The original title of the novel is Doctor Zhivago. The history of the creation of the novel “Doctor Zhivago”

“J” is the writer’s pinnacle work, according to him own assessment, prepared by all his previous creativity, intense spiritual and artistic searches. In fact, all of P.’s prose and, to a greater extent, poetry, from the very first experiments, were preparations for the final novel, on which the author relied special role both in his own destiny and in the broader context of 20th century literature.

“J” is the writer’s pinnacle work, in his own estimation, prepared by all of his previous work, intense spiritual and artistic searches. In fact, all of P.’s prose and, to a greater extent, poetry, from the very first experiments, were preparations for the final novel, to which the author assigned a special role both in his own destiny and in the broader context of 20th-century literature.

P. writes: “I now have the opportunity to work on something of my own, without thinking about my daily bread. “I want to write prose about our entire life from Blok to the current war.” Pasternak says that he began his career during the period of the collapse of form, when description and thought were based in prose. He wanted to create a novel that would give feelings, dialogues and people in a dramatic embodiment, and would reflect the prose of the time.

The first significant milestone in the movement towards a large prose form was the story - "The Childhood of Eyelets" (1921), part of an unfinished novel with the tentative title "Three Names". The novel in verse “Spektorsky” (1929) and the related “Tale” (1929) were a kind of dilogy, where P. made an attempt to combine two elements - poetry and prose - in a single plot whole. In the early 30s, P. again began writing a novel about the fate of his generation. The work was not completed. The surviving excerpts, entitled “The Beginning of the Prose of '36,” contained some elements that later became the novel.

From the point of view of the embodiment of autobiographical motives, the novel is also adjacent to the essays “Safety Certificate” (1930) and “People and Positions” (1957).

In the winter of 1945/46, the novel “D.J.” was started. The novel was completed in 1956. P. proposed the manuscript to Goslitizdat, the magazines “Znamya” and “New World”. P. considered “J” the most important and final work of his work. He said that he created an epic canvas, a kind of “War and Peace” of his century. But Novy Mir and Znamya rejected the novel as an anti-Soviet libel. The largest publisher in Italy, Filtrinelli, became interested in the novel. By handing over his novel to him, P. realized that there could be serious consequences, but publishing the novel was the goal of his life. In November 1957 the novel was published in Italy. In 2 years it was translated into 24 languages. On August 24, 1958, the first “pirated” (released without the author’s knowledge) edition of “DZh” in Russian was published in Holland. Opinions about the novel varied ( for the most part negative). Some said that this is a unique combination of drama and poetry, “a bestseller in Europe,” others said that “the novel has clumsy transitions, verbose dialogues, the reader constantly loses the thread of the conversation, the book has no end.”

On October 23, 1958, the Swedish Academy of Literature and Linguistics announced the award of P. Nobel Prize in literature "for his significant contribution to modern lyricism and to the field of the great traditions of Russian prose writers." On the same day, P. sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy of Sciences: “Endlessly grateful, touched, surprised, embarrassed.” A. Belyaev: “The basis of the decision to award B.P. The prizes were based not on aesthetic, but on political considerations.”

Before the death of B.P. there was a year and seven months left. Events rushed with stunning speed. Oct 24 A demonstration was held at P.’s dacha with the slogans: “traitor”, “renegade”, “betrayal paid for by the Nobel Prize”. P. was betrayed to a “national curse”, declared “Judas, a misanthrope, a slanderer, an embittered mongrel,” etc.

Oct 27 At a meeting of the presidium of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR, P. was expelled from the Union of Writers.

P. sent a second telegram to the secretary of the Swedish Academy of Sciences: “In connection with the importance that your award attaches to the circumstance to which I belong, I must refuse the undeserved distinction awarded to me. I ask you not to take my voluntary refusal with offense.”

S.S. Smirnov appealed to deprive P. of Soviet citizenship. P. addressed a letter to Khrushchev: “Traveling outside my homeland for me = death, I ask you not to take this extreme measure against me. Hand on heart, I did something for Soviet literature and I can still be useful to her.”

He was required to write an appeal to the people, saying that he was proud of the time in which he lived and believed in the Soviet future.

All these ordeals greatly undermined his health. P. writes the poem “Nobel Prize”:

I slept like an animal in a pen.

Somewhere there are people, will, light,

And behind me there is the sound of a chase,

I have no way out.

What kind of dirty trick did I do?

Am I a murderer and a villain?

I made the whole world cry

Over the beauty of my land.

Three decades later (1987), the secretariat of the Writers' Union canceled the decision to exclude P. from the USSR Writers' Union. A year later, “New World” with the novel “DZ” was published in a million copies.

Title options: “There will be no death”, “Boys and girls”, taken from A. Blok’s poem “Palm Saturday”, “Rynva”, “The Experience of Russian Faust”, “From the unpublished papers of the Zhivago family”, “Norms of Russian nobility”, “Winter Air”, “The Living, the Dead and the Resurrecting”, “The Candle Was Burning”. In 1948, the final title “DZh” appeared with the subtitle “Pictures of Half a Century of Use,” which was later withdrawn.

