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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
Nailed it again.
Not many people convey the human experience like Dostoevsky did. This book made me feel that Russian air running through my veins as I read of the trials and tribulations faced throughout this book. After doing further research after my read, to think this happened to him makes the novel even more brilliant. His experiences masked in a story that seems almost too wild to be true. This piece of art hangs high amongst his already impeccable collection.
Overall: 4.7-4.9/5
Not many people convey the human experience like Dostoevsky did. This book made me feel that Russian air running through my veins as I read of the trials and tribulations faced throughout this book. After doing further research after my read, to think this happened to him makes the novel even more brilliant. His experiences masked in a story that seems almost too wild to be true. This piece of art hangs high amongst his already impeccable collection.
Overall: 4.7-4.9/5
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
‘Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.’
–[a:Angela Y. Davis|5863103|Angela Y. Davis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1643594354p2/5863103.jpg]
It has been said you can judge the character of a society by how they judge their prisoners and poor. This quote is often misattributed to the great Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and though he may not have said those words exactly, the sentiment rings loud and clear in Notes from a Dead House. Published between 1860-1862, the novel—often translated as The Dead House though for the purposes of this review I’ll be using the translation from translator duo [a:Richard Pevear|3357|Richard Pevear|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1301560792p2/3357.jpg] and [a:Larissa Volokhonsky|3358|Larissa Volokhonsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1301560740p2/3358.jpg]—is a chilling look at the harshness of the Siberian penal colonies where the brutalities of forced labor and punishment are so awash in a monotony of the mundane stretching on for years until even brutality registers as mundane. I mean, prison is pretty shit at its most basic, but this is a whole higher tier of not awesome that literature has ensured will be remembered amongst the many punitive atrocities committed by humans against each other. A roman à clef inspired by Dostoevsky’s own four year sentence at a prison in Omsk, this unabashed and incisive account of prison was thought of as one of his greatest novels during his life and earned praise from fellow Russian author [a:Leo Tolstoy|128382|Leo Tolstoy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651443031p2/128382.jpg] who remarked that he ‘didn’t know a better book in all our literature.’ Which is saying a lot considering ole Leo rarely had kind words for his contemporaries. The novel is by turns gripping and horrifying, yet can be repetitive and is occasionally a slog through burdensome passages—clearly by design to affect the quotidian tedium of prison life—all the while the lack of freedom seeps into the reader to shake you to your core. These experiences of penal exile shaped Dostoevsky’s worldview which burns brightly in the stories within Dead House and make this an important and insightful novel that cuts to the heart of the human condition under tormentous states, championing the people most put out upon by society and delivering a damning indictment on the cruelties of prison.
‘Here is the world to which I am condemned, in which, despite myself, I must somehow live.’
First, I’d like to thank Luh for a great buddy read of this book which managed to make a very bleak novel quite fun. Thank you for all the discussions, many of the ideas we talked about found its way into this review in some form so I’d like to co-credit her. Oh, and a little me factoid: not only has Dostoevsky long been a favorite but was also my first tattoo:
Upon his release from the Siberian prison camps, Dostoevksy wrote to his brother saying ‘I have brought back from the camps so many folk figures, characters!...So many stories of vagabonds and brigands, stories of dark and bitter life. I could fill volumes.’ Which I guess being all “wow I got some wild stories to tell now!” is about as optimistic a take on being in prison one can have? These characters would find their way into Notes From the Dead House and inspire characters long through his career with his time spent in the labor camp, and the mock execution that preceded it, inspiring thematic ideas throughout his works. According to his biographer [a:Joseph Frank|11328|Joseph Frank|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1461525772p2/11328.jpg], it was in the penal colony that Doestovksy began to see the working-class, poor and criminals less as ‘barbarians awaiting the light’ as he had once written, but as representations of God and beauty in their ‘capacity to love and forgive’ This becomes the conclusion reached by narrator Alexander Petrovitch Goryanchikov in Dead House and we see how he, a nobleman cast into prison for the murder of his wife (which Dostoevsky doesn’t find altogether too damning I guess as he refers to him as ‘a man of irreproachably moral life’ mere sentences after telling his crime) goes from attempting to categorize his fellow inmates to seeing such categorizations as beside the point in their mass suffering and society of confinement. ‘Reality resists classification,’ he writes. Bonus points to anyone who decides this could be a fun line to pull out at your next performance review!
