Doctor Zhivago Kindle Edition

Remembering reading this book as an important literary event during my high school years, I finally made it back to Dr. Zhivago to see if it was as great as it seemed back then. And it was. There's that grand sweep of a classic Russian novel, the vast cast of characters who keep miraculously reappearing, the romantic dilemma of a good man trapped by a tragic fate, plus all the details of the confusion during and after the Russian revolution.As a teenager, I was enchanted by the love story, and couldn't really follow (or understand) the politics. Now, so many decades later, I appreciated the emotional and moral tensions. I still didn't understand all the ins and out of politics. I found myself a bit impatient with the lengthy philosophical discussions, and the numerous extraneous characters. However, the majesty of Pasternak's language entranced me all the way through. Here's one passage from where Zhivago is being swept away writing poetry:"His work took possession of him and he experienced the approach of what is called inspiration. At such moments the correlation of the forces controlling the artist is, as it were, stood on its head. The ascendancy is no longer with the artist or the state of mind which he is trying to express, but with language. his instrument of expression. Language, the home and dwelling of beauty and meaning, itself begins to think and speak for man and turns wholly into music, not in the sense of outward, audible sounds but by virtue of the power and momentum of its inward flow.""An old Russian folk song is like water in a weir. It looks as if it were still and were no longer flowing but in its depths it is ceaselessly rushing through the sluice-gates and its stillness is an illusion."This next one is lovely -- Zhivago describing Lara. But I doubt that it would be get past an editor today (might be seen as sappy):"How well he loved her, and how lovable she was, in exactly the way he had always thought and dreamed and needed. Yet what was it that made her so lovely?.. She was lovely by virtue of the matchlessly simple and swift line which the Creator at a single stroke had drawn round her, and in this divine outline she had been handed over, like a child tightly wound up in a sweet after its bath, into the keeping of his soul."This is a long book. By the end, I felt like I'd spent about thirty years in Russia.

When Boris Pasternak wrote "Doctor Zhivago" at a writer's community in Russia, where he could be among literary people, he kept it under cover, knowing that the Soviet Union would never let it be published in Russia.After a friend smuggled the manuscript out, it was first published in Italy and became a world-wide sensation by 1956.Eleven years later, I was a young lad in my first year of high school, tired of comic books and ready to spread my wings into the world of literature. Daunted by the sheer size of "War and Peace", I saw the movie "Doctor Zhivago" and decided to check out the original book.What a feast!Yuri Zhivago is the son of a wealthy businessman who died of alcohol. His mother dies when Yuri is only a boy. Raised by his aunt and uncle, Yuri becomes a doctor and poet, marries his cousin, Tonia Gromeko and settles in Moscow to practice medicine and write poetry. But, his world is turned upside down by World War I and the Russian Revolution. While in the army, Yuri meets and later falls in love with Lara Antipov, whose husband is a White Revolutionary and is presumed killed in action.Yuri is captured by counter-revolutionaries and escapes, walking for miles, half-frozen and seeking Lara. Lara has been abused as a young woman by Victor Komarovsky, a corrupt lawyer who is "in touch" with Yuri's half-brother, a Red officer who had helped Yuri's family flee Moscow during the Stalinist purges.And so it goes on, with enough sub-plots and back-stories to make a very sprawling read. "Zhivago" enjoyed a revival during the Sizties, after David Lean's film was released, and I do remember finding a strange "analysis" book at my local library, written by two Russians living here, who insisted that Pasternak's characters were "symbols" - Lara represented Russia in its purity before the Revolution, Yuri as the middle class, Komarovsky as the corrupt citizens who wanted to keep the status quo, and so on. And so Pasternak set these "symbols" and metaphors into a very realistically written novel.Another aspect of this novel is where Pasternak has his characters "linked" to others by certain events, relationships, and so on. Which goes to show how much art mirrors life. Even with nothing to connect people but - other people.Forget David Lean's film: the "soap opera" element that Robert Bolt wrote into it just doesn't do justice to this rich and magnificent story, comparable in sweep to "Gone With The Wind" and "War and Peace".