The novel “J” is a work that cannot be unequivocally assessed. The difference of opinion was caused by a special “proteistic”, i.e. the multiple and ambiguous nature of the novel, where behind the external simplicity and lapidary style there was hidden a very significant content for the author, and in specific plot situations there is a generalized meaning. This feature of the novel is indicated by hints contained in the text itself, where it seems not the author, but “the flowing speech itself, by the power of its laws, creates along the way, in passing, meter and rhyme, and thousands of other forms and formations even more important, but still unrecognized, unaccounted for, unnamed." The multiplicity and “unrecognizability” of all forms simultaneously predetermined the diversity of interpretations. In the genre sense, the novel was read in different ways, depending on the reader’s attitude and his “genre expectations.” It was seen primarily as a “poetic novel” (A.A. Voznesensky), in which the lack of epic objectivity was more than compensated for by an intense lyrical beginning. The work was seen as a spiritual “autobiography, in which there are surprisingly no external facts that coincide with real life author”, and the main character appears as the lyrical hero P., who in his prose remained a lyric poet (D.S. Likhachev), this is “P.’s lyrical confession.”

Dissatisfaction with this somewhat narrowed interpretation gave rise to a different type of argumentation. In "DZ" a novel was discovered that continued the traditions of realistic psychological prose XIX c., where, according to N. Ivanova, main character“closes the row of heroes of Lermontov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.” The novel presented a generalized portrait of the Russian XIX culture- beginning of the 20th century According to I.V. Kondakov, the style and images of this “novel of culture” subtly combined the features of Russian classics, immediately “the entire Russian culture as a whole, organically welded, fused, not divided into separate creative individuals, styles, speech patterns, or philosophical concepts of unity.”

Indeed, a novel that chronologically spans almost half a century: from 1903 to 1929, and with an epilogue - until the early 50s. - densely “populated” with many major and episodic characters. Close-up portraits of the historian and philosopher Vedenyapin, the chemist Gromeko, the industrialist and philanthropist Kologrivov, the unprincipled lawyer Komarovsky and many others are shown. Among the characters, historically reliable personalities are sometimes discerned (N.N. Fedorov, S.I. Mamontov, etc.). At the same time, all the characters are in one way or another grouped around the main character, described and evaluated through his eyes, and “subordinated” to his consciousness. Art world“J” appears as a single monologue of the “author-hero”, uniting and dissolving the “voices” of individual characters. The consciousness of the “author-hero” is self-pressing, which does not at all limit the image. For P., J. is a “tool” of multifaceted vision, a kind of “thinking eye” placed in the world and recording its state.

In living tissue philosophical novel idea-images of Russia, Nature, Love, Creativity, History, Faith, Immortality, Sacrifice coexist and intertwine. They are “dissolved” in the text, but often “condensed” and appear, in B.P.’s own words, in the form of semantic “explosive nests.” Such semantic “clumps” are put into the mouths of Vedenyapin, Yuri, Lara. Taken together, these ideas-images are united into the main and comprehensive concept of Life, which is the leitmotif that subordinates the structure, style, and internal atmosphere of the entire novel.

Main characters

• Yuri Andreevich Zhivago - doctor, the main character of the novel
• Antonina Aleksandrovna Zhivago (Gromeko) - Yuri's wife
• Larisa Fedorovna Antipova (Guichard) - Antipov's wife
• Pavel Pavlovich Antipov (Strelnikov) - Lara's husband, revolutionary commissar
• Alexander Alexandrovich and Anna Ivanovna Gromeko - Antonina's parents
• Evgraf Andreevich Zhivago - Major General, Yuri's half-brother
• Nikolai Nikolaevich Vedenyapin - uncle of Yuri Andreevich
• Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky - Moscow lawyer
• Katenka Antipova - Larisa's daughter
• Misha Gordon and Innokenty Dudorov - Yuri's classmates at the gymnasium
• Osip Gimazetdinovich Galliulin - white general
• Anfim Efimovich Samdevyatov - advocate
• Liveriy Averkievich Mikulitsyn (Comrade Lesnykh) - leader of the Forest Brothers
• Marina - third common-law wife Yuri
• Tiverzin and Pavel Ferapontovich Antipov - Brestskaya workers railway, political prisoners
• Maria Nikolaevna Zhivago (Vedenyapina) - Yuri's mother

Plot

Main character novel, Yuri Zhivago, appears before the reader as a little boy on the first pages of the work, describing the funeral of his mother: “They walked and walked and sang” Eternal memory“ …” Yura is a descendant of a wealthy family that made its fortune in industrial, commercial and banking operations. The parents' marriage was not happy: the father abandoned the family before the death of the mother.

Orphaned Yura will be sheltered for a while by his uncle living in the south of Russia. Then numerous relatives and friends will send him to Moscow, where he will be adopted into the family of Alexander and Anna Gromeko as their own.

Yuri's exceptionalism becomes obvious quite early - even as a young man, he shows himself as a talented poet. But at the same time he decides to follow in the footsteps of his adoptive father Alexander Gromek and enters the medical department of the university, where he also proves himself to be a talented doctor. The first love, and subsequently the wife of Yuri Zhivago, becomes the daughter of his benefactors, Tonya Gromeko.

