spread
Moscow, dark, mute and hungry.... They understood then that only
a life similar to the life of the people who surrounded them, a life
which immerses itself in life without leaving a trace, is a true life, that
solitary happiness is not happiness.
It is because his spirit is so open and so disposed to accept not only
what is just but all that takes place, and to evaluate it for what it
means, that Zivagho, hearing about Lenin's
coup d'etat,
can exclaim:
"From the manner in which this act has been carried out to the end,
without the slightest hesitation, there is something of our national tra–
dition, something ancestral and familiar. Something of Pushkin's ab–
solute light, of Tolstoy's direct faithfulness to the concrete."
But it is just this generous impartiality that gives Juri Zivagho
the right to judge and, confronted by the newly established power,
to say:
Everything has its measure, Larisa Fedorovna. In this in-between period
it
was necessary to achieve something. Instead, it seems clear that, for
the
inspirers
of the revolution, the marasmus of upheavals and trans–
formations is
their natural element. They do not live on bread, they
require something which at least equals the whole terrestial globe. The
construction of new
worlds,
the period of transition is their
goal,
a
goal
in itself. They haven't
learned
anything else, they don't know how to
do anything else. And do you know where the restlessness of this con–
tinual changing of theirs comes from? From the lack of definite abilities,
talent. Man is born to live, not to prepare himself for life.
On the other hand, such judgments would not carry the weight
of conviction they do
if
they did not well up from so vast and joyous
a feeling for nature and the communion of all living beings, to which
Pasternak continually brings back his characters: on the earth is the
chaos caused by men, one endures it as inevitable and perhaps even
just, but, lo! a cloud forms in the sky, a cow moos, the ice melts in
the spring, and everything that happens on earth is transfigured, its
burden of pain infinitely lightened, the great certainty which lies at the
bottom of the human heart infinitely
confirmed.
