Doctor Zhivago
Quotes & Notes
by Stephen Balbach, July 27 2007
See main review at Cool
Reading.
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Boris Pasternak on art. Most of these can be read as Pasternak talking
about his own philosophy of art, and the writing of the novel itself, a
sort of post-modern meta-narrative.
"..art has two constant, two unending concerns: it always
mediates on death and thus always creates life." (p.90)
"..this was what art aimed at - homecoming, return to one's
family, to one-self, to true existence." (p.164)
"I have always thought that art is not a category, not a
realm covering innumerable concepts and derivitive phenomenon, but that,
on the contrary, it is something concentrated, strictly limited. It is a
principal that is limited present in every work of art, a force applied
to it and a truth worked out in it. And I never seen art as form but
rather as a hidden, secret part of content. .. It is the presence of art
in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the
story of Raskolnikov's crime." (p.281-2)
"I don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little
philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to
make it ones specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but
horseradish."(p.407)
It had been a dream of his life to write with an originality
so discreet, so well concealed, as to be unnoticable in its disguise of
current and customary forms; all his life he had struggled for a style
so restrained, so unpretentious that the reader or the hearer would
fully understand the meaning without realizing how he assimilated it. He
had striven constantly for an unostentatious style, and he dismayed to
find how far he still remained from his idea." (p.440)
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"..If the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by
threats - any kind of threat, whether by jail or retribution after death
- then the highest emblam of humanity would be the lion tamer in the
circus with the whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But don't
you see this is just the point - what has centuries raised man above the
beast is the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of
unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example. It has always
been assumed that the most important things in the Gospels are the
ethical maxims and commandments. But for me the most important thing is
that Christ speaks in parables taken from life, that He explains the
truth in terms of everyday reality." (p.42)
Here we see the philosophical struggle over how to govern man. It is an
interesting passage in light of the "cudgel" commists states used to
keep people in line. It is not the specific laws of the Bible that are
important but the wisdom behind the laws, why they were enacted to begin
with, the truth of the matter.
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His friends had become strangely dim and colorless. Not one
of them had preserved his own outlook, his own world. They had been much
more vivid in his memory .. Under the old order, which enabled those
whose lives were secure to play the fools and eccentrics at the exspense
of the other while the majority led a wretched existence, it had been
only too easy to mistake the foolishness and idleness of a priviledged
minority for genuine character and originality. But the moment the lower
classes had risen, and the privileges of those on top had been
abolished, how quickly had those people faded, how unregretfully had
they renounced independed ideas - apparently no one had ever had such
ideas! (p.174)
Powerfully true in countries like Mao'st China and Soviet Russia which
saw a leveling of society, intellectual integrity became rare as the new
idealism took over. The first part of this quote would be interesting to
compare with The Great Gatsby.
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Revolutionaries who take the law into their own hands are
horrifying not because they are criminals, but because they are like
machines that have got out of control, like runaway trains. (p.296)
This sentiment reminds me of Wikipedia. Everyone takes the law into
their own hands. Perhaps Wikipedia with its emphasis on egalitarianism
is a form of communism, idealist and revolutionary but ultimately a
doomed grand experiment .
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"..such austere surroundings would be conductive to patient,
fruitful work."(p.431)
Commenting on the grand house in the country with a large desk next to
the bay window overlooking the snowbound countryside. Seems ideal.