Yuri and Tony had two children, however, then fate separated them forever, and youngest daughter The doctor never saw the child born after the separation.

At the beginning of the novel, new faces constantly appear before the reader. All of them will be tied into a single ball by the further course of the story. One of them is Larisa, the slave of the elderly lawyer Komarovsky, who tries with all her might and cannot escape the captivity of his “patronage”. Lara has a childhood friend, Pavel Antipov, who will later become her husband, and Lara will see her salvation in him. Having gotten married, he and Antipov cannot find their happiness, Pavel leaves his family and goes to the front of the First World War. Subsequently, he would become a formidable revolutionary commissar, changing his surname to Strelnikov. At the end of the civil war, he plans to reunite with his family, however, this desire will never come true.

Fate will bring Yuri Zhivago and Lara together in different ways in the provincial Yuryatin-on-Rynva (a fictional Ural city, the prototype of which was Perm), where they are in vain seeking refuge from the revolution that is destroying everything and everyone. Yuri and Larisa will meet and fall in love. But soon poverty, hunger and repression will separate both Doctor Zhivago’s family and Larina’s family. For more than two years, Zhivago will disappear in Siberia, serving as a military doctor in captivity of the Red partisans. Having escaped, he will return on foot back to the Urals - to Yuryatin, where he will again meet with Lara. His wife Tonya, together with Yuri's children and father-in-law, while in Moscow, writes about imminent forced deportation abroad. Hoping to wait out the winter and the horrors of the Yuryatinsky Revolutionary Military Council, Yuri and Lara take refuge in the abandoned Varykino estate. Soon an unexpected guest comes to them - Komarovsky, who received an invitation to head the Ministry of Justice in the Far Eastern Republic, proclaimed on the territory of Transbaikalia and the Russian Far East. He persuades Yuri Andreevich to let Lara and her daughter go with him to the east, promising to transport them abroad. Yuri Andreevich agrees, realizing that he will never see them again.

Gradually he becomes an alcoholic and begins to go crazy from loneliness. Soon Lara's husband, Pavel Antipov (Strelnikov), comes to Varykino. Demoted and wandering across the expanses of Siberia, he tells Yuri Andreevich about his participation in the revolution, about Lenin, about the ideals of Soviet power, but, having learned from Yuri Andreevich that Lara has loved and loves him all this time, he understands how bitterly he was mistaken. Strelnikov commits suicide with a shot from a hunting rifle. After Strelnikov's suicide, the doctor returns to Moscow in the hope of fighting for his later life. There he meets his last woman - Marina, the daughter of his ex (back when Tsarist Russia) Zhivagov's janitor Markel. IN civil marriage with Marina they have two girls. Yuri gradually descends, abandons scientific and literary activity and, even realizing his fall, he cannot do anything about it. One morning, on the way to work, he becomes ill on the tram and dies of a heart attack in the center of Moscow. His half-brother Evgraf and Lara, who will soon go missing soon after, come to say goodbye to him at his coffin.

Publication history

The first edition of the novel in Russian was published on November 23, 1957 in Milan by the publishing house Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, which was one of the reasons for the persecution of Pasternak Soviet authorities. According to Ivan Tolstoy, the publication was published with the assistance of the US CIA.

Nobel Prize

On September 23, 1958, Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize with the wording “for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, and also for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel." Due to the persecution that unfolded in the USSR, Pasternak was forced to refuse to receive the prize. Only on December 9 of the year the Nobel diploma and medal were awarded in Stockholm to the writer's son Evgeniy Pasternak.

Because this man overcame what all other writers in the Soviet Union could not overcome. For example, Andrei Sinyavsky sent his manuscripts to the West under the pseudonym Abram Tertz. In the USSR in 1958 there was only one person who, raising his visor, said: “I am Boris Pasternak, I am the author of the novel Doctor Zhivago. And I want it to come out in the form in which it was created." And this man was awarded the Nobel Prize. I believe that this highest award was awarded to the most correct person on Earth at that time.

Bullying

The persecution of Pasternak because of the novel “Doctor Zhivago” became one of the reasons for his serious illness And premature death V . The persecution began immediately after the publication of the novel in the West. The tone was set by Nikita Khrushchev, who from the podium said very rudely about Pasternak: “Even a pig doesn’t shit where it eats.” A TASS statement dated November 2, 1958 indicated that in “his anti-Soviet essay Pasternak slandered social order and the people." The direct coordinator of public and newspaper persecution was the head of the culture department of the Central Committee of the party D.A. Polikarpov. The fact of publishing the book abroad was presented by the authorities as treason and anti-Soviet, while the condemnation of the book by the working people was presented as a manifestation of patriotism. In the resolution of the Writers' Union of October 28, 1958, Pasternak was called a narcissistic esthete and decadent, a slanderer and a traitor. Lev Oshanin accused Pasternak of cosmopolitanism, Boris Polevoy called him a “literary Vlasov,” Vera Inber convinced the joint venture to appeal to the government with a request to deprive Pasternak of Soviet citizenship. Then Pasternak was “exposed” for several months in a row in major newspapers such as Pravda and Izvestia, magazines, radio and television, forcing him to refuse the Nobel Prize awarded to him. His novel, which no one read in the USSR, was condemned at rallies organized by the authorities during the working day in institutes, ministries, factories, factories, and collective farms. The speakers called Pasternak a slanderer, a traitor, a renegade of society; They offered to try and expel them from the country. Collective letters were published in newspapers and read out on the radio. Both people who had nothing to do with literature (these were weavers, collective farmers, workers) and professional writers were brought in as accusers. So, Sergei Mikhalkov wrote a fable about “a certain cereal called parsnip.” Later, the campaign to defame Pasternak received the capacious sarcastic title “I haven’t read it, but I condemn it!” " These words often appeared in the speeches of public accusers, many of whom did not pick up books at all. The persecution, which had subsided for a while, intensified again after the publication on February 11, 1959 in the British newspaper “Daily Mail” of Pasternak’s poem “The Nobel Prize” with a commentary by correspondent Anthony Brown about what kind of ostracism Nobel laureate exposed in his home country.

