On This Day in 1890, Boris Pasternak (author of Dr. Zhivago) Was Born

On this day in 1890, the writer Boris Pasternak was born into an affluent and cultured Russian-Jewish family. His father, Leonid, was a renowned artist and professor at the Moscow School of Painting; his mother Rosa, nee Kaufman, was a concert pianist. His parents’ social circle included notable figures of the day such as Sergei Rachmaninoff and Leo Tolstoy. The influence of this creative community led the young Pasternak to study first music and then philosophy, both in Russia and abroad. In 1912 he abandoned academia to pursue his true calling: poetry and prose.

The outbreak of World War I signaled changing tides for Pasternak; unable to serve in the army (having fallen off a horse as a child and been left with one leg shorter than the other), he spent four years as a clerk in a Ural factory. Despite his trepidation about the brutality employed by the revolutionaries, Pasternak opted to stay in Russia as the rest of his family emigrated to Germany. Over the next few decades Pasternak would alternate between despair and optimism in his new role as a Soviet poet.

Pasternak’s relationship with the Soviet state was complex and contradictory. Although an initial supporter of the revolution, by the late 1920s he became disillusioned with the usage of art primarily to exalt the Soviet government. After refusing to sign a 1937 statement from the Union of Soviet Writers supporting the death penalty for defendants of a show trial, he fully expected arrest, but was spared by Stalin himself (who thought the poet’s Tolstoyan philosophies to be harmless).

On the other hand, his fumbling defense of his fellow poets garnered him a mixed reputation among the more dissident Soviet literary elite. Pasternak’s political reputation was never a straight line.

Pasternak’s work was inseparable from his rich and tumultuous personal life. He suffered two failed love affairs before his 1922 marriage to Evgeniya Lurye, both of which are recounted in his early poetry. While his wife was abroad for medical treatment in 1930, Pasternak met and fell in love with the married Zinaida Neuhaus, for whom he would divorce his wife and marry two years later. Although he would remain married to Zinaida for the remainder of his life, in 1946, Pasternak would meet the much-younger Olga Ivinskaya, who would become his longtime mistress. Ivinskaya would spend nearly a decade of her life imprisoned for her association with the poet.

Pasternak was and perhaps is still best known in Russia as a poet. His first collection, “My Sister, Life” (1922) was a literary sensation. He was one of the four great poets of the 20th century along with Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Osip Mandelshtam. He is also renowned for his translations, particularly of Shakespeare, which remain popular with readers although critics find them to be very “pasternakized.”

In the West, his most lasting legacy is his novel “Doctor Zhivago,” a musing on the brutality of the Russian revolution and the inner turmoil of love and self-actualization. Pasternak’s life itself served as a basis for the novel. The setting alternates between Pasternak’s familiar Moscow and Ural locales, the characters bear resemblance to Pasternak’s own acquaintances (particularly the character of Lara to real-life Ivinskaya), and the protagonist navigates the same revolution and newfound state that Pasternak found himself caught up in. Completed in 1956, the book was rejected by Soviet publishers and was instead smuggled abroad for publication. The 1958 announcement that Pasternak would receive the Nobel Prize was met with outrage by the Soviet state, and out of self-preservation Pasternak turned down the award. He would live in relative poverty for the remaining two years of his life, before succumbing to lung cancer in 1960.

His house in Peredelkino, where he wrote some of his most famous works, was only opened as a museum on Feb. 10, 1990.

Just want to get something out there that not many are aware of but now you know.

First, s little bugaboo of mine with the poster of Pasternak's 'emblem', because in my experience, Pasternak is wrong about the lion tamer as higher value added than God on the Cross conquering death. That said, we forge on.

Pasternak's novel is a masterpiece of human nature while David Lean's 1965 Hollywood screen film was amazing and worth viewing multiple times over.

But there is another film series very few know about which brings out more fully the Pasternak view (which is why it was written and produced), it is also amazing. It tells so much more and like the 1965 film is worth viewing again and again.

