Article: Lara's Theme

Poetry makes nothing happen.‎

- Auden‎

‎"The private life is dead. History has killed it in Russia."‎

Who did not thrill to these words, uttered in his tense and taut style by Tom ‎Courtney, the young revolutionary? Marxist and non-Marxist alike felt a frisson at the ‎sheer imperiousness of this pronouncement, magnificent in its sentiment and terrible in ‎its implications. ‎

It takes some time to understand Sir David Lean's "Dr. Zhivago". Unlike his ‎other epics - "Bridge on the River Kwai", "Lawrence of Arabia" - "Dr.Zhivago" was ‎more "opaque". While "Kwai" and "Lawrence" had slender story-lines, "Zhivago" was ‎much more intricate and convoluted in its plot. And while the other films were devoid of ‎glamour and romance - and chock-full of adventure - the Russian epic surfeited the ‎viewer with both. The beauty and figure of Larissa and the handsome demeanour of ‎Zhivago overshadowed all else. But then, wasn't that what the film was all about - the ‎private life, private love? And the haunting melody of Lara's theme, Maurice Jarre's ‎superb composition that runs like a unifying thread through every scene, inspires ‎horripilation even as we recall the notes!‎

Not that the poet was against the revolution. In a brief scene he explains his subtle ‎reasons for going on writing his "bourgeois" poetry to his half-brother. He likens the ‎revolution to a surgical operation undertaken to remove a tumour. Poetry serves as a sort ‎of "anaesthesia", keeping the body alive. Somebody has to keep the body politic alive by ‎‎"living". This explains the doomed romance of Lara and Zhivago, and the poetry inspired ‎by that romance - against the backdrop of revolution. ‎

Russia has since then done a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. It would appear that ‎rumours about the death of the private life had been greatly exaggerated by Pasha ‎Antipov, alias Strelnikov. However, if any advertisement of the evils of the private life ‎were needed one need not look beyond present-day Russia. Law and order appears to ‎have been the foremost items to have been privatised. Accountability at every level has ‎also been privatised. It does not seem to be the case, though, that people are reading more ‎poetry. In fact, the consumption of literary trash and the consumption of alcohol and ‎cigarettes serve the same purpose - to numb the mind. A concomitant renaissance of ‎religious life underscores the thorough privatisation and desocialisation of the individual. ‎Not only Strelnikov, even Zhivago was in error. ‎

A friend of mine was in Russia in the early eighties. On his periodic visit to the ‎motherland, he would recount the good life the students from the motherland were ‎enjoying in Russia: the easy trips to Europe, the smuggled goods that helped pay for ‎those easy trips, the girls, the romance, the culture (he was the only one at the Bolshoi in ‎a pair of jeans!)....It all seemed like a fairy-tale here, to me. Besides, it wasn't supposed ‎to be true. Russia was supposed to be running out of everything, from cabbages to toilet ‎paper. Yes, he did mention the bread-queues, but everyone (except apparatchiki) had to ‎join the queues, and everyone ultimately got the bread. There was something totally ‎democratic about a supposedly totalitarian system. ‎

Now, of course, Russia is really democratic, much as we are. There's a ballot-box ‎ritual, and there are political parties. Never mind that a few people have made fortunes, ‎and the rest are cold and drunk (not necessarily at the same time). There's even a thriving ‎civil society - there are, apparently, several thousand NGOs. ‎

And where are the dissidents? Well, so long as they had a system or a person to ‎hate and direct their poems and plays against, they were relevant, even heroic. Who can ‎blame them, if, today, they have cashed in on that goodwill? The Czech dissident has ‎been exemplary in this regard. And none more so than Vladimir Zelezny, once a ‎vehement critic of communism, and now co-owner of TV Nova, the most popular TV ‎channel. Allow me a little digression. When the BBC first started broadcasting here, the ‎weather report was, well, like a fresh breath after the musty weather forecasts at the f*g-‎end of the news on national TV. But one would be very surprised if anyone in the Czech ‎republic watches the BBC or CNN weather forecasts; for TV Nova predicts sunshine and ‎rain using (no, I'm not inventing this) naked weather girls. "We just show what the ‎market wants," explains Mr. Zelezny. If opera were as popular as guns and naked ‎women, he says, we would show opera. ‎

Of course, Mr. Zelezny! ‎

And how have our dissidents fared in Bangladesh? The intellectual who does not ‎run his own NGO and drive around in a Pajero and live in a swanky apartment needs to ‎be ferreted out from among those who do. There are the frequent junkets abroad - ‎impressive-sounding seminars, conferences, workshops. Even the environment - a classic ‎case of market failure - has been turned into a marketable commodity. Well, if Mr. ‎Zelezny can sell the weather, why can't we? ‎

And to think that at one time heroic people had sacrificed their lives and well-‎being for an idea that today is nothing but a commodity. Take the Czech Republic, again. ‎On January 16, 1969 Jan Palach burned himself to death in public, in protest against loss ‎of national independence. When a correspondent from an international newspaper ‎interviewed modern Czech youths, one of them recalled him vaguely. "The guy who did ‎that Buddhist thing, right?" inquired one of them. As Mrs. Thatcher famously observed, ‎‎"There is no such thing as society". Kids today are more familiar with Nike and ‎McDonalds then the memory of Jan Palach, who had done the Buddhist thing. ‎

Why? The answer again can be found in "Dr.Zhivago". And the answer lies in ‎marriage and love. Zhivago's "arranged"‎ marriage with his cousin fails; the ‎‎"spontaneous" love for Lara, on the other hand nearly succeeds. Nearly, because it was ‎too volatile, too disorderly, too passionate to be contained within human limits. The film ‎glorifies the individual, in her love, and downplays the role of all third parties - the state, ‎the family, society. These are seen as creating artificial emotions, fictitious passions. The ‎Russian, Czech, and indeed our own experience have shown that the absence of a third ‎party can be disastrous. ‎