Christian motives in the work Doctor Zhivago. Christian motives in verses from the novel by B.L.

Boris Pasternak considered the poems that make up a separate, final part of the novel “Doctor Zhivago” as the poems of the main character, the doctor Yuri Zhivago, to be his best poems. Here many images are connected with the Gospel. In the opening of the cycle, “Hamlet,” the poet begs God to pass by the cup of suffering, but realizes that

... The schedule of actions has been thought out,

And the end of the road is inevitable.

I am alone, everything is drowning in pharisaism.

Living life is not a field to cross.

In another poem, “On Passion,” nature mourns the death of Christ:

And the forest is stripped and uncovered

And at the Passion of Christ,

How the line of worshipers stands

A crowd of pine trunks.

And in the city, on a small

In space, as if at a meeting,

The trees look naked

In church bars.

And their gaze is filled with horror.

Their concern is understandable.

Gardens emerge from fences.

The order of the earth is wavering:

They are burying God.

However, according to the poet, the miracle of the Resurrection on Easter night will restore world harmony and overcome death:

But at midnight creation and flesh will fall silent,

Hearing the spring rumor,

It's just clearing weather,

Death can be overcome

With the strength of Sunday.

In one of Pasternak’s most famous poems, in the famous “ winter night", a candle lit on the table, like a candle near an icon, likens a love date to a prayer:

Shadows lay on the illuminated ceiling,

Crossing of arms, crossing of legs,

Crossing fates.

There was a blow on the candle from the corner,

And the heat of temptation

Raised two wings like an angel

Crosswise.

At Pasternak's true love guarded by angels.

The “Christmas Star” is dedicated to Christmas. Here Star of Bethlehem“rose like a burning stack of straw and hay in the middle of the whole Universe, alarmed by this new star.” And the Magi:

We stood in the shadows, as if in the darkness of a stable,

They whispered, barely finding words.

Suddenly someone in the dark, a little to the left

He pushed the sorcerer away from the manger with his hand,

And he looked back: from the threshold to the Virgin,

The Christmas star looked on like a guest.

And almost all the verses in the cycle that follow “The Christmas Star” are already dedicated directly to Jesus Christ. In “Dawn” the poet again, after a long break, comes to faith in the Lord:

All night I read Your Testament

And as if he had fainted, he came to life.

In "Miracle" - last way Christ from Bethany to Jerusalem, and the episode with the fig tree incinerated by lightning:

Find yourself a moment of freedom at this time

At the leaves, branches, and roots, and trunk,

If only the laws of nature could intervene.

But a miracle is a miracle, and a miracle is God.

When we are in confusion, then in the midst of confusion

It hits you instantly, by surprise.

Pasternak puts God's Providence above the laws of nature, miracle above knowledge. In “Earth” he calls “for the secret stream of suffering to warm the cold of existence.” In "Bad Days" to Christ during the solemn entry into Jerusalem

I remember the majestic stingray

In the desert and that steepness,

With which world power

Satan tempted him.

Also, the poet himself had to endure many devilish temptations from those in power in his life, but he did not betray his muse, as Doctor Zhivago proved. In Magdalene, Pasternak hopes

During this terrible interval I will grow to Sunday.

And in the final “Garden of Gethsemane” the gospel landscape, where “gray silver olive trees tried to step into the distance through the air,” conveys state of mind Jesus when

He refused without confrontation,

As from things borrowed,

From omnipotence and wonderworking,

And now he was like mortals, like us.

The distance of the night now seemed like an edge

Destruction and non-existence. Space

The universe was uninhabited

And only the garden was a place to live.

Christ addresses his disciples:

... The passage of centuries is like a parable

And it can catch fire while driving.

In the name of her terrible greatness

I will go to the grave in voluntary torment.

I will go down to the grave and on the third day I will rise,

And, as rafts are floated down the river,

To Me for judgment, like the barges of a caravan,

Centuries will float out of the darkness.

For Pasternak, the evangelical motifs of “verses from the novel” were necessary to emphasize the Christian ethics underlying Doctor Zhivago. The sermon of Jesus illuminates not only all centuries of subsequent history, but also the images of the heroes of the novel. It glows not only in the Universe, but also in the souls of Yuri Zhivago and Lara. Zhivago, in full accordance with his surname, is alive; in Soviet society he is actually buried alive. It is no coincidence that the novel begins with the funeral of Yuri’s father and the prophetic phrase: “Zhivago is being buried.” And in the finale, Doctor Zhivago is destined to “seriously and completely die” - he literally suffocates in a crowded tram. But he resurrects - in his poems that complete the novel.

The problem of revolution and civil war in Russia was very important for Pasternak in understanding the fate and future of Russia. The writer believed that after the most difficult events in the history of the country, a spiritual awakening of society would definitely begin: “If God wills it, and I’m not mistaken, there will soon be a bright, exciting life in Russia new Age».

The writer was looking forward to this time, with which he had all his dreams and hopes. And the first step towards spiritual awakening was one of his best works - Doctor Zhivago.

The novel began in December 1945. Pasternak felt a certain inner duty to his native land, so he sought to create a novel about Russia, about its tragedy.

The awareness that his creation will be a kind of guarantee of immortality, that there is no way to retreat, is most clearly expressed in the poem “Hamlet”, included in the collection of works by Yuri Zhivago:

The hum died down. I went on stage.

Leaning against the door frame,

What will happen in my lifetime.

In my opinion, Pasternak (like Pushkin, Lermontov and many other poets and writers) sees the main goal of creativity as the proclamation of truth and truth. However, this path is very difficult and sometimes cruel.

Pasternak himself once said the following about his novel: “This thing will be an expression of my views on art, on the Gospel, on human life in history and much more...” This novel became a kind of revelation of the author. Indeed, in Doctor Zhivago Pasternak gives his assessment human life. He is especially concerned about the topic of faith in God and Christian motives: “The atmosphere of the thing is my Christianity, in its breadth it is a little different than the Quaker and Tolstoy, coming from other sides of the Gospel in addition to the moral ones.”

So what is Pasternak's understanding of Christianity? This question can be answered, in my opinion, if we turn to the scene taking place at the bedside of the dying Anna Ivanovna Gromeko. Yuri Zhivago says that “I always understood Christ’s words about the living and the dead differently.”

According to young man, resurrection is already in our birth. However, people do not notice this and perceive life as a series of sufferings. The most important, true thing is that “man in other people is the soul of man.” In my opinion, one cannot but agree with this. Memory becomes that amazing power, which makes everyone immortal, alive in those around them: “... this is what your consciousness breathed, fed, got along with all your life. Your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what? You were in others, you will remain in others.”

Thus, we can say that for Pasternak, a person’s actions are important, because only they will remain in memory. And the rest is perishable and has little meaning.

Although the attitude towards death in the work is also special. Yuri Zhivago claims that death simply does not exist, there is only immortal life. This position, in my opinion, is optimistic and has a basis, since Pasternak himself was also confident in the impossibility of death. It is important to note that the writer initially wanted to call his novel “There is No Death.” But in that case main idea the work would be too transparent. It must have been this argument alone that forced the author to abandon such a name. But this idea can be seen very clearly in the novel.

Despite physical death, main character yet he found the “elixir of eternal life.” They become creativity and actions that remain in people’s memory.

Yes, of course, Pasternak believes in some predestination and divine power, which at some moments guides a person. However, in the era revolutionary events During the civil war, for most people, faith in God faded into the background. The writer understands this, but still tries to convey to people the value of striving for beauty, the present as a manifestation of God.

It is also important to note that Pasternak’s Christianity is inevitably connected with nature. Thus, Jesus appears as “a man-shepherd in a flock of sheep at sunset.” The main character is escorted to another world by flowers, for they are “the kingdom of plants - the closest neighbor to the kingdom of death. In the greenery of the earth is the concentration of the mystery of transformation and the riddle of life.”

Thus, in his perception of Christianity, Pasternak, on the one hand, confirms the basic laws of existence, and on the other, introduces new adjustments that can also be considered true. Moreover, he transfers his worldview into the plot of the novel, once again proving that death does not exist, but there is eternal life. And the content of this life depends on the actions that people perform, on their kindness, sensitivity and spiritual strength.

In the novel, Pasternak does not impose Christian dogmas on others, he overestimates them. The writer gives a new explanation of faith, Christ, love, truth, believing that each of us and our deeds are the power that collectively gives the concept of “God.” The author expressed his point of view in the novel “Doctor Zhivago”

EAT. Lintovskaya

Orenburg State University, Russia

Vocabulary of religious themes in the novel by B.L. Pasternak "Doctor Zhivago"

The great Russian culture is the heritage of all Russians. Religion is an integral part of culture. R religiosity Russian Orthodox man is a complex and diverse phenomenon. By religiosity we mean faith in God, which includes a set of norms and types of behavior. The aspects of studying this phenomenon are no less diverse: historical, philosophical, social, etc. The subject of our research is the linguistic and cultural aspect of Russian religiosity.

From the point of view of N.A. Berdyaev, “the soul of the Russian people was formed by the Orthodox Church, it received a purely religious formation. And this religious formation has survived to this day...” [Berdyaev, 1990].

The word “religion” in Russian is used from the first half XVIII century. In the Old Russian language it was identical to the lexeme “faith” (consciousness of divine law). Language and religion, being two different content forms of expression of the spiritual culture of an ethnos, reveal a close connection [Mechkovskaya, 1998]. So, V.K. Zhuravlev in his work “Russian Language and Russian Character” notes that “following the path of Christ’s commandments, the Russian person carries within himself deep religiosity, love for Christ, sincere love for his neighbor and even his enemy, sincere respect for another people, their language and culture , to his faith. And this is reflected in the Russian language" [Zhuravlev, 2002].

K.A. Timofeev identifies three groups of religious vocabulary. The first group contains general religious vocabulary.It includes words denoting concepts common to all monotheistic religions (God, soul, righteousness, prayer, etc.). The second group consists of words denoting concepts common to all major Christian denominations(Holy Trinity, Holy Spirit, Savior, Apostle, Gospel, Church, confession, etc.). The third group is formed by words characteristic of individual Christian denominations (for example, the names of clergy: priest, pastor, priest, curé, abbot, cardinal; divine services: mass, matins, all-night vigil, mass, lithium, litany; parts of the temple: iconostasis, porch, porch and etc.)[Timofeev, 2001].

Let's turn to the novel by B.L. Pasternak "Doctor Zhivago".

It is necessary to note the author’s frequent use of religious vocabulary. Thus, in the speech of Yuri Zhivago there are lexemes: “resurrection”, “Christ”, “God”, “soul”, “Christmas”, “Lord”. Nikolai Nikolaevich’s speech is also rich in religious vocabulary (God, Gospel, reward after death, preacher, commandments, Christ).

Having analyzed the vocabulary used in the novel, we found it possible to divide it into ten thematic groups.

The first group of studied vocabulary includes different names God, names of saints and biblical heroes (Christ, God, Lord, Jesus, dear God, Jesus, Holy Mother of God, deity, holy spirit, mother of God, saints, apostles, God's angels, Our Lady, Magdalene, Paul, Judas the traitor, Adam, Eve, Patriarch Moses, Apostle, Magi) .

The second group contains nominations for church services (matins, mass, requiem service, funeral service, mysteries, sermons, service, Orthodox worship, litany, prayer for health, funeral service).

The third group contains the names of actions related to religion (pray, sing a psalm, confess, get married, prayed, swear, be baptized,resurrect, cross herself).

The fourth group represents lexemes denoting conceptscharacteristic of the Christian worldview (immortality, afterlife, kingdom of God, soul, sin, reward after death, newly worshiped saint, Resurrection, Satan, repentance, conscience, chastity, curse, monastic monastery, Christianity, martyr, cherub, hell, apocalypse, heavenly punishment , scourge of God, procession, shroud, Passion of Christ, guardian angel, servant of God, right hand of God).

The fifth group consists of the names of church holidays (Easter, Trinity, Christmas, Trinity Day, Spiritual Day,Maundy Thursday, Day of the Twelve Gospels, Holy Feast, Annunciation, Great Tuesday, Holy Week, Holy Saturday, Transfiguration of the Lord, Savior).

The sixth group includes the names of prayers and sacred sources (psalm, gospel,commandments, holy scripture, nine beatitudes, Revelation of John, Old Testament, Psalter, God's story, ninetieth psalm).

The seventh group includes lexemes denoting clergy (preacher, psalm-reader, church warden, priest, priest).

The eighth group consists of the names of holy places and buildings intended for worship (Mount Athos, Tabor, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, monastery, synod, church, monastery, Church of the Holy Mother of God, little church, temple, monastery walls, church parishes, Cathedral of Christ the Savior, porch, Vozdvizhensky Monastery, bell tower).

The ninth group includes the names of believers (praying, theosophist, pilgrims, Christians, prayer books).

