Doctor Zhivago (99 page)

Like a new visitor enticed

Into the net of my profession?

But still, I would have Thee expound for me the meaning

Of sin, and death, and hell and brimstone fire—

When I, before the eyes of all, have grown into one

With Thee, even as scion and tree,

Because my yearning is beyond all measure.

When, Jesus, I embrace Thy feet

As I support them on my knees

It may be that I am learning to embrace

The squared beam of the Cross

And, bereft of my senses, am straining for Thy body

As I prepare Thee for Thy interment.

II

People are tidying up before the holiday.

Aloof from all this bustle, I am anointing

Thy most immaculate feet

With myrrh from a small bowl.

I grope for and cannot find Thy sandals.

I can see naught because of my tears.

Strands of my loosened hair have fallen

Like a pall over my eyes.

I have set Thy feet upon my lap,

I have poured my tears over them, Jesus;

I have entwined them with the string of beads from around my neck,

I have buried them in my hair, as in the folds of a burnous.

I see the future in such detail

As if Thou hast made it stand still.

At this moment I can foretell events

With the fatidical clairvoyance of the Sybils.

The veil will fall on the morrow within the Temple.

We will be huddled in a knot off to one side.

And the earth will rock underfoot—

Out of pity for me, perhaps.

The ranks of the guard will realign

And the mounted soldiers will start dispersing.

Just as a waterspout in a storm strains upward

So will that Cross be straining to reach the sky.

I shall prostrate myself on the earth at the foot of the crucifix.

I shall make my heart stop its beating, I shall bite my lips.

Thou hast spread Thy arms to embrace far too many,

Flinging Thy hands out till they reach the ends of the crossbeam.

For whom in this world is all this breadth,

So much agony and such power?

Are there so many souls and lives in this universe—

So many settlements, and rivers and groves?

Yet three days such as this shall pass

And they shall thrust me into such a void

That during this brief interval of time

I shall, even before the Resurrection, attain my full stature.

The turn in the road was illumined

By the indifferent glimmer of the remote stars.

The road led around the Mount of Olives;

Below, in its valley, the Brook Kedron ran.

Halfway, the small meadow dipped in a sharp break;

Beyond it began the great Milky Way,

While the silver-gray olives still strained forward

As if to stride onward upon empty air.

Furthest away was someone
'
s garden plot.

He left His disciples outside the stone fence

Saying,
"
My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;

Tarry ye here, and watch with me.
"

He had rejected without resistance

Dominion over all things and the power to work miracles,

As though these had been His only on loan

And now was as all mortals are, even as we.

Night
'
s distance seemed the very brink

Of annihilation, of nonexistence.

The universe
'
s span was void of any life;

The garden only was a coign of being.

And peering into these black abysses—

Void, without end and without beginning—

His brow sweating blood, He pleaded with His Father

That this cup of death might pass from Him.

Having eased His mortal anguish through prayer,

He left the garden. Beyond its wall His disciples,

Overcome with sleep, sprawled on the ground

In the wayside feathergrass.

He awakened them:
"
God hath granted you to live

During my days on earth, and yet you lie there sprawling.

Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man

Shall betray Himself into the hands of sinners.
"

He had scarcely spoken when, coming from none knew where,

A throng of slaves sprang up, a host of vagrant men

With swords and torches, and at their head stood Judas

With the perfidious kiss writhing on his lips.

Peter drew sword and thrust the cutthroats back

And struck a man and smote off his ear.

Whereon he heard,
"
No metal can resolve dissension.

Put up thy sword again into his place.

Thinkest thou my Father would not send

Sky-darkening hosts of winged legions to my succor?

And without harming even a hair of mine

My enemies would scatter, leaving no trace behind.

But now the book of life has reached a page

Which is more precious than are all the holies.

That which was written now must be fulfilled.

Fulfilled be it, then. Amen.

Seest thou, the passing of the ages is like a parable

And in its passing it may burst to flame.

In the name, then, of its awesome majesty

I shall, in voluntary torments, descend into my grave.

I shall descend into my grave. And on the third day rise again.

And, even as rafts float down a river,

So shall the centuries drift, trailing like a caravan,

Coming for judgment, out of the dark, to me.
"

THE END

BORIS PASTERNAK
belonged to a generation that gave Russia its twentieth-century poets—Blok, Esenin, and Mayakovsky. He was born in Moscow in 1890, the eldest son of Leonid Pasternak, the painter, and Rosa Kaufman Pasternak, the musician. Early in life he became interested in music and the study of composition, but later abandoned music for philosophy and went to study with Professor Cohen in Marburg, Germany. During the First World War he returned to Russia and worked in a factory in the Ural Mountains; after the Revolution he was employed in the library of the Commissariat for Education. He joined avant-garde poetry groups, experimenting in new techniques of rhythm and composition. His poems, most of which appeared between 1917 and 1932, gave him an eminent and unique position in the world of letters. In 1932, an autobiographical poem,
Spectorsky
,
gave rise to violent accusations of
"
anti-sociability.
"
From 1933 on, Pasternak lived a retired life, devoting himself mainly to translations of foreign poets. He also translated a number of Shakespeare
'
s plays; his versions are considered the most outstanding and popular in the Russian language.

Doctor Zhivago
was the first Original work published by Pasternak after twenty-five years of silence. It was announced for publication in Russia in 1954 but subsequently withdrawn. In the meantime an Italian edition was already on press and it could not be withheld from publication. Thus it happened that one of the most important works of contemporary Russian literature appeared first in translation.
Doctor Zhivago
has still not appeared in Russia, but has been published in Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian (University of Michigan Press), Spanish, and Swedish.

In October of 1958, one month after the American publication of this novel, Boris Pasternak was awarded The Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mr. Pasternak died in his sleep on May 30, 1960 at his home in Peredelkino, a writer
'
s colony about twenty miles outside of Moscow.