Intact and well read. Does not tell you it is a rendition of Readers Digest book of the month club

My 4th or 5th tour of Pasternak as witness to the depths of love and our intense need for it, coupled to the economic, blinding, lemming-like false view of the Marx-Human $$ interface. A perception by hysterical dreamers thinking they face a modern Czar Nicolas, a HUGE and ignorant stretch, reveals our division and self- delusion today. They are led by those who defy economics and don't know history, so are determined to repeat it. The impact on our humanity and our LOVE - Yuri, Taniya, Lara, Pasha, Maria - crafted by MASTER of his craft, even in translation, is best not ignored. That launch of an 85-year failed Soviet nightmare is amazing in fact and masterful as fiction. Pasternak seems to have had his Lara, an Olga. Solzhenitzen, I think, detailed the Gulag Archipeligo - there is no dearth of history for actual students, not those in our K-16 crushed system today. We again stand upon the divided precipice. As a student of all of this, I strongly recommend Doctor Zhivago as a dense and deep and tearful text of a known reality. My Russian teachers for 2,880 hours or so in my studies were White Russian emigres who fled the Reds. They were a stunning reality of 'the Right.' This book and story to me is a text. All in my imagination. No. I am 78, a retired Prof and solid Capitalist. My past association with the USAF and NSA was fundamental. Enough. My best book ever award.

Taking place between the Russian Revolution and World War Two, Pasternak's celebrated piece of fiction raises awkward questions about the enigma of history and 'the political mysticism of the Soviet intelligentsia'. Vladimir Nabokov's dismissal of the book as 'a sorry thing, clumsy, melodramatic' focuses its real animus on the 'trite coincidences' that weave their way into the most unlikely encounters and reunions. Pasternak defends these coincidences and says that they are 'traits to characterise the somewhat wilful, free, fanciful flow of reality.' And that's the point that Nabokov misses. Yet the monster juggernaut of historical change up to the time of Stalin's Purge threatens to swamp the movements of characters as they get swallowed up in the 'childish harlequinade of immature fantasies'. Pasternak's hatred of the deadly machinery of State control, which he refers to as 'the inhuman reign of the lie', sets Zhivago off in his life-philosophy towards nature and the principle of self-renewing, enjoying language for the 'impetuousness and power of its inward flow'.Like the candle on the table, an important motif in the novel, Zhivago sees his own future as something amorphous and confused and this becomes essential to his mindset; the long train journey out to the east lies right at the heart of the novel and becomes a powerful metaphor for the disrupted, irresolute nature of his thoughts. Across the nation, meanwhile, 'the vastness of the war, the vastness of the revolution' dominates this massive novel as the 'wild enchantment' of nature conflicts with the 'artificial doggerel' of the new socialist dream.This was a long and occasionally uncomfortable read, with characters making implausible quantum leaps into new composite identities (Pasha/Strelnikov, for example) across huge Russian distances. Names need careful charting and destinies followed in order to grasp the full sense of Pasternak's central concept that 'all human lives are interrelated' and all are subject to 'spontaneous intoxication with the general stream of life'. Romanticism hits the ruggedness and brutality of historical forces here and, though the interplay of the two frequently works well, there is an unnerving, undifferentiated fluidity to the writing that makes you want to escape into the wild blue yonder and simply shut its tedium out for good.

Don't get me wrong, this is a fantastic story and I have seen both versions of the film (the first was better and truer to the book). It is easily worth five stars and, dare I say it, Pasternak is up with Tolstoy as one of the country's great writers.There are a number of typos, but not too many, which come from translating Russian characters or even just accents, so é as in touché is represented as something like Â~@, into Western ones. OK, that is normal in scanned books for the Kindle but for that reason it loses a star and annoys me so much as even a free word processor program could have solved this with search and replace.The story is based around five main characters Yuri, Lara, Tanya, Pasha and Komarovsky (the villain of the piece) and describes the chaotic descent into the Russian rebellion and the advent of communism told in an uniquely intimate way. It is a love story, a story of bravery, suffering and winning through. It takes you from the ballrooms of St Petersburg to the lowest of living. It is enthralling, emotional and reads very easily. The Russian habit of calling people by a variety of nicknames needs to be understood so Yura, Yurii, Yurichenka etc. are all the same person.

