Syncretism of artistic time in the novel “Doctor Zhivago” by B. Pasternak

The article describes a new approach to the study of the category of time in the novel “Doctor Zhivago” by B. Pasternak. Due to the influence of B. Pasternak’s poetry on his prose, the genre of the novel was modified. The semantic structure of “Doctor Zhivago” corresponds to the space and time of the lyric poem, whose scale multiplied many times, a coherent plot appeared, but the principles of its construction remained lyrical. In particular, B. Pasternak perceives time as a perfect lyrical time, that is, as an inseparable connection between the past, present and future. The syncretism of time is a consequence of the syncretic perception of the genus of literature by B. Pasternak, who did not think of the epic, lyrics and drama separately from each other. The exceptional role of time in the artistic world of “Doctor Zhivago” is due to both the general modernist “search for lost time” and the peculiarities of the “personal aesthetics” of B. Pasternak, which is characterized by a tragic perception of the world. Thus, the tragedy is inherent in “Doctor Zhivago” at the universal level. Tragedy is manifested in a clear, essentially musical, structure of the plot and its inner completeness (each element of the plot is part of the whole concept, containing the same problems and techniques on a smaller scale). Most of the episodes that play the semantic role of the entire work are given from the standpoint of a holistic perception of time in the novel. Moreover, with the development of the plot, particular motives become many times more complicated, since they are intertwined, given from different points of view of different characters at different times, but always form a unity.