Doctor Zhivago

Rating:
Summary: The crying soul
Review: Doctor Zhivago is a crying soul and nothing else. Timeless. Boundless. The hope for the future. Post-human.

Rating:
Summary: A Tale of Life.Love and Destruction
Review: This Russian classic begins in 1901 and takes us through the dying years of Tsarist Empire and through the unspeakable horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution and the resultant Civil War and then into the hideous totalitarian regimes of Lenin and Stalin

It is not a political novel but rather a human drama but anyone honestly writing about events during this time cannot fail to depict how the cruelty of these times ( unknown prior to the 20th century ) destroyed lives and love, all that is noble and good and compassionate .

It focuses on Dr Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago and several friends and associates of his including his loyal and strong wife Tonya, the beautiful and mystifying Laryssa Fyodorovna (Lara),her shy and gentle husband Pasha who later reappears as the terrible Red Army officer Strenikov
And Yuri's two close friends Misha Gordon and Nicky Dudorov

Zhivago -disgusted by the poverty and injustices of Tsarist Russia - initially supports the high ideals of the Bolsheviks but after their bloody seizure of power it soon becomes clearer and clearer that the Bolsheviks are far and away crueler and more steeped in hypocrisy than even the worst elements of the Tsarist order

Later in the book he is forced to ask himself "Was it possible that he must pay for that one moment of rash enthusiasm all his life hearing ,year after year , anything but these unchanging , shrill , crazy exclamations and demands , even more lifeless , meaningless and unfulfillable as time went by? Was it possible that in one short moment of over-sensitive generosity he had allowed himslef to be enslaved for ever"

The Civil War of 1918 - 1920 sees unimaginable horrors from which previous terrible tribulations of long suffering Russia such as the invasion by Napoleon in 1812 (depicted by another great Russian epic) and the recent First World War pale into incomparison.)

Misery and terror are spread into every corner of Russia and nobody is spared

While staying in a village on the steppes with his wife and family Yuri once more meets up with Lara whom he had known from his past

The love of Yuri and Lara is one of the great romances of literature like that of Romeo and Juliet ,Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights , and Lancelot and Guinevere

Lara describes it a something ordained by the very forces of nature but at the same time something predestined to be destroyed

He sends a few brief , ecstatic but fearful months with her after the Civil War but hey are again cruelly separated. By this time Yuri's wife Tonya and their children have gone into exile

Slowly the key characters in the novel disappear one by one until the two main characters of the novel Yuri and Lara are themselves devoured by the cruel , pitiless and wolfish revolution

All that has beautiful seems to have been destroyed but we are then again reminded how life and all that is good continues to sustain itself ,through hope everlasting, against all that is cruel and evil and ugly in this world

Rating:
Summary: At least the movie is good...
Review: I sat down to read what I heard was one of the greatest Russian novels of the 20th century. I got through the first few chapters, thinking Pasternak is laying the groundwork, it will get better. It doesn't.

I did like parts of the novel. The prose is very well done. His descriptions of Russia during the upheaval of revolution, war, and basically the whole first part of the 20th century is riviting. The best parts, in my opinion, are the side stories of the minor characters. Those give you a good insight as to what the time was like for the everyday Russian.

But what I didn't like outweighed the good. This book is waaay too preachy. There are parts where one character will say, for example, "Tell me what you think of christianity," and then Pasternak will follow with 3-5 pages of an essay on his views on christianity. It didn't flow, it didn't feel like a natural conversation two people would have. It felt like Pasternak was using this novel as a forum to express his views rather than to tell a story. I don't mind philosophy in literature, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the story central to the novel.

The other thing I feel I must comment on is that I must echo previous reviewers and say the names are very confusing. He uses first names, last names, nicknames, maiden names, aliases, and pseudonyms, all interchangibly, all with no regularity. With a novel already populated with many different characters, referring to those characters in 5 different ways makes the story very difficult to follow, and puts up an unnecessary roadblock to the reader.

I guess I just expected more.

Rating:
Summary: Definitive Work of 20th Century Russian Fiction
Review: As far as Russian literature in this last century goes, this is the best work I have seen. Doctor Zhivago does for the Communist Revolution what War and Peace did for Napoleon's invasion. There can be many comparisons made between the two books. Zhivago's story starts with the suicide of his father, who squandered the family fortune, and moves on from there to the revolution. No punches are pulled here: we see many shockinge effects of that event. Zhivago and his family leave Moscow to avoid the bloodshed and needless deaths, but he heads to more of the same, eventually becoming conscripted into the Red Army against his will to help with medicine. There is also Lara, Zhivago's love, who brings Zhivago to carry on. The decision to release this book was a gutsy one by Pasternak, but it paid off. This is the definitive epic of Soviet literature, and it comes highly recommended by me.

