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Dostoievski îndrăgostit: O biografie intimă
Condamnat la moarte în ipostaza de tânăr revoluționar, Dostoievski a supraviețuit unui simulacru de execuție și exilului siberian, trăind apoi o perioadă de agitație politică în Rusia și fiind în cele din urmă primit în cercul intim al țarului. A avut trei mari aventuri amoroase, fiecare umbrită de amenințarea epilepsiei și de dependența de jocurile de noroc. Printre toate acestea, a găsit timp să scrie: povestiri, articole, celebrele romane. În Dostoievski îndrăgostit, Alex Christofi împletește fragmente alese din opera scriitorului cu contextul istoric, în încercarea de a alcătui un întreg atrăgător și accesibil. Rezultatul este o biografie romanțată care cufundă cititorul în panorama grandioasă a Rusiei lui Dostoievski: de la lagărul de prizonieri din Siberia la sălile de jocuri de noroc din Europa, de la celulele mucede ale închisorii la saloanele rafinate din Sankt-Petersburg. Pe parcurs, Christofi relatează poveștile celor trei femei a căror viață s-a întrepătruns atât de adânc cu cea a lui Dostoievski; rezultă portretul unui iubit timid, dar devotat, al unui prieten al celor umiliți și obidiți capabil de o mare empatie, al unui frate și camarad credincios și al unui scriitor care a reușit să pătrundă profunzimile sufletului uman.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2021
81 people are currently reading
1578 people want to read
About the author
Alex Christofi
5 books35 followersALEX CHRISTOFI is Editorial Director at Transworld Publishers and author of books published in twelve languages, including the novels Let Us Be True and Glass, winner of the Betty Trask Prize for fiction. He has written for numerous publications including the Guardian, the London Magazine, The White Review and the Brixton Review of Books, and contributed an essay to the anthology What Doesn't Kill You: Fifteen Stories of Survival. Dostoevsky in Love, his first work of non-fiction, was selected as a Times and Sunday Times literary non-fiction book of the year and shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize. His latest book is CYPRIA: A journey to the heart of the Mediterranean (Bloomsbury, 2024).
@alex_christofi
@alex_christofi
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 136 reviews
December 14, 2020
Alex Christophi takes an interesting approach in writing of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, a fascinating and original blend of biographical facts interspersed with his varied fiction, which Christophi claims contains relevant aspects for the memoir Dostoevsky never got to write before his death at the age of 56. If you are looking for a straightforward biography of one of Russia's greatest 19th century writers, acclaimed for his ability to reveal the human soul and penetrate the deepest depths of the human psyche, then I would suggest looking elsewhere. I wanted to read this because The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment are two of my all time favourite novels, albeit I read them quite some time ago. The 'in love' part of the title is approached in the broadest possible terms, such as applying to his family, brother Mikhail, his children, the 3 main women he was in love with, his love of literature and writing itself, religion, the underclass, and humanity as a whole.
Fyodor was particularly poor at managing his finances, living most of his life in debt, exacerbated by his gambling addiction, responsible for the heavy pressures on him to write, and resulting in him being ripped off by dishonest publishers. His poor health was to plague him throughout his life, at the mercy of epileptic seizures, about which he was never fully open about with his first wife, Maria, which resulted in his marriage going downhill. His fraught and turbulent life echoes the political turbulence of Russia itself, leading him to be seen as the state of nation writer. He had shifting contrary political and social perspectives through time, a committed believer in the Russian Orthodox Church, although he had his doubts, unsurprising, given the loss of two of his children which hit him hard. The narrative takes the reader through his experiences at a Siberian prison camp, the intense discussions, conflicts and rivalries in the writers circles, falling in love for the first time in his mid-thirties with a married woman, Maria, whom he married but not before a mass of emotional melodrama, his affair with student Polina, she harbours radical thoughts of assassinating the Tsar, and his second marriage to Anna, the stenographer, the happiest time of his life, and the other events, philosophy, political thinking, Russia and the people who inspired his writing.
I imagine it took Christophi some considerable time to consider and meld the appropriate extracts from Dostoevsky's influential fiction with his biographical details, but he manages this with such aplomb that I found reading this a riveting and compulsive affair. The only fly in the ointment was the ARC itself from the publisher, with its confusion over time and the difficulties in accessing the references provided at the end, and is the main reason I did not award this 5 stars. Other than this, this was terrifically enjoyable and offered a different, yet highly insightful way, of looking at the life and times of Dostoevsky, a man who loved Pushkin and Charles Dickens, and of Russia itself. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC.
Fyodor was particularly poor at managing his finances, living most of his life in debt, exacerbated by his gambling addiction, responsible for the heavy pressures on him to write, and resulting in him being ripped off by dishonest publishers. His poor health was to plague him throughout his life, at the mercy of epileptic seizures, about which he was never fully open about with his first wife, Maria, which resulted in his marriage going downhill. His fraught and turbulent life echoes the political turbulence of Russia itself, leading him to be seen as the state of nation writer. He had shifting contrary political and social perspectives through time, a committed believer in the Russian Orthodox Church, although he had his doubts, unsurprising, given the loss of two of his children which hit him hard. The narrative takes the reader through his experiences at a Siberian prison camp, the intense discussions, conflicts and rivalries in the writers circles, falling in love for the first time in his mid-thirties with a married woman, Maria, whom he married but not before a mass of emotional melodrama, his affair with student Polina, she harbours radical thoughts of assassinating the Tsar, and his second marriage to Anna, the stenographer, the happiest time of his life, and the other events, philosophy, political thinking, Russia and the people who inspired his writing.
I imagine it took Christophi some considerable time to consider and meld the appropriate extracts from Dostoevsky's influential fiction with his biographical details, but he manages this with such aplomb that I found reading this a riveting and compulsive affair. The only fly in the ointment was the ARC itself from the publisher, with its confusion over time and the difficulties in accessing the references provided at the end, and is the main reason I did not award this 5 stars. Other than this, this was terrifically enjoyable and offered a different, yet highly insightful way, of looking at the life and times of Dostoevsky, a man who loved Pushkin and Charles Dickens, and of Russia itself. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC.
December 31, 2024
O excepțională biografie. De citit. Recomand.
May 7, 2025
I’ve read everything by Dostoevsky, not many books about him—just a few articles here and there. I knew the major events of his life: the mock execution, the years in Siberia, the gambling, the epilepsy, the deep faith, and the personal tragedies. But not a biography. Joseph Frank’s work has long been on my list, but when Dostoevsky in Love came my way, I thought I’d start small.
This is very intimate and emotionally rich. It brings Dostoevsky to life as a human being—flawed, fragile, and painfully alive. His intense sensitivity, psychological depth, and spiritual torment are so vividly laid out. The author’s use of quotes from Dostoevsky’s novels, placed in dialogue with the events of his life is very effective. It shows how deeply his personal suffering shaped his characters the moral struggles they endured.
I wept a lot and by the end, I felt such an intense sense of loss—my heart aches so much!
This is very intimate and emotionally rich. It brings Dostoevsky to life as a human being—flawed, fragile, and painfully alive. His intense sensitivity, psychological depth, and spiritual torment are so vividly laid out. The author’s use of quotes from Dostoevsky’s novels, placed in dialogue with the events of his life is very effective. It shows how deeply his personal suffering shaped his characters the moral struggles they endured.
I wept a lot and by the end, I felt such an intense sense of loss—my heart aches so much!
January 6, 2021
Although I have read most of Dostoevsky’s works, I have never read his biography. The author takes an interesting approach and puts Dostoevsky’s emotional and personal life central of his life. And what a life it was. Indeed this opens with Dostoevsky suffering a mock execution, which resulting in him being informed that, rather than being killed, he would be sentenced to four years hard labour, before being forced to serve as a private in the army. I suspect many would take such a sentence more favourably had they seriously considered a bullet to be the alternative, but it is certainly a strong opening.
Christofi then takes the reader back to his birth at a Hospital for the Poor, where his father was a doctor. As Dostoevsky’s father aged, he seemed to become more discontented and was, possibly, killed by peasants at the small estate he owned. Later, Christofi muses that Dostoevsky – once arrested - faced the irony of being killed by peasants, who disliked and distrusted, political prisoners, when he had been imprisoned for plotting their emancipation.
As the title of the book shows, this biography focuses on Dostoevsky’s personal life. Not only romantic, as we read of his love for his mother and brother. However, there are also long rides to try to convince his first wife to marry him, with love quickly turning to disappointment. Romance and a second marriage to the, almost Saintly patient, Anna, who refused to blame her husband, even when his gambling meant that he constantly pawned her wedding ring. Indeed, Dostoevsky’s gambling obsession was so bad that it is almost painful to read about it. At one point, leaving a town where he has lost everything the couple had, he leaves the train they were leaving on, to go and lose their remaining few coins; the lure of the casino was so strong.
Despite his faults, Dostoevsky personally had a lot of warmth; especially in his love of children. Although, again, there are tragedies, he obviously adored his children. He would dress as a polar bear, strand his giggling children on ‘ice floes,’ and stalk them to gobble them up. The sight of a child always warmed him and he had endless patience with them; once sitting up most of the night with his son, who was unable to leave his Christmas present behind to go to bed.
If, like me, you know little of Dostoevsky’s life, this will be a joy to read. I found it utterly compelling and a fascinating portrait of a literary life. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
Christofi then takes the reader back to his birth at a Hospital for the Poor, where his father was a doctor. As Dostoevsky’s father aged, he seemed to become more discontented and was, possibly, killed by peasants at the small estate he owned. Later, Christofi muses that Dostoevsky – once arrested - faced the irony of being killed by peasants, who disliked and distrusted, political prisoners, when he had been imprisoned for plotting their emancipation.
As the title of the book shows, this biography focuses on Dostoevsky’s personal life. Not only romantic, as we read of his love for his mother and brother. However, there are also long rides to try to convince his first wife to marry him, with love quickly turning to disappointment. Romance and a second marriage to the, almost Saintly patient, Anna, who refused to blame her husband, even when his gambling meant that he constantly pawned her wedding ring. Indeed, Dostoevsky’s gambling obsession was so bad that it is almost painful to read about it. At one point, leaving a town where he has lost everything the couple had, he leaves the train they were leaving on, to go and lose their remaining few coins; the lure of the casino was so strong.
