The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers by Boris Pasternak Page A

The story is virtually plotless, full of reminiscences which Pasternak “objectivizes”; a young girl’s reactions to the world about her seem to become part of that very world. Another story is Air Ways (1925), set against the background of the 1917 Revolution, depicting in a fragmentary and quite unsentimental manner a father’s inability to save his illegitimate son, arrested for taking part in a counterrevolutionary conspiracy. But the story as such is less important than its imagery. Safe Conduct (1931) is an autobiographical account of the poet’s youth and early spiritual development.
    Pasternak has been compared to a number of modern poets, including Eliot, Hopkins and Rilke. More than they, however, he is a writer whose subject was a new manner of perception, a manner far more important than what is perceived or what is believed. It is the fresh way of perceiving reality which is original in his work. During the 1920’s Pasternak had considerable influence on a number of young Soviet poets, including Tikhonov, Bagritski and Selvinski. But his influence largely waned with the attacks on his work by Soviet critics.
    In 1958 a novel by Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago , appeared in Italy; subsequently the work was published in English and in many other languages. Dr. Zhivago is a lyrical novel of the life of Russian intellectuals during World War I, the Civil War and the early years of the Soviet regime. The hero is a physician and poet who reacts to the tragic happening of history by passive withdrawal and a search for freedom within himself. His love for Lara, the novel’s heroine, is a triumphant assertion of life in the face of the logic of historical events; so also is his creative work as a poet. The novel is a symbolic depiction of the spiritual death of Russia, particularly the old Russia of the intelligentsia, in the Revolution; at the end of the book the possibility of regeneration is symbolized by the appearance of Zhivago’s daughter Tanya. Marxism and Communism are sharply criticized by the author; to them he opposes a Darwinian conception of life and a Christian philosophy of history which emphasizes individual freedom.
    Later in 1958 the Nobel Prize for literature was offered to Pasternak; he at first accepted it, but later rejected it after he had been subjected to a storm of vituperation by Soviet critics. To date (1961) the novel has not been published in the Soviet Union. Pasternak died in 1960 of heart disease.
    WILLIAM E. HARKINS
    Columbia University.

I
    The Long Days
    Zhenya Luvers was born and grew up in Perm. Later on, her memories were buried in the many shaggy bearskins of the house, as her little boats and dolls had been earlier. Her father was manager of the Luviewsky Mines and had many customers among the manufacturers of Chusovaya.
    The luxuriant, brown-black bearskins were gifts. The white she-bear in the nursery was like a giant, full-blown chrysanthemum. This fur had been especially chosen for “Zhenichka’s room.” It had been carefully selected, purchased in a store after long bargaining, and brought to the house by a delivery boy.
    In the summer the Luvers lived in a country house on the other side of the Kama. In those years Zhenya used to go to bed early, and did not see the lights of Motovilikha. But, one night, the Angora cat, frightened in her sleep, made a violent movement and woke up Zhenya. Suddenly she saw people on the balcony. The alder tree which overhung the balcony railing was iridescent like thick, dark ink. The tea in the glasses was red. The men’s cuffs and the cards were yellow and the tablecloth green. It was like a nightmare, but it was a nightmare with a name that Zhenya knew: it was called “a game of cards.”
    But what was going on, on the other shore of the river, in the far, far distance, she could not recognize; it had no name, no definite color or clear contours. Its billowing movements had something dear and