Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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A New Translation of ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ August 08, 2023
Here’s a data point that may be useful in the tricky task of choosing between excellent translations of a Russian classic: In Constance Garnett’s canonical 1912 version of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov,” the word “ecstasy” and its vari...
The Miracle of “The Brothers Karamazov” July 25, 2023
"No, gentlemen of the jury, they have their Hamlets, while we still have only our Karamazovs!” Arguments are under way in the state’s case against Dmitry Karamazov, on trial for the murder of his father, Fyodor Karamazov, and for the theft of three t...
The Grand Inquisitor and the Voice of Freedom March 06, 2023
The rich philosophical vision of Fyodor Dostoevsky is punctuated, in his masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov, by a dynamic narrative full of psychological realism, highlighted by complex characters. Even a virtuous character like Alyosha has his own w...
On Hope and Holy Fools November 04, 2022
There is nothing very sexy about hope. Certainly, there is nothing sexy about grace. The idea that we might be redeemed by an act of love—a wordless affirmation of something beyond the paradigms through which we are capable of understanding ourselves...
Don’t Blame Dostoyevsky July 26, 2022
Culture, too, is a casualty of war. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some Ukrainian writers called for a boycott of Russian music, films, and books. Others have all but accused Russian literature of complicity in the atrocities committed by Russia...
Freedom Confronts Nihilism January 31, 2022
Dostoevsky is an author for this and for all seasons as the truly thoughtful responses to my original forum essay on his 1872 masterwork Demons richly confirm. Demons arose from two originally disparate though related projects: a planned political pa...
Encountering the Spirit of Revolutionary Negation January 10, 2022
The 150th anniversary of the publication of Dostoevsky’s Demons (also known as Devils and perhaps less accurately as The Possessed) provides a welcome opportunity to reengage this timely and timeless literary dissection of moral and political nihilis...
Dostoevsky and His Demons June 16, 2021
How should one narrate the life of a great writer? Joseph Frank’s five-volume biography of Dostoevsky, now supplemented by his Lectures on Dostoevsky,...
Russian Roulette March 08, 2021
Adeath sentence, prison in Siberia, and chronic epilepsy. The death of his young children, a gambling addiction, and possible manic depression. Few writers endure such dark lives or possess such bright creativity as Fyodor Dostoevsky.Dostoevsky’s inc...
Dostoevsky in Love February 05, 2021
‘At different times,” writes Alex Christofi in this innovative biography, “all ends of the political spectrum ... allowed themselves to believe that he spoke for them.” Such was the capacious mind and fertile genius of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky,...
Dostoevsky in Love January 19, 2021
The first time he fell in love, Fyodor Dostoevsky was in his mid-30s. He had written two famous novels, Poor Folk and The Double, been arrested for treason, suffered a mock-execution, and served four years of hard labour in Siberia. He was now, in 18...
Dostoevsky: Philosopher of Freedom December 31, 2020
On December 22, 1849, a group of political radicals were taken from their prison cells in Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress, where they had been interrogated for eight months. Led to the Semenovsky Square, they heard a sentence of death by firing ...
Faith and Reason in Dostoyevsky October 16, 2020
The battle lines in the supposed war between reason and tradition, science and faith, in the 18th and 19th centuries are a fitting entry point into the life and work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Russian novelist viewed the world in cosmic terms. Philoso...
The Scholar Starting Brawls with the Enlightenment May 29, 2020
Who could resist the title? László F. Földényi’s new book of essays is called “Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts Into Tears” (Yale). It sounds like something that might happen in a Dostoyevsky novel: cause and effect scrambled, reason abo...
Encountering Dostoyevsky February 23, 2020
Fyodor Dostoevsky was arrested, led to a platform, tied to a stake, and blindfolded before a firing squad. As his biographer Joseph Frank describes the scene: “A cart with coffins could be seen on the side, and a priest came carrying a cross, which t...
'You Mean a Lot to a Lot of Us' January 17, 2020
It might seem inappropriate, even offensive, to say this, but I’ve enjoyed spending time with Roger Scruton today. I know he would understand. I’ve been looking at e-mails from him, and listening to a podcast or two we did together. It’s hard to thin...
Prophets for Our Age of Suicide June 03, 2019
To read or not to read literary criticism, that is the question for the twenty-first century reader who prefers to process 42 characters instead of 42 minutes of reading a substantial argument. I draw the either-or dilemma from Hamlet's famous speech...
