The image and characteristics of Yuri Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago parsnip essay. Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago": analysis of the work Doctor Zhivago main character characteristics

Pasternak made the main character of his novel a prominent representative of the Russian intelligentsia, Yuri Zhivago. Moreover, the writer changed the original title of the novel “The Candle Burned” to “Doctor Zhivago”.

Name Main character Yuri echoes the main toponyms of the novel - Yuryatin and Moscow (her patron is St. George, whose name in Rus' was transformed into Yuri), and also has an associative connection with the word “holy fool”. The hero’s patronymic is formed from the name “Andrey”, which means “courageous”. Yuri's surname evokes associations with Christ: Pasternak spoke about his deepest childhood impressions caused by the words of the prayer: “You are truly Christ, the son of the living God.” In combination with his profession, the hero’s surname – Doctor Zhivago – can be read as “doctor of all living things.”

Yuri Zhivago is peculiar alter ego Pasternak, embodying his spiritual biography. The author himself said that he combined the features of Blok, Mayakovsky, Yesenin and himself in the image of the main character. He trusts Yuri to express his thoughts, views, doubts, and himself - his poems.

Pasternak reveals image of Zhivago in two planes: the external one tells the story of his life, and the internal plane reflects the spiritual life of the hero. The writer assigns the main role to spiritual experience, paying great attention to the hero’s monologues.

The scion of a wealthy family, Muscovite Yuri Zhivago - typical intellectual. He is an intellectual by profession (Yuri is a talented diagnostician), by creative self-expression (he has an extraordinary poetic gift) and by spirit - by his amazingly sensitive soul, desire for independence and restlessness.

Possessing a strong mind and good intuition, Zhivago outwardly looks like a weak-willed person. Seeing and perceiving everything, he does what life demands of him: he agrees to a wedding with Tonya, does not oppose being drafted into the army, does not object to a trip to the Urals.

Finding himself in the thick of historical events, the hero hesitates, not knowing whose side to take. Raised in the Christian traditions of love and compassion for one’s neighbor, Zhivago encounters all the horrors of bloodshed on the war fronts and during captivity in a partisan detachment. He fulfills his duty as a doctor, equally caring for suffering people - be they wounded partisans or Kolchak volunteer Rantsevich.

Initially enthusiastic about the revolution, "great surgery", Yuri soon realizes that “You can’t take anything with violence”. He's disgusted “a leap from serene, innocent regularity into blood and screams, general madness and savagery of everyday and hourly, legalized and praised murder”. Understanding the inevitability of the course of history, Zhivago with his humanistic principles absolutely does not accept "bloody slaughter and slaughter". In conditions when " “everything household has been overturned and destroyed.”, there is only one force left - “naked, stripped to the bone soulfulness”. Feeling the need for spiritual freedom, wanting to preserve himself as an individual, Zhivago deliberately refuses to participate in history; he constructs his own personal space in time, where he exists in the true values ​​of love, freedom of spirit, thoughts, feelings and creativity. Yuri lives the time allotted to him by fate the way he would like to live: “Oh, how sweet it is to exist! How sweet it is to live in the world and love life!”. This spirituality of being and inner strength, which allows him to defend his beliefs, more than covers up Zhivago’s external lack of will.

In an atmosphere of total impersonality of society, Yuri Zhivago remains the person who, while maintaining kindness and humanity, can comprehend the whole essence of events and express it on paper, in poetry. But a person cannot live in conditions of unfreedom, which is why the hero dies in the year of the “great turning point,” which marks the final victory of unfreedom. But the novel does not end with the death of the main character, it ends with a cycle of poems by Zhivago, because poems, unlike the finite life of a person, are immortal.

Solving through the image of the main character the complex problem of human fate in the whirlpool of history, Pasternak proclaims the idea of ​​the self-worth of the individual, embodying the eternal ideals of humanity in the novel.

• "Doctor Zhivago", analysis of Pasternak's novel
• "Doctor Zhivago", a summary of Pasternak's novel

Boris Pasternak is a whole universe, a galaxy that can be studied endlessly. Doctor Zhivago is a planet where the finest combinations of poetry and reality are collected. This book has a special spirit, its own soul. It should be read as slowly as possible, reflecting on each phrase. Only then can you feel the sublimity of the novel and find the poetic sparks that fill every page.

Anna Akhmatova “pushed” Pasternak to think about creating a novel in May 1944, when she invited him to write “Faust” of the twentieth century. And Boris Leonidovich agreed. Only he wrote not as expected from him, but in his own way. After all, Yuri Zhivago, like Faust, is dissatisfied with himself, with his life and strives to change it. But not by making a deal with the devil, but by painstaking work on your soul and its moral principles.

