Four More Books on Dostoevsky

Some More Books Dostoevsky-related

In my last post in this blog, I expressed rather passionately my virtual besottedness with anything by or on Fyodor Dostoevsky.  Here I will review four books, one by the author and the other three about him from different perspectives.  They are all short books that can be read quickly or even dipped into.  As a seventeen-year-old boy, writing to his brother Mikhail, he stated his ambition as a writer in a rather passionate way; indeed, one would say in a precocious manner, but nonetheless true, given the majesty and universality of his oeuvre:

“My soul is not subject to my former violent upsets. All is calm within it, as in the heart of a man who has harboured a deep mystery; ‘to learn what life and man means’ – I am being reasonably successful in this; I can study characters from the writers with whom the best part of my life is passed in joy and freedom; I can say no more about myself.  I am sure of myself. Man is a mystery.  The mystery must be solved, and if you spend your whole life trying to solve it, then don’t say you have wasted your time; I am preoccupied with this mystery because I wish to be a man.” [My italics. The quotation is taken from his Diaries and it appears in Dostoevsky: Life and Times, by Richard Freeborn, House Publishing: London.]

1. Dostoevsky: Life & Times (2003, House Publishing: London)

The first book is the one from which I have taken that wonderful quotation above.  It is written by Richard Freeborn, a wonderful Russian scholar who has both written extensively on Russian history and has also translated much material from Russian. We may add to that list of accomplishments that he is Emeritus Professor of Russian literature at the University of London and is hale and hearty at 90 years of age. He is a consummate scholar who writes with erudition and with amazing clarity.

This is an exceptional book by any standards. Not only is it a wonderfully precise and succinct introduction to the life and work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, but it is also an erudite introduction to the Russia of the nineteenth century. Professor Freeborn knows his history thoroughly as well as his subject, Fyodor Dostoevsky.  He is well acquainted with his novels and life and how they intertwine and interweave. One is also left in no doubt that Professor Freeborn is equally at home in either Russian or English.  If I were to recommend a wonderful, easily-read and lucid introduction to the writings of Dostoevsky then this is the one to buy.  The text runs to 140 pages only and can be quickly read. Also, the notes given at the back of the book, the chronology of the novelist’s life and recommendations for further reading enhance this little volume and give it the power and punch of a more voluminous work.  Buy it if you love Dostoevsky.

2. Dostoyevsky: An Examination of the Major Novels (British Classical Press, Bristol, 1992).

This book was written by another eminent English academic who died in 2013 at the age of eighty, William Peace who was a Professor of Russian Studies at Bristol University until his retirement in 1994. This, his close reading of Dostoevsky’s major novels, was first published by Cambridge University Press (1971) and remains Peace’s best-known work and secured his international reputation, is the volume reviewed here.  Peace, in this critical, fulsome and erudite book concentrates his attention on Dostoyevsky’s four great novels: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils, and The Brothers Karamazov. He analyzes each one of these novels in considerable detail under the headings of theme, structure, characterization and style.  All the time, Professor Peace adduces relevant quotations to back up his arguments and comments. This book is a considerable help to any student of our nineteenth-century Russian author as the professor covers his subject in detail.  Furthermore, all the translations from Dostoevsky are by Peace himself and this instills much confidence in the reader that the author knows his subject intimately. However, it is not as attractive a read as the first book as it is more aimed at the literature student than the general reader. Nonetheless, it is a good read, if a little too serious and academic.

3. Russian Thinkers by Isaiah Berlin, Penguin Classics, 2013, originally published by the Hogarth Press, 1978. 

Sir Isaiah Berlin, who died in 1997 at the grand old age of 88, was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas.  In being the latter, I have always enjoyed Berlin’s books because of his grasp of the development of ideas and culture over the last two thousand years or so.  He offers the reader a great breadth of vision and depth of insight into cultural matters. 

 

Berlin was born in Riga, Latvia in 1909 but his family moved to Petrograd, Russia when the boy was six, where he witnessed the revolution of 1917.  However, in 1921, his family came to England, and he was educated at St Paul's School, London and Corpus Christi College.

