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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 Dr. Zhivago 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 Elsinore. Curiously, the very first poem in the collection at the
end of that book is entitled "Hamlet" and the significant cry rings
out of it: Abba, Father, if
it be possible Let this cup
pass from me. 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 The time is out
of joint: – O cursed spite, That ever I was
born to set it right!¹ 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. However, let us
begin from the beginning. For Pasternak has a well-pronounced view of things
and it is characteristic of his consciousness. 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.
¹ Hamlet,
Act I, Sc. 5.
Page – 185 Creation forms a global unity and there is
one pulsation, one throb running through all life. In this regard he is a
unanimist 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. Nature in her
sovereign scheme of harmony accepts destruction, 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. 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
"A thing which has been conceived in a lofty ideal manner becomes coarse
and material."
Page – 186 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 modern 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 herself for that
ideal. Sri Rama on the contrary sacrificed his personal individual claims to
the demand of his people, the collective godhead. 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. 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' commonalty, an
element or asset of human progress; it may also
Page – 187 hamstring, for
it is normally conservative and averse to movement and progress. 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
inclination 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. 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. 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 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,
The whole
existence awaits its warmth From just a
little suffering.¹ Pasternak's poetry is characterized by this tragic sensitivity, a nostalgia woven into the fabric of the utterance, its rhythm
¹
Rendered from the French version: "C'est que toute
existence attend Sa chaleur d'un peu de
souffrance."
Page – 188 and imagery, its thought and phrasing. "The eternal note of sadness" 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:
But who are we,
where do we come from When of all those
years Nothing but idle
is life And we are nowhere in the world!¹
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! But their
hearts are beating, Now he, now she Struggles to
awake, Falls back to
sleep. Eyes closed. Hills. Clouds. Rivers. Fords. Years. Centuries.²
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. 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:
The driven snow
drew circles and arrows On the window
pane. The candle on
the table burned. The candle
burned.³ ¹
"Encounter". ²
"Fairy Tales". ³
"Winter Night".
Page – 189 Or again The frosty night
was like a fairy tale, Invisible beings
kept stepping down From the snowdrifts into the crowd.
But the cardinal point is in the final settling of accounts.
In all the world Are there so
many souls? So many lives? So many villages
and woods? These three days
will pass But they will
push me down into such emptiness That in the
frightening interval I shall grow up to the Resurrection...¹
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 Surely it is my
calling To see that the
distances should not lose heart And that beyond
the limits of the town The earth should not feel lonely. ²
For the miracle does happen and man is waiting for that in spite of all the tragic interlude:
If the leaves,
branches, roots, trunk Had been granted
a manual of freedom, The laws of
nature would have intervened. But a miracle is
a miracle, a miracle is God. When we are all
confusion, That instant it
finds us out.³ ¹
"Magdalene" (II). ²"Earth". ³
"Miracle".
Page – 190 Yes, the captive tree rooted to the soil for eternity is as much of a miracle as the freed wide-winging bird in the infinitude, even as Death too is a miracle, the passage to Immortality, only its mask perhaps.
Page – 191
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