After the publication of the novel, it is generally believed that after War and Peace, this work is the only one that can be used as a summary and portrayal of such a broad historical period in spirit. Doctor zhivago, an immortal epic, is highly respected in the west, but it is accused of being "socialist-hating" in Russia, and is called "the first political banned book in the world".
Doctor zhivago embodies the Oedipus complex of revolution, history, philosophy of life and culture. It is an important event in the history of human literature and morality, and it is a poetic novel reflecting the greatest revolution in the 20th century.
-Wilson, American critic
Doctor zhivago is a masterpiece full of love, not anti-Soviet. It is not bad for any party and has universal significance. Russia only needs to remember that this Nobel Prize was awarded to a great Russian writer who lived and worked in Soviet society.
-French writer albert camus.
200 1 1 9 I watched doctor zhivago again. I first read it when I was studying at Lu Xun College of Literature in Beijing. At that time, the book had just been translated and was all the rage. I remember a lot of people in the class are circulating and talking about it. Honestly. I wasn't so excited when I saw it at that time. Maybe more than ten years have passed, and the years have passed, which makes me feel more vicissitudes, so I love it especially.
I like the love between lesbians and doctor zhivago. This is a kind of repressed, noble and pure love. The love between them, warm in heart and restrained in appearance, is sympathetic and admirable. In fact, true happiness is always accompanied by pain, and tortured love is as lovely as a flower covered with dew. Critics like to regard this book as a "political" book, because it is about the October Revolution and the attitude of a generation of intellectuals to the revolution. But today I would rather regard it as a bitter love novel, because in which era there is no tragedy?
Pasternak won great honor in the west for such a book. Although the Swedish Academy announced that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature because of his great contribution to Russian poetry, everyone knows that he gained a wider international reputation because of doctor zhivago. This book not only brought him honor, but also brought him great disaster. The Soviet Union believed that the author vilified the October Revolution in his book and called it a reactionary book. Pasternak gave up Nobel Prize in Literature to show his loyalty to his motherland. Even so, the Soviet literary world never stopped rejecting him until he died alone in a small village outside Moscow.
Things have changed. Who would be hostile to such a great work in Russia today? However, at that time, Gorky College of Liberal Arts students went to Parks Mansion in a rage to make trouble. They smashed doors and windows and called the author a "traitor" of the Soviet Union. In fact, any revolution has its drawbacks as well as its success, and people should be allowed to reflect on it. Only by constantly reflecting on itself can a nation sail deeper and wider.
This is a lonely weekend. I write this diary while listening to Mahler's Song of the Earth. I think its melody is very suitable for doctor zhivago. This musical work and this literary work are interlinked in spirit, because they are equally simple, equally passionate and poetic, equally desolate and tragic. If these great writers and musicians hadn't shocked our hearts from time to time, how suffocating and boring the earthly life would be.
Zhivago grew up in an intellectual environment and received a good education. But he was brought up by his uncle, which made him develop an introverted personality and full of sympathy for the unfortunate people. After graduating from college, he read many works of philosophy, history and literature. Under the influence of religion, his compassion developed into a strong spirit of fraternity. He is a surgeon, and the practice of surgical operation has cultivated his strict, objective and calm attitude towards people and things. He likes to think and judge any phenomenon independently, but his starting point for judging things is often his own personal experience and books he has read. Zhivago is an honest and upright old intellectual. But his opposition to the October Revolution was not out of bourgeois nature. On the contrary, when he served as a military doctor in World War I, he saw the darkness and corruption of Russian society and faithfully welcomed the October Revolution. He once said, "What a superb operation! Skillfully cut off the rotten old ulcer at once! An unjust world. This is an unprecedented feat. This is a miracle in history. "
Zhivago's position on the revolution is very strange, including his enthusiasm for the revolution, but he hates the suffering brought by the revolution as much as he hates old Russia. Revolution is not what progressive young people imagine: it can bring earth-shaking changes to the world. Abandon the old backward and unreasonable system. This is similar to me and young people like me now. I hope that world innovation is full of curiosity and hope for new things. I believe that as long as innovation is correct, innovation is hope. Everyone has ideas about the future, but many people don't know how to think and are at a loss about the future.
