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<p class="paracenter">
<b>BORIS PASTERNAK </b>
</p>
<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para"> 
The portrait of the late poet (for he is more of a poet than a novelist, as has 
been pointed out) on the cover of the British edition of his novel <i>Dr. 
Zhivago</i></p>
<p class="para">
seems to be the very image of the tragic hero. Indeed he reminds one of Hamlet 
as he stood on the ramparts of the castle of Elsinor. Curiously, the very first 
poem in the collection at the end of that book is entitled &quot;Hamlet&quot; and the 
significant cry rings out of it:</p>
<blockquote>
	<blockquote>
<p class="para">
Abba, Father, if it be possible </p>
<p class="para">
Let this cup pass from me. </p>
	</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Here is a sensitive soul thrown into a world where one has to draw one's breath 
in pain. Even like the Son of Man, the exemplar and prototype, he has to share 
in the sufferings and errors of an ignorant humanity. He cannot escape and 
perhaps should not. It will not do like Hamlet again, to say
</p>
<blockquote>
	<blockquote>
<p class="para">
The time is out of joint. O cursed sprite </p>
<p class="para">
That ever I was born to set it right. </p>
	</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
No, the son of man and every man has to bear his cross heroically and 
triumphantly. Life is a calvary and the Kingdom of Heaven can be reached only by 
traversing Gethsemane. There is no short cut.
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-38</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
However, let us begin from the beginning. For Pasternak has a well-pronounced 
view of things and it is characteristic of his consciousness.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
The first article of his faith then—it is not merely a faith but a deep and 
concrete perception—is that the world is one. Creation forms a global unity and 
there is one pulsation, one throb running through all life. In this regard he is 
a <i>unanimist </i>of 
the school of Jules Romains. Life's single pulsation, however, he feels most in 
the plant world; the global 
unity 
there moves in a 
wonderfully perfect rhythm and harmony. Mankind in its natural, unsophisticated 
state shares in that rhythm and harmony and forms part of it. That is perhaps 
the stage of happy innocence of which many of the first great Romantics dreamed, 
e.g., Rousseau and Wordsworth. Viewed as such, placed as a natural phenomenon in 
the midst of Nature, in its totality, mankind still appears as a harmonious 
entity fitting into a harmonious whole. But that is a global bird's-eye view. 
There is a near view that isolates the human
phenomenon; and 
then a different picture emerges. That is the second article of Pasternak's 
faith. Life is a rhythmic whole, but it is not static, it is a dynamic movement, 
it is a movement forward-toward growth and progress. It is not merely the 
movement of recurrence; life does not consist in pulsation only, a perpetual 
repetition. As I say, it means growing, advancing, progressing, as well. That 
is, in other words, the inevitable urge of evolution. Ay, and there's the rub. 
For it is that which brings in conflict and strife: together with creation comes 
destruction.</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Nature in her sovereign scheme of harmony accepts destraction,
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-39</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">it is 
true, and has woven that element too in her rhythmic pattern and it seems quite 
well and good. She is creating, destroying and re-creating eternally. She 
denudes herself in winter, puts on a garb of bare, dismal aridity and is again 
all lush, verdant beauty in spring. Pain and suffering, cruelty and battle are 
all there. And all indeed is one harmonious whole, a symphony of celestial 
music.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
And yet pain is pain and evil evil. There are tears in mortal things that touch 
us to the core. In mankind the drive for evolution brings in revolution. Not 
only strife and suffering but uglier elements take birth; cruelty, inhumanity, 
yes, and also perversity, falsehood, all moral turpitudes, a general inner 
deterioration and bankruptcy of values. In the human scheme of things nothing 
can remain on a lofty status, there comes inevitably a general decline and 
degradation. As Zhivago says &quot;A thing which has been conceived in a lofty ideal 
manner becomes coarse and material.&quot;
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
An element of the human tragedy—the very central core perhaps—is the calvary of 
the individual. Pasternak's third article of faith is human freedom, the freedom 
of the individual. Indeed if evolution is to mean progress and growth it must 
base itself upon that one needful thing. And here is the gist of the problem 
that faces Pasternak (as Zhivago) in his own inner consciousness and in his 
outer social life. The problem—Man versus Society, the individual and the 
collective—the private and the public sector in modem jargon—is not of today. It 
is as old as Sophocles, as old as Valmiki. Antigone upheld the honour of the 
individual against the law of the State and sacrificed
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-40</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">herself 
for that ideal. Sri Rama on the contrary sacrificed his personal individual 
claims to the demand of his people, the collective godhead.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Pasternak's tragedy runs on the same line. Progress and welfare of the group, of 
humanity at large is an imperative necessity and the collective personality does 
move in that direction. But it moves over the sufferings, over the corpses of 
individuals composing the collectivity. The individuals, in one sense, are 
indeed the foci, the conscious centres that direct and impel the onward march, 
but they have something in them which is over and above the dynamism of physical 
revolution. There is an inner aspiration and preoccupation whose object is other 
than outer or general progress and welfare. There is a more intimate quest. The 
conflict is there. The human individual, in one part of his being, is 
independent and separate from the society in which he lives and in another he is 
in solidarity with the rest.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
The freedom of the individual is a double-edged sword —it is a help to progress, 
it is also a bar. Individuals, great individuals, are the spearhead of 
progressive movements. They initiate new and advanced beginnings. But if freedom 
means whims and caprices, too great a stress on personal likes and dislikes, 
then that brings about a deviation in the straight path, or rather, obstacles in 
the forward march. And the advancing time-spirit or world-spirit has to push 
them and cast away. There is also the other side of the shield. Collectivity, 
like the individual, may also be a help as well as a bar. It means the 
enlargement and diffusion of the individual's gain, a sharing in wide com-
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-41</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">monalty, 
an element or asset of human progress; it may also hamstring, for it is normally 
