Word: zhivago
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...novel in this century has drawn such worldwide acclaim," said the London Daily Express of Doctor Zhivago. That was the trouble. By the time an English version reached the U.S. in 1958, two years after Boris Pasternak had sent his manuscript out of the Soviet Union, the novel's potential readers were already weary, and wary, of the Pasternak affair. It had been in the headlines for more than a year. In literary circles, skepticism and envy were aroused by the celebrity of the author and by his Nobel Prize. More disturbing to some intellectuals was the political aspect...
...when Edmund Wilson declared in 1959 that the novel would "come to stand as one of the great events in man's literary and moral history," scarcely anybody seemed to believe him. Since then it has been principally Russian exiles and specialists who have persisted in treating Doctor Zhivago as a masterwork of 20th century fiction. For all the attention the book has received from American critics, Doctor Zhivago might be a novelization of the movie of the same name...
Lately, however, there have been signs that Doctor Zhivago is assuming the place that Wilson had assigned to it. Interest has been quickened by the 1978 publication of A Captive of Time, the memoirs of Olga Ivinskaya, Pasternak...
...second day of the Congress, Pasternak, one of the Soviet delegates, stood at the podium. A respected poet, he had not yet written Dr. Zhivago, the work that was to insure his literary immortality. "I understand that this is a meeting of writers to organize assistance to Fascism. I have only one thing to say to you: Do not organize. Organization is the death of art. Only personal independence matters. In 1789, 1818, 1917, writers were not organized for or against anything. Do not, I implore you, do not organize...
...Pasternak's son is sparing no effort to save his father's house and has challenged the Writers' Union to take him to court. Until it is legal to read Doctor Zhivago aloud in the Soviet Union, he says, he will fight in every way he can to keep alive the memory of the author who wrote of his countrymen, "You are eternity's hostage, a captive of time...