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Antonina “Tonya” Alexandrovna Zhivago (neé Gromeko)
Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky is a powerful Moscow lawyer and the lover of both Madame Guichard and her daughter Lara. He is also the lawyer of Yuri Zhivago’s father, whose alcoholism and reckless spending he encourages, eventually culminating in Zhivago’s suicide. Komarovsky is a cunning, selfish man, so he’s disturbed when his affair with Lara inspires a deep, uncontrollable passion within him. Still, he cares deeply about her in his own way, first leaving her alone once she decides to cut off their affair and then helping her avoid legal consequences after she attempts to kill him and shoots another man by mistake. Ultimately, Komarovsky’s love for Lara outweighs his jealousy: he helps her marry Pasha Antipov and move to Yuriatin, and he later returns to rescue her during the civil war by bringing her to the far east, where he has become an important figure in the Provisional Government. This generosity seems to extend to Lara alone, however, as Komarovsky is quite willing to sacrifice both Yuri Zhivago and Yuri and Lara’s daughter, Tanya, to ensure Lara’s safety—and his own.
Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky Quotes in Doctor Zhivago
The Doctor Zhivago quotes below are all either spoken by Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky or refer to Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 2: A Girl from a Different Circle Quotes
If mama finds out, she’ll kill her. Kill her and then take her own life.
How did it happen? How could it happen? Now it’s too late. She should have thought earlier.
Now she’s—what’s it called?—now she’s-a fallen woman. She’s a woman from a French novel, and tomorrow she will go to school and sit at the same desk with those girls, who, compared to her, are still unweaned babies. Lord, Lord, how could it happen!
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Part 14: In Varykino Again Quotes
“If they have time, if the sun doesn’t set beforehand” (he wouldn’t be able to see them in the darkness), “they’ll flash by one more time, the last one now, on the other side of the ravine, in the clearing where the wolves stood two nights ago.”
And now this moment came and went. The dark crimson sun still rounded over the blue line of the snowdrifts. The snow greedily absorbed the pineapple sweetness the sun poured into it. And now they appeared, swept by, raced off. “Farewell, Lara, till we meet in the other world, farewell, my beauty, farewell, my fathomless, inexhaustible, eternal joy.” And now they vanished. “I’ll never see you again, never, never in my life, I’ll never see you again.”
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With his lament for Lara, he also lamented that far-off summer in Meliuzeevo, when the revolution was a god come down from heaven to earth, the god of that time, that summer, and each one went mad in his own way, and the life of each existed by itself and not as an explanatory illustration confirming the rightness of superior politics.
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Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky Character Timeline in Doctor Zhivago
The timeline below shows where the character Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky appears in Doctor Zhivago. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 2: A Girl from a Different Circle
...Madame Guichard buys a dressmaker’s shop but remains dependent on her husband’s lawyer, Viktor Ippolitovich Komarovsky, for financial advice and emotional support. Though Komarovsky and Madame Guichard have an ongoing, torrid...
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The lawyer Komarovsky lives a luxurious bachelor’s life with his bulldog and spinster housekeeper in the Petrovsky Lines....
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...staff. Yuri, struggling to understand what happened, is struck by brief glimpses of the imposing Komarovsky and the forlorn-looking Lara. As they leave, Misha explains to him that it was none...
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Part 3: The Christmas Party at the Sventitskys’
In the spring of 1906 Lara decides her relationship with Komarovsky must end. During a thunderstorm at school she realizes the way out and asks her...
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...has no control over her own life, Lara comes to a decision: she will ask Komarovsky for money to live on her own. Once again packing the revolver, she sets off...
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...the children and elderly guests. Lara also arrives, dressed improperly for a ball and eyeing Komarovsky, who is buy busy playing cards and ignores Lara completely. Lara recognizes one of his...
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Part 4: Imminent Inevitabilities
...delirious Lara stays at the Sventitskys’, where she requires more medical attention than her victim. Komarovsky also stays behind, agitated and unsure of how to rectify the situation; he is torn...
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...packed up for the train trip the next morning, they drink and carouse all night—even Komarovsky is invited. Early in the morning, Lara wakes up to a thief in the apartment....
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Part 13: Opposite the House with Figures
...She tells him he has nothing to be jealous about; the conversation then turns to Komarovsky and his influence on each of their lives.
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Part 14: In Varykino Again
...home from the hospital as winter sets in again in Yuriatin. Lara informs him that Komarovsky has stopped in the city on his way to the Far East. Komarovsky, Lara explains,...
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Komarovsky argues that while Yuri is free to do as he wishes, he has no right...
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...Yuri’s doubts about Lara’s decision continue to grow. He urges her to reconsider leaving with Komarovsky. When she refuses, he plans to return to writing, hoping that soon he will be...
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...to think that Varykino was abandoned. Returning home, he finds another horse outside and recognizes Komarovsky’s voice inside arguing with Lara.
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Komarovsky greets Yuri and explains that he is offering them one last chance to join him—he...
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After Komarovsky, Lara, and Katenka depart, Yuri instantly regrets his decision and considers rushing out to catch...
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...Samdevyatov visits him, bringing him more alcohol and news that Lara successfully left Yuriatin with Komarovsky. Seeing the state that the doctor is in, Samdevyatov promises to return in a few...
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Part 15: The Ending
...the injustice of the fact that Yuri and Pasha Antipov (Strelnikov) are both dead while Komarovsky remains alive and free somewhere in East Asia. She then reminisces about her conversation with...
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