Abstract

Tolstoy's analogy between art and "infectious" transmission of feeling serves as a starting point for this dissertation. Addressing the intellectual ambience of Pasternak's artistic beginnings, the thesis examines the impact of Tolstoy's controlling metaphor for art on Pasternak's aesthetic vision and artistic practice. ;Implicit in Pasternak's thought is the Tolstoyan belief that art is an essentially transmissible condition of the soul that ideally culminates in spiritual union with another. Pasternak's lecture on "Symbolism and Immortality" supplies the initial frame of reference for a discussion of the two writers' views on art as a transmissible condition of the soul. ;The association symbolism-immortality is shown to have been inspired by the concrete event of Tolstoy's death and by his enduring presence in Pasternak's artistic consciousness. In this perspective, his conception of symbolism and Tolstoy's "infection" appear to be intimately related, albeit in an inconspicuous fashion. The connection between them is established through the intermediate relay of Andrey Bely's essay "Symbolism as a World View" . Against this background, the underlying logic of Pasternak's lecture is related to his intuitive understanding of the semiotic function of art and rephrased in terms of contemporary semiotics . ;In order to conjugate Tolstoy's "infection" to the system of themes and devices peculiar to Pasternak's art, the thesis expands upon the Jakobson-Zholkovsky line of thought regarding the function of the metonymic principle in Pasternak's poetics. The works considered illustrate how the aesthetic implications of "infection" are selectively assimilated and distilled by either enhancement or abatement. The basic texts selected for analysis are Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Pasternak's "Letters from Tula," "The Childhood of Luvers" and Doctor Zhivago. ;Although no explicit theory of "infection" emerges from Pasternak's work, his often encoded references to Tolstoy's artistic personality and aesthetic doctrine is conducive to a richer understanding of Pasternak's complex response to his predecessor's system-building aspirations and, on another level, to the cultural atmosphere of his age