The novel is framed as being highlights from the notebooks of a fellow inmate found after his death, a layer of narrative remove from Dostoevksy’s experiences that allows artistic freedom. As Dostoevksy biographer [a:Alex Christofi|7328083|Alex Christofi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1721052581p2/7328083.jpg] writes:
While there is fiction at work. The book retains much of the actual dialogue of prison life he recorded in what is dubbed his Siberian Notebook: a journal he kept hidden for the four years intentionally leaving no indication of its authorship in case it was discovered. Having gained some notoriety at a young age with his novel [b:Poor Folk|67326|Poor Folk|Fyodor Dostoevsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348171372l/67326._SX50_.jpg|28898] and mixed reception of his short stories, the guards in the prison were wary of him writing about what he saw and talking big litera-shit about them so they and frequently beat and questioned him where he was keeping his writing. Dostoevsky would only reply ‘In my head,’ which is pretty hard.
Sketch of the mock execution face by Dostoevsky
If I may back up a moment because my ADHD took the wheel of this review structure, the situation around his imprisonment is rather key to the understanding of most of his works. As a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, Dostoevksy was one of several members denounced to the government and sentenced for execution. His crime was the reading and distribution of essays critical of Russian politics and religion, though he claimed he was reading them only for literary purposes. On the date of his execution, he was tied to a stake with other men, had their death sentences read but, right before being fired upon, an officer ran forward with a letter of reprieve from the Tzar sentencing them instead to forced labor in Siberia. The mock execution was part of the punishment like some really fucking twisted hidden camera prank show, something Dostoevsky would visit in [b:The Idiot|12505|The Idiot|Fyodor Dostoevsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657539107l/12505._SY75_.jpg|6552198] declaring the knowledge of impending execution to be the cruelest of torments. As Prince Myshkin says in The Idiot:
It had its effect and several of the men would have lasting mental health issues due to the trauma, though Dostoevsky wrote to his brother that ‘I am being reborn in another form,’ though the discussions from Myshkin would later reveal how much Dostoevsky still struggled to come to terms with the philosophical and spiritual resonance of that event. You know, as one probably would if someone tried to publicly execute you as a political stunt.
‘During the first weeks, and naturally the early part of my imprisonment, made a deep impression on my imagination. The following years on the other hand are all mixed up together, and leave but a confused recollection. Certain epochs of this life are even effaced from my memory. I have kept one general impression of it though, always the same; painful, monotonous, stifling. What I saw in experience during the first few days of imprisonment seems to me as if it had all taken place yesterday. Such was the case.’
The novel shows in great detail the horrific monotony and brutality witnessed in the camps. ‘Of course, prisons and the system of forced labor do not correct the criminal.’ Alexander Petrovitch writes, ‘they only punish him and ensure society against the evildoer’s further attempts on its peace and quiet.’ This idea is central to ideas of prison abolition as expressed by activists such as [a:Mariame Kaba|8156101|Mariame Kaba|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] or [a:Angela Y. Davis|5863103|Angela Y. Davis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1643594354p2/5863103.jpg] who wrote:
The who and why is key to Dead House, as the narrative observes how these are people being forced into exile and hidden from society, put in conditions so harsh they may likely not be able to ever return (and many immediately find themselves resentenced upon release).
It does not reform a person, he argues, only solidifies their hatred for society. It disappears people but not the problems that lead to them either.
‘What are we here for? We are not alive though we are living and we are not in our graves though we are dead.’
The passage of time in Siberia is both boring and brutal until even the brutality hardly registers. Haha It is show how the worst torment of prison, however, is not the violence or the hard labor, but the utter lack of freedom and meaning.
He also spends much time discussing ‘one more torment in prison life that waqs almost worst than all the others,’ which was the ‘ forced communal cohabitation.’ Criminals of all walks of life were forced into tight confinement and were forced to create a society of themselves. Our narrator, of noble lineage like Dostoevsky, is initially outcast for his parentage but comes to be trusted as we see how time erodes any differences between inmates. But it is a harsh world with harsh neighbors where stealing is common, though I enjoyed the aspect of his one friend stealing constantly ‘without any embarrassment, almost unconsciously, as if out of duty, and it was impossible to be angry with him.’ So much of everything just becomes the mundane, and even punishment or informing to the guards barely registers with anyone. It’s just how it is.
I did greatly enjoy the aspects on how their society worked such as the smuggling or trades that were kept up despite being in prison. It was viewed almost as a resistance and a way to bring life into the camps and when people were caught, punished, and their goods taken from them, they just go right back to it. ‘Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him,’ he writes and resilience is championed even in all the drudgery and bleakness. This is not to say it was comfortable and the experience had horrific lasting effects of the mental and physical health of all who endured it. They can survive but even the strongest ‘submits and suffers the cruelest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.’ There is a big lead up to a performance put on for the benefit of the prisoners and our narrator observes this rare moment of warmth in humanity that reverberates through the prison during this time. Though this is immediately followed by some of the harshest scenes which drives home the point that these were fellow humans, people down on their luck but just like anyone else, and they were dehumanized and suffering to nearly unspeakable degrees.