Like the two previous authors, Berlin obviously speaks fluent Russian.   In fact, he translated works by Ivan Turgenev into English and, during the war, worked for the British Diplomatic Service. From 1957 to 1967 he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford and became the president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964.  Then, in 1966, he played a crucial role in founding Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its first President.

In the ten essays in this book, Berlin writes eruditely on the great Russian minds of the nineteenth century: Herzen, Bakunin, Belinkski, Tolstoy and Turgenev – as well as exploring the political and social revolutions they inspired and responded to. Dostoevsky is mentioned much in this volume, getting some thirty references in the index, though he does not attract a chapter of his own at all.  However, this book will give the reader of the latter’s novels the cultural background against which those books were written. A great read, this volume presents a wonderful panoramic view of, and consequent grasp of, the nineteenth-century Russian world of ideas.

4. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Alma Classics: Surrey, 2008.

In June 1862, when he was in his forty-first year, Dostoevsky left St. Petersburg and made his first excursion to Western Europe.  He told the authorities that he was journeying westward to consult Western specialists about his recurring epilepsy.  However, his main reason for going, as is abundantly clear in this very short but wonderfully riveting book, was to see for himself the source of those wicked and vile ideas that were insinuating themselves into Russia and corrupting it.  During his journey, Dostoevsky went to the following cities: Berlin, Paris, London, Florence, Milan and Vienna.  What is particularly rewarding in reading this little gem of a book is the insight it gives into Dostoevsky’s mind, his thoughts, his ideals, his biases and indeed his downright prejudices. In that sense, it gives us an insight into some of the thoughts, views and visions expressed in his major novels.

The preface, written by Kyril Fitzlyon, the translator, is exceedingly good and places this work in the context of the novelist’s life.  He adverts to the usual division of Dostoevsky’s oeuvre into two halves, the first being that which opens with Poor Folk (1844) and closes with House of the Dead (1862).  The second period, he stresses, is deemed to begin with Notes from Underground (1864). However, only a year before he wrote Notes he wrote this wee book, namely, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863). Fitzlyon maintains that this book could equally be said to mark the beginning of the second period.  The translator also gives us a good clear insight into Dostoevsky’s mystical vision of Russian culture and life:

“The centre of Dostoevsky’s ideas harbours a vision of the world as a moral and spiritual unity, a “brotherly fellowship,” which must “exist in nature,” but cannot be artificially created (as both Summer Impressions and Father Zosima phrase it), and which expects, but most definitely does not demand, of its members a total responsibility for each other and for the community as a whole.  It is a unity which makes each one of us into a link in an infinite chain of causation...” (p. ix.)

Winter Notes also lets us into the inner workings of Dostoevsky’s mind, especially concerning his presuppositions and prejudices. Before he goes to France he is wholly convinced that the French are all style and little or no substance, a people who mostly love the sound of their own voices. Likewise, his antipathy to London, with its smog and blackened buildings, its seediness, and its throng of human flesh all oppress Dostoevsky almost before he has set foot there.  None of this impressed Dostoevsky at all. 

However, if you read this book you will know that given his presuppositions, his pastoral vision for humanity, his Russian Orthodox ideals, his basic mysticism and indeed his downright reactionary prejudices, he was never going to like London anyway. All in all, a wonderful read as one gets a real handle on the man’s character. His vision abhors the consumerism of capitalism, the repulsive individualism of the new age, and the shallow and dehumanizing promises of the International Exhibition of 1862, or Great London Exhibition which he visited. 

That Exhibition was a World Fair that was held from 1 May to 1 November 1862, beside the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, South Kensington, London, on a site that now houses museums including the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum (London). None of this impresses Dostoevsky at all.  However, if you happen to read this book, you will know that given his presuppositions, his pastoral vision for humanity, his Russian orthodox ideals, his basic mysticism and indeed his downright reactionary prejudices, he was never going to like London anyway.  All in all, this is a wonderful read, as one gets a real handle on the novelist's character.