Word: pasternak
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (558 pp.)-Boris Pasternak-Pantheon...
Thus the U.S.S.R.'s Boris Pasternak, who once described himself as "almost an atheist," seems to summon his readers to stand-not before the official Communist deity, which is a thing called history-but before the divinity of Jesus. This helps to explain why Doctor Zhivago, the greatest Russian novel since the Revolution, will not be read in Russia. The poem is attributed to the novel's hero, who supposedly leaves it with a sheaf of other verse as his legacy, but it plainly speaks for Pasternak and his gentle genius...
...Pasternak is a poet, and it is not merely such blunt statements of opposition that make his novel stick in the Communist crop. The book attempts a subtle defense of individualism, and of the individual's search for meaning in life. While nursing wounded in a service hospital, the heroine muses: "One needs to believe in essential values, in life's force, in beauty, in truth so that they-and not human authority-may lead you up sure paths...
General Phariseeism. Despair and religious yearning pervade a group of poems, supposedly written by the hero, which Author Pasternak effectively uses as the novel's epilogue. Sample: "I catch the distant echo of the happenings of my century. In the darkness of the night a thousand flaming binoculars are focused on me. If only it is possible, God, remove this chalice from me. I love your obstinate plan, and in agreement, I will play my part. But now a new drama has arisen. This time at least, relieve me of taking part in it . . .1 am alone and everything...
What effect the bootleg publication of his novel will have on Author Pasternak, 67, is questionable. Probably he will survive; he has been out of favor before (in 1946 for bourgeois tendencies), presumably knows how to bow to "human authority" as well as his colleague, Novelist Dudintsev. When asked at a recent diplomatic cocktail party what would become of irksome Author Dudintsev, Dictator Nikita Khrushchev replied blandly: "I intend to see him. He will continue to write, but there will be nothing for which world capitalists will sing his praises...