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Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Notes From A Dead House" (a.k.a. "The House of the Dead" and other titles) is the great Russian author's 1861 "novel" chronicling his four years spent in prison in Siberia.
The young author Dostoyevsky had involved himself with radical political types, some of whom had ideas about "revolution" that Dostoyevsky himself did not. But when the radical circle was busted by the tsar's authorities Dostoyevsky was busted just as well.
Condemned to death by firing squad, Dostoyevsky was frozen with fear as he approached the execution site. But when an atheist fellow prisoner mockingly asked what would happen once they were dead, Dostoyevsky still answered that they would be with Christ.
There was no execution. It was a fake, designed to strike terror into the hearts of the young rebels. Their actual sentence was several years' imprisonment in Siberia, which would make some of them wish they'd been executed! But it gave Dostoyevsky another book to write.
This "novel" was only one in the sense that names were fictionalized for it. Otherwise, what we have with "Notes From a Dead House," the latest 2015 printing as translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is Dostoyevsky's own prison journal.
From the beginning, immediately after his being put in leg chains, Dostoyevsky's fellow convicts looked askance at him as a "noble" (Dostoyevsky was one in name only) who "knew nothing" of "real life." As they were mostly common criminals, thieves and murderers, the prisoners WERE right that they had little in common with Dostoyevsky. Except that they were all prisoners in the same crowded barracks in the same freezing wasteland where it was cold most of the year.
The place was a "work camp," but the work was mostly pointless, doing things such as dismantling an old wooden barge abandoned on a river. Surprisingly, Dostoyevsky embraced the labor, finding it a way to tire himself and guarantee a good night's sleep, even as other prisoners mocked him for his inexperienced style of working.
Food at the prison fort was predictably horrendous. As a result, an entire prison economy related to half-decent food, alcohol and other goods was always in full swing, and Dostoyevsky explains at length in amusing detail how this worked.
Dostoyevsky had some "kopecks" of money sent to him by friends and relatives, and to earn some of these fellow inmates ran errands for him and such.
While they were never meted out to the self-contained Dostoyevsky, severe whippings which required time in the medical ward were a regular punishment for any prisoners who deliberately stepped out of line. Dostoyevsky tells in his typical psychological detail of the mentality of the whipped, many of whom actually sought out trouble and punishment in a bizarre way.
The prison was located near towns full of civilians, so that many of the goods traded in the prisoners' black market were able to flow to it freely. Prison bosses rarely took any action on such matters, though one can easily picture them taking a slice of the illicit trades' money.
Thusly the prison became its own mini-society as cut off from "proper" society. One time that the place was seen as part of something universal was on Christmas, to which Dostoyevsky devotes a chapter. That was a day that everyone there, bound by Russian culture, was blessed by a priest and then eagerly took part in the festivities, which included a daylong smorgasbord of various delicious foods, many of which were cooked and donated by the townspeople. No one argued on that day, and if anyone was drinking they did not get sloppily drunk.
Dostoyevsky's descriptions of that holy day in prison convinced even a cynic like me that there is hope for the souls even of murderers, even as whether such people should ever be released again is another matter. Easter is also mentioned as another special day at the prison.
Dostoyevsky describes the one day a week "baths" that the men were allowed to take, "baths" which largely consisted of a bucket of hot water. Just reading that should be enough that the stench which permeated the barracks will waft across a reader's nostrils, especially when one reads that some prisoners did not care for the washings and largely stank for 24 hours, 365 days a year!
Dostoyevsky like all the convicts slept on a wooden bed. He was only afforded a mattress when, never in the best of health, he periodically fell ill and was placed in the hospital ward, where patients were given unwashed robes including the snot of previous patients.
Dostoyevsky did have some friends in prison whom he describes in detail, mostly simple men who recognized his quietly deep intelligence and were drawn to it. Dostoyevsky writes about this with modesty, unlike how the blowhard Tolstoy likely would have.
An unbearable chapter here which I do not re-read involves several cases of animal cruelty in the prison. The only good news there is that Dostoyevsky befriends a local dog.
On and on goes the narrative. And then, all of a sudden the four years are up and Dostoyevsky is being released on the same date as his entry, his leg irons being removed after 1,460 days. But he would remain in forced exile, living in Siberia in military service, for several years more.
Everything about this re-readable book is engrossing and I cannot put it down when I periodically take it up again. While it may have been a slog if written by another, in Dostoyevsky's hands this becomes a classic page-turner. It can be compared to Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" of 100 years later in that little about the gross Siberian prison conditions were any different. Except that in the later communist prisons no priests and no religion, and thus no hope at all, were afforded by the state. Unless you count the totalitarian propaganda that even government officials must have found absurd in the moments they were mouthing it.
Conditions in Russian prisons now have improved in that American basketball player Brittney Griner found her time in one to be lonely and stark, but at least clean and healthy.
Dostoyevsky was a man separated from the boys by his prison hardship. Compared to the spoiled, wealthy Tolstoy who was his literary rival, prison and his later money and health problems made Dostoyevsky the true man of the people among 1800s Russian writers, as he was finally recognized in the last years before his death.
