The Private Life of the Writer

Having made the mistake this summer of acquiring a few DVDs of movie titles I’ve long been fond of to help offset my reading for Ph.D. exams, I wasted no time in adding to my collection my two favorite classics by British director David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, which address the poet-warrior / poet-lover dichotomy in a mutual companionship I’ve always appreciated as a writer. As far as cutting into the mythos of T.E. Lawrence by way of his acknowledged writing prowess, Lean’s Arabia doesn’t shed any more light on that subject than Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom (a tedious reading which I attempted years ago to glean his popular appeal for myself before giving up half-way through); instead, we are treated to a portrait of the writer as a brave creature of public creation, thanks in no small part to media outlets needing a hero to beat the drum of war with, namely the opportunistic Chicago reporter chasing Lawrence down in the desert, “desperate to tell a story.” Three years after Arabia’s release, Lean follows this real-life historical legend with his sensitive, doe-eyed Russian doctor from Boris Pasternak’s famous novel, a different breed of Romantic Warrior who wants nothing to do with war—other than to cure those who have been wounded by it. He seeks to exist by simply living without political entanglements and bureaucratic interference, and accentuated by his own well-known poetry, a prospect which becomes less likely in the growing revolutionary tide of post-Tsarist Russia where privacy quickly becomes the true luxury no one will ever afford again.

The two films make a curious pair of cases in modernity’s malaise impacting the creative writer. Both stories end unhappily for these men in a time of war’s confusion, with Lawrence and Zhivago banished to virtual exile in their respective countries—the difference being, of course, Lawrence lives outside the state where he can (and does) act with reckless impunity in his self-imposed code of valor with fame, while Yuri Zhivago, the reluctant adulterer, is forced to flee and evade within both his own emotions and the borders of a state that now regards him a petty, sentimental bourgeois. These men, however, to borrow Yegref Zhivago’s dismal estimation of his hopelessly idealistic half-brother, are writers living with a noose around their necks, not at all aware of the nature of their predicament. Though products of the advance of modern history, they are, as their antagonists insinuate, never as political as their writing should be. They have their selfish ways to inspire the masses’ own selfish ways, for which the state must ultimately suffer should one subscribe to the thinking of Pasha Antipov, or even the kingdom-building Prince Faisal who, despite his utmost gratitude towards Lawrence, exhorts to his British allies as soon as he leaves stage left, “We are glad to be rid of him, are we not?” And in such fashion, the accolades for these two heros are rendered posthumously by those who never really understood what they were thinking.

Why I keep finding my sympathies being drawn towards Zhivago may have something to do with Lean emphasizing Zhivago’s impulses and writing process leading to what will later be heralded as his “Lara poems” in the film, written at the Varykino estate while in seclusion with Larissa, a perspective lacking in Arabia. In that film, we must take someone else’s word that Lawrence is “a mighty poet,” while in Zhivago, at least we witness the good doctor finding his triumph, albeit briefly, in the inspiration from his secret mistress, the true love of his “private life.” This private life, alternately scolded and prized throughout the movie by various parties, reveals itself in Omar Sharif’s performance as a propensity for staring off, observing minutiae, and intuitive connection-making (i.e., the sound of clothes being ironed which Lean uses to displace Tonya for Lara in Zhivago’s distraction) among other writerly traits, feeding the restlessness of Zhivago the poet. His joy to seek and create in his language is not tempered by the state’s disapproval of it alone (as this can only be mere disapproval to the poet), but by the moral implications of his infidelity serving as catalyst to his imaginative conception, having abandoned a content marriage with Tonya which, in turn, will abandon her and their son to a life outside Russia—a high price to pay for a single book of good poetry, Lean says. Is Zhivago the talented poet also a flawed humanist by circumstance if not a thoughtless, betraying husband? As Allen Tate would profess the poet’s responsibility to his conscience above all else, including society, Zhivago’s agonized decision to give Larissa up to the chiding Komarovsky for securing her safety is the death of his private life—and, hence, writing life—by his own hand. It is an ideal more dramatic than poetic, and a bit self-effacing.

Lean’s perspective on this matter of the writer acquiescing all that is private in Arabia, while not altogether clear since it is the grand military exploits of Lawrence’s character that is of greater concern than the poetic ones, does foreshadow Zhivago somewhat, especially when we see the futile political scribbling of Lawrence in the deserted Arab congress pulled away by the hand of Auda ibu Tayi as he admonishes his stupidity, “I know what is in your heart.” Certainly, no one can say the same about Zhivago. We know the political solution will not fare any better for our conflicted poet-lover, which Lean doesn’t even consider for him. He leaves the frail Zhivago to die at the base of a golden statue saluting the brave workers as he tries to chase down Larissa in the street, the Fallen Woman beautiful to his life because she becomes beautiful by virtue of his poetic method falling into jeopardy in the new Russian modernity. Everything else from his language has already been sealed away in the forsaken writer’s recognition of an unwelcome paradigm yet to come.