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Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time

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As the published reviews indicate, the scholarship in this biography is exemplary. But what I find most appealing about it is the thoughtful, gentle tone. The facts are here, the big ideas are examined in detail, but more than that, the biographer conveys a deep sense of awe for his subject's extraordinary career, and a genuine affection for Dostoevsky's complex character. Reading this book is uplifting.

In the 1960s, when Joseph Frank submitted his first manuscript for a volume on Dostoevsky's fiction to Oxford University Press one reader summarized its negative reception bluntly: "I don't see how Mr. Frank can write so many pages about Dostoevsky without saying anything of his life." With the publication of Dostoevsky: A Writer In His Time earlier this year, a massive abridgement of five volumes written over three decades, Frank breaks once and for all with his early critic's stilted categories in portraying the human subject. His innovative method of biography, influenced heavily by literary criticism, starts with artistic expression and moves backward, seeking to carefully situate his subject within ideological context. The conventional biographical point of view, Frank clarifies early on in his preface, does not do justice to the complexities of Dostoevsky's creations (xiii). Thus, a precise account of an era's ideological doctrines reflected and refracted in literary achievement is the best way to fully grasp that era's most dominating figures.

Frank's objective in the abridged version is unwavering: to furnish readers with the context--social, cultural, literary, and philosophic--that will help forward a better understanding of the work (xiv). Whether or not Frank's biographical approach ought to be generalized as a model is debatable but such an approach, few would contest, is uniquely useful for Dostoevsky; the Russian literary giant was so shaped and consumed by the intellectual debates in the second half of the 19th century that his writing emanates almost naturally in capturing and defining the era's ideological--and Western literature's eternal--strivings.

There is nearly unanimous consent that Frank is a paragon of his form, with words such as `magisterial,' `authoritative' and `monumental' being the cliché in describing his analysis of Dostoevsky's life and times. Often is Frank's work called one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century and the best of Dostoevsky in any language. So, the question insists: how ought one evaluate this distilled version? Mary Petrusewicz's abridgement of the original five volumes and Joseph Frank's stamp of approval on her work provides a chance to re-consider both Frank's form and analysis in its newly calibrated and accessible style. On a more substantial level and mirroring Dostoevsky's accumulation of literary ability through time, Frank's most recent Dostoevsky is one brought forth with increased complexity and perception coming with age and experience; in short, Frank's own Brothers Karamazov as a preeminent biographer.

Without a doubt, the genius of Frank's form is in combining three modalities in crafting his narrative: literary criticism, social and intellectual history, and biography. Centering on Dostoevsky as his subject to pioneer this form, whose literature and epoch are not highly accessible or self-explanatory, is fortuitous if not unique to this particular venture. Perhaps for this reason, Frank's comprehensive treatment reads like a novel by Dostoevsky himself: meticulous, idea-driven, and patiently insistent on unearthing layer after layer of the human condition in all its beautiful and terrible complexity. Frank's form yields telling results. For instance, one simply cannot estimate the satirical impact and historical rootedness of Stavrogin and Verkhovensky in Demons without understanding the rise of the Russian nihilists, influenced as they were by Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, one of Dostoevsky's several ideological nemeses. Revolutionary fervor sweeping Europe was highly susceptible to misappropriation, Frank intimates, and in Demons Dostoevsky sought unabashedly to expose the false pretense and ideological buffoonery of a well-intentioned movement without a moral fixedness in religious faith (656). In fact, Dostoevsky captured the ideological fanaticism of the nihilists in Demons so well that Albert Camus would remark years later that he and not Karl Marx was the greatest prophet for the twentieth century.

Given his form, it is not surprising that Frank's narrative shifts considerably among the several forces swirling around the author's life, but, it also connects very well--from his upbringing in a lowly family obsessed with status and recognition to his literary maneuverings and early ideological compromises in the Petrashevsky circle. A benefit of Frank's style is in positioning and scrutinizing Dostoevsky's stories as a rich panorama of enfleshed ideas--ideas that move through time to gain precision without losing their consequential significance. For instance, Dostoevsky's trial, mock execution and exile in Omsk are probed to relate a time of deep introspection and significant ideological formation for the young writer. The full impact of nearly ten years of forced labor and military conscription tempered Dostoevsky's views on the goodness of humanity and his early, almost perfunctory sympathy toward the Utopian Socialist cause (399). Under dire conditions in Omsk, one could say, the literary giant was born, formulating ideas about the necessity of human freedom and the deforming effects of oppression on the human psyche that would enrich his character construction vastly.

In multiple ways Dostoevsky's exile would serve to greatly inform his literary license and his later mantle as a prophet for the Russian people. "It is the great teacher," Nietzsche conjectured, "that shows us how to bear steadfastly the reverses of fortune, by reminding us of what others have suffered." Dostoevsky assuredly suffered alongside criminals--mostly peasants--and Frank leverages the insight he methodically gained as a psychologist-prisoner to elucidate an intriguing perspective on the class structure at the center of the Russia's ideological struggles.

