To help a schoolchild. Essay: Christian motives in verses from the novel by B.L.

What Christian motifs are present in Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”?

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 vibrant life in Russia, exciting a new century.”

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 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.”

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 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.

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"

The ideological and thematic content of the novel is largely determined by how the author himself characterizes his plan in 1946 in a letter to his sister O. M. Freidenberg: “I began to write a big novel in prose. Actually, this is my first real job. In it I want to give a historical image of Russia over the last forty-five years, and at the same time, with all aspects of its plot, heavy, sad and detailed... this thing will be an expression of my views on art, the Gospel, on human life in history and to much more." Thus, Doctor Zhivago was conceived as a “novel of the century” and as the author’s most complete and objective lyrical statement “about time and about himself.” “...I want to speak on the topics of life and time to the end and in clarity, as given to me...” wrote Pasternak about working on the novel. For him, this is not just the result of life and creativity, but a concentrated expression of the entire complex of philosophical, religious, ethical ideas, a view of his own destiny and the path of world history and culture.

One of the main themes of the novel is reflections on the history of Russia, its past, present and future in the context of world history. Pasternak is characterized by a concept close to Tolstoy’s about the course of the historical process, which he entrusts to Yuri Zhivago to express: “He again thought that he imagined history, what is called the course of history, in a completely different way from what is customary, and he it is depicted like the plant kingdom. ...No one makes history, it is not visible, just as you cannot see how grass grows.” That is why so often in the novel living, constantly regenerating nature personifies Russia and the entire history of mankind. It is not for nothing that the heroes of the novel, Yuri Zhivago and Lara, who are closest to the author, feel nature so subtly, are so close to it, as if dissolved in the natural principle. The main ideological and thematic nodes of the novel represent the connection between man and nature. That is why natural images, motifs, and similes are so important in his ideological and artistic system: “...Russia flew past in clouds of hot dust, raised by the sun like limestone...”.

The entire novel is permeated and cemented by the multi-valued image of a blizzard, blizzard, storm. Firstly, this is the cleansing storm of the revolution, a symbol similar to Blok’s from the poem “The Twelve” (a symbolic picture of the November snow falling on the page of a newspaper with the first decrees of the Soviet government). Secondly, this is a gust of feelings beyond the control of reason, which sweeps over the heroes like a snowstorm. And, finally, this image is associated with an equally sudden burst of creativity that captured Yuri Zhivago and determined his future path. It is through the curtain of a winter blizzard that he sees from the street a circle of candles burning in the house where Lara is having a conversation with her future husband Antipov. Then Yuri for the first time hears the words of probably the most famous of the poems that conclude the novel: “The candle was burning on the table, the candle was burning...”. This is how a poet is born, who with his creativity redeemed not only his life, suffering, love, but also tied together the disconnected ends of Russian culture and history, restoring the “connection of times.”

Similar figurative and thematic threads permeate the entire artistic canvas of the novel, which gives it a special integrity and organic quality. Thus, at the beginning of the novel, the image of a storm appears, which recognized ten-year-old Yura: “A blizzard was raging outside, the air was smoking with snow. One might have thought that the storm had noticed Yura and, realizing how terrible it was, was enjoying the impression it made on him. She whistled and howled and tried in every way to attract Yurino’s attention.” And in the finale, it’s as if the same storm is gathering a thunderous “black-purple cloud”, which overtakes the tram carrying Yuri Andreevich, sweltering from the heat, suffocating, on his final journey.