Maybe you feel nothing after reading this book. Not as grand as the October Revolution, such as The Silent Don, will not make you cry easily. It's just a plain novel, the life of ordinary people and the thinking of small people. But it represents every ordinary little person. Can you find yourself in zhivago?
Talking about doctor zhivago today is obviously picking up an old topic, which has no sensational effect more than ten years ago. We probably won't forget how people marveled at the anti-secularism saturated in the novel and shed tears of sympathy for Pasternak's misfortune when the novel finally met their relatives in the "relapsing fever" of Soviet literature more than ten years ago, and then set off another upsurge in China, an ancient eastern neighbor. Now, after unveiling the mystery, I suddenly saw that all the ecstasy, surprise and even confusion have vanished with the passage of time. If this work is still attractive to us, it can only be because of its classicality.
Doctor zhivago is a classic, a classic left by Russian literature in the 20th century. As far as the age of its birth is concerned, it is undoubtedly one of the classics of Soviet literature, and it is a true and rigorous classic without any attributive. I don't know who started it. Many so-called "main melody" works in Soviet literature (including contemporary China literature) are called "red classics". To tell the truth, the so-called "red classics" that people often talk about today (whether from the Soviet Union or China) are essentially literary freaks derived from a highly politicized and ideological social, cultural and ecological environment. I wonder if the person who first invented the title "red classic" was out of admiration or ridicule? In fact, the real literary classics can't add any "pigments". Those so-called "red classics", those "red classics" that are not "classics", perhaps just because they can't bear the weight of the word "classic", they reluctantly hide under the umbrella of the word "red".
Classics require writers to have a grand historical vision, and people require classics to have an epic style. I remember Pasternak once said, "doctor zhivago is my first real work, and I want to describe Russian history for nearly 45 years". Yes, the 1905 revolution, the first world war, the February revolution, the October revolution, the new economic policy ... all the historical events covered in doctor zhivago seem to satisfy the desire of people who try to appreciate the vicissitudes of history. No wonder American edmund wilson can't help comparing it with War and Peace. However, this grand narrative vision is shared by Soviet writers, who have nourished their artistic creation inspiration in the historical shock and change. In Soviet literature, almost every voluminous masterpiece contains a huge picture of history and reality. However, not every such masterpiece can be regarded as a classic handed down from generation to generation. Classics are few and far between. I'm afraid only those works that are full of strong realistic and historical critical consciousness and have achieved the transcendence of real life can enter the classic palace. The essence of literature is to deny and transcend the aestheticization of reality. Without the spirit of denying and transcending real life, the life of art will cease to exist. This is the basic value and essence of art.
Reading doctor zhivago, we can find that there is a strong sense of criticism between the lines. I remember that in the "doctor zhivago fever" more than ten years ago, many people were wondering with interest: Is this novel anti-October Revolution? What is Pasternak's attitude towards the historical changes of the Soviet Union in the past 30 years? For a time, different answers to this question seem to determine different value judgments of the novel. As a result, a rather funny situation is formed: those who really can't give up their favor for doctor zhivago, the masterpiece, have to do everything possible to deny it, and there is even a trace of denial of history and reality in the writer's mind. Wozniacki, a critic at that time, said: "zhivago and Pasternak were neither opponents of the revolution nor opposed to it." I'm afraid his statement reflects the mentality of most people who love this work. However, the author thinks that on this issue, it seems that the five editors of New World magazine who opposed the publication of this novel 45 years ago feel more real. They really perceive the criticism of history and reality contained in the novel. Indeed, doctor zhivago is full of criticism, just as all the famous works in western Europe in the19th century, the representative works of western modernism in the 20th century and even the works of post-modernism are full of sharp and profound criticism and denial of the emerging capitalist society, industrialized society and even post-industrialized society, so is doctor zhivago. If we still only give 19 century great Russian literature a spirit of criticism and negation; It would be ridiculous to think that the new Soviet literature can only offer sweet hymns to the new Soviet society. However, although the five editors smell the criticism of the novel, it does not mean that they have a correct understanding of the negative spirit of the novel.
