Boris Pasternak and Nikolay Berdyaev: “А New Understanding of Christianity as a New Idea of Art”

Many researchers define Boris Pasternak’s novel, Doctor Zhivago, as a Christian one. The reflections on Christianity contained in it mainly belong to one of the main characters, Nikolay Nikolaevich Vedenyapin. Researchers have devoted a lot of work to the question of the origin of the image of Nikolay Nikolaevich Vedenyapin and his role in the novel, and came to the conclusion that he represents the philosophical movement of the early 20th century, which is called “God-seeking.” In addition to the fact that the “defrocked priest” embodies the desire for the renewal of religious concepts among many philosophers of that period, he expresses the philosophical ideas of one of them, Nikolai Berdyaev. It is widely believed among researchers that the main point of convergence between Boris Pasternak and Nikolai Berdyaev lies in their vision of history and immortality. Recognizing the influence of Berdyaev’s ideas on Boris Pasternak’s work, we dedicate this article to proving that Berdyaev’s philosophy and Pasternak’s “unspoken philosophy” are based on the same understanding of art. By analyzing this topic from both authors, you can better understand other topics such as history and immortality. The peculiarity of both authors’ reflections on art is that they explored this phenomenon in the light of the concept of freedom, which is a new approach compared to previous philosophical concepts. In this article, we will try to trace in which fragments of the works of Pasternak and Berdyaev both authors consider the phenomenon of art, and to what extent their vision turns out to be new in comparison with their predecessors.