The revolutionary debate among the educated class centered ostensibly on the value and worth of the peasantry in the ushering in a new socio-political arrangement. All of these ideas Dostoevsky insisted, gave little or no credit to the peasant class or to the traditional moral fabric of the Russian obshchina (peasant community). Literature served an overt purpose and the revolutionary ideas as well as the literary establishment reflected only a small stratum of society. Frank quotes Dostoevsky reflecting on this theme in Tolstoy's novels: "There has not yet been a new word to replace that of the gentry-landowners," (612). Clearly, Dostoevsky regarded himself as uniquely capable of supplying such a new word and the early burden of representing and defending the peasants to the revolutionaries really masked the larger debate on the content of human nature.

Later on, the tension between the nihilists' complete rejection of established ideas and social institutions and Dostoevsky's affirmation of the inexorable values in the Russian peasantry reveals his incessant desire to seek out the source and landscape of human nature: what's inherent to the human condition and what is not? what is morally worth retaining and what is not?--a debate that is no doubt still pivotal to the political and social systems today.

Frank's interlocking method also enriches common motifs in Dostoevsky's literature. Nearly omnipresent in all novels is a scathing critique of liberalism in its several manifestations--atheism, rationalism, utilitarian morality, and egoism--unraveling beautifully under Frank's illustrative lens, deeply passionate but comprehensive enough not to render it too quickly in vogue. A specific example of this is in disinterring a fresh perspective on Notes from the Underground, a sneering polemic against rational egoism. The social conditions surrounding the resentful and self-loathing Underground Man remain consistent in Frank's analysis while the depth of Dostoevsky's satirical wit is flipped on its head.

The established interpretation posits the Underground Man as a tormented irrationalist in a world saturated with Chernyshevsky's ideology of rational egoism (315). But Frank credits Dostoevsky with a much more subtle usage of satire, claiming that the Underground Man is actually living in a self contradiction--accepting the precepts of rationalism in his head all the while fully rejecting it in his heart or emotively and intuitively (421). This dialectic of self-contradiction seems eminently plausible if only because of the breadth of Frank's scope in relating Dostoevsky's ultimate moral-spiritual project; his ardent belief that rational egoism necessarily implied a utilitarian morality (doing right by numbers) to the exclusion of any other moral frame. In the end, the depth of cunning and subtlety in Notes from the Underground is retained as a severe critique of a foolhardy idea, according to Dostoevsky, that was too simplistic to be grasped to its logical and soul-stifling conclusion.

In digesting his work, Frank highlights what many have considered Dostoevsky's unequaled technique of following ideas through to their ultimate end. This usage of what Dostoevsky himself referred to as "fantastic realism" stretches the interpretive scope of his work between being strictly a writer in his time and a socio-cultural prophet for an entire people. As Frank claims early on, Dostoevsky had a special talent for "feeling ideas" so perceptibly that his characters' personalities are more pathological than normal. The literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin claims that in Dostoevsky's work one sees not who a character is but rather how a character is conscious of him or herself--an agonizing self consciousness that pervades his work, especially Crime and Punishment.

Hoping to achieve the same penetrating insight into Dostoevsky's personality and psychology does not seem to be Frank's primary concern here if only to withhold speculation that would overanalyze his subject. What Frank does offer however is a perceptive reading of Dostoevsky that gains considerable traction with his analysis of ideological and historical context. This is done in a nimble and judicious fashion, offering an interpretation without foreclosing on alternate ones; detailing the facts without overplaying their presence and meaning in his artistic expression. In this manner, Frank does well in capturing the genius of Dostoevsky as a decidedly nuanced commentator of Russian history and an adroit navigator of the insistent philosophical questions his turbulent era brought to the fore. In an era when ideas held such consequential weight, ranging from censorship to exile, Dostoevsky sought unfailingly to reconcile the ideological frenzy with monumental aspects of Russia's historical experience.

Culminating Frank's analysis is a straightforward, eighty page hermeneutic on Dostoevsky's last and most well received novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Even in the abridged format Frank's interpretation of Brothers could read as a stand alone literary achievement; although, much like the novel's own stand alone chapter "The Grand Inquisitor," Frank's best work is in setting up the story. His interpretation connotes a novel fraught with the usual tensions, all interlinked and profoundly relevant to Russia's "place" in the world: reason and faith, Slavophile and Western, nihilism and moral responsibility, good and evil, certainty and doubt. Reason and faith however form the primary lens by which Frank proceeds to view the unfolding drama that ranks in the Western canon on par with Milton, Shakespeare, and Dante. This lens, argues Frank, assumes something of a nexus between Dostoevsky's artistic accomplishments and his occasionally discordant religious and ideological impulses. Thus, its characters and plot accurately captures both the eternal greatness and the eternal mystery of the author himself.

