Meanwhile...

Meanwhile...
I love all creatures. I consider them, all of them, to be sentient beings... I write thrillers, fantasy, mysteries, gothic horror, romantic adventure, occult, Noir, westerns and various types of short stories. I also re-tell traditional folk tales and make old fairy tales carefully cracked. I'm often awake very early in the morning. A cuppa, and fifteen minutes later I'm usually writing something. ;)

Friday, January 26, 2024

In "Doctor Zhivago," ~ Viktor Ippolitovich Kormarovsky: The Villain...

Viktor Komarovsky is a cruel and selfish, unscrupulous businessman who played both sides of the Russian Revolution by having friends in the Bolshevik Party and in the Imperialists. He is implied to be a constant womanizer as he seduces Amelia, a Russianized Frenchwoman, a widow, who works as a seamtress, the mother of Lara. Though portrayed as a powerful man, he, according to a rare 1958 interview with author Boris Pasternak, is the owner of a “small member”. Later, he eyes up the stunning seventeen year old Larissa, or Lara, herself despite the fact that Lara is engaged to a young revolutionist named Pasha Antipov. She is then seduced by Komarovsky and continues to see him in secret (Amelia finds out and attempts to commit suicide by drinking iodine, but is saved by Professor-Doctor Boris Kurt and his protege Yuri Zhivago). When Lara decided to end the relationship once and for all, after Pasha Antipov declared his marriage for Lara, Komarovsky tries to reason with Lara that marrying Pasha would be a huge mistake. In this, he is right for stern and politically obsessive Pasha will never understand or appreciate the passionately romantic and tender Lara. Lara ignores Komarovsky, so Komarovsky brutally rapes her and in retaliation Lara tracks him down to a Christmas Eve party and attempts to kill him with a revolver Pasha gave her. But, she only wounds his arm before she is escorted out of the building by Pasha as Yuri Zhivago, tends to his wound and Komarovsky callously offers Lara to Zhivago, when he decides he's finished with her. After Yuri's family is deported to Paris and Pasha, under the alias of the much feared Bolshevik commander Strelnikov, is fighting in the Russian Revolution, Lara and Yuri rekindle their on-off relationship (which started as they worked together on the frontlines of WW1). During which Komarovsky (now a Bolshevik) informs them that thanks to Strelnikov being considered a liabitity to the Bolshevik cause they are being watched by the Cheka (Soviet secret police) due to Lara's connection to Strelnikov via marriage and Yuri's personal and counter revolutionary poetry and desertion from Commmunist partisans. He offers the couple help in leaving Russia, but Lara and Yuri decline, instead choosing to hide in the abandoned Varykino estate along with Lara's daughter, Katya, where he writes the "Lara Poems". Sometime later, Komarovsky reappears with Bolshevik soldiers, telling Yuri that Strelnikov was captured by the Bolsheviks in route to returning to Lara and committed suicide when on the way to his execution, implying that Lara is in grave danger herself due to the Bolsheviks only sparing her to draw Strelnikov out of hiding.
Against his and Lara's will, Yuri sends Lara, and her daughter Katya, away with Komarovsky who had since been appointed a govenrment official in the nominally independant Far Eastern Republic, while Yuri himself accepts his fate to be by himself, as he refuses to accompany a man that he very strongly dislikes. (Yuri's passiveness is his main fault.) It is unknown what happens afterwards although it is implied that Lara gave birth to a girl Yevgraf believes is Yuri's daughter Tanya (Yevgrav narrates the story to an older Tanya as he's searching for Yuri and Lara's child) and that Lara, Viktor and Tanya got separated during one of Stalin's purges (Komarovsky let go of Tanya's hand amist the chaos of the Civil War when it broke out in the Far East). Lara tried to find her lost daughter with Yevgrav's help, but didn't succeed. (It's not mentioned with happened to Lara's other daughter Katya.) Later, Lara's put in a gulag and becomes one of the many, many lost persons of the Russian Revolution. It's assumed that she finally died, forgotten, in a labor camp. >>> Quotes: “Larissa, I want to talk to you. (Lara: Monsieur Komarovsky, have you...?) I beg you, drop this affectation of addressing me as "Monsieur Komarovsky." Under the circumstances, I find it rather ridiculous. Lara, I am determined to save you from a dreadful error. There are two kinds of men, and only two. That young man is one kind. He is high-minded. He is pure. He's the kind of man the world pretends to look up to, and in fact despises. He is the kind of man who breeds unhappiness, particularly in women. Do you understand (Lara: No.) I think you do. There's another kind. Not high-minded. Not pure. But alive. That your tastes should incline towards the juvenile is understandable. But for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there's two kinds of women. (Lara puts her hands over her ears, Komarovsky snatches them off) There are two kinds of women. And you, as we well know, are not the first kind. (Lara slaps Komarovsky, he slaps her back even harder, having no qualms about hitting a woman.) You, my dear...are a slut. (Lara: I am not!) We'll see (Komarovsky violently rapes Lara. attempting to cheapen and degrade her. Some time later, Komarovsky starts to leave the room) And don't delude yourself this was rape. That would flatter us both. „ ~ Viktor Komarovsky explaining to Lara why Pasha isn't an ideal suitor for her. “ Pavel Pavlovich, my chief impression... and I mean no offense, is that you're very young. (Pasha: Monsieur, I hope I don't offend you. Do people improve with age?) They grow a little more tolerant. (Pasha: Because they have more to tolerate in themselves. If people don't marry young, what do they bring to their marriage?) A little experience. (Pasha: I'm 26. My mother died needlessly when I was 8. My father died in prison. I have fended for myself. I've worked my way through school and university. I am familiar with things that you can hardly guess at.) All this is an experience of a kind, certainly. (Pasha: I've no amorous experience, if that's what you mean. None whatever. Lara's 17. That speaks for itself. (Lara hangs her head in shame knowing that she isn't the virgin Pasha thinks she is.) (Pasha: You probably find this situation comic. We don't. We're going to be married next year. I hope I haven't offended you by speaking plainly.) Not at all. „ ~ Komarovsky questioning Pasha Antipov's experiences. (From "Wiki Fandom: Villains".)

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