This volume, the fourth of five planned in Joseph Frank's widely
acclaimed biography of Dostoevsky, covers the six most remarkably
productive years in the novelist's entire career. It was in this
short span of time that Dostoevsky produced three of his greatest
novels--"Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, " and "The Devils"--and
two of his best novellas, "The Gambler" and "The Eternal Husband."
All these masterpieces were written in the midst of harrowing
practical and economic circumstances, as Dostoevsky moved from
place to place, frequently giving way to his passion for roulette.
Having remarried and fled from Russia to escape importuning
creditors and grasping dependents, he could not return for fear of
being thrown into debtor's prison. He and his young bride, who
twice made him a father, lived obscurely and penuriously in
Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, as he toiled away at his writing,
their only source of income. All the while, he worried that his
recurrent epileptic attacks were impairing his literary capacities.
His enforced exile intensified not only his love for his native
land but also his abhorrence of the doctrines of Russian
Nihilism--which he saw as an alien European importation infecting
the Russian psyche. Two novels of this period were thus an attempt
to conjure this looming spectre of moral-social disintegration,
while "The Idiot" offered an image of Dostoevsky's conception of
the Russian Christian ideal that he hoped would take its place.
General
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