Russian Classics: The House of the Dead & The Gambler

I just finished reading two Russian novels in English translation: The House of the Dead and The Gambler. It was an unusual experience because normally I journal my reading one novel at a time. I purchased the book online years ago, but I was not aware that it was a two-in-one edition─containing  two novels in the same book. What a surprising and lovely bonus!

The author of both novels was Fyodor Dostoevsky, a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature. His literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. These were the second and third of Dostoevsky's novels I read, after Crime and Punishment─his most acclaimed work, which I read two years ago.

 

The English translation I read was by Constance Garnett, an English translator of 19th-century Russian literature. She was the first English translator to translate almost all of Fyodor Dostoevsky's fiction into English. She also rendered works by Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Ostrovsky, and Alexander Herzen into English. Altogether, she translated 71 volumes of Russian literature, many of which are still in print today.

The first novel, The House of the Dead, portrays the life of convicts in a Siberian prison camp. It is generally considered to be a fictionalised memoir and a loosely knit collection of descriptions, based on Dostoevsky's own experiences as a prisoner in such a setting. Dostoevsky spent four years in a forced-labour prison camp in Siberia. This experience allowed him to describe with great authenticity the conditions of prison life and the characters of the convicts.

His time in prison profoundly changed his views on life. After the four-year imprisonment in western Siberia and a further six years of exile, Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg and wrote The House of the Dead. The novel incorporates several of the horrifying experiences he witnessed while in prison. He recalls the guards' brutality and relish performing unspeakably cruel acts, the crimes that the convicted criminals committed, and the fact that among these hardened criminals there were good and decent individuals. However, he was also astonished at the convicts' abilities to commit murders without the slightest change in conscience.

The second novel I read was The Gambler, a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novel, set in a hotel and casino in a German city, reflects Dostoevsky's own experience of addiction to roulette. Dostoevsky completed the novel in 1866 under a strict deadline to pay off his gambling debts─a backstory and an inspiration that are even more fascinating than the plot of the novel itself.

Dostoevsky gambled for the first time at the tables at Wiesbaden in 1863. From that time till 1871, he played at Baden-Baden, Homburg, and Aix-les-Bains frequently, often beginning by winning a small amount of money and losing far more in the end. Interestingly, all these cities were in Germany, and Homburg is also the primary setting in the novel. Several films have been inspired by the novel. Among them, the most noble adaptation was a 1974 American crime drama film of the same name, starring James Caan. Caan's performance was widely lauded and nominated for a Golden Globe.

As part of my extended study, I learned about a few interesting backstories, and this is the first one: the Petrashevsky Circle. Organized by Mikhail Petrashevsky─a follower of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier─the Petrashevsky Circle was a Russian literary discussion group of progressive-minded intellectuals in St. Petersburg in the 1840s, including Dostoevsky. Alarmed at the prospect of the revolutions of 1848 spreading to Russia, Nicholas I saw great danger in organisations like the Petrashevsky Circle. In 1849, members of the Circle, Dostoevsky included, were arrested and imprisoned. As part of a pre-meditated deception known in history as a mock execution, prisoners were sent to Semyonov Place for execution. As they stood in the square waiting to be shot, a messenger interrupted the proceedings with notice of a reprieve. The Tsar had prepared a letter commuting the death sentences to incarceration. Some of the prisoners─ Dostoevsky among them─were sent to Siberia. 

The second one is about how Anna Dostoevskaya, Dostoevsky's stenographer at the time, came to his rescue. Dostoevsky had agreed to a contract with his publisher which would have forfeited his copyright for his novel The Gambler and future novels for nearly 10 years if he did not meet a deadline. They did not have much time, but Anna was determined. Initially, Dostoevsky dictated too fast, but once they established a pace, they completed The Gambler just in time. They also fell in love, and married in the following year (1867). Elsewhere, Anna Dostoevskaya was also known as one of the first female philatelists in Russia. 

Through the novels and my extended study, I envisioned the historical contexts shaped by the revolutions of 1848, also known as the springtime of the peoples or the springtime of nations. The revolutions spread across Europe after an initial revolution began in Italy in January 1848. Over 50 countries were affected, but with no significant coordination or cooperation among their respective revolutionaries. Many goals of the revolutions were achieved by the 1870s, among them: a third French Republic, the Unification of Germany, the Unification of Italy, the autonomy for Hungary within a dual monarchy, and the emancipation of serfs by the Russian czar.

In particular, the emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of the liberal reforms enacted during the reign of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. The reform effectively abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire. The 1861 Emancipation Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic (household) serfs. By this edict, more than 23 million people received their liberty. Serfs gained the full rights of free citizens, including rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property and to own a business. This would be followed by the Emancipation Proclamation─an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War. The Proclamation had the effect of changing the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free. 

This is the part of reading that I love the most: learning about historical contexts through the novel, and, with a historical perspective, appreciate the works of great writers more fully.