Toward the end of his life most Russians regarded Dostoevsky as perfectly emblematic of their plight and place. In the final sections of the book, Frank's otherwise cerebral analysis capably expresses Russia's love and admiration for their "prophet". As a reader and speaker during the country's celebrated Pushkin Festival, Dostoevsky seals his memory (813). A letter to his wife during the festivities implies a rather clumsy incredulity at his last novel's reception. "A horde of people, young people, gray-haired people and ladies, rushed up to me and said, `You are our prophet. You have made us better since The Karamazovs'" (821).

After Dostoevsky's final appearance during the festival that featured a laudatory and messianic interpretation of Pushkin's work and its accursed characters set against the Western reforms of Peter the Great, the crowd literally shouted that he had solved the question of the tormented "Russian soul" so brooding in all of Pushkin's work. Such a reception must have been immensely gratifying after a life spent dramatizing and combating the moral and spiritual confusion of late 19th century. In a poem many years later, Anna Akhmatova reflects on Dostoevsky's legacy as prophet whose perception of his country's ideological struggle was a uniquely sacred one:

The Country shivers, and the convict from Omsk
Understood everything, and made the sign of the cross over it all.

When Joseph Frank's five volume encyclopedic biography of the life and times of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was published over the course of several years, it was widely lauded as the most comprehensive work ever undertaken on the life of this writer who has had enormous lasting impact over the past two centuries. Now, the Princeton University Review has published a condensed (though still a massive 959 pages) version of Frank's epic work that gives new readers a richly detailed overview of both Dostoevsky's writings and the times and circumstances that throughly influenced it.

Seen by many as the father of existentialism, Dostoevsky was passionately connected to the social, political and ideological movements of 19th Century Russia and Frank's depiction of the man is less an analysis of his works as much as an attempt to (and succeed in) seemlessly intertwine the events of both his individual life (from his unwanted schooling at the Academy of Military Engineers, to his early forays into journalism, to an eventual four year incarceration in Siberia) and the raging philosophical movements of his time (utopian socialism, determinism, Russian radicalism, Nihilism as well as various shades of Christianity) with the output of his career as both a prominent novelist and essayist.

Frank purposefully sets out to avoid the `purely personal biography' (which has been covered by numerous others) and seeks to explore and define what he terms the "eschatological imagination"; the fusion of the ever-evolving political and sociological backdrops of the times with the way these philosophies infuse his characters (from his essays and novels including `Poor Folk,' `Crime and Punishment' and the final masterpiece `The Brothers Karamazov') with a zeal that carries his stories out to their ultimate conclusions.

The depth and details portrayed by Frank are astonishing in both their breadth and their inalienable connection to the subject at hand. It is worth noting that a project of this scope could not have been accomplished without the insightful editing required to reduce the five volume set to a single (albeit massive) book and still maintain the magnitude and absorbing details of the original works largely intact. In this regard, this work is largely credited to Stanford PhD, Mary Petrusewicz, whose efforts should not go without mention.

Joseph Frank is not particularly interested in the tawdry details of Dostoevsky's life, though he doesn't shrink from them. He IS interested in who and what from the writer's life ended up in his works, and why. Frank is not the most profound literary critic, but he is insightful; and anyway, it doesn't matter because those of us who love Dostoevsky don't need a critic to explicate the novels -- we need someone to cue us to the social-political-cultural-literary currents that underlie the words and actions of Raskolnikov or Stavrogin or Ivan Karamazov. This Frank does superlatively.
The title in question is a one-volume abridgement (performed seamlessly by editor Mary Petrusewicz) of Frank's five-volume masterwork, which began in the 1970s. I remember reading a review of the first installment and thinking "I should probably check this out," but I never did. I am grateful that I now have this "compact" version (if 900+ pages can be described as compact) available as I make my way yet again through Dostoevsky's novels. The only quibble I have is that the scholarly apparatus (footnotes, bibliography) is a bit skimpy.

Short and sweet: if you like thoughtful writing and wish to see what still can be accomplished in the field of biography, Mr. Frank is your man. A tremendous task! And on a personal note Mr. Frank is a nice man, besides being a wonderful writer. My admiration to you, sir!

Princeton University Press ha publicado oportunamente un resumen de la monumental biografía escrita por el Profesor Joseph Frank, hace ya algunos años.
En esa época, llovieron torrencialmente los elogios de los más eminentes eruditos. También nosotros , los lectores no especializados, opinamos que el Profesor Frank alcanzó la cima magisterial.
En este libro resumido, encontramos un talento excepcional en la prosa y el análisis de los más intrincados y antitéticos aspectos de la personalidad de Dostoievsky.
A veces pienso que prefiero leer al biógrafo, más que al biografiado.
¿Qué mayor elogio se puede decir?