Today, it seems that we don't have to worry about whether this novel denies the October Revolution. There is no doubt that Pasternak must have viewed the history he described with a negative eye. But it is wrong to assert that he has a natural antipathy to the October Revolution. He did not criticize history and reality with an innate hatred, nor did he mean to have a hard time with the October Revolution. His critical edge only stems from his natural artistic nature, that is, his critical vision of reality. As American scholar Robert Payne said, "Some western critics regard doctor zhivago as a figure who opposes the Soviet regime. This view is incorrect because they failed to discover that this work is actually a rebellion against all existing regimes. " That's the point. Although it is difficult for us to refute the statement of British Heywood that "doctor zhivago written by Pasternak in 1946 was deliberately conceived as a challenge to everything maintained by Stalin and his regime", we must understand this "challenge" as a metaphysical denial of the established reality. "What an excellent operation! Bring it here and skillfully cut off the smelly ulcer for many years! It is simple and straightforward, and it has made a judgment on the injustice that people have been accustomed to worship for hundreds of years. " This famous saying from the mouth of zhivago, the hero of the novel, has been quoted many times, hoping to take it as the hero zhivago's yearning for the revolutionary storm that befell Russia. In fact, this sentence is not so much an expression of zhivago's appreciation of the revolutionary storm as a criticism of the Russian society in which he lived. This famous saying is essentially the same as the protagonist's later reflection on the October Revolution. What makes us uneasy is that they all reflect the spiritual independence and critical consciousness that zhivago, the protagonist of the novel, should have as a typical intellectual. Pasternak endowed the protagonist of the novel and even the whole work with this kind of critical and transcendental consciousness of reality and history, which made this work possible to become a classic. After all, how can real art not criticize and transcend reality?
Polish writer Kan Burovic put it well: "I think any artist who respects himself should be, and must be, a veritable exile in various senses." In my opinion, the so-called "exiles" refer more to spiritual "exiles" and "self-exiles". Such artists will never be forgotten by history, because only such "self-exiles" can truly gain the "independent spirit" that Mr. Chen Yinque said in the past. Only in this way can he transcend the current mainstream social consciousness and give the writer real "free thought" for his so-called "political thought".
Looking back on the Soviet literature in the past 70 years, can the so-called classics with "pigments" that "sang loudly" and danced gracefully under the flute sounded by the times be regarded as real classics? Classics are classics because they can criticize the historical process from the spiritual height of thinking about human existence and life value. More than 40 years ago, when doctor zhivago was banned by the editorial department of New World magazine, many people, including Pasternak and his wife Zina Yida, wanted to know why Du Dingtsev's Not Just Bread was published despite being besieged by some people. In their eyes, it seems that this novel really exposes the dark side of society. If Pasternak himself really thinks so, then obviously, the great poet failed to realize that his novels, though not as direct as Du Dintsev's masterpieces, touched the fragile nerves of the authorities in another higher sense. Doctor zhivago's rebellion is unmatched by King Rabbah. This kind of rebellion does not point to a specific bureaucratic habit, nor to obvious institutional problems, but to the internal level of human spirit from the height of cultural criticism. For literature, only in this sense can cultural criticism truly transcend the limitations of the times. It is very important for an artist to examine reality from the perspective of cultural criticism.
Gorky's "untimely thoughts" and "revolutionary writers' profound reflections on the Russian revolution fully show the calm and far-reaching mind of a cultural person who insists on cultural integrity in the era of fierce political turmoil. Both Gorky, a "revolutionary writer", and Pasternak, an "old Russian intellectual", deeply reflected on the Russian barbarism and servility bred in the Russian revolution. Although Pasternak will never have the word "revolution" on his head, this kind of examination and criticism of history and reality from the standpoint of human cultural spirit is what the two artists have in common.
