Os Efeitos da Libertação - 1860 a 1865

Dostoevsky #3

by Joseph Frank, Geraldo Gerson de Souza (translator)

As transformações na obra de Dostoiévski, após seu longo período de prisão, são o objeto de estudo de Joseph Frank nesse volume que cobre a vida do escritor russo entre 1860 e 1865. Corresponde ao seu retorno às atividades sociais e culturais do país, num período de intensa agitação social e debate de idéias. Ao servir-se de vasta documentação e mesclar com habilidade a análise histórica, a literária e a cultural, o autor busca apresentar as direções que a obra dostoievskiana tomou após a dura experiência do degredo. A proximidade da morte e o cerceamento da liberdade pessoal levaram Dostoiévski a repensar os valores que conferem significado à existência. Além disso, o próprio evento da libertação dos servos por Alexandre II em 1861, pouco depois de seu retorno a São Petersburgo, fez despontar novas questões sociais em sua obra, quando então o tema da liberdade novamente se lhe impôs.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Literature, History, Russia, Russian Literature, Philosophy

521 pages

First published September 1, 1986

About the author

Joseph Frank was professor emeritus of Slavic and comparative literature at Stanford and Princeton. The five volumes of his Dostoevsky biography won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, two James Russell Lowell Prizes, and two Christian Gauss Awards, and have been translated into numerous languages.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am 60% of the way through Joseph Frank's five volume study of Dostoevsky's life and work. He is now on the verge of his greatest works, having just finished publishing Notes from the Underground.

While I am reading Frank's work, I am also reading or re-reading Dostoevsky's novels and stories. I look forward to starting the fourth volume soon.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part 3 of Frank's wonderful Dosty study is denser than the previous two volumes, but that's forgivable since by the end of this one, we're moving into the Five Great Novels period. Thus, there's more intense focus on Dosty's development as a writer (ending here with "Underground") and the context of that development.
When I say "denser", I mean less personal, which Frank has warned us about all along. Partly due to scanty documents, partly due to the pivotal nature of this post-exile period for D-bag's genius, there is little here traditionally biographical. His trips abroad and his marital life are given short thrift, save for the Suslova bits and the death of his first wife and brother.
The meat of this book is the cultural/polemical context that resituates Dosty not as the pro-Tsar reactionary many blithely take him to have been, but rather as someone trying to find a place where his philosophical and religious ideals--the autonomy of the will in a Christian context of love and the rejection of material philosophies and radical acts--can come to the fore. Giving the slip to his journalism, he evolves into the writer that we know and recognize. This volume covers that evolution.
Probably the best lit bio you'll ever read?

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Least favorite so far of the abridged

[Javier Muñoz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Frank hizo una tarea titánica en estas biografías. Es la primera que leo y me arrepiento de no comenzar con la primera.

[Dustin Lovell · Rating 5 out of 5]

"[E]verything takes refuge in the flesh, everything is thrown into fleshly debauchery, and, to supply the lack of higher spiritual impressions, the nerves and the body are goaded with everything capable of arousing the sensibility. The most monstrous perversions, the most abnormal acts, little by little become customary."

Thus Joseph Frank recounts Feodor Dostoevsky's foresight of what life will become if the radical socialists' materialist worldview were to be adopted across Russia and Europe. Beginning at Dostoevsky's return to St. Petersburg after a ten-year exile in Siberia and Semipalatinsk and running until his brother Mikhael's death and the failure of their second journal, Epoch, The Stir of Liberation focuses less on the events of the Russian author's life than the previous two volumes of Joseph Frank's biography on the author. Instead, it follows the journalistic and ideological bouts that formed the core of what would guide Dostoevsky's later masterpieces.

After recounting the circumstances of Dostoevsky's return, Frank explores the brothers Dostoevskys' first literary journal, Time, as well as the values underlying it. While his time in prison had shown Dostoevsky the incompleteness and foolhardiness of utopian socialism, the author still sympathized with the stated goals of the radicals of mid-century Russia. The journal's alternative method for helping the Russian peasantry raise their standard of living -- pochvennichestvo, a broad plan to educate the lower classes by an educated upper class through authentically Russian art and literature -- is a major theme in the book, as is Dostoevsky's initial impulse to conciliate between the other, alternatively more radical and conservative, journals of the time. Subsequently, in this volume readers will find a more theoretical explanation and exposition of Dostoevsky's view of art, as well as the view of the radical socialists, foremost among whom was Chernyshevsky, introduced in the biography's second volume. The ideological back-and-forths between the journals -- both Time and, after its bungling censorship, Epoch -- constitute much of this volume (this may or may not appeal to readers; I found it engaging and, under Frank's pen, understandable).