conservative and averse to movement and progress.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Zhivago at almost every step shows how the individual is thwarted in his inner 
and personal fulfilment—even in those matters that concern his higher and nobler 
inch-nations and pursuits, not merely his affairs of selfish interest. The 
demands of the collective urge, the progress that society needs and exacts is 
often a millstone that slowly grinds the individual down to personal frustration 
and failure. That is, I suppose, the central lesson of Pasternak's 
autobiography.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
That is why even when Pasternak speaks of social progress, a better humanity, we 
are not sure. For what matters is the present. A brave new world in the offing, 
yes. But how to take life in the meanwhile? Evidently, it is the life of the 
cross, you have to choose that or it is imposed upon you. The Kingdom of Heaven 
is within you and in spite of what the world and life are, you can create within 
you, possess in your inner consciousness something of the divine element, the 
peace that passeth understanding, the purity and freedom and harmony with 
oneself and with the entire creation, including even one's neighbours.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Inner divinity does not save you from an outer calvary. But you know how to 
accept it and go through it, not only patiently but gladly, for thereby you take 
upon yourself the burden of sorrow that is humanity's share in the life here 
below. I referred at the beginning to the tragedy of a sensitive soul; I may 
turn the phrase and speak of the
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-42</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">
sensitivity of a tragic soul. There are souls that are tragic in the very 
grain—it is that which gives an unearthly beauty, nobility—indeed the martyr's 
aureole. It is not only that our sweetest songs arise out of our saddest 
thought, but that, as our poet says,
</p>
<blockquote>
	<blockquote>
<p class="para">
The whole existence awaits its warmth </p>
<p class="para">
From just a little suffering.<sup>1</sup> </p>
	</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Pasternak's poetry is characterized by this tragic sensitivity, a nostalgia 
woven into the fabric of the utterance, its rhythm and imagery, its thought and 
phrasing. &quot;The eternal note of sadness&quot; which Arnold heard and felt in the lines 
of Sophocles, we hear in the verses of Pasternak as well. Almost echoing the 
psalmist's cry of Vanity of vanities, Pasternak sings:
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para"> 
	But who are we, where do we come from </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	When of all those years </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	Nothing but idle is life </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	And we are nowhere in the world! </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Here in this world, upon this earth we move as in a dream—I, you, everything, 
living or non-living, all together forming together one indivisible flow passing 
eternally to eternity!
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">
	<sup>1</sup> Rendered from the French 
	version: </p>
	<p class="para">
	C'est que toute existence attend </p>
	<p class="para">
	Sa chaleur d'un peu de souffrance. </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para">
Page-43</p>
<hr>
<br>
<blockquote>
	<blockquote>
<p class="para">
But their hearts are beating, </p>
<p class="para">
Now he, now she Struggles to awake, </p>
<p class="para">
Falls back to sleep. </p>
<br>
<p class="para">
Eyes closed. </p>
<p class="para">
Hills. Clouds. </p>
<p class="para">
Rivers. Fords. </p>
<p class="para">
Years. Centuries. </p>
	</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
A beautiful picture in the Chinese style—a few significant strokes, simple and 
clear, evoking a whole landscape, brimful of yearning and resignation and 
tearful quietness in which the whole creation is embalmed.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Pasternak's snowscapes are beautiful, they are particularly expressive of this 
nostalgia that pervades his whole consciousness like a perfume as it were. Here, 
for example, is a haunting scene:
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para"> 
	The driven snow drew circles and arrows </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	On the window pane. </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	The candle on the table burned. </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	The candle burned. </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Or again
</p>
<blockquote>
	<blockquote>
<p class="para">The frosty night was like a fairy 
tale, </p>
<p class="para">Invisible beings kept stepping down
</p>
<p class="para">From the snowdrifts into the crowd.
</p>
	</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br><p class="para">
Page-44</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">But the 
cardinal point is in the final settling of accounts.
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para"> 
	In all the world </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	Are there so many souls? </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	So many lives? </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	So many villages and woods? </p>
	<br>
	<p class="para"> 
	These three days will pass </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	But they will push me down into such emptiness </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	That in the frightening interval </p>
	<p class="para"> 
	I shall grow up to the Resurrection... </p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
This is one world, one and indivisible, and it moves, whole and entire, through 
a kind of wintry blizzard, bearing its heavy cross, moves yet to a new life, a 
miracle that shall happen—for such is the lesson of the life that the lord of 
life, the Son of Man lived and showed. Even like his master and guide, Pasternak 
says, to himself, above all
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">
	Surely it is my calling </p>
	<p class="para">To 
	see that the distances should not lose heart </p>
	<p class="para">And 
	that beyond the limits of the town </p>
	<p class="para">The 
	earth should not feel lonely. </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
For the miracle does happen and man is waiting for that in spite of all the 
tragic interlude:
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">If 
	the leaves, branches, roots, trunk </p>
	<p class="para">Had 
	been granted a manual of freedom, </p>
	<p class="para">The 
	laws of nature would have intervened. </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para">
Page-45</p>
<hr>
<br>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">But 
	a miracle is a miracle, a miracle is God. </p>
	<p class="para">
	When we are all confusion, </p>
	<p class="para">
	That instant it finds us out. </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Yes, the captive tree rooted to the soil for eternity is as much of a miracle as 
the free wide-winging bird in the infinitude, even as Death too is a miracle, 
the passage to Immortality, only its mask perhaps.
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-46</p>
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