The publication of the novel and the awarding of the Nobel Prize to the author led, in addition to persecution, to the expulsion of Pasternak from the Union of Writers of the USSR (reinstated posthumously). The Moscow organization of the Union of Writers of the USSR, following the Board of the Union of Writers, demanded the expulsion of Pasternak from Soviet Union and deprivation of his Soviet citizenship. In 1960, Alexander Galich wrote a poem on the death of Pasternak, which contains the following lines:

We will not forget this laughter, And this boredom! We will remember by name everyone who raised their hand!

Among the writers who demanded the expulsion of Pasternak from the USSR were L. I. Oshanin, A. I. Bezymensky, B. A. Slutsky, S. A. Baruzdin, B. N. Polevoy, Konstantin Simonov and many others.

• It is widely believed that the prototype of the city of Yuryatin from Doctor Zhivago is Perm.

  “Fifty years ago, at the end of 1957, the first edition of Doctor Zhivago was published in Milan. In Perm, on this occasion, the Yuryatin Foundation even released a wall calendar “Zhivago’s Time,” and in it there is an annual list of anniversary events.” (see Conversation about life and death. On the 50th anniversary of Doctor Zhivago).

Pasternak spent the winter of 1916 in the Urals, in the village of Vsevolodo-Vilva, Perm province, accepting an invitation to work in the office of the manager of the Vsevolodo-Vilva chemical plants B.I. Zbarsky as an assistant business correspondence and trade and financial reporting. In the same year, the poet visited the Berezniki soda plant on the Kama. In a letter to S.P. Bobrov dated June 24, 1916, Boris calls the Lyubimov, Solvay and Co. soda plant and the European-style village with it “small industrial Belgium.”

• E. G. Kazakevich, having read the manuscript, stated: “It turns out, judging by the novel, the October Revolution was a misunderstanding and it would have been better not to have done it”, K. M. Simonov, Chief Editor Novy Mir also responded by refusing to publish the novel: “You can’t give Pasternak a platform!”

• The French edition of the novel (Gallimard,) was illustrated by the Russian artist and animator Alexander Alekseev (-) using the “needle screen” technique he developed.

Film adaptations

In the last months of the war, Boris Pasternak was often invited to Moscow University, the Polytechnic Museum and the House of Scientists, where he publicly read his poems. Therefore, he hoped that victory would have a significant impact on the political climate. But bitter disappointment awaited him: the attacks from the leaders of the Writers' Union continued. They could not forgive him for his ever-increasing popularity among foreign readers.

Starting work on a novel

The concept of the novel "Doctor Zhivago", the history of which began at the very beginning creative path Pasternak, took a long time to form in the poet’s mind. But in the fall of 1945, having collected all the images, thoughts, intonations, he realized that he was ready to start working on the work. Moreover, the plot formed so clearly into a single line that the poet expected that it would take him only a few months to write the novel.

We can say that February 1946 marks the beginning of Pasternak’s work on the novel. After all, it was then that the poem “Hamlet” was written, opening last chapter"Doctor Zhivago".

And in August the first chapter was already ready. He read it to close friends. But on August 14, the “same” Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” was issued. Despite the fact that it had no direct relation to Pasternak (it affected the fates of A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko), this event gave rise to a new round of struggle against “ideologically alien” authors. His situation worsened even more when rumors spread about Pasternak's possible nomination for the Nobel Prize.

Working on the first chapters

However, the author did not stop working. Pasternak was so captivated by the novel Doctor Zhivago that by the end of December two more chapters were completed. And the first two were copied into a clean copy, the sheets of which were sewn into a notebook.

It is known that the original name was different: “Boys and Girls.” This is how the author named his work in the first stages of creation. This was not only a description of the historical image of Russia in the first half of the 20th century, but also an expression of Pasternak’s subjective views on the place of man in the formation of the world, on art and politics, etc.

In the same 1946, the poet met a woman who became his last love. It was at the beginning of our acquaintance that she acted as a secretary. There were plenty of barriers between them. These are both past tragedies and current life circumstances. Ivinskaya’s first husband committed suicide, and the second was also dead. And Pasternak at that time was married for the second time, he had children.