Along with recounting the adventures of the Dostoevskys' journals, Frank follows the key events in Dostoevsky's life that accompanied and gave him fodder for his pieces, such as his first trip to Europe (which does not line up with his/Russia's expectations), his affair and travels with the student Apollinaria Suslova, the long-expected death of his wife, and the sudden and completely unexpected (to him) death of his brother. Out of these events Frank explains such works as Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, The Gambler, and, in an explicatory chapter that, alone, makes the volume worth reading, Notes from Underground.

Frank's long focus on this last work is outstanding -- unsurprising, considering its being Dostoevsky's first GREAT work in his later apocalyptic themes. Giving background sources and influential interpretations since the work's publication, Frank couches Dostoevsky's satirizing the socialist-materialist of Chernyshevsky's What is to be Done? (the polemic that inspired many in Russia to become radicals, and V. I. Lenin's favorite book) in the underground man's inability to live out his grandiose creed. Covering each section of the work, Frank presents a unified reading that elucidates Dostoevsky's most obscure book, placing it squarely within the arguments of its day while showing how it relates to the author's later timeless novels.

While others might not enjoy this volume as much as the more event-based volumes of the biography. I found it to be the most engaging yet. The Stir of Liberation shows the processes by which Dostoevsky hashed out his worldview and applied it to the Russia of his day, and it shows Dostoevsky in the years when he took the lessons and experiences he had in Siberia and articulated them into full literary understanding. Fans of literary theory and philosophy of art -- not to mention political theory -- will have much to enjoy in this volume.

[Justin ••• · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third volume of Frank's biography continues to be amazing... but maybe just a tad less so. In the first two books Frank covered Dostoevsky's early life, his first literary and cultural steps, and his harrowing incarceration followed by probation and censorship. This present volume still had some very important parts of Dostoevsky's story, such as the deaths of his wife and brother, but a lot of this middle volume was spent detailing how in this time period Dostoevsky (both professionally and personally) was repeatedly taking two steps forward followed by two steps back. Overall though it is important and even necessary information for understanding what follows (especially Frank's examination of the cultural and philosophical currents in Russia at the time, and which Dostoevsky would spend the rest of his life engaging with, including in his best-known works like Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot)

[Frankie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This third book in Joseph Frank's five-book biography slows down a bit, concentrating on this pivotal time in the subject's life. This volume covers Dostoevsky's release from exile, the loss of both his first wife and brother, the rise and fall of two journals, and his publishing of House of the Dead and Notes from Underground .

Gathering from letters and diaries of friends and even lovers, the author once again draws a surprisingly detailed account of D's re-molded state of mind. Much is brought to light concerning D's growing anti-radical writing and editing (primarily in Time), among other tribulations for the writer – the tsarist censorship, his marginal gambling habit and subsequent debts, his epilepsy, etc.

The book leaves D on the eve of publishing three of his greatest novels, so I am eager to move on....

[David Coody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frank cranks it up a notch with the third volume. Before getting to Dostoevsky’s four major works, Frank depicts the ideological struggle taking place in Russia during Dostoevsky’s lifetime. Frank has shown in the previous two volumes how Dostoevsky outgrew his youthful naïveté and his radical ideas, stating that one must live by a transcendent ideal or they are not living at all. In this book, he depicts with full force Dostoevsky undressing his once held ideas. It was a peculiar sensation reading excerpts from his journal, essays, and novels that completely unmasked most of my currently held beliefs. Rational egoism is nothing but naive optimism which doesn’t see human nature for what it is. Determinism is a belief system that creates a moral vacuum for individuals to act out their petty self-absorbed desires and blame it on the ‘machine.’ Yet Frank shows that Dostoevsky is not writing out of spite or condescension. He sympathizes immensely with those who hold these beliefs. He only asks them to take the daunting leap of faith that cannot be made with one’s reason The leap can only be made with the most dear, most vital, and most exclusive part of themselves… their will. The truth about life according to Dostoevsky can only be revealed when one lays down their will and attempts to actively love another person solely for their benefit. He communicates this truth in a way that only he can. This man is truly one of the remarkable men of all time, and Frank does an excellent job of showing you that.

