Revolution through the eyes of Pasternak (Based on the novel “Doctor Zhivago”)
1. Premonition of coming changes. 2. Personal and planetary revolution. 3. Results and results of spontaneous processes.
Nowadays, both the 1917 revolution itself and its results are ambiguously assessed.
The older generation considers her merits positive. Middle-aged people approach this event differently. And we, young people, sometimes don’t know what to believe and what not. How did a writer closer to that time evaluate these events? Boris Pasternak partly reflected his view of the revolution in his novel Doctor Zhivago. Through the eyes of the main character, we are shown the writer's perception of the revolution. Even before all the events begin, Yuri Zhivago anticipates future radical changes. But not everyone around him agrees with this. So, he talks to Lara in Melyuzeev about the coming changes: “Soon an unimaginable dump will happen here. It is beyond our power to prevent it.” Lara doesn’t believe him, she doesn’t feel these new trends of the times: “Nothing will happen. You overstate". Zhivago seems inspired by the coming changes and, like any person, hopes for a bright future, and most importantly freedom: “And you and I live in these days!.. Think: the roof was torn off from all over Russia, and we and all the people found ourselves in the open air > - Freedom!" This unexpected freedom opens up new horizons for a person. He can now build his own destiny. Gradually, as the novel progresses, we understand that Zhivago looks at the revolution not in particular, but in general, one might say, on a planetary scale. “I watched the rally last night. “An amazing sight,” he says to Lara. “Mother Rus' has moved, she doesn’t stand still, she doesn’t walk, she talks. The stars and trees come together and converse, the night flowers philosophize and the stone buildings rally.” All this became possible thanks to the revolution, the groundwork for which was created by the war. The revolution had finally broken free of the shackles that held it back. But the revolution appears not only as a social revolution on the pages of the work. The writer very clearly notes that it also happens inside every person. “One could say,” Zhivago suggests, “two revolutions happened to everyone, one personal, and the other general.” But for now, in anticipation of change, Zhivago only wants to merge with what is happening: “I really want to be part of the general animation.” These new trends and the swirling circle of life appear again and again in the thoughts of Yuri Zhivago. “Loyalty to the revolution and admiration for it” increasingly took possession of him. But over time, this fascinating time machine began to hang over the hero as something inevitable. “He considered himself and his environment doomed. There were trials ahead, maybe even death.” This increasingly unfolding spontaneous event is no longer attractive, but dangerous in its scale of fundamental changes. This already scares Yuri Zhivago and he seeks salvation in work and family. However, mentally he still returns to this and realized his own insignificance in the elemental world: “He understood that he was a pygmy in front of the monstrous colossus of the future.” A person can only observe what is happening around him and not interfere. Yuri Zhivago still remains admiring the revolution, although he no longer feels able to interfere in the course of events. The hero now speaks about it as something going on in parallel: “What a magnificent surgery! Take it and artistically cut out old stinking ulcers! A simple, straightforward verdict on centuries-old injustice, which is accustomed to being bowed to, scraped and curtseyed in front of it.” Such admiration for the writer is colored by a cloud of snowflakes. This coincidence of natural (snowfall, blizzard) and human (revolution) actions speaks of their whirlwind origin. This still shakes the imagination of Yuri Zhivago, but alarming notes are already sounding: the verdict, as we know, cannot be appealed. When, finally, Yuri Zhivago encounters the results of these spontaneous processes, they do not at all inspire him or cause admiration. “The doctor remembered the recent autumn, the execution of the rebels, the infanticide and wife-murder of the Palykhs, the bloody slaughter and slaughter of people, which had no end in sight. The fanaticism of the whites and the reds competed in cruelty, alternately increasing one in response to the other, as if they were multiplied.” It is difficult to judge who the writer prefers. It would be better to say that he is trying to objectively assess the current situation. It is increasingly becoming clear that the end does not justify the means, either on the part of the whites or the reds. The blood shed by both sides has and will not have justification. Yuri, having been in the war, only in the Liveria camp encountered such senseless bloodshed: “The blood made me sick, it came to my throat and rushed to my head, my eyes swam with it.” Zhivago’s life path intersects with another main character of the novel, Strelnikov. He tries to convince the doctor that he will never understand the reasons for such global changes: “You won’t understand this. You grew up differently. Dirt, overcrowding, poverty, desecration of man as a worker, desecration of woman. There was the laughing, unpunished insolence of debauchery, mama’s boys, white-lined students and merchants.” Zhivago was only able to state historical facts and correct the consequences (treat the wounded). The very course of history is not subject to his control. Zhivago cannot change the “exhalation” of a large number of people. All this is beyond his abilities. The engine of global change will not concentrate on the little person. This is exactly how Pasternak sees the revolution in his novel. He clearly describes the manifestations of human helplessness in the face of the elements that burst into everyone’s life. As a result, this element spares neither whites nor reds. Almost all the heroes of the work become its “victims”. This whirlwind of revolution sucks in and does not offer a way out of this vicious circle. And here, it seems, it doesn’t really matter which side you’re on. The main thing is not to lose your own “I” in the whirlpool of history. Life itself will then put everything in its place. But this spontaneous process will not give rest for a long time. And therefore it is impossible to give a clear answer to the question: Pasternak is for or against the revolution. In the novel he appears as an artist who plausibly described the realities of that time.
Essay A look at the revolution and civil war in B. Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”
When writing the novel “Doctor Zhivago,” Pasternak, first of all, wanted to convey the era of that time, the events of which he was a witness and describer. In the novel, the writer expresses his unusual, different from others, view of the world and what is happening. Before us unfolds the life story of a relatively small circle of people whose fates are directly related to historical events. The content of the novel is the spiritual story of Boris Pasternak himself, presented as the life story of another person, Doctor Yuri Zhivago. At the same time, in the few years lived by Doctor Zhivago at the height of the revolution, Pasternak contains his life and spiritual experience for a much longer period, almost for the entire post-October period. The experiences, thoughts, and sufferings of the hero of the novel reflected a very wide range of circumstances. It is important for a writer not so much to depict the hero’s life itself as to express his attitude to the revolution, his relationship with the revolution. Zhivago is a personality, as if created in order to perceive the era without interfering in it at all. In the novel, the main active force is the element of revolution. The main character himself does not influence or try to influence her in any way, does not interfere in the course of events, he serves those to whom he ends up. Once, in a battle with the whites, he even takes a rifle and, against his own will, shoots at the attacking young men who admire him for their bravery. He is repulsed by the cruelty of the rampant Red partisans, repelled by the cruelty of the whites, and the indifference of the new government to culture. Pasternak, and with him his hero, accept life and history as they are. The writer believed that “no one makes history, it is not visible, just as one cannot see grass growing.” Wars, revolutions, kings, Robespierres - these are its organic pathogens, its fermenting yeast. Revolutions are made by “effective people, one-sided fanatics.” The events of the October Revolution are perceived by the writer as something independent of human will, like natural phenomena. He feels them, hears them, but does not comprehend them logically; for him they are like a natural given. Pasternak wanted to show the all-consuming scale of the revolution. He believed that it was necessary to make life itself speak, in which the smells of nature and the horrors of war are naturally intertwined. To understand Pasternak’s attitude to historical events, it is necessary to cite one scene from the novel. Having bought an emergency issue from a newspaper boy with a government message from Petrograd about the formation of the Council of People's Commissars, the establishment of Soviet power in Russia and the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in it, the main character, Yuri Zhivago, returns home. Warming himself by the stove, he hands the newspaper to his father-in-law: “Have you seen it? Admire it. Read it." Without getting up from his haunches, stirring the coals, Yuri Andreevich talks loudly to himself: “What a magnificent surgery!.. Revelation gasped into the very thick of the ongoing routine, without paying attention to its progress.” These words in the novel are perhaps the most important for Pasternak’s understanding of the revolution. Firstly, they belong to Zhivago, and, therefore, express the thoughts of the writer himself. Secondly, they are directly dedicated to the events of the October Revolution. Thirdly, they explain the attitude of the advanced intelligentsia towards the revolution. Doctor Zhivago takes history for granted, simply including or not including the phenomena of reality in the orbit of his life. Here is how Yuri talks about the war: “The war was an artificial interruption of life, as if existence could be postponed for a while (what nonsense!). The revolution broke out against our will, like air that had been held back for too long. Everyone came to life, was reborn, everyone had transformations, revolutions. One could say: two revolutions happened to everyone, one of their own, personal, and the other general. It seems to me that socialism is a sea into which all these individual revolutions, a sea of life, a sea of identity, should flow into streams.” Revolution is a revelation, and it is not subject to ordinary evaluation. It cannot be avoided, its events cannot be changed. A person caught in her net becomes weak-willed. He sees and participates in revolutionary events, but participates only as a grain of sand and can change little in its course. Zhivago’s neutrality in the civil war is explained by the fact that he is a military doctor, that is, neutral according to international conventions. According to Pasternak, it was during the war that even death threats “were a blessing compared to the inhuman dominion of fiction and brought relief because they limited the witchcraft power of the dead letter.” Pasternak, together with Yuri Zhivago, sees those killed in the struggle and those dying without guilt, scattered families, broken destinies, severe material deprivation and the destruction of moral standards. Both the author and Zhivago perceive the revolution not just as an accomplished fact, but they see the greatness of what is happening and recognize its justice. The main thing is that Pasternak makes us understand what the revolution cost, what losses this “magnificent surgery” had to pay for.
"Doctor Zhivago"
In the 1940s Pasternak actively worked on translations of texts by William Shakespeare, Johann Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and other great poets. Boris Leonidovich's poetic translations are still considered exemplary. The translations not only allowed Pasternak to earn money, they also inspired him to create a major work of art with deep philosophical implications. In the future, Boris Leonidovich will write a novel “Doctor Zhivago”, in which motifs from “Faust” and “Hamlet” are felt.
During the Great Patriotic War, Pasternak was evacuated to Chistopol. There he wrote poems on military topics. They did not become popular like the lyrical texts of Konstantin Simonov or Alexander Tvardovsky - the complexity and metaphorical nature did not allow Pasternak’s poems to go among the people. But it was precisely Pasternak’s inherent complexity that made him a unique poet.
After the war, Pasternak began writing a major novel, which reflected the writer’s views. It was this book that played a fatal role in the fate of the poet. For ten years Pasternak worked on the novel Doctor Zhivago. Before this book, Boris Leonidovich undertook to write prose texts several times, but they remained unfinished.
In this book, the writer was able to express his worldview through the artistic world. Pasternak, showing the reader the life path of the poet-doctor Yuri Zhivago, tells us about his views on Christianity, love, the fate of Russia and creativity. The novel ends with beautiful poems that mark a complete transition from the complexity of form (futurism) to the complexity of content (symbolism).
In the fall of 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording: “for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel.” Before this, only Ivan Bunin received the Nobel Prize among Russian writers. And the candidacy of Boris Pasternak was proposed in 1958 by the French writer Albert Camus. By the way, Pasternak could have won the prize from 1946 to 1950: he was listed as a candidate every year during this time.
Having received a telegram from the secretary of the Nobel Committee Anders Oesterling, Pasternak replied to Stockholm with the following words: “Grateful, glad, proud, embarrassed.” Many of the writer’s friends and cultural figures have already begun to congratulate Pasternak. However, the writing team reacted extremely negatively to this award.
