“Exit from the temple underneath the open sky of language” (Boris Pasternak's “Evangelical” poems)

The article is devoted to the consideration of some methods of Russian adaptation of Church Slavonic texts in the “evangelical” verses of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Linguistic allusions and reminiscences, direct and indirect echoes of biblical texts are revealed; the place of sacred vocabulary as a means of style formation is revealed. The conclusion is substantiated that the facts of biblical history were a deeply personal experience for the author, therefore, lexically and syntactically, Boris Pasternak did not separate, did not isolate, and did not fence them off from the modern Russian literary language. The “evangelical” verses largely determine the style of the novel, written “with biblical laconicism, with a gentle and tender, tearful intonation.” The article draws attention to the place of the Church Slavonic language in the mass linguistic consciousness of Pasternak’s contemporaries, which, of course, was reflected in the ideological and artistic content of the “evangelical” poems in the novel Doctor Zhivago .