Reading: Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (1864) This week we turn to the main response to the Nihilists’ ideas of rational egoism and social reorganization, in the form of Dostoevsky’s 1864 novel, Notes from Underground. Dostoevsky is the only writer whose fictional texts we are examining in any detail, but I think this is justified in [...]
All posts tagged Notes from the House of the Dead
Russian thought lecture 5: Dostoevsky and the anti-rationalist argument
Posted by Sarah Young on December 10, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/12/10/russian-thought-lecture-5-dostoevsky-and-the-anti-rationalist-argument/
Russian prison experience
Last week I participated in a workshop titled ‘Punishment as a Crime? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Prison Experience in Russian Culture’, at Uppsala University’s Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The programme, which is available here, was notable for its wide range of papers and approaches. The imperial, soviet and post-soviet periods were all covered, and [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on August 22, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/08/22/russian-prison-experience/
Dostoevsky and the Gulag
I’ve started work on a paper on the depiction of criminals in labour camp writing for a workshop later this summer, and as Dostoevsky is one of my starting points, this has led me to revisit the broader question of the role of recurrent references to him in Gulag literature. This post is not intended [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on May 6, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/05/06/dostoevsky-and-the-gulag/
Dostoevsky in English
I haven’t posted anything for a while, but having got over pre-Christmas flu, festivities, and catching up with work after both, I am now back in the saddle. I decided to post a list of links to English translations of Dostoevsky’s works, partly because someone suggested it would useful, partly to have an overview what’s [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on January 16, 2012
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2012/01/16/dostoevsky-in-english/
Doroshevich on Sakhalin
I had other plans yesterday, but was feeling far too tired and depressed to concentrate on the writing I was supposed to be doing. So, to take my mind off present-day violent criminality at home, I started thinking about violent criminality more than a hundred years ago on the other side of the world… I recently [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on August 10, 2011
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2011/08/10/doroshevich-on-sakhalin/
Re-reading Crime and Punishment: the Drunkards
When Dostoevsky first conceived of the work that ultimately became Crime and Punishment, he titled it ‘The Drunkards’, and said that it would deal with ‘the present question of drunkenness … [in] all its ramifications, especially the picture of a family and the bringing up of children in these circumstances’ (letter to A. A. Kraevsky, June [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on September 6, 2010
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/09/06/re-reading-crime-and-punishment-the-drunkards/
Siberian prison and exile: two studies
I’m currently working on revisions to an article on nineteenth-century narratives of prison and exile (see my previous posts on an earlier stage of work on this and on the conference where I presented it), and in the process of completing my reading, two works have stood out in different ways: Sergei Maksimov’s Sibir’ i [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on July 26, 2010
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/26/siberian-prison-and-exile-two-studies/
Russkii vestnik 1868
The highlight of Russkii vestnik for 1868 was the publication of Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot, but other notable features are articles by N. A. Liubimov on advances in Physics, Hermann Laroche on Glinka, A. D. Gradovsky on Russian historical literature, and Gustave de Molinari (a regular contributor on European affairs) on the 1867 World Exhibition [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on July 25, 2010
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/25/russkii-vestnik-1868/
Porfiry: a poor pastiche
In response to the disappointment I expressed in my review of Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44, a reader alerted me (please note: not ‘recommended’) to the existence of a series of crime novels by R. N. Morris set in 19th century St Petersburg, and featuring Porfiry Petrovich. The detective from Crime and Punishment is a [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on July 1, 2010
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/07/01/porfiry-a-poor-pastiche/
Women, beauty and other things
The ambiguous treatment of some of Dostoevsky’s major themes was high on the menu in the first session on Thursday. Joe Andrew gave a very interesting paper on the ‘woman question’ in The Brothers Karamazov, discussing how marginalized the female characters are – in the central family grouping there are no mothers, daughters or sisters [...]
Posted by Sarah Young on June 18, 2010
http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2010/06/18/women-beauty-and-other-things/