Despite his faults, Dostoevsky personally had a lot of warmth; especially in his love of children. Although, again, there are tragedies, he obviously adored his children. He would dress as a polar bear, strand his giggling children on ‘ice floes,’ and stalk them to gobble them up. The sight of a child always warmed him and he had endless patience with them; once sitting up most of the night with his son, who was unable to leave his Christmas present behind to go to bed.
If, like me, you know little of Dostoevsky’s life, this will be a joy to read. I found it utterly compelling and a fascinating portrait of a literary life. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
September 29, 2021
Anyone who reads my Goodreads reviews will know I am no fan of overly long books. So I was delighted when, one year ago, author Alex Christofi announced “I am the book murderer”, an accusation that he attracted for his unconventional, but to me entirely understandable approach to reading large tomes, by literally tearing the book into manageable chunks.
One of the books featured in the accompanying illustration was Joseph Frank’s biography of Doestevsky’s, a volume that itself was a mere 984 page ‘condensed’ version of the 2500 page multi-volume original:
Christofi has praised Frank’s work, if not its physical manifestation, but in Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life he presents us with a much more manageable (c. 200 pages) and innovative approach to the life of an author, who, as James Joyce said, was he “more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch. It was his explosive power which shattered the Victorian novel with its simpering maidens and ordered commonplaces; books which were without imagination or violence”.
Chrisofi explains his approach to Doestevsky’s life story:
“Undoubtedly his most powerful writing was drawn from his lived experience, whether recounting the quasi-mystical experience of an epileptic fit in The Idiot or hard labour in a Siberian prison in Notes from the House of the Dead.
This book therefore cheerfully commits an academic fallacy, which is to elide Dostoevsky’s autobiographical fiction with his fantastical life in the hope of creating the effect of a reconstructed memoir. (The fact is, this is neither a story nor a memoir.)”
Sitting between Frank’s “wonderful five-volume intellectual biography” and the novelistic approach of Leonid Tsypkin (‘Summer in Baden-Baden’ in the translation by Roger and Angela Keys) and Coetzee (‘The Master of Petersburg’):
“My aim is to explore whether a synthesis is possible – a tale both novelistic and true to life, representing Dostoevsky in his own words. Because Dostoevsky’s overarching project was to understand how people thought – the sometimes maddening ways we explain and deceive ourselves – and to represent that thought faithfully so that others might know themselves better.”
He does so my not only following Doestevsky’s life in parallel with his work, but by using the author’s own words, sometimes directly quoted, but more often re-written in the intimate first person as his thoughts by using material from his letters, notebooks, journalism, and, most effectively, his fiction.
It makes for a fascinating read - as does Doestevsky’s own passionate, dramatic, religiously- fervent and gambling-addicted life.
Two gripes though:
In such a compact, non-academic work and one centered on the author’s own words, there was an overuse of irrelevant footnotes (such as Somerset Maugham’s words on when authors are hailed as prophets, or the well-rehearsed joke about the different names of St Petersburg).
And, the detail of Dostevesky’s gambling habits got a little repetitive. It was clearly key to his life, and it was necessary to make that clear via repetition, but it didn’t really need the detailed enumeration of his daily or even hourly wins and losses on each spree.
Nevertheless, an interesting approach. 3.5 stars
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.
One of the books featured in the accompanying illustration was Joseph Frank’s biography of Doestevsky’s, a volume that itself was a mere 984 page ‘condensed’ version of the 2500 page multi-volume original:
Christofi has praised Frank’s work, if not its physical manifestation, but in Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life he presents us with a much more manageable (c. 200 pages) and innovative approach to the life of an author, who, as James Joyce said, was he “more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch. It was his explosive power which shattered the Victorian novel with its simpering maidens and ordered commonplaces; books which were without imagination or violence”.
Chrisofi explains his approach to Doestevsky’s life story:
“Undoubtedly his most powerful writing was drawn from his lived experience, whether recounting the quasi-mystical experience of an epileptic fit in The Idiot or hard labour in a Siberian prison in Notes from the House of the Dead.
This book therefore cheerfully commits an academic fallacy, which is to elide Dostoevsky’s autobiographical fiction with his fantastical life in the hope of creating the effect of a reconstructed memoir. (The fact is, this is neither a story nor a memoir.)”
Sitting between Frank’s “wonderful five-volume intellectual biography” and the novelistic approach of Leonid Tsypkin (‘Summer in Baden-Baden’ in the translation by Roger and Angela Keys) and Coetzee (‘The Master of Petersburg’):
“My aim is to explore whether a synthesis is possible – a tale both novelistic and true to life, representing Dostoevsky in his own words. Because Dostoevsky’s overarching project was to understand how people thought – the sometimes maddening ways we explain and deceive ourselves – and to represent that thought faithfully so that others might know themselves better.”
He does so my not only following Doestevsky’s life in parallel with his work, but by using the author’s own words, sometimes directly quoted, but more often re-written in the intimate first person as his thoughts by using material from his letters, notebooks, journalism, and, most effectively, his fiction.
It makes for a fascinating read - as does Doestevsky’s own passionate, dramatic, religiously- fervent and gambling-addicted life.
Two gripes though:
In such a compact, non-academic work and one centered on the author’s own words, there was an overuse of irrelevant footnotes (such as Somerset Maugham’s words on when authors are hailed as prophets, or the well-rehearsed joke about the different names of St Petersburg).
And, the detail of Dostevesky’s gambling habits got a little repetitive. It was clearly key to his life, and it was necessary to make that clear via repetition, but it didn’t really need the detailed enumeration of his daily or even hourly wins and losses on each spree.
Nevertheless, an interesting approach. 3.5 stars
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.
November 27, 2025
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If you, just like me, are a fan of Dostoevsky’s work, you will definitely enjoy Dostoevsky in Love:An Intimate Life. And even if you haven’t read any of his books, you’ll learn about what it felt like living in 19th century Russia (and other European countries), and I am certain that upon reading this, you’ll go and grab one of Dostoevsky’s books.
Synopsis:
Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life is a detailed biography of the life of Dostoevsky, mixed with a bit of creative freedom. Alex Christofi tells the story of Dostoevsky’s life using quotes from Dostoevsky’s books, as well as from letters and diaries.
My Thoughts:
It’s not very often I read biographies. If I read a biography, it has to be from someone I know a lot about and am curious about. I was going to say that it’s also from people I really admire, but I love reading biographies about serial killers, so maybe that’s not the best statement to put in words. However, from all the biographies I’ve read, this one certainly jumps at the top of my list, firstly because of its uniqueness. Alex Christofi not only shows us the life of Dostoevsky and his works, but he digs much deeper than that. We get to know Dostoevsky on a very personal level, able to read his thoughts, re-live his experiences and witness his many tragedies in life and few of his moments of happiness.
Starting with his mock execution, we immediately get a glimpse of the terror Dostoevsky goes through. I can only imagine how that experience can leave a mark on you – for life. Then we follow his years in prison, his illness, his romantic life and his gambling addiction. The joy he experiences when his first child is born, and the pain he suffers when many people he loves keep dying around him.
“Suffering and pain are always mandatory for broad minds and deep hearts. Truly great people, it seems to me, should feel great sadness on this earth.”
I went into Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life with only a basic knowledge of Dostoevsky’s life, but a more broader knowledge of his works.
And I know now, where this genius has come from.
He always had the truly remarkable gift to be able to write, but his experiences in life certainly made him understand pain, grief, human psychology and interaction on such a deeper level, in a way that not many people can truly comprehend. This biography not only made me much more understanding of his life, but also made me eager to re-read all his works now, knowing what I know about his life. And not only his life, but also the period he lived in as well, the politics, the social groups of authors and people’s interactions with one another.
“Everywhere in Russia there have always been, and always will be certain strange individuals who, while humble and by no means lazy, are destined to be broke for ever.”
I admire Alex Christofi for his detailed research and the work he put into this book.
He was able to combine extracts from Dostoevsky’s books into experiences that Dostoevsky lived through. And connect the events with when the books were written. I had mixed feelings on this creative freedom at first, but very soon I started to enjoy it, and it brought the writer and the works closer together in my world. We can feel moments, when an event would happen to Dostoevsky, and how this reflects in his books. How it inspired him to start a book, how a character matches a person from his life. I really wished that we read more about the time he was writing “Crime and Punishment”. It was mentioned a lot of times, but it never was associated with any moment in his life. I am wondering about how this book came to be, and the initial response it received from the public.
There’s a reason why Dostoevsky is such an important person in the world literature. Why many of his books are classics and are being read and studied in schools even today. He has brought a view on psychology and sociology through fiction. There is yet an author to try and create something as remarkable as what Dostoevsky did in his time.
“If we take the trouble to honour the dead, perhaps one day someone will remember us.”
If you, just like me, are a fan of Dostoevsky’s work, you will definitely enjoy Dostoevsky in Love:An Intimate Life. And even if you haven’t read any of his books, you’ll learn about what it felt like living in 19th century Russia (and other European countries), and I am certain that upon reading this, you’ll go and grab one of Dostoevsky’s books.
Synopsis:
Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life is a detailed biography of the life of Dostoevsky, mixed with a bit of creative freedom. Alex Christofi tells the story of Dostoevsky’s life using quotes from Dostoevsky’s books, as well as from letters and diaries.
My Thoughts:
It’s not very often I read biographies. If I read a biography, it has to be from someone I know a lot about and am curious about. I was going to say that it’s also from people I really admire, but I love reading biographies about serial killers, so maybe that’s not the best statement to put in words. However, from all the biographies I’ve read, this one certainly jumps at the top of my list, firstly because of its uniqueness. Alex Christofi not only shows us the life of Dostoevsky and his works, but he digs much deeper than that. We get to know Dostoevsky on a very personal level, able to read his thoughts, re-live his experiences and witness his many tragedies in life and few of his moments of happiness.
Starting with his mock execution, we immediately get a glimpse of the terror Dostoevsky goes through. I can only imagine how that experience can leave a mark on you – for life. Then we follow his years in prison, his illness, his romantic life and his gambling addiction. The joy he experiences when his first child is born, and the pain he suffers when many people he loves keep dying around him.
“Suffering and pain are always mandatory for broad minds and deep hearts. Truly great people, it seems to me, should feel great sadness on this earth.”
I went into Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life with only a basic knowledge of Dostoevsky’s life, but a more broader knowledge of his works.