It is in these last minutes of life that the thought again comes to him about a certain “principle of relativity in the world of life,” according to which completely unexpected, at first glance, rapprochements, meetings, intersections of people, destinies, times and spaces occur. This idea is heard more than once in the novel, characterizing not only its basic constructive principle, but the most important idea for the author of the interconnectedness of all life phenomena. This also applies to the above-mentioned interpenetration of human and natural principles, and to that paradoxical connection between the destinies of numerous heroes of the novel, which often seemed to readers and critics to be something unnatural and far-fetched. Moreover, this is another most important theme of the novel about the connection of a single Russian culture, which, it would seem, was cut off forever under the blows of revolutionary cataclysms. The novel itself is an artistic fusion of various styles that embody all the leading traditions of Russian culture. This is a kind of “generalized portrait of Russian culture of the 19th century.” beginning of the 20th century." Indicative from this point of view is the reading range of the heroes of the novel: “Demons” by Dostoevsky, “War and Peace” by Tolstoy, “Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin and much more, which makes up the “golden fund” of Russian culture. The characters talk, argue, and think about this, and at the same time the problem that is so important for the author becomes increasingly clear: what happens when the richest culture of a people, containing its most powerful spiritual potential, collides with the militant “anti-culturalism”, lack of spirituality, after the revolution has taken place? onic destruction of centuries-old traditions, which seemingly filled the entire national cultural and historical space. In this monstrous battle, it becomes obvious what in fact from the cultural and historical heritage of Russia can be destroyed, destroyed, distorted, and what is eternal and indestructible, despite all the revolutions and wars. At the same time, Pasternak does not give a “portrait” of Russian culture in isolation, but fits it into the global cultural space. Not only Russian, but also foreign literature is reflected on the pages of the novel (Dickens and Stendhal are read in Zhivago’s house), various philosophical systems and political events are discussed, to which different characters give different interpretations in accordance with their own position. But they all emphasize precisely the idea of continuity and unity. So, fully immersed in the revolutionary struggle, Antipov-Strelnikov reasoned in a conversation with Zhivago: “... This entire nineteenth century with all its revolutions in Paris, several generations of Russian emigration, starting with Herzen, all the planned regicides... the entire labor movement of the world, all Marxism in the parliaments and universities of Europe... Lenin absorbed all this and expressed it in a general way in order to bring down the old with personified retribution for everything he had done.

Next to him rose an indelibly huge image of Russia, in front of the eyes of the whole world, suddenly blazing with a candle of atonement for all the poverty and hardships of mankind.” Despite the differences in attitude towards the coup, the heroes of the novel, like the author himself, recognize the inevitability of what is happening. “What a magnificent surgery!” - exclaims Yuri Zhivago, who did not recognize the new life and never fit into it. For all his disagreement with the new system, which levels and destroys the individual, in the revolution itself he sees something artistically brilliant. “This is unprecedented, this is a miracle of history, this revelation is thrown into the very thick of the ongoing routine, without paying attention to its progress. This is the most brilliant thing." It is obvious that the author trusts the hero to express his thoughts about the unintentionality of historical development, and therefore, despite all the horrors of the revolution, it is perceived as a given, an inevitability that draws a person, like a grain of sand, into the whirlpool of events. For Pasternak, wars, revolutions, tsars, Robespierres are the “fermentation yeast” of history. Fanatics like Antipov-Strelnikov, who make revolutions, destroying the entire previous system of life in a few hours and days, are “geniuses of self-restraint” in the name of the “great idea” they recognize. But what comes after this?

“For decades, centuries, the spirit of limitation, leading to revolution, has been worshiped as a shrine.” For Pasternak, this is precisely one of the most terrible consequences of the revolution for Russia. As a result, a kingdom of mediocrity has been established, which rejects, persecutes, and destroys everything truly living and creative. That is why people like Dudorov and Gordon were able to adapt to the new life and settle in it, but there was no place for a free, creative personality like Yuri Zhivago. “The stereotype of what Dudorov said and felt especially touched Gordon. ...Innocent's virtuous speeches were in the spirit of the times. But it was precisely the regularity, the transparency of their hypocrisy that exploded Yuri Andreevich. An unfree person always idealizes his bondage. Yuri Andreevich could not stand the political mysticism of the Soviet intelligentsia, what was its highest achievement or, as they would say then, the spiritual high point of the era.” It turns out that the revolution kills not only through its harshness (“if the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed”), but in itself contradicts life, rejects it. “...In our time, microscopic forms of cardiac hemorrhages have become very common,” notes Dr. Zhivago with medical precision. -...This is a disease of modern times. I think her reasons are moral. The vast majority of us are required to maintain a constant system of crookedness. You cannot, day after day, act contrary to what you feel without health consequences; to bow down to what you don’t love, to rejoice at what brings you unhappiness.” Material from the site

