DOSTOEVSKY: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859

by Joseph Frank ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1983

Following Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt (1976), this second volume of Frank's definitive biography spans the period from Dostoevsky's arrest for anti-state activities to his return to St. Petersburg ten years later--after imprisonment, Siberian exile, illness (epilepsy), a bad marriage, and spiritual realignment. And, though only two literary works emerged from this decade (the Siberian novellas Uncle's Dream and The Village of Stepanchikovo, a.k.a. The Friend of the Family), Frank is so clear-eyed a biographer that he moves from station to station in the progress of Dostoevsky's development without great need of textual hand-holds. Thus, it is Dostoevsky's largely unrecorded but easily deduced emotional/intellectual journey that always remains in the foreground here, not simply its literary manifestations--beginning in 1850, when he was taken into custody as a member of the Petrashevsky circle of anti-statists. Sentenced to four years at hard labor, Dostoevsky and his cronies were first subjected to mock-execution, led out to a public square and aimed at by riflemen. . . who were then called off, according to prearrangement, at the last moment. This sadistic ruse, trauma enough for anyone, seemed to open Dostoevsky to the most elemental sort of transformation--its first stage coming in prison camp, where he saw the worst of people and yet arrived at a conversion-experience conclusion: that even in the worst (especially there, perhaps) there is the most sovereign good. Such a belief, of course, had little in common with either of the period's two strong philosophical movements--left-Hegelian liberalism and the antipodal Slavophilism that was sweeping through the Russian intelligentsia of the time. Instead, it implied ""a sense of universal moral culpability and responsibility for evil and sin. It is only a love for one's fellow man springing from such a sense. . . that can escape the onus of pharisaical pride and insulting condescension and both judge and pardon at the same time."" This--along with the related Dostoevskyan theme of personality forced to exhibit itself at any cost--is Frank's subtext here, expertly mined from the most barren yet percolating of Dostoevsky's life-periods; and the result is another impressive installment in one of modern scholarship's largest biographical achievements.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1983

ISBN: 0691014221

Page Count: -

Publisher: Princeton Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION