Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859 [Paperback]

Joseph Frank (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1987

With this second volume, Joseph Frank continues his major reinterpretation of the great novelist. Frank now goes on to the most critical period in Dostoevsky's life - the ten years between his arrest as a conspirator in late 1849 and his return to St Petersburg to resume his literary career in 1859. Frank depicts his imprisonment in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, his interrogation, his mock execution staged by Nicholas 1 and his journey to exile. The book also deals with Dostoevsky's four years in a Siberian prison camp, his life in the Russian army and his infatuation with the tempestuous and cultivated young woman who became his first wife.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[A]nother impressive installment in one of modern scholarship's largest biographical achievements. -- Kirkus Reviews



In its scale and scholarly care, Frank's study, even at this preliminary stage, has no rival throughout the extensive critical and biographical literature on Dostoevsky. -- George Steiner, New Yorker

About the Author

Joseph Frank is Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus at Princeton University and Professor of Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literature Emeritus at Stanford University. Previous volumes of Dostoevsky have received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, two Christian Gauss Awards, two James Russell Lowell Awards, a Los Angeles Book prize and other honours. In addition to the previous volumes of Dostoevsky, Frank is author of Through the Russian Prism: Essays on Literature and Culture. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (January 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691014221
• ISBN-13: 978-0691014227
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #892,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Continued excellence, February 11, 2011

By 

Geoff Puterbaugh (Chiang Mai, T. Suthep, A. Muang Thailand) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859 (Paperback)

The first volume in this series was superb, and I was a little worried about the second volume. "The Years of Ordeal" were years when Dostoevsky wrote just about nothing at all (a few letters excepted) so I was worried that it might be tedious reading.

Not a bit of it! We get detailed discussion of the investigation --- Dostoevsky at 27 was on trial for his life and supposedly condemned to death. In this book you will find out exactly what happened and how Dostoevsky was shipped off for four years of hard labor in Sibera, and how he came brutally and abruptly face-to-face with the moral horror of the Russian peasantry in prison. Their behavior --- drunkenness, habitual theft, constant fighting, etc. --- was bad enough, but Dostoevsky learned something worse right off the bat: they hated him and everybody from his class. Much to his surprise, after his rose-colored glasses were smashed to bits, he found himself hating them right back --- and out went the Christian socialism he had almost committed treason for. Dostoevsky was still a Christian, however, and this experience of fierce hatred for a class he had previously romanticized led to a genuine "conversion experience" and the foundation of the firm convictions which served him for the rest of his life --- although he took "a long, long time" to completely work through his conversion experience.

All is this is developed and told by Joseph Frank in a completely fascinating way. It may not be as thrilling as "Crime & Punishment," but it sure beats a lot of modern novels in holding reader interest! Particularly fascinating is a detailed and very plausible account of how Dostoevsky finally managed to establish working relations with the peasants he hated so much; he had to learn to behave as they wanted and expected him to behave --- as a gentleman he could be as strict as he wanted with the peasants, but he could never commit the error of (a) pretending to be a peasant himself, or (b) failing to treat them as fellow human beings. They wanted him to act and be noble, but without a hint of nose-in-the-air snobbism. It sounds like a very delicate line to tread, but Dostoevsky finally caught on.

There is way too much to summarize here. These books have won a basketful of literary and scholarly prizes, and are very much worth your attention.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More exciting than Crime and Punishment, December 18, 2007

By 

Oscar Wilde "Judy" (Santa Monica, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859 (Paperback)

Frank has written a magisterial series on Dostoevsky, a life's work. The books move through the social, political, biographical and literary world of Dostoevsky. This reader was thrilled.