Dostoevsky Joseph Frank Published by Princeton University Press Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time. With a New preface by the author ed. Princeton University Press, 2009. Project MUSE.muse.jhu.edu/book/43760. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43760 Access provided at 3 Apr 2020 02:51 GMT with no institutional affiliation D o s t o e v s k y This page intentionally left blank D o s t o e v s k y AWriterinHistime Joseph FrAnk edited by Mary Petrusewicz PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2010 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William street, Princeton, new Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 oxford street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire ox20 1tw All rights reserved Library of congress cataloging-in-Publication Data Frank, Joseph, 1918– Dostoevsky : a writer in his time / Joseph Frank. p. cm. Abridged ed. of author’s work in 5 v.: Dostoevsky. c1976–2002. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBn 978-0-691-12819-1 (acid-free paper) 1. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881. 2. Novelists, Russian—19th century—Biography. 3. Russia—Intellectual life—1801–1917. I. Title. PG3328.F75 2010 891.7393—dc22 [B] 2009001418 British Library cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Adobe Garamond Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ press.princeton.edu Printed in the United states of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Frontispiece: The bust of Dostoevsky on his grave Parched with the spirit’s thirst, i crossed An endless desert sunk in gloom, And a six-winged seraph came Where the tracks met and i stood lost. Fingers light as dream he laid Upon my lids; i opened wide My eagle eyes, and gazed around. He laid his fingers on my ears And they were filled with roaring sound: i heard the music of the spheres, The flight of angels through the skies, The beasts that crept beneath the sea, The heady uprush of the vine; And, like a lover kissing me, He rooted out this tongue of mine Fluent in lies and vanity; He tore my fainting lips apart And, with his right hand steeped in blood, He armed me with a serpent’s dart; With his bright sword he split my breast; My heart leapt to him with a bound; A glowing livid coal he pressed Into the hollow of the wound. There in the desert i lay dead. And God called out to me and said: “Rise, prophet, rise, and hear, and see, And let my words be seen and heard By all who turn aside from me. And burn them with my fiery word.” —A. s. Pushkin, “The Prophet” trans. D. M. Thomas This page intentionally left blank C o n t e n t s List of Illustrations xi Preface: Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time xiii Acknowledgments xix Transliteration xxi Abbreviations xxiii p A r t I The seeds of revolt, 1821–1849 1 Prelude 3 2 The Family 5 3 The religious and cultural Background 23 4 The Academy of Military engineers 38 5 The Two romanticisms 51 6 The Gogol Period 61 7 Poor Folk 76 8 Dostoevsky and the Pléiade 86 9 Belinsky and Dostoevsky: i 94 10 Feuilletons and experiments 104 11 Belinsky and Dostoevsky: ii 119 12 The Beketov and Petrashevsky circles 129 13 Dostoevsky and speshnev 145 vii viii Contents p A r t II The Years of ordeal, 1850–1859 14 The Peter-and-Paul Fortress 163 15 Katorga 185 16 “Monsters in Their Misery” 196 17 Private Dostoevsky 223 18 A russian Heart 243 19 The siberian novellas 255 20 Homecoming 273 p A r t III The stir of Liberation, 1860–1865 21 Into the Fray 281 22 An Aesthetics of Transcendence 298 23 The Insulted and Injured 317 24 The era of Proclamations 330 25 Portrait of a nihilist 341 26 Time: The Final Months 358 27 Winter Notes on Summer Impressions 372 28 An emancipated Woman, A Tormented Lover 384 29 The Prison of Utopia 399 30 Notes from Underground 413 31 The end of Epoch 441 Contents ix p A r t I v The Miraculous Years, 1865–1871 32 Khlestakov in Wiesbaden 455 33 From novella to novel 472 34 Crime and Punishment 483 35 “A Little Diamond” 509 36 The Gambler 521 37 Escape and exile 531 38 In search of a novel 549 39 An inconsolable Father 564 40 The Idiot 577 41 The Pamphlet and the Poem 590 42 Fathers, sons, and stavrogin 601 43 Exile’s return 616 44 History and Myth in Demons 626 45 The Book of the impostors 650 p A r t v The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881 46 The Citizen 669 47 Narodnichestvo: russian Populism 682 48 Bad ems 694 49 A Raw Youth 706 50 A Public Figure 723 x Contents 51 The Diary of a Writer, 1876–1877 738 52 A new novel 760 53 The Great Debate 779 54 Rebellion