Doktor Zhivago (B. Pasternak)

Cover. Feltrinelli 1958.

Title: Doktor Zhivago [Doctor Zhivago]

Author: Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960)

Years of writing: 1946-1955

Year of first publication: 1957 (translation by Pietro Zveteremich)

Publisher: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli

Place of publication: Milan

First edition in Russian: Doktor Zhivago, Mouton, Brussels 1958

Description:
Doktor Zhivago was written between July 1946 and December 1955 when Pasternak had been excluded from official literary circles. The novel was initially titled Boys and Girls and aimed to document in ten chapters the years from 1902 to 1946.  It was the result of a profound crisis caused by the war and the disappointment of Russia’s hopes for renewal (see Boris Pasternak’s letter to his cousin Ol’ga Freidenberg dated 5 October 1946, Pasternak 1987: 343).
The events leading up to the first edition of the text were tumultuous. In the winter of 1955-1956, a final typewritten copy of the novel was delivered to the Soviet magazines “Znamia”, which had previously published the poems later included in Doktor Zhivago, and “Novyi mir”, with which Pasternak had signed a contract in 1947 that was later annulled. At the same time, a series of events led to the publication of the novel in tamizdat. In March 1956, Sergio D’Angelo, a young journalist sent by the Italian Communist Party and commissioned by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli to find potentially interesting literary works for a Western audience, arrived in the Soviet Union.
D’Angelo learned about Pasternak’s novel through foreign radio stations and, after visiting the writer’s home in Peredel’kino, asked him for permission to publish the novel in Italy. After an initial moment of hesitation, Pasternak accepted. Having learned of the writer’s intentions, the Soviet authorities expressed their disappointment and in September 1956, despite pressure from liberals, blocked the publication of the novel in the Soviet Union: “Novyi mir”, directed by Konstantin Simonov, returned the manuscript to the author together with a letter including an analysis of the work and the reasons for its rejection (endorsed also by “Znamia”). This rejection convinced Pasternak to have the manuscript printed abroad and, despite initial difficulties, on his return to Italy, D’Angelo went ahead with organising the novel’s publication. On 13^th June 1956, the manuscript was handed to Pietro Zveteremich, who wrote an enthusiastic review for Feltrinelli. At the end of June, Pasternak signed a contract for the novel’s translation which was entrusted to Zveteremich (suggested by Lo Gatto, Pasternak later proposed Angelo Maria Ripellino).
Editorial complications continued over the coming months. Il’ia Ėrenburg had informed Feltrinelli of “Novyi Mir’s” rejection. Pressure from the Soviet authorities grew stronger and Pasternak, persuaded by D’Angelo and at the explicit request of his companion Ol’ga Ivinskaia, sent a telegram to Feltrinelli asking for the return of his manuscript to make “important improvements”. As D’Angelo and Pasternak had imagined, the Milanese publisher did not heed the message or bow to subsequent pressure from Mario Alicata representing the PCI (the Italian Communist Party). By now, the Polish publisher Opinie had also expressed an interest but did not print the manuscript and, in France, Gallimard and, in England, Collins had also tried in vain to acquire translation rights.
Eventually with the involvement of Vittorio Strada, Aleksei Surkov (Secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers), Feltrinelli himself and Zveteremich, the novel was published for the first time in Italy and in Italian on 15^th November 1957 with a print run of 3,000 copies (there were at least nine reprints in the same year). The work was preceded by an introduction in which the publisher summarized the events leading to its publication. The Italian edition was presented on 22^nd November 1957 at the Continental Hotel in Milan.
After its publication  in Italy, many Western publishers became interested in publishing the novel in Russian, including the French publisher de Proyart, to whom Pasternak had delivered a new corrected version (an episode that caused friction between the French publisher and Feltrinelli), and the Dutch publisher Mouton, who finally succeeded, without Feltrinelli’s knowledge, in publishing the novel in September 1958, and distributing it to Russian-speaking visitors at the Vatican pavilion at the World Fair in Brussels.
Doktor Zhivago became a worldwide success and its publication one of the most important literary events of the 20^th century.  The work continued to impress and won Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature which he refused under pressure from the then Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev.

Giuseppina Larocca
[30th June 2021]

Tanslation by Cecilia Martino

Bibliography

• Alicata M., Sul caso Pasternak, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1958.
• D’Angelo S., Il caso Pasternak. Storia della persecuzione di un genio, Bietti, Milano 2006.
• Fleishman L., Živago e il poeta in Id. (ed.), Boris Pasternak, transl. by M. Graziosi, Il Mulino, Bologna 1993: 329-362.
• Fleishman L., Lo scandalo del Nobel in Id. (ed.), Boris Pasternak, transl. by M. Graziosi, Il Mulino, Bologna 1993: 363-397.
• Fleishman L., Vstrecha russkoi ėmigratsii s “Doktorom Zhivago”: Boris Pasternak i “kholodnaia voina”, Stanford Slavic Studies, 38 (2009).
• Garzonio S., Pietro Zveteremich e la pubblicazione del “Dottor Živago”, in A. Parysievicz Lanzafame (ed.), Pietro A. Zveteriemich, l’uomo, lo slavista, l’intellettuale, Università degli studi di Messina, Messina 2009: 73-86.
• Gardzonio S., Rečča A. (eds.), “Dottor Živago”: Pasternak. 1958. Italiia, Reka vremen, Moskva 2012.
• Mancosu P., Živago nella tempesta. Le avventure editoriali del capolavoro di Pasternak, it. transl. by F. Peri, Feltrinelli, Milano 2015.
• Pasternak B., Le barriere dell’anima. Corrispondenza con Ol’ga Frejdenberg (1910-1954), it. ed. by Nadai L. V., Garzanti, Milano 1987.
• Resoconto stenografico dell’esame del caso Pasternak all’assemblea degli scrittori di Mosca, in Ju. Galanskov (ed.), Feniks 66. Rivista sovietica non ufficiale, Jaca book, Milano 1968: 175-194.