In the tenth group we identified phrases, sentences, fragments of statements, fragments of prayers (“Angel of God, my holy guardian…», « heaven, where the faces of saints and righteous women shine like stars...», “Bless the Lord, my soul, and His holy name,” “Blessed are the poor in spirit... Blessed are those who weep... Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness...”, “Blessed are the mocked, blessed are the entangled. God bless you...", "Holy God, holy mighty, holy immortal, have mercy on us", "Speak in tongues and prophesy. Pray for the gift of interpretation,” “Pray diligently to Your Son and Your God,” “And my spirit rejoiced in God my Savior. As if you look at the humility of your servant, behold, from now on all your people will bless me”, “For the mighty one, create greatness for me”, “Rejoice at the picturesque cross, an invincible victory for piety”, “Great intercession for the sad, pure Mother of God, quick helper, protection for the world”, “ Alive in the help of the Most High”, “Fear not...from the arrow that flies in the days”, “For I have known my name”, “I am with him in sorrow, I will destroy him...”, “You have cast me away from Thy presence, the unstoppable light, and covered I am the alien darkness of the accursed”, “the Lord is coming to free passion”, “Having enslaved the dignity of my soul, the cattle became a beast”, “Having escaped from paradise, we strive to enter through the abstinence of passions”, “Resolve the debt, like I have hair”, “Like night I have intemperance intemperate fornication, the dark and moonless zeal of sin”, “May I kiss your most pure nose and rip off this hair from my head; their Eve will go to paradise, having filled her ears with noise in the afternoon, hiding with fear”, “But she, imagine, there is a heli-grader...", Amen, Abba Father).

It is not uncommon in the novel to turn to God for one purpose or another, to use His name in the most emotionally intense moments of life (“Lord!”“to pray to God forever”, “Lord, Lord...”, “You are my God...”, “God”, “God willing”, “Oh, God...”, “Lord, your holy will!”, “for Christ’s sake”, “Good God”, “God is with you!”, “Heavenly powers”, “My God”, “glory to God”, “But God forbid!”, “There is no cross for you!”, “Fear God!”).

The lexeme “God” is used most often as part of well-known phraseological units (“ God knows...", "God knows...", " Only God knows...", « ...one must be faithful to Christ!"). Also, heroes, trying to assure their opponent of the sincerity of their words, refer to God (“By God!”, “Christ’s opinion,” “ The Word of God "). Wishes for good things are not complete without mentioning God’s name (“Christ save you”, “God grant you...”, “God help you”, “God help you”, “God save you”). Let us also note the names of religious realities (crosses, lamp, bell,lamp oil, shrine, censer, cross, amulet, icon, prosphora). There are also frequent lexemes denoting church rituals (mourning, fasting, church funeral).

We also tried to classify the above vocabulary according to its stylistic affiliation. In the novel, one can distinguish high-style vocabulary (chastity, retribution, apocalypse), stylistically neutral (priest, commandments, angels) and vocabulary belonging to the colloquial style (church, little god, father).

The most frequent lexemes in the text are those with roots -god- (-god-), -church-, -cross-, -holy- (-holy-), -mol-.

Yes, root -god- (-god-) occurs in the text of the work 141 times (God, little god, God's, divine service, venerate, Mother of God, deity, gods, pilgrims, theology, God-saved, knowledge of God, divine, piety), root -churches- 30 times (church, church, little church), root -cross- 22 times (cross, cross, godfather, be baptized, crossed, baptizing, baptized, baptized), root -sacred- (-holy-) 41 times (sacred, priest, holy, holy, holy, shrine, holy), -they say- 41 times (prayer, supplication, pray, prayed, pray, praying, pilgrims, prayer books, pray).

The most frequent religious vocabulary used by the author is the lexeme “God” (73 times). This word in the novel is used in a nominative meaning, maintaining its sacredness.

There is a close connection between the two forms of expression of the spiritual culture of an ethnic group - language and religion, which is determined by their interpenetration and mutual influence. The language is reflected and religious ideas, forming the religious picture of the world.

Thus, we can conclude that in the novel B.L. Pasternak reflected the Orthodox religious worldview, as evidenced by a large number of religious vocabulary different styles and topics (from names Christian holidays and attributes to philosophical concepts) in the speech of the main and episodic characters. The vocabulary of religious themes in the novel acts as an ethical counterbalance to the newspeak that spread in post-revolutionary times, when “a room is called living space”, and “food and firewood” was replaced by “food and fuel issues.”

Literature:

1. Berdyaev N.A. Origins and meaning of Russian communism. – M.: Nauka, 1990. – 224 p.

2. Zhuravlev V.K. Russian language and Russian character. – M.: Lyceum of Spiritual Culture, 2002. – 255 p.

3. Mechkovskaya N.B. Language and religion: A manual for students of humanities universities. – M.: Agency “FAIR”, 1998. – 352 p.

4. Pasternak B.L. Doctor Zhivago. – M.: “Book. Chamber", 1989. – 431 p.

5. Timofeev K.A. Religious vocabulary of the Russian language as an expression of the Christian language.– Novosibirsk, 2001. – 88 p.

JUSTIN BERTNES

University of Bergen, Norway

CHRISTIAN THEME

IN PASTERNAK'S NOVEL "DOCTOR ZHIVAGO"

Often one motive can be identified as the leading element of a theme. work of art: it repeats, varies, the composition of the entire work or part of it rests on it.

If such an element, which performs an important compositional function, is defined as “Christian”, this is due to the fact that it goes back to the system of Christian ideas that we draw from church literature and art, from liturgical texts, theology and anthropology.

This element plays a major role in the novel Doctor Zhivago, and it is significant that the novel begins with the scene Orthodox funeral. The mother of ten-year-old Yuri Zhivago is buried:

„ They walked and walked and sang “Eternal Memory”, and when they stopped, it seemed that the legs, the horses, and the blowing wind continued to sing it in the usual way.

Passers-by let the procession pass, counted wreaths, and crossed themselves. Curious people entered the procession and asked: “Who is being buried?” They were answered: “Zhivago.”‒ "That's it. Got it".- “Not him. Her". ‒ "Doesn't matter. The Kingdom of heaven. The funeral is rich” (3, 7) 1.

What is striking in this passage is the contrast between the singing of the hymn “ Everlasting memory"and deliberate ordinariness, everyday life in the depiction of the event itself.

Two spheres, two different planes are connected here. First plan‒ description of the funeral as an episode from the life of the main character of the novel, Yuri Zhivago‒ we'll call author's plan. The second plan, which consists of fragments of borrowed texts, we will call quotation plan.