Everyone reading here who appreciates Pasternak's great epic should do their best to get a copy or stream the following:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_(miniseries)

Doctor Zhivago is a 2002 British television miniseries directed by Giacomo Campiotti and starring Hans Matheson, Keira Knightley and Sam Neill. The teleplay by Andrew Davies is based on the 1957 novel of the same title by Boris Pasternak.

Doctor Zhivago
Written by Andrew Davies
Directed by Giacomo Campiotti
Starring Hans Matheson, Keira Knightley, Sam Neill, Kris Marshall

Theme music composer Ludovico Einaudi <== this composer is awesome
No. of episodes 3

Production Running time 225 minutes
Original release 24 November – 8 December 2002

The serial is the second English-language screen adaptation of the book, following the 1965 feature film. It was produced by Granada Television, with co-funding from the American PBS station WGBH Boston and the German company Evision. It was first broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom, beginning on 24 November 2002. In the United States, it aired as part of Masterpiece Theatre on 2 and 9 November 2003.

Here's a great summary by scriptwriter Andrew Davies

In discussing adapting the Boris Pasternak novel for television, screenwriter Andrew Davies revealed the task was "daunting because the book is reckoned to be a masterpiece and the film is a great movie and one that I admire very much. Robert Bolt is the king of epic screenplay writers in my book. But as I got further into the book I kept thinking that I didn't agree with Robert Bolt about how to tell the story... and I began to feel much more excited." He added, "It was also a relief to find so much in the book that hadn't found its way into the first movie and could make great drama.... I thought the film does the spectacle really well. Rather surprisingly, it also explains the politics very well, but I thought it could do a better job on the relationships. It's probably a bit controversial, but I thought we could say more about Lara and Yuri and how they get together; about Lara's extraordinary situation at the beginning of the story and Yuri having a dreadful start to his life with his parents dying. None of these things really came out in the movie, but they are there in the book. I think that if they look at both versions now, people will probably think that this version in a lot of ways works better for our time. It's more contemporary. I think they'll find the performances are more subtle yet speak to us in our time. Maybe my script will seem out of date in 20 years time because a lot of them do, but watching the original film, I think the central performances look stilted and dated now."

Initially Davies and director Giacomo Campiotti clashed about how to present the material. Davies recalled, "The first couple of weeks after Giacomo joined this project were horrendous for me because Zhivago has always been one of his very favorite books. He has always dreamed about filming it and has his own interpretation in his head. I can actually remember thinking after one long, long day, where we just didn't agree about a single thing, that it wasn't going to work—it's either got to be him or me. Somehow, we arrived at a compromise and I have almost forgotten what we were arguing about now, as now we are both very pleased with the script. I always knew that he would make it look beautiful because he has got a poet's vision and now, having seen the rushes and some cut footage, I feel like he is my favourite director of all time. Everything is delightful now... Giacomo Campiotti's direction makes it extraordinary."

Because so much of the story is set in the winter, it was crucial to film the series where it was likely snow would be available. Due to budget constraints, Russia, Norway, and Finland were deemed too expensive. Alberta, Canada was considered until the producers learned the previous year's snowfall had been minimal. Other Canadian provinces were rejected because the production crew was told it would be too cold to operate the needed equipment. Slovakia, where a 95% chance of snow was predicted, was selected for the March filming, and there was a blizzard two days before shooting began. But it quickly melted, and eventually the scenic designers had to utilize 1000 bags of artificial snow. Producer Hugh Warren recalled, "We had all the expense of going to Slovakia as well as the trouble of crossing the border, and then there was no snow. It was more than a little ironic."

Costume designer Annie Symons and her staff of thirty had to create more than 3000 costumes and 35,000 individual items of clothing for the cast. The characters of Zhivago and Lara each had at least 90 costume combinations, and six other principal characters had an average of fifteen changes each. By the time principal photography ended, a total of 984 yards of fabric, 300,000 yards of thread, 1 million buttons, and 7,000 safety pins were used.

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