Welcome to week eleven of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.
After a chapter away from the main cast, we're back with Yury — now a captive medic of the Forest Brotherhood partisans, almost two years into a captivity he keeps trying and failing to escape.
This is the chapter where Pasternak puts a doctor who has sworn to do no harm into a firefight, and asks what a conscience does when events stop leaving it a choice. A reader's diary written in Ukraine on the first morning of the 2022 invasion gives us the frame:
"People only do that which they can't not do."
From there: two enemy soldiers carrying the same psalm to opposite ends, Yury's argument with Liberius about whether any theory can contain life, and Pamphil Palykh — a man who has killed without flinching, undone by the one death that follows him home.
Where do you think it's heading — does Yury get away from Liberius? Let me know in the comments, and I'll see you in the next one.
📖 Follow along with the essay and printable version at https://camscampbellreads.substack.com/p/doctor-zhivago-chapter-11
Lara: The Untold Love Story That Inspired Doctor Zhivago, Anna Pasternak
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book, Peter Finn, Petra Couvée
A People's Tragedy, Orlando Figes
Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War, Ed. Mark Andryczyk
It's also available as a YouTube video here.
All quotations are from the Hayward/Harari translation. Buy the Everyman's Library edition from Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones or Bookshop.org with this affiliate link: https://geni.us/bZsI
---
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
