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Creating Creation
Readings of Pasternak's Doktor Zhivago

By Susanna Witt
August 2000
Almqvist & Wiksell
ISBN: 91-22-01905-7
157 pages
$51.00 paper original

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In English and Russian languages. This Ph.D. dissertation investigates the process of creation in Doktor Zhivago, both as depicted in and realized by the novel. The first part examines the protagonist's understanding of art as "continuational writing." Part two examines the protagonist's own creative activity, showing how writing is persistently modeled as painting. Part three is a case study of the novel's "continuation" of The Brothers Karamazov. Part four shows how biological mimicry connects with the implicit aesthetic discussion in the book. And lastly it is suggested that the forest serves as a stage for the demonstration of the novel's poetics and philosophy of art.

Literature
Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature, No. 33