So, this isn’t a review of Dr Zhivago, the novel, but of the poems written by Dr Zhivago in the novel. If you have seen the movie, you may recall a night he goes to a den in his house, a room with lots of windows, and it’s in the dead of a Russian winter. He has a pen, fresh ink, fresh paper, a blazing desire to write and he is smiling from ear to ear (that is, the actor Omar Sharif is) because he knows he will be undisturbed, and can write in solitude for as long as he likes.
It is every artist’s dream moment. Zhivago begins to write a poem. Outside, in the snow and pines, the wolves are howling. He happily launches the nib of his pen across the paper, paper white as the winter outside the window, and he is content and fully alive in the act of creation.
This book is a collection of the poems written by Dr Zhivago in the course of the novel which means, of course, they are ultimately written by the author of the novel, Boris Pasternak himself.
They are beautiful.