And I know now, where this genius has come from.
He always had the truly remarkable gift to be able to write, but his experiences in life certainly made him understand pain, grief, human psychology and interaction on such a deeper level, in a way that not many people can truly comprehend. This biography not only made me much more understanding of his life, but also made me eager to re-read all his works now, knowing what I know about his life. And not only his life, but also the period he lived in as well, the politics, the social groups of authors and people’s interactions with one another.
“Everywhere in Russia there have always been, and always will be certain strange individuals who, while humble and by no means lazy, are destined to be broke for ever.”
I admire Alex Christofi for his detailed research and the work he put into this book.
He was able to combine extracts from Dostoevsky’s books into experiences that Dostoevsky lived through. And connect the events with when the books were written. I had mixed feelings on this creative freedom at first, but very soon I started to enjoy it, and it brought the writer and the works closer together in my world. We can feel moments, when an event would happen to Dostoevsky, and how this reflects in his books. How it inspired him to start a book, how a character matches a person from his life. I really wished that we read more about the time he was writing “Crime and Punishment”. It was mentioned a lot of times, but it never was associated with any moment in his life. I am wondering about how this book came to be, and the initial response it received from the public.
There’s a reason why Dostoevsky is such an important person in the world literature. Why many of his books are classics and are being read and studied in schools even today. He has brought a view on psychology and sociology through fiction. There is yet an author to try and create something as remarkable as what Dostoevsky did in his time.
“If we take the trouble to honour the dead, perhaps one day someone will remember us.”
April 13, 2025
Experimentul lui Christofi, îmbinând ficțiunea și biografia, cu inserții din scrisorile și literatura lui Dostoievski, din memoriile apropiaților și imaginația lui (a lui AC) e interesant în teorie. Practic, pentru mine, e sabotat de fragmentarea excesivă - ce cititor (nu-mi place termenul "serios", deci hai să zicem "curios") nu s-ar întrerupe să verifice (aproape) toate cele 452 de note, ca să vadă dacă citatul respectiv e realitate sau fictiune?
Sigur, orice realitate literară e, de fapt, îmbibată de subiectivism și orice ficțiune e și autoficțiune. Și dacă scopul e să demonstrezi ce permeabil e pragul dintre ficțiune și nonficțiune, clar, și l-a atins. Dar amestecului de aici mi se pare că ii lipsește frumusețea cursivității. Atât de pregnantă tocmai la Dostoievski.
Probabil cel mai mare câștig al cărții pentru mine e că mi s-a făcut dor să-l recitesc pe FMD. Altfel, am aflat puține lucruri noi despre el și ce știam deja a fost pus într-o lumină cumva antipatică. Mai mult decăt un reflector, am avut aici o lanternă care se aprinde și se stinge iritant de des.
Sigur, orice realitate literară e, de fapt, îmbibată de subiectivism și orice ficțiune e și autoficțiune. Și dacă scopul e să demonstrezi ce permeabil e pragul dintre ficțiune și nonficțiune, clar, și l-a atins. Dar amestecului de aici mi se pare că ii lipsește frumusețea cursivității. Atât de pregnantă tocmai la Dostoievski.
Probabil cel mai mare câștig al cărții pentru mine e că mi s-a făcut dor să-l recitesc pe FMD. Altfel, am aflat puține lucruri noi despre el și ce știam deja a fost pus într-o lumină cumva antipatică. Mai mult decăt un reflector, am avut aici o lanternă care se aprinde și se stinge iritant de des.
April 10, 2023
"You may forget me, dear ones, but I love you from the tomb."
The definitive English-language biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky is Joseph Frank's roughly 2,600-page opus, published in five volumes between 1976 and 2002. For the layman Frank also very considerately condensed this material into the 1,000-page, single-volume Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, which is regarded just as highly.
A few months ago I picked up the "short" Frank biography from the library, thinking that was a very reasonable alternative to devoting literal years of my life to the five-volume version. To my surprise, though, the sight of Frank's cinder-block-sized book, with thin pages, tiny print, and the grim visage of a haggard Russian novelist on the cover, did little to convince my partner that my undertaking was "reasonable" or, indeed, sane. "You don't start with the 1,000-page biography!" she informed me, quite sensibly. "You read a short biography to get a taste, and if it's interesting enough you can do more later."
Reader, I listened to her. As it so happens, I knew of another, recently-published Dosto bio, a mere 200-pager with a sunny title and a jauntily askew portrait of a younger, more silly-looking Russian novelist on its inviting blue cover. Dostoevsky in Love was that book. I don't imagine anyone will ever write a Dosto bio more authoritative than Frank's, and I doubt many will try. But Alex Christofi—a young, London-based novelist and editor—was clever enough to realize that Frank had left the market wide open for a much less stately and imposing work on a popular author who's life was, after all, at least as exciting as his books.
Aside from a shortened page count and a more reader-friendly (though still intelligent and professional) tone, Christofi employs two main techniques to set his biography apart. For one thing, as the subtitle informs us, this is "An Intimate Life": we learn plenty about Dosto's various writing projects and changes of opinion, but there's much more emphasis on his personal life and relationships than on literary analysis or mapping out his intellectual journey. Nevertheless, while there is a fair bit of page-space devoted to the author's various romantic entanglements (he was married twice and had at least two other major courtships or affairs), I do think the "in Love" part of the title is slightly misleading. This is a full, birth-to-death biography, and these romances are not always at the forefront even as they're occuring. (For instance, there's significantly more attention paid to wife #2, Anna, than wife #1, Maria.) Perhaps we're meant to take "love" a little more broadly, though, as Dosto valued this virtue highly and is shown to have felt it in abundance for his mother, his brother, his children, his friends, his literary heroes, his God, the Russian people, and ultimately life itself.
Christofi's other, more risky innovation is to incorporate text from across Dostoevsky's body of work—fiction and nonfiction alike—directly into the narrative, with the stated intention of giving the bio a more memoirlike, in-his-own-words feel. These interpolations are signposted by a shift to first-person and italics (or, in the audiobook version, an "in-character" voice), so there's no risk of confusing Christofi's words with Dosto's; but since they're only attributed via endnotes, and since there are so many of them as to make it highly impractical to flip to the back every single time, there's no clear way to distinguish between, say, a passage of dialogue from a novel and an excerpt from one of Dosto's own letters.
This is a dangerous game. No fiction writer wants their work to be read as thinly-veiled biography, and Dostoevsky in particular wrote very often from perspectives other than his own. At first I wasn't at all on board, and even less so as I was "reading" the audio version and couldn't check the notes in real time (though thankfully I did have access to a hard copy as well). But I have to admit Christofi quickly won me over. Though Dosto's life is much better-documented than Shakespeare's or Pontius Pilate's, I've always enjoyed imaginative biographies like Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World or Ann Wroe's Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man . As a fan of Dosto's writing I did find that the frequent bursts of his own language added some life to the text, and for newcomers this might be a good way to get a taste for his style without committing to a 700-page novel of it.
Overall I think Christofi does an admirable job. For such a short book, it's impressive how much he manages to pack in: not just the broad strokes of Dosto's endlessly exciting life, but also plenty of interesting side notes about his turbulent world and the characters he crossed paths with. (Surely there were very few other people who knew the Tsar personally and shared a mutual friend with Karl Marx; he also claimed to have met the Antichrist in the form of a French ambassador, whom he recognized by his tail.) The hits are here—to my relief Christofi dispenses with the crucial but perhaps slightly over-discussed mock execution in the prologue—but I also gained a much fuller picture of parts of Dosto's life I knew nothing of previously, especially the years immediately after his imprisonment in Siberia and the various relationships he developed in that time. Despite the focus on personal rather than artistic matters, I even came away with some new insights into his books and their origins; for instance, I'd had no idea he wrote another long novel, The Adolescent, during the same period when he was composing his most famous works.
No less importantly, Christofi hits the ideal biographer's balance of making his subject appealing and sympathetic without glossing over flaws or indulging in hero-worship. Frankly, Dosto sounds like he was a patience-straining and histrionic romantic partner at the best of times, his ineptitude with money was legendary (and compounded by a severe gambling addiction), and he was riddled with insecurities, petty jealousies, and strong but often untenable moral convictions. On the other hand, going into this with a preexisting sense that Dosto was not someone I'd like or agree with much as a person, despite my admiration for his work, I actually found myself quite endeared by him for much of this account, with a better feel for his compassionate and amiable sides.
Dostoevsky in Love probably won't speak as much to most readers as it did to me, but for me it was a nearly perfect little reading/listening experience. Not only did it scratch my itch for a Dosto biography (while still leaving enough gaps to justify a possible future dip into Joseph Frank's tome), but it was the perfect companion for a moment of major change and intense, conflicting feelings in my own life. Checking in with Dosto on my commute each day, learning about the extreme highs and lows of his wild life, I felt both solidarity and relief that mine will at least (I hope!) never be as chaotic as his. That's one of the best functions a book can serve, so I think it's only just to give Christofi a top rating for his accomplishment.
The definitive English-language biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky is Joseph Frank's roughly 2,600-page opus, published in five volumes between 1976 and 2002. For the layman Frank also very considerately condensed this material into the 1,000-page, single-volume Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, which is regarded just as highly.
A few months ago I picked up the "short" Frank biography from the library, thinking that was a very reasonable alternative to devoting literal years of my life to the five-volume version. To my surprise, though, the sight of Frank's cinder-block-sized book, with thin pages, tiny print, and the grim visage of a haggard Russian novelist on the cover, did little to convince my partner that my undertaking was "reasonable" or, indeed, sane. "You don't start with the 1,000-page biography!" she informed me, quite sensibly. "You read a short biography to get a taste, and if it's interesting enough you can do more later."
Reader, I listened to her. As it so happens, I knew of another, recently-published Dosto bio, a mere 200-pager with a sunny title and a jauntily askew portrait of a younger, more silly-looking Russian novelist on its inviting blue cover. Dostoevsky in Love was that book. I don't imagine anyone will ever write a Dosto bio more authoritative than Frank's, and I doubt many will try. But Alex Christofi—a young, London-based novelist and editor—was clever enough to realize that Frank had left the market wide open for a much less stately and imposing work on a popular author who's life was, after all, at least as exciting as his books.
