The Real Dr Zhivago

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That last of Rachmaninoff was hanging on the wall of the Pasternak house in London - we saw it last night!!

I thought it looked familiar!

[waldo]

One of the great problems here is the inexplicable lack of a half-decent translation. There are only two major ones, as far as I am aware: the original one by Max Hayward and Manya Harari (1958); then a much more recent one by Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear. I am no expert (I don't read Russian), but both of these are highly problematic. The Hayward (a well-intentioned rush job) is readable and flows naturally, but is littered with countless inaccuracies and "liberties", as well as being somewhat crude overall. The later translation is absolutely unreadable and frequently incomprehensible - a dogs dinner that must have had its roots in a fanatical, but utterly misguided fantasy of absolute fidelity to the original text. (Volokhonsky and Pevear are rightly acclaimed for their translations of Tolstoy etc - but they lost their way here, to say the least.)

If you are going to read it, there is only one option - the Hayward. It makes sense and reads well. The other is to be avoided at all costs.

As to whether it is worth it or not, you can't go into it expecting War and Peace. It just doesn't operate like a regular novel. The narrative moves clumsily and abruptly from one scene to the next; characters major and minor are drawn into focus, then abandoned in such a way that you wonder why Pasternak even mentioned them. The narrative trajectory is somewhat bewildering, too - baffling and disappointing, if you are expecting something like the film. Half way through the book, you still have that feeling that you haven't really started.

But I still think it is worth the effort, because there are so many compensating pleasures. He's really good at long, concentrated sequences - journeys, for instance, or crowds erupting in revolutionary violence. There's a magnificent train journey early on, for example. It's in the film. The Zhivagos head off to their country house in Varykino, trying to escape the revolution. (And who should be in Yuriatin, over the hill? Julie Christie!) Anyway, that whole sequence is just a marvel from start to finish; the relentless piling up of details and specifics is simply breathtaking. And it isn't just a few pages, as you might expect - it goes on and on and on. Throughout the book, there are countless incidents and details which bring the revolution alive: not the great historical sweep of it, but the filthy, distressing, unpredictable madness of it all. I studied this whole period in university and wrote the usual stock essays on what was meant by "revolution" etc, but it wasn't until I read Zhivago that I began to get some sense of what really happened.

Anyway, I will certainly read it again one day. It's just a pity there isn't a better translation...........

[Conchis]

I've owned a second hand paperback of the novel for .... (gasps!)....thirty-six years. In all that time, I have made only one serious ( though aborted) attempt to read it. Coincidentally, it is currently sitting on my book-ledge, staring reproachfully at me (actually, as it's a film tie-in edition, a muffled up Omar Sharif is waving at me as he stands in a wintry landscape: as if to say, 'Hello! Please come and read me....!')

I recently read a biography of Robert Bolt, who wrote the film's screenplay. He found the adaptation very problematic, but I think he came up with the goods. I, too, admire Tom Courtenay's performance. Whenever I get into an argument with someone who I feel is being a overtly sentimental, I roar at them: 'Don't you understand?! The personal life is dead!' :)

[waldo]

I always liked Tom Courtenay as the doomed spy in Operation Crossbow.........done over by the double-crossing Anthony Quayle.

[Richard Tarleton]

There's a magnificent train journey early on, for example. It's in the film. The Zhivagos head off to their country house in Varykino, trying to escape the revolution. (And who should be in Yuriatin, over the hill? Julie Christie!)

Your analysis spot-on. Re coincidence, see my OP, it's used as a plot device rather too often.

The film shot largely in Spain, with the Pyrenees standing in for the Urals.....

[waldo]

Re coincidence, see my OP, it's used as a plot device rather too often......

You are right......I'd forgotten just how many there are in the book. I can take one or two big ones - a necessary and powerful device in love stories. But there are some really silly ones in the book - one, especially, right at the end.