Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago

by

Boris Pasternak

Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky is a powerful Moscow lawyer and the lover of both Madame Guichard and her daughter Lara. He is also the lawyer of Yuri Zhivago’s father, whose alcoholism and reckless spending he encourages, eventually culminating in Zhivago’s suicide. Komarovsky is a cunning, selfish man, so he’s disturbed when his affair with Lara inspires a deep, uncontrollable passion within him. Still, he cares deeply about her in his own way, first leaving her alone once she decides to cut off their affair and then helping her avoid legal consequences after she attempts to kill him and shoots another man by mistake. Ultimately, Komarovsky’s love for Lara outweighs his jealousy: he helps her marry Pasha Antipov and move to Yuriatin, and he later returns to rescue her during the civil war by bringing her to the far east, where he has become an important figure in the Provisional Government. This generosity seems to extend to Lara alone, however, as Komarovsky is quite willing to sacrifice both Yuri Zhivago and Yuri and Lara’s daughter, Tanya, to ensure Lara’s safety—and his own.

Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky Quotes in Doctor Zhivago

The Doctor Zhivago quotes below are all either spoken by Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky or refer to Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
History and Agency Theme Icon
).
Part 2: A Girl from a Different Circle Quotes

If mama finds out, she’ll kill her. Kill her and then take her own life.

How did it happen? How could it happen? Now it’s too late. She should have thought earlier.

Now she’s—what’s it called?—now she’s-a fallen woman. She’s a woman from a French novel, and tomorrow she will go to school and sit at the same desk with those girls, who, compared to her, are still unweaned babies. Lord, Lord, how could it happen!

Related Characters: Larissa “Lara” Fyodorovna Antipova (neé Guichard) (speaker), Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky, Madame Guichard
Page Number: 51-52
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 14: In Varykino Again Quotes

“If they have time, if the sun doesn’t set beforehand” (he wouldn’t be able to see them in the darkness), “they’ll flash by one more time, the last one now, on the other side of the ravine, in the clearing where the wolves stood two nights ago.”

And now this moment came and went. The dark crimson sun still rounded over the blue line of the snowdrifts. The snow greedily absorbed the pineapple sweetness the sun poured into it. And now they appeared, swept by, raced off. “Farewell, Lara, till we meet in the other world, farewell, my beauty, farewell, my fathomless, inexhaustible, eternal joy.” And now they vanished. “I’ll never see you again, never, never in my life, I’ll never see you again.”

Related Characters: Yuri Andreevich Zhivago (speaker), Larissa “Lara” Fyodorovna Antipova (neé Guichard), Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky, Katenka Antipova
Related Symbols: Winter
Page Number: 535
Explanation and Analysis:

With his lament for Lara, he also lamented that far-off summer in Meliuzeevo, when the revolution was a god come down from heaven to earth, the god of that time, that summer, and each one went mad in his own way, and the life of each existed by itself and not as an explanatory illustration confirming the rightness of superior politics.

Related Characters: Yuri Andreevich Zhivago, Larissa “Lara” Fyodorovna Antipova (neé Guichard), Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky
Page Number: 539
Explanation and Analysis:
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Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky Quotes in Doctor Zhivago

The Doctor Zhivago quotes below are all either spoken by Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky or refer to Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
History and Agency Theme Icon
).
Part 2: A Girl from a Different Circle Quotes

If mama finds out, she’ll kill her. Kill her and then take her own life.

How did it happen? How could it happen? Now it’s too late. She should have thought earlier.

Now she’s—what’s it called?—now she’s-a fallen woman. She’s a woman from a French novel, and tomorrow she will go to school and sit at the same desk with those girls, who, compared to her, are still unweaned babies. Lord, Lord, how could it happen!

Related Characters: Larissa “Lara” Fyodorovna Antipova (neé Guichard) (speaker), Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky, Madame Guichard
Page Number: 51-52
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 14: In Varykino Again Quotes

“If they have time, if the sun doesn’t set beforehand” (he wouldn’t be able to see them in the darkness), “they’ll flash by one more time, the last one now, on the other side of the ravine, in the clearing where the wolves stood two nights ago.”

And now this moment came and went. The dark crimson sun still rounded over the blue line of the snowdrifts. The snow greedily absorbed the pineapple sweetness the sun poured into it. And now they appeared, swept by, raced off. “Farewell, Lara, till we meet in the other world, farewell, my beauty, farewell, my fathomless, inexhaustible, eternal joy.” And now they vanished. “I’ll never see you again, never, never in my life, I’ll never see you again.”

Related Characters: Yuri Andreevich Zhivago (speaker), Larissa “Lara” Fyodorovna Antipova (neé Guichard), Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky, Katenka Antipova
Related Symbols: Winter
Page Number: 535
Explanation and Analysis:

With his lament for Lara, he also lamented that far-off summer in Meliuzeevo, when the revolution was a god come down from heaven to earth, the god of that time, that summer, and each one went mad in his own way, and the life of each existed by itself and not as an explanatory illustration confirming the rightness of superior politics.

Related Characters: Yuri Andreevich Zhivago, Larissa “Lara” Fyodorovna Antipova (neé Guichard), Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky
Page Number: 539
Explanation and Analysis: