Živago's ‘Intoxication’: Pasternak's Hymn on Cvetaeva's Birth

Abstract

The article explores the links to Tsvetaeva in two of Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago poems – ‘Chmel’ (‘Intoxication’/‘Hops’) and ‘Veter’ (‘The Wind’). Earlier analyses have revealed themes and scenes in the novel that may be read as conscious attempts to commemorate Tsvetaeva and the special relation Pasternak had to her. However, little attention has been paid in the context of the Tsvetaeva connection to Zhivago's poems. Joseph Brodsky noted echoes of Tsvetaeva in ‘Magdalina’ (‘Mary Magdalene’), but the multivalent status of Zhivago's poems seems to have made researchers hesitant to follow this lead. However, the poems in the novel deserve to be read as having been written precisely from this position: from within a fiction – but a fiction created for very specific artistic reasons. By presenting the poems in this way, Pasternak managed to contextualize his poetic expression in a way that was congenial to his personal relationship with Tsvetaeva and the artistic worldview which he shared with her, and which both regarded as a common heritage received from Rilke.