Their love was against all odds. Many times they parted forever, but they could not live apart. Pasternak himself admitted that it was Olga’s features that he put into the image main character novel by Lara Guichard.

Break

A difficult financial situation forced Pasternak to interrupt work on the novel Doctor Zhivago. The history of creation continued the following year, 1948. And throughout 1947, the poet was engaged in translations, because he had to provide not only for himself, but also for all those whose care he voluntarily shouldered. This and own family, and Nina Tabidze (the wife of a repressed Georgian poet), Ariadna and Anastasia Tsvetaeva (the daughter and sister of the poetess), and the widow of Andrei Bely, and, finally, the children of Olga Ivinskaya.

In the summer of 1948, the fourth chapter of the novel was completed. At the same time, the author gave the work its final title: “Doctor Zhivago.” The content has already been structured, the parts are also titled.

He would not complete the seventh chapter until the spring of 1952. In the fall it was printed in blank. Thus, work on the first book of the novel “Doctor Zhivago” was completed. The author suffered a myocardial infarction a few days later, was hospitalized and remained in the hospital for more than two months. There, being in extreme in serious condition, he suddenly felt close to the Creator. This feeling also influenced the mood of his works.

After the death of Stalin and the execution of Beria, there was a noticeable revival literary life. And Boris Pasternak perked up, especially since Olga Ivinskaya returned from the camps. In 1954, ten poems from an unfinished novel were published.

The end of Doctor Zhivago

In the fall of 1954, Pasternak and Ivinskaya resumed their close relationship. Olga spent the summer of 1955 not far from Peredelkino. There the poet rented a house for her. He couldn't completely abandon his family. Tormented by an unbearable feeling of guilt before his wife, he led double life. From that time on, Olga was almost entirely involved in Pasternak’s financial, editorial and publishing affairs. Now Boris Leonidovich has more time for creativity. In July he was already working on the epilogue. Finishing touches were introduced at the end of 1955.

The further fate of the novel

Hoping for the liberalization of his views, Pasternak offers the manuscript of the novel to two publishing houses simultaneously. Also, for the purpose of familiarization, Boris Leonidovich gave the manuscript to a radio correspondent, Italian Sergio d'Angelo, who was also the literary agent of the publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Most likely the poet this fact was famous. Soon he received the expected news from an Italian publisher who offered to publish the novel. Pasternak accepted the offer, but was sure that home country His work (“Doctor Zhivago”) will be published faster. The history of the creation of the novel is interesting because it is full unexpected turns. None of the magazines gave an answer, and only in September Pasternak received an official refusal from the Novy Mir publishing house.

The poet did not give up and still believed in the success of the novel in his homeland. And indeed, Goslitizdat accepted the novel “Doctor Zhivago” for publication. But the event itself was delayed due to numerous amendments and deletions by editors. Unexpectedly, several poems and two chapters from Doctor Zhivago were published by the Polish magazine Opinie. This was the beginning of a scandal. Pasternak was put under pressure, forcing him to withdraw the manuscript from Feltrinelli. Boris Leonidovich sent a telegram to the Italian publisher, demanding the return of the text of the novel. However, behind the back of the Writers' Union, Pasternak simultaneously gives permission to Feltrinelli to publish the novel Doctor Zhivago. The author gave permission to preserve the original text.

Even the conversation between Pasternak’s main persecutor and the Italian did not change the decision to publish the novel. Also in other countries, the first copies of the work were already being prepared for release.

The West's reaction to the novel "Doctor Zhivago". The history of creation ended in tragedy

The reaction of Western critics was so resonant that they again wanted to nominate Pasternak for the Nobel Prize. The author was very encouraged by the attention of foreign readers and gladly answered letters coming from all over the world. On October 23, 1958, he received a telegram with the news that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize and an invitation to its presentation.

It is clear that the Writers' Union was against the trip, and Pasternak received direct instructions to refuse the prize. Pasternak did not accept this ultimatum, and, as a result, was expelled from the membership of the USSR Writers' Union.

Last lines

Boris Leonidovich was so mentally exhausted and brought to the point that he nevertheless changed his mind and refused the prize. But this did not reduce the barrage of angry statements against him. The poet understood that this scandal could result in even more serious consequences for him. He was very worried. He expressed his feelings in one of his last poems. This poem was the answer to all the attacks and angry discussions. But at the same time, the last lines again spoke about the personal: about the break with Olga, for whom he missed so much.

Soon Pasternak had a heart attack. And three weeks later, on May 30, 1960, Boris Leonidovich died.

The life and fate of Pasternak is one of the most amazing in the history of our literature, with its tragedy and heroism.

B. Pasternak, “Doctor Zhivago”: summary

The novel describes the events of 1903-1929. The main character works as a doctor. This is a man with a very creative views And interesting character. Life's difficulties affected him as a child, when his father first left the family and subsequently committed suicide, and at the age of 11 he lost his mother. He, in fact, is Doctor Zhivago. Yuri Zhivago did not live very long, but very rich life. There were several women in his life, but only one love. Her name was Lara Guichard. Fate gave them very little time to be together. Difficult times, obligations to other people, life circumstances - everything was against their love. Yuri dies in 1929 from a heart attack. But later his stepbrother finds his notes and poems, which make up final part novel.