These are the people the literary community should always be putting our support behind. What is the good of art if it isn’t being used to uplift those in need? Dostoevsky wasn’t the only one with this stance, and later [a:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|19771050|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1574793149p2/19771050.jpg] would write about the traumas of the gulags, [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1686463588p2/957894.jpg]’s [b:Reflections on the Guillotine|2653858|Reflections on the Guillotine|Albert Camus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1480549012l/2653858._SY75_.jpg|2678626] would condemn capital punishment and [b:Are Prisons Obsolete?|108428|Are Prisons Obsolete?|Angela Y. Davis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320521835l/108428._SX50_.jpg|104488] by [a:Angela Y. Davis|5863103|Angela Y. Davis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1643594354p2/5863103.jpg] would help spearhead prison abolitionist movements that center addressing social ills over disappearing people. Though I always think of [a:Victor Hugo|13661|Victor Hugo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1415946858p2/13661.jpg]’s statement on why [b:Les Misérables|24280|Les Misérables|Victor Hugo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1411852091l/24280._SY75_.jpg|3208463] will always be necessary when the poor are oppressed:
A powerful statement. And the same can be said of Dead House.
You might have noticed this is a rather bleak and burdensome read, but there is still a light that shines in its championing of the human spirit and plea to treat everyone with dignity and respect. That Dostoevsky was writing stories of the poor and criminals was rather progressive at the time and we can really see how his experience in Siberia lead to many of his themes and strengthened his faith. Notes From the Dead House is a powerful work that feels heavy to ready, though it is because Dostoevsky excels at instilling strong emotions in the reader and making them share the struggles of his characters. A chilling read that wasn’t my favorite by him but does have lasting value—it was later adapted as an opera by Leoš Janáček so someone with an actual attention span please check that out and let me know how it is—for its look at social issues, the human condition and as a key source of understanding for his entire oeuvre.
4/5
‘Every man, whoever he may be and however humiliated, still requires, even if instinctively, even if unconsciously, respect for his human dignity. The prisoner himself knows that he is a prisoner, an outcast and he knows his place before his superior; but no brands, no fetters will make him forget that he is a human being. And since he is in fact a human being, it follows that he must be treated like a human being.’
–[a:Angela Y. Davis|5863103|Angela Y. Davis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1643594354p2/5863103.jpg]
It has been said you can judge the character of a society by how they judge their prisoners and poor. This quote is often misattributed to the great Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and though he may not have said those words exactly, the sentiment rings loud and clear in Notes from a Dead House. Published between 1860-1862, the novel—often translated as The Dead House though for the purposes of this review I’ll be using the translation from translator duo [a:Richard Pevear|3357|Richard Pevear|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1301560792p2/3357.jpg] and [a:Larissa Volokhonsky|3358|Larissa Volokhonsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1301560740p2/3358.jpg]—is a chilling look at the harshness of the Siberian penal colonies where the brutalities of forced labor and punishment are so awash in a monotony of the mundane stretching on for years until even brutality registers as mundane. I mean, prison is pretty shit at its most basic, but this is a whole higher tier of not awesome that literature has ensured will be remembered amongst the many punitive atrocities committed by humans against each other. A roman à clef inspired by Dostoevsky’s own four year sentence at a prison in Omsk, this unabashed and incisive account of prison was thought of as one of his greatest novels during his life and earned praise from fellow Russian author [a:Leo Tolstoy|128382|Leo Tolstoy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651443031p2/128382.jpg] who remarked that he ‘didn’t know a better book in all our literature.’ Which is saying a lot considering ole Leo rarely had kind words for his contemporaries. The novel is by turns gripping and horrifying, yet can be repetitive and is occasionally a slog through burdensome passages—clearly by design to affect the quotidian tedium of prison life—all the while the lack of freedom seeps into the reader to shake you to your core. These experiences of penal exile shaped Dostoevsky’s worldview which burns brightly in the stories within Dead House and make this an important and insightful novel that cuts to the heart of the human condition under tormentous states, championing the people most put out upon by society and delivering a damning indictment on the cruelties of prison.
‘Here is the world to which I am condemned, in which, despite myself, I must somehow live.’
