Hi everybody! Welcome to the second week of my guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.
Reading Schedule | Character List | Poetry Titles | Resources
Print and read offline:
Video
I’ve recorded this as audio and video, so you have multiple options.
1.
The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) is not yet over and ‘waves of revolution swept across Russia’. This is where Larisa Guishar, nicknamed Lara, enters our story. She’s the young daughter of a deceased Belgian engineer and a Russianised Frenchwoman. Her mother, Madame Amalia Guishar (Guichard, P&V; Гишар), is a widow of about thirty-five and has a weak heart. Lara attends the same girls’ school as Nadya Kologrivova, the young girl with whom Nicky Dudorov was at the pond at the end of the first chapter. Madame Guishar buys a seamstress business on the advice of Komarovsky, the now deceased Zhivago senior’s lawyer. Lara is sixteen when she’s introduced. We’re told that Komarovsky stares at her till she blushes; he’s a creepy man, make no mistake.
2.
The Guishars rent an apartment in a rough part of Moscow. Komarovsky also takes advantage of Madame Guishar’s reduced circumstances and fear of men, causing her at one time to seek help from her neighbour, the ‘cellist Tishkevich.
3.
Madame Guishar’s workshop is located on Tverskaya, near the headquarters of the Brest railway. This was the main line that ran from Moscow to Brest-Litovsk (now in Belarus) and into Poland. It’s now Belorussky Station. We’ve already had trains mentioned in Chapter 1, and now we have ‘engine depots, warehouses and lodgings for clerks’.
Komarovsky often passes through the workshop on his way to the Guishars’ flat. His dog, Jack, bites Lara’s leg.
‘Why is it,’ thought Lara, ‘that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?’ (p32)
Good question, Lara.
4.
Lara helps her mother with errands and works hard at school. As she has a long lie one Sunday in July, Pasternak mentions her left shoulder and the big toe of her right foot, and that ‘everything between her shoulder and her foot was vaguely herself—her soul or essence neatly fitting into the outline of her body and impatiently straining towards the future’. It’s quite lyrical, isn’t it? I read something about shoulders in an essay somewhere, probably in the Critical Companion, but I’ve forgotten what it said, and it’s a physical book, so I can’t search. I hope to come back to it later, as it features again.
I like the idea of one’s soul being contained in the body. In my own mind, I sometimes think of it as being trapped in the body. We strive to return to the whole and do that through art and religion, drugs and connection. If I find the shoulder thing again, I can come back and reference it, as now that I’ve mentioned it here, it’s searchable!
She moved with a silent grace, and everything about her—voice, figure, gestures, her grey eyes and shining hair—was fitting and harmonious. (p32)
I like that description of Lara. P&V render it thus:
She moved noiselessly and smoothly, and everything about her — the inconspicuous quickness of her movements, her height, her voice, her grey eyes and fair hair — went together perfectly. (p22)
Which do you prefer?
Name days
Russians celebrated name days more than birthdays. It’s Olga’s name day in this chapter, meaning it’s the feast day of Saint Olga of Kyiv (11 July). All the Olgas across the land would be celebrating on this day. Name days superseded birthdays in terms of importance. Feast days were based on the Orthodox Christian calendar. Your Christian name would tie you to your religion and form part of your identity. Birthdays were merely biological.
Komarovsky takes advantage of Lara at the name-day celebration and she’s mortified. It was the dancing that had led to it, ‘dancing … the root of the evil.’
5.
There’s unrest among the railway workers that autumn, 1905. There’s so much history packed into that opening line. I’ll unpack it as succinctly as I can.
Bloody Sunday took place in January of that year, when Tsar Nicholas II’s guards fired on peaceful protesters outside the Winter Palace. The protesters were petitioning the Tsar for better working conditions and liberal reform. Many were killed, and it changed the mood of the people; they no longer saw the Tsar as the benevolent father and now became more hostile towards the monarchy. Pressure built, with strikes happening first in St Petersburg, and later spreading to Moscow. The railway industry was huge at that time, as indeed it is now. This gave the railway workers enormous power to disrupt the country, and this they did. Strikes and protests took place right through 1905, so the ‘revolution’ wasn’t a single event, as with the October 1917 coup; rather, it was a prolonged period of unrest and activism sparked by Bloody Sunday. Workers united in small councils called soviets (советы).1 The most important Soviet in terms of history was the St Petersburg Soviet (later the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies); it was highly instrumental in the revolutions of 1917.
St Petersburg was the epicentre of unrest, but railway workers used the rail network to coordinate and communicate.
The unrest led to the Tsar’s concession in August 1905 to form a State Duma, or parliament, but its powers were limited and it had little effect.