______________

The interaction of the two plans occurs in different ways. Thanks to quotes, one or another episode can appear in an ironic light, or, conversely, the events and images of the novel, correlated with the events and images of the quotation plan, acquire special depth.

The ironic tendency in the novel is slightly expressed. We feel it only in the description of the Orthodox Church as part of the Russian establishment at the beginning of the century. The beginning of the story of Yuri Zhivago coincides with this time.

In the funeral scene, the interaction of two plans gives a slight touch of irony. And to a much greater extent the irony is felt in the characterization of Shura Shlesinger:

“Shura Shlesinger was a theosophist, but at the same time she knew the course of Orthodox worship so perfectly that even toute transport é e , in a state of complete ecstasy, could not resist telling the clergy what to say or sing. “Hear, O Lord,” “like for all time,” “the most honorable cherub,”‒ Her hoarse, broken tongue twister could be heard all the time” (3, 57).

A completely different function is performed by Christian elements introduced into the novel with the help of quotations, when they correlate with the main actors: Yuri Zhivago and Larisa Guichard, as well as with characters that seem to duplicate them, such as Yuri’s uncle and his spiritual forerunner Nikolai Nikolaevich Vedenyapin, a “priest disbanded at his own request,” who moved away from the official church ideology, and the half-mad Simushka Tuntseva, who , like the holy fools in Christ, existing only in the Orthodox world, hides the truth under the guise of eccentricity.

The motif of memory, one of the main ones in the novel, announced from the first page by the name of the psalm performed during the church funeral, serves as an example of how a motif can vary and be filled with new meaning through comparison with one or another hero of the novel.

This motif is repeated in the monologue about the meaning of resurrection, which young medical student Yuri Zhivago pronounces to the dying Anna Ivanovna‒ his adoptive mother, and the mother of his future wife, Toni.

Almost “impromptu”, even with some annoyance at the way he does it, Yuri interprets Christ’s words about the resurrection as constant updating one and the same eternal life “in innumerable combinations and transformations.” Immortality of man for Yuri Zhivago‒ it is life in the minds of others:

“Man in other people is the soul of man. This is what you are, this is what your consciousness has been breathing, eating, and reveling in all your life.

Your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what? You were in others, and you will remain in others. And what difference does it make to you that later it will be called memory. It will be you, who will be part of the future” (3, 69-70).

The repetition of the motive is the main compositional feature novel. Pasternak reduced the role of traditional intrigue to a minimum. Philosophical dialogues, pictures of nature, changing seasons, scenes of the senseless horrors of war and brief moments of happiness‒ from all this the biography of Yuri Zhivago is built‒ a harmonious whole in which, like a piece of music, the main melody is repeated and varied.

Contrary to the traditions of the Russian novel, Pasternak does not seek to psychologically justify the actions of the heroes or observe the cause-and-effect relationship between events, and this makes his novel difficult to understand. The author is more busy searching for meaning in the game of chance than constructing a logically completed series of events.

The abandonment of the usual intrigue leaves the reader confused, especially at first. Episodes flash before him, between which it is impossible to establish a connection, characters whose roles will be determined much later. The main thing in the novel‒ this is the discovery of internal connections between people and events, which leads to an understanding of history as a natural and consistent process.

It is in revealing this inner content of the novel that Christian motifs play the most important role.

The Mystery of the Incarnation‒ the main Christian motif in the novel Doctor Zhivago. It sounds in the reasoning of Uncle Yuri, the heretic Vedenyapin, already in the first book:

“Until now, it was believed that the most important thing in the Gospel is the moral sayings and rules contained in the commandments, but for me the most important thing is that Christ speaks in parables from everyday life, explaining the truth with the light of everyday life. The underlying idea is that communication between mortals is immortal and that life is symbolic because it is significant” (3, 44-45).

The discrepancy between the “lowness” of form and the “exaltation” of content has always been considered a distinctive feature of Christian teaching. If we turn to history, this feature has often been emphasized in critical speeches against the official church and in connection with the heretical idea that each person can independently achieve salvation and eternal bliss if he follows the example of Christ and accepts humiliation and torment.

It is very significant that the main feature of the Gospel in the novel is recognized as “the clarification of truth by the light of everyday life,” and the human image of Christ is the cornerstone of Vedenyapin’s historiosophy, which, according to him, is built on the idea that “man lives not in nature, but in history , and that in the current understanding it is founded by Christ, that the Gospel is its foundation” (3, 14). What is history in Vedenyapin’s understanding?

“This is the establishment of centuries-old work on the consistent solution to death and its future overcoming. For this, mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves are discovered, and symphonies are written for this. It is impossible to move forward in this direction without some uplift. These discoveries require spiritual equipment. Data for it are contained in the Gospel. Here they are. This is, firstly, love for one’s neighbor, this highest type of living energy that overflows the human heart and requires release and waste, and then these are the main components modern man, without which it is unthinkable, namely the idea of a free personality and the idea of life as a sacrifice” (3, 14).

Vedenyapin's view of history and human personality is opposed to antiquity, which did not have such an understanding of history. In ancient times, the human person had no value, and rulers likened themselves to gods, turning people into slaves.

“There was a boastful dead eternity of bronze monuments and marble columns. Centuries and generations breathed freely only after Christ. Only after him did life begin in the offspring, and a person dies not on the street under a fence, but in his own history, in the midst of work devoted to overcoming death, he dies, himself dedicated to this topic” (3, 14).

The Confrontation Between Antiquity and the Gospel‒ this is the confrontation between Rome with its “hustle and bustle of borrowed gods and conquered peoples” (3, 46) and in a human way Christ:

“And then into the rubble of this marble and gold bad taste came this light and dressed in radiance, emphatically human, deliberately provincial, Galilean, and from that moment the peoples and gods stopped and man began, a man-carpenter, a man-plowman, a man-shepherd in a flock of sheep at sunset, a man who does not sound the least bit proud, a man gratefully heard in all the lullabies of mothers and in all art galleries peace" (3, 46).

This inspired portrait of Christ is clearly akin to the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, and this emphasizes the sense of expectation inherent in Vedenyapin's pre-revolutionary messianism. His

interpretation of the Gospel includes elements of those philosophical directions, which defined Russian culture at the turn of the century. Vedenyapin's belief that beauty will save the world is directly related to the ideas of Dostoevsky and Rozanov. The passage quoted above contains a hint of Gorky’s naively enthusiastic exclamation: “Man! It sounds proud!”

The quotation plan with the theme of Christ appears again at the end of the second book, in the thirteenth and seventeenth parts.

