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Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time
Joseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume "Dostoevsky" is widely recognized as the best biography of the writer in any language - and one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century.
Now Frank's monumental, 2500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume with a new preface by the author.
Carefully preserving the original work's acclaimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time" illuminates the writer's works - from his first novel "Poor Folk" to "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov" - by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideological context.
More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.
Now Frank's monumental, 2500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume with a new preface by the author.
Carefully preserving the original work's acclaimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time" illuminates the writer's works - from his first novel "Poor Folk" to "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov" - by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideological context.
More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.
984 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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6458 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Frank
85 books138 followersJoseph Frank was professor emeritus of Slavic and comparative literature at Stanford and Princeton. The five volumes of his Dostoevsky biography won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, two James Russell Lowell Prizes, and two Christian Gauss Awards, and have been translated into numerous languages.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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December 8, 2016
This is a LONG but incredible recent biography about the great Fyodor Dostoyevski. Joseph Frank took advantage of the opening of archives in Russia that were previously unaccessible behind the Iron Curtain and gives us a fascinating story of this most contradictory of writers - intensely religious and yet capable of creating anarchists and nihilists in his writing and of writing one of the most heart wrenching and faith crushing chapters in all of literature about religion - The Grand Inquisitor. A man of great passion and, alas, full of pro-Russian anti-Semitism, he suffered greatly from his exclusion to the Siberia which he immortalised in Notes from the House of the Dead and suffered health wise the rest of his life. That being said, he created an ensemble of books that are one of the greatest pinnacles of literature: Crime and Punishment, The Adolescent, The Demons, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov all of which are beyond description in terms of the incredible writing, level of psychological depth to the characters and capturing of the unique Russian spirit and especially of the very volatile times he lived in. This is an absolute must biography for those who love Dosto's works and wish to understand more about the man and the historical context that made the works possible.
May 2, 2021
THE EXECUTION OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY 23 DECEMBER 1849
Young Dosto drifted into some regular meetings at this posh guy’s private house where they talked about the need to liberate the serfs and get rid of state censorship, nothing very radical, but this group of genteel debaters were shopped to the police and raided and carted off to jail and put on trial for sedition and get this, they were SENTENCED TO DEATH. Yes, people got death sentences for genteel debating in 19th century Russia.
And they were dragged out on 23 December, no last Christmas turkey for them, no unwrapping final presents, nope. And they were tied to stakes and a whole firing squad of proper soldiers took aim and fired. Blam blam blam.
An artist's impression of the event
But nobody died. That was because it was a mock execution! Apparently the Russians did this now and then, just to put the fear of God into you. (I don’t think that would be allowed anymore. It seems in poor taste to me.)
So instead of DEATH they were then given hard labour sentences in a Siberian prison. It was like a good news-bad news thing. Good news – we didn’t shoot you! I bet they were laughing and joking with each other. “That was a close one, eh Fyodor!” “Cor blimey, guv!”
A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
At first the 27 year old Dosto didn’t care for life in frozen Siberia eating potato peelings and thin soup and never being alone for one single solitary moment and having to rub along with these frankly lower class gross types who had all committed ACTUAL crimes and had poor manners.
But after some months a great transformation came upon Dosto and it shaped the rest of his life. He had been an intellectual drinking from the bubbling fountain of Western liberal ideas, like most politically aware Russians. (Joseph Frank calls his original beliefs “semi-secularised Christian socialism”). But gradually, due to his enforced intimacy with the Russian masses, he realised that they already had the answers he was looking for. Yes, instead of finding solutions for the social oppression of Russia from advanced Europe, they should be finding the solutions already existing in the hearts and minds of the Russian peasants. What on earth was he talking about?
He thought the peasants has an instinctive and uniquely Russian grasp of the ideals of Christianity – you know, perfect brotherly love, self-sacrifice, turn the other cheek and so forth. He thought they embraced and ennobled suffering and became Christlike themselves. He thought they had an innate socialist-utopian understanding of life. Russia didn’t need anybody else; au contraire, the world actually, although they didn’t know it yet, needed Russia.
Joseph Frank summarises like this
For Dostoyevsky, faith had now become completely internal, irrational and nonutilitarian, its truth could not be impugned by a failure to effect worldly changes, nor should it be defended rationally
These ideas sound kind of mystical, because they were. And also frankly nationalistic. From Siberia onwards, when Dosto spotted an idea that nowadays we might describe as progressive (a written constitution, democracy) he was against it. But he was the kind of genius who took delight in formulating the ideas he thought were wrong in brilliant ways in his novels. All the ideas of his time rushed through his bloodstream madly, all the time.
[By the way, this intense desire to do away with normal politics and put everything in the hands of God is something that flares up in all societies from time to time. In England, after Oliver Cromwell had cut off the King’s head and declared England to be a Commonwealth and no mere Monarchy, he got tired of all the squabbling politicians and sent them all packing. He then decreed that every Church should select its holiest member and dispatch them all to Parliament, and God Himself would through these holy men establish his reign on Earth. No prizes for guessing how that hairbrained notion turned out. (Hint – total chaos.)]
CAN’T PAY? WE’LL TAKE IT AWAY
In 1866 the author of Notes from Underground, The House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment and others got a letter from the police saying if he didn’t cough up 600 roubles to his creditors they would be round to make an inventory of his personal belongings preparatory to their sale at public auction. There’s a show called Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away on British TV, it’s so trashy and I love it, true misery porn, and it features real life bailiffs knocking on people’s doors demanding immediate payment of unpaid vet fees etc and I was thinking they should do a historical recreation of this episode in Dosto’s life.
Other authors were rolling around on beds of filthy lucre, Dickens and Wilkie Collins were lighting their cigars with ten pound notes, and poor old Dosto couldn’t catch a break.
A GREAT WIFE
Dosto signed a terrible publishing contract and found he couldn’t write fast enough. A friend found him freaking out about it and immediately thought of the solution – dictation! He knew a guy who taught shorthand and got him to send Dosto one of his star pupils. A couple of days later Anna turned up. She was 20, he was 45. Three months later they got married. Sounds wonderful, right? Only what Anna discovered, when they got engaged, is that even though Dosto was a best selling author he had no money because he was bankrolling a couple of human leeches. The first was Pasha, son of his first wife, who was a year older than Anna. Second was Emiliya, his brother’s widow, who had four grown children. Dosto was supposed to support all of them, plus his own younger brother Nikolay who was an alcoholic. One cold evening that October Dosto came home wearing only his summer coat. He was frozen. Where was his winter overcoat? He had pawned it, because all three of these people had descended on him at once that day demanding money.
One solution she came up with was to put distance between them and get Dosto to spend a long time abroad. Unfortunately wherever they went Dosto ended up rushing off to lose all his bits of money at the roulette table. She didn’t know he was mad on gambling.
From Anna’s book of reminiscences, a typical scene, after Dosto loses half their money
He was terribly excited, begging me not to think him a rogue to have robbed me of my last crust of bread only to lose it, while I implored him only to keep calm…then he went away and I cried bitterly, being so cast down with sufferings and self-tormentings
And also if all that wasn’t enough when she married him she didn’t know quite how bad his epilepsy was. Then she found out. But she was married to Dosto for 15 years, until he died, and they were happy together. She was a very remarkable woman.
(This was Dosto’s 2nd wife. His first marriage was a really miserable affair and she eventually died after taking a real long time to do it.)
TOLSTOY AND DOSTO
They had never met, but once they were at the same concert. But Tolstoy had told his friend “don’t introduce me to anybody”. So even when the friend spotted Dosto in the audience he couldn’t get them to meet. Imagine his frustration.
CAN YOU BELIEVE DOSTO HAD TO SELF-PUBLISH?
His novel Demons attacked the socialist left in Russia and as it was being published in monthly parts all the Russian left were slagging it off so badly that when Dosto was trying to sell it as a single volume to a publisher he only got the most derisory offers, so like any amateur writer today, he published it himself, and finally he did all right. I think Anna did most of the actual publishing work.
SUDDEN FAME
At the age of 54 Dosto suddenly became famous throughout Russia. Sure, he had been considered one of Russia’s top three authors since The House of the Dead , but this was only by the intellectuals who read big books. But in 1875 he had the idea of self-publishing a monthly magazine entirely written by himself called A Writer’s Diary. I can’t think that something called A Writer’s Diary would set the world on fire these days, but in Russia in the 1870s it was just what every student and young person wanted. Dosto stuffed his monthly musings on Big Issues with accounts of True Crime. He attended murder trials and scoured the papers for stories of disembowellings and slaughter. If he was around today, it’s clear he would be binge-watching series like Forensic Files and Born to Kill on YouTube, he loved all that stuff, the more gruesome the better. So I could connect with him on that level easily. Dosto, I would say, this episode will blow your mind.
A Writer’s Diary turned him into a prophet figure, Frank says :
No one had ever written about such matters so forcefully and vividly, with such directness, simplicity, and intimate personal commitment. It is little wonder that the public response was tremendous, and that Dostoyevsky was deluged with correspondence, both pro and contra, the moment his publication appeared in the kiosks.
WHY IS DOSTO GREAT?
Joseph Frank’s enthusiasm is continually bubbling to the surface of this book – here he is on page 665 talking about the novel Demons, and his words answer the question what makes Dosto so great :
The scope of his canvas, the brilliant ferocity of his wit, the prophetic power and insight of his satire, his unrivalled capacity to bring to life and embody in characters the most profound and complex moral-philosophical issues and social ideas
THIS GIGANTIC BOOK
This biography is 932 very large pages long and is a one-volume abridgement of Joseph Frank’s five volume version. Holy Russia, that’s like too long for even 99% of Dosto fans. This one volume was nearly too much for me. But of course it is a wonderful account of an extraordinary writer. And now I need to lie down for some time, I’m exhausted.
Young Dosto drifted into some regular meetings at this posh guy’s private house where they talked about the need to liberate the serfs and get rid of state censorship, nothing very radical, but this group of genteel debaters were shopped to the police and raided and carted off to jail and put on trial for sedition and get this, they were SENTENCED TO DEATH. Yes, people got death sentences for genteel debating in 19th century Russia.
And they were dragged out on 23 December, no last Christmas turkey for them, no unwrapping final presents, nope. And they were tied to stakes and a whole firing squad of proper soldiers took aim and fired. Blam blam blam.
An artist's impression of the event
But nobody died. That was because it was a mock execution! Apparently the Russians did this now and then, just to put the fear of God into you. (I don’t think that would be allowed anymore. It seems in poor taste to me.)
So instead of DEATH they were then given hard labour sentences in a Siberian prison. It was like a good news-bad news thing. Good news – we didn’t shoot you! I bet they were laughing and joking with each other. “That was a close one, eh Fyodor!” “Cor blimey, guv!”
A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
At first the 27 year old Dosto didn’t care for life in frozen Siberia eating potato peelings and thin soup and never being alone for one single solitary moment and having to rub along with these frankly lower class gross types who had all committed ACTUAL crimes and had poor manners.
But after some months a great transformation came upon Dosto and it shaped the rest of his life. He had been an intellectual drinking from the bubbling fountain of Western liberal ideas, like most politically aware Russians. (Joseph Frank calls his original beliefs “semi-secularised Christian socialism”). But gradually, due to his enforced intimacy with the Russian masses, he realised that they already had the answers he was looking for. Yes, instead of finding solutions for the social oppression of Russia from advanced Europe, they should be finding the solutions already existing in the hearts and minds of the Russian peasants. What on earth was he talking about?
