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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
Although this took me nearly a month to read, it is probably one of my favorites now. Fairly easy to follow, but man this book is depressing.. in a good way.
... The edition of the book has the incorrect page # and publisher. This edition has 653 pages and is published by Vintage International.
... The edition of the book has the incorrect page # and publisher. This edition has 653 pages and is published by Vintage International.
My first Russian book!! Picked it up bc Russia was constantly in the news and then they actually invaded Ukraine, so wish things didn’t pan out like that. Enjoyable novel equal parts tragic story of Yury and historical background of Russia in the 1900s.
adventurous
emotional
sad
medium-paced
"Doctor Zhivago" contains a treasury of achingly beautiful passages on love, the individual, philosophy and religion.
The romance between Yury and Lara obtains a near spiritual quality as the last individuals under a harsh regime of "unity and equality" find fleeting solace together.
The mystical is laced throughout this novel in the form of unexpected coincidence, elevating the novel beyond pure reality and into a realm of symbolism, everything becoming imbued with meaning.
While not all of the characters and resolutions of plotline hold up to close scrutiny, the power and clarity with which the themes are conveyed is near transcendental.
In the words of Boris Pasternak's cousin Olga Freidenberg who had recently been sent the book and asked for feedback: "what do I think of it? What do I think of life? This if life in its greatest and broadest sense"
The romance between Yury and Lara obtains a near spiritual quality as the last individuals under a harsh regime of "unity and equality" find fleeting solace together.
The mystical is laced throughout this novel in the form of unexpected coincidence, elevating the novel beyond pure reality and into a realm of symbolism, everything becoming imbued with meaning.
While not all of the characters and resolutions of plotline hold up to close scrutiny, the power and clarity with which the themes are conveyed is near transcendental.
In the words of Boris Pasternak's cousin Olga Freidenberg who had recently been sent the book and asked for feedback: "what do I think of it? What do I think of life? This if life in its greatest and broadest sense"
I liked him more than Crime & Punishment, and less than War & Peace/Anna Karenina. The translation I read (sadly didn't remember to write down who did it) was really really really wonderful, and the writing is beautiful -- but the plot didn't impress me so much. This is a sinful analogy, but Dr. Zhivago : War & Peace :: Babel : Traffic.
I didn't like this book enough to actually read quite 1/2 of it. The context and Yuri's poetry were interesting, but the writing style, most characters and general plot bored me. I feel like Pasternak should have stuck with poetry writing.
This belongs in the great tradition of revolutionary and wartime fiction alongside the likes of The Tale of Two Cities and War and Peace.
What got Pasternak in trouble with this book is that it presents a humanist view of the Russian Revolution and its impact on a middle class doctor/poet from Moscow. The project of the Soviet Union, so the thinking went in the USSR, should be viewed from the perspective of human epochs. The rise of proletariat, according to a certain kind of thinking, was an inevitable and permanent change for the better for humankind.
Of course, the trouble with that as we well know -- not just through the heavily-filtered Western propagandist's perspective during the Cold War, but with the benefit of hindsight decades later -- is that the experience on the individual human level was almost uniformly awful. And that's what Doctor Zhivago is -- a perspective from the human vantage point.
As a medical professional, the titular Doctor Zhivago is part of the privileged merchant middle class under the Czars. He has a liberal bend to his philosophy well before the revolution, served his country in the military, and is an all-around pretty cool dude. But when the wave of the revolution hits, disorder and famine sets in, ultimately yielding to a civil war and power consolidation, Zhivago's life gets twist-turned upside down.
His family tries to make due with diminished circumstances in Moscow before deciding to pursue an almost utopian vision of living off the land in the country's relatively untamed eastern portion. This succeeds for a while before the civil war rolls over and he is conscripted in the partisan forces and his family is basically permanently severed.
There is way more to it in the 700+ pages, obviously, including a cast of characters that recurs throughout Zhivago's life, a doomed love affair that spins of bittersweet moments, and many unsolved mysteries (what the heck drove Zhivago's father to suicide?) to chew on over several readings.
I think the strongest thread I was able to pull out of this well-wrought tale though was that philosophy and ideology are great in theory, but often produced monstrous results when applied to reality. As an idealist myself, I think I often succumb to the idea that if only everybody listened to my common sense ideas, so many of the world's problems would be solved!
But the real world does not bow to the logic and pure forms that populate our minds. Politics is not philosophy, it's a negotiation between powerful factions. People are fallible and hypocritical and selfish and don't always behave in a way that's rational. So no bit of high-minded political rhetoric is going to be warped into something much different and dangerous by reality and circumstance.
That doesn't mean necessarily that the ideas behind a project like the Soviet Union are in some way flawed and evil. It just means that trying to convert a region that has largely been dominated by autocrats into a system genuinely governed by small Soviets of citizens is inevitably going to snap back to its natural form. In this case, autocracy where everybody calls everyone else comrade.
And even if that political form had come out all roses from the societal perspective, it's still going to make many lives much worse than they were before, like for our friend Doctor Zhivago, flawed human being that he is.
I can understand why the Soviet Union didn't like the book, but I also think that many Americans wouldn't like the message either... which is really, don't buy the propaganda, do what you have to do to preserve the health and safety of you and yours. Or your mistress, you know, whatever.