The topic has undergone some changes. By this time, Yuri Zhivago had already been to the front, experienced the defeat of the Russians in the First World War, the civil war and the complete collapse of Russian society. He suffered a dangerous illness, fled with his family to Siberia, and was captured by partisans. Separated from his family, he began a new life with Lara in a Siberian city.

One day he accidentally hears Simushka Tuntseva analyzing liturgical texts, interpreting them in accordance with Vedenyapin’s ideas. True, Simushka explains these ideas in his own way. She illustrates them with quotes from the church fathers, from Holy Scripture and from Orthodox liturgical texts, such as, for example, a verse dedicated to Mary Magdalene, authored by the Byzantine poetess Cassia, who lived in IX century.

The essence of this episode is that here Vedenyapin’s historiosophy is expressed in a language different from his own.

According to Lara, Simushka is “phenomenally educated, but not in an intellectual way, but in a popular way” (3, 404). And yet, her views strikingly coincide with the views of Yuri Zhivago, reflected in his poetry, in which the theme of Christ is repeated, and again in new interpretation.

“You can use the words: culture, eras,‒ Simushka begins his monologue.‒ But they are understood so differently. Due to the confusion of their meaning, we will not resort to them. Let’s replace them with other expressions” (3, 405).

“I would say that a person consists of two parts. From God and work. The development of the human spirit disintegrates over an enormous period of time individual works. They were carried out over generations and followed one after another. Such work was Egypt, such work was Greece, such work was the biblical knowledge of God by the prophets. This is the latest work, not yet replaced by anything else, carried out with all modern inspiration.‒ Christianity" (3, 405).

Like Vedenyapin, Simushka is clearly influenced by Hegel in assessing the meaning of Christianity for modern man, who no longer wants to be either a ruler or a slave

in contrast to the pre-Christian social system with its absolute division into leaders and peoples, into Caesar and the faceless mass of slaves.

“Something has shifted in the world. Rome ended, the power of numbers, the duty imposed by weapons to live for the entire population, the entire population. Leaders and peoples are a thing of the past.

Personality and the preaching of freedom replaced them. An individual human life became God's story and filled the space of the universe with its content. As one hymn for the Annunciation says, Adam wanted to become God and made a mistake, did not become one, and now God becomes a man in order to make Adam God” (3, 407).

Pasternak forces Simushka to express the idea that underlies the Orthodox theory of salvation and teaching Orthodox Church about the transformation of man into God. According to this teaching, a person must strive to repeat the life of Christ, become like him, work to return sinful nature to a state of paradisiacal pristineness, to return to it the Divine meaning with which everyday life is filled in the Gospel parables.

The theme of apocatastasis, human participation in transforming the world and returning it to its original divine state, is repeated in Simushka’s reasoning, dedicated to the poem about Mary Magdalene, written by Cassia, where Simushka speaks about the Church Slavonic word “passion”, which means both suffering and lust in contrast from a similar modern Russian word, which is used only in the second meaning. The penitent Mary Magdalene here symbolizes the sinful nature‒ she becomes equal to God by grieving over her sins, washing the feet of Christ with her tears and wiping them with her hair. According to existing tradition, Magdalene, glorified in verse, is identified with the sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke. VII, 36).

Simushka is captivated not only by the content of the liturgical chants. She is fascinated by their poetic originality, which she explains by combining the “ideas” of the Old and New Testaments.

“In order to present to you in all its freshness, unexpectedly, not in the way you yourself know and are accustomed to, but simply, more directly, the new, unprecedented thing that it brought, I will analyze with you several passages from liturgical texts, just a few of them, and then in abbreviations.

Most stichera form a combination of Old Testament and New Testament ideas placed side by side. With the conditions of the old world, the burning bush, the exodus of Israel from

Egypt, the youths in the fiery furnace, Jonah in the belly of the whale, and so on, compare new provisions, for example, the concept of the conception of the Mother of God and the resurrection of Christ.

In this frequent, almost constant combination, the antiquity of the old, the novelty of the new and their difference appear especially clearly.

In a whole host of verses, Mary’s virginal motherhood is compared to the Jews’ crossing of the Red Sea. For example, in the verse “In the sea of Chernem, the image of unartificed brides was sometimes painted” says: “The sea, after the passing of Israel, remained impenetrable, the immaculate sea, after the birth of Emmanuel, remained imperishable.” That is, after Israel crossed over, the sea became impassable again, but the virgin, having given birth to the Lord, remained untouched. What kind of incidents are put in parallel here? Both events are supernatural, both are recognized as the same miracle. What did these different times see as a miracle, the ancient, primitive time, and the new, post-Roman time, which has moved far forward?

In one case, at the behest of the people's leader, Patriarch Moses, and at the wave of his magic wand, the sea parted, let through an entire nation, a countless multitude consisting of hundreds of thousands, and when the last one had passed, it closed again and covered and drowned the pursuers of the Egyptians. A spectacle in the spirit of antiquity, the elements obedient to the voice of a wizard, large crowds of numbers, like Roman troops on campaign, people and leaders, things visible and audible, deafening.

In another case, the girl‒ ordinariness, which ancient world I wouldn't pay attention‒ secretly and quietly gives life to the baby, brings into the world life, the miracle of life, the life of all, “The Belly of All,” as it is later called. Her birth is illegal not only from the point of view of the scribes as illegitimate. They contradict the laws of nature. A girl gives birth not out of necessity, but miraculously, out of inspiration. This is the very inspiration on which the Gospel, which contrasts exclusivity with the ordinary and the holiday with everyday life, wants to build life, in defiance of any coercion.

What a huge change! How can heaven (because through the eyes of heaven all this must be assessed, in the face of heaven, in the sacred frame of uniqueness, all this is accomplished)‒ How did a private human circumstance, insignificant from the point of view of antiquity, become equivalent to an entire migration of people?” (3, 405-407)

Russian modernists rediscovered not only the art of icon painting. They also discovered Church Slavonic spiritual poetry. However, unlike church visual art, this poetry has yet to take its rightful place.

place in the history of Russian culture. But everyone who is familiar with church liturgical texts will certainly agree with Simushkina’s assessment. Church poetry is built on the principle of montage. The liturgical text is a system of canons, dogmas, highest degree traditional cliches, which can be updated, modified, and include various biblical motifs.

This principle of connection is characteristic not only of church texts quoted in the novel Doctor Zhivago. The novel itself, as well as the poetry of Yuri Zhivago, is largely built on this principle.

The quotation plan with its textual diversity is a link in parallelism, the other link of which is the author’s plan‒ a story about the fate of Yuri Zhivago in its historical context.

