Pasternak's novel is studied as "the other prose", as a book that combines the structural characteristics of an elite "lyrical epic" and mass fiction. It is aimed at "the fates of junction" and the direct effect upon a common reader that is not experienced in aesthetics. The novel's relation to historical reality is studied, along with its folklore and psychological characteristics, the interaction of its verse and prose, the development of particular motifs in The Poems by Yury Zhivago. Zhivago is the poet the early Pasternak himself wished to become at the end of his life (and never became though). His novel, as Varlam Shalamov noted, carried on with the tradition of Tolstoy's discourse of life, a responsible and conscientious one.