On storylines The novel was largely influenced by the difficulty with which Boris Pasternak wrote his work. "Doctor Zhivago", summary which does not give the full feeling of this great work, was very warmly received in the West and so cruelly rejected in the Soviet Union. Therefore, every Russian needs to read this magnificent novel and feel the spirit of a real Russian person.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak admitted: “In the field of words, I love prose most of all, but I wrote poetry most of all. A poem in relation to prose is the same as a sketch in relation to a painting. Poetry seems to me to be a great literary sketchbook.” Not only poetry, but all creative biography the poet's work is like preparation for something more beautiful and perfect than the novel "Doctor Zhivago" became for the writer. First prose works Pasternak dates back to the winter of 1909-1910.

just like the first poetic experiments. In 1918, “Childhood Eyelets” appeared in print, which was immediately noticed by critics. However, despite the enthusiastic reception, the novel, in which “The Childhood of Eyelets” was allocated a fifth of the entire content, was never completed. Perhaps this was due both to the pressure of life circumstances (for a long time Pasternak was forced to do translations) and to the lack of life experience, necessary for the development of a wide novel canvas.

However, unlike the earlier prose, this was already the first significant step towards the style of Doctor Zhivago. Pasternak writes: “I decided that I would write as letters are written, not in a modern way, revealing to the reader everything that I think and am thinking of telling him, refraining from technical effects fabricated outside his field of vision and presented to him in a ready-made form, hypnotically and etc.

I thus decided to dematerialize the prose." Also in 1918, prose passage, entitled "Lovelessness", which is interesting due to the similarity of its concept with "Doctor Zhivago". In the images of two characters - Goltsev and Kovalevsky - one of the main antitheses of the future novel was outlined here: loyalty to life and obsession with abstraction. The writer’s characteristic attention to individual fate, to an individual personality, as well as the desire to convey historical events from a “subjective” position found their expression in the first prosaic experiments. This is exactly how the draft of the novel was written, mentioned by B.

L. Pasternak in his autobiographical essay “People and Positions”. In 1932

he goes to Sverdlovsk in order to find materials about the socialist reconstruction of the Urals. The devastation and unprecedented social contrasts seen there deeply shock Pasternak. He tried to convey the impression he made in separate prose sketches of the novel, work on which stopped due to serious changes in socio-political life, which caused a severe mental crisis for the writer, who was sensitive to the misfortunes that befell the people. In letters to friends, he often complains about the “gray, enervating emptiness.” Since the fall of 1936, the tone of the press in relation to the situation has changed dramatically.

And he himself again takes up prose. Work begins on a novel about Patrick (a variation of the title found on a survivor of a fire in the winter of 1941-1942).

handwritten piece of paper, "The beginning of the novel about Patrick"). The covers of the fragment of the novel proposed for publication with two crossed out titles have been preserved - “When the Boys Grew Up” and “Notes of Zhivoult”. They were a significant link between all the early attempts to create " great novel"and the concept of "Doctor Zhivago". A number of motives, positions, names and characters indicate this to us clearly. For example, the semantic identity of the surnames of the main characters: Zhivago - Zhivult. The play "In the Other World" - another work of the writer - was imbued with immortality , begun already during the war in Chistopol: “The tragic, difficult period of the war was a living period and in this regard a free, joyful return of a sense of community with everyone.”

In 1942, Pasternak burned this manuscript, leaving only two fragments. From the second, most important, fragment we learn the names of the main characters- officers Dudorov and Gordon. In another, unfinished, novel - “Spektorsky” - B. Pasternak comes to the idea of ​​trying to combine prose and poetry in one work.

The zenith of Pasternak's literary fame was in the second half of the 20s and the first half of the 30s. This began to be felt especially clearly after the death of the “first” poet V. Mayakovsky.

According to the official authorities, Boris Pasternak, the author of the epic "1905", was to take his place. However, the “pomp and parade” that the writer had hated since childhood now seem to him even more inappropriate and unnecessary, interfering with his work. Pasternak understands perfectly well that national recognition will require him to abandon true creativity and write “to order.” In his works one of the the most important topics future novel - the problem of the artist’s dignity in the face of his time, embodied in autobiographical prose"Safety certificate." For the first time, the motive of disappointment in “success” will be heard in it. October revolution, which was perceived by the writer as “overdue inevitability,” a straightening impulse of life. Its consequences only give rise to a feeling of historical “damage”, which will ultimately lead Pasternak to an irrevocable break in 1936 with the official literary environment.

"Safety certificate" was banned in 1933. Military “unity” breathed a fresh stream of air into the stale atmosphere of the country and, at the same time, brought new disappointments: “when, after the generosity of fate, which was reflected in the fact of victory, albeit at such a price for a purchased victory, when, after such generosity, the historical elements turned to cruelty and philosophizing of the most stupid and dark pre-war years, I experienced for the second time (after ’36) a feeling of shocked repulsion from the established order, even stronger and more categorical than the first time... This is very important in relation to the formation of my views and their true nature." It was then that Pasternak began the novel Doctor Zhivago. He begins a truthful conversation that reveals his personal attitude to reality: “... when a writer goes against the general views, he has to interpret himself, his worldview.