Thus, the theme of Russia, its history and culture, reflections on the laws of the historical process are inextricably linked in the novel with its main philosophical theme - life, death and immortality. In the prose part of the novel, it is most clearly expressed in the reflections of the protagonist’s uncle, Nikolai Nikolaevich Vedenyapin, “a priest who was defrocked at his own request.” He states: “...man does not live in nature, but in history... in the current understanding, it is founded by Christ... The Gospel is its foundation,” and asks the question: “What is history? This is the establishment of centuries-old work on the consistent solution to death and its future overcoming.” What is necessary to achieve immortality? “This is, firstly, love for one’s neighbor, this highest form of living energy... and then these are the main components of modern man, without which he is unthinkable, namely the idea of a free personality and the idea of life as a sacrifice.” Thus, the main ideological and thematic lines of the novel close and come to its main theme - life, death and immortality of man in the Christian understanding. For Pasternak, the appearance of Christ is the beginning of the true history of mankind: “Only after Him did life begin in posterity, and a person dies not on the street under a fence, but in his own history, in the midst of work dedicated to overcoming death, he dies himself dedicated to this topic." According to the author, after the coming of Christ, the history of mankind begins to be projected into eternity. The model of personality in the novel is Christ: with his arrival, as Pasternak writes, “peoples and gods ceased” and “man began.” It is not without reason that Pasternak’s image of Christ is “emphatically human, deliberately provincial,” because thanks to this, every person gains hope for immortality. This is “... 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 carried throughout all the lullabies of mothers and throughout all the art galleries of the world.” The worldview center of the novel is the idea of resurrection and immortality, which manifests itself in a sense of personality commensurate with the world. The reflections of Yuri Zhivago are indicative in this regard: “There is no death. Death is not our thing. But you said: talent is a different matter, it’s ours, it’s open to us. And talent, in the highest broadest concept, is the gift of life.” This is exactly how the idea of immortality is realized in the novel in the fate of Zhivago: after his death, the memory of him remained in the hearts of people close to him, his poems remained, which complete the entire book. “The Poems of Yuri Zhivago” is a kind of catharsis for the novel, a breakthrough into immortality after a difficult plot, this breakthrough into eternity. That is why among these verses there are so many that are directly related to Christian themes, motifs and images: “On Passion”, “Christmas Star”, “Miracle”, “Magdalene”, “Garden of Gethsemane”. It is in this series that one of the most significant “eternal images” for Russian literature appears - Hamlet, and with him the problem of moral choice, posed in the novel as fundamental for each of the heroes, reaches a universal human level. The idea of the complexity and responsibility of choice, of its possible consequences, of a person’s right to shed blood, running through the entire novel, is projected onto the fate of its author and appeals to readers. Thus, “The Poems of Yuri Zhivago” are not only ideologically and thematically connected with the main lines of the work, but also complete their development at a new level of artistic generalization.

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“Doctor Zhivago”: themes, main motives,

Christian theme in the novel "Doctor Zhivago"

Despite the variety of research positions, one of the aspects in the study of Doctor Zhivago remained on its periphery. This is the powerful influence of the Christian tradition of Russian literature (Dostoevsky), as well as Gospel and liturgical texts on Pasternak as a decisive factor in the creation of the novel “Doctor Zhivago”. [Ptitsyn, 2000, p. 8]. J. Börtnes, T.G. devoted their works to identifying the religious and philosophical roots in Doctor Zhivago. Prokhorova, I.A. Ptytsin et al.

The novel contains a huge amount of information, including many subjects, phenomena, eras and figures in the overall cultural and historical work. The text of Doctor Zhivago comes from many sources. Pasternak’s “inscription” of various pretexts into the images of these characters actualizes the plots and details of the latter in projection onto the modernity depicted by the writer and allows him to give hidden assessments of it.

The world of history and a person’s entry into it is determined for Pasternak by the dimensions that he outlined in a Christian vein: “free personality,” “love for one’s neighbor,” and “the idea of life as a sacrifice.” The highest sphere where this understanding of the world of history is embodied is, according to the writer, art. Pasternak saw such art as realistic and corresponding not only to the truth of history, but also to the truth of nature. [Kutsaenko, 2011, p. 3].

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 motives play the most important role.

There is also a lot of debate about Yuri Zhivago’s Christianity, and the main complaint against Pasternak here is the identification of the hero with Christ. Pasternak just set himself the task of proving that a very good person is precisely the most honest follower of Christ in the world, because... sacrifice and generosity, submission to fate, non-participation in murders and robberies are quite enough to consider oneself a Christian.” [Bykov, 2007, p. 722].

The hero, capable of voluntarily dooming himself to suffering, entered Pasternak's work early. Yuri Zhivago symbolized the figure of Christ. For Pasternak, the following Christian idea is very important: he who obeys the calls of Christ, makes an effort on himself, diligently transforms his entire life. [Ptitsyn, 2000, p. 12].

In light of the problems of B. Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago,” the parallelism between the image of Yuri Zhivago and the image of Jesus Christ in the novel becomes fundamentally important. However, there is reason to talk not just about the parallelism of images, but about the parallelism of the entire story of Yuri Zhivago, the entire plot of his fate with the biblical story of the life, deeds, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This parallelism forms the key structure of Pasternak's novel. This parallelism is formed in the phases of the plot action, and in the system of characters, and in stylistic “consonances”, and finally, a whole range of special signals is oriented towards it.

The heroes of the entire work live by the idea of life as a victim. For Pasternak, the theme of the compassionate identity of the soul of one person to another, the idea of the inevitability of giving all of oneself for people, is important. Only in the context of eternity does the life of man and all humanity gain meaning for the writer. All the events of the novel, all the characters are continually projected onto the New Testament tradition, intertwined with the eternal, be it the obvious parallelism of the life of Doctor Zhivago with the way of the cross, the fate of Lara with the fate of Magdalene, Komarovsky -

with the devil. “The mystery of life, the mystery of death” - the thought of the author of Doctor Zhivago struggles with this mystery. And Pasternak solves the “mystery of death” through life in history-eternity and in creativity.

Pasternak is concerned with the theme of the spiritual resurrection of the individual. The first lines of the book (the funeral of Yura's mother, the blizzard night after the burial, the child's experiences) are the semantic beginning of this theme. Later, Yuri Andreevich imagines that he is writing the poem “Confusion” about those days that passed between the death of Christ and his resurrection, about that space and time when there was a struggle between the resurrection potency of life and the “black earthly storm.” [Pasternak, 2010, p. 123]. The main character of the novel understands resurrection this way: “...You are afraid whether you will be resurrected, but you were already resurrected when you were born, and you didn’t notice it” [Pasternak, 2010, p. 45].

In the novel “Doctor Zhivago,” both the moral aspects of the gospel teaching and others related to the main idea brought by Christ to humanity were embodied. Doctor Zhivago believes that man in other people is the soul of man, his immortality: “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 has become part of the future.” [Pasternak, 2010, p. 45].

“There will be no death” - this is one of the author’s options for the title of the future novel. According to Pasternak, a person should carry within himself the idea of immortality. He cannot live without this. Zhivago believes that immortality will be achieved by a person if he becomes “free from himself” - he accepts the pain of time, accepts all the suffering of humanity as his own. And it is significant that the main character is not only a doctor, but also a poet. The collection of his poems is the result, the summation of his life. This is Yuri Zhivago's life after death. This is the immortality of the human spirit.

The ending of the novel is conceptually important. It contains two epilogues: the first is the result of the hero’s earthly life, and the second is the result of his creativity and miracles. A deliberately reduced image of the death of Yuri Zhivago is replaced by the apotheosis of the hero - the publication, many years later, of his book poems. This is a direct plot materialization of the idea of immortality. In his poems, which captured the miracle of life, expressing his attitude and understanding of the world, Yuri overcame the power of death. He preserved his soul, and it again entered into communication with people.

Human immortality for Yuri Zhivago? it is life in the minds of others. Yuri speaks the words of Christ about the resurrection as a constant renewal of the same eternal life. 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. [Pasternak, 2010, p. 2]. Truth is known through 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 there is its justification" [Pasternak, 2010, p. 13]. 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.

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. One day he accidentally hears Simushka Tuntseva analyzing liturgical texts, interpreting them in accordance with Vedenyapin’s ideas.

The views of Vedenyapin's historiosophy strikingly coincide with the views of Yuri Zhivago, which are reflected in his poetry, in which the theme of Christ is repeated, and again in a new interpretation. 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 order with its absolute division into leaders and peoples, into Caesar and the faceless mass of slaves. “An individual human life became God’s story, filling the space of the universe with its content” [Pasternak, 2010, p. 239].

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

The main things in life for Yuri Zhivago are: noble culture and ideas of Christianity: Yuri Andreevich about uncle Nikolai Nikolaevich: “Like her (mother), he was a free person, devoid of prejudice against anything unusual. Like her, he had a noble sense of equality with all living things” [Pasternak, 2010, p. 12]; “This, firstly, is love for one’s neighbor, this highest type of living energy that overflows the human heart... the idea of a free personality and the idea of life as a sacrifice” [Pasternak, 2010, p. 13].

Thus, one of the interpretations of the legend of Christ, which is a constant element of culture, was included in the content of the novel about Yuri Zhivago - an eternal theme - Christian - was embodied in his personality and fate. B. Pasternak raised mortal man to the same level as Jesus Christ, proving the equivalence of the earthly life of a spiritualized man, his tragedy of the existence of that fate, which became for humanity a symbol of martyrdom and immortality. The parallelism between the fate of Yuri Zhivago, a Russian intellectual who lived in the first third of the 20th century, and the story of Jesus Christ became in the novel the most important way of discovering the moral essence of man’s struggle with his time, a form of enormous artistic generalization.

Once upon a time, all the literature of Christian peoples was imbued with Christian motifs. Love for Christ, ardent and deep, illuminated almost every page that came from the pens of writers in Russia, Europe and America. Over the past decades, we have lost the habit of this: bloodily persecuted in one part of the world, respectfully suppressed in another, Christianity has almost completely disappeared from the pages of world literature.

