Zhivago or Zhivavo

 

Zhivago or Zhivavo?

August 10, 2021

 

I’ve been reading a book about the Russian author Boris Pasternak, his novel Doctor Zhivago, and how the CIA used that book in an anti-Soviet propaganda campaign.[1] There is an interesting (interesting to me at least) issue about how to pronounce the name Zhivago. In English and many other languages it is pronounced the way it is spelled, with the next to last letter correctly transliterated from the Cyrillic as a g and pronounced as a hard g. The issue arises from the source of the name. Pasternak took it from a verse in the Russian Orthodox liturgy that includes the phrase properly transliterated as “Syn Boga zhivago.” It means “Son of the living God.” The last word in the phrase, which is an adjective not a noun, means “living.” It is the source of Pasternak’s name for his book and its main character.

The problem is that in Russian the word zhivago is pronounced as if it were spelled zhivavo. The stress is on the first syllable not as it is on the second syllable the way everyone pronounces Zhivago in the name of the book. “Zhivago” is a perfectly ordinary Russian word. It is the singular masculine genitive form of the word zhivyi, which means living. The only thing odd about the way Pasternak used it and the way the Orthodox church spells it is that in ordinary Russian it is zhivogo not zhivago. That spelling difference makes no grammatical difference nor does it change the pronunciation of the word. The adjective zhivyi in all of its grammatical forms is used all the time in spoken and written Russian. There is nothing unusual or extraordinary about it.

Unlike most Russian words, however, that are spelled more or less the way they are pronounced, the adjectival ending ago or ogo is pronounced as if it were spelled ovo or avo. The word that Pasternak adapted for the name of his book is spelled zhivago, but in ordinary usage it is pronounced ovo. Anyone who knows Russian would, upon finding that word in a text, pronounce it avo not ago as it is spelled. If Pasternak’s intent was to use the adjectival ending ago as part of the proper name Zhivago he would presumably have intended that the name be pronounced Zhivavo not Zhivago. That pronunciation retains the actual meaning of the Russian word. Pronouncing the g as a g does not. I was not able to find any source online that pronounces the name Zhivavo. They all pronounce the way it is spelled but put the emphasis on the second syllable not the first one as it is in the ordinary Russian word. Did Pasternak intend to change the pronunciation of the adjective zhivago when he used it as the proper name Zhivago? I haven’t been able to find an answer. I do however find it to be an interesting question. If my finding that question interesting makes me weird, so be it.

 

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[1] Finn, Peter, and Petra, Couvée, The Zhivago Affair, The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book, Pantheon Books, New York, 2014.