| Doctor Zhivago, the David Lean movie, was fabulously popular in 1966. My cousin and I were first year students at different universities, and on returning home at Easter break, we decided to see the movie in South Bend.  Tonya and Yuyi arrive at Varykino  Tonya |  The theater was large, a sprawling orchestra at street level with balcony above, but only sparsely attended that night. We found places in a lower middle aisle, the half dozen intervening rows empty between us and the two patrons seated almost directly ahead, a strawberry blonde and an elderly man, her father. A coincidence entirely, I had met the young woman only a few months before, spoke to her many times on campus, while yearning for a deepening mutual attraction. |
| Perhaps my cousin noticed how quiet I became at that moment, but house lights were fading and Lara’s Theme began to play. There was no time to tell him, to say ‘I know that girl.’ A few minutes into the three hour movie, I watched her father lean close to translate for her the Russian banners carried by marching Muscovites. I could tell she was enthralled by what appeared on the screen that night and I tried to remember and understand it too, because of her. Unsurprisingly, everything of Zhivago is still imprinted in me, after more than 50 years. |  Muscovites attacked by dragoons |
 Varykino in winter. | Have you seen the movie? If you liked it, might I suggest reading the book as I did recently. The first fifty pages are daunting, dozens of seemingly unrelated characters are introduced, each with given, patronymic and family names, plus a couple nick names. But then, about page 60, Lara, Tonya, Yuri and Pasha begin to carry the story as their lives and tragedies weave together, and Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize winning novel begins to sing. |
 Pasha and Lara |  Lara and Yuri |
| If you remember the movie, you will notice rather profound differences to the novel, particularly at the end. This story is not for the faint-hearted, but there are many marvelous passages, like this one in which Lara is speaking to Yuri of how she came to love Pasha when they were teenagers, only children. “Early in childhood I began to dream of purity. He [Pasha] was its realization. We were almost from the same courtyard. . . | I was his childhood passion. He swooned, he went cold when he saw me. It’s probably not good for me to say it and know it. But it would be still worse if I pretended not to know. I was his childhood passion, that enslaving infatuation which one conceals, which a child’s pride doesn’t allow him to reveal, and which is written without words on his face and is obvious to everybody. He and I are people as different as you (Yuri) and I are similar. Right then I chose him with my heart. I decided to join my life with this wonderful boy’s . . .” |
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