He thought the peasants has an instinctive and uniquely Russian grasp of the ideals of Christianity – you know, perfect brotherly love, self-sacrifice, turn the other cheek and so forth. He thought they embraced and ennobled suffering and became Christlike themselves. He thought they had an innate socialist-utopian understanding of life. Russia didn’t need anybody else; au contraire, the world actually, although they didn’t know it yet, needed Russia.
Joseph Frank summarises like this
For Dostoyevsky, faith had now become completely internal, irrational and nonutilitarian, its truth could not be impugned by a failure to effect worldly changes, nor should it be defended rationally
These ideas sound kind of mystical, because they were. And also frankly nationalistic. From Siberia onwards, when Dosto spotted an idea that nowadays we might describe as progressive (a written constitution, democracy) he was against it. But he was the kind of genius who took delight in formulating the ideas he thought were wrong in brilliant ways in his novels. All the ideas of his time rushed through his bloodstream madly, all the time.
[By the way, this intense desire to do away with normal politics and put everything in the hands of God is something that flares up in all societies from time to time. In England, after Oliver Cromwell had cut off the King’s head and declared England to be a Commonwealth and no mere Monarchy, he got tired of all the squabbling politicians and sent them all packing. He then decreed that every Church should select its holiest member and dispatch them all to Parliament, and God Himself would through these holy men establish his reign on Earth. No prizes for guessing how that hairbrained notion turned out. (Hint – total chaos.)]
CAN’T PAY? WE’LL TAKE IT AWAY
In 1866 the author of Notes from Underground, The House of the Dead, Crime and Punishment and others got a letter from the police saying if he didn’t cough up 600 roubles to his creditors they would be round to make an inventory of his personal belongings preparatory to their sale at public auction. There’s a show called Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away on British TV, it’s so trashy and I love it, true misery porn, and it features real life bailiffs knocking on people’s doors demanding immediate payment of unpaid vet fees etc and I was thinking they should do a historical recreation of this episode in Dosto’s life.
Other authors were rolling around on beds of filthy lucre, Dickens and Wilkie Collins were lighting their cigars with ten pound notes, and poor old Dosto couldn’t catch a break.
A GREAT WIFE
Dosto signed a terrible publishing contract and found he couldn’t write fast enough. A friend found him freaking out about it and immediately thought of the solution – dictation! He knew a guy who taught shorthand and got him to send Dosto one of his star pupils. A couple of days later Anna turned up. She was 20, he was 45. Three months later they got married. Sounds wonderful, right? Only what Anna discovered, when they got engaged, is that even though Dosto was a best selling author he had no money because he was bankrolling a couple of human leeches. The first was Pasha, son of his first wife, who was a year older than Anna. Second was Emiliya, his brother’s widow, who had four grown children. Dosto was supposed to support all of them, plus his own younger brother Nikolay who was an alcoholic. One cold evening that October Dosto came home wearing only his summer coat. He was frozen. Where was his winter overcoat? He had pawned it, because all three of these people had descended on him at once that day demanding money.
One solution she came up with was to put distance between them and get Dosto to spend a long time abroad. Unfortunately wherever they went Dosto ended up rushing off to lose all his bits of money at the roulette table. She didn’t know he was mad on gambling.
From Anna’s book of reminiscences, a typical scene, after Dosto loses half their money
He was terribly excited, begging me not to think him a rogue to have robbed me of my last crust of bread only to lose it, while I implored him only to keep calm…then he went away and I cried bitterly, being so cast down with sufferings and self-tormentings
And also if all that wasn’t enough when she married him she didn’t know quite how bad his epilepsy was. Then she found out. But she was married to Dosto for 15 years, until he died, and they were happy together. She was a very remarkable woman.
(This was Dosto’s 2nd wife. His first marriage was a really miserable affair and she eventually died after taking a real long time to do it.)
TOLSTOY AND DOSTO
They had never met, but once they were at the same concert. But Tolstoy had told his friend “don’t introduce me to anybody”. So even when the friend spotted Dosto in the audience he couldn’t get them to meet. Imagine his frustration.
CAN YOU BELIEVE DOSTO HAD TO SELF-PUBLISH?
His novel Demons attacked the socialist left in Russia and as it was being published in monthly parts all the Russian left were slagging it off so badly that when Dosto was trying to sell it as a single volume to a publisher he only got the most derisory offers, so like any amateur writer today, he published it himself, and finally he did all right. I think Anna did most of the actual publishing work.
SUDDEN FAME
At the age of 54 Dosto suddenly became famous throughout Russia. Sure, he had been considered one of Russia’s top three authors since The House of the Dead , but this was only by the intellectuals who read big books. But in 1875 he had the idea of self-publishing a monthly magazine entirely written by himself called A Writer’s Diary. I can’t think that something called A Writer’s Diary would set the world on fire these days, but in Russia in the 1870s it was just what every student and young person wanted. Dosto stuffed his monthly musings on Big Issues with accounts of True Crime. He attended murder trials and scoured the papers for stories of disembowellings and slaughter. If he was around today, it’s clear he would be binge-watching series like Forensic Files and Born to Kill on YouTube, he loved all that stuff, the more gruesome the better. So I could connect with him on that level easily. Dosto, I would say, this episode will blow your mind.
A Writer’s Diary turned him into a prophet figure, Frank says :
No one had ever written about such matters so forcefully and vividly, with such directness, simplicity, and intimate personal commitment. It is little wonder that the public response was tremendous, and that Dostoyevsky was deluged with correspondence, both pro and contra, the moment his publication appeared in the kiosks.
WHY IS DOSTO GREAT?
Joseph Frank’s enthusiasm is continually bubbling to the surface of this book – here he is on page 665 talking about the novel Demons, and his words answer the question what makes Dosto so great :
The scope of his canvas, the brilliant ferocity of his wit, the prophetic power and insight of his satire, his unrivalled capacity to bring to life and embody in characters the most profound and complex moral-philosophical issues and social ideas
THIS GIGANTIC BOOK
This biography is 932 very large pages long and is a one-volume abridgement of Joseph Frank’s five volume version. Holy Russia, that’s like too long for even 99% of Dosto fans. This one volume was nearly too much for me. But of course it is a wonderful account of an extraordinary writer. And now I need to lie down for some time, I’m exhausted.
May 29, 2021
"One thing that canonization and course assignments obscure is that Dostoevsky isn’t just great, he’s fun. His novels almost always have just ripping good plots, lurid and involved and thoroughly dramatic. There are murders and attempted murders and police and dysfunctional-family feuding and spies and tough guys and beautiful fallen women and unctuous con men and inheritances and silky villains and scheming and whores." (David Foster Wallace)
https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/07/...
https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/07/...
August 24, 2020
A scholarly book that is worth reading if you like Dostoevsky's books or any of the great Russian writers that lived in the mid to end of the 19th century: Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy. What the book does is lay out for you the ideological climate of the age. What were the political, social, philosophical, psychological principles that moved Dostoevsky and then the book traces those ideas to his major works. What I enjoyed the most about this biography is the way that Frank links the thoughts and beliefs of Dostoevsky's characters to the beliefs that Dostoevsky embraced and those he fervently opposed. Thanks to Frank, I see now the incredible genius of this writer who was able to use his novels to put forth a certain world view and at the same time create such realistic characters, such vivid portrayal of theirs and ours inner depths. If you like to write, you will find this book inspiring and helpful in a very practical way because it shows you how a great writer is able to transform ideas into literature. And then, of course, there is Dostoevsky's life. What did this man not suffer? Imprisonment in Siberia, Epilepsy, Constant, never-ending Debt, Poverty, Gambling Addiction, Bad Marriage, Bad In-Laws, Public Humiliations. I could go on. And he was able to write those books! Most of the time I'd rather not know about an author's life for fear it will affect the way I read his works. Who needs to know that the author of a sublime work is so human? It's different with Dostoevsky. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe because he found a way to pour all of his confusion and all of his longing, all of his remorse and his hope, all of his doubts and all of his faith into his books.
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October 27, 2010I read each of the five volumes of Frank's masterful biography of Dostoesvsky as they appeared over the 1970s and 1980s - each and every one entirely engrossing. I am now reading the one volume version - at 1000 pages two volumes really, but who's counting. I am thrilled to take up another of Frank's works, among the greatest biographers I've ever encountered. Right up there with Ann Wroe and Richard Helms.
Having finished this book, it is without doubt among the most successful examples of the biographer's art that I know. I leave the book with a thorough understanding of the political and intellectual contexts of D's life and the particular elements of those contexts that evoked responses from him in the form of his novels. Franks' criticism of these novels is masterful in the clarity of his exposition and the mappings he makes from novel to context as well as D's particular perspectives on those contexts and his specific responses as documented in his fiction. None surpass his accomplishment.
I would rank his work with Holmes on Coleridge and Shelly, Wroe on Shelly, Ackroyd on Dickens, Gordon on Eliot.
For those with an insatiable appetite for great biography I would recommend that they read the "condensed" version first and then take on the five volume version. I found it very difficult to remember the "threads" within the larger version over 25 years, reading one volume after the other with intervals of four or five years between the appearance of one volume and its successor.
I will say, althought the observation isn't particularly important, that I would not have liked Dostoevsky at all - an insufferable man really, a virulent anti-Semite, a reactionary, a religious zealot, a zenophobe, bigotted in just about every way. Besides that he was irrasible, rageful at times, personally obnoxious, a divo, for whom I would have had no use.
Having finished this book, it is without doubt among the most successful examples of the biographer's art that I know. I leave the book with a thorough understanding of the political and intellectual contexts of D's life and the particular elements of those contexts that evoked responses from him in the form of his novels. Franks' criticism of these novels is masterful in the clarity of his exposition and the mappings he makes from novel to context as well as D's particular perspectives on those contexts and his specific responses as documented in his fiction. None surpass his accomplishment.
I would rank his work with Holmes on Coleridge and Shelly, Wroe on Shelly, Ackroyd on Dickens, Gordon on Eliot.
For those with an insatiable appetite for great biography I would recommend that they read the "condensed" version first and then take on the five volume version. I found it very difficult to remember the "threads" within the larger version over 25 years, reading one volume after the other with intervals of four or five years between the appearance of one volume and its successor.
I will say, althought the observation isn't particularly important, that I would not have liked Dostoevsky at all - an insufferable man really, a virulent anti-Semite, a reactionary, a religious zealot, a zenophobe, bigotted in just about every way. Besides that he was irrasible, rageful at times, personally obnoxious, a divo, for whom I would have had no use.
August 4, 2012
I can only imagine what it would be like to read through Joseph Frank's five volumes of Dostoevsky's biography (published between the mid-1970's and early 2000's). This abridgment is a stunning substitute and is probably sufficient for most readers. It's a great distillation of what must in total be an amazing overall achievement. Bravo to the editor as well as the author! Frank masterfully weaves together biography, history, ideology, and literary criticism to elucidate Dostoevsky's thought. It's so well-written that the 900+ page length shouldn't intimidate readers considering the book. I've read almost all of Dostoevsky's novels (some multiple times) and feel much more capable of understanding the richness of his ideas and intentions. I'm also now more familiar with the ideological debates of his time and his critical role in Russian history. Even if you don't read the whole book, I highly recommended the chapters on each of his novels. You'll definitely gain the most from reading the whole book. Brilliant!
September 7, 2014
For as long as I can remember, I’ve regarded reading as a powerful gift. As an aspiring author myself, I will always stand in awe of the remarkable impact that books can make on those who read them. I can wholeheartedly say that Joseph Frank’s “Dostoyevsky: A Writer in His Time” is one of those works I will never forget. If you follow me on Goodreads, or Facebook, or Tumblr, or if you know me personally, you’ve probably heard this before: Dostoyevsky is my favorite author, and one of a very few influences who I can say without doubt has changed my life. Thus, reading Frank’s account of Dostoyevsky’s life and works was extremely enticing to me, especially as the biography comes with such esteemed acclamations.