Rating:
Summary: The Definitive Russian Epic of the Twentieth Century
Review: Without intending to stereotype an entire nation, I don't think I'd be wrong to say that the Russian people seem to have a profound gift for literature. Many of the world's great writers were Russian: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Pushkin, Gogol, and countless others. These masters have created timeless works addressing universal issues. In Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak has created the definitive Russian epic of the 20th Century, and in doing so joins this impressive list of literary lions.

Without going into too much detail, the story traces the lives of Yuri Zhivago and Lara Guishar during the time of the Russian Revolution. The paths of these two exceptionally believable and distinctive characters cross from time to time, and their attraction towards one another is palpable. While this book is many things, it is also a love story, and so it comes as no surprise when the two stories become one.

The various qualities that make this novel so impressive are too many to list, but I will list some of the more notable points: the story helps to shed light on one of the most momentous political and social events in history (the ousting of the Tzar by the Bolsheviks through a series of revolutions), and goes a long way in explaining the effects of this political upheaval on the Russian people; while the story is a sprawling epic in the tradition of Charles Dickens, the characters are much more well-rounded and believable than those in most of Dickens's novels; Pasternak graces this book with some of the most beautiful passages in the history of literature (many of which describe the Russian landscape). This novel is at times mysterious, harrowing, uplifting, eye-opening, and introspective, and it goes farther in emotionally overwhelming the reader than most great works of literature.

The difficulties I had with Doctor Zhivago were small, but difficulties nonetheless. I found it irksome that Pasternak took the time to introduce us to so many relatively insignificant characters, giving us not only their names and descriptions, but their histories and ancestry. I was also bothered by the abundance of coincidences in the story. Everytime Zhivago ran into someone (even if he was thousands of miles into Siberia), it was a character he (and we) had previously encountered. One or two such incidents would be mildly ironic... forty or fifty start to stretch the limits of plausibility.

Despite these minor flaws, this book is breathtaking. It is the story of a butterfly-like individual who attempts to survive a thunderous storm of a revolution. You do not need any knowledge of Russian history to appreciate this epic story. All you need is a little imagination, and a lot of time (the book is about 550 pages).

Rating:
Summary: The epic of independent thought in censorship hell
Review: This is the epic of Zhivago (and later, Pasternak himself)over the background of Russia's transition from Czarist rule to Bolshevism, passing through the First World War and the Civil War. The novel tells the intercrossing stories of Dr. Yuri Zhivago and Lara, whose lives meet several times during their childhood and adolescence, without getting to know each other. Zhivago grows up in Moscow, with the Gromeko family, whose child Tonya becomes his wife. Lara gets married to Pavel Antipov, who goes to war. When he is missing in action, Lara becomes a military nurse, in order to look for him. Zhivago also has to go to war, and there he meets Lara. After the war, he and his family move to a rural estate near the city of Yuriatin. There he meets Lara again. She lives alone with her daughter, since her husband has become the terrible revolutionary known as Strelnikov. They fall in love immediately and absolutely, and they start an affair which torments Zhivago, since he feels bad about being unfaithful to his wife. One day, he is kidnapped by the Partisans (revolutionaries), who keep him in prison during the Civil War. Eventually he escapes, to proceed his life. Many things more happen, but let's not spoil the plot.

This book is a vast landscape of Russia, but it's not a political or social novel. It is basically a story of love and Fate, but it is also possible to interpret it as a symbol of what war, politics and especially totalitarianism can do to the individual. But I don't agree with the reviewer who says that every character is a specific symbol or prototype, since I found them to be full personalities, tragic figures with a whole life depicted in the book. This book is to be suffered, for it is very emotional and sad. "Rich" is perhaps the best word to describe it.

Rating:
Summary: Beware the Poet Bearing Prose
Review: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak is billed as the greatest love story ever told. While the setting of the book is very interesting, the material that it covers is not.

The story takes place in revolutionary Russia. Yurii Zhivago is a socialist doctor who has been swept up in the currents of WWI and the Russian revolution. Along the way he meets a woman named Lara who is married to a man that she is seeking at the front during the war.

Zhivago also meets Lara at different times in the story. I kept waiting for their romance to blossom but it never does. Instead, at one of the times that they meet during their travels they just all of a sudden start this love affair. The affair has no basis in reality. They just fall into each others arms and we are supposed to accept that this is the way it was always meant to be. We are not given any rationale for the affair.

