Motif of Illness in Boris Pasternak’s Novel “Doctor Zhivago”

Abstract

The motif of illness and recovery lies at the core of the worldview of the protagonist of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago. The novel refers to the motif of illness firstly because of the protagonist’s trade and the realities of the post-revolutionary and civil war years, which were accompanied (or followed) by typhus epidemics. Secondly, the motif of illness is inextricably linked with the time of major historic transitions, and as such with the prevalent feeling of violation of physical and psychological harmony of the universe. The article distinguishes and analyses a number of themes and motifs which are interwoven with the motif of illness, such as creativity, the release of unconscious impulses, liminal states, dreamstates, and the figure of the window. All these themes and motifs were outlined in Pasternak’s poems and later found their continuation and development in the novel Doctor Zhivago.