Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writer's Life

I had the privilege of meeting Geir Kjetsaa and of spending several days with him at a conference held at Tolstoy's estate of Yasnaya poliana several years ago. I deeply regret that I did not keep in touch with him, because I found him to be a wonderful and very learned man. He had already gained deserved fame with this book on Dostoevsky and was working on a critical biograqphy of Tolstoy when we met. I have searched for it, but I don't read Norwegian and I haven't yet found a translation in a language that I do know. Kjetsaa, as I remember, was a burly man with a constant smile on his face. He seemed to like everybody he met and took part in multilingual conversations with great glee. I am sure that his teaching was brilliant; I envied his students. His book on Dostoevsky emerged at a difficult time, since it was competing with Joseph Frank's five-volume biography of Dostoevsky that clearly marked the standard for the 20th century and for this one. It stands as a work of genius. But Kjetsaa's biography has no less value as an introduction to this enigmatic Russian miracle-worker. I am still looking for his book on Tolstoy. If anyone can help me, please contact me with information. I do remember one anecdote he told me--I was telling him about my teaching Tolstoy's aesthetics to undergraduates and finding a quote by a painter in the recent biography by A. N. Wilson. It summed up Tolstoy's philosophy of art in its early stages perfectly. Kjetsaa leaned forward and lowering his voice, told me: "You know, I was struck by that quote too, but it doesn't exist. I looked everywhere for it because I wanted to include it in my book, but it just doesn't exist in any other sources." Apologies to Mr. Wilson if we are mistaken, and Geir certainly did not impart his information with any negative remarks to the author, but the irony spoke for itself. I do however remember Geir's smile, full of tolerance and patience for human foibles, as he told me that one of the best quotes about Tolstoy's aesthetics may have been made up after the fact.

This compulsively readable biography by a Norwegian professor (in an excellent translation by the writer Siri Hustveldt and David McDuff) immerses the modern reader in the literary, social and philosophical currents that shaped Dostoevsky's thinking and writing.Professor Kjetsaa has great material to work with, because the novelist's life would have made a page turning Russian novel. Before he was forty, Dostoevsky's father had died at the hands of his own serfs, a close childhood friend was kidnapped and killed, and he came within minutes of being executed by a firing squad for his political beliefs. His death sentence was commuted to exile, and he spent a decade in Siberia as a political prisoner and military conscript before making his way back to St Petersberg and literary respectability. Lifelong attacks of epilepsy gave him glimpes of the divine before plunging him into incapacitating depressions. Time and again, he gambled away what little money he had, which forced him to write many of his major works under the threat of debtor's prison.Professor Kjetsa is particulary good at tracing the development of Dostoevsky's political and religious ideas. The young idealist who almost dies for his ties to international socialism becomes a xenophobic reactionary. The casual nihilist turns into a devout Christian, though one who continually wrestles with doubt and unbelief.Dostoevsky is revered as a thinker and a religious prophet, but first and foremost he was a popular novelist. While Professor Kjellstra does a fine job of mapping the contours of Dostoevsky's ideas as they play out in the novels, he spends less time on literary issues. Dostoevsky's ability to bring ideas to life through powerful scenes and unforgettable characters, and his refusal to force tidy conclusions about the big issues of faith, love and redemption are what make the novels so fresh and compelling to the modern reader. One could wish for a deeper examination of what makes him novel as a novelist, such as his stylistic innovations, the inticacy and pacing of his plots, and his masterful use of narrative voice. Another quibble is the way Professor Kjetsaa rehashes the rumors that Dostoevsky may have been a pedophile without taking a stand on the issue. The approach to this issue is voyeuristic, adds nothing to the debate, and is in striking contrast to the well-reasoned decisiveness with which the author addresses the other major controversies in Dostoevsky's life. Otherwise, this fine book will broaden your understanding of the world Dostoevsky moved in, increase your sympathy for the obstacles he overcame on his way to world acclaim, and expand your appreciation of his magnificent literary creations, characters who embody the failings and aspirations that reside in us all.