In the era of political turmoil, the insistence on cultural integrity is the most precious, and it has a thorough critical consciousness of all utilitarian thoughts and behaviors of human beings. This critical consciousness of adhering to cultural ethics is often labeled as "conservative". Dickens' performance of the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities is full of "sentimental conservatism". Gorky, the Haiyan who called for the storm, suddenly became worried when the storm really came, and our Lu Xun was once dismissed as a "feudal remnant" by later generations. However, when our descendants have experienced the absurd "baptism" of history, is there no reason to admire the far-reaching vision of these cultural sages? The accusation against Lu Xun and even Gorky now seems to be our joke. Isn't it ridiculous to criticize Pasternak more than 40 years ago? This kind of thinking about history and reality transcends the ordinary political level, and this kind of criticism and transcendence consciousness that overcomes narrow nationalism and political utilitarianism and aims at the most extensive eternal and common feelings of mankind is an important feature of literary classics. American Wilson summed up doctor zhivago in fourteen words, which is quite accurate.
People often say that this novel is saturated with comments on Christian teachings, thoughts on life and death, thoughts on freedom and truth, and thoughts on the relationship between history and nature and art; It is often said that Pasternak views the revolutionary movement and social and historical changes with some immortal human nature and some transcendental religious and humanistic concepts such as goodness and justice as the frame of reference. Therefore, people naturally regard doctor zhivago, a highly self-centered figure, as an old-style aristocratic intellectual who is far away from the masses and the pace of the times, and then regard the novel as an intellectual who stands outside the historical trend and is "morbidly" sentimental about the historical process, thus doubting the "correctness" of the novel thinking.
This critical thinking about the collective consciousness at that time, this philosophical perspective on social and historical changes, is a valuable way for intellectuals to look at the world with their independent rational spirit. Doctor zhivago's depoliticized reflection on Russian history is the value of this novel. It is an indisputable fact that Tolstoy, who was politically "reactionary" a hundred years ago, still lives in the long river of history as a master of literary classics. Then, Pasternak's novel doctor zhivago transcends the current social ideological level with philosophical and cultural reflection, revealing the meaning of "human existence" and a wide range of metaphysical issues such as the tragic color of human existence. Isn't this an eternal classic?
Pasternak once said, "Artists talk to God". This requires artists to face impetuous real life with the spirit of exploring the true meaning of history and human nature and listening to the deepest voice of life, and to reveal the tragedy of human existence and the absurdity of historical process in the great changes of reality and history. Doctor zhivago is such a spiritual product. No wonder Wilson praised it as "an important event in the history of human literature and morality, and a poetic novel reflecting the greatest revolution in the 20th century". Pasternak, as the mysterious giant of modern Soviet literature, is "a special key to open the treasure house of Russian culture and the mind of intellectuals".
The revolution in Russia in the 20th century was endowed with tragic color by historical practice. All the sufferings experienced by the Soviet people, from spirit to body, are intrinsically related to the contradictory duality of this revolution. The classics of Russian literature in the 20th century should be able to profoundly express these two tragic spiritual characteristics. The reason why literary classics are classics lies in their profound insight into the essential spiritual connotation of the times in their grasp of the human spiritual level. In doctor zhivago, the image of Antipov is the embodiment of the profound contradiction of the Russian revolution. He is not a pure "political animal", but a "pure incarnation" and tool alienated by the times and politics. Although he has a heart of stone, he still has an immortal body. Isn't this duality of spirit a harbinger of the bumpy experience faced by Russians in the 20th century? Literary classics are not rootless duckweeds, and the flowers of classics are deeply rooted in the spiritual soil of literary tradition.
Doctor zhivago is an epic in the 20th century, but we can clearly feel the "influence anxiety" in it: Pasternak, a poet who is eager to describe contemporary history, always makes us feel the power of tradition. Perhaps, trying to find the shadow of Luo Ting, Lee Tnevov, Ivanov, Trigoring or Tribbe Lev in doctor zhivago; Looking for traces of tatiana or Na Stasija filippo Fu Na in Lala; It is futile to look for Nadasha Rostova or Kitty in Tonya to smell Rachmetov, Bazarov and even Necajev, a historical real person in Antipov. However, it is undeniable that from doctor zhivago, we have clearly realized the way of understanding the world and life that only Russian intellectuals have.
