BORIS PASTERNAK
549
translation of the original text, and now this new and challenging pro–
duct of Pasternak's talent is available in English tOO.l
The novel is huge in size and broad in scope, and unfolds its
hero's fate from his childhood to his premature death on the eve
of the great Stalinist purge. Raised
in
the idealism of the early part
of the century, Zhivago trains himself to become both a doctor and
a poet, thus following the double call of charity and grace. He mar–
ries, but the revolution forces him to settle
in
the Urals, where he
is separated from his family and made to serve as a medical officer
in a Red guerrilla unit during the civil war. His only consolation
is his love for Lara:, an old Moscow acquaintance, who represents
in the novel the intuitive wisdom of life. When the crisis is over, he
returns to Moscow, and in 1929 he dies there of a heart attack.
The narrative of Doctor Zhivago's existence merges with that
of other, numberless characters, originally connected as neighbors,
relatives, or friends, and who, in the course of the story, meet again
in the most surprising circumstances. Although traditional in struc–
ture, the novel lacks a well-made plot: coincidence works beyond
the limits of verisimilitude, taxing the credulity of the reader, and
failing to raise the whims of chance or of the writer's fancy to the
level of either destiny or providence. Deprived of an epic or tragic
design, the narrative unfolds as a rhapsody: and this explains why
all
its beauties are but fragmentary ones. There are many memorable
episodes, but the novel's high point is that describing the hibernation
of the Red partisans in the
tayga,
and the attempt of some of their
wives to reach them by cutting a path through the snow and ice of
a primeval forest.
The protagonist survives many physical trials yet dies young,
wasted by the fever of life. Up to the end he faces each test with both
the compliance of his will and the resistance of his conscience. He
acts at once like a witness and a victim, never like an avenger or
judge. His mind often says "yea" to the reality to which his heart
says "nay." Ivan Karamazov accepted God while rejecting the world
He had created: Doctor Zhivago similarly accepts the postulate of
the revolution while rejecting many of its corollaries. From this view–
point there is no doubt that the protagonist represents the author's
outlook. The writer refuses, however, to intervene directly
in
the
1. Pantheon Books. $5.00.
