Books: Blood Relatives

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF BORIS PASTERNAK AND OLGA FREIDENBERG 1910-1954 Edited by Elliott Mossman Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 365 pages; $19.95

"No novel in this century has drawn such worldwide acclaim," said the London Daily Express of Doctor Zhivago. That was the trouble. By the time an English version reached the U.S. in 1958, two years after Boris Pasternak had sent his manuscript out of the Soviet Union, the novel's potential readers were already weary, and wary, of the Pasternak affair. It had been in the headlines for more than a year. In literary circles, skepticism and envy were aroused by the celebrity of the author and by his Nobel Prize. More disturbing to some intellectuals was the political aspect of the book. Caught in a crossfire of extravagant praise in the Western press ("a new version of War and Peace") and attacks by Soviet officials ("the dungwater of lyrical manure"), Doctor Zhivago became suspect as literature.

Thus when Edmund Wilson declared in 1959 that the novel would "come to stand as one of the great events in man's literary and moral history," scarcely anybody seemed to believe him. Since then it has been principally Russian exiles and specialists who have persisted in treating Doctor Zhivago as a masterwork of 20th century fiction. For all the attention the book has received from American critics, Doctor Zhivago might be a novelization of the movie of the same name.

Lately, however, there have been signs that Doctor Zhivago is assuming the place that Wilson had assigned to it. Interest has been quickened by the 1978 publication of A Captive of Time, the memoirs of Olga Ivinskaya, Pasternak's

"Lara." Last year there appeared a splendid biography of Pasternak by Guy de Mallac, the first in any language. Now comes an intriguing volume of letters by Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, lovingly edited and annotated by Elliott Mossman.

The letters span 44 terrible years, from Revolution and Red Terror through the great purges and war. The correspondents were cousins, akin in blood, spirit and culture: Olga, the distinguished classical scholar, and Boris, one of Russia's greatest modern poets. Of Pasternak's letters the most revealing bear upon Doctor Zhivago.

Shortly after Pasternak began 'writing his novel in the mid-1940s he wrote to Freidenberg: "It is my first real work. In it I want to convey the historical image of Russia over the past 45 years, and at the same time I want to express in every aspect of the story—a sad, dismal story, worked out in fine detail, ideally, as in a

Dickens or Dostoyevsky novel—my own views on art, the Gospels, the life of man in history, and much more."