The moral principle in those difficult years was needed more than ever. Time dictated its conditions, but not everyone sought to silently accept them. Pasternak was tormented by a feeling of some kind of persecution and powerlessness. Repressions, arrests, suicides. Unbearable. The “insatiable machine” consumed everything in its path, leaving no chance of survival. That is why in Doctor Zhivago the entire life of the main characters is literally permeated with suffering, mental anguish, uncertainty and poverty. However, Pasternak sincerely believed that the “red monster” would sooner or later moderate his ardor and change his anger to mercy. But things only got worse. Soon it reached Boris Leonidovich himself. The party leadership began to actively suppress literature. Pasternak was not repressed, but in 1946 warnings began to be received against him as a poet who did not recognize “our ideology.” He did not fit into the official post-war art either as a poet or as a prose writer.

Despite everything that was happening, hard work on the novel continued. The titles changed one after another: “There will be no death,” “Boys and Girls,” “Innokenty Dudorov.” Yuri Andreevich could turn out to be Doctor Zhivult. It is interesting that Pasternak’s personal connections are also reflected in the novel. Olga Ivinskaya, for whom the author had tender feelings, becomes the prototype of Lara.

Journalistic fate of the book

"Through hardship to the stars". This phrase can describe the difficult path that the novel took to end up in the hands of its many readers. Why? Pasternak was refused publication of the book. However, in 1957 it was published in Italy. It was published in the Soviet Union only in 1988, when the author could no longer find out about it.

The story of the novel "Doctor Zhivago" is in some ways special. In 1958, Boris Leonidovich was nominated for the Nobel Prize, which he refused. In addition, a ban was imposed on the publication of the book, and this further fueled interest in the work. Readers expected something special from the novel. But later they were disappointed. This was not hidden even by Boris Pasternak’s close friends, among whom were quite famous writers A.I. Solzhenitsyn and Anna Akhmatova, who made a remark that sowed alienation between the poets.

Genre of the novel "Doctor Zhivago"

It is difficult to define the genre of a novel unambiguously. The work can be considered autobiographical, since it contained the main milestones of the writer’s life. We can safely say that the hero of the novel, who finds himself in the whirlpool of ongoing events and subtly senses the world around him in all its changes and vibrations, is the second “I” of Boris Pasternak.

At the same time, the novel is also philosophical, since questions of existence occupy an important place in it.

The work is also interesting from a historical point of view. Pasternak correlates his novel with a true picture of life. "Doctor Zhivago" - Russia shown to us as it really is. From this point of view, the artist’s book is a traditional realistic work that reveals a historical era through the destinies of individual people.

In terms of its metaphorical nature, imagery, symbolism and poetics, Doctor Zhivago is a novel in verse and prose.

For most, this is a “love story” with an entertaining plot.

Thus, we have before us a multi-genre novel.

Composition "Doctor Zhivago"

As soon as we begin to get acquainted with the book, from the very first chapter our consciousness puts a tick in front of the “structural elements of composition” item. One of them is the protagonist’s notebook, which has become a harmonious continuation of his prose beginning. The poems confirm the tragic perception of reality by the author and Doctor Zhivago, and reveal the overcoming of tragedy in creativity.

An important compositional feature of the novel is the accumulation of chance encounters, unexpected turns of fate, various coincidences and coincidences. The heroes of the novel often think that such life turns are in principle impossible and incredible, that this is some kind of dream, a mirage that will disappear as soon as they open their eyes. But no. Everything is real. It is noteworthy that without this the action of the novel could not develop at all. It is not for nothing that the “poetics of coincidence” declares itself. It is justified by the artistic originality of the work and the worldview of the author, who strives to convey to the reader his vision of a particular situation as accurately as possible.

In addition, the structure of the novel is based on the principle of cinematic editing, the selection of independent scenes - frames. The plot of the novel is built not on the acquaintance of the characters and the further development of their relationship, but on the crossing of parallel and independently developing destinies.

Themes of Pasternak's novel

The theme of the path is another one of the leading ones in the novel. One strays from this path and goes to the side, and in an arc here he gains spiritual maturity, dooming himself to difficult thoughts in solitude. Which of them does Zhivago belong to? To the second. The doctor’s flight from half-frozen, hungry Moscow to the Urals is a forced step. Setting off on a journey, Yuri does not feel like a victim. He feels that he will find the truth and discover the hidden truth about himself. This is what happens. A creative gift, true love and philosophy of life - this is what a person gets who has escaped the boundaries of his consciousness, left the “safe haven”, and is not afraid to go into the unknown.

