When I searched this quote, it looks like the second paragraph has been picked out often, but the first paragraph gives a little context:

“But, first, the idea of social betterment as it is understood since the October revolution doesn’t fill me with enthusiasm. Second, it is so far from being put into practice, and the mere talk about it has cost such a sea of blood, that I’m not sure that the end justifies the means. And last—and this is the main thing —when I hear people speak of reshaping life it makes me lose my self-control and I fall into despair.

“Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking
and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your
or my obtuse theories about it.”

It’s passages like the one above that when you read them you think “Ah! so that’s why Doctor Zhivago is a classic.”

When he says that life “is never a material, a substance to be molded.” he’s questioning the common (but overlooked/taken for granted) belief that the the universe is something that was constructed out of nothing by an all powerful intelligence who lives in the sky and has a long grey beard.

That belief has not been mine for quite a long time. I don’t recall if I ever believed in the creator on his thrown amongst the clouds. And like a lot of people, I’ve flirted with nihilism. I might still describe myself as a practicing Absurdist.

But absurdism and existentialism are very similar to nihilism in my humble opinion. The difference is that “a nihilist” doesn’t have as much fun and is maybe a bit bitter about being born.

Camus is the type that has a couple drinks and hops in a race car and… dies – but the type who takes advantage of life and lives life to the fullest. (Sidenote: Camus considered himself more a Stoic than an Existentialist) Then Sartre and existentialism sit somewhere between Camus and the Big Lebowski nihilists or the goth teenagers smoking cigarettes across the street from the school parking lot. (Sidenote: Camus and Sartre were first friends, then somewhat rivals, and then bitter rivals, although Sartre expressed his remorse when Camus died.)

Anyway… Pasternak comes closer to Eastern philosophies like Buddhism and Taoism and the Chinese idea that the universe and nature is something that grows and “happens of itself”, rather than something constructed or designed.

I thought I would do separate blog post about this next bit. The first time I had the “Oh… so that’s why ‘Doctor Zhivago’ is a household name…” was when I read the following excerpt about Yurii Andreivevich Zhivago’s general thoughts on the life. Maybe I’ll come back and write a couple words on it but I’ll include it here and now as it seems applicable to the idea of Pasternak’s personal philosophy having an Eastern flavor. (Sidenote: “Resurrection” I misremembered as “reincarnation.”)

“Resurrection. In the crude form in which it is preached to console the weak, it is alien to me. I have always understood Christ’s words about the living and the dead in a different sense. Where could you find room for all these hordes of people accumulated over thousands of years? The universe
isn’t big enough for them; God, the good, and meaningful purpose would be crowded out. They’d be crushed by these throngs greedy merely for the animal life.
“But all the time, life, one, immense, identical throughout its innumerable combinations and transformations, fills the universe and is continually reborn. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you rose from the dead when you were born and you didn’t notice it.
“Will you feel pain? Do the tissues feel their disintegration? In other words, what will happen to your consciousness? But what is consciousness? Let’s see. A conscious attempt to fall asleep is sure to produce insomnia, to try to be conscious of one’s own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a light directed outward, it lights up the way ahead of us so that we don’t stumble. It’s like the headlights on a locomotive—turn them inward and you’d have a crash.
“So what will happen to your consciousness? Your consciousness, yours, not anyone else’s. Well, what are you? There’s the point. Let’s try to find out. What is it about you that you have always known as yourself? What are you conscious of in yourself? Your kidneys? Your liver? Your blood vessels? No.
However far back you go in your memory, it is always in some external, active manifestation of yourself that you come across your identity—in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And now listen carefully. You in others—this is your soul.
This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life—your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory?
This will be you—the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.
“And now one last point. There is nothing to fear. There is no such thing as death. Death has nothing to do with us. But you said something about being talented—that it makes one different. Now, that does have something to do with us. And talent in the highest and broadest sense means talent for life.
“There will be no death, says St. John. His reasoning is quite simple. There will be no death because the past is over; that’s almost like saying there will be no death because it is already done with, it’s old and we are bored with it. What we need is something new, and that new thing is life eternal.”