The background of Doctor Zhivago is very interesting. Also, Pasternak's treatment of the revolution is scathing at best. I can see why the Soviet Union would have been upset at the book's publication and Pasternak's subsequent fame because of it.

However, this doesn't make up for the book's inherent flaws of plot formation. As I said in my title to this review: beware the poet bearing prose. They too often have their heads in the clouds when prose requires a firm footing on solid ground.

Rating:
Summary: a Russian Harlequin Romance
Review: I didn't like this book at all. The characters were all one-dimensional, more representations of ideals (Mother Russia in Lara; the old intelligentsia in Yuri; the Revolutionary Spirit in Lara's husband) than actual characters--and weakly written, at that. Perhaps Pasternak would have been better served (as would generations of readers) if he had put the story in the form of an epic poem where such things are acceptable.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I have read
Review: This is a great book that illustrates the Russian Revolution, the war between the Reds and Whites across the countryside, partisans, social situation before, shortly after, and decades after the revolution, and even World War II, with short descriptions on gulags. This book evokes a lot of grief from the reader. I am typically a fan of Steinbeck, so I generally like this style and was not disappointed by this book. A fairly good sized portion of the book focuses on Yurii Zhivago's romance life, which was not as interesting as the other sections, but this did not take away from my enjoyment of the novel. The Pantheon Books edition is excellent, with footnotes that clarify details. In summary, this is a great book that, although difficult with its large cast of characters, is an excellent work that should be included in every school reading list.

Rating:
Summary: respected the book more than enjoyed
Review: Man is born to live, not to prepare for life. Life itself, the phenomenon of life, the gift of life, is so breathtakingly serious! -Boris Pasternak

Most of us are only familiar with Doctor Zhivago from the epic David Lean film version (indeed this is one of the books I come across most frequently at book sales, almost always unread). The movie is beautiful but strangely inert, has a somewhat disjointed narrative and conveys no clear philosophical message--flaws which I always assumed were a function of the difficulty of converting a Russian novel to film and the inexplicable casting of two really awful actors (Omar Sharif & Julie Christie) in the lead roles. But now, having reread the novel, it seems to me that these weaknesses are inherent in the novel. Just as Lean seemed most interested in the story as a vehicle for presenting cinematic images, the real life in Pasternak comes less from the narrative itself than from the poetry that Zhivago produces. And the message of the novel, assuming that there is one, is presented awfully subtly.

Zhivago himself, the name means "life" in Russian, is a pretty docile leading man. The story follows him as he is buffeted by the winds of change in Russia from 1903 to his death sometime after WWII. We can take at least a twofold message from the novel. Pasternak seems first of all to be speaking out, however obliquely, against a system which denies life and destroys artists, as the Soviet regime had. However, he also seems to be saying that the artist is relatively helpless against the tides of history. It is ironic in light of this that Pasternak became such a cause celebre. A good deal of this novel's reputation surely rests on the Western reaction to Soviet efforts to quash it. Perhaps I've simply lost the ability to read between the lines of samizdat, but I thought the condemnation of Communist Russia in the book was exceedingly mild, almost too much so. And there is one section in particular, right at the end of the book, where Pasternak waxes optimistically over how the nation may be entering a period of renewed freedom now that the war has been won. This kind of wishful thinking comes across as incredibly naive. I guess I too will have to fall back on the reaction that the novel provoked and assumed that even such feathery criticism as the book contains was important in crystallizing opposition to the regime.

But Doctor Zhivago is understood to be semi autobiographical and to the extent that Zhivago is acted upon rather than acting himself, perhaps he is intended to convey Pasternak's own ambivalence about the role he had played by remaining in Soviet Union and continuing to work. Indeed, there is a really poignant moment in Isaiah Berlin's piece on the author, where Pasternak, near desperation, seeks to solicit Berlin's opinion on whether people believe that he has collaborated with the government because he remained in the USSR or whether they instead accept that he felt compelled to stay. In fairness to Pasternak, it should not be necessary to leave a country (as did Solzhenitsyn) or be disappeared (as was Isaac Babel) or be imprisoned (as were countless others) in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of your opposition to an evil government.

To be honest, the subtlety of Pasternak's message and our increasing distance from the time when even such subtleties could prove incendiary, served to deaden the effect of a novel which already suffers from being a tad too episodic. In the final analysis, I guess I respected the book more than enjoyed it and found it more interesting as a key artifact of an age that is quickly receding from memory than compelling as a novel.

GRADE: B-