If a writer cannot be understood against the backdrop of generally accepted ideas, it is not enough to depict everyday life..." The extreme intensity of his work is evidenced by Pasternak's correspondence. By February 1946, the author became clear about the idea of ​​the first book of the novel. He even expressed hopes for its speedy writing.

In February 1946, the first public reading of Shakespeare's Hamlet in Pasternak's translation took place at Moscow State University. The first edition of the poem “Hamlet”, which opens the book of poems by Yuri Zhivago, dates back to February of the same year.

In June 1946, Pasternak reads the first chapter of the novel “Boys and Girls” (one of the draft titles of “Doctor Zhivago”).

The second chapter is ready in August - “A Girl from Another Circle”. In the midst of working on a novel, fate seems to begin to test the author. On September 9, an article appears in the Pravda newspaper, which cites the indicting resolution of the USSR Writers' Union, where Pasternak is branded "an author without ideas, far from Soviet reality." In light of these unpleasant events, the public reading of B.

Pasternak in the first chapters of the novel, which happened on the same September day, is perceived by many as a daring, senseless challenge to the authorities. But for now, the writer is still far from an irrevocable break with official literature, since he needs to feed his family. Work on the novel is slowed down due to the reworking of the second chapter. Pasternak strives to create a spin-off version of Doctor Zhivago, where the revolutionary spirit of the era comes first.

The end of winter - spring of 1947 was marked by work on the third chapter ("Christmas tree at the Sventitskys"). During this period, persecution resumes, having subsided in the winter.

Perhaps the reason for this was the news about Pasternak’s nomination for the Nobel Prize. As a consequence of this, an “instructional” article by the poet A. Surkov “On the Poetry of Pasternak” appears, and “The Neglected Garden” by A. Sashin is published in the “Literary Gazette” - a poetic parody of Pasternak’s poetry. Only a year later, in the spring of 1948, after lengthy studies of translations, Pasternak managed to finish the fourth chapter (“Years in Between,” the title of the first edition) about the First World War. On June 26, the XI plenum of the Union of Writers of the USSR opens, at which general secretary Writers' Union A.

A. Fadeev, who in his speech condemns Pasternak for escaping reality. At the same time, the speaker argues his thoughts based on laudatory articles about B. Pasternak in the West. January 23, 1948

The editorial board of Novy Mir files a claim in court to recover an advance from Pasternak for the novel Innokenty Dudorov (edited chapter two) that was not delivered on time. In April, another, no less sensitive, blow follows - the circulation of “The Chosen One,” prepared by Pasternak back in 1947, is destroyed. However, even under these conditions, Pasternak continues to create: he wrote a dozen poems from “Yurina’s Notebook.”

During April - May, he reworks the chapter “The Christmas tree at the Sventitskys” and finally rewrites the chapter “Overdue Inevitabilities” (formerly “Years in Between”). At the same time, the final title “Doctor Zhivago” was approved with the subtitle “Pictures of Half a Century of Use”, discarded by the author in 1955. B. Pasternak’s position becomes more and more uncertain.

Blow follows blow. In 1949, rumors about his arrest spread in Moscow and Leningrad. Another reason for the danger is the increased interest in the Russian poet in the West. Pasternak is again nominated for the Nobel Prize. Olga Ivinskaya is arrested - close friend writer.

Of course, such a confluence of circumstances and experiences could not but leave an imprint on the work on the novel “Doctor Zhivago”, in which the poetic and prose chapters of the second book were hastily completed. Seven poems, which were added to Yuri Zhivago’s notebook in November - December 1949, are imbued with melancholy and tenderness, a feeling of the inevitability of the end (“Autumn”, “Tenderness”, “Magdalene II”, “Date”, etc.).

d.). Behind long years While working on the novel, despite the firmness and immutability of his author's credo, Pasternak constantly notes one or another phenomenon of literary or social reality that had a special influence on him at this point in his work. Alexander Blok stands in this row (the novel begins with his discussion of poetry literary work Yuri Zhivago), Soviet reality (hunger and devastation during the Civil War, unity and freedom during the Patriotic War, persecution, arrests, slander post-war years etc.

etc.), music and painting (Scriabin, L. Pasternak), Dostoevsky (Petersburg is present in every line of his works) and towards the end of the work - L. Tolstoy and his novel “Resurrection”, which B.

Pasternak rereads in February 1950. In a letter to N.S. Rodionov dated March 27, 1950, he states: “I think that I am not alone in this regard, that people from the camp considered non-Tolstoy are in this situation, that is I want to say that, contrary to all appearances, the historical atmosphere of the first half of the 20th century throughout the world is a Tolstoyan atmosphere." In August - October 1950, Pasternak completed chapters 5 and 6 of the second book.

