The Eternal Husband (The Art of the Novella) - Softcover

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 097614073X ISBN 13: 9780976140733

Publisher: Melville House, 2005

Synopsis

The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings.

This remarkably edgy and suspenseful tale shows that, despite being better known for his voluminous and sprawling novels, Fyodor Dostoevsky was a master of the more tightly-focused form of the novella.

The Eternal Husband may, in fact, constitute his most classically-shaped composition, with his most devilish plot: a man answers a late-night knock on the door to find himself in a tense and puzzling confrontation with the husband of a former lover—but it isn’t clear if the husband knows about the affair. What follows is one of the most beautiful and piercing considerations ever written about the dualities of love: a dazzling psychological duel between the two men over knowledge they may or may not share, bringing them both to a shattering conclusion.

The Art of The Novella Series

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

About this title

From the Back Cover

DOSTOEVSKY'S SHORT MASTERPIECES BROUGHT TOGETHER IN A BRILLIANT NEW TRANSLATION

The Eternal Husband and Other Stories brings together five of Dostoevsky's short masterpieces rendered into English by two of the most celebrated Dostoevsky translators of our time. Filled with many of the themes and concerns central to his great novels, these short works display the full range of his genius. The centerpiece of the collection, the short novel The Eternal Husband, describes the almost surreal meeting of a cuckolded widower and his dead wife's lover. Dostoevsky's dark brilliance and satiric vision infuse the other four tales with all-too-human characters, including a government official who shows up uninvited at an underling's wedding to prove his humanity; a self-deceiving narrator who struggles futilely to understand his wife's suicide; and a hack writer who attends a funeral and ends up talking with the dead. The Eternal Husband and Other Stories is sterling Dostoevsky -- a collection of emotional power and an uncompromising insight into the human condition.

From the Inside Flap

ece of this collection , "The Eternal Husband" (1890) is one of Dostoevsky's most perfect works. Classical in form, it presents his most profound exploration of mimetic rivalry and the duality of human consciousness. Told from the point of view of a rich and idle man who is confronted by a younger rival, the husband of his former, and now deceased, mistress, the story portrays the interchanging hatred and love of the two men.
Along with "The Eternal Husband" is "A Nasty Anecdote" (1862), a satire on the "reform period of Russia," which portrays a high-ranking official who is convinced that "humaneness" will unite all people in a regenerated society. The other three stories, "Bobok" (1873), "The Meek One" (1876) and "The Dream of A Ridiculous Man" (1877), are taken from The Diary of a Writer, which Dostoevsky published between the completion of Demons and The Brothers Karamazov.

About this edition

• Publisher: Melville House
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 097614073X
• ISBN 13: 9780976140733
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224