The biography of Yuri Zhivago, developing parallel to the theme of Christ, becomes a deeper phenomenon than a listing of everyday events and circumstances. And the description of the chaos of the civil war and the establishment of a new order, compared with pictures of the transition from antiquity to Christianity, introduced into the quotation plan,‒ it is more than a historical chronicle.

Thus, the opposition of Rome, with its division into leaders and peoples, with its false gods, to the gospel recognition of the divine meaning of the individual human personality is translated into the author’s plan, where the individual, Yuri Zhivago, is contrasted with the new society of leaders and slaves. For the revolution did not become a process of liberation of peoples, contrary to Vedenyapin’s dream.

Instead of a utopian brotherhood of free individuals, slowly rising from the chaos of war new Rome, a new barbaric division into rulers and the crowd. The revolutionaries turned themselves into a class of masters, similar to the ancient tyrants:

“Counted among the divine rank, at whose feet the revolution laid all its gifts and sacrifices, they sat as silent, strict idols, from which political arrogance erased all living, human things” (3, 315).

The new idols are opposed by a doctor with the Siberian surname Zhivago. His name coincides with the genitive form of the Church Slavonic adjective “zhivoy” (alive). In Orthodox liturgical texts and the Bible, this word in relation to Christ is written with a capital letter: “Why are you looking for the Living One among the dead?” (Onion. XXIV, 5) ‒ The angel addresses the women who came to the tomb of Christ. That is, the doctor’s name graphically coincides with one of the names of Christ, and thereby

the connection between the hero of the novel and his gospel prototype is emphasized.

In the light of the image of Christ, which occupies a central place in quotation plan, allusions to death and resurrection in Zhivago’s biography acquire special meaning. They often appear in the novel, especially in connection with scenes of feverish visions that accompany Yuri Zhivago's illness or mortal fatigue. A state of unconsciousness and closeness to death are characteristic of Yuri Zhivago’s transition from one stage of life to another. Typhoid fever marked the separation from Moscow and the flight with his family to Siberia to escape hunger. Recovery coincides with the victory of spring and light, with the awakening of nature to new life. Hallucinations visit Yuri after Lara leaves, when the end of their life together comes. Left alone, Yuri makes a long journey on foot across all of Russia to Moscow, where he appears, resembling the appearance of a wanderer, accompanied by a blond young man.

Purely outwardly, these transitions from one state to another can be perceived as a gradual decline and social degradation. However, the visions and images that fill Yuri’s feverish fantasies occupy a special place in the novel, because they are directly correlated with the death and resurrection of Christ.

At the beginning of the novel, in the scene of typhoid fever, there is already an indication of the close connection between the poet’s creative self-denial and the sacrificial feat of Christ. Yuri imagines that he is writing a poem:

“He writes a poem not about the resurrection or about the position in the grave, but about the days that passed between one and the other...

We are glad to touch hell, and decay, and decay, and death, and, however, along with them, we are glad to touch spring, and Magdalene, and life. AND‒ I need to wake up. We need to wake up and get up. We must be resurrected" (3, 206).

Allusions to the passions of the Lord and the reflections of the hero are woven together, predetermining the compositional design of the future poem by Yuri Zhivago, which, like a code, will concentrate all the main themes of the novel.

This poem, called “Hamlet,” opens a cycle of poems by Yuri Zhivago.

Hamlet

The hum died down. I went on stage.

Leaning against the door frame,

What will happen in my lifetime.

The darkness of the night is pointed at me

A thousand binoculars on the axis.

If possible, Abba Father,

Carry this cup past.

I love your stubborn plan

And I agree to play this role.

But now there is another drama,

And this time fire me.

But the order of actions has been thought out,

And the end of the road is inevitable.

I am alone, everything is drowning in pharisaism.

Live life ‒ not a field to go to.

Yuri Zhivago identifies himself with Hamlet. However, the poem was not written from Hamlet's point of view. It is written from the perspective of an actor waiting to go on stage. And behind the image of this actor-poet stands the author of the novel himself, stands each of us, identifying himself with the lyrical hero of the poem. This hero perceives the upcoming performance as a drama of passion and prays to be spared from the upcoming trial in almost the same words that Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane:

If possible, Abba Father,

Carry this cup past.

For this association to become clear, it is necessary to know the main idea of Pasternak’s essay “Hamlet,” which was included in the “Notes on Translations from Shakespeare.”

Pasternak rejected the popular idea of Hamlet as a tragedy of the will. He explains it in his own way:

“From the moment the ghost appears, Hamlet abandons himself in order to “do the will of him who sent him.” Hamlet is not a drama of spinelessness, but a drama of duty and self-denial. When it is discovered that appearance and reality do not converge and are separated by an abyss, it does not matter that the reminder of the falsity of the world comes in a supernatural form and that the ghost demands revenge from Hamlet. It is much more important that, by chance, Hamlet is chosen to be a judge of his time and a servant of a more distant one. "Hamlet"‒ the drama of a high lot, a commanded feat, an entrusted destiny” (4, 416).

This understanding of the tragedy “Hamlet” leads Pasternak to a clear awareness of the close connection between the images of Christ and Hamlet, which is also evident in this essay, where he draws a parallel between the famous “To be or not to be” and the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane:

“These are the most trembling and insane lines ever written about the anguish of the unknown on the eve of death, rising with the power of feeling to the bitterness of the Gethsemane note” (4, 417).

Yuri Zhivago's poem “Hamlet” relates to the situation of Hamlet delivering the monologue “To be or not to be” (Nilsson, 1958). At the same time, the poem relates to the situation of Zhivago himself, described in the novel (Bodin, 1976), and also‒ with a certain historical context and situation of the author of the novel, who belonged to those poets who chose the path of suffering and self-sacrifice. Their life drama, the fate of Yuri Zhivago, the tragedy of Hamlet represent a series of repetitions of the Passion of the Lord.

Like Christ, Hamlet fulfills the will of his father. Both sacrifice their lives for others. The hero of the poem must also fulfill a great destiny. He must be ready to sacrifice himself so that others continue to live, drawing strength from his poetry and feat, so that his life continues in them.

The idea of the poet’s sacrifice lies at the heart of the novel; it defines Zhivago’s poetry and at the same time forms the basis of the worldview of Pasternak himself, convinced that voluntary suffering and self-sacrifice‒ the purpose of human existence on earth. The motif of self-denial is present in the penultimate stanza of the poem “Wedding”:

Life is also only a moment,

Only dissolution

Ourselves in all others

As if as a gift to them.

