Advent of the Inevitable

Title: Nutcracker Suite - Russian Dance Trepak

Composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

 

This moment in the novel is a very short one, but momentous nonetheless. The moment can best be taken from the last lines of Chapter 4, The Advent of the Inevitable. As Lara is working in the hospital during the First World War, and Yury is recovering from being knocked unconscious by an explosion, the patients begin hurrying around. Chapter 4 ends with, “All the patients who were not bedridden rushed in from the other rooms, hobbling noisily on crutches, or running, or walking with sticks, shouting: ‘Street fighting in Petersburg! The Petersburg garrison has joined the insurgents! It’s the Revolution!’”

This moment is filled with only celebration and hopes for a better future. They are not concerned with the pain that they will endure or the hardships that will come with a long revolution, or the death and suffering and horrors that millions will experience at the hands of both sides of the war.

The excitement and energy of this moment is illustrated in the short piece of the Russian Dance Trepak by Tchaikovsky. The pride that Tchaikovsky has for Russia that he puts into this piece matches the pride that so many people in Russia felt at the start of the Revolution. It is a jubilant, fast paced piece that reflects the scene succinctly. The quick violins that play in the piece even mimic the hustle and bustle of all the patients scurrying around the hospital shouting about the revolution. As Zhivago so well describes the feeling in Chapter 5, “The revolution broke out, willy-nilly, like a breath that’s been held in too long. Everyone was revived, reborn, changed, transformed.” Everyone was affected by this revolution, and at it’s beginning, the people saw only reason to celebrate.