Aside from a shortened page count and a more reader-friendly (though still intelligent and professional) tone, Christofi employs two main techniques to set his biography apart. For one thing, as the subtitle informs us, this is "An Intimate Life": we learn plenty about Dosto's various writing projects and changes of opinion, but there's much more emphasis on his personal life and relationships than on literary analysis or mapping out his intellectual journey. Nevertheless, while there is a fair bit of page-space devoted to the author's various romantic entanglements (he was married twice and had at least two other major courtships or affairs), I do think the "in Love" part of the title is slightly misleading. This is a full, birth-to-death biography, and these romances are not always at the forefront even as they're occuring. (For instance, there's significantly more attention paid to wife #2, Anna, than wife #1, Maria.) Perhaps we're meant to take "love" a little more broadly, though, as Dosto valued this virtue highly and is shown to have felt it in abundance for his mother, his brother, his children, his friends, his literary heroes, his God, the Russian people, and ultimately life itself.
Christofi's other, more risky innovation is to incorporate text from across Dostoevsky's body of work—fiction and nonfiction alike—directly into the narrative, with the stated intention of giving the bio a more memoirlike, in-his-own-words feel. These interpolations are signposted by a shift to first-person and italics (or, in the audiobook version, an "in-character" voice), so there's no risk of confusing Christofi's words with Dosto's; but since they're only attributed via endnotes, and since there are so many of them as to make it highly impractical to flip to the back every single time, there's no clear way to distinguish between, say, a passage of dialogue from a novel and an excerpt from one of Dosto's own letters.
This is a dangerous game. No fiction writer wants their work to be read as thinly-veiled biography, and Dostoevsky in particular wrote very often from perspectives other than his own. At first I wasn't at all on board, and even less so as I was "reading" the audio version and couldn't check the notes in real time (though thankfully I did have access to a hard copy as well). But I have to admit Christofi quickly won me over. Though Dosto's life is much better-documented than Shakespeare's or Pontius Pilate's, I've always enjoyed imaginative biographies like Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World or Ann Wroe's Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man . As a fan of Dosto's writing I did find that the frequent bursts of his own language added some life to the text, and for newcomers this might be a good way to get a taste for his style without committing to a 700-page novel of it.
Overall I think Christofi does an admirable job. For such a short book, it's impressive how much he manages to pack in: not just the broad strokes of Dosto's endlessly exciting life, but also plenty of interesting side notes about his turbulent world and the characters he crossed paths with. (Surely there were very few other people who knew the Tsar personally and shared a mutual friend with Karl Marx; he also claimed to have met the Antichrist in the form of a French ambassador, whom he recognized by his tail.) The hits are here—to my relief Christofi dispenses with the crucial but perhaps slightly over-discussed mock execution in the prologue—but I also gained a much fuller picture of parts of Dosto's life I knew nothing of previously, especially the years immediately after his imprisonment in Siberia and the various relationships he developed in that time. Despite the focus on personal rather than artistic matters, I even came away with some new insights into his books and their origins; for instance, I'd had no idea he wrote another long novel, The Adolescent, during the same period when he was composing his most famous works.
No less importantly, Christofi hits the ideal biographer's balance of making his subject appealing and sympathetic without glossing over flaws or indulging in hero-worship. Frankly, Dosto sounds like he was a patience-straining and histrionic romantic partner at the best of times, his ineptitude with money was legendary (and compounded by a severe gambling addiction), and he was riddled with insecurities, petty jealousies, and strong but often untenable moral convictions. On the other hand, going into this with a preexisting sense that Dosto was not someone I'd like or agree with much as a person, despite my admiration for his work, I actually found myself quite endeared by him for much of this account, with a better feel for his compassionate and amiable sides.
Dostoevsky in Love probably won't speak as much to most readers as it did to me, but for me it was a nearly perfect little reading/listening experience. Not only did it scratch my itch for a Dosto biography (while still leaving enough gaps to justify a possible future dip into Joseph Frank's tome), but it was the perfect companion for a moment of major change and intense, conflicting feelings in my own life. Checking in with Dosto on my commute each day, learning about the extreme highs and lows of his wild life, I felt both solidarity and relief that mine will at least (I hope!) never be as chaotic as his. That's one of the best functions a book can serve, so I think it's only just to give Christofi a top rating for his accomplishment.
November 10, 2025
'if you see Dostoevsky, tell him I love him' - Tolstoy
October 17, 2021
A vida de Fiodor Dostoievski foi uma sucessão de maldições: um jovem triste e solitário depois que sua amada mãe(morreu de tuberculose), pai(morreu assassinado por colonos, engravidou uma menina de uma aldeia era um bêbado)e irmão morreram; a cruel zombaria do círculo literário, que ele pensava serem seus amigos; trabalhos forçados na Sibéria; um casamento infeliz e sem filhos com Maria; a morte de dois de seus filhos com Anna, seu vício destruidor em jogos de roleta onde perdia todo o dinheiro que tinha e ainda pedia emprestado para poder jogar. Além disto Dostoiévski tinha epilepsia, ficava horas desacordado, e quando acordava urrava de dor. Tinha também hemorroidas. Sofria muito.
Dostoiévski escrevia seus livros sempre pressionado. Ele tinha que pagar os credores que estavam sempre no seu pé. Ele não era como Tolstoi que era rico e tinha todo tempo do mundo para escrever e pensar uma novela. Dostoiévski escrevia por dinheiro, tinha que cumprir prazos, estava sempre sem dinheiro e na miséria. Quando terminou de escrever seu livro” O eterno marido" não tinha dinheiro para pôr o livro no correio.
A sua situação financeira só melhorou um pouco no final de sua vida com a publicação do seu livro” Os irmãos Karamazov”. Só ali, no fim da vida, ele começou a ser reconhecido pelos russos.
Contudo, sua saúde já estava deteriorada. Ele estava terrivelmente doente e exausto, mas dificilmente houve um momento em sua vida em que isso não fosse verdade. A vida, para Fiodor, foi uma negociação constante com miopia, hemorroidas, infecções na bexiga, convulsões, a claudicação que desenvolvera na Sibéria e a rouquidão exacerbada por seu enfisema.
Seu casamento com Anna foi muito frutífero, apesar da tragédia dos filhos(Sônia morreu com apenas três meses,) e dos sofrimentos que tiveram tendo que fugir dos credores. Anna foi muito importante para Dostoiévski durante sua vida e depois da sua morte, mantendo seu legado.
Fiodor Dostoiévski morreu em 9 de fevereiro de 1881 nos braços de sua amada Anna. Na época de sua morte, aos 59, o autor de Crime e Castigo, e Os Irmãos Karamazov foi aclamado como um herói e profeta.
Este livro de Alex Christofi com certeza será um dos melhores livros de 2021. O romancista e editor britânico cria um retrato memorável do mestre russo. Entrelaçando os escritos autobiográficos e ficção de Dostoiévski com os contornos de sua biografia, ele dá uma nova vida este gênio da literatura mundial.
Dostoiévski escrevia seus livros sempre pressionado. Ele tinha que pagar os credores que estavam sempre no seu pé. Ele não era como Tolstoi que era rico e tinha todo tempo do mundo para escrever e pensar uma novela. Dostoiévski escrevia por dinheiro, tinha que cumprir prazos, estava sempre sem dinheiro e na miséria. Quando terminou de escrever seu livro” O eterno marido" não tinha dinheiro para pôr o livro no correio.
A sua situação financeira só melhorou um pouco no final de sua vida com a publicação do seu livro” Os irmãos Karamazov”. Só ali, no fim da vida, ele começou a ser reconhecido pelos russos.
Contudo, sua saúde já estava deteriorada. Ele estava terrivelmente doente e exausto, mas dificilmente houve um momento em sua vida em que isso não fosse verdade. A vida, para Fiodor, foi uma negociação constante com miopia, hemorroidas, infecções na bexiga, convulsões, a claudicação que desenvolvera na Sibéria e a rouquidão exacerbada por seu enfisema.
Seu casamento com Anna foi muito frutífero, apesar da tragédia dos filhos(Sônia morreu com apenas três meses,) e dos sofrimentos que tiveram tendo que fugir dos credores. Anna foi muito importante para Dostoiévski durante sua vida e depois da sua morte, mantendo seu legado.
Fiodor Dostoiévski morreu em 9 de fevereiro de 1881 nos braços de sua amada Anna. Na época de sua morte, aos 59, o autor de Crime e Castigo, e Os Irmãos Karamazov foi aclamado como um herói e profeta.
Este livro de Alex Christofi com certeza será um dos melhores livros de 2021. O romancista e editor britânico cria um retrato memorável do mestre russo. Entrelaçando os escritos autobiográficos e ficção de Dostoiévski com os contornos de sua biografia, ele dá uma nova vida este gênio da literatura mundial.
April 21, 2025
Deși am citit tot ce am găsit în limba română scris de Dostoievski, nu am citit niciodată despre viața lui. Romanul lui Alex Christofi m-a făcut să pun pe listă, de REcitit niște romane ale lui Dostoievski, care a fost o perioadă lungă (poate încă mai e) scriitorul spre care mă întorceam ca spre un zeu.
Omul ăsta a dus o viață interesantă și cred că o frază scrisă de Christofi spune multe, poate chiar totul: "Opera micului Fedea Dostoievski, născut într-un spital pentru săraci și trimis în Siberia (la muncă silnică) pentru rebeliune, tronând pe un raft al cabinetului ţarului!"
Mi s-a părut bine scrisă și cred că citatele lui însuși Dostoievski au atârnat foarte mult.😉
Omul ăsta a dus o viață interesantă și cred că o frază scrisă de Christofi spune multe, poate chiar totul: "Opera micului Fedea Dostoievski, născut într-un spital pentru săraci și trimis în Siberia (la muncă silnică) pentru rebeliune, tronând pe un raft al cabinetului ţarului!"
Mi s-a părut bine scrisă și cred că citatele lui însuși Dostoievski au atârnat foarte mult.😉
January 15, 2024
"کاش میدانستید نویسنده بودن چه کار سختی است. اگر دو یا سه سال مانند تورگنیف، گنچاروف یا تولستوی برای رمان حمایت میشدم، داستانی مینوشتم که مردم صد سال بعد هم دربارهاش صحبت کنند! "
"مشترکان نشریه منادی آن سال خوششانس ترین
مشترکان مجلههای ادبی بودند که توانستند دوتا از آثار ادبی بزرگ را به صورت سریالی بخوانند؛ یکی اثر تولستوی و دیگری اثر داستایفسکی. هر دو کتاب با گستاخی ناپلئونی نوشته شده بود. طرح داستان جنگ و صلح تولستوی برای جامعه بود، داستان جنایت و مکافات داستایفسکی جنگ و کشمکش یک روح را نشان میداد."