Essentially the same motive sounds in the monologue of young Zhivago about resurrection and immortality as a continuation of life in others.

In the poem “Dawn” the religious nature of this motif is clearly visible. The poet speaks of a return to faith as an event that awakened him to a new life and transformed reality. His relationship with the world has changed:

I feel for them all

It's like being in their shoes...

There are people with no names with me,

Trees, children, homebodies.

I'm defeated by them all

And only in that is my victory.

Redemptive suffering‒ main topic poetry of Yuri Zhivago. It is most clearly reflected in the last poem of the Passion cycle, which is based on a verbal game, on the interaction of various texts: the author's, the Gospel and the liturgical, representing the death and resurrection of the Son of God.

The difference between death and resurrection is not metaphysical in nature. It is rather “liturgical”: “the ontological gap between them is considered as the flow of liturgy‒ the interval between Good Friday, when the funeral rites are performed, and Easter night" (Obolensky, 1961).

It was this gap in time that the delirious Zhivago dreamed of. The poem “On Passion” describes a ritual symbolizing the burial of Christ. The distance from Death to Resurrection seems endless:

There is still darkness all around.

It's so early in the world,

That the square lay down for eternity

From the crossroads to the corner,

And until dawn and warmth

Another millennium.

But this infinity will be overcome during the night Easter liturgy:

But at midnight creation and flesh will fall silent,

Hearing the spring rumor,

It's just clearing weather,

Death can be overcome

With the strength of Sunday.

The Passion Cycle itself begins with the poem “Miracle”, which is based on gospel story about the barren fig tree cursed by Christ,‒ an event commemorated on the first day of Holy Week.

In the next poem, “Earth,” the poet’s farewell to his friends is associated with the Gospel Last Supper:

For this, in early spring

Friends come to me

And our evenings are farewells,

Our feasts are testaments,

So that the secret stream of suffering

Warmed the cold of existence.

Next comes "Bad Days"‒ poem covering the first four days of Holy Week: on the first day Jesus entered Jerusalem, on the fourth‒ appeared before the high priests. The penultimate two poems are dedicated to Mary Magdalene‒ According to tradition, she is identified with the sinner who washed Christ's feet and dried them with her hair.

The cycle reaches its climax in the last poem, “The Garden of Gethsemane,” where the poet mourns with Christ on the eve of crucifixion and death. However, the fear of death is overcome by faith in eternal life.

The poem was written with the idea that the course of history takes place according to a predetermined plan. In the last stanzas, the poet’s voice merges with the voice of Christ:

You see, the passage of centuries is like a parable

And it can catch fire while driving.

In the name of her terrible greatness

I will go to the grave in voluntary torment.

I will go down to the grave and on the third day I will rise,

And, as rafts are floated down the river,

To my court, like the barges of a caravan,

Centuries will float out of the darkness.

Obolensky (1961) especially emphasized that the last poem picks up the theme of the first and transfers it to the cosmic plane. Both poems are variations on the same theme‒ self-sacrifice as the fulfillment of the divine cosmic will.

The hero, capable of voluntarily dooming himself to suffering, entered Pasternak’s work early: this is the hero of his translation of Heinrich von Kleist’s drama “Prince Friedrich of Homburg” (1923). These are the heroes of “The Tale” and “Lieutenant Schmidt”‒ works of the twenties. Both of them are ready for the feat of self-sacrifice, both are spiritually connected with the gospel prototype.

Work on the translation of Hamlet in 1939-40 made this image more visible. However, only in Yuri Zhivago was the idea of life as a repetition of the path of Christ fully embodied.

The fact that Yuri Zhivago, with all his human imperfections, symbolized the figure of Christ, did not raise any doubts among Pasternak’s colleagues from Novy Mir, who banned the publication of the novel in this magazine. From the letter they wrote to Pasternak, it is clear what the stumbling block was. They quote a phrase from Yuri Zhivago’s thoughts about his closest

friends: “The only living and bright thing about you is that you lived at the same time as me and knew me” (3, 474) and point to the closeness of this text with the biblical one, which, paraphrased, was included in the poem “Garden of Gethsemane” in in the form of the words addressed by Christ to his disciples:

He woke them up: “The Lord has granted you

To live in my days, you are spread out like a sheet.

The hour of the Son of Man has struck.

He will betray himself into the hands of sinners.”

But Yuri Zhivago repeats the path of Christ not only in suffering. He, like the ancient righteous man, is marked by the Holy Spirit. He participates in the divine nature of Christ and is his companion. The poet, with his gift of seeing the essence of things and existence, participates in the work of creating living reality. Pasternak once speaks of “images and miracles of the word” (Nilsson, 1958). In the fourteenth poem of the cycle “August,” the idea of the poet’s involvement in the creation of a miracle is most clearly expressed.

The hero of the poem has a presentiment imminent death, says goodbye to work, and meanwhile the foliage is burning, illuminated by the light of the transformed Lord. The light of the Transfiguration of the Lord, captured in the word, remains to live forever thanks to the poet:

"Farewell, Preobrazhensky blue"

And the gold of the second Savior...

And the image of the world, revealed in words,

And creativity and miracles.”

The idea of the poet as an accomplice in creative divine work belongs to those thoughts that occupied Pasternak all his life and which he formulated in his early youth.

Pasternak’s view of art was already formed at the age of twenty. In his report “Symbolism and Immortality,” made in 1913, Pasternak asserted “the symbolic, conditional essence of all art in that very in a general sense, how can we talk about the symbolism of algebra” (4, 320).

In his autobiographical essay “People and Positions,” written in the mid-fifties, Pasternak returns to this report and outlines its main idea.

The report, he said, was “based on considerations of the subjectivity of our perceptions”:

“...on the fact that the sounds and colors we perceive in nature correspond to something else, an objective vibration of sound and light waves. The report suggested that this subjectivity

is not a property of an individual person, but is a generic, super-personal quality, which is the subjectivity of the human world, the human race. I assumed in the report that from each dying personality there remains a share of this undying, generic subjectivity, which was contained in a person during his lifetime and with which he participated in the history of human existence. The main goal of the report was to make the assumption that, perhaps, this extremely subjective and all-human corner or department of the soul is the eternal circle of action and the main content of art. That, moreover, although the artist is, of course, mortal, like everyone else, the happiness of existence that he experienced is immortal and, in some approximation to the personal and blood form of his original sensations, can be experienced by others centuries after him through his works" (4, 320).

