Garnett is sometimes accused of sanding down Dostoevsky’s tone and register, of smoothing and filtering him so that he might be poured out of bone china. The Paris Review, in its ‘Art of Translation’ series, takes issue with her ‘Victorian elision’, which is very unfair because most of her translations were Edwardian. Where I felt that Garnett might be making Dostoevsky appear uncharacteristically diplomatic or toothless, as in Notes from the House of the Dead, the translations I present were informed by others.
Below, I have given the print editions that are most widely available, though the lesser works are more easily accessible in ebook. The Garnett translations were first published in a 12-volume octavo edition produced by William Heinemann between 1913 and 1920. The most authoritative edition of Dostoevsky’s work in Russian is the 30-volume complete collected works published by the Institute of Russian Literature (Leningrad, 1972–90), which contains his correspondence. Translations of the latter are available from Ardis (complete, albeit out of print and hard to get) and from Routledge (selected) – in addition to these, I am grateful for the translation advice of Ilona Chavasse, who helped ensure the translations and paraphrases I used remained faithful to the sense of the original. There are also thorough resources available online at fedordostoevsky.ru and dostoevsky-lit.ru.
Beer, Daniel, The House of the Dead (Allen Lane, 2016)
Carr, Edward Hallett, Dostoevsky: A New Biography (George Allen & Unwin, 1931)
Catteau, Jacques, Dostoyevsky and the Process of Literary Creation (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Dostoevsky, Andrey, Vospominaniia (Izdatel’stvo pisateleĭ v Leningrade, 1930)3
Dostoevsky,4 Anna, The Diary of Dostoyevsky’s Wife, ed. René Fülöp-Miller and Friedrich Echstein, trans. Madge Pemberton (Gollancz, 1928)
Dostoevsky, Anna, Dostoevsky Portrayed by his Wife, ed. and trans. S. S. Koteliansky (Routledge, 1926)
Dostoevsky, Anna, Dostoevsky: Reminiscences, ed. S. V. Belov and V. A. Tunimanov (W. W. Norton, 1975)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Complete Letters, Volume One, 1832–1859, ed. and trans. David Lowe and Ronald Meyer (Ardis, 1988)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Complete Letters, Volume Two, 1860–1867, ed. and trans. David Lowe and Ronald Meyer (Ardis, 1988)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Complete Letters, Volume Three, 1868–1871, ed. and trans. David Lowe and Ronald Meyer (Ardis, 1988)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Complete Letters, Volume Four, 1872–1877, ed. and trans. David Lowe and Ronald Meyer (Ardis, 1988)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Complete Letters, Volume Five, 1878–1881, ed. and trans. David Lowe and Ronald Meyer (Ardis, 1988)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment, trans. Constance Garnett (Wordsworth Editions, 2000)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Devils, trans. Constance Garnett (Wordsworth Editions, 2005)5
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Dostoevsky: Letters and Reminiscences, trans. S. S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murray (Chatto & Windus 1923)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Dostoevsky’s Occasional Writings, ed. and trans. David Magarshack (Random House, 1963)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Friend of the Family; or, Stepantchikovo and its Inhabitants,6 trans. Constance Garnett (William Heinemann, 1920)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Gambler & Other Stories [containing Poor Folk], trans. Constance Garnett (Macmillan, 1917)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Gambler with the Diary of Polina Suslova, trans. Victor Terras, ed. Edward Wasiolek (University of Chicago Press, 1972)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The House of the Dead & The Gambler, trans. Constance Garnett (Wordsworth Editions, 2010)7
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Idiot, trans. Constance Garnett (Wordsworth Editions, 2010)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Insulted and Injured,8 trans. Constance Garnett (William Heinemann, 1947)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Karamazov Brothers,9 trans. Constance Garnett (Wordsworth Editions, 2007)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Memoirs from the House of the Dead, trans. Jessie Coulson (Oxford, 1983)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Notebooks for The Brothers Karamazov, ed. and trans. Edward Wasiolek (University of Chicago Press, 1971)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment, ed. and trans. Edward Wasiolek (University of Chicago Press, 1967)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Notebooks for The Idiot, ed. Edward Wasiolek, trans. Katharine Strelsky (University of Chicago Press, 1967)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Notebooks for A Raw Youth, ed. Edward Wasiolek, trans. Victor Terras (University of Chicago Press, 1969)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Notebooks for The Possessed, ed. Edward Wasiolek, trans. Victor Terras (University of Chicago Press, 1968)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Notes from the Underground & Other Stories, trans. Constance Garnett (Wordsworth Editions, 2015)10
