Yuri Zhivago's very name announced the great theme Pasternak drew from the peculiarly Russian belief he shared with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the physical resurrection of the dead.
"Why seek ye the living (zhivago) among the dead?" the angels in the Russian Bible ask the women who search for Christ on Easter morning, and from the first paragraph of Doctor Zhivago to the poem "Magdalene" which closes the novel, Pasternak reiterates his belief in the central mystery of Christianity. Zhivago's Christian name "Yuri" suggests the special Russian insight into the price of resurrection, the suffering and death undergone for love: yurodiviy, "fools of God," fitfully illuminate the course of Russian history, daring to speak the truth to the Tsars of All the Russias. Pasternak's title carries his message still further; in its oldest sense, "doctor".....
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