'Zhivago' author's passionate love affair

Before writing Dr Zhivago, Boris Pasternak was revered as a poet. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Before writing Dr Zhivago, Boris Pasternak was revered as a poet. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The author shows her admiration of the loyalty and courage shown by Olga Ivinskaya. Photo:...
The author shows her admiration of the loyalty and courage shown by Olga Ivinskaya. Photo: Wikipedia

The great-niece of Boris Pasternak has written a fascinating account of the passionate love affair that inspired 'Doctor Zhivago', writes Patricia Thwaites.

LARA: The Untold Love Story That
Inspired Doctor Zhivago
Anna Pasternak
HarperCollins

By PAT THWAITES

No doubt anyone who has read and enjoyed Boris Pasternak's Dr Zhivago will have a mental picture of his romantic creation, Lara. It has been many years since I read it, but I can remember being so enthralled by the book I almost assumed ownership of the characters, to the extent of being disappointed with the choice of Julie Christie as Lara on viewing David Lean's movie.

Now, included in this great-niece's account of the passionate love affair between Pasternak and his muse, Olga Ivinskaya, I have seen photos of the real people who inspired the book.

Would Olga, prototype for Lara, have matched my idea of his romantic creation? Not in beauty, but then Pasternak, with his long slightly equine face, doesn't have the movie star features of an Omar Sharif either. Between them was also a 22-year age difference.

What the book makes clear is that Boris and Olga were soulmates; there was a physical attraction, but what cemented their relationship was an overwhelming and shared commitment to literature. Upon meeting at the offices of an influential literary journal "their attraction was mutual and instant. It was easy to see why they were drawn to each other. Both were melodramatic romantics given to extraordinary flights of fantasy.''

Before writing Dr Zhivago, Boris Pasternak was revered as a poet. A gifted linguist, his other source of income was the translating of literary works from several countries, especially the works of Shakespeare.

He first voiced his intention of writing a novel in 1935, before meeting Olga, but this book makes clear the author's belief that if he hadn't met her, Dr Zhivago would never have been completed and published, such was her loyalty and commitment to him.

The Pasternak family has tried to ignore Olga's influence. Boris had been married twice before meeting her and "having a public mistress was indigestible to their staunch moral code''.  His sister Josephine (Anna's grandmother) was stunned to think he might "lend his inimitable prose to a subject both petty and vulgar''. 

But Anna Pasternak is clearly on her side, shown in her admiration of the loyalty and courage shown by Olga when under persecution by the fearsome Stalinist regime.

The horrific consequences for writers who were seen to be disloyal to Stalin form an ever-present background to this story. Boris, famous and influential, was not arrested for what was seen as traitorous in his writing.

Olga was an easier mark. She was tortured and sent to the gulag twice, the second time accompanied by her daughter. She refused to testify against Pasternak. Her loyalty to her lover was remarkable, considering he wouldn't leave his loveless second marriage for her.

Despite Anna Pasternak's famous name and connections, I was initially sceptical about the book's merit when I discovered that among her previous work was the gossipy expose of Diana's affair with James Hewitt.

However in Lara, she carefully and sympathetically describes a far more famous and enduring love affair, and provides readers with a well-written and researched picture of what life was like in pre- and post-revolutionary Russia. There's plenty of background family knowledge here, chilling suspense (one of her telling phrases refers to Soviet society of the time as having "a general atmosphere of fetid secrecy''), and the lure of discovering more about an extraordinary romance.

Patricia Thwaites is a retired Dunedin schoolteacher.

Win a copy

The ODT  has five copies of  Lara,  by Anna Pasternak, to give away courtesy of HarperCollins. For your chance to win a copy, email helen.speirs@odt.co.nz with your name and postal address  in the body of the email,  and ‘‘Lara Book Competition’’ in the subject line, by 5pm on Tuesday, October 4.

LAST WEEK’S WINNERS
Winners of last week’s  giveaway, Robert Burns:  Poet and Revolutionist,  by Harry Holland,  edited by Dougal McNeill, courtesy of Steele Roberts, were: Peter & Lynne Hill, of Mosgiel, Bill McDonald, of Milton, Ella O’Brien and Lauren McConville, both of Dunedin,  and May Ludemann, of Oamaru.

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