The author returns us to another side of reality - to man, elevating love as one of the most beautiful phenomena of life. The theme of love is another theme of the novel. It is literally permeated with love: for children, for family, for each other and for the Motherland.

The themes stated in the novel cannot be divided. They look like skillful weaving, which will immediately collapse if you remove even one thread. Nature, love, fate and the path seem to spin in a graceful dance, which gives us an understanding of the genius of this novel.

Problems in the novel

One of the main problems in the novel is the fate of a creative personality in the revolution.

The pursuit of truth entailed a clash of ideals with reality. Creativity collided with revolutionary reality and desperately defended itself. People were forced to defend their right to individuality. However, their desire for creative originality was brutally suppressed and took away any hope of liberation.

It is noteworthy that the text speaks of physical work as a real creative endeavor. The problem of beauty, the philosophy of femininity and even the “royalty” of a person engaged in simple labor is connected primarily with the image of Lara. In everyday chores - at the stove or at the trough - she strikes “the spirit with a breathtaking appeal.” Pasternak peers with admiration at the “beautiful, healthy faces” of “people from the people” who have worked on the earth all their lives. The writer managed to show the national character of the heroes. They not only love, think, act - their deep national roots are manifested in all their actions. They even talk “as only Russian people in Russia talk.”

The problem of love is connected with the main characters in the work. This love is fateful, destined for the heroes from above, but encountering obstacles in the form of chaos and disorder in the surrounding world.

The intelligentsia in the novel "Doctor Zhivago"

In the souls of the Russian intelligentsia of that time there lived a readiness for asceticism. The intelligentsia expected the revolution, imagining it rather abstractly, not realizing what consequences it could lead to.

Thanks to spiritual thirst and the desire to comprehend the world around him, Yuri Andreevich Zhivago becomes a thinker and poet. The hero’s spiritual ideals are based on a miracle: throughout his entire life he never lost the ability to perceive the world, human life and nature as a miracle! Everything is in life, and everything is life, only it was, is and will be. In this philosophy, two points attract attention and explain the reasons for the tragic state of affairs of the hero in his contemporary society: Yuri’s uncertain position and rejection of “violence.” The conviction that “one must attract with goodness” did not allow Zhivago to join any of the two warring parties, because violence was the basis of their programs of activity.

Strelnikov is portrayed in the novel as the antipode of Zhivago. He is a ruthless, irreplaceable reasoner, ready to confirm with his weighty proletarian word any, even the most cruel, sentence. His inhumanity was seen as a miracle of class consciousness, which ultimately led him to suicide.

The intelligentsia played an important role in the formation of revolutionary reality. The desire for novelty, change and a change in the ruling layer wiped off the face of the earth that thin layer of the real intelligentsia, which consisted of scientists, creative figures, engineers and doctors. New “individuals” began to replace them. Pasternak noticed how, in the putrid atmosphere of NEP, a new privileged layer began to take shape with a claim to an intellectual monopoly and continuity with respect to the old Russian intelligentsia. Returning to Moscow, Yuri Zhivago made a living cutting wood for wealthy people. One day he came in to pay. Yuri Andreevich’s books lay on the table. Wanting to look like an intellectual, the owner of the house read the works of Zhivago, but did not even deign to glance at the author himself.

Revolution and Christian motives

“The grain will not sprout if it does not die,” Pasternak loved this gospel wisdom. Finding himself in the most difficult situation, a person still cherishes the hope of revival.

According to many researchers, B. Pasternak’s personality model is Christ-oriented. Yuri Zhivago is not Christ, but the “centuries-old prototype” is reflected in his fate.

To understand the novel, it is necessary to understand the author's approach to the Gospel and to the revolution. In the Gospel, Boris Pasternak perceived, first of all, love for one's neighbor, the idea of ​​personal freedom and an understanding of life as a sacrifice. It was with these axioms that the revolutionary worldview, which permitted violence, turned out to be incompatible.

In his youth, the revolution seemed like a thunderstorm to Pasternak’s hero; there seemed to be “something evangelical” in it - in scale, in spiritual content. The spontaneous revolutionary summer gave way to the autumn of collapse. The bloody soldiers' revolution frightens Yuri Zhivago. Contrary to this, admiration for the idea of ​​revolution breaks through with sincere admiration for the first decrees of the Soviet government. But he looks at what is happening soberly, becoming more and more convinced that reality is at odds with the proclaimed slogans. If at first Zhivago the doctor thought surgical intervention was justified for the sake of healing society, then, disappointed, he sees that love and compassion disappear from life, and the desire for truth is replaced by concerns about benefit.

