132
PARTISAN REVIEW
Such scenes, such spectacles (those of the hallucinatory march of
Par–
tisans across the Siberian steppes) gave the impression of something
transcendental, of another world. They appeared to be fragments of
an unknown existence, of other planets, transported by error on to the
earth. Only nature remained faithful to history and revealed itself to
the eye as the artists of the modern age had depicted it.
If
there is a mysticism of nature in Pasternak (and it is in the
light of this mysticism that his Christianity should be interpreted), there
is also, as a direct emanation of it, a mysticism of artistic creation.
After two or three stanzas composed in a rush and a few similes which
almost surprised him, the work took possession of him and he felt the
approach of that which he called inspiration. In such cases the en·
semble of forces that preside over creation seems to gain the upper
hand. The chief role no longer is the author's nor the state of his
spirit, which he is trying to render, but rather is taken over by the very
language with which he wants to express it. The language ...
begins
to think by itself, to speak and become totally music, not in the sense
of pure phonetic resonance, but as the consequentiality. and rhythm of
one's inner flow.... At such moments Juri Andn!evic felt that it
was
not he who did the essential work but something greater than himseU:
the situation of thought and poetry in the world... . He was only
an
occasion and a point of support. . . .
I t is while he is composing poetry that Zivagho happens to reflect
on history:
He realized once again that he did not know how to conceive of history
... that it presented itself to his thought like the unfolding of life
in
the vegetable world. In the winter, beneath the snow, the stripped
branches of a deciduous wood are thin and miserable as the hairs
in
an old man's wen. In the spring, the wood is transformed in a few
days.... During this transformation the wood moves with a speed
that surpasses that of the animals, for animals do not grow as quickly
as plants. And yet this is the sort of movement nobody can observe.
The wood does not move, we can't catch it in the act, or hide in such
a way as to surprise it. We always find it immobile. And
in
this very
immobility we rediscover the life of society, history, which also eternally
moves, eternally changes. . . . Tolstoy . . . thought of it in just
this
way, but he has not expressed it with sufficient clarity. Nobody makes
history, one cannot see history, just as one cannot see the
growing
of the grass. . . .
The capacity to give himself to life, to generously obey its rhythm–
this is the true measure of a man. It is not enough that a person
car·
ries out his function perfectly, like the revolutionist Strelnikov, the
per–
fect image of the resolute, intelligent man.
His thoughts had an extreme clarity and equilibrium. He possessed to
a rare degree the sense of justice and honesty, nobility and elevation