I honestly don’t even know where to start in my humble attempt to recapture some of the impact Frank’s work produced on me. This is, to date, the longest book I have ever read (a hefty tome of 959 pages in paperback) and it’s been my companion since last January. It has seen me through the triumphs and tribulations of my first year of college. It has witnessed my frantic consultation of its pages for help in citing facts about Dostoyevsky for my emotional final paper on “The Brothers Karamazov” (for which I have also written a Goodreads review, if you would like to share in my gushing over that novel!). It has seen me defend, time and again, my reasons for choosing Dostoyevsky as a favorite author, and my agreement with him, despite what some call naivety, that people, after all things, are inherently good. (In his short story, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, Dostoyevsky asserts, “I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition among men. And yet they all laugh at this faith of mine. But how can I help believing it?”) And Frank’s biography has played its part in my choice to major in Russian Language and Literature. It may sound silly, but I really do think that “companion” is the best word to describe the relationship that I now have with this massive volume, which I have toted with me through ups and downs and changes now for more than half a year.
Frank’s “Dostoyevsky” is a condensation of his famous five- volume set detailing the Russian author’s life. Nonetheless, this “short” version cannot be found wanting in its meticulous—and arguably unrivaled—depiction of Dostoyevsky and all that he stood for. Though this work is, of course, non-fiction, it often reads like a novel, and I found myself thoroughly engrossed in its pages. Frank opens with Dostoyevsky’s childhood, and it is endearing to read of the little boy who protected his schoolmates from bullies, a touching detail that I think has quite a bit to say about Dostoyevsky’s character and who he would become.
Indeed, while the aforementioned detail may seem trivial out of context, it becomes truly profound when one begins to understand the later events of Dostoyevsky’s life. In the 1840s, the young Dostoyevsky was accused of political subversion—for supporting the freedom of the press—and he was sentenced to four years in a Siberian prison. However, this “lighter” sentence came only after Dostoyevsky and his fellow prisoners were subjected to a “mock execution”; they stood before a firing squad, and were only “saved” at the last moment. Frank unflinchingly illustrates the harrowing experience, and one must respect Dostoyevsky, if for no other reason than fortitude in surviving this horror with his sanity intact. The next four years, during the great novelist’s time in prison, can only be adequately fathomed by reading Dostoyevsky’s haunting semi-autobiographical novel, “The House of the Dead”. Many have speculated about Dostoyevsky’s years in Siberia, including Leonid Tsypkin, in his novel “Summer in Baden-Baden” (which I have also reviewed). Tsypkin believed that Dostoyevsky was flogged while in prison, and while we may never know for certain whether this is true, the awful possibility is entirely plausible. What we can say for sure constitutes one of my principal reasons for caring so deeply about Dostoyevsky: it was only through his suffering in Siberia that he began to regard his fellow prisoners as human beings who had erred but could be redeemed. (Let it be noted that, while Dostoyevsky was a political prisoner, many of the convicts he lived with had committed violent crimes, and some had murdered multiple people). Dostoyevsky’s ordeal in prison arguably became the trial by which he could become an author truly capable of seeing the souls in all people. Frank marvelously sums up Dostoyevsky’s convictions: “Dostoyevsky believed that since man… was capable of remorse and repentance, the hope of his redemption should never be abandoned” (357).
As can well be expected, memories of his prison years would haunt Dostoyevsky for the rest of his life, and I applaud Frank for not overlooking this issue. Many people are quick to label Dostoyevsky as rude or arrogant because of his occasional losses of temper over seemingly-trivial issues. Such a judgment, in my opinion, disregards and belittles the traumatic experiences Dostoyevsky endured. While his cruel words were clearly in the wrong, they were likely the manifestations of deep psychological scars which never healed, and which, in the 19th century, were also never fully understood. One of the most unforgettable scenes from Frank’s biography, related through the words of E.P. Letkova-Sultanova’s memoir, comes to mind:
“Dostoyevsky’s words came tumbling out in a stream of spasmodic sentences. He evoked the freezing coldness of the morning [of the mock execution], and the horror that overcame [the prisoners] as they heard the death sentence being pronounced. ‘It could not be that I, amidst all the other thousands who were alive—in something like five to six minutes would no longer exist!’… Polonsky (the host of the gathering Letkova-Sultanova describes) approached [Dostoyevsky] to break the tension and said consolingly, ‘Well, all this is past and gone,’ inviting him to drink tea with their hostess. ‘Is it really gone?’ Dostoyevsky whispered” (780).
Throughout this masterful work, I admired Frank’s ability to powerfully address various controversial issues from which others would shy away. He does this in describing Dostoyevsky’s own prejudices (most often against Jewish people), assessing them in their 19th century context, when such views were commonplace, without excusing them. Frank also, in describing Dostoyevsky’s epilepsy (from which he suffered seizures about once a month), touches on cultural stigmas which continue to surround the disease even today. Offended by the portrayal of radicals in Dostoyevsky’s novel “Demons”, many protested that the writer’s characters were too psychologically damaged to be taken seriously. And, Frank adds, many were inclined to view Dostoyevsky in the same manner because he suffered from epilepsy. Dostoyevsky’s contemporary Ivan Turgenev is known to have held this opinion as well. Frank skillfully weaves this context into his analysis of Dostoyevsky, and his words carry connotations about the instinctive human fear of that which we do not understand. This thought echoes Dostoyevsky’s own beliefs in his short story, “A Gentle Creature”, in which the inability to understand one another leads his characters to disaster. Certainly a sobering thought in today’s war-ravaged, isolation-based world as well.
Of course, I couldn’t finish this review without discussing Anna Snitkina, Dostoyevsky’s second wife (after the death of his first, Marya Isaeva, in 1864 from Tuberculosis). Anna is one of my favorite historical ladies, and often doesn’t receive the respect she deserves. In fact, my one point of contention with Frank arises over this very issue. He, like many others, describes Anna as submissive to her husband’s will. On the contrary, she was a fascinating and complex person. First of all, Anna attended a women’s college (Yay, women’s colleges! Can you tell I go to a women’s college?), which was remarkable in her time because higher education for women was still relatively unheard of. She met Dostoyevsky through his hiring her as a stenographer to help him finish the manuscript for “The Gambler”. Having an independent means of earning money was also revolutionary for a woman in 19th century Russia.
The two eventually fell in love and were married, living abroad for several years afterward. Though Anna was perhaps naïve at first, unwittingly enabling her husband’s gambling addiction by lending him money and unfailingly forgiving him for losing it, she quickly matured into a powerful woman in her own right. It was Anna who negotiated (behind her husband’s back at first) with creditors who sought to put Dostoyevsky in debtors’ prison and exposed their corruption. It was Anna who went out alone into a dangerous city (also without Dostoyevsky’s permission) to rescue a lost suitcase which contained an extremely important manuscript of her husband’s. And, overall, it is quite valid to assert that it was Anna who is responsible for making Dostoyevsky the great writer the world knows today, as she eventually took over the family’s finances and organized their own publishing business. One has only to read her remarkable “Reminiscences” to appreciate how smart, capable, and compassionate a soul Anna Dostoyevskaya was.
The Dostoyevskys’ marriage, while having undergone many strains in the beginning (Dostoyevsky’s gambling addiction and resulting debt, as well as the horrific tragedy of losing their first daughter, Sonya), grew into a relationship of deep love and mutual respect. It should be known that Fyodor put aside his own crippling grief to take care of Anna when she was shattered after the loss of Sonya. He battled some of his greatest demons for her, eventually giving up gambling after their second daughter, Lyubov, was born. Frank portrays Anna and Fyodor’s love with exceptional skill (and several very entertaining excerpts from their rather “suggestive” letters to each other!). It seems no test could break their devotion, and that no force could destroy their unfailing optimism. In the heartbreaking end, Anna holds her husband’s hand as he dies, and he still manages to console her, beseeching her not to worry. Anna is later said to have exclaimed, “Oh, whom have I lost!” (926) and the reader cannot help but feel the power of the additional words, uttered by Dostoyevsky’s lifelong friend, Appollon Maikov: “whom has Russia lost?” (926).
In the final pages of this monumental work, Frank astutely notes that, in the end, Dostoyevsky achieved his ideal of bringing Russia together. Indeed, the unprecedented crowds attending his funeral transcended the divides of class, gender, religion and politics to pay tribute to the man Russians call prophet. I can say for certain that Frank’s remarkable account of Dostoyevsky’s life will remain with me for years to come, as it has helped me gain a greater understanding of the author whose works have shaped the person I have become. I first encountered Dostoyevsky’s novels during a very dark time in my life, from which I had begun to doubt I would ever heal. But Dostoyevsky, through his immortal words and his own life’s example, taught me that the power of compassion and love outweighs the power of negativity. It was he, after all, who said that “compassion is the chief law of human existence”, and, conversely, that “Hell… is the suffering of being unable to love”. We can all learn from Dostoyevsky’s example; once a falsely-imprisoned convict who thought his life would never amount to anything, Dostoyevsky became perhaps the greatest writer to live. As Frank writes, “There is never a moment in Dostoyevsky’s life when we can catch him giving up entirely” (445). And because of him, I didn’t give up. Critics throughout history have remarked that Dostoyevsky’s words have changed the world, but for me, it will always be enough that they changed my life.
I honestly don’t even know where to start in my humble attempt to recapture some of the impact Frank’s work produced on me. This is, to date, the longest book I have ever read (a hefty tome of 959 pages in paperback) and it’s been my companion since last January. It has seen me through the triumphs and tribulations of my first year of college. It has witnessed my frantic consultation of its pages for help in citing facts about Dostoyevsky for my emotional final paper on “The Brothers Karamazov” (for which I have also written a Goodreads review, if you would like to share in my gushing over that novel!). It has seen me defend, time and again, my reasons for choosing Dostoyevsky as a favorite author, and my agreement with him, despite what some call naivety, that people, after all things, are inherently good. (In his short story, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, Dostoyevsky asserts, “I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition among men. And yet they all laugh at this faith of mine. But how can I help believing it?”) And Frank’s biography has played its part in my choice to major in Russian Language and Literature. It may sound silly, but I really do think that “companion” is the best word to describe the relationship that I now have with this massive volume, which I have toted with me through ups and downs and changes now for more than half a year.
Frank’s “Dostoyevsky” is a condensation of his famous five- volume set detailing the Russian author’s life. Nonetheless, this “short” version cannot be found wanting in its meticulous—and arguably unrivaled—depiction of Dostoyevsky and all that he stood for. Though this work is, of course, non-fiction, it often reads like a novel, and I found myself thoroughly engrossed in its pages. Frank opens with Dostoyevsky’s childhood, and it is endearing to read of the little boy who protected his schoolmates from bullies, a touching detail that I think has quite a bit to say about Dostoyevsky’s character and who he would become.
