Product Description
1958 International Collectors Library - bound in wine red leatherette stamped is gilt foil, and ribbon marker ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Love and Revolution
"Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak, © 1957, 1958, 1958

Quite the love story.It is sad, and a lot is made of the Russian Revolution, as is right.The times were in turmoil and it affected everyone.It is to be noted that the same events are happening in Iraq today: factions fighting factions; injustice and terrorism are treated as if just and right because the perpetrators are a part of some group that thinks so; etc.
This is really a soap opera.People live their lives and have troubles, solve problems, create heartache and what not, just like we do in real life.The story does not deal in psychology, so a few times the choices of the characters are truly left to your own intuition and understanding ofhuman nature.Some of the philosophy spouted by these people gets a bit esoteric and convoluted, by and large, it is understandable, just a bit odd to read in a literary story.
As I read the book, I began to feel as if, if I tried, I could see Lara as a microcosm for Russian peasants.They were violated young, treated all right for a time, left to their own resources, on and on, up through the Russian Revolution.Maybe that is the quality of this book that so many people were enthralled to read it.It could also have been the history told through personal toil that waswhat people of the West were really interested in.I am not a real fan of that sort of literature.I did not enjoy reading Galsworthy, "The Forsthye Saga" either.They are just too mundane
It is interesting that this is a story of a philander.Yuri marries his childhood sweetheart, then finds another sweet and gentle soul to enjoy.The marriage falls apart due to social conditions and Yuri's inability to do anything for his family.At one point, he realizes he has not been much of a father to his children.It makes him sad, but there is little he can do to undo or make things better for any of them.I guess that, in the sense that a philander goes outside of his marriage to have sex for the heightened libido or something, Yuri is not like that.He truly loves his wife and Lara, seemingly equally as much.They both have the sun shining out of their root charka, as far as he is concerned.As for his last lover, there he is just trying to still be human, but his mental state is such that he fails at that and in the end abandons her. ... Read more

Product Description
Set amidst Russia's revolutionary upheaval in the early years of the 20th century, this novel (abridged for this reading) tells of Zhivago, doctor and poet, as he endeavours to come to terms with the momentous changes overtaking society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Early influences
Pasternak was born in 1890.The art school of his father was under the ministry of the Imperial Court.The family lived in aparments there.His father illustrated Tolstoy's RESURRECTION.

Boris was betwitched by Scriabin, by the freshness of his spirit.The negative side of Scriabin was his egocentric nature.The author's father saw Gorky.Mayakovsky and Blok read poems.

As a schoolboy the author was intoxicated by the work of Hamsun and Andrey Bely.He went to the University of Marburg in 1912.The author liked the early lyric poetry of Mayakovsky very much.In the poems of Pasternak and Mayakovsky there were technical similarities.

Essenin treated his life like a fairy tale.Both Essenin and Mayakovsky committed suicide.A quite substantial set of notes completes the text. ... Read more