"به ن��ر خودم رمان ابله در مقایسه ی رمان جنایت و مکافات، تاثیر کمتری بر مخاطبان دارد. بنابراین احساس پوچی میکنم. میخواهم دوباره تاثیرگذار باشم."
کتاب داستایفسکی دلباخته از زبان خود نویسنده "حکایتی داستانگونه و زندگی واقعی که داستایفسکی را از زبان خودش روایت کند".
من از خوندن این کتاب بسیار لذت بردم مخصوصا از نقل و قول های از زبان خود داستایفسکی. خوندن این کتاب باعث میشه برداشت جدید و متفاوتی از کتاب هاش داشته باشین و دلتون بخوایید کتاب هاش رو دوباره با دید جدیدی بخونید.
"مشترکان نشریه منادی آن سال خوششانس ترین
مشترکان مجلههای ادبی بودند که توانستند دوتا از آثار ادبی بزرگ را به صورت سریالی بخوانند؛ یکی اثر تولستوی و دیگری اثر داستایفسکی. هر دو کتاب با گستاخی ناپلئونی نوشته شده بود. طرح داستان جنگ و صلح تولستوی برای جامعه بود، داستان جنایت و مکافات داستایفسکی جنگ و کشمکش یک روح را نشان میداد."
"به ن��ر خودم رمان ابله در مقایسه ی رمان جنایت و مکافات، تاثیر کمتری بر مخاطبان دارد. بنابراین احساس پوچی میکنم. میخواهم دوباره تاثیرگذار باشم."
کتاب داستایفسکی دلباخته از زبان خود نویسنده "حکایتی داستانگونه و زندگی واقعی که داستایفسکی را از زبان خودش روایت کند".
من از خوندن این کتاب بسیار لذت بردم مخصوصا از نقل و قول های از زبان خود داستایفسکی. خوندن این کتاب باعث میشه برداشت جدید و متفاوتی از کتاب هاش داشته باشین و دلتون بخوایید کتاب هاش رو دوباره با دید جدیدی بخونید.
November 20, 2020
I'm pleased and honored to be the first person to be rating and reviewing this excellent biography on GR. It was a terrific read, but the reading experience itself was pretty frustrating and here's why...it takes a certain kind of sadism to offer up for advanced reading a biography that featured encoded dates. Yes, Bloomsbury, talking about you here…so not ok. Especially because the book itself is excellent, exactly the kind of bio I enjoy. It’s well written, well paced, erudite, interesting and read just as engagingly as a good work of fiction might. But every single number in the book is encoded, dates, ages, distances, you name it, it’s a doodle. Mind you, the encoding isn’t Enigma worthy, it’s easy enough to figure out some of the years and from that figure out what number each symbol represents and continue to do mental substitutions for the duration of the book, but who wants to do that. This book has enough educational information without bringing maths into it. So yeah, reading experience…a mixed bag to say the least and entirely publisher’s fault. The author did a great job.
Now then, Dostoevsky. One of the literary giants. Unquestionably. For my money, one of the best writers of dark psychology, ever. A man simply had an innate profound understanding of basic drivers like guilt, fear, sadness, etc. Sure, some of it must have just been bred in by his motherland, much like vodka to babies, a certain kind of melancholy is typically mainlined in from the start. But there’s also other aspects of his life to consider, a strange life of ups and downs, prolonged times of unhappiness interrupted by radiant joy.
I’ve just recently watched a thing about his mock execution. It was a dementedly wild thing to have occurred to someone so young, but the more you learn about the man’s life, the less you think of it as wild or at least wildly uncharacteristic. So Dostoevsky as a young man was a subject to a staged mock execution for his rebellious antiestablishment rebel ways. Pardoned at the last minute, he was sent to four year of labor instead. Afterwards, he found himself stuck in the outskirts of the country, far from the civilized world, he vanquished desperately, trying to write, trying to romance the woman who became his first wife, trying to get by.
Eventually, something like a pardon permitted his return, he began publishing, integrating into the literary society, etc. And yet, his life seemed far from happy, his marriage didn’t’ work out, his love life was one of desperate fails, there was never enough money, there was a useless stepson to be stuck with indefinitely, etc.
In fact, it seems that only in his 40s upon marrying a absolutely devoted to him woman ½ his age did Dostoevsky finally found some contentment in his life. For one thing, he finally became a devoted father, though that wasn’t without tragedy either, as only two of his 4 kids survived childhood. And so he did his best, he wrote his best, he finally got the acclaim he so very much deserved and then…he died, at a relatively young age of 56, completely worn out by life’s verisimilitudes. And left behind a body of work cherished by book lovers to this day. A sort of immortality, really.
So that’s Dostoevsky in love. In life he was more complicated, a devout Christian who wrote of such dark matters, a rebel turned tsarist, a devoted family man and a degenerate gambler who systematically pissed away family money, a great talent whose track record was all over the place, an ambitious magazine publisher who barely managed to stay afloat, a man with familial responsibilities he took very seriously, but one who was absolutely terrible with money. A difficult life, but one that makes for a read just as interesting as his imaginary exploits.
This was an excellent book in that it did a terrific job presenting not just the life of its protagonist, but also the epoch it was lived in, in other words, it presented a complex layered context of the place and time that produced such a man, such a mind. The turbulent era of political upheavals, of grand ideas and brutal executions of thereof, the time of tsars and serfs and Nihilists and anarchists and some genuinely spectacular literature.
Dostoevsky didn’t have the money afforded leisure of Tolstoy, he wrote with desperate urgency of a man just trying to get by, he had to curb resentments, deal with rivalries, press and manipulative dishonest publishers. And yet, throughout it all, he persevered admirably, championed and supported by the proverbial love of a good woman and left behind the books that still excite the imagination and expand our understanding of essential psychology, of what makes a person function or, in some many cases, malfunction. The way he wrote about things, be it guilt (Crime and Punishment) or paranoia (Double), it’s…timeless. The essential definition of a classic. It stands the test of time.
You may question Dostoevsky as a person, his ideas and believes, though he was very much a product of his time. But as a writer he is more or less beyond reproach.
It would stand to reason a book about a great writer should be a great read and this one definitely lived up to that notion. If only Bloomsbury provided a reading copy worthy of its context. So yeah, maybe wait for the book to actually come out to enjoy it. Unless you’re great with numerical substitution codes. But definitely a very good read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
Now then, Dostoevsky. One of the literary giants. Unquestionably. For my money, one of the best writers of dark psychology, ever. A man simply had an innate profound understanding of basic drivers like guilt, fear, sadness, etc. Sure, some of it must have just been bred in by his motherland, much like vodka to babies, a certain kind of melancholy is typically mainlined in from the start. But there’s also other aspects of his life to consider, a strange life of ups and downs, prolonged times of unhappiness interrupted by radiant joy.
I’ve just recently watched a thing about his mock execution. It was a dementedly wild thing to have occurred to someone so young, but the more you learn about the man’s life, the less you think of it as wild or at least wildly uncharacteristic. So Dostoevsky as a young man was a subject to a staged mock execution for his rebellious antiestablishment rebel ways. Pardoned at the last minute, he was sent to four year of labor instead. Afterwards, he found himself stuck in the outskirts of the country, far from the civilized world, he vanquished desperately, trying to write, trying to romance the woman who became his first wife, trying to get by.
Eventually, something like a pardon permitted his return, he began publishing, integrating into the literary society, etc. And yet, his life seemed far from happy, his marriage didn’t’ work out, his love life was one of desperate fails, there was never enough money, there was a useless stepson to be stuck with indefinitely, etc.
In fact, it seems that only in his 40s upon marrying a absolutely devoted to him woman ½ his age did Dostoevsky finally found some contentment in his life. For one thing, he finally became a devoted father, though that wasn’t without tragedy either, as only two of his 4 kids survived childhood. And so he did his best, he wrote his best, he finally got the acclaim he so very much deserved and then…he died, at a relatively young age of 56, completely worn out by life’s verisimilitudes. And left behind a body of work cherished by book lovers to this day. A sort of immortality, really.
So that’s Dostoevsky in love. In life he was more complicated, a devout Christian who wrote of such dark matters, a rebel turned tsarist, a devoted family man and a degenerate gambler who systematically pissed away family money, a great talent whose track record was all over the place, an ambitious magazine publisher who barely managed to stay afloat, a man with familial responsibilities he took very seriously, but one who was absolutely terrible with money. A difficult life, but one that makes for a read just as interesting as his imaginary exploits.
This was an excellent book in that it did a terrific job presenting not just the life of its protagonist, but also the epoch it was lived in, in other words, it presented a complex layered context of the place and time that produced such a man, such a mind. The turbulent era of political upheavals, of grand ideas and brutal executions of thereof, the time of tsars and serfs and Nihilists and anarchists and some genuinely spectacular literature.
Dostoevsky didn’t have the money afforded leisure of Tolstoy, he wrote with desperate urgency of a man just trying to get by, he had to curb resentments, deal with rivalries, press and manipulative dishonest publishers. And yet, throughout it all, he persevered admirably, championed and supported by the proverbial love of a good woman and left behind the books that still excite the imagination and expand our understanding of essential psychology, of what makes a person function or, in some many cases, malfunction. The way he wrote about things, be it guilt (Crime and Punishment) or paranoia (Double), it’s…timeless. The essential definition of a classic. It stands the test of time.
You may question Dostoevsky as a person, his ideas and believes, though he was very much a product of his time. But as a writer he is more or less beyond reproach.
It would stand to reason a book about a great writer should be a great read and this one definitely lived up to that notion. If only Bloomsbury provided a reading copy worthy of its context. So yeah, maybe wait for the book to actually come out to enjoy it. Unless you’re great with numerical substitution codes. But definitely a very good read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
January 24, 2021
Life within the novels, novels that sum up the reality of one life. Life that is proliferated by both the fictional and the not so fictional. Their imagery ceaselessly converging and simmering in the cauldron of his mind. But is there any fiction that is somewhat not based from non-fiction? Isn't all life as such? Fiction in one sense and non-fiction in its true sense? Are'nt we all the unconscious writers of our own lives? Creating our own specific role to mark our part and fully experience the great drama of life?
