On the Candlemas of the Symbol and the Reality (Once Again on Doctor Zhivago)

The article discusses the problem of a literary method that was used by B.L. Pasternak in the novel Doctor Zhivago. The author examines the relation of this method with the ideas of symbolism and post-symbolism. In the novel, symbolist motives take new forms. Pasternak establishes a “live” connection between heroes and events, which symbolize “prime causes” of the taking place events and destinies. They belong to two worlds that are not separated from each other by borders between essential levels (from the lowest to the highest). The reality of life stops being a shadow of the highest reality, but the former is penetrated by the latter. Symbols do not indicate “prime causes” and “prime senses,” but become their “live” mediums. In space of the novel there is a “Candlemas” of the reality that shows itself through symbols and the reality of life, with all its secrets and solutions, happiness and grief, absurdity and clear sense. The literary method that make possible such Candlemas can be determined as “symbolist realism.” The Candlemas does not create harmony, it leaves all contradictions not resolved, all questions – without answer, expectation – without hope. His heroes symbolize the highest realities, and at the same time they live and die. It allows the reader simultaneously to be both the contemplator of game of the highest forces (as envisioned by symbolism) and the compassionate participant of vital tragedies of heroes of the novel (as in realism). B.L. Pasternak created a genre of novel-poem that by the means of poetic prose puts and solves deep philosophical problems of the philosophy of history and philosophical anthropology.

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