Literary Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

[AnotherCat]

Well, that is a load off my mind and legs uncrossed now.

Thanks for the research .

[drofgnal]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

Lol. From an internet search, it appears that there were toilets on trains used while the train was moving, sometimes being a hole, but that while in station they were often locked.

When I was a kid in 1962, we visited my Grandma in West Berlin. We took a train ride somewhere, may from Berlin back to West Germany. If you went to the bathroom and flushed, you saw train tracks. I was 6 my brother 10, he said 'hey you have to come see this...'.

Back on topic, my reading has slowed to almost nothing right now, without my morning hour at starbucks. My wife and her sister decided it was necessary to remove my mother in law from her assisted living facility, and she is currently staying with us for a few weeks until they figure out what to do. It presents many logistical challenges to say the least, her being incontinent, needing a walker and help getting up and down. I have zero time to myself for any reading right now between working from home and helping my wife out. I read a bit Friday afternoon and I've just gotten to where Yura meats Lara at the Front.

[AnotherCat]

I am getting well through it now and it seems for me that the story line is becoming much more cohesive. One thing that I thought early on, and now the story seems to be flowing is more easily seen, for me the prose is short on rhythm and smoothness, seems choppy and a little technical to me.

Maybe the original Russian is that too, I have no idea, but wonder if it is a result of the exactness of translation rather than the translation caring more for "nice prose".

One paragraph I liked very much and thought appropriate for this time:

"Those caught hoarding and concealing food supplies will be shot on the spot"

Supermarkets are bare of flour here, it is all stored in the pantries of hoarders with overly grand intentions of turning into bakers (seems a whole country of bakers is materializing?). Not a bad ambition, but sure to fizzle and the flour spoil, while the rest of us who have the routine of just buying what we need for our normal week or so of baking bread or other items go without .

[Bookworm_Girl]

Thanks for the childhood story, drofgnal. I hope you are able to get things sorted with your mother in law.

I was thinking about some of the things in this book too and about how much more relatable they are now than we could have imagined even a month ago. I certainly have a greater appreciation of not wasting food and creative meal planning than I ever did before.

My reading progress has been slowed. I switched over to I, Claudius for a change of pace and then I will return to this one in a few days refreshed.

[AnotherCat]

I have now finished the book; while I am pleased to have read it, I am not so sure that I can say that I found it a very rewarding read. That, in part and as I mentioned, may be the translation. The second half of the book flowed better for me but still struck me as seeming to concentrate more on being a technical translation rather than nicety of prose. Yuri's poems I gave up on, it is not often translated poems work well (plus I have an aversion to many poem types, that being my fault )

I wonder if Russians really did speak in several page long monologues during private conversations and if so did their listener's attention drift away as mine did? The few Russians I have spoken to have seemed to be quite more to the point (but modern Russians, of course).

One thing I did get out of it was additional evidence of how we in nations are molded by our histories (or in my own country's case, lack of it). While I had a splattering of Russian history and read a little of Solzhenitsyn's work (which is focused on a particular aspect of history), Dr Zhivago although a historical novel traveled over a period of great molding of the nation and, to me, contributed very much to the current character of it.

I think it could stand a second reading but I am not sure that I would be up to it; if I were to do so I think I would give the earlier translation a go. Wife and I still have the 3 hour movie to watch.