That is why the best way to know a person is through his stories, or the unravelling of his personal story and the best way to penetrate his character (if it's possible) is to discern the psychological machinations behind it that animates the semi-fiction of his life with the force of reality invisibly withdrawn from mere sight
What does it mean? In a sense though, truth or the so called quest of truth is similarly obtained, or rather more accurately in reality unobtainable in its totality because parts it will always remain hidden and what we can only visibly see is the conspicuous "portions" of it. These portions serve as slices subject to "interpretations" that we can gather to have a full glimpse it with the entire whole remaining inveterately elusive.
Every life is a mystery. Every mystery is truth hidden in every story of every life. Unearthing portions of this life serve as a glimpse, a glimpse of truth into the mystery that governs all of life.
Concurrently, this is what Alex Christofi utilizes to unravel the truth from the life and times of a man, whose searing prose, letters and insights are glimpses into the very mystery of human existence.
Dostoevsky in Love is an effectively condensed version of what can be deemed a hefty tome of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's life, which can be seen as dramatic if not as tragic as the novels inspired by it. The book is not just about picking up only the highlights and somewhat leaving the rest untold, but by choosing what is relevant and make it appear as whole and as complete to the reader.
From his precocious childhood in the hospital and their estate of Darovoe, to his mock execution and life changing exile in Siberia, from the deplorable conditions of his life as a writer and addiction to gambling, from the affairs and relationships he had had that defined him as a man and eventually as a father and to his monumental fame and rise as a prophet, it is told simply without any form of prolixity. The love in title refers to the variations of it as it appears in different periods of Dostoevsky's life, or perhaps more aptly love as it progresses into a higher state of evolution.
From its earliest nascent as filial love for his mother as a son, to his fraternal love for his brother Mikhail, the tumultuous love he had for his first wife as a young man, to his inveterate and disgusting love for gambling, sweeping his new found love for his second wife Anna in marital destitution. His paternal love for his children especially to Sonya and Alexei, who both died young, his passionate love for his art, for his Orthodox religion, for the peasants, for Russia, patriotic fervor for his country and people that transforms ultimately to deific love as purified by suffering and redeemed by the Universal Brotherhood of Mankind, a love, which Dostoevsky believes is the only cure for all the ills and problems of humanity.
Far fetched? Perhaps. But for those with an open mind, those who see a glimmer of truth in it, those who have greatly suffer and are asking for redemption, those who seek for answers to unanswerable questions, those who believe in God, those who deny God, those who want to probe into human nature, those who want to know more about life, even those who are simply curious, just try and grab one of his books, preferably The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Demons, The Idiot, Notes From The Dead House and Notes from Underground. Immense yourself into the madness of his fiction and surely your outward life will turn inward and from there see the poignant reality that is Universal in all of us...
Related Reviews:
Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time
by Joseph Frank
Dostoevsky: Letters and Reminiscences
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
That is why the best way to know a person is through his stories, or the unravelling of his personal story and the best way to penetrate his character (if it's possible) is to discern the psychological machinations behind it that animates the semi-fiction of his life with the force of reality invisibly withdrawn from mere sight
What does it mean? In a sense though, truth or the so called quest of truth is similarly obtained, or rather more accurately in reality unobtainable in its totality because parts it will always remain hidden and what we can only visibly see is the conspicuous "portions" of it. These portions serve as slices subject to "interpretations" that we can gather to have a full glimpse it with the entire whole remaining inveterately elusive.
Every life is a mystery. Every mystery is truth hidden in every story of every life. Unearthing portions of this life serve as a glimpse, a glimpse of truth into the mystery that governs all of life.
Concurrently, this is what Alex Christofi utilizes to unravel the truth from the life and times of a man, whose searing prose, letters and insights are glimpses into the very mystery of human existence.
Dostoevsky in Love is an effectively condensed version of what can be deemed a hefty tome of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's life, which can be seen as dramatic if not as tragic as the novels inspired by it. The book is not just about picking up only the highlights and somewhat leaving the rest untold, but by choosing what is relevant and make it appear as whole and as complete to the reader.
From his precocious childhood in the hospital and their estate of Darovoe, to his mock execution and life changing exile in Siberia, from the deplorable conditions of his life as a writer and addiction to gambling, from the affairs and relationships he had had that defined him as a man and eventually as a father and to his monumental fame and rise as a prophet, it is told simply without any form of prolixity. The love in title refers to the variations of it as it appears in different periods of Dostoevsky's life, or perhaps more aptly love as it progresses into a higher state of evolution.
From its earliest nascent as filial love for his mother as a son, to his fraternal love for his brother Mikhail, the tumultuous love he had for his first wife as a young man, to his inveterate and disgusting love for gambling, sweeping his new found love for his second wife Anna in marital destitution. His paternal love for his children especially to Sonya and Alexei, who both died young, his passionate love for his art, for his Orthodox religion, for the peasants, for Russia, patriotic fervor for his country and people that transforms ultimately to deific love as purified by suffering and redeemed by the Universal Brotherhood of Mankind, a love, which Dostoevsky believes is the only cure for all the ills and problems of humanity.
Far fetched? Perhaps. But for those with an open mind, those who see a glimmer of truth in it, those who have greatly suffer and are asking for redemption, those who seek for answers to unanswerable questions, those who believe in God, those who deny God, those who want to probe into human nature, those who want to know more about life, even those who are simply curious, just try and grab one of his books, preferably The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Demons, The Idiot, Notes From The Dead House and Notes from Underground. Immense yourself into the madness of his fiction and surely your outward life will turn inward and from there see the poignant reality that is Universal in all of us...
Related Reviews:
Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time
by Joseph Frank
Dostoevsky: Letters and Reminiscences
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
June 30, 2024
O título afastou-me, “Dostoevsky in Love” (2021), mas algumas críticas ao livro levaram-me a perceber que havia aqui algo mais. Alex Christofi não entrega um livro sobre os romances do escritor, apesar de falar deles, o foco é antes aquilo que aparece em subtítulo, “An Intimate Life”, que vai dos amores às obsessões, doenças, humilhações, torturas, e claro, a fé. Mas o que torna esta obra verdadeiramente incontornável é o seu processo de criação. Christofi começa por falar na ausência de uma autobiografia que Dostoiévski quis escrever mas acabou por não o fazer, pelo que Christofi procura exatamente chegar aqui àquilo que poderia ter sido essa autobiografia, ou como lhe chama o autor, "memórias reconstruídas".
4.5/5
continuar a ler com excertos em:
https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2024/...
4.5/5
continuar a ler com excertos em:
https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2024/...
April 20, 2024
Ég er greinilega kominn á þann aldur að vera hrifinn af æfisögum. Ég hélt að ég ætti ennþá nokkra áratugi í þetta... Þessi bók er hinsvegar alveg mögnuð og höfundurinn hefur alveg unnið heimavinnuna sína. Það sem er erlíka mjög gott með bókina er að lesandinn þarf ekki að hafa mikla þekkingu á Dostojevskí, textinn er afar vel matreiddur ofan í okkur. Ég hlakka til að lesa hana aftur seinna en núna þyrfti ég helst að lesa meira eftir Dostojevskí. Þetta er svo þriðja þýðingin sem ég les (af einskærri tilviljun) frá Áslaugu Agnars og hún stendur alltaf fyrir sínu, textinn er lipur og hún bætir við fróðleik um þýðingar Ingibjargar Haralds þar sem er viðeigandi.
February 28, 2021
via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒔 𝑰 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒏’𝒕 𝒚𝒆𝒕 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒏. 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒎𝒆, 𝒊𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒆! 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝑰 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒎𝒚 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒉 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒐 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒖𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒓, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒓𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔, 𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒍𝒍, 𝒊𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆.
Alex Christofi has written an intimate portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky, one that beautifully connects his personal life with his great work. He wrote his way through, if not out, of personal tragedies. The pen seemed to be at ready to spill each fresh misery that cropped up during his many trials and tribulations, be they born from the seed of love or politics. A man who used even his mock execution during his brutal imprisonment to write a semi-autobiographical novel about the inmates in a Siberian prison camp. Dostoevsky’s writing always seemed to flow from what he was confronted by in life. There was an untold amount of tragedy, some at fate’s mysterious hands but often, like all of us, by his own making. Gambling, poor choices of the heart, deaths, illness- so much plagued our dear author from his earliest loss, that of his mother. Without question, his health influenced his work and was in and of itself a curious thing, epilepsy. So little understood about it during his lifetime, how can it not have affected Fyodor’s thoughts, creativity? Make him question his very mortality?
The phases of his life from childhood to his dying day, the people dear to him as much as those he resented, the pleasures and disturbances of his very existence, all of it found a way into his fiction and, as Christofi points out within these pages, made for autobiographical work. Dostoevsky didn’t need to leave behind memoirs, for he was present in everything he wrote. He pinned human behavior as no other, from the foolish to the profound, and that is why even today the wisdom of his words reaches many readers’ souls. He suffered, lord he suffered like no other. He was contrary, he pursued his desperate wants only to later reflect with keen perception how we never seem to be satisfied with attainment, that the rush is in the chase. He understood humiliation, the misery of insult, the imbalance of class, the madness of politics, the contrary nature of man, and he penetrated the very heart of every emotion that can be born of any situation and was able to express it through characters. Alex Christofi writes beautifully of the author I felt I was observing for an entire lifetime, one who is both grand and small.
This book is far less static than other biographical accounts of Dostoevsky, it is factual but with fictional breezes of Fyodor’s writing blowing through. Fyodor isn’t the only person brought to life, all too often when a historical figure is written about, the people surrounding them fall flat. Not here! The women that he loved, who caused him desire so strong he trembled, pulse with life, even when fading from their own story as consumptive Maria. Polina is the fire, the wildcard and would be assassin, a woman he can’t help but draw close and cling to, despite the burn. Later it is the young Anna, his stenographer who he falls in love with and uses a story to tell her of his love for her. Anna becomes his dearly devoted second wife and mother to his children, sticking by him despite his debts, gambling addictions, the crippling loss of their two children and severe illness. Anna is a beacon to his troubled soul, and their love story as great as anything he has written. She is the one who carries on his legacy, what does a man do to deserve such a faithful, intelligent partner?