And again, forced translation work suspended the writing of the novel. According to friends, in December 1951

Pasternak is in obvious decline of spirit. Renewal and transformation come to the writer only with the onset of spring. In May 1952, he completed chapter 7 of the novel, which now (at periodic readings of chapters to friends) is increasingly criticized rather than admired. “Of the people who read the novel, the majority are still dissatisfied, call it a failure, say that they expected more from me, that it is pale, that it is beneath me, and when I recognize all this, I break into a smile, as if this swearing and condemnation is praise" (letter to S. Chikovani in June 1952). On the 10th of October, the 10th chapter of the novel was reprinted, and on October 20, Boris Pasternak was admitted to the Botkin hospital with a massive heart attack, where he remained until January 6, 1953.

It was here that the seriously ill writer felt with particular joy his unity with eternal life, his natural gift as an artist from God. More than ever before, Pasternak wanted to talk about God, to “glorify” the Creator of all things. In the summer, while in the Bolshevo sanatorium, Pasternak writes eleven more poems in “Yurina’s Notebook,” two of which he will delete later. The final order of the “notebook” cycle will be established only in the fall of 1955. In the fall of 1953, O. Ivinskaya is released from prison.

A year later, in the midst of work on the novel, rumors spread again about Pasternak being awarded the Nobel Prize. “I was more afraid that this gossip would become true than I wanted it... I am proud of one thing: not for a minute did this change the course of the hours of my simple, nameless, unknown working life,” he writes these days about .

M. Freidenberg.

Finally, on October 10, 1955, the novel reaches its final point, whose difficult story has not yet ended. The manuscript of the novel is transferred by the author to the magazine "New World", which was clearly in no hurry to publish. In May 1956, the Italian communist journalist Sergio D'Angelo came to his dacha in Peredelkino, to whom Pasternak handed over one of the uncorrected versions of the manuscript.

The writer agrees to the publication of this version of the novel on Italian, warning only that its release does not get ahead of the Russian version. However, the Soviet magazine was in no hurry to publish, while the Italian publisher G. Feltrinelli published the novel. Then the foreign procession of Doctor Zhivago begins (Italy, England, Sweden, France and Germany). In January 1959, the “second” was published Russian edition novel from a copy given by Feltrinelli.

A revised version of the novel in Russian was published in 1978 after Pasternak's death, while Russian readers lost it for more than thirty years.

In 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for the novel Doctor Zhivago. He voluntarily renounces it because this solemn personal moment is given a purely political character.

The novel “Doctor Zhivago” is the result of many years of work by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, the fulfillment of a life’s dream. Since 1918, he repeatedly began to create a large-scale work about the destinies of his generation, but for various reasons he was forced to leave the work unfinished. During this time, everything in the world, and especially in Russia, changed too quickly. Tragic events in the history of our country: Civil War, collectivization, the impending Stalinist terror - largely influenced the concept of the work and the fate of its heroes.

Judging by the surviving cover, Pasternak originally wanted to call the novel “Notes of Zhivult.” But it was never finished, and the Great War, which began six years later, Patriotic War forced the author to completely reconsider the concept of his work. In the light of the sense of universality born in the war, he was seen differently: it was necessary to talk about the atmosphere of the entire European history during which his generation was formed.

Pasternak wrote that he would like to create historical image Russia over the past forty-five years. This will become an expression of his views on art, on Christianity, on human life in history and much more. Since he was engaged in translations, he did not immediately turn to the implementation of the plan. The novel was first called “Boys and Girls,” then “The Candle Was Burning,” and by the fall of 1946 the title “Doctor Zhivago” remained.

Then Pasternak began reading chapters of the novel to his friends. In the summer of 1948, four parts of the novel appeared in print and formed the first book. This first version reached the writer’s friends, and based on their feedback, the author began to continue working.

In the magazine “Znamya” for April 1954, the first poems of Yuri Zhivago appeared with an explanatory note stating that they remained after the death of the doctor Yuri Andreevich Zhivago, who died in 1929. It is very symbolic that the death of the main character occurred precisely in this year, which became a time of disruption in life in the Soviet Union.

At the beginning of 1956, Pasternak gave the completed manuscript of the novel to the editorial office of the magazines “Znamya” and “New World”, as well as to the publishing house “ Fiction" However, the work was published on November 15, 1957 in Italy, and by the end of 1958 it was published in all European languages. Same year Nobel Committee on the seventh attempt, awarded him the prize “For outstanding achievements in modern lyric poetry and continuation of the traditions of great prose.”

At home, Pasternak was subjected to real persecution: he was expelled from the Union Soviet writers, a whole stream of accusations and insults appeared in the press, and he was forced to refuse the Nobel Prize. The novel was recognized as anti-Soviet, so it burst out terrible scandal: in the press it was called the “Pasternak case”. This completely undermined the writer’s health, but he was unable to leave Russia.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak died on May 30, 1960, and his novel “Doctor Zhivago” was read in his homeland only in 1988, 33 years after it was written.

• "Doctor Zhivago", analysis of Pasternak's novel
• "Doctor Zhivago", a summary of Pasternak's novel
• The image of Yuri Zhivago in Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”
• “Winter Night” (Shallow, shallow all over the earth...), analysis of Pasternak’s poem
• “July”, analysis of Pasternak’s poem