First, Doctor Zhivago is dead! Oh, spoiler alert. He really does die, finally. It's a great book. No, better than great--worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize in literature--but long and difficult. And I'm a good reader. Honestly I'm not bragging, I just am, having read well over 100 books (here's a list of the ones I remember). Despite being a good reader, I needed two full weeks to read the book of only 560 pages. Yes, I worked on it, but I did just as much reading looking up Russian terms, history, maps. All of it because I can't stand to read and not follow the story. A word I may figure out using context clues? Oh heck no! Even when I'm certain I've figured it out, I have to make sure. I'm a perfectionist reader.
While these photos may not be specifically of places and people mentioned in the novel, they certainly do match the vision in my mind as I read. The beautiful steppes, the snow, the rivers, the architecture. All of it is described in minute detail.
"Here is Tonia walking through a field in a blizzard with Sasha in her arms. She keeps wrapping him up in a blanket, her feet sinking into the deep snow. She can barely drag along, using all her strength, but the blizzard knocks her down, she stumbles and falls and gets up, too weak to stand on her feet, the wind buffeting her and the snow covering her up. Oh, but he is forgetting. She has two children with her, and she nurses the little one. Both her hands are busy, like the fugitives at Chilimka who broke down and went mad with grief and strain" (373).
If Pasternak built a vision in my mind of snow, it would be these photos. I tend to read whole sections, looking up terms as I go and researching photos of the scenes when I get to the end of a section or chapter. I prefer to build my own images then sort of fact-check after.
"It was bitter cold. The streets were covered with a thick, black, glassy layer of ice, like the bottom of beer bottles. It hurt her to breathe. The air was dense with gray sleet and it tickled and pricked her face like the gray frozen bristles of her fur cape. Her heart thumping, she walked through the deserted streets past the steaming doors of cheap teashops and restaurants. Faces as red as sausages and horses' and dogs' heads with beards of icicles emerged from the mist. A thick crust of ice and snow covered the windows, and the colored reflections of lighted Christmas trees and the shadows of merrymakers moved across their chalk-white opaque surfaces as on magic lantern screens; it was as though shows were being given for the benefit of pedestrians" (78).
One of the rabbit holes I kept falling into is the history hole. Knowing practically nothing about Russia means know nothing about its history. But the history is what explains the motives and backgrounds of Pasternak's characters.
For example, I ran across the term bezpriornia, abandoned or orphaned children especially from the the World Wars, revolution or civil wars. I have spent well over an hour reading about homeless children in Russia, beginning with the turn of the 20th century and continuing to 2012, the most recent information available.And so, even though I've finished reading the book, I'm still reading it. I'm reliving the story and fretting for the world. I remember the characters and despair over inhumane treatment. I see the beauty of place and imagine blood running through war, revolution, and government executions. But I would read it all again.
That's the problem with being a perfectionist reader. I can't let go of the people, the places, the events just because I've closed the cover.
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