This biography reads with the pace and interest of a well-written novel - a tribute to the translator no less than to the writer. It brings Dostoyevsky and his time to life and lends considerable perspective to his writings by relating them not only to the overall social context but also to the novelist's personal experiences and development. Quite inevitably, the mock-execution of Dostoyevsky and his companions - an act of calculated and petty sadism by Czar Nicholas I which it is hard to comprehend or to excuse, even after a century and a half of greater atrocities - stands as the watershed of the book, no less than of the writer's own life and it explains much that informs his subsequent work. Dostoyevsky's letter to his brother immediately after his reprieve still has power to move and the sense of rebirth conveyed in it goes far to explain how he somehow survived and made sense of the years of imprisonment, privation and exile that followed. The most heartbreaking sections of the book are not however those that deal with Siberia, but rather those detailing Dostoyevsky's gambling addiction, of which he appears never to have been cured, but rather to have been rescued by Bismarck's closure of the German casinos. The wonder is that during these years of degradation masterpieces were somehow produced and Dostoyevsky higher, almost mystical, vision of human potential evolved and came to full fruition in his last great work. The story, so full of contradictions, is well told against the background of a Russia groping towards modernity and reform, yet never finding it, and heading blindly for the abyss. Within this context Dostoyevsky's own identification with an ideal of conservative and regressive cultural and political nationalism cannot but jar the modern reader, contrasting as it does with the sublimity of so much else of his thought. Throughout it all however one gains an impression of a man who must have been difficult to like but impossible not to love ... In short, this is a splendid biography and a delight for any who admire the subject or have an interest in Russia, its literature and its history.

Petersburg, December 22, 1849: The convicts kiss the cross before the firing squad takes aim. Thirty seconds never took that long. Then, the hasty messenger with the tsarean pardon, given in secret three days before the squad lifted their guns. The "execution" was a sham. One convict loses his sanity, none regain their freedom. Ah - a plot in a book by Dostoyevsky? No. A day in his life. (But he described his thoughts in The Idiot, twenty years later.) At his death in 1881, Fjodor M. Dostoyevsky (b. 1821) was a famous writer in Russia, by many compared to Pushkin, Russia's late "national poet". Dostoyevsky's funeral turned out a national event; his widow was barely admitted without her forgotten ticket. "You are the sixth `Dostoyevsky's widow` demanding to get in", she was told by the annoyed head of police. Nevertheless, he was virtually unknown abroad. That changed. He is translated into 170 languages, and by 1985, the copies of his books totalled 15 million. Who was this man, who wrote most all his fiction fighting deadlines and creditors, creating masterpieces with his back to the wall? This question is eloquently answered by the author - insofar as it is answerable. Dostoyevsky is a fascinating figure, as difficult to pin down as his most subtle characters. The symmetry between the life and the writings is hardly paralleled in a writer. Thus, this biography also gains insight from Dostoyevsky's own writings, and sheds light upon them. Dostoyevsky himselg claimed that to be a great writer, one must suffer a lot. The biography tells us how. Dostoyevsky became well-known in Russia after his debut with Poor Folks, 1846. Facing the executioners' guns three years later was a pivotal point in his life. The four years in a Siberian prison changed his outlook significantly. He turned from the nihilists (atheists) and back to the Christian faith of his youth. He was a slavophile, and deeply sceptical to the ways of the West. Concerned with the fate of goodness in this evil world, he also held that even the worst criminal must be won back to the fellowship. But the debt must be paid. At his brother's death, Dostoyevsky took upon him the responsibility for the unpaid debts. These debts sent him abroad for years to avoid the debtors' prison. But his passion for gambling didn't improve his finances, either. (The Gambler hardly needed special research, nor The Young Man's attempt to salvage a desperate situation by always playing on zero.) According to Mr. Kjetsaa, the main point for Dostoyevsky was not the money, but the thrill of the game. Actually, the guilt incurred after losing at the green tables gave Dostoyevsky a creative boost. Even if you have never read a line of Dostoyevsky's works, you will be gripped by this biography. Read it. It will draw you gently into Dostoyevsky's own writing. And he will show you joy, sorrow and profound insight into questions worth thinking about. (This review refers