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Poor People, trans. Hugh Aplin (Alma, 2002)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Three Short Novels of Dostoevsky [from which I quote The Eternal Husband], trans. Constance Garnett (International Collectors Library, 1960)11
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Unpublished Dostoevsky, Volume 1, ed. Carl R. Proffer (Ardis, 1973)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Unpublished Dostoevsky, Volume 2, ed. Carl R. Proffer (Ardis, 1975)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Unpublished Dostoevsky, Volume 3, ed. Carl R. Proffer (Ardis, 1976)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, trans. Kyril Fitzlyon (Oneworld Classics, 2008)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, trans. Kenneth Lantz (Northwestern University Press, 1993)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, A Writer’s Diary, Volume 2, trans. Kenneth Lantz (Northwestern University Press, 1994)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment, trans. Oliver Ready (Penguin, 2015)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, A Raw Youth (The Adolescent), trans. Constance Garnett (Digireads, 2009)12
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, ed. Joseph Frank and David I. Goldstein, trans. Andrew MacAndrew (Rutgers University Press, 1989)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Village of Stepanchikovo, trans. Ignat Avsey (Angel, 1983)
Figes, Orlando, The Europeans (Allen Lane, 2019)
Frank, Joseph, Dostoevsky (Princeton University Press, 2010)13
Frank, Joseph, Lectures on Dostoevsky, ed. Marina Brodskaya and Marguerite Frank (Princeton University Press, 2020)
Grossman, Leonid, Dostoevsky, trans. Mary Mackler (Allen Lane, 1974)
Kelly, Laurence, St Petersburg (Constable, 1981)
Kjetsaa, Geir, Fyodor Dostoevsky: A Writer’s Life (Macmillan, 1988)
Lantz, Kenneth, The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia (Greenwood, 2004)
Marullo, Thomas Gaiton, Fyodor Dostoevsky: In the Beginning, 1821–1845 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2016)
Miles, Jonathan, St Petersburg (Windmill, 2018)
Sekirin, Peter, The Dostoevsky Archive (McFarland & Co., 1997)
Slonim, Marc, Three Loves of Dostoevsky (Alvin Redman, 1957)
Terras, Victor, Reading Dostoevsky (University of Wisconsin Press, 1998)
Troyat, Henri, Firebrand, trans. Norbert Guterman (Roy, 1946)
Turgenev, Ivan, Letters, Volume One, ed. and trans. David Lowe (Ardis, 1983)
Turgenev, Ivan, Letters, Volume Two, ed. and trans. David Lowe (Ardis, 1983)
Hadn’t I better end my notes here?452
Notes
1 With apologies to Fred Whishaw.
2 Although it’s worth pointing out that Nabokov also hated Dostoevsky himself with a passion that can only be described as Oedipal, calling him ‘a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian’ and claiming that ‘his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured’. Funny, then, that he borrowed so liberally: Nabokov’s best-known protagonist, Humbert Humbert, is a direct descendant of Stavrogin and Svidrigailov; his Hermann Karlovich, in Despair, an explicit descendant of Golyadkin and Raskolnikov.
&n
bsp; 3 This is one of the few primary sources not translated into English in its entirety, which is sad because it contains such a wealth of detail on Dostoevsky’s early life. Portions are available in the works of Joseph Frank, Thomas Marullo, Peter Sekirin and a few others.
4 Her surname in Russian is Dostoevskaya.
5 The title has been variously translated as Devils, Demons and The Possessed. The Russian title, Бесы or besy, is a house devil from folk tradition, but in the relevant passage of the novel it is an extended metaphor taken from the Biblical story of the devils being exorcised and cast into the swine. In this metaphor, Russia is the sick man, and so the revolutionaries are not ‘the possessed’ but the devils that must be cast out.
6 Now better known as The Village of Stepanchikovo.
7 Strictly speaking it should be Notes from the House of the Dead. The Russian word Записки or zapiski points to a Russian genre that means notes or scribblings, the intention being that, like Notes from the Underground, these are the incidental papers of an imagined third party.
8 The interminable versions of this title include Humiliated and Insulted, Insulted and Humiliated and Injury and Insult. This is probably the title that could most easily stand as a spoof title for any of his other books and the phrase crops up throughout his fiction, as early as Netochka Nezvanova (p. 28).
9 More commonly styled The Brothers Karamazov.
10 Literally, Notes from Under the Floorboards. Under the floorboards is where you might look for evil spirits in Russia, whereas English monsters seem to prefer living under the bed. C. J. Hogarth translated it as Letters from the Underworld, which is so bad the average reader could have done better with a Russian–French dictionary.
11 Whishaw translates The Eternal Husband as the rather more flatfooted The Permanent Husband.
12 Garnett’s first translation of the book is titled A Raw Youth, but the Russian title, Podrostok (Подросток), literally means ‘adolescent’. Richard Freeborn’s translation goes with An Accidental Family, taking up the theme of unconventional families that Dostoevsky develops towards the end of the novel. Dostoevsky argued, in a separate 1877 essay, that Tolstoy’s families were all alike, whereas Dostoevsky’s families were all unhappy in their own way.
