Word: zhivago
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...sense, Zhivago and the Russian intellectuals he symbolizes are Dostoyevsky's Ivan all over again. Just as the murder of the Father Karamazov was a consequence of Ivan's ideas, so was the Revolution a consequence of the (at once brilliant and naive) Russian intellectual ferment, a century in the coagulating. And just as Ivan was unable to face the practical implications of those ideas, to accept his own involvment in reality, and went insane; so Zhivago and his ilk came out of the October Revolution bewildered and shaken into silence...
...Zhivago's tragedy is somewhat confused by Pasternak's limitations as a novelist. This is his first novel. He is a poet, and during the Stalin era of literary frigidity, he devoted himself to Russian translations of Shakespeare. As a poet, he has been schooled to write from a single point of view, a single consciousness ranging on a variety of subjects or focusing on one. Most poetry is characterized by this synthesis of artist and the created personality. For poetry, it is basic; for the novel, it can be disastrous. The fusion of Zhiva-go and Pasternak admits...
...Evgraf, Zhivago's brother, appears once every 150 pages and plays his spasmodic role as a brother's keeper. Pasha, who left his family to become a military commander for the Communists, must explain his love, excuse his motivation, justify his life, and shoot himself in ten pages. These two men offered Zhivago a serious intellectual challenge--service out of love, and service out of duty. But Zhivago fails to come to terms with either concept, and Pasternak abets...
...springing full-blown from this same faulty technique is the book's most serious fault-lack of character development. The reader must constantly depend upon random statements by one character judging another for either of them to be illuminated. We are told that Lara (for Zhivago, the life-force) symbolizes the oppression of the 19th century and the hope of the 20th; but someone has to say it, for in the characterization of her words and deeds there is no indication of such a symbolic meaning...
Evgraf, Pasha, Komarovsky (the old lecher), and Tonia (Zhivago's first wife) rush onto the stage, whisper or shout their say, commit their little deeds and consider their situations, and the clamber back into the wings. Some, like Zhivago, are tangled in the threads of introspection; others don't appear to think at all. Does Komarsky help Lara out of a sense of guilt for having violated her, out of a real love, or what: What sort of person is Tonia? Why did Pasha really leave home? Unfortunately, we can't tune in tomorrow...