I wasn’t expecting to be as deeply engaged as I was. You don’t need to be familiar with Dostoevsky to enjoy the read but certainly a book any fan would enjoy. Every person in his orbit is humanized. Beautifully written, the connections, the facts, the emotions, the timeline- it’s quite the journey. Yes, read it.
Publication Date: March 23, 2021
Bloomsbury USA
𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒔 𝑰 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒏’𝒕 𝒚𝒆𝒕 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏 𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒏. 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒎𝒆, 𝒊𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒆! 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝑰 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒎𝒚 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒉 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒐 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒖𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒓, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒓𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔, 𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒍𝒍, 𝒊𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆.
Alex Christofi has written an intimate portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky, one that beautifully connects his personal life with his great work. He wrote his way through, if not out, of personal tragedies. The pen seemed to be at ready to spill each fresh misery that cropped up during his many trials and tribulations, be they born from the seed of love or politics. A man who used even his mock execution during his brutal imprisonment to write a semi-autobiographical novel about the inmates in a Siberian prison camp. Dostoevsky’s writing always seemed to flow from what he was confronted by in life. There was an untold amount of tragedy, some at fate’s mysterious hands but often, like all of us, by his own making. Gambling, poor choices of the heart, deaths, illness- so much plagued our dear author from his earliest loss, that of his mother. Without question, his health influenced his work and was in and of itself a curious thing, epilepsy. So little understood about it during his lifetime, how can it not have affected Fyodor’s thoughts, creativity? Make him question his very mortality?
The phases of his life from childhood to his dying day, the people dear to him as much as those he resented, the pleasures and disturbances of his very existence, all of it found a way into his fiction and, as Christofi points out within these pages, made for autobiographical work. Dostoevsky didn’t need to leave behind memoirs, for he was present in everything he wrote. He pinned human behavior as no other, from the foolish to the profound, and that is why even today the wisdom of his words reaches many readers’ souls. He suffered, lord he suffered like no other. He was contrary, he pursued his desperate wants only to later reflect with keen perception how we never seem to be satisfied with attainment, that the rush is in the chase. He understood humiliation, the misery of insult, the imbalance of class, the madness of politics, the contrary nature of man, and he penetrated the very heart of every emotion that can be born of any situation and was able to express it through characters. Alex Christofi writes beautifully of the author I felt I was observing for an entire lifetime, one who is both grand and small.
This book is far less static than other biographical accounts of Dostoevsky, it is factual but with fictional breezes of Fyodor’s writing blowing through. Fyodor isn’t the only person brought to life, all too often when a historical figure is written about, the people surrounding them fall flat. Not here! The women that he loved, who caused him desire so strong he trembled, pulse with life, even when fading from their own story as consumptive Maria. Polina is the fire, the wildcard and would be assassin, a woman he can’t help but draw close and cling to, despite the burn. Later it is the young Anna, his stenographer who he falls in love with and uses a story to tell her of his love for her. Anna becomes his dearly devoted second wife and mother to his children, sticking by him despite his debts, gambling addictions, the crippling loss of their two children and severe illness. Anna is a beacon to his troubled soul, and their love story as great as anything he has written. She is the one who carries on his legacy, what does a man do to deserve such a faithful, intelligent partner?
I wasn’t expecting to be as deeply engaged as I was. You don’t need to be familiar with Dostoevsky to enjoy the read but certainly a book any fan would enjoy. Every person in his orbit is humanized. Beautifully written, the connections, the facts, the emotions, the timeline- it’s quite the journey. Yes, read it.
Publication Date: March 23, 2021
Bloomsbury USA
April 6, 2025
Crimă şi pedepsă este, pentru mine, cel mai bun roman scris vreodată. M-a cutremurat să aflu ce viață tulburătoare a avut acest geniu. În confortul vieții de azi, ne pierdem mulți, dar uite cum, în cea mai mare agonie şi suferință, ieşeau la iveală genii creatoare. Recomand biografia!
July 20, 2024
sometimes knowing less is better. a foot fetish wasn't on my bingo card🤕😭
February 28, 2024
Bardzo przystępnie napisana, nawet nie było aż tak czuć tej fabularyzacji.
Poparcie fabuły cytatami z listów i dzienników Dostojewskiego, nawet książek (które nieodzownie traktowały o jego życiu i jego przeżyciach, przez co niekiedy mogą być uważane za autobiografie, a na pewno za ówczesną formę "coping mechanismu") dodają wiarygodności i umilają czytanie.
Dobra biografia; te zazwyczaj mnie nudzą, ale Dostojewski szczerze interesuje. Chciałam najpierw poznać jego życie i to, skąd pochodzi, nim zabrałam się za czytanie jego szerszej twórczości. I to z pewnością pomogło; teraz jasno widać, że wszystkie jego książki, wszystko co zostało tam opisane, jest kalką z życia prywatnego artysty pławiącego się w swoim nieszczęściu, żałosnego i trawionego przez choroby byłego katorżnika.
Ach, i popłakałam się, kiedy urodziła się Sonia. Bardzo wzruszające. „Wieczny mąż" chyba na zawsze pozostanie moim ulubionym tytułem książki, chyba zaraz po „Napluję na wasze groby".
Poparcie fabuły cytatami z listów i dzienników Dostojewskiego, nawet książek (które nieodzownie traktowały o jego życiu i jego przeżyciach, przez co niekiedy mogą być uważane za autobiografie, a na pewno za ówczesną formę "coping mechanismu") dodają wiarygodności i umilają czytanie.
Dobra biografia; te zazwyczaj mnie nudzą, ale Dostojewski szczerze interesuje. Chciałam najpierw poznać jego życie i to, skąd pochodzi, nim zabrałam się za czytanie jego szerszej twórczości. I to z pewnością pomogło; teraz jasno widać, że wszystkie jego książki, wszystko co zostało tam opisane, jest kalką z życia prywatnego artysty pławiącego się w swoim nieszczęściu, żałosnego i trawionego przez choroby byłego katorżnika.
Ach, i popłakałam się, kiedy urodziła się Sonia. Bardzo wzruszające. „Wieczny mąż" chyba na zawsze pozostanie moim ulubionym tytułem książki, chyba zaraz po „Napluję na wasze groby".
November 13, 2021
This was a perfect blend, being a biography supplemented by fictional quotes which only enhanced the beauty of this journey.
Dostoevsky's life is intriguing and no less than a novel in itself, he has often portrayed parts of his own life, time and again, through fiction, be it house of the dead, mock execution in The Idiot, Ippolit's death in TBK and the likes; this book places this perfectly, which gives a very poetic impression as if written by Dostoevsky himself.
"You may forget me dear ones, but I love you from the tomb"
Dostoevsky's life is intriguing and no less than a novel in itself, he has often portrayed parts of his own life, time and again, through fiction, be it house of the dead, mock execution in The Idiot, Ippolit's death in TBK and the likes; this book places this perfectly, which gives a very poetic impression as if written by Dostoevsky himself.
"You may forget me dear ones, but I love you from the tomb"
December 22, 2024
Mi-a plăcut mult. Ma întreb cât e ficțiune și cât e realitate
Și dacă Dostoievski nu ar fi avut așa viață “zbuciumată” ar mai fi scris asemenea capodopere …?
Și dacă Dostoievski nu ar fi avut așa viață “zbuciumată” ar mai fi scris asemenea capodopere …?
April 10, 2025
O biografie neobișnuită compusă de Alex Christofi din fragmente de roman, scrisori, articole de ziar și memorii ale lui Dostoievski, armonios legate între ele ca să formeze o imagine cât mai completă a vieții scriitorului. Pe lângă asta, mi s-a părut că autorul creionează un portret destul de reușit și al poporului rus, cu înclinația lor spre găsirea unor "profeți" și dorința de preamărire, de a deveni cel mai cel popor.
"Felul de a gândi al rușilor va face lumea să renască, iar acest lucru va fi înfăptuit de o generație viitoare - aceasta este credința mea înflăcărată. Mai întâi căzuse Roma, apoi Bizanțul; Rusia urma să-și împlinească destinul ca a treia Romă, la începutul mileniului următor, cu un Hristos rus la conducerea lumii." (P 205)
"Felul de a gândi al rușilor va face lumea să renască, iar acest lucru va fi înfăptuit de o generație viitoare - aceasta este credința mea înflăcărată. Mai întâi căzuse Roma, apoi Bizanțul; Rusia urma să-și împlinească destinul ca a treia Romă, la începutul mileniului următor, cu un Hristos rus la conducerea lumii." (P 205)
February 14, 2021
Excellent place to start if you haven't read any biography of Dostoevsky before - and a great read even if you have, because it's well told and because the story of Dostoevsky's life in itself is so incredibly gripping.
February 6, 2025
O biografie fascinantă! Scrisă cu mână ușoară drept urmare a unei munci grele (de documentare).
Abia acum o să mă simt slobod să fac paralele îndrăznețe între textele lui, știind niște subtilități ale vieții pe care A TRĂIT-O. Dar și să citesc Karamazovii mai liniștit și atent totuși. 🫠
Abia acum o să mă simt slobod să fac paralele îndrăznețe între textele lui, știind niște subtilități ale vieții pe care A TRĂIT-O. Dar și să citesc Karamazovii mai liniștit și atent totuși. 🫠
April 23, 2021
I enjoyed this biography that adds in some of Dostoevsky writing, it flows really well and he lived in interesting times.
March 26, 2021
Dostoevsky did not live to complete his intended autobiography, but Alex Christofi has done both him and us a great service in this daringly original fictionalised biography, based on meticulous research, which skilfully weaves in Dostoevsky’s own words, printed in italics. It seems as if many of the quotations are taken from a piece of fiction, but applied here with astonishing aptness. Despite revealing Dostoevsky’s many flaws, literally warts and all, the author succeeds overall in painting him in a sympathetic light.
The dramatic hook of a prologue, largely in these italics, presents what Dostoevsky believed would be his final thoughts in December 1849 during the last moments before execution by firing squad for involvement in a group which had acquired a printing press to organise a coup against the Tsar. “The most terrible part of the punishment is…the certainty…that in half a minute your soul will quit your body and you will no longer be a man”.
