Sep 14, 2009 04:41 PM
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(Updated Sep 14, 2009 05:08 PM)
Although it contains passages written in the 1910s and 1920s, Doctor Zhivago was not completed until 1956. After submission for publication to the journal Novy mir, it was rejected because of Pasternak's political viewpoint (incorrect in the eyes of the Soviet authorities):
The author, like Dr Zhivago, was more concerned with the welfare of individuals than with the welfare of society, and Soviet censors construed passages as anti-Marxist. There are implied critiques of Stalinism and references to prison camps. In 1957, the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli smuggled the book manuscript from the Soviet Union and simultaneously published editions in both Russian and Italian in Milan, Italy.
The next year, it was published in English, (translated from the Russian by Manya Harari and Max Hayward) and was eventually published in a total of eighteen different languages.The publication of this novel was partly responsible for Pasternak's being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. The Soviet government asked the committee not to award him the prize, leading him to reject it in order to prevent a scandal back at home. Boris Pasternak died on 30 May 1960, of natural causes.
Doctor Zhivago was finally published in the Soviet Union in 1988, in the pages of Novy mir, although earlier samizdat editions existed.
Plot summary
Yuri Zhivagois sensitive and poetic nearly to the point of mysticism. In medical school, one of his professors reminds him that bacteria may be beautiful under the microscope, but they do ugly things to people.
Zhivago's idealism and principles stand in contrast to the brutality and horror of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the subsequent Russian Civil War. A major theme of the novel is how mysticism and idealism are destroyed by both the Bolsheviks and the White Army alike, as both sides commit horrible atrocities. Yuri witnesses dismemberment and other horrors suffered by the innocent civilian population during the turmoil. Even the love of his life, Lara, is taken from him.
He ponders on how war can turn the whole world senseless, and make an otherwise reasonable group of people destroy each other with no regard for life. His journey through Russia has an epic, dreamlike, almost surreal feeling because of his traveling through a world which is in such striking contrast to himself, relatively uncorrupted by the violence, and to his desire to find a place away from it all, which drives him across the Arctic Siberia of Russia, and eventually back to Moscow. Pasternak gives subtle criticism of Soviet ideology: he disagrees with the idea of "building a new man, " which is against nature.
Lara's life is also dealt with in considerable detail. Lara, whose full name is Larissa FeodorovnaGuishar (later Antipova), is the daughter of a bourgeois mother. She becomes involved in an affair with Viktor Komarovsky, a powerful lawyer with political connections, who both repulses and attracts her. Lara is engaged to Pavel "Pasha" Antipov, an idealistic young student who becomes involved in Bolshevism through his father. To gain independence from Komarovsky, Lara spends three years working as a live-in nanny for a wealthy family (the Kologrivovs). Upon returning her brother begs her to get 700 rubles from Komarovsky to repay money that he has gambled away. Lara gets the money for her brother from her generous employer, Kologrivov. However, when her pupil Lipa graduates, she feels like she is on charity instead of working for her keep in the Kologrivov household. She decides that Komarovsky "owes her" and she will get money from him with which she will become independent. She goes to a party to demand the money from Komarovsky. He is playing cards all evening and she does not get his attention. She finally walks in and attempts to shoot him but misses.
Zhivago briefly encounters Lara while assisting his mentor who has been called by Komarovsky to the scene of the attempted suicide of Lara's mother in response to Lara's and Komarovsky's scandalous relationship. Zhivago also sees Lara at the Christmas party where she tries to shoot Komarovsky. Lara and Zhivago truly meet following a roadside encounter between First World War troop columns, one group being miserable retreating Russian Army deserting veterans and the other group are new recruits bound for the hopeless conditions at the Front. Lara has been serving as nurse while searching for her assumed-dead husband Antipov. The two fall in love as they serve together in a makeshift field hospital. They do not consummate their relationship until much later, meeting in the town of Yuriatin after the war.
Pasha and Komarovsky continue to play important roles in the story. Pasha is assumed killed in World War I, but is actually captured by the Germans and escapes. He joins the Bolsheviks and becomes Strelnikov (the shooter), a fearsome Red Army general who becomes infamous for executing White prisoners (hence his nickname). However, he is never a true Bolshevik and yearns for the fighting to be over so he can return to Lara. (The film version would change his character significantly, making him a hard-line Bolshevik.)
(Note- I have read the Punjabi Translation version of this Novel)
(English Version Source- Net )(The purpose of posting- everyone should know how great this Novel is)