In October 1905, Tsar Nicholas II issued his October Manifesto, promising liberal reforms and paving the way for a constitutional monarchy to replace the Romanov autocracy. This satisfied the Constitutional Democrats (KaDets), but didn’t go far enough. It’s often said that the 1905 revolution was a dress rehearsal for the February 1917 revolution that led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. This is what makes Doctor Zhivago such an interesting novel: it’s placed in history, but it’s not about history. Unfortunately, that makes the novel far less meaningful for those who don’t know anything about the historical setting. Where other historical fiction will describe historical events as part of the plot—Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for example—Pasternak doesn’t do that. Instead, he places his characters in history, and we follow them through it.
Pavel Ferapontovich Antipov is the Track Overseer of the station district. He’s frustrated by his superiors’ corruption, which leads to low-quality steel.
6.
Tiverzin, a railway worker, and Antipov leave an underground meeting early. It’s payday for the railway workers. The old foreman, Pyotr Khudoleyev, is beating an apprentice, Yusupka. He’s the son of Gimazetdin Galliulin, a porter. There’s some bad blood between them as Tiverzin’s father, Saveliy Nikitich, married the woman who had rejected Khudoleyev. We get an argument between Tiverzin and Khudoleyev that includes some racial slurs against the Tartars. A fight ensues, which is broken up by the crowd. Tiverzin walks off.
He knew that all their strivings … were small separate stages on the great road lying ahead of them. (p38)
History.
Keep an eye out for Yusupka, the young apprentice. Save the name Galliulin in your brain.
Tiverzin missed the meeting where it was decided that a strike was to take place that very night. He only finds out later. His job is to blow the hooter to signal the start of the strike, and this he does.
7.
It’s two days after the strike. The porter, Gimazetdin Galliulin, thanks Tiverzin for rescuing Yusupka from Khudoleyev’s bullying. Tiverzin goes home, where he lives with his mother. She warns him that Pavel Antipov Sr has been arrested and that he should lie low for a while. She then tells him that the Tsar has issued a manifesto. It’s a very big part of Russia’s history, but in Doctor Zhivago, you could easily blink and miss it! This is the October Manifesto I mentioned above.
8.
Young Pavel (Pasha) Antipov moves in with the Tiverzins after his father is arrested. There’s a demonstration in November 1905 following the October Manifesto, marching from the Tver Gate, located near Belorussky Station at Tverskaya Zastava Square, to the Kaluga Gate, now Kaluzhskaya Square (route map). Tiverzin’s mother marches and Pasha goes with her.
The protesters receive a warning that Cossacks and dragoons are waiting to ambush them.
Half a platoon galloped through, turned, re-formed and cut into the tail of the procession. The killing began.
This event describes growing tension in the city as the reforms promised in the October Manifesto fail to materialise. It ultimately leads to the Moscow Uprising in December.
What’s important to note here is that young Pasha Antipov was there to witness this violence’s being perpetrated against the people by the state.
9.
Nikolay Vedenyapin arrives in Moscow from St Petersburg and stays with the Sventitskys. Yury Zhivago is now living with the Gromekos. Their daughter, Tonya, is the same age as Yury, and Yury’s friend, Misha Gordon, spends most of his time with them. We learn that the three youths ‘had soaked themselves in The Meaning of Love and The Kreutzer Sonata.’ There’s a whole essay on this in The Critical Companion, written by Jerome Spencer.2 The quote refers to two texts: the first by the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov and the second by Leo Tolstoy.
In The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), Tolstoy, through his main character, claims that the love on which marriage is based is nothing more than a desire to copulate.
Such carnal desire prevents any kind of spiritual relationship from developing, which is ruinous, as spiritual love represents the ultimate aim of human existence. Spiritual love, when it exists, is expressed “in words, in conversations, in colloquies”. The only way to reach spiritual love is to eliminate carnal lust.3
Solovyov wrote The Meaning of Love (1894) in response to The Kreutzer Sonata. He claimed that spiritual love must come first, followed by social love and, only then, animal love. Women represent the ‘Divine Feminine’, and when a man achieves the perfect relationship with a woman, he is allowed to become one with the Divine Feminine, taking her characteristics into himself. If a woman is corrupted by carnal lust before spiritual love, then that corruption is irreversible. It’s kind of problematic, don’t you think? I can’t talk too much about how Pasternak deals with this, as we’re only in Chapter 2; suffice to say, he doesn’t agree with either author. It’s interesting to note that Pasternak places this reference in the text just before we read of Komarovsky’s seduction of Lara. He’s clearly thinking about these texts as he writes his novel.
10.
Nikolay Vedenyapin has a visitor. They have a discussion about schools and mysticism, which ends up making Nikolay angry, not so much at his visitor as at himself for revealing to this blockhead some of his most intimate thoughts, thoughts like this one:
But for me the most important thing is the fact that Christ speaks in parables taken from daily life, that he explains the truth in terms of everyday reality. The idea which underlies this is that communion between mortals is immortal, and that the whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning. (p48)
He refers to the ancient world and ends with the change brought about by Christ, an idea that I wrote about in my essay on Chapter 1.
11.
