Vladimir Solovyov's Idea of All-Unity in Boris Pasternak's Novel “Doctor Zhivago”

Author: korolevaNV / Date: 30-09-2025 /
Publication Title: 
Vladimir Solovyov's Idea of All-Unity in Boris Pasternak's Novel “Doctor Zhivago”
Publication author(s): 
E.S. Buzhor, E.A. Basilicò
Abstract: 

The article examines the novel “Doctor Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak from the point of view of Vladimir Solovyov's theory of all-unity. It is suggested that the key provision of Solovyov's theory of all-unity is the opposition of the world of positive all-unity and the world of empirical disunity, as well as the need for their reunification. It is argued that Solovyov developed two ways of reunification - evolutionary-historical and individual-existential, realized through creativity and love. It is shown that Pasternak had organic feeling of all-unity, which he expressed through the concepts of life and immortality. It is noted that the means of achieving immortality for the poet is history, understood in the Christian paradigm as an already arrived future. It is argued that in the novel both ways of restoring all-unity outlined by Solovyov merge due to Pasternak's idea that history cannot reach its final goal without the conscious and free participation in the historical process of man. It is discussed that the paradigmatic form of this participation is creativity, which must acquire a theurgic character. It is shown that the means that allows the protagonist to discover the divine dimension and take the path of theurgic creativity is love, which has features of Solovyov's philosophy of love. It is concluded that the collection of poems created by the protagonist as a result of his life is an image of the future that has already arrived and at the same time a phenomenon of the beauty of the highest world of all-unity, capable of having a transformative effect on empirical reality, which is narrated in the epilogue of the novel.

 

References: 

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Key words: 
the idea of all-unity, immortality as the goal of history, the concept of the “future that has arrived”, personality as an “organic man”, theurgic creativity
2025. Issue 3 (87)
The DOI index: 
10.17588/2076-9210.2025.3.164-180
Publication file: