Abstract
This article offers a new interpretation of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago in the cultural and historical context of the first half of the 20th century, with an emphasis on the interrelationship between religion and philosophy of history in the text. Doctor Zhivago is analysed as a condensed representation of a religious conception of Russian history between 1901 and 1953 and as a cyclical repetition of the Easter narrative. This bipartite narrative consists of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ as symbols of violence and renewal (liberation). The novel cycles through this narrative several times, symbolically connecting the ‘Easter’ revolution (March 1917) and the Thaw (the spring of 1953). The sources of Pasternak’s Easter narrative include the Gospels, Leo Tolstoy’s philosophy of history and pre-Christian mythology. The model of cyclical time in the novel brings together the sacred, natural and historical cycles. This concept of a cyclical renewal of life differs from the linear temporality of the Apocalypse as an expectation of the end of history.
Highlights
In his contribution to the third volume of Christianity and the Eastern Slavs that saw light with UCLA Press in 1995, Lazar Fleishman says: “The question of Boris Pasternak’s Christian faith—and first of all in his novel Doctor Zhivago—is one of the most painful, complicated and contentious ones in literary scholarship” (Fleishman 1995, p. 288)
In Olga Freidenberg’s publications, we find an analysis of the connection between Christianity and myth that was creatively realised in the Easter narrative of Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zhivago retells the history of Russia as a religious parable modelled on the Gospel story of the life of Christ
Summary
In his contribution to the third volume of Christianity and the Eastern Slavs that saw light with UCLA Press in 1995, Lazar Fleishman says: “The question of Boris Pasternak’s Christian faith—and first of all in his novel Doctor Zhivago—is one of the most painful, complicated and contentious ones in literary scholarship” (Fleishman 1995, p. 288). I suggest a reading of Doctor Zhivago from a new perspective, with emphasis on the interrelationship between religion and philosophy of history throughout the novel. My interpretation places Pasternak’s novel in the broader context of historical and religious consciousness in Russian 20th century culture. On 13 October 1946, Boris Pasternak mentioned in a letter to his cousin Olga Freidenberg that he had started work on a novel He named his two key aims: “to paint a historical image of Russia over the last forty-five years, and at the same time [...] this work will be an expression of my views on art, on the Gospels, on one’s life in history and on much more” Pasternak’s concept of time leads to the understanding of a repeated renewal of life as a cyclical process
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