The last chapter of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago consists of a cycle of twenty-five poems…. These poems express the quintessence of Zhivago's life experience and the insights he has reached in the course of events described in the prose part of the novel. Whereas in the prose Zhivago's life is narrated and forms a part of a larger context, in the poetry it is he himself who, in his capacity of poet, is the sole "central intelligence." This does not mean that Zhivago's existential attitudes are immediately and directly revealed in the last lyrical chapter, in spite of the formal simplicity of the poems. Their meaning is hidden in certain key images and concepts, and in the very structure of separate poems and the cycle…. The main principle which unifies the Zhivago poems into a cycle containing a closed system of thought, is both structural and philosophical. It may be termed an "alternation of opposites."
The Zhivago cycle is permeated with certain contrasting concepts and images. These are: (a) darkness and light, (b) oblivion and remembrance (or departure and return), (c) sickness and health, (d) autumn and spring (winter and summer), (e) sleep and vigil (awakening), and (f) death and life (resurrection). These opposites which may be further generalized under headings such as "passivity" and "activity," or "disintegration" and "synthesis," are shown in sequences of alternation, either in one poem, or several poems, or the whole cycle. Awareness of the constant presence of this pattern is a help to understanding the cycle. (pp. 438-39)
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