Komarovsky lives in the Petrovka, a posh part of Moscow that’s reminiscent of St Petersburg. Pasternak clearly disapproves of this character.
12.
Lara walks home in a daze. The weather is unseasonably warm and there’s a thaw. She has been at least seduced, possibly raped. We’re not told by whom, but the juxtaposition of chapters 11 and 12 makes it clear that it was Komarovsky.
13.
Komarovsky is longing for Lara. He’s like a caged animal, an apt description. He’s infatuated with her. This is not spiritual love. We’re told that Jack the bulldog is jealous of Lara ‘as if it were afraid of her infecting its master with something human.’ Komarovsky takes out his frustration on the dog, kicking him and beating him with a stick.
14.
‘What a bewitched circle it was.’
Lara is in turmoil over her affair with Komarovksy. On the one hand, she’s flattered that such a powerful man should have a sexual relationship with her; and on the other, she’s disgusted by it.
15.
‘She hated him, he was the curse of her life.’
Lara feels like Komarovsky’s prisoner.
‘Even the strong are ruled by the weak and treacherous’.
16.
Komarovsky wants to marry Lara. She ignores his pleading. He takes her out to fancy restaurants, she wearing a veil. She has a dream that she’s buried under the ground and all that remains of her is her left side and her right foot. Body parts again. (Remember the left shoulder and big toe of her right foot above?)
17.
Lara’s not religious, but she goes to church for the music of God’s word. While she’s in church one day, she hears the Beatitudes’ being read and hears it as a message for her: happy are the downtrodden.
18.
It was the time of the Presnya rising, the Moscow Uprising I mentioned above—yet another of the briefest mentions of a significant historical event. Lara lives in that area, and she knows Nicky Dudorov and Pasha Antipov hang out with the insurgents. She’s noticed that Pasha has a crush on her and, unconsciously, begins to use it to her advantage. At this stage, she thinks of Nicky and Pasha as children, though she’s only three years older than they are. At that age, three years matter. She has also crossed the line from maidenhood.
‘Good, decent boys,’ she thought. ‘It’s because they are good that they are shooting.’ (p55)
19.
Those not involved with the uprising take shelter in the Montenegro Hotel. Amalia Guishar’s seamstress business had carried on operating all year, but they go out on strike in December, much to Amalia’s chagrin. Lara sees how the land lies and comforts her mother, explaining that it’s political, not personal.
Lara feels safe from Komarovsky now as she’s behind the barricades. She wishes that she could tell her mother, but is too ashamed. She remembers a painting that was hanging in the room where it all began: The Woman and the Vase.
As Lara and her mother are leaving their flat for the safety of the hotel, there’s this line:
‘Well, let’s sit down and then we must be off’.
The footnote in my Hayward Harari translations explains: A Russian custom: before a move or a journey people sit down for a few moments for luck (p57). I actually didn’t know this. My wife read Doctor Zhivago thirty years ago and spotted this when we were watching the 2016 Andrew Davies adaptation of War and Peace and commented on it. Count Rostov and his family sit down in silence for a moment before leaving their empty home in Moscow during Napoleon’s invasion.
20.
At the Gromekos’. The brothers, Alexander and Nikolay, are both professors of chemistry. Alexander’s wife, Anna Krueger, is from a town in the Urals called Yuryatin. This will come up later in the story. Yury is now living with them. The Gromekos love chamber music and there’s to be a concert at their home in January 1906. Their home and the food prepared for the concert stand in stark contrast to the workers on the streets, an image of bourgeois life.
During the concert, Alexander learns from his housemaid that something has happened at the Montenegro and, as a result, one of the musicians has to leave.
21.
After the suppression of the Moscow Uprising, the streets were now relatively quiet. Order was restored for the most part. Yury and Misha Gordon are accompanying Alexander and the musician to the Montenegro Hotel. The incident turns out to have been an attempted suicide by Amalia Guishar. Did Lara tell her about Komarovsky? Lara’s asleep in a chair. Alexander Gromeko waits outside for the musician to come out of the room so that they can leave, but another man comes out instead. It’s Komarovsky. He wakes Lara and they share some intimate glances, as if she were a puppet and he the puppeteer. When Yury sees Lara, it’s love at first sight. As they leave, Misha tells Yury that it was Komarovsky who was on the train with his father when he jumped.
Catch you next week for Chapter 3!
The word could also be transliterated as sovyet, with the stress on the second syllable. The word means advice or counsel and has a Proto-Slavic root: větъ / větiti → to speak, to discuss, to give counsel. So now you know where the word Soviet came from!
Jerome Spencer, ‘“Soaked in the Meaning of Love” and The Kreutzer Sonata: The Nature of Love in Doctor Zhivago’, in Doctor Zhivago: A Critical Companion, ed. by Edith W. Clowes (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011), pp. 76–88.
Spencer, ‘Soaked in the Meaning of Love’, p. 77.
