Dr. Zhivago is a world-renowned novel. The translation of this book by Mr. Khodabakhshzadeh, published by Negah, in my opinion, is a perfect example of a difficult, literary, and perhaps unbearable translation of a classic masterpiece that has taken away all the pleasure of the book.

There is no doubt about the greatness of Boris Pasternak's novel. However, this translation is not very popular among the audience and cannot attract readers. Perhaps the film made from this work is so skillfully directed and the camera takes such magnificent images, for example, of the vast white snow-covered fields of Russia, that it is not comparable to the words of the book, although they are poetic. In fact, what we see in the film has such a powerful and winning effect on the audience that it is not comparable to the book.

Dr. Zhivago is also a charming character. This doctor, who is in love with Lara, a former streetwalker and friend of his, has many noble qualities and a scent of unwavering loyalty. As soon as he sees the beautiful Lara, he falls in love with her so much that he forgets his family. Even when he escapes from captivity, he doesn't get any news of his family at all and goes straight to Lara!

Certainly, if the book was translated into Persian in a simpler and more accessible language, avoiding difficult words, the Iranian audience would better understand the subtleties used in this great work.

Trying to tick off the classics is indeed a nice and challenging task.

Particularly, when it focuses on the tumultuous topic of the Russian revolution, it becomes even more captivating.

I have to admit that I felt disconnected and confused through certain parts of the book.

I guess that was the author's ingenious way of summing up the chaotic period that these characters were living through.

The descriptive details of locations are undoubtedly the book's strong points.

The vastness of Russia is perfectly explored during the train journey, painting a vivid picture in the reader's mind.

There were times when I had to push through the difficulties, but reading historical fiction gives a great insight into the inspired real events.

The realities of the revolution are brutally harsh and heavy, but I can truly appreciate its classic appeal. It makes me understand the significance and impact of that historical period on a deeper level.

Overall, despite the initial confusion, this book has provided me with a valuable and thought-provoking reading experience.

A celebration of poiesis as a path to wisdom leads one to a primal place. This inner place is in danger of being overrun by modernity in general and the intense efforts at systematization that marked the last century. It is truly a book of great ethical significance, a desperate attempt to assert the irreducibility of humanity against the numerous efforts of the last century to reduce mankind to an abstract specter, whether through capitalist or socialist ideologies, each with its own social and behavioral engineering techniques to reshape man in the form of an abstraction above life itself. It's like the iced rowanberry soaring above the shiny abstract system in Pasternak's universe.

The work is a self-reflexive meditation on the nature of art and poiesis as an existential stance. Pasternak asks us to celebrate human life and thought as a continuous, unstoppable, radical poietic act without closure or tidy definition, formal completion or systematization, and the human being as a constant outpouring of creative energy. The poietic act, as it shows in thought or creation, connects us to the uncontainable ground of Being, as Heidegger might have said. This is evident in many passages that shift from the human domain to the larger domain of Being that contains the former. However, the poet can see this deeper dimension of history while the men making it and spouting slogans cannot, resulting in their destructiveness. The greatest enemy to historical progress thus becomes the human being itself, sacrificed for the sake of the superior light of the Idea.

Pasternak's creative process reminds me a bit of the romantics. In the West, like Wordsworth, who said the poet's knowledge is a necessary part of our existence, a natural inheritance. The poet rejoices in truth as a visible friend. He is the defense of human nature. Among the moderns, he is like Joyce, who also affirmed artistic creation as a medium for a form of knowing and ethical being that resists abstract reduction. Yet he is unique, having access to and drawing on the inexhaustible creative resources of Russian folklore and oral tradition not available to modern Western artists, who have to consider their practice as a perpetual struggle to start from scratch. Thus, for him, modern creation is not opposed to tradition. On the contrary, it seems to me he would have struggled to hold on to humanity in the inhuman world he lived in if he hadn't felt within himself the accumulated residue of so many past lives.