[Chet · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not just a great survey of Dostoevsky. It's a great survey of mid-19th century Russian and European cultural history. In this volume Dostoevsky goes abroad for the first time. Frank compares his writings about working class England to those of Engels. Debates around European socialism/radicalism and Russian socialism/radicalism get heated. Herzen, Dostoevsky, Chernyshevsky. But also a writer I hadn't heard of before: Saltykov-Shchedrin. This latter satirist was, according to a book of reportage I recently read by Lion Feuchtwanger, a favorite of Stalin's, frequently cited in his speeches. The wide tapestry of Russian intellectual life is spread out here in English for our enjoyment. If you're at all curious about the foundations for what today sets Russia apart from Europe, culturally, then read this series. Unabridged.

[PR · Rating 5 out of 5]

The struggle to reestablish himself in the literary scene after his imprisonment and years in the Army, the rise and fall of his literary magazine, the death of his brother, the death of his wife. He still has yet to write the novels that will cement his place in history, but the pain required to do so is being accumulated here.

[Zo · Rating 5 out of 5]

My thoughts are very similar to my reviews of the other volumes -- this is just as good. It is amazing how the Russian intellectual debates of the 1860s on socialism, nihilism, free will, and western rationalism continue to feel current and speak to contemporary controversies. The critical analysis of Notes From Underground -- and how it takes up those themes -- is fantastic.

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andele, andele!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Third volume of five. Brilliant reading of Notes from the Underground.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years spent on journalism. Much more lively a tale than I thought.

He remains the champion of psychic freedom against the determinism of his day. It's this that caused his split with the Left -- as the Left now sails. Though for most of this book he throws the weight of his frantic journalism into the effort to keep up polite interactions, a common ground, with the scientific materialists, misled, he believes, by a creed of rational egoism. Until the satire or protest that is Notes from the Underground, where determinism has become a more urgent enemy for him than tsarism.

He's in terrible straits at the end of this one: his wife dead, followed hard on by his wonderful brother -- who slaved himself to death at the journals, which D., with the brother's family to support, promptly almost does too. The hours they put in and the stresses they were under -- never mind the persiflage. But the journal goes bust again, and that loads D. with debts he is never free from for the rest of his life. If you wonder how he survived the last instalment (prison camp) this is just about as rough. He says himself.

Aside from the hardest worker who ever tried to earn a crust for his dependents, he's a far stronger person after prison camp and less vulnerable. He still behaves with beauty and great generosity of spirit. Sizzles at the journalistic battles, though: he cares so much. He has such energy.

His first wife I'd call an abusive spouse, with the fraught temperament you meet often in Dostoyevsky's women. Mind you he knows fraught himself. It was on his honeymoon, after a 'massive seizure' to which she was 'a horrified witness', that he was told these attacks that came upon him in Siberia are in fact epilepsy and incurable. He declares he wouldn't have married had he known. Plainly, she wouldn't have married him. From the beginning to the end, however, he calls her the most noble, magnanimous woman he ever met. If you can't work out whether Ivan and Katya -- or Mitya and Katya -- love or hate each other, just read about his real life.

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third book in the series of Joseph Frank's five book series on Dostoevsky. It comprises of details of the five years (1860-65) of Dostoevsky's life. These are the years immediately following Dostoevsky's return from his exile in Siberia. This book is a bit different from the first two books. The first book covers 28 years of Dostoevsky's life and is more biographical in nature. The second book covers 9 years of his life. It is biographical and the key theme is the struggles that played a role in Dostoevsky's transformation as a person and as a writer. This book diverts from the theme of biography and ventures into political ideologies of the era.
The first part is mainly focused on inception of the publication 'Time' (by Dostoevsky brothers) and its political skirmishes with 'the contemporary'. There is hardly any mention of Dostoevsky's life outside the publication and arguments involved in the skirmish. The details in this part break the natural flow of looking at the world from the Dostoevsky's eyes. Towards the end of first part and major portion of second part, the book focuses on some of the lesser known works of Dostoevsky including 'winter notes on summer impression', 'notes from underground' and 'house of the dead'. The author scatters details of Dostoevsky's love story and travel in between the details of Dostoevsky's books and political arguments in that era.
The book, which otherwise may feel like a text diverting from its initial promise, towards the end finds its roots again and gets directed towards Dostoevsky thoughts and life. The reader may get lost in the beginning, may find some interesting arguments sprinkled in the text in the middle but would definitely find all the reasons to get to part four of the book by the time he/she reaches the last chapter. It was author's prerogative to include a 400 page description of 5 years of Dostoevsky's life although some of the details in the book could have been easily eliminated without losing the continuity.

