Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871 [Hardcover]

Joseph Frank (Author)

Book Description

Series: Dostoevsky (Frank, Joseph) | Publication Date: January 24, 1995

This volume, the fourth of five planned in Joseph Frank's widely acclaimed biography of Dostoevsky, covers the six most remarkably productive years in the novelist's entire career. It was in this short span of time that Dostoevsky produced three of his greatest novels--Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Devils--and two of his best novellas, The Gambler and The Eternal Husband. All these masterpieces were written in the midst of harrowing practical and economic circumstances, as Dostoevsky moved from place to place, frequently giving way to his passion for roulette. Having remarried and fled from Russia to escape importuning creditors and grasping dependents, he could not return for fear of being thrown into debtor's prison. He and his young bride, who twice made him a father, lived obscurely and penuriously in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, as he toiled away at his writing, their only source of income. All the while, he worried that his recurrent epileptic attacks were impairing his literary capacities. His enforced exile intensified not only his love for his native land but also his abhorrence of the doctrines of Russian Nihilism--which he saw as an alien European importation infecting the Russian psyche. Two novels of this period were thus an attempt to conjure this looming spectre of moral-social disintegration, while The Idiot offered an image of Dostoevsky's conception of the Russian Christian ideal that he hoped would take its place.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This fourth installment in Frank's acclaimed, projected five-volume biography presents an astonishingly vivid, uncanny portrait of Dostoevsky's spiritual, emotional and artistic development during his crucial years abroad. Marrying his pert, reserved stenographer, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina (his first wife died in 1864), Dostoevsky fled Russia with her in 1867 to escape harassing creditors and grasping dependents. Their obscure, lonely existence in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, until their return to Russia in 1871, was punctuated by the tragic death of their first child, Sofya, who lived only two months; by the penurious writer's frequent, disabling epileptic fits; by his mania for gambling; and by a stormy meeting with liberal, pro-Western Turgenev in Baden-Baden. The miracle implied by the book's title is that during this period, Dostoevsky wrote three major novels-Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Devils-plus two novellas, The Gambler and The Eternal Husband. Frank anchors the prophetic writer in his social and cultural milieu, tracing his struggles against Russian nihilists, his expose of the pitfalls of revolutionary politics, his messianic nationalism and his vision of an authentic Russian culture rooted in Christian morality and mystical union with the soil.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The three previous volumes of Frank's biography (The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849, LJ 9/1/76; The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859, LJ 11/15/83; and The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865, LJ 3/15/87) have received high praise as well as prestigious awards, and the current volume merits similar reception. Frank has aimed to keep Dostoevsky's works "constantly in the foreground...rather than accessory to the life...to furnish the reader with a context, drawn from the writer's personal life, as well as from the social, cultural, literary, and philosophical background... that will help toward a better understanding of the work." This he has done for the period in which Dostoevsky produced three major novels (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils) and two novellas that rank among his best. With admirable balance and lucidity, Frank delineates the trying personal circumstances (poverty, the death of his first child, his gambling mania) as well as the influence of currents such as Russian nihilism on the works as they developed in Dostoevsky's notebooks. A rich and worthwhile biography for scholar and general reader alike.
Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (January 24, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691043647
• ISBN-13: 978-0691043647
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,391,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Outstanding Biography, May 8, 2000

By 

Hugh James (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871 (Hardcover)

Joseph Frank's biography of Dostoievsky is a picture of the artist in the context of his century. It is not only a brilliant portrait of a great man but an image of nineteenth century Russia. It is neither patronizing nor overly analytic, but provides a taste of Dostoievky's life - making his thoughts, actions, and writings fuse into a coherent whole. I have probably read hundreds of biographies in my life and this one is the best.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Notes from the Underground, July 14, 2008

By 

Philip W. Henry (Rialto, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871 (Paperback)

Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871

"It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half."
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Literary biography is a tough genre. The challenge for the biographer is to avoid doing a hatchet job on the one hand, and being a shill on the other (Max Brod's panegyric to Kafka comes to mind). Among the best at the genre are Richard Ellman (James Joyce, Oscar Wilde); Ron Powers (Mark Twain); Leon Edel (Henry James) and Joseph Frank, whose massive, five-volume biography of Dostoevsky is a marvel.
Frank succinctly sums up his task: "The aim of literary biography, as I conceive it, is to furnish readers with a context, drawn from the writer's personal life,as well as from the social, cultural, literary and philosphical background of his or her time, that will help toward a better understanding of the work."

The son of an abusive alcoholic father and a consumptive mother; a compulsive gambler, introspective and melancholic; given to epileptic seizures; sentenced to a Gulag and forced to serve in a Russian regiment; chronically broke and peripatetic; variously lionized and demonized by his critics and supporters -- there's enough material in Dostoevsky's life for a five volume biography, which, written over a 30 year period, Frank provides.

Of course he has a lot to work with: Dostoevsky left reams of material, including diaries, notebooks, letters, and manuscripts. His collected works, in Russian, run to 30 volumes. Frank makes ample use of this material, especially in his analysis of Dostoevsky's major works in this period, "Crime and Punishment," "The Idiot," and "The Devils." Like a bipolar person, Dostoevsky swung from deep depression to exalted heights. He could plumb the depths of human depravity one minute, and celebrate the heights of the human spirit the next.

An example is one of his frequent gambling binges. "(The letter) also contains a frank admission of his recent gambling escapades, which Dostoevsky explains, in his usual fashion, in terms of the lure of freeing himself from debt in one miraculous stroke. "In one fell swoop to get out of all these proceedings with his creditors, provide for myself for a time and for my family. "But Dostoevsky is honest enough to add that gambling contains its own vertiginous attraction ("You know how that draws you in") (Frank, P. 224)

Frank's scholarship is exemplary, his writing lucid, and his subject mesmerizing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Insight Into A Great Genius, June 20, 2007

By 

el cid "rodrigo" (black hills USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871 (Paperback)

Joseph Frank, generally considered the world's foremost expert on Dostoyevsky, provides all the background you would ever need to truly understand the great mind that was Dostoyevsky. An indispensable guide to the master's great works.