Memoirs from the House of the Dead (Oxford World's Classics)
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Book Summary Information
Author: Fyodor DostoevskyEditor: Ronald Hingley
Translator: Jessie Coulson
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-08-01
ISBN: 0199540519
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of Memoirs from the House of the Dead (Oxford World's Classics)
Book Review: Brutal, magical, unforgettable
Summary: 5 Stars
His four years in a prison in Omsk opened widely the eyes of Dostoevsky on `real' life: `I yet could not distinctly see much of what lay under my nose.'
He was brutally confronted with the complexity of man, of facts (crimes) and of murky motives.
One can find here in a nutshell the main themes and characters of his later masterpieces.
In prison he was forced to live herded with a
Fascinating gallery of controversial human personalities
The Idiot (Aley), the eternal servant, the eternal child, the eternal ill, the eternal vagabond, the eternal executioner, the vain, the leader, the hanger-on, the solitary, the dreamer, the desperate, the completely indifferent, the informer, the alcoholic, the beast, the jester, the clown, the cold killer, the absolutely corrupt, the depraved, the passionate flogger, the feigned mad, people with a mission, people with disinterested compassion, the dying.
Man
For Dostoevsky, man `is his worst enemy, a creature of habit to a monstrous degree, a creature who can get used to anything.'
`Every man, however low he may have fallen, requires, if only instinctively and unconsciously, that respect be given to his dignity as a human being. He possesses a mournful desire for an abrupt display of personality, appearing suddenly and developing into fury, the eclipse of reason, the convulsion of madness.'
`It is difficult to conceive to what extent human nature can be perverted. The executioner's nature is found in embryo in almost every man.'
Facts (crimes)
`It was difficult to form even the most elementary idea of some crime, there was so much that was strange in their execution. Some murders derive from the most astonishing causes.'
Unforgettable scenes
There is the magical theatre scene, showing plainly that art is essentially the transmission of pure emotions into the spectator (the reader); the hellish bath scene; the boisterous Christmas party; the shocking death by consumption (`He must have had a mother too!'); the ice cold killing (`like a calf') of a wife by her husband; the sickening cure of the wounds inflicted by flogging (`the adroit plucking out of from the wounds of splinters from broken rods.'
This `documentary' novel is, by any standard, one of the best, profoundest, most shocking, most provocative and most shattering dissections of man.
Dostoevsky wrote one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all times. A must read.
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