Indeed, while the aforementioned detail may seem trivial out of context, it becomes truly profound when one begins to understand the later events of Dostoyevsky’s life. In the 1840s, the young Dostoyevsky was accused of political subversion—for supporting the freedom of the press—and he was sentenced to four years in a Siberian prison. However, this “lighter” sentence came only after Dostoyevsky and his fellow prisoners were subjected to a “mock execution”; they stood before a firing squad, and were only “saved” at the last moment. Frank unflinchingly illustrates the harrowing experience, and one must respect Dostoyevsky, if for no other reason than fortitude in surviving this horror with his sanity intact. The next four years, during the great novelist’s time in prison, can only be adequately fathomed by reading Dostoyevsky’s haunting semi-autobiographical novel, “The House of the Dead”. Many have speculated about Dostoyevsky’s years in Siberia, including Leonid Tsypkin, in his novel “Summer in Baden-Baden” (which I have also reviewed). Tsypkin believed that Dostoyevsky was flogged while in prison, and while we may never know for certain whether this is true, the awful possibility is entirely plausible. What we can say for sure constitutes one of my principal reasons for caring so deeply about Dostoyevsky: it was only through his suffering in Siberia that he began to regard his fellow prisoners as human beings who had erred but could be redeemed. (Let it be noted that, while Dostoyevsky was a political prisoner, many of the convicts he lived with had committed violent crimes, and some had murdered multiple people). Dostoyevsky’s ordeal in prison arguably became the trial by which he could become an author truly capable of seeing the souls in all people. Frank marvelously sums up Dostoyevsky’s convictions: “Dostoyevsky believed that since man… was capable of remorse and repentance, the hope of his redemption should never be abandoned” (357).
As can well be expected, memories of his prison years would haunt Dostoyevsky for the rest of his life, and I applaud Frank for not overlooking this issue. Many people are quick to label Dostoyevsky as rude or arrogant because of his occasional losses of temper over seemingly-trivial issues. Such a judgment, in my opinion, disregards and belittles the traumatic experiences Dostoyevsky endured. While his cruel words were clearly in the wrong, they were likely the manifestations of deep psychological scars which never healed, and which, in the 19th century, were also never fully understood. One of the most unforgettable scenes from Frank’s biography, related through the words of E.P. Letkova-Sultanova’s memoir, comes to mind:
“Dostoyevsky’s words came tumbling out in a stream of spasmodic sentences. He evoked the freezing coldness of the morning [of the mock execution], and the horror that overcame [the prisoners] as they heard the death sentence being pronounced. ‘It could not be that I, amidst all the other thousands who were alive—in something like five to six minutes would no longer exist!’… Polonsky (the host of the gathering Letkova-Sultanova describes) approached [Dostoyevsky] to break the tension and said consolingly, ‘Well, all this is past and gone,’ inviting him to drink tea with their hostess. ‘Is it really gone?’ Dostoyevsky whispered” (780).
Throughout this masterful work, I admired Frank’s ability to powerfully address various controversial issues from which others would shy away. He does this in describing Dostoyevsky’s own prejudices (most often against Jewish people), assessing them in their 19th century context, when such views were commonplace, without excusing them. Frank also, in describing Dostoyevsky’s epilepsy (from which he suffered seizures about once a month), touches on cultural stigmas which continue to surround the disease even today. Offended by the portrayal of radicals in Dostoyevsky’s novel “Demons”, many protested that the writer’s characters were too psychologically damaged to be taken seriously. And, Frank adds, many were inclined to view Dostoyevsky in the same manner because he suffered from epilepsy. Dostoyevsky’s contemporary Ivan Turgenev is known to have held this opinion as well. Frank skillfully weaves this context into his analysis of Dostoyevsky, and his words carry connotations about the instinctive human fear of that which we do not understand. This thought echoes Dostoyevsky’s own beliefs in his short story, “A Gentle Creature”, in which the inability to understand one another leads his characters to disaster. Certainly a sobering thought in today’s war-ravaged, isolation-based world as well.
Of course, I couldn’t finish this review without discussing Anna Snitkina, Dostoyevsky’s second wife (after the death of his first, Marya Isaeva, in 1864 from Tuberculosis). Anna is one of my favorite historical ladies, and often doesn’t receive the respect she deserves. In fact, my one point of contention with Frank arises over this very issue. He, like many others, describes Anna as submissive to her husband’s will. On the contrary, she was a fascinating and complex person. First of all, Anna attended a women’s college (Yay, women’s colleges! Can you tell I go to a women’s college?), which was remarkable in her time because higher education for women was still relatively unheard of. She met Dostoyevsky through his hiring her as a stenographer to help him finish the manuscript for “The Gambler”. Having an independent means of earning money was also revolutionary for a woman in 19th century Russia.
The two eventually fell in love and were married, living abroad for several years afterward. Though Anna was perhaps naïve at first, unwittingly enabling her husband’s gambling addiction by lending him money and unfailingly forgiving him for losing it, she quickly matured into a powerful woman in her own right. It was Anna who negotiated (behind her husband’s back at first) with creditors who sought to put Dostoyevsky in debtors’ prison and exposed their corruption. It was Anna who went out alone into a dangerous city (also without Dostoyevsky’s permission) to rescue a lost suitcase which contained an extremely important manuscript of her husband’s. And, overall, it is quite valid to assert that it was Anna who is responsible for making Dostoyevsky the great writer the world knows today, as she eventually took over the family’s finances and organized their own publishing business. One has only to read her remarkable “Reminiscences” to appreciate how smart, capable, and compassionate a soul Anna Dostoyevskaya was.
The Dostoyevskys’ marriage, while having undergone many strains in the beginning (Dostoyevsky’s gambling addiction and resulting debt, as well as the horrific tragedy of losing their first daughter, Sonya), grew into a relationship of deep love and mutual respect. It should be known that Fyodor put aside his own crippling grief to take care of Anna when she was shattered after the loss of Sonya. He battled some of his greatest demons for her, eventually giving up gambling after their second daughter, Lyubov, was born. Frank portrays Anna and Fyodor’s love with exceptional skill (and several very entertaining excerpts from their rather “suggestive” letters to each other!). It seems no test could break their devotion, and that no force could destroy their unfailing optimism. In the heartbreaking end, Anna holds her husband’s hand as he dies, and he still manages to console her, beseeching her not to worry. Anna is later said to have exclaimed, “Oh, whom have I lost!” (926) and the reader cannot help but feel the power of the additional words, uttered by Dostoyevsky’s lifelong friend, Appollon Maikov: “whom has Russia lost?” (926).
In the final pages of this monumental work, Frank astutely notes that, in the end, Dostoyevsky achieved his ideal of bringing Russia together. Indeed, the unprecedented crowds attending his funeral transcended the divides of class, gender, religion and politics to pay tribute to the man Russians call prophet. I can say for certain that Frank’s remarkable account of Dostoyevsky’s life will remain with me for years to come, as it has helped me gain a greater understanding of the author whose works have shaped the person I have become. I first encountered Dostoyevsky’s novels during a very dark time in my life, from which I had begun to doubt I would ever heal. But Dostoyevsky, through his immortal words and his own life’s example, taught me that the power of compassion and love outweighs the power of negativity. It was he, after all, who said that “compassion is the chief law of human existence”, and, conversely, that “Hell… is the suffering of being unable to love”. We can all learn from Dostoyevsky’s example; once a falsely-imprisoned convict who thought his life would never amount to anything, Dostoyevsky became perhaps the greatest writer to live. As Frank writes, “There is never a moment in Dostoyevsky’s life when we can catch him giving up entirely” (445). And because of him, I didn’t give up. Critics throughout history have remarked that Dostoyevsky’s words have changed the world, but for me, it will always be enough that they changed my life.
August 24, 2025
A very large and intense definitive guide to Dosteovsky, including an analysis of his magus Optus The Brother Karamazov. Ideal for scholars but it can be hard going for any but the hardened Dostoevsky fan. I gained so much insight from this book.
December 23, 2021
Is it ever possible to recover from Dostoevsky?
Probably not .
As Virginia Woolf says about his works, "seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts that hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture.”
A mammoth of work of around 950 pages, which in itself is an abridegement of five volumes on the author, from an academic who has spent 20 years of life studying Dostoevsky. A meticulous journey of the tormented writer's life and works understanding the influence of the socio-political Russian atmosphere of the time. Frank's work shows the craftsmanship of Dostoevsky who turned people and events he encountered in real life into themes and characters embroiled in moral-psychological conflicts, often from the vantage point of a conflict between reason and Christian faith which was his lifetime matter of interest. His creative genius lies in this elevation of the ordinary into the tragic portrayal of human life.
One of the examples of his brilliant craftsmanship which I found interesting among the many detailed in this amalgamation of literary criticism, biography and socio cultural history, is about the creation of his novel 'Demons'. Demons is his explicitly political novel and voices his vehement animus towards nihilism and radicals of the time. A firm believer in the Russian culture, Dostoevsky found in the Russian peasantry the animus towards nihilism and radicals of the time. Dostoevsky who was working on his ambitious novel on his 'eternal' themes Russian culture, atheism and the clash between Western reason and Russian faith,titled 'The Life of a Great Sinner' was distracted by the news of a murder committed by revolutionary conspirators. Quite remarkably, he blends what he called a 'poem' on faith and a sociopolitical 'pamphlet' of criticism to create 'Demons'.
Even while praising his authorial impeccability, Frank does not refrain from showing Dostoevsky for his flaws and guile. Some of which include his tragic addiction to roulette, rudeness and morose nature and a rabid Russian nationalism. If not all, a few of them can be attributed by the consequences of frequent seizures and the humiliations he had to endure. For a man who has absolute empathy for people around him and staunchly believed in the liberation of serfs, Dostoevsky was acutely Anti-Semitic and maintained the prejudice in his later journalistic articles. Probably, when Elena Shtakenshneider, an intelligent woman who kept a salon in Petersburg at the time, says "Dostoevsky is himself a magical tale, with its miracles, unexpected surprises, transformations, with its enormous terrors and its trifles", it might be a nearly accurate sketch of him.
It is not very often that the more I read analytical works about a favourite piece of fiction, the more I get beguiled by the text. Frank's biography provokes one to revisit Dostoevsky novels for its brilliance of craft and characters, if not for the unsettling yet consoling depiction of innermost toils of human mind. I just realized how much I love The Idiot, The Humiliated and Insulted and the Brothers Karamazov.
Probably not .
As Virginia Woolf says about his works, "seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts that hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture.”
A mammoth of work of around 950 pages, which in itself is an abridegement of five volumes on the author, from an academic who has spent 20 years of life studying Dostoevsky. A meticulous journey of the tormented writer's life and works understanding the influence of the socio-political Russian atmosphere of the time. Frank's work shows the craftsmanship of Dostoevsky who turned people and events he encountered in real life into themes and characters embroiled in moral-psychological conflicts, often from the vantage point of a conflict between reason and Christian faith which was his lifetime matter of interest. His creative genius lies in this elevation of the ordinary into the tragic portrayal of human life.
One of the examples of his brilliant craftsmanship which I found interesting among the many detailed in this amalgamation of literary criticism, biography and socio cultural history, is about the creation of his novel 'Demons'. Demons is his explicitly political novel and voices his vehement animus towards nihilism and radicals of the time. A firm believer in the Russian culture, Dostoevsky found in the Russian peasantry the animus towards nihilism and radicals of the time. Dostoevsky who was working on his ambitious novel on his 'eternal' themes Russian culture, atheism and the clash between Western reason and Russian faith,titled 'The Life of a Great Sinner' was distracted by the news of a murder committed by revolutionary conspirators. Quite remarkably, he blends what he called a 'poem' on faith and a sociopolitical 'pamphlet' of criticism to create 'Demons'.
Even while praising his authorial impeccability, Frank does not refrain from showing Dostoevsky for his flaws and guile. Some of which include his tragic addiction to roulette, rudeness and morose nature and a rabid Russian nationalism. If not all, a few of them can be attributed by the consequences of frequent seizures and the humiliations he had to endure. For a man who has absolute empathy for people around him and staunchly believed in the liberation of serfs, Dostoevsky was acutely Anti-Semitic and maintained the prejudice in his later journalistic articles. Probably, when Elena Shtakenshneider, an intelligent woman who kept a salon in Petersburg at the time, says "Dostoevsky is himself a magical tale, with its miracles, unexpected surprises, transformations, with its enormous terrors and its trifles", it might be a nearly accurate sketch of him.
