Customer Reviews

The Eternal Husband

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fabulous collection. "The Eternal Husband" is quite interesting and features the trademark Doestoevsian psychological interplay (along the lines of that found between _Crime and Punishment_'s Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich, or _The Idiot_'s Rogozhin and Prince Nikolaevich). However, the short stories included are, imho, superior to "The Eternal Husband." "A Nasty Anecdote" is a very funny satire, especially if the reader is privileged to know a bit about post-"emancipation" Russia. "The Meek One" studies the fascinating, yet highly unhealthy relationship between a husband and wife. At the same time, it meditates on the uses of love in much the manner of _King Lear_. "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" features the sort of Christ figure found in _The Idiot_ or _The Brothers Karamazov_'s Alyosha. Warning: this story may make you cry.

However wonderful the stories, Richard Pevear's introductory essay alone is worth the price of admission-- with a caveat. If you are familiar with most of Dostoevsky's novels, then you will understand and appreciate Pevear's analysis of Dostoevskian philosophy-- the stories in this collection are even arranged in an order that supports Pevear's theories. However, those unfamiliar with Dostoevsky's work will be very lost.

P.S. These stories are enjoyable for everyone, but those familiar with Dostoevsky will appreciate them even more. I would suggest that Dostoevsky first-timers start with _Crime and Punishment_ or _Notes from Underground_.

This is an entertaining novella that will give you an idea of Dostoevsky's genius. Like his great works (Crime and Punishment, Brothers K, The Idiot, The Possessed), it has a lot of psychological power and displays his style of writing. It has enough depth to it that you really get into the story and the characters, unlike some of his short stories. However, it does not have all the philosophy present in his longer works. As Dostoevsky is also known for his philosophical and political debates, some may lament the loss of it in The Eternal Husband. However, many newcomers to Dostoevsky find that the philosophy drags and that they get lost in it. For that reason, The Eternal Husband is an easy read and great for people who have never read Dostoevsky before.

The book contains five stories translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky and an introduction by Richard Pevear. The Eternal Husband is 150 pages. The other four stories are short. They are good examples of the writings and the literary techniques of Dostoevsky including the use of dreams.

I have read most of Dostoevsky's major novels. There are about 10 or so available in English, and the present collection is not a substitute for reading the other works. I still like The Gambler and The Brothers Karamazov as his two most interesting works, followed by The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, and Demons. Perhaps The Gambler is not his best work, but it was the first one that I had read. He wrote it with his second wife in 30 days. The Gambler is a short but entertaining - and reflects Dostoevsky`s addiction to gambling. The present works are similar to Notes From the Underground, but less intense, less creative, and more varied in subject matter.

The Eternal Husband involves an extra-marital affair by the male protagonist with a married woman and the subsequent relationship between the man, Velchaninov, and the husband, Pavel Pavlovich. The story is set years later after the death of the wife and uses a dream sequence near the beginning. It reflects a love triangle situation found in his other writings and is loosely related to the circumstances of Dostoevsky`s first marriage, although not identical.

Another story is The Dream of a ridiculous Man. Dostoevsky uses the dream sequences as a vehicle to tell a utopian story about an ideal society. Again, the dream is a literary mechanism used by Dostoevsky. This is related to the short but unusual story Bobok. It is set in a cemetery where the dead are holding conversations. The characters use flights of fancy, dreams, and communicate with the dead. The dead characters lack morals, even dead.

The other two stories, A Nasty Anecdote and The Meek One, are more conventional stories. The first involves an official who accidentally attends the wedding of a poor government worker, a man who works in his department. The official drinks too much and causes much commotion and embarrasses the groom and the wedding party. In short, he makes a fool of himself. Dostoevsky touches on his themes of the disintegration of human life and the use of the "unexpected" gathering to expose false ideas and situations.

The Meek One is about a man who is trying to deal with the suicide of his wife. Again, the story is short. But, he uses the "stream of consciousness" technique - possibly one of the first uses of the technique in the modern literature according to Pevear - years before Joyce.

5 stars and a surprisingly good selection of short stories.

I love this little paperback of stories! The depth of the human person is so well written and the sharp contrast between the consciences of the different characters are fascinating.

