Dostoevsky

Co-Winner of the Etkind Prize, European University at St. Petersburg "A monumental achievement... This is not a literary biography in the usual sense of the term... It is, rather, an exhaustive history of Dostoyevsky's mind, an encyclopedic account of the author as major novelist and thinker, essayist and editor, journalist and polemicist... Wrought with tireless love and boundless ingenuity, it ... [is] a multifaceted tribute from an erudite and penetrating cultural critic to one of the great masters of 19th-century fiction."--Michael Scammell, New York Times Book Review "It is unquestionably the fullest, most nuanced and evenhanded--not to mention the most informative--account of its subject in any language, and it has significantly changed our understanding of both the man and his work."--Donald Fanger, Los Angeles Times Book Review "In his aim of elucidating the setting within which Dostoevsky wrote--personal on the one hand, social, historical, cultural, literary, and philosophical on the other--Frank has succeeded triumphantly."--J. M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time thus immediately becomes the essential one-volume commentary on the intellectual dynamics and artistry of this great novelist's impassioned, idea-driven fiction... To understand Dostoevsky's often savage satire or nightmarish visions or just the conversations among the Karamazov brothers, one needs to grasp not only the text but also the ideological context. To both of these there is no better guide than Joseph Frank."--Michael Dirda, Wall Street Journal "Magnificent... A deeply absorbing account."--James Wood, New Republic "The ideal one-volume biography of Dostoevsky could only come through a distillation of the much-acclaimed five-volume biography (1976-2002) by Joseph Frank. In compressing his longer work, editor Mary Petrusewicz tightens the rigor of a narrative that already departed from traditional biography by focusing chiefly on the ideas with which the Russian author wrestled so powerfully, providing the details of his personal life only as incidental background. Thus, for example, while readers do learn of formative incidents during Dostoevsky's four years in tsarist prison camp, what they see most clearly is how the prison experience deepened the author's faith in God while dampening his zeal for political reform. In a similar way, Frank limns only briefly the life experiences surrounding the writing of the major novels--Crime and Punishment, Demons, and Brothers Karamazov--devoting his scrutiny largely to how Dostoevsky develops the ideological tensions within each work. Readers consequently see, for instance, how Napoleonic illusions justify Raskolnikov's bloody crimes, how the Worship of Man dooms Kirillov to suicide, and how deep Christian faith enables Alyosha to resist Ivan's corrosive rationalism. Yet while probing Dostoevsky's themes, Frank also examines the artistry that gives them imaginative life, highlighting--for example--perspectival techniques that anticipate those of Woolf and Joyce. A masterful abridgement."--Bryce Christensen, Booklist (Starred Review) "Frank displays a brilliant command of Dostoyevsky's heroic endeavors, and his biography reads readily, especially for such a scholarly work. It compares nicely with Leon Edel's multivolume biography of Henry James. Highly recommended."--Robert Kelly, Library Journal "It is wonderfully lucidly written and a marvellous portrait of the man behind the books."--Nadine Gordimer, Independent "This extraordinary biography succeeds in making both irony and great ideas wholly alive, immediately accessible to us. It is a great work, both of scholarship and of art."--A. S. Byatt, Sunday Times (London) "A narrative of such compelling precision, thoroughness and insight as to give the reader a sense not just of acqu

Joseph Frank is professor emeritus of Slavic and comparative literature at Stanford and Princeton. The five volumes of his Dostoevsky biography, published between 1976 and 2002, won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Times book prize, two James Russell Lowell Prizes, two Christian Gauss Awards, and other honors. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies awarded Frank its highest honor.

List of I llustrations xi Preface: Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time xiii Acknowledgments xix Transliteration xxi Abbreviations xxiii PART I: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849 Chapter 1: Prelude 3 Chapter 2: The Family 5 Chapter 3: The Religious and Cultural Background 23 Chapter 4: The Academy of Military Engineers 38 Chapter 5: The Two Romanticisms 51 Chapter 6: The Gogol Period 61 Chapter 7: Poor Folk 76 Chapter 8: Dostoevsky and the Pleiade 86 Chapter 9: Belinsky and Dostoevsky: I?94 Chapter 10: Feuilletons and Experiments 104 Chapter 11: Belinsky and Dostoevsky: II?119 Chapter 12: The Beketov and Petrashevsky Circles 129 Chapter 13: Dostoevsky and Speshnev 145 PART II: The Y ears of Ordeal, 1850-1859 Chapter 14: The Peter-and-Paul Fortress 163 Chapter 15: Katorga 185 Chapter 16: "Monsters in Their Misery" 196 Chapter 17: Private Dostoevsky 223 Chapter 18: A Russian Heart 243 Chapter 19: The Siberian Novellas 255 Chapter 20: Homecoming 273 PART III: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865 Chapter 21: Into the Fray 281 Chapter 22: An Aesthetics of T ranscendence 298 Chapter 23: The Insulted and Injured 317 Chapter 24: The Era of Proclamations 330 Chapter 25: Portrait of a Nihilist 341 Chapter 26: Time: The Final Months 358 Chapter 27: Winter Notes on Summer Impressions 372 Chapter 28: An Emancipated Woman, A Tormented Lover 384 Chapter 29: The Prison of Utopia 399 Chapter 30: Notes from Underground 413 Chapter 31: The End of Epoch 441 PART IV: The Miraculous Y ears, 1865-1871 Chapter 32: Khlestakov in Wiesbaden 455 Chapter 33: From Novella to Novel 472 Chapter 34: Crime and Punishment 483 Chapter 35: "A Little Diamond" 509 Chapter 36: The Gambler 521 Chapter 37: Escape and Exile 531 Chapter 38: In Search of a Novel 549 Chapter 39: An Inconsolable Father 564 Chapter 40: The Idiot 577 Chapter 41: The Pamphlet and the Poem 590 Chapter 42: Fathers, Sons, and Stavrogin 601 Chapter 43: Exile's Return 616 Chapter 44: History and Myth in Demons 626 Chapter 45: The Book of the Impostors 650 PART V: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881 Chapter 46: The Citizen 669 Chapter 47: Narodnichestvo: Russian Populism 682 Chapter 48: Bad Ems 694 Chapter 49: A Raw Youth 706 Chapter 50: A Public Figure 723 Chapter 51: The Diary of a Writer, 1876-1877 738 Chapter 52: A New Novel 760 Chapter 53: The Great Debate 779 Chapter 54: Rebellion and the Grand Inquisitor 788 Chapter 55: Terror and Martial Law 804 Chapter 56: The Pushkin Festival 813 Chapter 57: Controversies and Conclusions 835 Chapter 58: The Brothers Karamazov: Books 1-4 848 Chapter 59: The Brothers Karamazov: Books 5-6 867 Chapter 60: The Brothers Karamazov: Books 7-12 886 Chapter 61: Death and Transfiguration 912 Editor's Note 933 Index 935 Contents