The hero rushes between two camps, rejects the violent suppression of the individual. A conflict develops between Christian and new morality based on violence. Yuri finds himself “neither one nor the other.” The fighters repulse him with their fanaticism. It seems to him that outside of the fight they don’t know what to do. War consumes their entire essence, and there is no place for creativity and no need for truth.

Nature in Doctor Zhivago

Man is part of nature. The natural world in the novel is animated and materialized. He does not rise above a person, but seems to exist in parallel with him: he grieves and rejoices, excites and calms, warns of impending changes.

The tragic scene of the funeral of Yura's mother opens the work. Nature, together with people, mourns for a good person. The wind sings a mournful song in unison with the farewell singing of the funeral procession. And when Yuri Andreevich passes away, some flowers become a replacement for the “missing singing.” The earth takes the “departed” into another world.

The landscape in the novel is also a picturesque picture that gives rise in the human soul to feelings of admiration and enjoyment of beautiful nature. “You can’t stop looking at it!” - How can you live and not notice this beauty?

Favorite image is the Sun, which “shyly” illuminates the area, being a special attraction. Or, “settling behind houses,” it casts red strokes on objects (a flag, traces of blood), as if warning of impending danger. Another generalizing image of nature is a calm, high Sky, conducive to serious philosophical reflection, or, flashing with a “pink, trembling fire,” empathizing with the events taking place in the human community. The landscape is no longer depicted, but acts.

A person is assessed through nature; comparison with it allows us to create a more accurate description of the image. So Lara, from the point of view of other characters, is “a birch grove with clean grass and clouds.”

Landscape sketches are exciting. White water lilies on the pond, yellow acacia, fragrant lilies of the valley, pink hyacinths - all this on the pages of the novel exudes a unique aroma that penetrates the soul and fills it with burning fire.

The meaning of symbolism

Boris Pasternak is a writer of subtle spiritual organization, living in harmony with nature and feeling the nuances of life, knowing how to enjoy every day he lives and accepting everything that happens as given from above. A person who opens his BOOK is immersed in a world filled with sounds, colors, and symbols. The reader seems to be reincarnated as a listener of music masterfully performed by the pianist. No, this is not solemn music sounding in one key. Major is replaced by minor, the atmosphere of harmony is replaced by an atmosphere of breakdown. Yes, such is life, and it is precisely this perception of it that the artist conveys in the novel. How does he do this?

But day is always replaced by night, warmth is always replaced by cold. Cold, Wind, Snowstorm, Snowfall are an integral part of our life, an important component, a negative side that we also need to learn to live with. These symbols in Pasternak's novel indicate that the world around a person can be cruel. It is spiritually necessary to prepare yourself for these difficulties.

Human life is beautiful because it consists not only of opposites, but also includes many different shades. The symbol that personifies the diversity of human types is the Forest, where the most diverse representatives of the animal and plant world coexist in harmony.

The Road, the Path are symbols of movement, striving forward, symbols of knowledge of the unknown, new discoveries. Each person in life has his own Road, his own destiny. It is important that this is not the road of loneliness, which certainly leads to a dead end in life. It is important that this is the Path that leads a person to Good, Love, Happiness.

Yuri Zhivago is the main character of Boris Leonidovich Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”; a successful medic who served during the war; husband of Antonina Gromeko and half-brother of Major General Efgraf Zhivago. Yuri was orphaned early, losing first his mother, who died as a result of a long illness, and then his father, who, while intoxicated, jumped from a train moving at full speed. His life was not easy. As the author himself said, he came up with the hero’s surname from an expression taken from a prayer: “God Zhivago.” The phrase implied an association with Jesus Christ, “who heals all living things.” This is how Pasternak wanted to see his character.

It is believed that the prototype of the hero was the author himself, or rather his spiritual biography. He himself said that Doctor Zhivago should be associated not only with him, but rather with Blok, with Mayakovsky, perhaps even with Yesenin, that is, with those authors who passed away early, leaving behind a valuable volume of poetry. The novel covers the entire first half of the twentieth century, and the doctor passes away in the turning point year of 1929. It turns out that in some sense it is an autobiographical novel, but in another sense it is not. Yuri Andreevich witnessed the October Revolution and the First World War. At the front he was a practicing doctor, and at home he was a caring husband and father.