[Sir Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of me is at odds with taking the time to read this five-volume biography, because biography, to me, is inherently a lower form of writing. But Joseph Frank elevates the genre, as these works are dense in parts with incisive literary criticism, often illuminated by the rich picture Frank paints of the literary-social climate of the 1860s in St. Petersburg. I learned, for example, that I’d misread Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, unaware of the irony that pervades Turgenev's treatment of the main character; and certainly I didn’t catch all the layers of irony (“inverted irony” Frank calls some of it) in Notes from the Underground, a work I’d taken—and was taught as such in a Modern Novel course at the University of Michigan, by a professor clearly in line with New Criticism—as a seminal example of existential literature, while being unaware of the fraught intellectual-cultural climate the work directly addresses. In Frank's reading, it's not quite about a lonely man in a cellar raving at the gods and existence; it's more about a lonely man with specific grievances attacking real human beings who’ve printed political ideas in Petersburg journals Dostoevsky disagrees with. Dostoevsky uses the Underground Man to critique the current of the Radicals in Russia of the 1860s by taking their ideas to wild extremes and unwittingly to him (but not to Dostoevsky!) showing how absurd those ideas are.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book chronicles a transitional period in Dostoevsky's career, where he formulates some of the key themes that he will grapple with for the remainder of his career. Much of this formulation comes as a result of his work on the two journals he and his brother started (Time and Epoch), as these provide an opportunity for Dostoevsky to write direct responses to some of the ideals advocated both on the left and the right. What begins as a left of center position in the early 1860s eventually shifts to the right by the middle of the decade, particularly as some of the leftist views take on an ever more activist and revolutionary streak.

Dostoevsky's works covered in this volume include The Insulted and the Injured, A Nasty Story, The House of the Dead, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, Notes from Underground, and The Crocodile. The reflections on Winter Notes and Notes from Underground are especially important as we see Dostoevsky distancing himself not only from his own naive Christian socialism of the 1840s, but also the embrace of European individualism in the 1860s. The product of this shift begins to come clear in Notes from Underground, but will only fully blossom in his work of the later 1860s and into the 1870s.

[Б. Ачболд · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quiet genius, Joseph Frank. This is the third volume . . . It is not grand or flashy, but is a genuine work. Quietly engaging and absorbing.

I don’t think it says everything important there is to say about Dostoevsky . . . but do this: (1) read Notes from Underground; (2) read Frank’s chapter on the book (which is also reprinted in the Norton edition of Notes by Michael Katz); (3) realize how much you hadn’t understood and how much you still don’t understand. Incidentally, despite its wealth of insights, I actually thought the chapter on Notes was where Frank maybe stretched things a bit too far, but that’s fine. I am probably wrong.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't know what else to say other than Joseph Frank knocks it out of the park again. This time the events of Dostoevsky's life are comparatively more tame than in the previous two volumes, but the book nonetheless remains a page-turner as the excitement shifts away from the actual physical events that occurred during Dostoevsky's formative years to the philosophical and artistic evolution of his thoughts and mindsets. This period definitely feels like a 'crystallization point' where everything Dostoevsky went through in the previous two volumes is now beginning to come together to finally, at long last, take shape into something approaching greatness.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deals mostly with Dostoevsky's writings in the journals Time and Epoch, which he ran with his brother. There are some great chapters dealing with Russian Nihilism and Notes from Underground .

My least favorite of the three volumes so far, but still an exciting and interesting read.

[Eduardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ive read the first 3 volumes of Frank's classic bio on Dostoevsky and I am amazed at the detail & level of care, insight, & academic depth this great work possesses. It is simply mind boggling to read a man's work that took a life time. I highly recommended it but it takes commitment and yet the way he presents the research and the life of an amazing man & author is intensely wonderful.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, I have indeed read all five volumes of Frank's splendid biography of Dostoevsky, one after the other over 15 to 20 years as soon after publication as I could get my hands on a copy. I enjoyed every one of the 2500-3000 pages

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volume III of Frank's 2500-page literary biography. Post-exile life and burgeoning philosophies that would shape his later work.

[Sara]

1986 finalist

[Buzz Borders · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best book so far. The way Frank covers Winter Notes on Summer Impressions and Notes from Underground is yet unmatched by any other scholarly work I've read on either topic.