This collection of five stories brings together a range of Dostoevsky's `mad men' stories. That is, stories focused on the middle-aged male narrator, invariably a spiteful, erratic hypochondriac who alternates between philosophical musings and extremely unsatisfactory relationships with other people. This might not sound particularly appealing, but the sheer intensity with which Dostoevsky carries these stories off and the psychological insight they contain makes them a lot more fun to read than they should be. Such stories could get old, and sooner or later, you realize that the psychological insight is more limited than it at first appears --- if we were all like Dostoevsky's characters, no one would have children --- but the selection of stories is well-measured and pulls up short of when it would wear out its welcome.

I'm not fond of descriptions of short stories because fiction of that length relies so much on novelty to work that accurate descriptions ruin some of their effects. This is especially the case with the novella `The Eternal Husband', which has plenty of surprises if you don't read too many reviews. Instead, it should suffice to give a sense of these wicked stories to say that they involve life in Russia (mainly Petersburg) in the middle of the nineteenth century, largely from the point of view of permanently soused, alienated bureaucrats. They're basically _Office Space_ played for keeps.

The stories have a very modern feel to them and can hold their own in terms of current tastes in plot, characterization, etc.
These stories, especially `The Eternal Husband', are widely praised for their economy, meaning that in contrast to Dostoevsky's big novels, they have the philosophical and religious rambling very much under control (or with 'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man', can make it more effective as fiction). This praise for the tightness of these stories is accurate: here, you get the good stuff of Dostoevsky, what could potentially appeal to anyone, without the digressions that could put a lot of people off.

Another review complained about the choppiness of the prose and someone else defended it by saying that this is a faithful rendition of Dostoevsky's prose. I only found a couple of places choppy, most notably the beginning of the fantastical story `Bobok', where it's hard to understand the set up. (But you quickly discover that that doesn't matter, the main conceit of the story is completely unrelated to the identity of the narrator. In that case, the madness is spread to an entire group of odd memorable characters.)

My main concern with the Pevear and Volokhonsky translations is that they almost seem too easy to read. I love the idea of having a translation team that has a native speaker of both languages (and think it's cool that here they're actually married). It seems to work well in practice. But I do wonder if it might make the final translation deceptively smooth.

This translation has less of problem than I've seen with other translations of Dostoevsky. Often you get lines like, "`The sky is blue,' he said maliciously." You're left wondering, "What on earth could be malicious about the sky being blue? I can't visualize someone saying that and it doesn't make sense in context." There's much less of this than usual (though the scene of making devil horns out of fingers in `The Eternal Husband' still baffles me).

Pevear and Volokhonsky are also good at their endnotes. Often, translators get high on their own erudition and clutter the text with so many notes that you realize that they're not important and stop reading them. This translation limits itself to the only most necessary supplemental information. Indeed, I wished the notes were footnotes because they are so important and I had to keep my finger at the back of the book. I eventually realized that it was better to read the notes before beginning a story.

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This review is based on a trade paperback. The price for the mass paperback is pretty reasonable.

I started reading The Eternal Husband, a taut novella by Dostoevsky, after I read the literary critic James Wood praise it. By all accounts it is his masterpiece. It even as a style of its own, a compression and economy that Doestoevsky isn't known for. Premise: A cuckolded widow visits the lover of his recently deceased wife to torment him. He never lets his betrayer know that he knows or doesn't know about the affair. Much of the torment is rooted in the betrayer's uncertainty. For pyschological drama, if you like this kind of discomfiting intensity, where the main character seems an inch away from descending into complete madness, you might also like The Horned Man by James Lasdun and Contempt by Alberto Moravia.

Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Eternal Husband and Other Stories contains intriguing tales.Many events in the title story are difficult to understand. An explanation,which accounts for several discrepancies in the tale,is that Pavel Trusotky poisons his first wife Natalia, his daughter Liza, and his two "friends" Alexei & Stepan.
Pavel's two "friends" betrayed him by having an affair with his wife. Pavel
wants to punish Alexei & Stepan in a way that mirrors the way they treated him. The
two "friends" befriended Pavel, then they betrayed him, Pavel wants to befriend them
both and then to betray them by poisoning them. Pavel also wants Alexei to form a bond with Liza(the daughter Alexei never knew he had)and then Pavel wants to punish
Alexei by poisoning Liza.
If Pavel poisoned Liza,it would explain many events. It would explain her illness and why Pavel would give Liza to Alexei in the first place-a man who
betrayed him. When Pavel gives Liza to Alexei,It is an act of friendship. If Pavel
gave Liza to Alexei knowing she would die,it is an act of friendship and secretly an
act of betrayal.
Before Liza becomes sick,Pavel makes this strange slip of the tongue. "Do you
know,sir,what Liza was for me, was and is,sir! Was and is!' he suddenly cried almost
in a frenzy."
In a short span of time 3 of the people in Pavel's life become sick and die-his
his wife,his daughter,and his "friend" Stepan. Also his "friend" Alexei becomes sick. Can it all be coincidence? Much of Pavel's behavior can be seen as an attempt
to counter any suspicions that might occur to Alexei or any other concerned party.
-Jim Spinosa