However, events developed in such a way that all life went contrary to the established order in society. At first he was left without parents, then he was raised in a family of distant relatives. He subsequently married the daughter of his benefactors, Tanya Gromeko, although he was more attracted to the mysterious Lara Guichard, whose tragedy he could not know then. Over time, life brought these two together, but they did not stay together for long. The homewrecker was the same ill-fated lawyer Komarovsky, after a conversation with whom Yuri’s father jumped out of the train.

In addition to healing, Zhivago was interested in literature and writing poetry. After his death, friends and family discovered notebooks in which he wrote down his poems. One of them began with the words: “The candle was burning on the table, the candle was burning...” It was born in his head that evening when he and Tonya were heading to the Christmas tree with friends and witnessed how Lara shot her mother’s lover. This incident remained forever in his memory. That same evening she explained herself to Pasha Antipov, who became her legal husband. Events developed in such a way that Lara and Pasha broke up, and Yura, after being wounded, ended up in the hospital where she worked as a nurse. There an explanation took place, during which Yura admitted that he loved her.

The doctor's wife and two children were expelled from the country and emigrated to France. Tonya knew about his relationship with Lara, but continued to love him. The turning point for him was the separation from Larisa, who was taken away by Komarovsky in a fraudulent manner. After this, Zhivago completely neglected himself, did not want to practice medicine and was not interested in anything. The only thing that fascinated him was poetry. At first he had a good attitude towards the revolution, but after being in captivity, where he had to shoot living people, he changed his enthusiasm to compassion for innocent people. He deliberately refused to participate in history.

Essentially, this character lived the life he wanted to live. Outwardly he looked weak-willed, but in fact he had a strong mind and good intuition. Zhivago died of a heart attack that happened to him on a crowded tram. Larisa Antipova (Guichard) was also at his funeral. As it turned out, she had a daughter from Yuri, whom she was forced to give up to be raised by a stranger. After his death, his half-brother Evgraf Zhivago took care of his niece and his brother’s work.

Boris Pasternak and Evgenia Lurie with their son. 1920s Mondadori/Getty Images

Antonina Gromeko / Evgenia Lurie

Among the possible prototypes of the protagonist’s wife, researchers most often name Evgenia Vladimirovna Pasternak (Lurie), an artist and Pasternak’s first wife. Her appearance was described by Elizaveta Chernyak, the wife of the literary critic Yakov Chernyak, who was friends with the writer: “A proud face with rather large bold features, a thin nose with a peculiar cutout of the nostrils, a huge, open, intelligent forehead.” According to Yevgeny Pasternak, a literary critic and the writer’s eldest son, her resemblance to early Renaissance female portraits was transferred to Tonya Gromeko from Doctor Zhivago, whom Larisa Antipova calls “Botticelli-esque.”

Anna Gromeko / Alexandra Lurie

In the summer of 1924, Alexandra Nikolaevna Lurie, Evgenia Lurie’s mother, climbed onto the wardrobe to get a toy for her grandson. Losing her balance, she fell and hurt her spine. This began a long illness, as a result of which Alexandra Lurie died. This story was indirectly reflected in Doctor Zhivago: a fall from a wardrobe caused the death of Antonina Gromeko’s mother, Anna Ivanovna. And Pasternak recalls Evgenia Lurie’s reaction to her mother’s death, describing Tony’s inconsolable grief.

“You probably already heard about the death of Zhenya’s mother. The nature of her death, her last words, etc., brought forward and strengthened at the last moment the similarity that had always been between her and Zhenya, and the long-day tears of the latter, especially in the first day, picked up and further strengthened this elusive connection. She cried, stroked and hugged the body, adjusted the pillow under it and secretly, through tears and between conversations with visitors, drew it. All this was fluent, changeable, childish - complete and immediate, all this was fused into one thing - death and grief, end and continuation, fate and inherent possibility, all this, due to its elusive nobility, was inexpressible in words.

In Doctor Zhivago: “They no longer found Anna Ivanovna alive when they ran headlong into the house from the entrance to Sivtsev.<...>For the first hours, Tonya screamed obscenities, went into convulsions and did not recognize anyone. The next day she became quiet, patiently listening to what her father and Yura told her, but could only answer with nods, because as soon as she opened her mouth, grief took hold of her with the same force and screams themselves began to break out of her as if possessed. She spent hours on her knees next to the deceased, in the intervals between funeral services, hugging the corner of the coffin with her large beautiful hands, along with the edge of the platform on which it stood, and the wreaths that covered it. She didn’t notice anyone around” (Part III, Chapter 15).

