Twentieth-Century Russian Literature. Selected Papers from the ...

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10. DEATH OF TWO HEROES
* A shoots himself (XIV,18:449)
Y moves into A's former room (XV,9:470; 479)
The death of Y (XV,13:475)
Y's body is returned to A's former room (XV,14:477)
In this group, the pulsation of events returns to its initial pattern. The death of Antipov is a very
strong event, because at this moment, not only Yurii is present, but Lara as well, represented by
the red 'berries' of her husband's blood. With Antipov's shot, a new borderline is drawn in the
plot. Structurally, this shot forms a distant counterpart to Lara's shot at the Christmas party.
Unlike the first shot, the second one is fatal, and it prefigures the extinction of Lara and Yurii.
With this shot, the denouement begins: from now on, both Yurii and Lara move towards their
deaths.
All the details preceding and accompanying Antipov's death confirm his antagonistic kinship
to Yurii. The fatalistic trend that can be traced all through the text is continued here in another
illogical connection between Yurii and his antagonist. A few months before his death, Yurii
moves to the same room in the Kamergersky Street where Antipov had lived, and where the
lighted candle had determined their lives. This is Yurii's unconscious return to the past, destiny's
effort to rectify the missed opportunitis of their young years, when Zhivago and Antipov 'had to
meet', but never did. This is a response to the question raised by the author at the moment of their
encounter in the train: 'How could it happen that life had not brought them together? How could
this happen that their roads had not crossed?' ('Kak ne stolknula ikh zhizn'? Kak ikh puti ne
skrestilis'? (246)).
Then comes Yurii's turn to die, and this is the weakest event in the group, since at that
moment, Lara is absent from his life and thought. There is no similarity between the death of
Zhivago and Antipov, but a secret intertwining of the three lives – Yurii's, Antipov's and Lara's –
is confirmed again. Found dead, Yurii is returned 'to the place of his last abode' (477), the same
room in the Kamergersky house; he is laid there, in the place which belonged to Antipov and
Lara – as Antipov lay dead near the Mikulitsyn house where Yurii and Lara had previously lived
together.
Yurii's after-death return to the room in Kamergersky Street is merged with his funeral, the
strong event of the next group.