It is not very often that the more I read analytical works about a favourite piece of fiction, the more I get beguiled by the text. Frank's biography provokes one to revisit Dostoevsky novels for its brilliance of craft and characters, if not for the unsettling yet consoling depiction of innermost toils of human mind. I just realized how much I love The Idiot, The Humiliated and Insulted and the Brothers Karamazov.
June 14, 2023
“…the scope of his canvas, the brilliant ferocity of his wit, the prophetic power and insight of his satire, his unrivaled capacity to bring to life and embody in characters the most profound and complex moral-philosophical issues and social idea…”
As I started to venture into my first book by Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, I quickly became intrigued with the author….and intrigued enough to jump into a 900+ page book about him. While a lot of this book consists of literary criticism of his many works, it does shed some light on what Dostoevsky’s life was like and how those shocking and pivotal life events shaped his novels, characters, and personal philosophy. The text also sparked my interest in pursuing the works of other writers he had alongside for inspiration, such as Gogol and Pushkin, and had me feverishly adding more works from Dostoevsky that I need to get my hands on. Joseph Frank’s approach to this biography is clearly vastly comprehensive in nature, and I still find it hard to believe that this is the abridged version of his previous work on Dostoevsky. The author also gives historical and cultural insight into the surrounding events without the text coming across as dry or like a misplaced digression. This is a book I can see myself flipping back to many times when exploring more of Dostoevsky’s works and one that has given me more of an appreciation for the author that is melting my brain with The Brothers Karamazov.
“For no event could have driven home to him so intimately and starkly the enigma of human life – the enigma of sudden irruption of irrational, uncontrollable, and destructive forces both within the world and in the human psyche; the enigma of the incalculable moral consequences even of such venial self-indulgence as his own demands on his father. It was this enigma that, indeed, he was to spend the rest of his life trying to solve; and no one can accuse him, while doing so, of having wasted his time.”
“This new world would strain Dostoevsky’s emotional and spiritual capacities to the utmost and immeasurably widen the range of his moral and psychological experience. What he had only read about previously in the most extravagant creations of the Romantics would now become for him the very flesh and blood of his existence.
“It was this parable of transgression, repentance, and forgiveness that he wished to leave as a last heritage to his children, and it may well be seen as his own ultimate understanding of the meaning of his life and the message of his work.”
As I started to venture into my first book by Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, I quickly became intrigued with the author….and intrigued enough to jump into a 900+ page book about him. While a lot of this book consists of literary criticism of his many works, it does shed some light on what Dostoevsky’s life was like and how those shocking and pivotal life events shaped his novels, characters, and personal philosophy. The text also sparked my interest in pursuing the works of other writers he had alongside for inspiration, such as Gogol and Pushkin, and had me feverishly adding more works from Dostoevsky that I need to get my hands on. Joseph Frank’s approach to this biography is clearly vastly comprehensive in nature, and I still find it hard to believe that this is the abridged version of his previous work on Dostoevsky. The author also gives historical and cultural insight into the surrounding events without the text coming across as dry or like a misplaced digression. This is a book I can see myself flipping back to many times when exploring more of Dostoevsky’s works and one that has given me more of an appreciation for the author that is melting my brain with The Brothers Karamazov.
“For no event could have driven home to him so intimately and starkly the enigma of human life – the enigma of sudden irruption of irrational, uncontrollable, and destructive forces both within the world and in the human psyche; the enigma of the incalculable moral consequences even of such venial self-indulgence as his own demands on his father. It was this enigma that, indeed, he was to spend the rest of his life trying to solve; and no one can accuse him, while doing so, of having wasted his time.”
“This new world would strain Dostoevsky’s emotional and spiritual capacities to the utmost and immeasurably widen the range of his moral and psychological experience. What he had only read about previously in the most extravagant creations of the Romantics would now become for him the very flesh and blood of his existence.
“It was this parable of transgression, repentance, and forgiveness that he wished to leave as a last heritage to his children, and it may well be seen as his own ultimate understanding of the meaning of his life and the message of his work.”
December 20, 2020
A thoroughly enjoyable if flawed tour de force, this book - part biography, part literary reader - takes us through the life, times and works of the author Feodor Dostoevsky. What might appear to be an onerous 930 pages is itself a heavily redacted 'reader-friendly' version of a set of five books of almost 2,500 pages. The limitations likely introduced through the editing process, and the still excessive length, weigh on the reader's enjoyment of what is at times an extraordinarily illuminating piece of scholarship.
In such a monumental tome, structure is crucial. Fortunately, Joseph Frank and his intrepid editor Mary Petrusewicz have succeeded in this regard. The book is split into five sections which, thanks to the incredible biography of the subject, form neatly demarcated periods of the author's life. Section 1 covers his early life and encounters with the 'subversive' Petrashevsky circle. This leads to his arrest and confinement in a Siberian prison for four years, followed by five years in exile in the now Kazakh city of Semipalatinsk - all covered in part 2. Part 3 details his return to Russian high society in Petersburg and his struggles financially and professionally to (re)establish his career. Part 4 discusses his most famous works and his rise in preeminence while Part 5 discusses his final years as a legendary "prophet" in Russia and the writing of his final masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, in three staggeringly brilliant chapters.
Below the superstructure of the book is the key decision to compartmentalise the discussion of the major novels. So, particularly once Dostoevsky returns from Siberia, the book picks up a helpful rhythm whereby Dostoevsky's life is discussed and the circumstances around (say) the creation of The Idiot are outlined, followed by a more detailed chapter on the book itself complete with in-depth literary analysis. This helps place all his works in context while not neglecting discussion of the books themselves. This is why I consider this book as much a 'reader' (in the manner of a guide to an author's works) as a biography. Such analysis is even more impressive when it elucidates understanding of books I have not even read: the chapter on Poor Folks illustrated how Dostoevsky attempts to split the difference between Pushkin’s more sympathetic view with Gogol’s satirical lens on the lower classes, and how he adapts the high-literary epistolary form and interlaces it with commentary on the literary fads of the time. Such insight helped me understand the wider discussion of what vexed Dostoevsky at this point in the book, as well as helping me grasp things I would totally have missed if I were ever to read Poor Folks.
And this is to the very great credit of Frank as it is this balanced approach to biography and literary analysis that is where the book shines. From reading this book I feel like I would gain so much more out of reading Dostoevsky's works now, not only for having read a literary analysis of a given novel, but from witnessing how Dostoevsky's life and the context of his writing form the backdrop and motivation of his works. It is this incredible synthesis that justifies Frank's fame in the field of literary biography.
What of Dostoevsky the writer: there are a handful of aspects that surface again and again which I will take away from Frank's analysis. Most important is Dostoevsky's belief in human freedom and capacity to choose, entwined with a belief that spontaneous human compassion (Christian love for your fellow man) is the ultimate virtue. This is, throughout his life, opposed to the then-voguish conceptions of improving the lot of mankind purely through the exercise of reason (utilitarianism). As we hear him write in a journal towards the end of his life: all host of evils came from the belief that "science will give ... wisdom; wisdom will reveal the laws ... and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is superior to happiness".
A second crucial piece of insight I gleaned from this book is that, while his books invariably play out his belief in the primacy of humankind's instinct for compassion (rooted in Christian belief) over cold, calculating reason, his approach to illustrating that is not to hector readers but to play out the consequences of particular ideological stances in the plot-action of his novels. As Frank describes, "his technique has always been to refute the ideas he was combatting "indirectly", by dramatising their consequences on the fate of his characters". So Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, hewing to a rationalist worldview, 'deduces' that the murder of the money lender will be a net benefit to the world, but ultimately cannot escape his conscience after carrying out the act. Even more revealingly, he finally admits to himself that his true motivation was an "egoistic" desire to enact his will and show dominance and power over the world, rather than his seemingly utilitarian motives we hear about before the murder.
A related feature of Dostoevsky's writings that I now have an appreciation for is his capacity to put the best insights into the minds of his ideological foes. The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor - a paean to removing human free will to promote their happiness- is one of the best-known passages in literature, yet encapsulates the point Dostoevsky is trying to refute. Indeed the book in which this is found - The Brothers Karamazov - is described by Dostoevsky as being entirely geared towards rebutting the views of the Grand Inquisitor.
Dostoevsky's capacity to walk around in his enemies' shoes no doubt reflects his own struggles with his beliefs, and it is this inner struggle that I now see played out across all his major novels. While, as with Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky is master of playing out the consequences of opposing ideologies, he is willing to submit his own position to such treatment too. As we hear in the chapter on The Idiot: "with an integrity that cannot be too highly praised, Dostoevsky thus fearlessly submits his own most hallowed convictions to the same test that he had used for those of the Nihilists - the test of what they would mean for human life if taken seriously and literally, and lived out to their full extent as guides to conduct ... he portrays the moral extremism of his own eschatological ideal, incarnated in Prince [Myshkin], as being equally incompatible with the normal demands of ordinary social life". No sentence better sums up the many features of Dostoevsky's writing that I now understand and value better than this one.
What of Dostoevsky the man? His personal life very much grounds and motivates his writing. Much can be made of his time in katorga (prison camp). We hear of a scene in which he initially agrees with a Polish inmate's condescending view of the behaviour of the Russian peasant convicts - who are often violent and drunk - but is then disgusted that he viewed himself as superior to his fellow man. He returns to the rowdy sleeping quarters to be among his people. This may reflect or motivate his Russian nationalism later on, and certainly drives his desire for Russia to develop its own ways of doing things in future, rather than emulating 'cultured' Europe.
Later in life he makes much of a recollection he then has of his childhood, in which a peasant Marey comforts the young Dostoevsky despite their being no one around and - for the peasant - no possible benefit to being kind to his young master. That a person in the, in Dostoevsky's own view, grotesque position of serfdom nevertheless acted on compassion than reason is proof eternal of the overriding role of conscience and love for others that is at the heart of Dostoevsky's philosophy.
Dostoevsky had a very nervous disposition, almost paralleling his literary struggles with both his ideological opponents and his own beliefs. As Frank notes: Dostoevsky “reveals his inability to harmonise his true inner sentiments with his outward behaviour. “I remember that you once told me,” he writes Mikhail [his brother], “that my behaviour with you excluded mutual equality. My dear fellow. This was totally unjust. But I have such an awful, repulsive character … I am ready to give my life for you and yours, but sometimes, when my heart is full of love, you can't get a kind word out of me. …” such self-analysis goes a long way to explain Dostoevsk’s genius for portraying the contradictory fluctuations of love-hate emotions in his characters, and his limitless tolerance for the gap between deeply felt intention and actual behaviour in human affairs.”
These charming moments of self-awareness on Dostoevsky's part do not, unfortunately, extend across all aspects of his life. He has a deeply unpleasant anti-semitic strain. This reveals itself in a general belief that much that is wrong with Europe pertains to the "yiddish" influence and such racist language peppers his journalistic work, particularly later in life. He also has a penchant for Russian imperial conquest (such as of Turkey or Central Asia) that offended many of his intellectual contemporaries. Lastly, though perhaps more excusable given the clear addiction at play, is his obsession with roulette. In the middle of his life we hear how, time and time again, he would have to pawn his watch or his long-suffering wife Anna's shawl to have enough money to life on after throwing away his last penny at the roulette wheel. He does kick the habit eventually but only after years of self-pityingly throwing himself on his wife's mercy and patience for having literally lost the family silver yet again.