The young author Dostoyevsky had involved himself with radical political types, some of whom had ideas about "revolution" that Dostoyevsky himself did not. But when the radical circle was busted by the tsar's authorities Dostoyevsky was busted just as well.
Condemned to death by firing squad, Dostoyevsky was frozen with fear as he approached the execution site. But when an atheist fellow prisoner mockingly asked what would happen once they were dead, Dostoyevsky still answered that they would be with Christ.
There was no execution. It was a fake, designed to strike terror into the hearts of the young rebels. Their actual sentence was several years' imprisonment in Siberia, which would make some of them wish they'd been executed! But it gave Dostoyevsky another book to write.
This "novel" was only one in the sense that names were fictionalized for it. Otherwise, what we have with "Notes From a Dead House," the latest 2015 printing as translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is Dostoyevsky's own prison journal.
From the beginning, immediately after his being put in leg chains, Dostoyevsky's fellow convicts looked askance at him as a "noble" (Dostoyevsky was one in name only) who "knew nothing" of "real life." As they were mostly common criminals, thieves and murderers, the prisoners WERE right that they had little in common with Dostoyevsky. Except that they were all prisoners in the same crowded barracks in the same freezing wasteland where it was cold most of the year.
The place was a "work camp," but the work was mostly pointless, doing things such as dismantling an old wooden barge abandoned on a river. Surprisingly, Dostoyevsky embraced the labor, finding it a way to tire himself and guarantee a good night's sleep, even as other prisoners mocked him for his inexperienced style of working.
Food at the prison fort was predictably horrendous. As a result, an entire prison economy related to half-decent food, alcohol and other goods was always in full swing, and Dostoyevsky explains at length in amusing detail how this worked.
Dostoyevsky had some "kopecks" of money sent to him by friends and relatives, and to earn some of these fellow inmates ran errands for him and such.
While they were never meted out to the self-contained Dostoyevsky, severe whippings which required time in the medical ward were a regular punishment for any prisoners who deliberately stepped out of line. Dostoyevsky tells in his typical psychological detail of the mentality of the whipped, many of whom actually sought out trouble and punishment in a bizarre way.
The prison was located near towns full of civilians, so that many of the goods traded in the prisoners' black market were able to flow to it freely. Prison bosses rarely took any action on such matters, though one can easily picture them taking a slice of the illicit trades' money.
Thusly the prison became its own mini-society as cut off from "proper" society. One time that the place was seen as part of something universal was on Christmas, to which Dostoyevsky devotes a chapter. That was a day that everyone there, bound by Russian culture, was blessed by a priest and then eagerly took part in the festivities, which included a daylong smorgasbord of various delicious foods, many of which were cooked and donated by the townspeople. No one argued on that day, and if anyone was drinking they did not get sloppily drunk.
Dostoyevsky's descriptions of that holy day in prison convinced even a cynic like me that there is hope for the souls even of murderers, even as whether such people should ever be released again is another matter. Easter is also mentioned as another special day at the prison.
Dostoyevsky describes the one day a week "baths" that the men were allowed to take, "baths" which largely consisted of a bucket of hot water. Just reading that should be enough that the stench which permeated the barracks will waft across a reader's nostrils, especially when one reads that some prisoners did not care for the washings and largely stank for 24 hours, 365 days a year!
Dostoyevsky like all the convicts slept on a wooden bed. He was only afforded a mattress when, never in the best of health, he periodically fell ill and was placed in the hospital ward, where patients were given unwashed robes including the snot of previous patients.
Dostoyevsky did have some friends in prison whom he describes in detail, mostly simple men who recognized his quietly deep intelligence and were drawn to it. Dostoyevsky writes about this with modesty, unlike how the blowhard Tolstoy likely would have.
An unbearable chapter here which I do not re-read involves several cases of animal cruelty in the prison. The only good news there is that Dostoyevsky befriends a local dog.
On and on goes the narrative. And then, all of a sudden the four years are up and Dostoyevsky is being released on the same date as his entry, his leg irons being removed after 1,460 days. But he would remain in forced exile, living in Siberia in military service, for several years more.
Everything about this re-readable book is engrossing and I cannot put it down when I periodically take it up again. While it may have been a slog if written by another, in Dostoyevsky's hands this becomes a classic page-turner. It can be compared to Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" of 100 years later in that little about the gross Siberian prison conditions were any different. Except that in the later communist prisons no priests and no religion, and thus no hope at all, were afforded by the state. Unless you count the totalitarian propaganda that even government officials must have found absurd in the moments they were mouthing it.
Conditions in Russian prisons now have improved in that American basketball player Brittney Griner found her time in one to be lonely and stark, but at least clean and healthy.
Dostoyevsky was a man separated from the boys by his prison hardship. Compared to the spoiled, wealthy Tolstoy who was his literary rival, prison and his later money and health problems made Dostoyevsky the true man of the people among 1800s Russian writers, as he was finally recognized in the last years before his death.
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