The House of the Dead and Poor Folk (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) - Softcover

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593081944 ISBN 13: 9781593081942

Publisher: Sterling Publishing, 2004

Synopsis

&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RThe House of the Dead and Poor Folk&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RFyodor Dostoevsky&&L/B&&R, is part of the &&LI&&R&&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R: &&LDIV&&R

• New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
• Footnotes and endnotes
• Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
• Comments by other famous authors
• Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
• Bibliographies for further reading
• Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics &&L/I&&Rpulls together a constellation of influences―biographical, historical, and literary―to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&R &&L/P&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&RArrested in 1849 for belonging to a secret group of radical utopians, &&LB&&RFyodor Dostoevsky&&L/B&&R was sentenced to four years in a Siberian labor camp―a terrible mental, spiritual, and physical ordeal that inspired him to write the novel &&LI&&RThe House of the Dead&&L/I&&R.&&LBR&&R&&LBR&&RTold from the point of view of a fictitious narrator―a convict serving a ten-year sentence for murdering his wife―&&LI&&RThe House of the Dead&&L/I&&R describes in vivid detail the horrors that Dostoevsky himself witnessed while in prison: the brutality of guards who relish cruelty for its own sake; the evil of criminals who enjoy murdering children; and the existence of decent souls amid filth and degradation. More than just a work of documentary realism, &&LI&&RThe House of the Dead&&L/I&&R also describes the spiritual death and gradual resurrection from despair experienced by the novel’s central character―a reawakening that culminates in his final reconciliation with himself and humanity.&&LBR&&R&&LBR&&RAlso included in this volume is Dostoevsky’s first published work, &&LI&&RPoor Folk&&L/I&&R, a novel written in the form of letters that brought Dostoevsky immediate critical and public recognition.&&LBR&&R&&L/P&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&R&&LSTRONG&&RJoseph Frank&&L/B&&R&&L/B&&R is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of an acclaimed five-volume study of Dostoevsky’s life and work.&&L/P&&R&&L/DIV&&R

About this title

About the Author:

Joseph Frank is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of an acclaimed five-volume study of Dostoevsky’s life and work.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

From Joseph Frank's Introduction to House of the Dead and Poor Folk

If one were asked to select two books of Dostoevsky that represent the variety and range of his literary talent, no better choice could be made than the ones published in this volume. Dostoevsky is best known for his larger and later novels, such as Crime and Punishment and The Devils (also translated as The Possessed), and an influential critical tradition views him primarily as the unsurpassed chronicler of the moral-psychological dilemmas of the alienated, refractory urban intelligentsia. This aspect of his work has had the greatest influence on later writers, particularly as he became more widely read outside of Russia; but it represents much too limited a perspective on the full scope of his creations.

To be sure, there are elements of the later Dostoevsky in Poor Folk, with its vivid depiction of the St. Petersburg background and its first embryonic sketch of educated types; but its main character is not a member of the intelligentsia at all and anything but rebellious. He is a humble, socially and emotionally downtrodden clerk in the vast Russian bureaucracy of St. Petersburg, frightened to death at his temerity in questioning, even in thought, the supreme virtues of the God-ordained order in which he lives.

The House of the Dead, on the other hand, stands alone in the Dostoevsky corpus as an unprecedented depiction, the first in Russian literature, of the prison gulags of the vast czarist empire. Dostoevsky's initial readers were shocked by the conditions of life he described, but we have since learned from Solzhenitsyn that these gulags were relatively humane compared to their successors under the Bolsheviks. The book also contains a gallery of Russian peasant types and sketches of Russian peasant life that equal those of Turgenev and Tolstoy, both of whom admired the book (Tolstoy thought it the best work Dostoevsky had ever written). Such peasant types are depicted only fleetingly in the major novels; but they were by no means, as we see here, outside Dostoevsky's creative purview. These two books are thus miles apart in theme and artistic treatment. The first initiates Dostoevsky's exploration of guilt-ridden characters; the second demonstrates his ability as an objective reporter and observer of a new social milieu. But there is one thing they have in common: Both opened the path to fame (if not to fortune) for their author. Poor Folk brought him to the forefront of the Russian literary scene at the age of twenty-four, and for a brief period he was, quite literally, the talk of the town.

Dostoevsky began The House of the Dead when he was thirty-nine, having returned to Russia after serving a prison sentence in Siberia and being absent from the literary scene for ten years. His first creations at this time, the novellas Uncle's Dream and The Friend of the Family, were received quite tepidly, and it was generally felt that his talent had not survived his exile. His prison memoirs, however, convinced even his detractors that they had been mistaken. These memoirs created a sensation by opening up a hitherto concealed world for the Russian reader; and the outcast criminal inhabitants of this hidden universe, generally looked down upon as little better than subhuman, were treated by Dostoevsky with respect and even occasionally with sympathy. He made no effort to conceal their sometimes horrendous crimes; but he saw them as sentient human beings whose behavior deserved to be understood if not pardoned.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sterling Publishing
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1593081944
• ISBN 13: 9781593081942
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480