These depressing character trains can't help but diminish not only from the author's works but from his personal qualities. Impressively for the time he appears to have been faithful to his second wife, whom he touchingly adored, as well as being a deeply devoted father. Reading his reaction to the deaths of two of his young children is heart rendering. It also explains the realism and pathos he can inject into the death of Ilyusha at the end of The Brothers Karamazov (some of the last words he ever wrote). The ailing Ilyusha "tells his father to "get a good boy" when he dies and "love him instead of me". But the grief stricken father, on leaving the room, [says] "I don't want a good boy, I don't want another boy ..."."
Why, given all that I've learned about Dostoevsky as a person and an author, have I only awarded three stars? Simply put, the book is too long and it feels it at times. The simple fact of its length by itself will put off all but the most intrepid readers which is a great shame as anyone reading Dostoevsky's works would benefit from the magnificent insight this book provides.
Yet it is not simply a case of 'brilliant, just too long'. There are clear cuts that could be made to shorten and tighten up the book. We are treated to detailed discussions of all the nuances of Russian thought through the middle of the 19th century at a level of detail far beyond what this work requires. There are lots of asides that go nowhere and could totally be removed. An example of this is a tedious discussion of Freud's analysis of Dostoevsky's first epileptic fit. Frank dismisses Freud's take on this, making the reader wonder why bring it up at all. This portends a bigger issue about including much discussion of differing scholarly opinions which simply will not be of interest to anyone but the academics. The title of the chapter "The Aesthetic of Transcendence" gives a clear indication in and of itself that perhaps it contains a level of detail that would better have been cut. Even the literary analysis chapters are not immune from bloating: the discussion of Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer contains a maddening amount of detail on some relatively insignificant short stories that could easily have been excised.
That excisions were precisely the aim of this redacted version of Frank's much larger whole is what makes it so disappointing to see either Frank himself or his editor fail to reduce the book to a size and detail appropriate for the true Dostoevsky novice. The die hards and scholars already have the five-volume maximus opus; this version should have fully carried out its aim of delivering a cut-down version for the masses. Instead we get a brilliant but excessive book that will be enjoyed by too few lovers of Dostoevsky.
In such a monumental tome, structure is crucial. Fortunately, Joseph Frank and his intrepid editor Mary Petrusewicz have succeeded in this regard. The book is split into five sections which, thanks to the incredible biography of the subject, form neatly demarcated periods of the author's life. Section 1 covers his early life and encounters with the 'subversive' Petrashevsky circle. This leads to his arrest and confinement in a Siberian prison for four years, followed by five years in exile in the now Kazakh city of Semipalatinsk - all covered in part 2. Part 3 details his return to Russian high society in Petersburg and his struggles financially and professionally to (re)establish his career. Part 4 discusses his most famous works and his rise in preeminence while Part 5 discusses his final years as a legendary "prophet" in Russia and the writing of his final masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, in three staggeringly brilliant chapters.
Below the superstructure of the book is the key decision to compartmentalise the discussion of the major novels. So, particularly once Dostoevsky returns from Siberia, the book picks up a helpful rhythm whereby Dostoevsky's life is discussed and the circumstances around (say) the creation of The Idiot are outlined, followed by a more detailed chapter on the book itself complete with in-depth literary analysis. This helps place all his works in context while not neglecting discussion of the books themselves. This is why I consider this book as much a 'reader' (in the manner of a guide to an author's works) as a biography. Such analysis is even more impressive when it elucidates understanding of books I have not even read: the chapter on Poor Folks illustrated how Dostoevsky attempts to split the difference between Pushkin’s more sympathetic view with Gogol’s satirical lens on the lower classes, and how he adapts the high-literary epistolary form and interlaces it with commentary on the literary fads of the time. Such insight helped me understand the wider discussion of what vexed Dostoevsky at this point in the book, as well as helping me grasp things I would totally have missed if I were ever to read Poor Folks.
And this is to the very great credit of Frank as it is this balanced approach to biography and literary analysis that is where the book shines. From reading this book I feel like I would gain so much more out of reading Dostoevsky's works now, not only for having read a literary analysis of a given novel, but from witnessing how Dostoevsky's life and the context of his writing form the backdrop and motivation of his works. It is this incredible synthesis that justifies Frank's fame in the field of literary biography.
What of Dostoevsky the writer: there are a handful of aspects that surface again and again which I will take away from Frank's analysis. Most important is Dostoevsky's belief in human freedom and capacity to choose, entwined with a belief that spontaneous human compassion (Christian love for your fellow man) is the ultimate virtue. This is, throughout his life, opposed to the then-voguish conceptions of improving the lot of mankind purely through the exercise of reason (utilitarianism). As we hear him write in a journal towards the end of his life: all host of evils came from the belief that "science will give ... wisdom; wisdom will reveal the laws ... and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is superior to happiness".
A second crucial piece of insight I gleaned from this book is that, while his books invariably play out his belief in the primacy of humankind's instinct for compassion (rooted in Christian belief) over cold, calculating reason, his approach to illustrating that is not to hector readers but to play out the consequences of particular ideological stances in the plot-action of his novels. As Frank describes, "his technique has always been to refute the ideas he was combatting "indirectly", by dramatising their consequences on the fate of his characters". So Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, hewing to a rationalist worldview, 'deduces' that the murder of the money lender will be a net benefit to the world, but ultimately cannot escape his conscience after carrying out the act. Even more revealingly, he finally admits to himself that his true motivation was an "egoistic" desire to enact his will and show dominance and power over the world, rather than his seemingly utilitarian motives we hear about before the murder.
A related feature of Dostoevsky's writings that I now have an appreciation for is his capacity to put the best insights into the minds of his ideological foes. The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor - a paean to removing human free will to promote their happiness- is one of the best-known passages in literature, yet encapsulates the point Dostoevsky is trying to refute. Indeed the book in which this is found - The Brothers Karamazov - is described by Dostoevsky as being entirely geared towards rebutting the views of the Grand Inquisitor.
Dostoevsky's capacity to walk around in his enemies' shoes no doubt reflects his own struggles with his beliefs, and it is this inner struggle that I now see played out across all his major novels. While, as with Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky is master of playing out the consequences of opposing ideologies, he is willing to submit his own position to such treatment too. As we hear in the chapter on The Idiot: "with an integrity that cannot be too highly praised, Dostoevsky thus fearlessly submits his own most hallowed convictions to the same test that he had used for those of the Nihilists - the test of what they would mean for human life if taken seriously and literally, and lived out to their full extent as guides to conduct ... he portrays the moral extremism of his own eschatological ideal, incarnated in Prince [Myshkin], as being equally incompatible with the normal demands of ordinary social life". No sentence better sums up the many features of Dostoevsky's writing that I now understand and value better than this one.
What of Dostoevsky the man? His personal life very much grounds and motivates his writing. Much can be made of his time in katorga (prison camp). We hear of a scene in which he initially agrees with a Polish inmate's condescending view of the behaviour of the Russian peasant convicts - who are often violent and drunk - but is then disgusted that he viewed himself as superior to his fellow man. He returns to the rowdy sleeping quarters to be among his people. This may reflect or motivate his Russian nationalism later on, and certainly drives his desire for Russia to develop its own ways of doing things in future, rather than emulating 'cultured' Europe.
Later in life he makes much of a recollection he then has of his childhood, in which a peasant Marey comforts the young Dostoevsky despite their being no one around and - for the peasant - no possible benefit to being kind to his young master. That a person in the, in Dostoevsky's own view, grotesque position of serfdom nevertheless acted on compassion than reason is proof eternal of the overriding role of conscience and love for others that is at the heart of Dostoevsky's philosophy.
Dostoevsky had a very nervous disposition, almost paralleling his literary struggles with both his ideological opponents and his own beliefs. As Frank notes: Dostoevsky “reveals his inability to harmonise his true inner sentiments with his outward behaviour. “I remember that you once told me,” he writes Mikhail [his brother], “that my behaviour with you excluded mutual equality. My dear fellow. This was totally unjust. But I have such an awful, repulsive character … I am ready to give my life for you and yours, but sometimes, when my heart is full of love, you can't get a kind word out of me. …” such self-analysis goes a long way to explain Dostoevsk’s genius for portraying the contradictory fluctuations of love-hate emotions in his characters, and his limitless tolerance for the gap between deeply felt intention and actual behaviour in human affairs.”
These charming moments of self-awareness on Dostoevsky's part do not, unfortunately, extend across all aspects of his life. He has a deeply unpleasant anti-semitic strain. This reveals itself in a general belief that much that is wrong with Europe pertains to the "yiddish" influence and such racist language peppers his journalistic work, particularly later in life. He also has a penchant for Russian imperial conquest (such as of Turkey or Central Asia) that offended many of his intellectual contemporaries. Lastly, though perhaps more excusable given the clear addiction at play, is his obsession with roulette. In the middle of his life we hear how, time and time again, he would have to pawn his watch or his long-suffering wife Anna's shawl to have enough money to life on after throwing away his last penny at the roulette wheel. He does kick the habit eventually but only after years of self-pityingly throwing himself on his wife's mercy and patience for having literally lost the family silver yet again.
These depressing character trains can't help but diminish not only from the author's works but from his personal qualities. Impressively for the time he appears to have been faithful to his second wife, whom he touchingly adored, as well as being a deeply devoted father. Reading his reaction to the deaths of two of his young children is heart rendering. It also explains the realism and pathos he can inject into the death of Ilyusha at the end of The Brothers Karamazov (some of the last words he ever wrote). The ailing Ilyusha "tells his father to "get a good boy" when he dies and "love him instead of me". But the grief stricken father, on leaving the room, [says] "I don't want a good boy, I don't want another boy ..."."
Why, given all that I've learned about Dostoevsky as a person and an author, have I only awarded three stars? Simply put, the book is too long and it feels it at times. The simple fact of its length by itself will put off all but the most intrepid readers which is a great shame as anyone reading Dostoevsky's works would benefit from the magnificent insight this book provides.
Yet it is not simply a case of 'brilliant, just too long'. There are clear cuts that could be made to shorten and tighten up the book. We are treated to detailed discussions of all the nuances of Russian thought through the middle of the 19th century at a level of detail far beyond what this work requires. There are lots of asides that go nowhere and could totally be removed. An example of this is a tedious discussion of Freud's analysis of Dostoevsky's first epileptic fit. Frank dismisses Freud's take on this, making the reader wonder why bring it up at all. This portends a bigger issue about including much discussion of differing scholarly opinions which simply will not be of interest to anyone but the academics. The title of the chapter "The Aesthetic of Transcendence" gives a clear indication in and of itself that perhaps it contains a level of detail that would better have been cut. Even the literary analysis chapters are not immune from bloating: the discussion of Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer contains a maddening amount of detail on some relatively insignificant short stories that could easily have been excised.
That excisions were precisely the aim of this redacted version of Frank's much larger whole is what makes it so disappointing to see either Frank himself or his editor fail to reduce the book to a size and detail appropriate for the true Dostoevsky novice. The die hards and scholars already have the five-volume maximus opus; this version should have fully carried out its aim of delivering a cut-down version for the masses. Instead we get a brilliant but excessive book that will be enjoyed by too few lovers of Dostoevsky.
April 27, 2020
An excellent biography of the great author and an ideal companion in my tour of his books. It helped me understand more about his life, even more about his books, and the fact that it gives us a complete picture of the political and ideological climate of the time in Russia perfectly complements the picture. Definitely one of the most complete biographies I've ever read.
Μία εξαιρετική βιογραφία του μεγάλου συγγραφέα και ένας ιδανικό σύντροφος στην περιήγηση μου στα βιβλία του. Με βοήθησε να καταλάβω περισσότερα πράγματα για τη ζωή του, ακόμα περισσότερα για τα βιβλία του ενώ το γεγονός ότι μας δίνει μία ολοκληρωμένη εικόνα για το πολιτικό και ιδεολογικό κλίμα της εποχής στην Ρωσία συμπληρώνει ιδανικά την εικόνα. Σίγουρα μία από τις πληρέστερες βιογραφίες που έχω διαβάσει.
