I
must have been about fourteen when I first saw David Lean’s hauntingly beautiful film of Boris Pasternak's Dr Zhivago.
Set in and after the time of the Russian Revolution, it starred Omar Sharif as
Yuri Zhivago, a young doctor; and Julie Christie as Lara, the woman with whom
he falls deeply in love. Geraldine Chaplin was Tonya, his wife – whom he
also loves, but in a much quieter way. Rod Steiger was the brutal realist and
seducer of the young Lara, and Tom Courtenay was the young revolutionary whom
she marries. But the backdrop was a huge part of the magic too: the vast forest and steppes of
Russia; slender birches with leaves stirred by a restless wind; the snowy
streets of St Petersburg, splashed with the blood of the poor.
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| Julie Christie and Omar Sharif as Lara and Yuri |
The
story matched the sweep of the landscape, and Omar Sharif – dark, sensitive,
tender – and Julie Christie – passionate, vulnerable, and so beautiful – were the perfect vehicles to drive it. I, along with
at least a generation, was bewitched by it – and so when I saw this book,
called Lara and with a picture of
Julie Christie on the front (though, rather oddly, the picture is not from the
film), I immediately reached for it.
But
it’s not, of course, the story of Lara – that was Dr Zhivago itself. This is the story of Olga Ivinskaya, the woman who inspired much of the
character of Lara. Not all: the inciting incident, Lara’s seduction by
Komarovsky, is based on something that happened to Pasternak’s second wife, Zinaida,
whom he had wooed away from her first husband (who happened to be one of his best friends).
In order to be with her, he left his first wife and child. But they turned out to be very
different people; she had little interest in his career as a highly successful poet and was fearful that his determination to speak out freely would
cause trouble with the authorities. (She was quite right: it did.) It seems
typical of Pasternak's devotion to his art that he would take whatever he needed from the lives of both
his wife and his mistress to create his heroine.
Boris
met Olga in 1946, when he was 56 and she was 34, twelve years after his
marriage to Zinaida. They met in the offices of a literary magazine where she
worked. She was blonde and very pretty, and she was a passionate fan. Her
romantic life, like his, had been eventful: her first husband killed himself when he
discovered that she was having an affair with the man who later became her
second husband - who in turn died young, from lung disease.
Boris
courted Olga, and they were soon lovers. They had a great deal in common. As
Anna Pasternak writes: Both were
melodramatic romantics given to extraordinary flights of fantasy. ‘And now there he was at my desk by the
window,’ she (Olga) later wrote, ‘the
most unstinting man in the world, to whom it had been given to speak in the
name of the clouds, the stars and the wind…’ Epic romantics indeed. They
were together until Pasternak’s death; their lives were closely intertwined.
She supported and encouraged his writing, he relied on her utterly, he had a
close relationship with her daughter Irina – but he never left Zinaida for her,
even though, had he done so, his name would probably have protected her from a
great deal of suffering - including two stints in the Gulag.
Interestingly,
Anna Pasternak is Boris’s great-niece, so she has access to sources which would
have been less easily available to another author. She tells us that 'both Olga and her daughter, Irina, have
received a bad rap from my family. The Pasternaks have always been keen to play
down the role of Olga in Boris’s life and literary achievements…for him to have
had two wives… and a public mistress was indigestible to their staunch moral
code.' Anna clearly sees things differently. She writes towards the end of
the book: 'When I began Lara, I was
secretly concerned that I would discover that Boris used Olga…' but as she
went on, she concluded that this was not the case, and she was surprised to develop a more tolerant
affection for Boris.
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| Olga as a young woman |
Olga
inspired the character of Lara, but she assisted at the birth of the novel in
another way too. When, in 1957, after twenty years in the writing, it was
finally ready for publication, the Russian authorities were outraged by its
critical portrayal of the Revolution. They refused to allow publication unless
Boris would agree to water it down considerably. Unlike Zinaida, Olga supported
his refusal to do this, and worked with him and with an Italian publisher to
enable it to be published, first in Italy, later all over the world. Pasternak
was held in high regard in Russia, and had been for many years – even Stalin
had been an admirer. He was shielded from the fallout – but Olga was not. She
was sent to Siberia twice because of her association with Boris and the book.
The
story of Olga and Boris has almost the romantic, epic sweep as that of Lara and
Yuri – and it gives us a sobering glimpse into how life was in an autocratic
society which lacked the freedoms which we take for granted. It’s a fascinating read - and it really makes me want to see that film again...
A version of this review appeared early last week on Writers Review.