Both zhivago and Pasternak lived in a typical lifestyle of Russian intellectuals, thinking about issues that only Russian intellectuals would ponder deeply. God-the mystery of death-the fate of Russian mother, which once troubled Russian cultural masters such as Nikolai Nikolai Gogol, Tolstoy the Old and Dostoevsky, is the pure Russian problem that Pasternak and his beloved hero zhivago are most concerned about. Zhivago, like his creator and writer Pasternak, reflected their independent spiritual pursuit of the true meaning and truth of life, and fought against the spiritual slavery of human beings, making them become интеллигнцр, which Berdyaev said was unique to Russia. In the Soviet Union, it takes great courage to maintain this spiritual tradition of Russian intellectuals. Because of this, this spiritual tradition is particularly precious in Soviet literature. Only Soviet writers who stick to this spiritual resource in hard times will write their names in the long river of history. Pasternak has such qualifications. However, if all thoughts and spiritual explorations cannot be presented in the meaning of poetry, then it is impossible to give birth to literary classics. We will never forget the simple truth expounded by belinsky in his famous "A glimpse of Russian literature 1847": "No matter how beautiful a poem is, no matter how strongly it reflects modern problems, if there is no poem in it, it can't contain beautiful thoughts and any problems. What we can see is at best a beautiful attempt to perform badly. "
How many "brilliant thoughts" in Soviet literature are eclipsed by the lack of poetic fusion, and doctor zhivago, a novel that has to be cautious because it involves the October Revolution, is first of all a poem and also a love poem, so that all the thoughts it contains about society, religion and history are truly shocking. Spanish writer Luisa called this novel "lyrical creation". Likhachev regards it as a "lyrical attitude towards reality", which is all insightful. Indeed, the greatest uniqueness of doctor zhivago is that it examines the history of the Russian revolution with poetic charm. The theme of "revolution-history-philosophy of life-cultural Oedipus complex" expressed in this "Lala Song" is irreplaceable by those pseudo-literary works full of passionate political preaching. The writer's exploration of life, his meditation on history, all his pursuits and anguish are reflected in the flashes of zhivago and Love Song of Lala. The writer imagines a world that only belongs to zhivago and Lala, two characters full of real human light. In this world, they know the mystery of life, the mystery of death, the charm of genius and the charm of revelation; In this world, they can have nothing to do with "arguing with a humble world is like cutting the earth again"; In this world, soul, art, beauty and nature can be integrated, and people are closely connected with the earth and the universe. "Art serves beauty". People who are full of reason and emotion are immersed in the mysterious happiness of artistic creation, the sweetness of love, the warmth of quiet life and the solemn silence of night, and live and think sincerely forever, "not ashamed of truth". However, this beautiful fairy tale world, the world of zhivago and Lala, was ruthlessly destroyed by the poet's pen. This fascinating world can't compete with the realistic utilitarian world, and what awaits it can only be tragic destruction. People's integrity and kindness become weak in the face of specific historical events and are doomed to be destroyed. This tragic historical paradox seems to be an eternal question raised by literary classics. Perhaps feeling this helplessness and regret is the most "classic" beauty.
People may cherish the Soviet literature because of this, and cherish the Soviet literature that created the "classical beauty" of Gligorij Marykhov's tragedy and zhivago's tragedy. Based on the times, beyond that era; The cage outside reality has returned to the traditional spiritual home. When all this happened to an artist who only walked into life with the eyes of a lyric poet, we can say that the generation of classics is not far away. Doctor zhivago is such a literary classic, and its classicality is far from being possessed by every work written into the textbook of Soviet literary history. Some works will always be remembered in the history of literature, because they mark a specific stage of literary development (such as thawing, one's experience, etc.). ), or a typical representative of a specific historical period (such as how steel was tempered). But they can't be strictly literary classics. Only those works that transcend the current narrow political level and nationalist sentiment and express the common and eternal feelings of mankind can enter the classic ranks. In the 20th century Russian literature, doctor zhivago can enter the classic door together with a handful of works such as Silent Tang, Master and Margaret.