Μία εξαιρετική βιογραφία του μεγάλου συγγραφέα και ένας ιδανικό σύντροφος στην περιήγηση μου στα βιβλία του. Με βοήθησε να καταλάβω περισσότερα πράγματα για τη ζωή του, ακόμα περισσότερα για τα βιβλία του ενώ το γεγονός ότι μας δίνει μία ολοκληρωμένη εικόνα για το πολιτικό και ιδεολογικό κλίμα της εποχής στην Ρωσία συμπληρώνει ιδανικά την εικόνα. Σίγουρα μία από τις πληρέστερες βιογραφίες που έχω διαβάσει.
November 25, 2016
Понеже има достатъчно много ревюта към книгата на английски, реших да драсна едно кратко и на български.
"Dostoevsky: A writer in his time" е компилация на монументалното дело на Джоусеф Франк, а именно - пет томната биография на Достоевски, която той пише от средата на '70те до началото на 21 век. Сериозно съкратена, но все още изключително подробна, книгата описва живота на Достоевски от годините непосредствено преди раждането му до неговата смърт.
Започвайки със семейната среда, подробно описание характера на баща му и начина по който Достоевски е възпитаван, A writer in his time дава някои много важни отговори свързани с въпроса за сформирането характера на писателя.
Книгата проследява идеологическото развитие на Достоевски, познанството му с Белински, замесването в кръга на Петрашевски и може би най - важния период от живота му - заточението в Сибир, след фалшивата екзекуция. Тези събития в последствие силно ще повлияят на неговата литературна дейност и именно от тях ще се родят шедьоврите познати като "Петокнижие".
Джоусеф Франк е свършил невероятна работа съчетавайки историята на Русия, идеологическите обществени настроения и литературните тенденции в империята през 19в. и философските течения в Европа с чисто човешката действителност на Достоевски; и всичко това написано в един изключително академичен стил.
Не на последно място, трябва да кажа, че "A writer in his time" съдържа и критически анализи на почти всички произведения излезли от перото на Достоевски.
В заключение, книгата е брилянтен пример и абсолютно показно как се пише биография на световна личност.
"Dostoevsky: A writer in his time" е компилация на монументалното дело на Джоусеф Франк, а именно - пет томната биография на Достоевски, която той пише от средата на '70те до началото на 21 век. Сериозно съкратена, но все още изключително подробна, книгата описва живота на Достоевски от годините непосредствено преди раждането му до неговата смърт.
Започвайки със семейната среда, подробно описание характера на баща му и начина по който Достоевски е възпитаван, A writer in his time дава някои много важни отговори свързани с въпроса за сформирането характера на писателя.
Книгата проследява идеологическото развитие на Достоевски, познанството му с Белински, замесването в кръга на Петрашевски и може би най - важния период от живота му - заточението в Сибир, след фалшивата екзекуция. Тези събития в последствие силно ще повлияят на неговата литературна дейност и именно от тях ще се родят шедьоврите познати като "Петокнижие".
Джоусеф Франк е свършил невероятна работа съчетавайки историята на Русия, идеологическите обществени настроения и литературните тенденции в империята през 19в. и философските течения в Европа с чисто човешката действителност на Достоевски; и всичко това написано в един изключително академичен стил.
Не на последно място, трябва да кажа, че "A writer in his time" съдържа и критически анализи на почти всички произведения излезли от перото на Достоевски.
В заключение, книгата е брилянтен пример и абсолютно показно как се пише биография на световна личност.
April 5, 2021
Incredibly thorough and very interesting. I really appreciated the detailed analyses of all Dostoyevsky's major writings which were interspersed chronologically throughout the bio.
April 7, 2012
This is an almost perfect book: Frank combines fascinating history, insightful biography and above average literary criticism perfectly. I'm literally speechless; the only book I can think of to put beside this is MacDiarmid's 'Christianity: the first three thousand years,' which is similarly clear, stimulating, beautifully written and finely structured.
Aside from giving us a model for literary biographies, Frank also manages (possibly without knowing it) to write a perfect guidebook for writing novels: combine a deep fascination with your own time, an interest in human psychology, deep moral convictions, and a concern for the Big Ideas of human life in general. Then work your butt off. I'd like to think someone out there has managed to do that without being quite the twat that Dostoevsky became (yes- Russia (and by 'Russia' he of course means 'Orthodox peasants') will save the world). But I have no evidence of that as yet. If you like Dostoevsky's novels at all, this is well worth the effort.
Fun things that Dostoevsky said:
"You feel that one must have perpetual spiritual resistance and negation so as not to surrender, not to submit to the impression, not to bow before the fact and deify Baal, that is, not to accept the existing as one's own ideal." (376)
"The people are always the people.... but here you no longer see a people, but the systematic, submissive and induced lack of consciousness." (378)
"It is necessary to assume as author someone omniscient and faultless, who holds up to the view of all one of hte members of hte new generation." (480)
"'it is not worth doing good int eh world, for it is said, it will be destroyed.' There's something foolhardy and dishonest in this idea. Most of all, it's a very convenient idea for ordinary behavior: since everything is doomed, why exert oneself, why love to do good? Live for your paunch." (843)
Aside from giving us a model for literary biographies, Frank also manages (possibly without knowing it) to write a perfect guidebook for writing novels: combine a deep fascination with your own time, an interest in human psychology, deep moral convictions, and a concern for the Big Ideas of human life in general. Then work your butt off. I'd like to think someone out there has managed to do that without being quite the twat that Dostoevsky became (yes- Russia (and by 'Russia' he of course means 'Orthodox peasants') will save the world). But I have no evidence of that as yet. If you like Dostoevsky's novels at all, this is well worth the effort.
Fun things that Dostoevsky said:
"You feel that one must have perpetual spiritual resistance and negation so as not to surrender, not to submit to the impression, not to bow before the fact and deify Baal, that is, not to accept the existing as one's own ideal." (376)
"The people are always the people.... but here you no longer see a people, but the systematic, submissive and induced lack of consciousness." (378)
"It is necessary to assume as author someone omniscient and faultless, who holds up to the view of all one of hte members of hte new generation." (480)
"'it is not worth doing good int eh world, for it is said, it will be destroyed.' There's something foolhardy and dishonest in this idea. Most of all, it's a very convenient idea for ordinary behavior: since everything is doomed, why exert oneself, why love to do good? Live for your paunch." (843)
July 1, 2022
This one-volume abridgement biography by Joseph Frank is more than a biography of Dostoevsky, it’s an encyclopaedia of 19th century Russia cultural history.
I’ve spent one year to finish as the author took me through not only masterpieces from Dostoevsky, but also those from Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev and Chernyshevsky - thus, indulging myself a whole year of Russian literatures.
The fact that Dostoevsky’s most important works are “inspired” by the ideological doctrines of his era. Many are responses to the political and cultural issues of his day. Hence, the title of the book “A writer in his time”. Without knowing the ideological motivations of his characters, there is no way to comprehend his works completely.
Major characters like Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment” or Stavrogin and Kirillov in “The Demons” are the logical extreme to immoderate nihilism; the prince in “The Idiot” is the incarnation of the author’s moral ideals; every single word in “Notes from the Underground” is an attack on Chernyshevsky’s “What is to be done”.
Even though one can still enjoy his novels immensely as psychological thrillers, one also misses the chance to drink in everything that Dostoyevsky has to offer.
This book is a must-read for all who loves Dostoevsky and Russian literature in general. By knowing Dostoyevsky, I get to know not only the one that inspired him but those who were inspired by him, including Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus and more. On that account, my to-read list is full for the next few years.
I’ve spent one year to finish as the author took me through not only masterpieces from Dostoevsky, but also those from Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev and Chernyshevsky - thus, indulging myself a whole year of Russian literatures.
The fact that Dostoevsky’s most important works are “inspired” by the ideological doctrines of his era. Many are responses to the political and cultural issues of his day. Hence, the title of the book “A writer in his time”. Without knowing the ideological motivations of his characters, there is no way to comprehend his works completely.
Major characters like Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment” or Stavrogin and Kirillov in “The Demons” are the logical extreme to immoderate nihilism; the prince in “The Idiot” is the incarnation of the author’s moral ideals; every single word in “Notes from the Underground” is an attack on Chernyshevsky’s “What is to be done”.
Even though one can still enjoy his novels immensely as psychological thrillers, one also misses the chance to drink in everything that Dostoyevsky has to offer.
This book is a must-read for all who loves Dostoevsky and Russian literature in general. By knowing Dostoyevsky, I get to know not only the one that inspired him but those who were inspired by him, including Nietzsche, Kafka, Camus and more. On that account, my to-read list is full for the next few years.
February 14, 2025
An outstanding biography. I can't begin to imagine how long it took for Frank to research and write all of what he contributed to Dostoevsky scholarship. To think, too, that this book is an ABRIDGED compilation! What I appreciated about this book, moreover, is that it offers a literary analysis which also considers the socio-political-historical context at the time of its conception for each book Dostoevsky wrote. This is far more profound than a mere biography.
If you wish to take a deep dive into the man behind some of the greatest books ever conceived, look no further than Joseph Frank's "Dostoevsky".
If you wish to take a deep dive into the man behind some of the greatest books ever conceived, look no further than Joseph Frank's "Dostoevsky".
December 30, 2013
This is the most interesting, comprehensive, intellectually stimulating biography I've ever read. Ranks above my previous favorite - David Herbert Donald's biography of Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward). If you're a reader of Dostoyevsky, Frank's insights will deepen your pleasure and understanding of the author's works.
January 25, 2018
This is one of the best biographies I've ever read. An absolute masterpiece.
January 3, 2015
I haven’t read that many biographies to certify it as the best biography ever. But the temptation remains. It satisfies you on so many levels. Because it doesn’t limit itself to the life of Dostoevsky. But, as the title suggests, tries to situate him in his time. The times that he lived in are equally important to it. This approach certainly doesn’t work for every other writer (for Kafka for example – whose life is revolved around his inner demons & whose famous diary entry reads thus: “August 2, 1914 - Germany has declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon.”). But for Dostoevsky it fits perfectly.
Many later commentators have sort of made Dostoevsky this existential philosopher who killed God (Nietzsche, Camus for example). But he is merely reacting to the ideologies of his time. He did not intend his heroes like Underground-man, Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov to be these sad representations of modern man. That was not his primary intention. In his view, they are the consequence of contemporary radical ideologies which he considered fatal for the moral health of Russia. Biographer Joseph Frank demonstrates this with irrefutable evidence. So now you’ve got this all new perceptive from which you can read Dostoevsky all over again. It certainly inspired me in that direction. I want read him again now.
Besides all this, may be because of the Telugu translations of Moscow’s Raduga publications that I’ve read as a child, I am fascinated by everything Russian. I think Russians (at least as they are depicted in those books) are the only people on the globe that come so close to the soul of Indians (Not Americans, not Germans and not even Latinos). When you exclude the mere props like samovars, sledges and steppes, they are us! Their pursuits, passions and emotions are so like ours. So this book – which not only concerns itself with Dostoevsky, but brings us so palpably close to the texture of 19th century Russia – is a very enriching experience for me. Thanks to the book, now I know the social cultural ambience behind those fictional worlds – teeming with titular councilors, serfs and radical youth.
