CALENDAR OF THE REVOLUTION
249
selves, assumed the postures of "fellow-travellers," and eventually became
Stalin's court poets-Shaginian, for instance, was a Stalin Prize Winner.
It is with the voice of that original, authentic "internal emigre" that
Pasternak has now spoken, equally unshaken in his hostility towards
Bolshevism and his deep, physical and poetic, attachment to Russia. It
is as
if,
in the course of nearly four decades, he had managed to pre–
serve this his identity intact. His perception, his emotions, and his imag–
ination have remained as if closed to the many deep changes that have
transformed his country beyond recognition and to some of the storms
that have raged over it in the meantime. This testifies to the organic
strength of his character but also to an extraordinary rigidity and limi–
tation of his sensitivity.
Doctor Zhivago
is indeed an act of resurrection.
But risen from the dead, Pasternak speaks the language of the dead,
not of the living.
II
Doctor Zhivago
is a political novel
par excellence;
and so its ap–
praisal must start with the analysis of its political message. The author
puts the message into the mouth of his chief character, who is largely his
own projection, and into the mouths of the other figures who all talk at
great length about their attitude towards the revolution. They dwell on
the revolution's failure, on its inability to solve any problems, on the
violence it has done to the human personality, and on the disillusion–
ment it has brought in its wake. The plot is designed to bear out this
critique. Nearly all the characters are driven to misery, despair and
death; and love and humanity are defeated and destroyed by the "poli–
tics of revolution." In the background there is Russia, shown as senselessly
convulsed and tormented to no purpose, unless in mystical expiation of
sin. Christianity remains the hope and refuge, a Christianity which need
not be clearly defined but is recognizable in its humanitarian outlook, its
humility, its acceptance of history, and its refusal to
try
and remake
man's earthly destiny. It is from this quasi-fatalistic Christianity that
finally springs Pasternak's ethereal note of reconciliation even with the
revolution, the unexpectedly optimistic note on which the novel ends.
It may be, the author suggests, that the great expiation has been accom–
plished and the deluge is over: its few survivors can already sense a
"presage of freedom in the air" and a "silent music of happiness"; and
they "feel a peaceful joy for this holy city" of Moscow.
A message of this kind is a matter of faith and hardly lends itself
to rational discussion. Nor is it likely to be fruitful artistically. With
nothing but these beliefs and convictions, Pasternak's characters are