Pavel Antipov / Vladimir Mayakovsky

In the image of Pavel Antipov, Pasternak used some features of Vladimir Mayakovsky, who was well known to him.

“I immediately guessed that if he was handsome, and witty, and talented,
and, perhaps, archly talented - this is not the main thing in him, but the main thing is an iron inner bearing, some precepts or foundations of nobility, a sense of duty, according to which he did not allow himself to be different, less beautiful, less witty, less talented. .

Boris Pasternak. "People and Positions", Chapter 9

Antipov-Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago also turns out to be endowed with an “iron inner bearing” and a special gift: “It is unknown why, it immediately became clear that this man represents a complete manifestation of will. He was to such an extent what he wanted to be that everything on him and in him inevitably seemed exemplary. And his proportionately built and beautifully set head, and the swiftness of his step, and his long legs in high boots.<...>This is how the presence of talent acted, knowing no tension, feeling as if in the saddle in any position of earthly existence, and thus conquering.”

Literary critic Victor Frank draws attention to another parallel - a common feature in the attitude of Yuri Zhivago to Antipov, on the one hand, and Pasternak to Mayakovsky, on the other. In “People and Positions,” Pasternak wrote about the closeness of his early work to the poetic style of Mayakovsky: “In order not to repeat it and not seem like an imitator, I began to suppress in myself the inclinations that resonated with him, the heroic tone, which in my case would be false, and desire for effects. It narrowed my style and purified it” (chapter 11).

Zhivago also speaks of his readiness to “give up his searches” and “suppress the inclinations in himself that resonate with him” in a conversation with Lara: “If a person close in spirit and enjoying my love fell in love with the same woman as me, I would have there would be a feeling of sad brotherhood with him, and not of dispute and litigation. I, of course, would not be able to share the object of my adoration with him for a minute. But I would retreat with a feeling of a different kind of suffering than jealousy, not so smoking and bloody. The same thing would happen to me if I encountered an artist who would captivate me with the superiority of his abilities in works similar to mine. I would probably give up my searches, repeating his attempts that defeated me” (Part XIII, Chapter 12).

In addition, in Lara's words about her husband one can find a description of the metamorphosis that occurred with Mayakovsky after 1918.

“It was as if something abstract had entered this image and discolored it. A living human face has become an embodiment, a principle, an image of an idea.<...>I realized that this was a consequence of the forces into whose hands he had given himself, sublime, but deadening and merciless forces, which someday would not spare him either.”

Doctor Zhivago, Part XIII, Chapter 13

These “sublime, but deadening and merciless forces” did not spare either Antipov-Strelnikov or Mayakovsky. Antipov's suicide is another argument in favor of his similarity to Mayakovsky.

Boris Pasternak and Olga Ivinskaya with their daughter Irina. 1958© Ullstein Bild/Getty Images

Boris Pasternak with Zinaida Neuhauz-Pasternak in Peredelkino. 1958© Bridgeman Images/Fotodom

Lara / Olga Ivinskaya / Zinaida Neuhauz-Pasternak

The main character of Doctor Zhivago combines the features of at least two women who played an important role in Pasternak’s biography: his second wife Zinaida Neuhaus and Olga Ivinskaya, his lover in recent years.

Lara enjoys any work in her hands, she is neat and hardworking. Also in a letter to his friend, poet Renate Schweitzer, Pasternak describes the “slender, bright brunette” Zinaida Neuhaus:

“My wife’s passionate work ethic, her ardent dexterity in everything, in washing, cooking, cleaning, raising children, created home comfort, a garden, a way of life and a daily routine, the peace and quiet necessary for work” (May 7, 1958).

At the end of January 1959, Pasternak gave an interview to Anthony Brown, a correspondent for The Daily Mail, in which he spoke about Olga Ivinskaya:

“She is my great, great friend. She helped me when writing a book, in my life... She received five years for being friends with me. In my youth there was no one, only Lara, there was no woman who resembled Mary Magdalene. The Lara of my youth is a shared experience. But the Lara of my old age is inscribed in my heart with her blood and her prison..."

In the second half of 1951, Ivinskaya was sentenced to five years in forced labor camps as a “socially unreliable element.” Lara is in constant confusion, knows nothing about herself, attracts disasters, appears from nowhere and disappears into nowhere:

“One day Larisa Fedorovna left home and never returned. Apparently, she was arrested on the street in those days, and she died or disappeared somewhere unknown, forgotten under some nameless number from the subsequently lost lists, in one of the countless general or women’s concentration camps in the north.”