Reprieved but sentenced to four years of hard labour in Siberia, at first “broken by the monstrous strangeness”, he began to absorb every impression of his new world, even questioning fellow convicts about what it felt like to receive more than 500 lashes: “But I could not get a satisfactory answer…it scorches like fire, as though your back were being roasted”. The prison hospital was the only place where he could record all this on smuggled paper.
Although I have only read “Crime and Punishment”, it was fascinating to see how much of it is drawn from his own thoughts and experiences. Dostoevsky practised his belief that a great writer needs to suffer. The circumstances of his early life were tragic enough. The small country estate awarded to his father for “zealous service” as a doctor was burned down. His mother died of TB when he was fifteen. Driven to drink, his father was found dead in a ditch, possibly murdered by a disaffected serf.
Perhaps his worst misfortune was debilitating epilepsy which repelled his first wife Maria, and made it increasingly difficult for him to work in later life: “As a result of the falling sickness..I have forgotten the plots of my novels. I do remember the general outline of my life.” Yet he even found something positive in his first full fit. “The sense of life, the consciousness of self, were multiplied ten times in that lightning strike…. My mind and heart…flooded with extraordinary light… all unease…..anxieties…. submerged in a lofty calm…serene harmony, joy and hope”. The next part was of course “unendurable”.
The serious gambling addiction which should have destroyed his second marriage to Anna, but for her at times inexplicable love, makes painful reading. Christofi gives us blow by blow accounts of the cycle of Dostoevsky borrowing yet more money to win initially, fail to quit, lose the lot, pawn his watch, pawn Anna’s jewelry, lose some more and lack the funds to return from the fatal attraction of the German casinos to Russia where such gambling was not allowed. Apart from his obsession with finding the formula “to overcome the crudity of blind chance and win” the money he needed to be free to write without continual worries over debts – he was not a rich landowner like Tolstoy or Turgenev - he admits to deriving “acute enjoyment” from the risk of gambling “at the cost of torture” in the process.
With acute self awareness, he had a character confess how an “exceptionally shameful position, some more than usually humiliating, despicable and, above all, ridiculous situation always aroused in me not only boundless anger but ….an incredible sense of pleasure, an intoxication…..from the agonising awareness of my own depravity. I confess that I often sought it out because for me it was the most powerful of all such sensations.”
Sensitive and romantic, too quick to propose, appeared Dostoevsky easily obsessed with the idea of love rather than the woman concerned. Maria, at first unobtainable because she was married, and reluctant to wed him when she was widowed because he was by then a low-ranking soldier, seemed to lose her appeal once she became his wife, her bitterness no doubt fed by his neglect. Did he become infatuated with the beautiful, intelligent student Polina because she strung him along so tantalisingly? If he had been prepared to leave his dying wife for her, would his love for Polina have evaporated in turn? Even during his second loving marriage to the highly supportive and collaborative Anna who also proved to have a sharp business sense, despite a deep love for their children, with the single-mindness of a creative artist, his work came first. His routine was to sleep every morning in order to write through the night without interruption.
Criticised by former colleagues for attacking the nihilism of the next generation of rebels, briefly editing a journal regarded as arch-conservative, Dostoevsky was in fact an independent thinker whose ideas evolved over time, “chopped and changed” in the unceasing attempt to communicate them. Having developed a strong religious sense during his imprisonment, he observed that “if someone succeeded in proving to me that Christ wasn’t real, I would rather stay with Christ than with the truth”.
Dostoevsky crammed a wealth of diverse experience into his fifty-six years. He managed to regain and surpass his early success as a writer so that, by the end, Victor Hugo was inviting him to a prestigious conference in Paris, the Tsar was demanding a copy of his latest book and his speech in celebration of Pushkin was met with an extraordinary emotional ovation, and a laurel wreath a metre-and-a-half wide.
The dramatic hook of a prologue, largely in these italics, presents what Dostoevsky believed would be his final thoughts in December 1849 during the last moments before execution by firing squad for involvement in a group which had acquired a printing press to organise a coup against the Tsar. “The most terrible part of the punishment is…the certainty…that in half a minute your soul will quit your body and you will no longer be a man”.
Reprieved but sentenced to four years of hard labour in Siberia, at first “broken by the monstrous strangeness”, he began to absorb every impression of his new world, even questioning fellow convicts about what it felt like to receive more than 500 lashes: “But I could not get a satisfactory answer…it scorches like fire, as though your back were being roasted”. The prison hospital was the only place where he could record all this on smuggled paper.
Although I have only read “Crime and Punishment”, it was fascinating to see how much of it is drawn from his own thoughts and experiences. Dostoevsky practised his belief that a great writer needs to suffer. The circumstances of his early life were tragic enough. The small country estate awarded to his father for “zealous service” as a doctor was burned down. His mother died of TB when he was fifteen. Driven to drink, his father was found dead in a ditch, possibly murdered by a disaffected serf.
Perhaps his worst misfortune was debilitating epilepsy which repelled his first wife Maria, and made it increasingly difficult for him to work in later life: “As a result of the falling sickness..I have forgotten the plots of my novels. I do remember the general outline of my life.” Yet he even found something positive in his first full fit. “The sense of life, the consciousness of self, were multiplied ten times in that lightning strike…. My mind and heart…flooded with extraordinary light… all unease…..anxieties…. submerged in a lofty calm…serene harmony, joy and hope”. The next part was of course “unendurable”.
The serious gambling addiction which should have destroyed his second marriage to Anna, but for her at times inexplicable love, makes painful reading. Christofi gives us blow by blow accounts of the cycle of Dostoevsky borrowing yet more money to win initially, fail to quit, lose the lot, pawn his watch, pawn Anna’s jewelry, lose some more and lack the funds to return from the fatal attraction of the German casinos to Russia where such gambling was not allowed. Apart from his obsession with finding the formula “to overcome the crudity of blind chance and win” the money he needed to be free to write without continual worries over debts – he was not a rich landowner like Tolstoy or Turgenev - he admits to deriving “acute enjoyment” from the risk of gambling “at the cost of torture” in the process.
With acute self awareness, he had a character confess how an “exceptionally shameful position, some more than usually humiliating, despicable and, above all, ridiculous situation always aroused in me not only boundless anger but ….an incredible sense of pleasure, an intoxication…..from the agonising awareness of my own depravity. I confess that I often sought it out because for me it was the most powerful of all such sensations.”
Sensitive and romantic, too quick to propose, appeared Dostoevsky easily obsessed with the idea of love rather than the woman concerned. Maria, at first unobtainable because she was married, and reluctant to wed him when she was widowed because he was by then a low-ranking soldier, seemed to lose her appeal once she became his wife, her bitterness no doubt fed by his neglect. Did he become infatuated with the beautiful, intelligent student Polina because she strung him along so tantalisingly? If he had been prepared to leave his dying wife for her, would his love for Polina have evaporated in turn? Even during his second loving marriage to the highly supportive and collaborative Anna who also proved to have a sharp business sense, despite a deep love for their children, with the single-mindness of a creative artist, his work came first. His routine was to sleep every morning in order to write through the night without interruption.
Criticised by former colleagues for attacking the nihilism of the next generation of rebels, briefly editing a journal regarded as arch-conservative, Dostoevsky was in fact an independent thinker whose ideas evolved over time, “chopped and changed” in the unceasing attempt to communicate them. Having developed a strong religious sense during his imprisonment, he observed that “if someone succeeded in proving to me that Christ wasn’t real, I would rather stay with Christ than with the truth”.
Dostoevsky crammed a wealth of diverse experience into his fifty-six years. He managed to regain and surpass his early success as a writer so that, by the end, Victor Hugo was inviting him to a prestigious conference in Paris, the Tsar was demanding a copy of his latest book and his speech in celebration of Pushkin was met with an extraordinary emotional ovation, and a laurel wreath a metre-and-a-half wide.
March 2, 2025
Aceasta biografie m-a facut sa am o imagine ceva mai ampla a scriitorului, dar si a omului Dostoievski. A fost o lectura mult mai grea decat m-as fi asteptat, caci au fost multe idei dense, pe care le-am recitit si rascitit pentru a intelege macar o farama din ele. Am subliniat citate ce m-au facut sa ma simt intr-un fel, m-am simtit inspirat de altele, dar nu stiu cum sa exprim in cuvinte exact cum am fost marcat. Oricum, mi-a placut modul cum a fost realizata bibliografia, a fost o lectura captivanta.
Cu siguranta as reciti biografia la un momentdat, si voi aprecia si mai mult cartile lui Dostoievski pe care sper sa le citesc la un momentdat.
Cu siguranta as reciti biografia la un momentdat, si voi aprecia si mai mult cartile lui Dostoievski pe care sper sa le citesc la un momentdat.
April 29, 2025
Honestly, I really liked this biography. I think it presented a humane and flawed character. He had vices (gambling and smoking and women - more the idea of being in love) and he was sick (temporal lobe epilepsy AND hemorrhoids 😬) and he sometimes was a hypocrite, but that didn't make me appreciate his novels any less. On the contrary, it kinda made me want to read all his novels and look for all the quotes that were used in this biography.
The structure is also very interesting as in it is formed in chronological order by using phrases from his novels, letters, journals and another made up of the author's filler words 😂 In my opinion it was pretty fun to read a biography that focused more on his facets as husband, father and writer.
If you're looking for a biography based more on facts and dates, this is not the one I'd recommend as this feels more like a romanced (cenzored?) story about him. I also heard the impression that it is an in-depth school project about Dostoievski.
Read it as you wish, but I suggest browsing it, at least, as it enhances the want to read Russian classics. :)
The structure is also very interesting as in it is formed in chronological order by using phrases from his novels, letters, journals and another made up of the author's filler words 😂 In my opinion it was pretty fun to read a biography that focused more on his facets as husband, father and writer.
If you're looking for a biography based more on facts and dates, this is not the one I'd recommend as this feels more like a romanced (cenzored?) story about him. I also heard the impression that it is an in-depth school project about Dostoievski.
Read it as you wish, but I suggest browsing it, at least, as it enhances the want to read Russian classics. :)
May 4, 2024
Daje do myślenia nad całym sensem twórczości Dostojewskiego i wpływu sytuacji społecznych, rodzinnych i wewnętrznych na jego dzieła. Niewątpliwie warte przeczytania, szczególnie przed samym rozpoczęciem czytania jego powieści i nowel
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