The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants: Newly Translated and Annotated

This highly spirited character comedy turns around an impudent schemer, who became the real master of a household through his `ties' with the mother of an estate owner, `uncle'. The latter is a credulous, irresolute weakling, who is terrorized of giving offense. He is completely mystified by the confident of his mother, who is not more than an arrogant, bullying parasite, but a master in psychological blackmail. Other important characters are a young heiress, whom the family wants to couple with `uncle' in order to save the estate, and a young girl who is in love with `uncle'. The whole bunch around them, are mainly intriguers and vipers, who are using `uncle' as a punching ball. In one of his first novels, Dostoyevsky shows already that he is a master painter of psychological warfare, in depth character sketches, complicated intrigues and hilarious scenes with embarrassing confrontations. Like in all his earlier work, one can find here the basic brushes of the great characters in his major novels. One thinks here immediately of `The Idiot'. In his excellent introduction, which should be read as an afterword, the translator I. Avsey explains that the character of `uncle' is a portrait and an attack on Gogol, because of his reactionary comments in `Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends'. This book is highly recommended to all lovers of world literature and all fans of Dostoyevsky.

The Village of Stepanchikovo, previously translated as The Friend of the Family, is significantly below Fyodor Dostoevsky's more famous novels but essential for fans, as it shows the seeds of his greatness in several ways and is quite valuable and enjoyable in itself. In addition, numerous differences from more representative work may well pleasantly surprise those not fond of the latter. Dostoevsky began writing the novel in forced exile, and it is one of the first things he published on returning, preceding his famous prison memoir The House of the Dead. The harrowing experience of course profoundly changed his life, but anyone expecting this to reflect the dark circumstances will be taken aback. Surprisingly, even shockingly, considering that Dostoevsky is known for unflinchingly dark works focusing on the soul's most perilous depths, this is essentially comic. Highly influenced by Gogol, Dickens, and Cervantes, influences Dostoevsky always claimed but which are very hard to see in later work, it was first envisioned as a comic play and shares many elements with one. The novel thus lacks his startling later originality, but the author performs surprisingly well on this limited stage. The comedy is simply brilliant; I lost count of how many times I could not read for laughing so hard, and it took great self-control not to wake my sleeping wife. Close readings of later Dostoevsky show that he always had a comic element, but his humor became ever darker; here it is positively riotous - at times even near-slapstick. On top of this, his famous realist tone is absent in favor of something very nearly farcical. Even so, and despite the fact that Dostoevsky's style was still developing, his brilliant dialogue was already here in great degree. As in later works, an astonishing amount of the novel consists of dialogue, and its greatness is far more than anyone has a right to expect from a comic work. In addition, and unlike more representative work, the novel is very fast-paced with loads of conventional suspense; it is indeed nothing less than a fun read. This is probably his most entertaining work on a pure surface level and certainly his funniest. The Village is therefore bound to disappoint anyone looking for later works' dense philosophical speculation and penetrating psychological insight, but it is important for showing that Dostoevsky had considerably more range than is generally recognized. I believe the novel is unfairly overlooked, but it would be too much to order a full reevaluation of his work; indeed, though unique among his writings, it also in many ways continues prior work and anticipates later. For example, despite being exiled for political subversion, his early works' overt political content is here in somewhat veiled form. Dostoevsky was appalled at Gogol's conservative turn, and The Village in many ways satirically lambastes him, even alluding directly to several writings. More importantly, themes later brought to fruition are

This is a great novel about a family. The characters form a community of relations and hangers on in a setting that is essentially a great house. An interesting device used by Dostoevsky is that everyone at a scene comments on what is happening or has happened, or 'Everyone puts in their two cents'. The telling goes beyond the drawing room conversation. The reader reaches a level of suspenseful concern about the vicissitudes of fortune of the various characters that can bring a successful, fortunate character down on his/her luck or can alleviate misfortune. At the end, however, Dostoevsky relieves the readers' ennui with a synopsis of what the future held for the characters.

The Village of Stepanchikovo is indeed a very strange work for those familiar with Dostoevsky's works. His psychological novels inform our understanding of Russian society and, at the same time, his works transcend their cultural boundaries to reveal truths of human nature. One could go on and on about how great a writer Dostoevsky is. That being said, the Village of Stepanchikovo is an odd book indeed. One could consider this novel his homage to Gogol, a stab at comedy. Although not entirely successful in and of itself, the novel is an important early sketch, raw material to be used in building his masterpieces. In addition, the story moves at a great pace and is never boring. Overall, I found it to be quite entertaining. The novel probably is not a classic but rather quite an enjoyable story.

This book is very different from the rest of Dostoevsky's production, primarily because it is a satire and not a tragedy. The narrator is Sergey, a young man who goes to visit his uncle at his isolated estate. The uncle is an extremely meek and impressionable man, who is dominated by a pretentious, ignorant and despotic pseudo-intellectual named Foma Fomitch, a master of sentimental blackmail. Foma is an arribist who has everybody in the estate under his capricious control, a situation which astonishes and irates Sergey. Hilariously absurd situations degenerate into the pathetic, as Sergey gets dismayed about everybody's inability to perceive Foma's stupidity and fakeness. Nevertheless, despite the radically different mood of this novel, compared to Dostoevsky's rest, a fact remains: the Russian people seem to behave abnormally in any circumstance, and to be full of deep emotional contradictions and complexities. Read it for a different taste of Dostoevsky's literature.