Who wrote Doctor Zhivago?

Research output: Contribution to journalReview Articlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

The depiction of historical events in this novel is both engaging and incomprehensible. History has never fit comfortably into any text, and this one is no exception. But, unlike many, the narrator of Zhivago acknowledges his failure; he is seeking throughout to express history's horrors in the written word but, for want of a better tool, is reduced to tracing conceptual mutations. "[T]he Russian Enlightenment has become the Russian Revolution…. Blok says somewhere: ‘We, the children of Russia's terrible years.’ Blok meant this in a metaphorical, figurative sense…. Now the metaphorical has become literal, children are children and the terrors are terrible, there you have the difference."* So says Misha Gordon, philologist and philosopher. He is quoting lines from a poem by Aleksandr Blok that takes on new meanings with each twist and turn of Russian history. "Those born in the muted years," it begins, "Do not remember their way." It is an acute observation and, in the context of our contemporary squabbles about historical memory, one that remains relevant to this day. The power of memory is itself historical, being contingent on the tragedy inherent in the current moment: "We, the children of Russia's terrible years / Have not the power to forget anything." The children of "the terrible years"—and the adults too—are in thrall to memory, which in times of relative calm simply shuts down. Memories are as unmanageable as amnesia.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)80-96
Number of pages17
JournalRussian Studies in Literature
Volume39
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 10 Dec 2014

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