WORLD SOUNDSCAPE PROJECT
SOUND REFERENCES IN LITERATURE

420.

You would find yourself transported to a vast, quiet park. Crows settled on the heavy branches Of firs, scattering the hoarfrost; their cawing echoed and re-echoed like crackling wood.

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Pantheon, a division of Random House, New York, 1958, p. 5.

PLACE: Moscow, the park of the Zhivago's

TIME: ca. 1890

CIRCUMSTANCE: reminiscence of Doctor Zhivago's childhood.

 

421.

The horses were like horses the world over: the shaft horse pulled with the innate honesty of a simple soul while the off horse arched its neck like a swan and seemed to the uninitiated to be an inveterate idler who thought only of prancing in time to the jangling bells.

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Pantheon, a division of Random House, New York, 1958, p. 6.

PLACE: Southern Russia,

TIME: Summer of 1903

CIRCUMSTANCE: Young Yura Zhivago, is driving across fields in a two-horse open carriage with his Uncle Nikolai.

 

422.

How enchanting this place was! Orioles kept making their clear three-note calls, stopping each time just long enough to let the countryside suck in the moist fluting sounds down to the last vibration.

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Pantheon, a division of Random House, New York, 1958, p. 11.

PLACE: Southern Russia, on a country estate near the Volga

TIME: Summer of 1903

CIRCUMSTANCE: Yura Zhivago is getting to know the estate.

 

423.

The sewing machines whirred frantically under the tread of tired seamstresses or their flitting hands. Here and there a woman sat on a table sewing quietly with a broad sweep of the arm as she pulled the needle and long thread. The floor was littered with scraps. You had to raise your voice to make yourself heard above the clatter of the machines and the modulated trills of Kirill Modestovich, the canary in its cage in the window.

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Pantheon, a division of Random House, New York, 1958, p. 23.

PLACE: Moscow

TIME: 1905

CIRCUMSTANCE: In Lara's mother's dressmaking workshop.

 

424.

The workshop was quiet. The window looking out on. the street was open. Lara heard the rattle of a droshki in the distance turn into a smooth glide as the wheels left the cobbles for the groove of a trolley track "I'll sleep a bit more," she thought. The rumble of the town was like a lullaby and made her sleepy.

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Pantheon, a division of Random House, New York, 1958, p. 25.

PLACE: Moscow

TIME: ca. 1905

CIRCUMSTANCE: A lazy summer Sunday morning in bed.


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