and the Grand inquisitor 788 55 Terror and Martial Law 804 56 The Pushkin Festival 813 57 Controversies and conclusions 835 58 The Brothers Karamazov: Books 1–4 848 59 The Brothers Karamazov: Books 5–6 867 60 The Brothers Karamazov: Books 7–12 886 61 Death and Transfiguration 912 Editor’s note 933 Index 935 I l l u s t r A t I o n s Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations are from Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky v portretakh, illyustratsiyakh, dokumentakh, ed. V. s. nechaeva (Moscow, 1972). Frontispiece The bust of Dostoevsky on his grave iii 1. Dr. M. A. Dostoevsky 8 2. Mme M. F. Dostoevsky 8 3. A government courier on a mission 39 4. The Academy of Military engineers 42 5. F. M. Dostoevsky in 1847 90 6. Feodor’s older brother, M. M. Dostoevsky, in 1847 92 7. V. G. Belinsky in 1843 95 8. M. V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky in 1840 137 9. N. A. speshnev 146 10. The Peter-and-Paul Fortress 164 11. The mock execution of the Petrashevtsy 178 12. Marya Dimitrievna isaeva 232 13. Dostoevsky in uniform, 1858 240 14. Nikolay strakhov in the 1850s 287 15. Apollon Grigoryev in the 1850s 289 16. Mikhail Dostoevsky’s home and the offices of Time 292 17. F. M. Dostoevsky, 1861 293 18. I. s. Turgenev, ca. 1865. From Turgenev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9 (Moscow–Leningrad, 1965) 344 19. Main hall of the crystal Palace. From Scientific American, March 19, 1851. 377 xi xii List of illustrations 20. Apollinaria suslova. From Dominique Arban et al., Dostoïevski (Paris, 1971) 386 21. Anna Grigoryevna Dostoevsky, ca. 1863 510 22. Hans Holbein the Younger, Dead Christ (1521–1522) 550 23. Apollon Maikov, ca. 1861 551 24. Dostoevsky in 1872, by V. G. Perov 620 25. A page from Dostoevsky’s notebooks for Demons 627 26. Vladimir solovyev 676 27. Tolstoy in 1877, by i. n. Kramskoy 702 28. Dostoevsky in 1876 728 29. A page from the manuscript of The Brothers Karamazov 861 30. Dostoevsky on his bier, by i. n. Kramskoy 927 p r e fac e Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time Since the present volume is a condensation of the five that I have already pub- lished on the life and works of Dostoevsky, I should like to acquaint my new readers with the point of view from which they were written. My approach arose primarily from a troubling sense that important aspects of Dostoevsky’s work had been overlooked, or at least not accorded sufficient importance, in the con- siderable secondary literature devoted to his career. The major perspective of these studies derived from his personal history, and this had been so spectacular that it was almost irresistible for biographers to recount its peripeties at length. No other Russian writer of his stature could equal the range of his familiarity with both the depths and heights of Russian society—a range that included four years spent as a convict living side by side with peasant criminals, and then, at the end of his life, invitations to dine with younger members of the family of Tsar Alexander II, who, it was believed, might benefit from his conversation. It is quite understandable that such a life, in all its fascinating particularities, should have furnished the background against which Dostoevsky’s works were initially viewed and interpreted. The more I read Dostoevsky’s novels and stories, however, not to mention his journalism, both literary and political (his Diary of a Writer was the most widely circulated monthly publication ever published in Russia), the more it seemed to me that a conventional biographical point of view could not do justice to the complexities of his creations. To be sure, while Dostoevsky’s characters struggle with the psychological and sentimental problems that provide the substance of all novels, more important, his books are also inspired by the ideological doc- trines of his time. Such doctrines, particularly in his major works, furnish the chief motivations for the often bizarre, eccentric, and occasionally murderous behavior of characters like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, or both Stav- rogin and Kirillov in Demons. The personal entanglements of the figures in the novels, though depicted with often melodramatic intensity, cannot really be un- derstood unless we grasp how their actions are intertwined with ideological motivations. It thus seemed to me, when I set out to write my own work on Dostoevsky, that its perspective should be shifted, and that the purely personal biography xiii xiv Preface should no longer dominate the explanatory context in which he was creating.