Dr. Z, part 1

The other week we happened to watch the first half of the famous film of Dr. Zhivago, the one at reference 1. Having probably seen the whole film at some point in the past and read the book in the even more distant past, when still little more than a child. Hard from my presently senior perspective to see what on earth I could have made of it as a junior. One Day in the Life, reference 10, was read for the first time at about the same time.

We then moved on to the television mini series at reference 2, which we thought rather good. I particularly liked the fragility conveyed by the two stars, Matheson and Knightley, which seemed to work better for me than the big-star bravura of Sharif and Christie. But we will get around to watching the latter again, having now got both lots of DVD's.

Surrey Libraries are taking their time at getting me a copy of the book proper, but they have come up with reference 4 in the meantime. A fictionalised account of Pasternak's life, very much a model for the doctor of the novel. A fictionalised account, rather after the fashion of the book noticed at reference 5, where one is never quite sure where fact stops and fiction begins. One just hopes that the biographer has fairly caught the tone, despite being inventive with the facts. With the difference that Anna Pasternak can claim quite close family connection with the famous Pasternak, with her great grandfather being his father.

A great grandfather whom I now know to be, inter alia, a famous illustrator and contemporary of Tolstoy. With one of these illustrations, Prince Andrey being introduced to Natasha, being included above. Not sure how it comes to be in colour, which I thought was only used in rather expensive books at that time, not mass market editions.

A book in three chunks. Pasternak himself then Pasternak and Olga (aka Lara) then Dr. Zhivago and death at the age of 70. Altogether much older than the Zhivago of the films and twenty years older than Olga - which is not the case in either of the films.

I was reminded that Pasternak was a very popular poet in Russia, particularly in the years after the revolution. Almost pop-star status by today's standards. He also came from a family of high culture and was firmly embedded in the Russian cultural elite of his day. A large chunk of which family however, including his parents, emigrated to western Europe while they still could. He chose to stay.

But like others before him, he was not content with popularity and success, with writing romantic poetry. He wanted to write a great book. A book which, in the event, got caught up in the cold war, still going strong in the 1960's, and got its glowing reviews in the west at least in part because of the unpleasant light it cast on the Soviet regime of the 1920's and 1930's. So famous and successful for the wrong reasons, at least from a literary point of view. But publishing the book was, nevertheless, an act of considerable bravery from another.

He was also pretty hopeless at marriage, getting hopelessly tangled up with Olga (whom he met when he was nearly 50) while remaining married to his second wife - whom he had stolen from a close friend. And he must have had terrific charm on a good day, as the close friend remained one, albeit after a short break. Olga went on to do getting on for ten years in grim labour camps, in large part because of her relationship with him. He was fairly safe, in part because Stalin liked his translations of Georgian poetry. Georgian as in his homeland, rather than the early 20th century poets of this country. Translations, some of them very well known, being his main source of income, certainly in the middle part of his life.

The Soviet regime of Stalin's era sounds pretty grim on this telling, certainly in so far as supervision of the intelligentsia and the massive - not to say monstrous - use of prison camps went. Involving, inter alia, a massive amount of casual and pointless cruelty. And lots of thoughtcrime, of the sort famously written about by George Orwell. I wonder now what sort of people wound up being guards in these places. Were they conscripted? I think the Dovlatov of reference 9 did his national service in one. Were most of them volunteers? Plus a snippet from the camps about how the peasant women from the Ukraine despised the weak, intellectual women from Moscow, not fit for a proper day's work. From where I associate to a report I once read from the German concentration camps, to the effect that the country people stood far more chance of surviving the harsh conditions than the town people, being far more used to it. Another snippet was the distinctive bronze tan acquired by town people who had to spend years out of doors, in all weathers.

Despite all that there was to interest me, a book which became tiresome after getting through about 150 of its 250 pages. More skimmed than read after that. For me, it might usefully have been a good deal shorter, with perhaps less reliance on what must be more or less invented detail and dialogue.

Toss-up now whether I will next have another go at the real book or the 1966 film. All depends how long the library takes I suppose. Unless I weaken and go into Waterstones in Epsom, where I expect I would find one, on the shelf. We used to have a copy but I can't now remember whether it was hardback or paperback or who bought it. A copy which made it to Epsom, but was culled at some point after that. And didn't make it to the Kindle, along with all the Tolstoy and Chekov to be be found there.

PS 1: no previous mentions of Zhivago in the blog, while Pasternak scores just two, both on account of his translations of Shakespeare. See references 6 and 7.

PS 2: another go at the shell hole of reference 7 on Friday evening. The thought then was rather good, with the cidery aspect of things not quite so much in evidence. But odd in that it started off a clear yellow, but very quickly, within half an hour or so, turned cloudy, getting more cloudy with time. Reminded that Bain is a chap who spurns the system of appellation d'origine contrôlée, and names his wines, rather as one might name a child.

Reference 1: Dr. Zhivago - B. L. Pasternak - 1957.

Reference 2: Dr. Zhivago  - Sharif, Christie and Lean - 1966.

Reference 3: Dr. Zhivago - Matheson, Knightley and Campiotti - 2002.

Reference 4: Lara: the untold love story that inspired Doctor Zhivago - Anna Pasternak - 2016.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/mrs-lewis.html.

Reference 6: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/01/leery.html.

Reference 7: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/01/pasternak.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/shell-hole.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-suitcase.html.

Reference 10: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 1962. A writer who went on to become something of a professional dissident. The Penguin edition of which book was retired many culls ago.