13 Except where I have made reference to a specific volume, I have cited the single-volume edition, which brilliantly captures the detail and sweep of Dostoevsky’s life without getting too bogged down in the socio-political ferment of nineteenth-century Russia.
Acknowledgements
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who helped to make this book possible. First and foremost, to my editor, Jamie Birkett, for trusting me to apply a creative method to a serious biography, and to my agent, Jonny Pegg, and his counterpart Doug Stewart, for helping a novelist sneak onto the non-fiction shelves. A huge thanks also to Richard Mason, Jude Drake, Rosie Parnham, and everyone else who has worked on the book at Bloomsbury.
I’m grateful to my academic readers for their invaluable feedback on early drafts of the manuscript. I am a storyteller, not a specialist, and recognise that a scholar might have balked at the idea of writing this book in this way. Any remaining errors are of course my own. To Professor Konstantin Barsht at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), for entertaining my suggestion of using spectrophotometry on the portions of Dostoevsky’s letters that had been inked out by Anna, though they remain a tantalising mystery for now. To Ilona Chavasse for helping me capture the nuances of the correspondence, and for our fascinating conversations about untranslatable Russian words.
Thanks to Louis Brooke, Alex Lawrence-Archer and Rosa Rankin-Gee for letting me hole up elsewhere when I needed to write uninterrupted, and to Samira Shackle and Cal Flyn for moral support when fatigue set in. To Anthony Rowland for accompanying me as I retraced Fyodor’s footsteps through St Petersburg (though I’m still recovering from the Russian policy that drinking vodka without beer is throwing money to the wind). To my family, Chris, Jan, Antony, Mel, Olympia, Adam, Kirsty and Thea. And to Bernadette, who hadn’t asked to live with Dostoevsky, and who was almost as patient as Anna.
Index
Aksakov, Ivan here
Alexander I, Tsar here, here
Alexander II, Tsar here, here, here, here, here, here
assassination attempts here, here, here, here, here
Alexander III, Tsar (Tsarevich Alexander) here, here, here
Alexander Nevsky Monastery here
Ambrose, Father here
anti-Semitism here, here
arson, Russian tradition of here
Bakunin, Mikhail here, here
Balzac, Honoré de here, here, here, here
Barannikov, Alexander here
Beethoven, Ludwig van here, here
Belinsky, Vissarion here, here, here, here, here, here
Belov, Sergei here
Belykh, Efim here, here, here
Bismarck, Prince Otto von here
Brown, Martha here
Bulatov, Colonel here
Bykov, Pyotr here
Byron, Lord here
Catechism of a Revolutionary here
Chekhov, Anton here
Chernosvitov, Rafael here
Chernyshevsky, Nikolai here, here, here, here, here, here
Citizen, The here, here, here
Columbus, Christopher here, here
Conrad, Joseph here, here
Constant, Varvara here
Contemporary, The here, here, here, here, here
Crimean War here
Dawn here
de Grave, General here
de Quincey, Thomas here
Decembrists here, here, here
Devil’s Sandbox here, here
Dickens, Charles here, here, here, here, here, here
Dostoevsky, Alexei (Alyosha) here
Dostoevsky, Andrei here, here, here
Dostoevsky, Anna
courtship and marriage here
Fedya’s birth here
and Fyodor’s death here
and Fyodor’s health treatments here, here, here
and Fyodor’s jealousy here
later life and death here
Lyuba’s birth here
manages finances and publishing here, here, here
Sonya’s birth and death here
summer holiday and illness here
travels in Europe here
Dostoevsky, Fyodor
and Alyosha’s death here
appearance here
arrest and imprisonment here
breach with Turgenev here
and brother’s death here
childhood here
and court etiquette here
courtship and marriage with Anna here
courtship and marriage with Maria here
death here
and dependants here, here
discharged from army here
early illness here
early literary success here
early reading here, here
edits The Citizen here
epilepsy here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
fatherhood here
and Fedya’s birth here
funeral here
gambling disorder here
government surveillance ends here
health treatments here, here, here, here
hypochondria here
intellectual independence here
jealousy here
‘The Knight of the Doleful Countenance’ here
letter to Tsar here
and literary journals here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
and Lyuba’s birth here
and Maria’s death here
meets the Devil here
mock execution here, here, here, here, here, here
and money here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
moves to St Petersburg here
and Nekrasov’s death here
and Petrashevsky circle here
portrait here
Pushkin festival and speech here, here
relationship with Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya here
relationship with Pelageya Guseva here
relationship with Polina here, here, here
and religion here, here, here
reunited with brother here
and Sonya’s birth and death here
summer holiday and Anna’s illness here
and Tolstoy here, here
travels in Europe with Anna here
travels in Europe with Polina here
travels in Europe with Strakhov here
writes plays here
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, works:
The Adolescent here, here, here
The Brothers Karamazov here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
The Children here
Crime and Punishment here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Devils here, here, here, here, here
The Double here, here, here