Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [305]
PART TWELVE
1. Oprichniki: An order of special troops organized by Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584), loyal to him alone, living on their own separate territory (the name comes from an old Russian word meaning “apart” or “separate”), and opposed to the traditional nobility (boyars). They were given unlimited power and used it ruthlessly. Their number increased from 1,000 in 1565 to 6,000 in 1572, when the tsar abolished the order.
2. a heretic witch from the Old Believers: The Old Believers, also known as Raskolniki (from the Russian word raskol, “schism”), separated themselves from the Russian Orthodox Church in protest against the reforms introduced by the patriarch Nikon in 1653. Women among the Old Believers sometimes took the role of “Mothers of God” or “Brides of Christ.”
3. A little hare … my beautiful one: According to the commentary of E. B. and E. V. Pasternak, this “folk song” is entirely the work of Pasternak himself.
4. Kolchak … Ivan Tsarevich: For Kolchak, see part 10, note 1. Ivan Tsarevich (“Ivan the Prince”) is a hero of Russian folktales, often the third of three sons, who struggles with Koshchei the Deathless, goes to catch the Firebird, and eventually marries the princess.
5. Or else, for instance … the Novgorod or the Ipatyev …: Kubarikha’s speech, as well as what she speaks about, is drawn from texts collected by Alexander Afanasiev (1826–1871) in his Poetic Notions of Nature Among the Slavs (1865–69). The Novgorod Chronicle, covering the years from 1016 to 1471, is the oldest record of the Novgorod Republic; the Ipatyev Chronicle contains material going back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is a major source for the early history of southern Russia.
6. the book of the living word: The verse comes from a hymn from the service for the Nativity of the Mother of God, but Kubarikha connects the Slavonic word zhivotnogo (“living”) with the Russian word zhivotnoe (“animal”) and applies it to the cow.
7. He cut down … Flenushka: Pasternak based the stories of the butchered man and of Pamphil Palykh on published accounts of partisan life during the war with Kolchak.
PART THIRTEEN
1. O Light … presence?: The first line of the fifth hymn of the canon in the eighth tone, sung at matins. Zhivago repeats it along with the second line a little further on.
2. the Gajda uprising: Radola Gajda (born Rudolf Geidl, 1892–1948) joined the Czech Legion in Russia in 1917. During their evacuation across Siberia in 1918, violence broke out between the Czechs and the Bolsheviks, and Gajda and his troops combined with Kolchak’s forces, but in July 1919, after a falling out with Kolchak, he was dismissed. He then involved himself in a mutiny of SRs, which came to be known by his name, and when it failed, he escaped from Siberia and made his way back to Czechoslovakia, where he later took up the cause of fascism.
3. Romeo and Juliet: The words are spoken by Romeo in his last speech (act 5, scene 3, line 82). Pasternak quotes from his own translation, made during the early years of World War II.
4. a man in a case: Lara is referring to the hero of Chekhov’s story “The Man in a Case” (1898), who for Russians typifies a man physically and mentally trapped in his own narrow views and inhibitions.
5. Rosa Luxemburg: The political writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (see part 4, note 1), and in 1914, with Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919), founded the antiwar Spartakusbund (“Spartacus League,” from Liebknecht’s pen name, Spartacus), which on January 1, 1919, became the German Communist Party. She was shot along with Liebknecht and others after the crushing of the Spartacist uprising later that same month, and thus became one of the first martyrs of the Communist cause.
6. Goethe’s … neo-Schellingism: In his Naturphilosophie, Goethe, like Schelling (see part 11, note 6), sought to establish a universal order of metaphysical as well