Doctor Zhivago, Part XV, Chapter 17

Unlike Lara, Ivinskaya was released under the first post-Stalin amnesty in the spring of 1953 and returned to Moscow.

Marina Shchapova / Marina Tsvetaeva

Konstantin Polivanov notes that the novel was influenced by Pasternak’s personal and creative relationship with Tsvetaeva. The last lover of Yuri Zhivago, the daughter of the janitor Markel from Gromeko’s former house in Sivtsev Vrazhek, is named Marina.

The intensive correspondence between Pasternak and Tsvetaeva for several years is reflected not only in poems from Tsvetaeva’s “Wires” series (“Telegraph: lyu - yu - blue...<...>/ Telegraphic: about - about - shai...<...>/ My high traction hums / Lyrical wires”), but also, perhaps, in Marina’s profession: she works at the telegraph office.

A special place in Tsvetaeva’s idea of ​​Pasternak’s poetry was occupied by rain (“But more passionately than grass, dawn, blizzard - he loved Pasternak: rain”). The image of rain as a message has repeatedly attracted the attention of researchers. This clarifies the definition that Zhivago gives to his relationship with Marina - “a romance in twenty buckets.”

Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky / Nikolai Militinsky

According to Zinaida Neuhaus-Pasternak, the prototype of Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky was her first lover, Nikolai Militinsky. When he was 45 years old, he fell in love with his cousin, 15-year-old Zinaida. Many years later she told Pasternak about this.

“You know,” he [Boris Pasternak] said, “this is my duty to Zina - I have to write about her. I want to write a novel... A novel about this girl. Beautiful, seduced from the true path... A beauty under a veil in separate rooms of night restaurants. Her cousin, a guards officer, takes her there. She, of course, is unable to resist. She is so young, so incredibly attractive...”

Josephine Pasternak, poet's sister

Zinaida Neuhaus-Pasternak later recalled: “Komarovsky is my first love. Borya described Komarovsky very angrily; N. Militinsky was much taller and nobler, not possessing such animal qualities. I told Bora about this more than once. But he was not going to change anything about this personality, since that’s how he imagined him, and he didn’t want to part with this image.”

Nikolay Vedenyapin / Alexander Scriabin / Andrey Bely

Victor Frank points out that the image of Nikolai Vedenyapin is associated with the composer Alexander Scriabin. In his “Safety Certificate,” Pasternak called Scriabin “his idol.” Vedenyapin is as much in control of the thoughts of Yura Zhivago as Scriabin is in control of the dreams of young Pasternak.

Vedenyapin, like Scriabin, leaves for Switzerland for six years. In 1917, the hero of the novel returns to Russia: “It was an amazing, unforgettable, significant meeting! The idol of his childhood, the ruler of his youthful thoughts, stood before him alive in the flesh again” (Part VI, Chapter 4). In the novel, as in life, the return of the “idol” coincides with liberation from his influence.

American Slavist Ronald Petersen draws attention to the similarities in the biographies of Vedenyapin and Andrei Bely. Having lived for a long time in Switzerland, Vedenyapin returned to Russia after the February Revolution: “A roundabout route to London. Through Finland" (part VI, chapter 2). In 1916, Bely traveled to Russia from Switzerland through France, England, Norway and Sweden.

In revolutionary Russia, Vedenyapin “was for the Bolsheviks” and became close to the Left Socialist Revolutionary publicists. Andrei Bely also initially welcomed the October Revolution and actively collaborated in Left Socialist Revolutionary publications.

Literary critic Alexander Lavrov says that Pasternak borrowed the surname Vedenyapin from Andrei Bely - it is worn by one of the characters in the novel “Moscow”.

The novel “Doctor Zhivago” became the apotheosis of Pasternak’s brilliant work as a prose writer. He describes the procession and transformation of the consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia through the dramatic events that completely permeate the first half of the 20th century.

History of creation

The novel was created over the course of a decade (from 1945 to 1955), the fate of the work was surprisingly difficult - despite worldwide recognition (its pinnacle was receiving the Nobel Prize), in the Soviet Union the novel was approved for publication only in 1988. The ban on the novel was explained by its anti-Soviet content; in connection with this, Pasternak began to be persecuted by the authorities. In 1956, attempts were made to publish the novel in Soviet literary magazines, but, naturally, they were not crowned with success. The foreign publication brought fame to the prose poet and resonated with unprecedented resonance in Western society. The first Russian-language edition was published in Milan in 1959.