What got Pasternak in trouble with this book is that it presents a humanist view of the Russian Revolution and its impact on a middle class doctor/poet from Moscow. The project of the Soviet Union, so the thinking went in the USSR, should be viewed from the perspective of human epochs. The rise of proletariat, according to a certain kind of thinking, was an inevitable and permanent change for the better for humankind.
Of course, the trouble with that as we well know -- not just through the heavily-filtered Western propagandist's perspective during the Cold War, but with the benefit of hindsight decades later -- is that the experience on the individual human level was almost uniformly awful. And that's what Doctor Zhivago is -- a perspective from the human vantage point.
As a medical professional, the titular Doctor Zhivago is part of the privileged merchant middle class under the Czars. He has a liberal bend to his philosophy well before the revolution, served his country in the military, and is an all-around pretty cool dude. But when the wave of the revolution hits, disorder and famine sets in, ultimately yielding to a civil war and power consolidation, Zhivago's life gets twist-turned upside down.
His family tries to make due with diminished circumstances in Moscow before deciding to pursue an almost utopian vision of living off the land in the country's relatively untamed eastern portion. This succeeds for a while before the civil war rolls over and he is conscripted in the partisan forces and his family is basically permanently severed.
There is way more to it in the 700+ pages, obviously, including a cast of characters that recurs throughout Zhivago's life, a doomed love affair that spins of bittersweet moments, and many unsolved mysteries (what the heck drove Zhivago's father to suicide?) to chew on over several readings.
I think the strongest thread I was able to pull out of this well-wrought tale though was that philosophy and ideology are great in theory, but often produced monstrous results when applied to reality. As an idealist myself, I think I often succumb to the idea that if only everybody listened to my common sense ideas, so many of the world's problems would be solved!
But the real world does not bow to the logic and pure forms that populate our minds. Politics is not philosophy, it's a negotiation between powerful factions. People are fallible and hypocritical and selfish and don't always behave in a way that's rational. So no bit of high-minded political rhetoric is going to be warped into something much different and dangerous by reality and circumstance.
That doesn't mean necessarily that the ideas behind a project like the Soviet Union are in some way flawed and evil. It just means that trying to convert a region that has largely been dominated by autocrats into a system genuinely governed by small Soviets of citizens is inevitably going to snap back to its natural form. In this case, autocracy where everybody calls everyone else comrade.
And even if that political form had come out all roses from the societal perspective, it's still going to make many lives much worse than they were before, like for our friend Doctor Zhivago, flawed human being that he is.
I can understand why the Soviet Union didn't like the book, but I also think that many Americans wouldn't like the message either... which is really, don't buy the propaganda, do what you have to do to preserve the health and safety of you and yours. Or your mistress, you know, whatever.
I have mixed emotions about it, to be honest. I already knew the plot and the characters from regular viewings of David Lean’s adaptation (one of my husband’s favorite films). If given a choice, I generally prefer to watch the adaptation of a book prior to reading the book, as I find that doing it in the reverse order makes it more difficult to enjoy the adaptation because it tends to make me focus on all of the things the filmmakers got wrong. In this case, I found myself wishing that the author had been able to maintain his focus as well as the filmmakers did. Certain sections really dragged and there were many occasions when it felt like the story was press ganged by partisans and prevented from reuniting with the main characters for a chapter or three. Don’t get me wrong, the authors of some of my favorite classic novels go off on even more tangents than this, but, for some reason, Pasternak’s meanderings didn’t thrill me as much as Tolstoy’s rambling about the “great man” theory of history or Victor Hugo’s scintillating description of the Paris sewers or Melville’s lengthy essays on cetaceans. Maybe it’s because Russian history in this time period is so utterly depressing, maybe it’s because something got lost in translation. I don’t know. I only know that it didn’t quite make it onto my greatest of “great novels” list.
Doctor Zhivago is a novel that interested me throughout but honestly left me feeling a little unsatisfied. It seems quite like an attempt to break into the Soviet epic genre but just isn't fleshed out to a satisfying point to achieve this. Therefore, it is a lot more digestible than many similar books but I just felt the transitions between different points were not detailed enough for me to feel lost in the story.
Above all, it is a love story. Yet I don't feel like it's clear exactly between who (there are a few love triangles and some adultery)! I guess you could describe it as a tale regarding the overruling idea of love rather than love between specific individuals. Love through turmoil and sacrifice for love are not unique concepts by any means, but it was enjoyable to read.
I think people give Pasternak too much credit for writing Doctor Zhivago as a 'genius work' against the Soviet Union. It really isn't. It actually feels imbued with a rather patriotic spirit at times, and there is not really anything very special about it.
Above all, it is a love story. Yet I don't feel like it's clear exactly between who (there are a few love triangles and some adultery)! I guess you could describe it as a tale regarding the overruling idea of love rather than love between specific individuals. Love through turmoil and sacrifice for love are not unique concepts by any means, but it was enjoyable to read.
I think people give Pasternak too much credit for writing Doctor Zhivago as a 'genius work' against the Soviet Union. It really isn't. It actually feels imbued with a rather patriotic spirit at times, and there is not really anything very special about it.