This bundle with tales of blindness, illusion and, on behalf of the author, disillusion is a perfect introduction to the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. They expose splendidly the author's dreams, obsessions, psychological insights, passionate characterizations and frenzied style.

Blindness
In `The Eternal Husband', a man has no inkling of the unfaithfulness of his wife. He even admires her lover: `Eternal husbands are only husbands in life and nothing else. It is impossible for him not to wear horns.'
In `The Meek One', a man doesn't understand his own dumb selfishness.

Illusions and disillusion
In `A Nasty Anecdote', State councilor Pralinsky sees `humaneness with subordinates - they, too, are people' as `the cornerstone of the forthcoming reform.' But, his drunken behavior turns into something very nasty indeed.
In `The Dream of a Ridiculous Man', still one man believes in the main thing, `love others as yourself ... I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of people'.
But, in `Bobok', human evil goes even on after death, in the grave: `the depravity of flabby and rotting corpses - not even sparing the last moments of consciousness.'

Themes
A recurrent theme in Dostoevsky's work is the little girl; here, `Liza' in `The Eternal Husband' and one without a name in `The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.'
People are also falling into a sort of frenzy, become bedeviled (the lover in `The Eternal Husband') or can barely survive utter despair (the suicide temptation in `The Dream of a Ridiculous Man').

This typical Dostoyevskyan book with its universal themes is a must read for all lovers of world literature.

Knowing what a book is about is usually critical when deciding whether to read it. This is an exception. It's better to read it in a state of ignorance about its contents and simply embrace it on a faith backed up by the knowledge that even if you don't like it, it's fairly short. The reason I make this unusual claim for this work by Dostoevsky that it is hard to describe it without spoiling something: in virtually every chapter, there is such a snap change in direction that knowing anything at all about the plot or the characters will ruin at least a few surprises and take some of the pleasure of out this very modern-feeling story.

Perhaps it would suffice to say that the story is set in nineteenth-century St. Peterburg and the main character and tacit narrator is a man named Velchaninov. He's cut from the same moodily neurotic cloth as the anti-hero of _Notes from Underground_ but whereas the protagonist of Notes is a loner, Velchaninov's life is complicated by other people's domestic ties. In this novella, the characters are complex, erratic, incomprehensible at times even to themselves to say nothing of their ability to mystify each other (and sometimes the reader, for the staccato bursts of anger that pepper the dialogue often seem unmotivated). These characters are delightfully intense and engage each other in a way that can only be described as mutual punishment.

In short, if someone wants some fast Dostoevsky without having to wade through extended philosophical or religious discussions of the great long novels, this book will likely do the trick.

Some thoughts on this edition: the introduction has its obligatory set of spoilers, so I'd skip it. This (British) translation goes for a modern feel, which sometimes comes across as slightly anachronistic. When reading about the nineteenth century, you don't expect to find words like `whacked' or `kiddie'. And while the goat on the cover is a non sequitur, the book itself is rather sturdy and elegant for a trade paperback. It's nice to hold. I'd probably buy a cheaper edition for myself, but if I wanted to give this novella as a gift to someone who I thought would either like Dostoevsky but hasn't read him or likes Dostoevsky but might not have read everything (for this story is relatively obscure), then I would likely buy them this edition.
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I've now also read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. It's smoother and doesn't seem as anachronistic. It also has four other stories with it that are mostly worth reading. The book physically feels cheaper, so I would still say the translation reviewed here is better as a gift (and probably only as a gift).

As a first-time reader of Dostoevsky, I found this translation to be difficult and the introduction to be inadequate. The wording used is often rough and choppy. It seems as if the translators themselves may not be native English speakers, as there is something odd and awkward about the phrasing used, especially in "Bobok" and "The Eternal Husband". I have since found other translations of these stories that are smoother and more understandable. The introduction could have been expanded to include a more detailed explanation of the political climate of the times these stories were written, especially for "A Nasty Anecdote" in which the changing political climate is a major backdrop to the events of the story.