Many later commentators have sort of made Dostoevsky this existential philosopher who killed God (Nietzsche, Camus for example). But he is merely reacting to the ideologies of his time. He did not intend his heroes like Underground-man, Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov to be these sad representations of modern man. That was not his primary intention. In his view, they are the consequence of contemporary radical ideologies which he considered fatal for the moral health of Russia. Biographer Joseph Frank demonstrates this with irrefutable evidence. So now you’ve got this all new perceptive from which you can read Dostoevsky all over again. It certainly inspired me in that direction. I want read him again now.
Besides all this, may be because of the Telugu translations of Moscow’s Raduga publications that I’ve read as a child, I am fascinated by everything Russian. I think Russians (at least as they are depicted in those books) are the only people on the globe that come so close to the soul of Indians (Not Americans, not Germans and not even Latinos). When you exclude the mere props like samovars, sledges and steppes, they are us! Their pursuits, passions and emotions are so like ours. So this book – which not only concerns itself with Dostoevsky, but brings us so palpably close to the texture of 19th century Russia – is a very enriching experience for me. Thanks to the book, now I know the social cultural ambience behind those fictional worlds – teeming with titular councilors, serfs and radical youth.
May 12, 2019
Five stars do not begin to make justice to this work: monumental in its scholarship; deep in analyses of the original texts, historical & social context; and deeply loving in the image it paints of Dostoevsky. This booked filled in all the blanks I had about D. despite having read his body of work at least twice. I have acquired insights that make me want to reread all the books, now that I have a fuller concept of each one's genesis, personal contexts and their impacts on society at the time.
I actually also bought the Kindle edition just so I would not stop reading it on the subway, travelling, waiting in line, etc. It is a page-turner, heavy scholarship and all! But if there is one life in this world that had many ups and downs... it is heart bleeding to imagine what that man suffered, he who had such strong feelings at all times, and the genius to share them with readers in the centuries ahead.
Now I'm forever spoiled, as I have given up on two biographies of Tolstoy because I missed so much the depth of knowledge and the love of a writer's work. I cannot recommend this enough as an example of how all writer's biographies should be.
I actually also bought the Kindle edition just so I would not stop reading it on the subway, travelling, waiting in line, etc. It is a page-turner, heavy scholarship and all! But if there is one life in this world that had many ups and downs... it is heart bleeding to imagine what that man suffered, he who had such strong feelings at all times, and the genius to share them with readers in the centuries ahead.
Now I'm forever spoiled, as I have given up on two biographies of Tolstoy because I missed so much the depth of knowledge and the love of a writer's work. I cannot recommend this enough as an example of how all writer's biographies should be.
November 17, 2011
there is hardly anything more worthwhile to read
August 19, 2022
Tremendous. Focuses on elucidating Dostoevsky’s works by reference to his ideas in their intellectual context.
June 9, 2013
After reading this book my understanding of Russian literature, Russia, and the causes of the Russian Revolution were clear and extended to an understanding of totalitarian governments, and why the Russian Revolution carried the seeds of its own failure.
I finished reading this book. Many facets of Russia and why it is Russia stay with me from the book. I am sorry that the literature created under the crucible of a totalitarian state seems to have died with it. Russia has been through so many changes, difficult changes, and her idealism seems in retreat from what I have read on the subject. Anyone interested in literature, how it is made, what pressures add/detract from its formation would like this study.
I finished reading this book. Many facets of Russia and why it is Russia stay with me from the book. I am sorry that the literature created under the crucible of a totalitarian state seems to have died with it. Russia has been through so many changes, difficult changes, and her idealism seems in retreat from what I have read on the subject. Anyone interested in literature, how it is made, what pressures add/detract from its formation would like this study.
September 27, 2024
Took repeated big pushes but so worth it. Dostoevsky's life and career are like that of a prophet and it was so satisfying and edifying to get a deep-dive close look. To see him at the end in the mantle of devotion from his country, people bearing heads when he passed by in carriage and weeping when he read aloud, a former convict full of such wisdom, profundity and experience of suffering, was an emotionally moving and exalting experience. Edified me spiritually and inspired me to dream bigger in my reading choices. On top of that, the walkthroughs of his novels were a whole new world in understanding his visions.
November 22, 2024
A monumental masterpiece on the extraordinary life of Fëdor Dostoevsky
June 9, 2010
When Joseph Frank’s five volume encyclopedic biography of the life and times of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was published over the course of several years, it was widely lauded as the most comprehensive work ever undertaken on the life of this writer who has had enormous lasting impact over the past two centuries. Now, the Princeton University Review has published a condensed (though still a massive 959 pages) version of Frank’s epic work that gives new readers a richly detailed overview of both Dostoevsky’s writings and the times and circumstances that throughly influenced it.
Seen by many as the father of existentialism, Dostoevsky was passionately connected to the social, political and ideological movements of 19th Century Russia and Frank’s depiction of the man is less an analysis of his works as much as an attempt to (and succeed in) seemlessly intertwine the events of both his individual life (from his unwanted schooling at the Academy of Military Engineers, to his early forays into journalism, to an eventual four year incarceration in Siberia) and the raging philosophical movements of his time (utopian socialism, determinism, Russian radicalism, Nihilism as well as various shades of Christianity) with the output of his career as both a prominent novelist and essayist.
Frank purposefully sets out to avoid the ‘purely personal biography’ (which has been covered by numerous others) and seeks to explore and define what he terms the “eschatological imagination”; the fusion of the ever-evolving political and sociological backdrops of the times with the way these philosophies infuse his characters (from his essays and novels including ‘Poor Folk,’ ‘Crime and Punishment’ and the final masterpiece ‘The Brothers Karamazov’) with a zeal that carries his stories out to their ultimate conclusions.
The depth and details portrayed by Frank are astonishing in both their breadth and their inalienable connection to the subject at hand. It is worth noting that a project of this scope could not have been accomplished without the insightful editing required to reduce the five volume set to a single (albeit massive) book and still maintain the magnitude and absorbing details of the original works largely intact. In this regard, this work is largely credited to Stanford PhD, Mary Petrusewicz, whose efforts should not go without mention
Seen by many as the father of existentialism, Dostoevsky was passionately connected to the social, political and ideological movements of 19th Century Russia and Frank’s depiction of the man is less an analysis of his works as much as an attempt to (and succeed in) seemlessly intertwine the events of both his individual life (from his unwanted schooling at the Academy of Military Engineers, to his early forays into journalism, to an eventual four year incarceration in Siberia) and the raging philosophical movements of his time (utopian socialism, determinism, Russian radicalism, Nihilism as well as various shades of Christianity) with the output of his career as both a prominent novelist and essayist.
Frank purposefully sets out to avoid the ‘purely personal biography’ (which has been covered by numerous others) and seeks to explore and define what he terms the “eschatological imagination”; the fusion of the ever-evolving political and sociological backdrops of the times with the way these philosophies infuse his characters (from his essays and novels including ‘Poor Folk,’ ‘Crime and Punishment’ and the final masterpiece ‘The Brothers Karamazov’) with a zeal that carries his stories out to their ultimate conclusions.
The depth and details portrayed by Frank are astonishing in both their breadth and their inalienable connection to the subject at hand. It is worth noting that a project of this scope could not have been accomplished without the insightful editing required to reduce the five volume set to a single (albeit massive) book and still maintain the magnitude and absorbing details of the original works largely intact. In this regard, this work is largely credited to Stanford PhD, Mary Petrusewicz, whose efforts should not go without mention
January 29, 2024
Joseph Frank's five-volume work is equal parts biography, dense sociocultural history, and literary analysis. Frank's elucidations of Dostoevsky's masterpieces fully illuminate the contemporaneous social and cultural conversations as well as the more timeless religious-moral quandaries feverishly animating all of the writer's work. While celebrating the genius of Dostoevsky, Frank doesn't shy away from the ugly parts of Dostoevsky's thinking -- his rabid, (silly) messianic Russian nationalism and deep anti-Semitism. These aspects of Dostoevsky tarnish the purity of his moral authority and connect him, unfortunately, with the current state of nationalism and xenophobia pervasive in Russian political and cultural life. In this way, Dostoevsky personifies, to some extent, what was so frequently true of his characters – their display of moral and ideological extremes.
Dostoevsky's characters, as Frank explores, are personifications of particular ideological and moral propositions pushed to their logical ends (e.g., Raskolnikov (nihilism, utilitarianism), Ivan Karamazov (secular humanism)). The depraved (e.g Fyodor Karamazov, Pytor Verkhovenksy) are contrasted with those morally pure and unassailable, such as Prince Myshkin and Alyosha Karamazov. Others, like Dmitry Karamazov and Nastasya Filipovna, vacillate, attempting to chart a journey through spiritual-moral transformation and redemption. Dostoevsky clearly meant his readers to ultimately realize the eschatological damnation awaiting the Ivan Karamazovs of the world – those tottering in their acceptance of spiritually, godly-animated life. We’re supposed to identify with Myshkin and Alyosha. Problem is: Dostoevsky’s damned, lunatic, unstable “underground” men and women -- with their tendencies of "flying into a rage,” insulting, lying, stealing, womanizing, neglecting their children and, fairly often, murdering – are so much more damn interesting and memorable than the hagiographic portraits of moral north-stars like Father Zosima. Though I certainly wouldn’t want to be or become a Dmitry or Ivan Karamazov, I bet it would be a lot more fun to have a beer with one of these two Karamazovs (even Fyodor) than it would with Alyosha.
Dostoevsky's characters, as Frank explores, are personifications of particular ideological and moral propositions pushed to their logical ends (e.g., Raskolnikov (nihilism, utilitarianism), Ivan Karamazov (secular humanism)). The depraved (e.g Fyodor Karamazov, Pytor Verkhovenksy) are contrasted with those morally pure and unassailable, such as Prince Myshkin and Alyosha Karamazov. Others, like Dmitry Karamazov and Nastasya Filipovna, vacillate, attempting to chart a journey through spiritual-moral transformation and redemption. Dostoevsky clearly meant his readers to ultimately realize the eschatological damnation awaiting the Ivan Karamazovs of the world – those tottering in their acceptance of spiritually, godly-animated life. We’re supposed to identify with Myshkin and Alyosha. Problem is: Dostoevsky’s damned, lunatic, unstable “underground” men and women -- with their tendencies of "flying into a rage,” insulting, lying, stealing, womanizing, neglecting their children and, fairly often, murdering – are so much more damn interesting and memorable than the hagiographic portraits of moral north-stars like Father Zosima. Though I certainly wouldn’t want to be or become a Dmitry or Ivan Karamazov, I bet it would be a lot more fun to have a beer with one of these two Karamazovs (even Fyodor) than it would with Alyosha.
February 17, 2014
Seamless fusion of personal, historical, and political narratives. One of the best biographies I've ever read. Last paragraph (Solovyev's words spoken just before D's death): "Just as the highest worldly power somehow or other becomes concentrated in one person, who represents a state, similarly the highest spiritual power in each epoch usually belongs in every people to one man, who more clearly than all grasps the spiritual ideals of mankind, more consciously than all strives to attain them, more strongly than all affects others by his preachments. Such a spiritual leader of the Russian people in recent times was Dostoevsky."
May 29, 2024
Para mi ha sido un libro imprescindible en el entendimiento de este autor.
Contiene incluso análisis en contexto con su vida de todas sus obras, ligados fuertemente a el momento de su escritura y su entorno sociocultural y político.
Contiene muchos spoilers que a mi criterio se agradecen para disfrutar más la lectura de sus obras.
Contiene incluso análisis en contexto con su vida de todas sus obras, ligados fuertemente a el momento de su escritura y su entorno sociocultural y político.
Contiene muchos spoilers que a mi criterio se agradecen para disfrutar más la lectura de sus obras.
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