And suddenly now, with a bright, life-giving stream, it shone in the work of the writer, who for forty years was under the yoke of the most ruthless anti-Christian force, under the yoke of the concentratedly mobilized satanic forces of evil, embodied in the power that has overrun our Motherland. This is not unexpected for us: we have always known that love for Christ and devotion to Him live with the greatest strength and fullness at the present time precisely in the depths of our people. But to outsiders this seems a surprise, and they write with surprise: “How could such an apostle of life, with the deepest sense of its Christian sacredness, live in the life-crushing and soul-destroying nightmare of communist revolution and tyranny?”

For us, “Doctor Zhivago,” the creation of Boris Pasternak, is most precious precisely for its manifestation of bright and deep love for Christ and faith in Him, although not orthodox, but sincere.

Lines from the poem “Garden of Gethsemane”, boldly but deeply truthfully, I would like to say, sacredly put by Pasternak into the mouth of Christ the Savior, just as similar words were put into the mouth of the Lord by the ancient holy hymnals - these lines will enter the soul of an Orthodox person along with the best religious lines of poems by Derzhavin, Pushkin, Lermontov, A. Tolstoy, along with the best Christian pages of Dostoevsky.

And since the pages of Doctor Zhivago were written not in the calm and quiet of the 19th century, but in the darkness of bloody anti-religious persecution, with confessional courage, they will become even more beloved.

The dispute cannot be resolved with iron.
Put your sword back, man.
Is it really the darkness of the winged legions
Wouldn't Father have equipped me here?
And then without touching a hair on Me,
The enemies would have dispersed without a trace.
But the book of life has come to the page,
Which is more expensive than all shrines.
Now what is written must come true,
Let it come true. Amen.
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 how rafts are floated down the river,
To Me for judgment, like the barges of a caravan,
Centuries will float out of the darkness.

These and many other lines from the poems and text of Doctor Zhivago will go deep into the Christian soul.

It is interesting to note the apparently completely unconscious spiritual roll call across the centuries. B. Pasternak probably did not read John Chrysostom. The traditions of the Russian intelligentsia, in which B. Pasternak grew up and was imbued with, have long since led Russian thinking circles away from this reading, which was once the favorite of our distant ancestors.

But in his poem "Magdalene" Pasternak repeats the thought of John Chrysostom. The suffering that Saint Mary Magdalene endured, remaining faithful in her love for the Lord after His death on the cross, so spiritually purified and elevated her that she was able to be the first to perceive the greatest truth of Christianity - the news of the resurrection of Christ and, becoming an apostle for the apostles, preach to them as well. , and to the whole world this truth. These are approximately the thoughts of St. John Chrysostom.

Pasternak says the same thing when he puts the following words into the mouth of Mary Magdalene:

Three days will pass
And they will push you into such emptiness,
What is this terrible interval?
I'll be old enough for Sunday.

B. Pasternak's book aroused recognition and admiration throughout the free world. But, of course, it was not published in the Soviet Union. And yet, the American reviewer is mistaken when he says that this book, which has received the approval of the whole world, will remain unknown to the Russian reader.

No, this book is already widely known and loved in Russia. We heard that Russian students often know poems from it by heart, and even before the book itself was abroad, these poems had already been transmitted by Russian people from there to Russian emigrants here. And of course, these lines entered into Russian thought, into the Russian soul firmly - forever.

It is not surprising, therefore, that B. Pasternak’s creation aroused such fierce hatred on the part of the persecutors of the Russian soul. Perhaps this phenomenon is an even better testament to the value of his book, even greater than the awarding of the Nobel Prize.

People can make mistakes. But Satan unmistakably recognizes everything that he hates. And when, in paroxysms of anger, his servants and heralds shout words full of hatred and anger regarding the new book, we could already guess from this alone that there is something very good and very valuable here.

Although B. Pasternak is under the yoke of this satanic power, he, fully armed with Christian courage, is not afraid of it. He says: “I am already an old man, and the most that can happen is death. And there is no need to be afraid of it.” Because he confesses:

Death can be overcome
Let's make Sunday stronger.

Low, earthly, church bow to Boris Pasternak. And glory to him!

From the book of Archbishop Nathanael (Lvov) “The Key to the Treasury”, published in the series “Spiritual Heritage of the Russian Abroad”, published by the Sretensky Monastery in 2006.

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/put/070201104425

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 it is a little different than the Quaker and Tolstoy, coming from other sides of the Gospel in addition to the moral ones.”

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.

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