I bought this book because I thought that the film was one of the best films ever. Maybe the intellectuals think the same about the book, and maybe they are right. I have read Natasha's Dance and also War and Peace, but I found this book very hard work. Possibly the sheer number of names of people, not initially connected, does not help. Possibly the number of strands which are, initially, not connected, defeated me (but yes, I did finish the book). A friend recommended reading it again now that I have a better understanding of how it integrates, but I cannot face it !

I must confess I was a little disappointed when I finished reading the book. I guess that from reading all the reviews and all the general comments I had heard about it, I was expecting something greater than what I got. Do not get me wrong, the book is wonderful and, although very long, it is relatively easy to read. The scenario is wonderful and the traveling as well, and what I found more interesting than the love story was the underlying social history of the novel. The description of how a country changes and shapes depending on the political figures it's wonderful! How people change with newly acquired powers, how cruel and unforgiving; and other hand, how powerful an oppressed population can get if they decide to come together. The novel has all this written in a wonderful poetic way!However, I did not relate nor felt sorry for the main characters and their love story. Zhivago is not the most relatable character out there, and although through parts of the novel I did empathize with his situation, by the end of the book I wanted to kill him! One of my main statements in life is that deciding to not do anything is actually doing something, and Zhivago is a great proof of this. Not doing anything will eventually lead you to a bottomless pit of self-loading (at least this is what I believe!). So well, I could not feel too sorry for the guy! But other than this, it is beautiful how random characters that show at different parts of the novel seem to come back at different points, to show how small the world is and how everything is connected one way or another. A good read, a must read!

This is a most fascinating epic novel set in the turbulent times in Russia in the early twentieth century. Doctor Yuri Andreevich Zhivago is apolitical at the time of the October Revolution and the subsequent civil war. But, forced to work as a doctor for the partisans (Bolsheviks), he witnesses brutality and inhumanity committed by both sides. He reflects: "This time justified the old saying: Man is a wolf to man.... The human laws of civilisation ended. Those of beasts were in force. Man dreamed the prehistoric dreams of the caveman."The relationship between Zhivago and Lara is, of course, the central theme. Their lives get tragically torn apart by the brutal forces beyond their control. When one realises that millions of Russians suffered the similar fate like Zhivago and Lara during the Revolution and civil war and under the totalitarian Soviet regime, the fate of these characters becomes poignant. The author's view on politics in Soviet Russia affecting ordinary citizens is an important theme. Pasternak writes: "Revolutions are produced by men of action, one-sided fanatics, geniuses of self-limitation. In a few hours or days they overturn the old order. The upheavals last for weeks, for years at the most, and then for decades, for centuries, people bow down to the spirit of limitation that led to the upheavals as to something sacred."He also writes later on: "It was precisely the conformity, the transparency of their (Soviet officials') hypocrisy that exasperated Yuri Andreevich. The unfree man always idealises his slavery. So it was in the Middle Ages; it was on this that the Jesuits always played. Yuri Andreevich could not bear the political mysticism of the Soviet intelligentsia, which was its highest achievement, or, as they would have said then, the spiritual ceiling of the epoch." These are very brave comments to make about the political system during the repressive Soviet era.It is easy to understand the reasons why the publication of this book in Soviet Union was banned by its authorities and Pasternak was forced by the Communist Party to decline the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958.Pasternak's vivid and poetic descriptions of nature are very good indeed. The reader will realise that he was a great poet (as he is apparently known in Russia more than as a novelist) and a religious man.I find the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (an experienced husband-and-wife team) excellent. I have not read other translations, but with this present version I feel the reader will be able to fully appreciate the beauty of the writing. Finally, with detailed notes by the translators, it's possible to follow military and political developments during the civil war and the subsequent period as well as understand some of Orthodox Church customs.