Book Report: The Poems of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1967)

I am not sure where I picked this book up–it does not show in any Good Book Hunting post, but it’s a Hallmark hardback, so I suppose it could have been in a book sale bundle. Hallmark issued this little gift book edition following the release of the film in 1965, when I guess Zhivagomania was at its peak? I bought a videocassette copy of the film last year, and I would not be surprised to discover a copy of the book from this era in the stacks since I know I picked up a copy of it in my Ebay peddling days. How soon I will get to them, I have no idea; I’ve seen mention of the film on a Substack somewhere in the recent past, but I’m not sure how eager I am to tackle a Russian novel these days.

The poems in this collection, 61 pages long, fall into three categories, broadly (with some overlap, of course). Poems about the seasons, mostly autumn and winter (being set in Russia, lots of winter amongst the poems). Love poems–given that the poems come from a novel which was a love story and that the poems were attributed in the novel to the title character, not the author, one wonders how much more meaningful they would be in the context of the story. And Christian poems dealing with the life birth and life of Jesus.

The poems are translated into quatrains with rhymes on lines two and four. No idea how much the translator had to alter the work to make it fit, but certainly some. Which is always the risk with translations, especially poetry, which I pretty much point out every time I read poetry in translation.

At any rate, better than the grandmother poetry I like to read. More approachable than the Pope I’ve saturated myself with over the last half of a year. Maybe on par with the Larsen I read before it. Which could be good news for Larsen: After all, Pasternak won the Nobel Prize, which I believe is a bigger deal than the Pushcart prize or even a Rattle prize. Neither of which I have won, to be clear.