Analysis of the work

Description of the work

(Cover for the first book, drawn by artist Konovalov)

The first pages of the novel reveal the image of an early orphaned little boy, who will later be sheltered by his uncle. The next stage is Yura's move to the capital and his life in the Gromeko family. Despite the early manifestation of a poetic gift, the young man decides to follow the example of his adoptive father, Alexander Gromeko, and enters the medical faculty. A tender friendship with the daughter of Yuri’s benefactors, Tonya Gromeko, eventually turns into love, and the girl becomes the wife of a talented doctor-poet.

The further narrative is a complex interweaving of the destinies of the main characters of the novel. Shortly after his marriage, Yuri falls passionately in love with the bright and extraordinary girl Lara Guichard, later the wife of Commissioner Strelnikov. The tragic love story of the doctor and Lara will appear periodically throughout the novel - after many ordeals, they will never be able to find their happiness. A terrible time of poverty, hunger and repression will separate the families of the main characters. Both lovers of Doctor Zhivago are forced to leave their homeland. The theme of loneliness is acute in the novel, from which the main character subsequently goes crazy, and Lara's husband Antipov (Strelnikov) takes his own life. Doctor Zhivago's last attempt at marital happiness also fails. Yuri gives up attempts at scientific and literary activity and ends his earthly life as a completely degraded person. The main character of the novel dies of a heart attack on the way to work in the center of the capital. In the last scene of the novel, childhood friends Nika Dudorov and…….. Gordon read a collection of poems by the doctor-poet.

Main characters

(Poster for the movie "Doctor Zhivago")

The image of the main character is deeply autobiographical. Through him, Pasternak reveals his inner self - his reasoning about what is happening, his spiritual worldview. Zhivago is an intellectual to the core, this trait manifests itself in everything - in life, in creativity, in profession. The author masterfully embodies the highest level of the hero’s spiritual life in the doctor’s monologues. Zhivago’s Christian essence does not undergo any changes due to circumstances - the doctor is ready to help all those who suffer, regardless of their political worldview. Zhivago's external weak-will is actually the highest manifestation of his internal freedom, where he exists among the highest humanistic values. The death of the main character will not mark the end of the novel - his immortal creations will forever erase the line between eternity and existence.

Lara Guichard

(Larisa Fedorovna Antipova) is a bright, even in some sense shocking, woman with great fortitude and a desire to help people. It is in the hospital, where she gets a job as a nurse, that her relationship with Doctor Zhivago begins. Despite attempts to escape from fate, life regularly brings the heroes together; these meetings each time strengthen the mutual pure feelings that have arisen. Dramatic circumstances in post-revolutionary Russia lead to the fact that Lara is forced to sacrifice her love to save her own child and leave with her hated former lover, lawyer Komarovsky. Lara, who finds herself in a hopeless situation, will reproach herself for this act all her life.

A successful lawyer, the embodiment of the demonic principle in Pasternak's novel. Being the lover of Lara's mother, he vilely seduced her young daughter, and subsequently played a fatal role in the girl's life, deceiving her by separating her from her loved one.

The novel “Doctor Zhivago” consists of two books, which in turn contain 17 parts, numbered consecutively. The novel shows the whole life of a generation of young intelligentsia of that time. It is no coincidence that one of the possible titles of the novel was “Boys and Girls.” The author brilliantly showed the antagonism of two heroes - Zhivago and Strelnikov, as a person living outside what is happening in the country, and as a person completely subordinate to the ideology of the totalitarian regime. The author conveys the spiritual impoverishment of the Russian intelligentsia through the image of Tatyana, the illegitimate daughter of Lara Antipova and Yuri Zhivago, a simple girl who bears only a distant imprint of the hereditary intelligentsia.

In his novel, Pasternak repeatedly emphasizes the duality of existence; the events of the novel are projected onto the New Testament plot, giving the work a special mystical overtones. Yuri Zhivago’s poem notebook, which crowns the novel, symbolizes the door to eternity, this is confirmed by one of the first versions of the title of the novel, “There Will Be No Death.”

Final conclusion

“Doctor Zhivago” is the novel of a lifetime, the result of the creative search and philosophical quest of Boris Pasternak; in his opinion, the main theme of the novel is the relationship of equal principles - personality and history. The author attaches no less importance to the theme of love; it permeates the entire novel, love is shown in all possible forms, with all the versatility inherent in this great feeling.