Doctor Zhivago

Zhivago believed in the Revolution. But he also knew it would be meaningless unless there was a revolution within people themselves: in the way they thought, in the way they looked at life, and in how they saw themselves in relation to others. He found the constant barrage of edicts and threats issued by those struggling for power in various places throughout the country childish. Many of the same people who had helped bring about the Revolution had forgotten what they were fighting for. They turned against each other, and against the masses who had suffered through starvation, atrocity, and war. Zhivago resented talk of lofty ideals when it was uttered by shallow-minded people living empty lives. At the same time, he saw beauty in everything. He saw it in death and disease, in nature, and in people�s battered desire for creativity and order.

The last several years of Zhivago�s life were just as amazing as those he spent surviving the Revolution. Their relative tameness was a natural outcome of the oppressive post-Revolutionary atmosphere, as well as the physical and mental exhaustion brought on by the suffering he had endured. His eccentric life in Moscow, where he stood out in appearance and thought, bore testimony to man�s hunger for meaning and purpose. While those around him were content to spout currently acceptable and government-mandated phrases about life, history, and politics, he went on living and speaking as before. Separated by fate from his wife, Tonia, and their son and daughter, and from his true love and spiritual soul mate, Lara, he �married� a third woman in Moscow with whom he had two more children. When he was feeling well enough, he wrote and published his thoughts on medical, philosophical, and literary subjects. Despite living an underground sort of existence, his work and name, especially as a poet, became widely known. When he died of heart failure, mourners crowded the room where his body lay surrounded with flowers. Instinctively, they knew what they had lost.

Doctor Zhivago brought Boris Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but the novel was banned in the Soviet Union and the author had to decline the honor. Once the book reached the West, it was quickly translated into over a dozen languages. Pasternak died in 1960 and was �rehabilitated� by the government in 1987, eventually leading to publication of the novel.

There are dozens of websites where you can read about Boris Pasternak�s life and career, and where you can read about what his novel might or might not have meant in terms of politics. Personally, I recommend the book for its history, humanity, and beautiful language. I also recommend it as a reminder of how small we really are in the overall scheme of things, and of how large we can be in the face of overwhelming circumstances and events.

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