In the final poem of the cycle’s epilogue Akhmatova solidifies her own affinity for the Mother of God through a particularly Russian image of Mary as protector of all believers, who covers them with her mantle. With this image she also reenforces herself as a national poet, whose voice will protect people who no longer have a voice or a self:

«Requiem» is indeed meant to be that mantle of words to preserve the memory of the Great Terror, which in turn can protect Russians from ever suffering this awful fate again.

In this final poem Akhmatova rises above the poetic rivalry with Tsvetaeva, placing the «Requiem» cycle in an ancient tradition of monument poems that dates back to Horace and in Russia starts in the 18^th century and moves forward through Pushkin. Here too Akhmatova establishes herself as the moral voice of her nation by suggesting that the monument be placed by the door of Kresty Prison, or in the logic of myth, by the «Cross», to honor Russia’s mothers in their effort to withstand the injustice of the Stalinist state:

Akhmatova dramatizes the image of the sorrowing mother:

The weeping mother in the end is the final judge of the terror and the wasted existence of the Stalin years.

With «Requiem» Pasternak’s rivalry with Akhmatova gains in intensity. In 1939 Akhmatova read to Pasternak some of the poems from «Requiem», to which Pasternak allegedly responded, «Now even dying wouldn’t be terrifying»[367]. As a rule, Pasternak was known for not paying much attention to other people’s poetry, and Akhmatova was often irritated that he seemed so ignorant of her work[368]. In fact, such turns out not to have been the case. Pasternak paid her the highest compliment, again in the secret code of poetic language, competing with her in what he considered to be his most serious work, «Doctor Zhivago».

Pasternak started working in earnest on his novel in 1946, the year after World War II ended. The significance of the novel for its author is the topic of letter of October 13, 1946: «This is my first real work. In it I want to give an historical image of Russia of the last 45 years… this thing will be an expression of my views on art, the Gospel, a person’s life in history and many other things… The atmosphere of the thing is my Christianity, in its breadth a bit different from Quakers or Tolstoyanism, coming from aspects of the Gospel other than its moral ones»[369]. What he meant by the «other than moral» aspects of the Gospel was its life-affirming aspects, its passion and its faith in resurrection.

For first time in his career, Pasternak is realizing the concept of the Bible theorized in his 1929 autobiography as the «notebook of humanity», the living, ever relevant rethinking and re-adaptation of sacred text. Here for the first time he draws on biblical archetypes that resonate with historical, philosophical, and mythical layers of meaning.

«Doctor Zhivago» has been called a «montage» of biblical and liturgical texts both visual and verbal, including the name of Zhivago from Luke 24:5, which means «of the living»[370]. There are a great many links to Orthodox ritual, starting with the structuring of time in the novel through the Orthodox calendar and ending with long discussions of Orthodox belief in transfiguration through imitating the life of Christ and through human participation in transfiguration of the world to a divine condition, known as Apokatastasis[371]. The main point, however, is that this unique lyrical-philosophical novel narrates the poet’s creative process resulting in an unparalleled cycle of poems that make up the work’s final chapter and which end with nine of the finest religious poems in Russian literary history.

Pasternak’s image of Christ emerges in the novel’s and Yury Zhivago’s own philosophical meditations about history and the historical development of the idea of personhood, which hearken back to the Orthodox philosophies that emerged during the Russian renaissance of the pre-revolutionary decades[372]. This figure particularly emphasizes the idea of resurrection. As Yury recovers from typhus in the winter of 1918, he starts to compose a poem in his head, in which he hears a voice of new life urging him «to wake up». This line is linked in Yury’s consciousness with both «ад, и распад, и разложение, и смерть», on one hand, and «весна, и Магдалина, и жизнь», on the other, much as she was in Tsvetaeva’s poems[373].

The image of Magdalene emerges periperally, as in Yury’s sick deliriums, only later to become the powerful center of Pasternak’s idea of resurrection. Much later, the heroine, Lara Guichard, herself a Magdalene figure, adopts a philosophical view of Magdalene as the embodiment of female personhood, becoming morally conscious through moral failure and self-overcoming.

Many critics have discussed the central figures of Christ and Magdalene as they develop in «Doctor Zhivago». Seemingly missing in the critical commentary are the archetypes associated with Akhmatova Although the wife (of Lot) and mother (Theotokos), so important to Akhmatova’s poetic identity, would seem to have been ignored here, as is often the case in the world of artistic creativity, a kind of acknowledgment of this rival appears where it is least expected, in the byways and side pages of «Doctor Zhivago». We know from Pasternak’s 1929 poem to Akhmatova that, even in resisting this image, he associated her with Lot’s wife. In his novel Pasternak does secretly nod to Akhmatova, while openly ignoring her. The same figure of Lot’s wife is mentioned on the pages dealing with the strange, magical days in the summer of 1917, on the western periphery of the Russian empire when World War I dissolves and revolution breaks out «против воли, как слишком долго задержанный вздох»[374]. Now Yury Zhivago attends public meetings where everyone has a voice, and all sorts of things, even the most outlandish opinions are aired. One speaker heralds ordinary people speaking up as the modern-day equivalent of the story of Balaam’s ass, who has seen an angel in the roadway and refuses to move forward. Having incurred the abusive wrath of her owner, the donkey challenges him, asking him why he is beating her (Numbers 22:22–34). The speaker argues that nothing good will come from not listening to these new voices and claims that Balaam’s master ended badly by being «В соляной столб обратился»[375]. Clearly the speaker, a woman, is confusing the story of Balaam’s ass with the story of Lot’s wife. She is laughed off the podium, just as Pasternak is doing symboliclly to Akhmatova In poetic code, Pasternak is making a signal reference to Akhmatova and, in a sense, putting her in a position of irrelevance, just as he adopts the very position she was also claiming, as the poetic witness to Russia’s horrific history. At the same time, he is also making fun of the poetic strategy of finding biblical analogies for Russia’s revolutionary events, something he himself will do often as the novel progresses.