The idea of the human personality as a place where time and eternity converge was the subject of intense thought by Pasternak both at the beginning and at the end of his creative career. It takes central place in poems written shortly before his death. In one of latest books, read by Pasternak, in Peter P. Rode's book on Kierkegaard, he underlined the entire paragraph in red on page 111 (Vyach. Ivanov, 1973, 147, number 141). Here Rohde paraphrases the concept of human existence as formulated by John Climacus in Kierkegaard's "Concluding Unscientific Afterword":

“To exist means to embody the eternal in the temporal, since man‒ it is a synthesis of the temporary and the eternal. Eternity‒ the basis of human subjectivity and is placed in the temporal through the act of creation. Thus, an amazing paradox arises, which consists in the fact that the eternal appears, “becomes” precisely through the actions of the living. Since the eternal is the future, it does not have objective certainty; certainty lies in action. Therefore, certainty rests on faith and is built on an objectively uncertain basis. For a person there is no objective truth, only subjective, inseparable from his most intimate and vital‒ this is the highest truth recognized by man. Taking action on such shaky ground‒ always uncertainty and risk. Risk‒ required condition existence, certainty is excluded in principle. But it is precisely under this condition that a restructuring and formation of personality occurs, which only in this case can become a personality” (Rode, 1959, 111).

The idea that to live means to realize the eternal in the temporal underlies the idea of the purpose of the poet in the novel “Doctor Zhivago”: everything in the world is filled with meaning

through the word of the poet and thus enters human history, which “in the current understanding... was founded by Christ” (3, 14).

This idea was also reflected quite early in Pasternak’s work, most clearly‒ in memories of meeting with Italian art in the autobiographical story " Safe conduct"(1927).

As a result of his acquaintance with this art, Pasternak felt “the tangible unity of our culture” (4, 208). He was especially struck by the Renaissance. “... in Venice, and even more strongly in Florence, or, to be completely precise, in the winters in Moscow immediately after the trip...” (4, 207), that is, after a trip to Italy in 1912, he went deeper in the study of this era. Contrary to the superficial, common admiration for the pagan humanism of the Renaissance, Pasternak considers the main thing in it to be “the clash of faith on Sunday with the age of the Renaissance” (4, 208). He points out the anachronism, in his words, often immoral, “in the interpretations of the canonical themes of all these “Introductions”, “Ascensions”, “Marriages at Cana” and “ Last Supper“with their unbridled high-society luxury” (4, 208). But it was precisely in this discrepancy that Pasternak saw the thousand-year-old uniqueness of our culture:

“I realized that, for example, the Bible is not so much a book with hard text as a notebook of humanity, and that such is everything eternal. That it is vital not when it is obligatory, but when it is receptive to all the comparisons with which the outgoing centuries look at it. I realized that the history of culture is a chain of equations in images, pairwise connecting the next unknown with the known, and this known, constant for the entire series, is the legend laid down in the foundation of the tradition, while the unknown is new every time‒ the current moment of the current culture" (4, 208).

Pasternak defines culture as a series of images for which the constant element is the legend of Christ, each time repeated in a new interpretation. One of these interpretations became the content of a novel about Yuri Zhivago‒ his personality and destiny embodied an eternal theme that forms the basis of our culture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bodin, Per Arne,(1976), Nine Poems from Doctor Živago. A study of Christian Motifs in Boris Pasternak's Poetry. Stockholm: Almqvist et Wiksell (Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature, 6).

Ivanov, Vjačeslav V.,(1973), “Kategorija vremeni v iskusstve i kul’ture XX century”, Structure of Texts and Semiotics of Culture, ed. by Jan van der Eng and Mojmir Grygar, The Hague: Mouton.

Ivanov, Vjačeslav V.,(1973), "The Category of Time in Twentieth-Century Art and Culture", pp. 1-45, Semiotica: Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, 8.

Jakobson, Roman(1976), "Entretien avec Emmanuel Jacquart autour de la Poetique", Crtique, May 1976, 461-472.

Nilsson, Nils Ake,(1958), “Life as Ecstasy and Sacrifice. Two Poems by Boris Pasternak", Scando-Slavica V, 180-198.

Obolensky, Dimitri,(1961), "The Poems of Doktor Zhivago", The Slavonic and East European Review, 40, 123-135.

Rohde, Peter P.,(1959), Sören Kierkegaard in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Hamburg: Rowohlt.

Stender-Petersen, Adolf,(1958), "Pasternak", Vinduet, 3. (Opptrykt i Ad. Stender-Petersen: På tarsklen til en ny tid, Århus 1963: Borgen, 127-137).

The writer was looking forward to this time, with which he had all his dreams and hopes. And the first step towards spiritual awakening was one of his best works - Doctor Zhivago.

The novel began in December 1945. Pasternak felt a certain inner duty to his native land, so he sought to create a novel about Russia, about its tragedy.

The hum died down. I went on stage.

Leaning against the door frame,

What will happen in my lifetime.

Pasternak himself once said the following about his novel: “This thing will be an expression of my views on art, on the Gospel, on human life in history and much more...” This novel became a kind of revelation of the author. Indeed, in Doctor Zhivago Pasternak gives his assessment of human life. He is especially concerned about the topic of faith in God and Christian motives: “The atmosphere of the thing is my Christianity, in its breadth a little different than Quaker and Tolstoy, coming from other sides of the Gospel in addition to moral ones.”

According to the young man, resurrection is already in our birth. However, people do not notice this and perceive life as a series of sufferings. The most important, true thing is that “man in other people is the soul of man.” In my opinion, one cannot but agree with this. Memory becomes that amazing force that makes everyone immortal, alive in those around them: “... this is what your consciousness breathed, fed, got along with all your life. Your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what? You were in others, you will remain in others.”

Thus, we can say that for Pasternak, a person’s actions are important, because only they will remain in memory. And the rest is perishable and has little meaning.

Although the attitude towards death in the work is also special. Yuri Zhivago claims that death simply does not exist, there is only eternal life. This position, in my opinion, is optimistic and has a basis, since Pasternak himself was also confident in the impossibility of death. It is important to note that the writer initially wanted to call his novel “There is No Death.” But in this case, the main idea of the work would be too transparent. It must have been this argument alone that forced the author to abandon such a name. But this idea can be seen very clearly in the novel.

Despite physical death, the main character still found the “elixir of eternal life.” They become creativity and actions that remain in people’s memory.

Yes, of course, Pasternak believes in some predestination and divine power, which at some moments guides a person. However, during the era of the revolutionary events of the civil war, for most people, faith in God faded into the background. The writer understands this, but still tries to convey to people the value of striving for beauty, the present as a manifestation of God.