«Doctor Zhivago» has been called a «montage» of biblical and liturgical texts both visual and verbal, including the name of Zhivago from Luke 24:5, which means «of the living»[370]
. There are a great many links to Orthodox ritual, starting with the structuring of time in the novel through the Orthodox calendar and ending with long discussions of Orthodox belief in transfiguration through imitating the life of Christ and through human participation in transfiguration of the world to a divine condition, known as Apokatastasis[371]. The main point, however, is that this unique lyrical-philosophical novel narrates the poet’s creative process resulting in an unparalleled cycle of poems that make up the work’s final chapter and which end with nine of the finest religious poems in Russian literary history.Pasternak’s image of Christ emerges in the novel’s and Yury Zhivago’s own philosophical meditations about history and the historical development of the idea of personhood, which hearken back to the Orthodox philosophies that emerged during the Russian renaissance of the pre-revolutionary decades[372]
. This figure particularly emphasizes the idea of resurrection. As Yury recovers from typhus in the winter of 1918, he starts to compose a poem in his head, in which he hears a voice of new life urging him «to wake up». This line is linked in Yury’s consciousness with both «ад, и распад, и разложение, и смерть», on one hand, and «весна, и Магдалина, и жизнь», on the other, much as she was in Tsvetaeva’s poems[373].The image of Magdalene emerges periperally, as in Yury’s sick deliriums, only later to become the powerful center of Pasternak’s idea of resurrection. Much later, the heroine, Lara Guichard, herself a Magdalene figure, adopts a philosophical view of Magdalene as the embodiment of female personhood, becoming morally conscious through moral failure and self-overcoming.
Many critics have discussed the central figures of Christ and Magdalene as they develop in «Doctor Zhivago». Seemingly missing in the critical commentary are the archetypes associated with Akhmatova Although the wife (of Lot) and mother (Theotokos), so important to Akhmatova’s poetic identity, would seem to have been ignored here, as is often the case in the world of artistic creativity, a kind of acknowledgment of this rival appears where it is least expected, in the byways and side pages of «Doctor Zhivago». We know from Pasternak’s 1929 poem to Akhmatova that, even in resisting this image, he associated her with Lot’s wife. In his novel Pasternak does secretly nod to Akhmatova, while openly ignoring her. The same figure of Lot’s wife is mentioned on the pages dealing with the strange, magical days in the summer of 1917, on the western periphery of the Russian empire when World War I dissolves and revolution breaks out «против воли, как слишком долго задержанный вздох»[374]
. Now Yury Zhivago attends public meetings where everyone has a voice, and all sorts of things, even the most outlandish opinions are aired. One speaker heralds ordinary people speaking up as the modern-day equivalent of the story of Balaam’s ass, who has seen an angel in the roadway and refuses to move forward. Having incurred the abusive wrath of her owner, the donkey challenges him, asking him why he is beating her (Numbers 22:22–34). The speaker argues that nothing good will come from not listening to these new voices and claims that Balaam’s master ended badly by being «В соляной столб обратился»[375]. Clearly the speaker, a woman, is confusing the story of Balaam’s ass with the story of Lot’s wife. She is laughed off the podium, just as Pasternak is doing symboliclly to Akhmatova In poetic code, Pasternak is making a signal reference to Akhmatova and, in a sense, putting her in a position of irrelevance, just as he adopts the very position she was also claiming, as the poetic witness to Russia’s horrific history. At the same time, he is also making fun of the poetic strategy of finding biblical analogies for Russia’s revolutionary events, something he himself will do often as the novel progresses.Textual evidence suggests that «Doctor Zhivago» might well be viewed as a response to Akhmatova’s treatment of the Theotokos, the Mother of God. Although it is certainly not by chance that Yury’s mother’s name is Maria, mothers in «Doctor Zhivago» are diametrically the opposite to Akhmatova’s images. The mother theme receives highly fraught treatment in Pasternak’s novel, where mothers are often not devoted to their children, and if they are, quickly become background characters. Mothers die or disappear or abandon their children in this novel. The novel starts with the funeral of Yury’s natural mother, Maria Nikolaevna Zhivago, whom Yury remembers adoringly and prayerfully even though she often abandonned him as she took cures in Europe for her failing health. Another mother figure is his adoptive mother, Anna Krueger-Gromeko, who dies early on.