First, I’d like to thank Luh for a great buddy read of this book which managed to make a very bleak novel quite fun. Thank you for all the discussions, many of the ideas we talked about found its way into this review in some form so I’d like to co-credit her. Oh, and a little me factoid: not only has Dostoevsky long been a favorite but was also my first tattoo:
Upon his release from the Siberian prison camps, Dostoevksy wrote to his brother saying ‘I have brought back from the camps so many folk figures, characters!...So many stories of vagabonds and brigands, stories of dark and bitter life. I could fill volumes.’ Which I guess being all “wow I got some wild stories to tell now!” is about as optimistic a take on being in prison one can have? These characters would find their way into Notes From the Dead House and inspire characters long through his career with his time spent in the labor camp, and the mock execution that preceded it, inspiring thematic ideas throughout his works. According to his biographer [a:Joseph Frank|11328|Joseph Frank|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1461525772p2/11328.jpg], it was in the penal colony that Doestovksy began to see the working-class, poor and criminals less as ‘barbarians awaiting the light’ as he had once written, but as representations of God and beauty in their ‘capacity to love and forgive’ This becomes the conclusion reached by narrator Alexander Petrovitch Goryanchikov in Dead House and we see how he, a nobleman cast into prison for the murder of his wife (which Dostoevsky doesn’t find altogether too damning I guess as he refers to him as ‘a man of irreproachably moral life’ mere sentences after telling his crime) goes from attempting to categorize his fellow inmates to seeing such categorizations as beside the point in their mass suffering and society of confinement. ‘Reality resists classification,’ he writes. Bonus points to anyone who decides this could be a fun line to pull out at your next performance review!
The novel is framed as being highlights from the notebooks of a fellow inmate found after his death, a layer of narrative remove from Dostoevksy’s experiences that allows artistic freedom. As Dostoevksy biographer [a:Alex Christofi|7328083|Alex Christofi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1721052581p2/7328083.jpg] writes:
‘Dead House is journalism, really, but it couldn’t be called that at the time so it’s framed as a novel. It’s part of a genre called Zapiski, which means ‘notes’ or ‘scribbles’. It’s nominally about a third person, but it’s obviously heavily influenced by his experience in prison. I don’t think you could have later writers like Solzhenitsyn without this book.’
While there is fiction at work. The book retains much of the actual dialogue of prison life he recorded in what is dubbed his Siberian Notebook: a journal he kept hidden for the four years intentionally leaving no indication of its authorship in case it was discovered. Having gained some notoriety at a young age with his novel [b:Poor Folk|67326|Poor Folk|Fyodor Dostoevsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348171372l/67326._SX50_.jpg|28898] and mixed reception of his short stories, the guards in the prison were wary of him writing about what he saw and talking big litera-shit about them so they and frequently beat and questioned him where he was keeping his writing. Dostoevsky would only reply ‘In my head,’ which is pretty hard.
Sketch of the mock execution face by Dostoevsky
If I may back up a moment because my ADHD took the wheel of this review structure, the situation around his imprisonment is rather key to the understanding of most of his works. As a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, Dostoevksy was one of several members denounced to the government and sentenced for execution. His crime was the reading and distribution of essays critical of Russian politics and religion, though he claimed he was reading them only for literary purposes. On the date of his execution, he was tied to a stake with other men, had their death sentences read but, right before being fired upon, an officer ran forward with a letter of reprieve from the Tzar sentencing them instead to forced labor in Siberia. The mock execution was part of the punishment like some really fucking twisted hidden camera prank show, something Dostoevsky would visit in [b:The Idiot|12505|The Idiot|Fyodor Dostoevsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657539107l/12505._SY75_.jpg|6552198] declaring the knowledge of impending execution to be the cruelest of torments. As Prince Myshkin says in The Idiot:
‘...the strongest pain may not be in the wounds, but in knowing for certain that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now, this second – your soul will fly out of your body and you’ll no longer be a man, and its’ for certain – the main thing is that it’s for certain.’
It had its effect and several of the men would have lasting mental health issues due to the trauma, though Dostoevsky wrote to his brother that ‘I am being reborn in another form,’ though the discussions from Myshkin would later reveal how much Dostoevsky still struggled to come to terms with the philosophical and spiritual resonance of that event. You know, as one probably would if someone tried to publicly execute you as a political stunt.
‘During the first weeks, and naturally the early part of my imprisonment, made a deep impression on my imagination. The following years on the other hand are all mixed up together, and leave but a confused recollection. Certain epochs of this life are even effaced from my memory. I have kept one general impression of it though, always the same; painful, monotonous, stifling. What I saw in experience during the first few days of imprisonment seems to me as if it had all taken place yesterday. Such was the case.’
The novel shows in great detail the horrific monotony and brutality witnessed in the camps. ‘Of course, prisons and the system of forced labor do not correct the criminal.’ Alexander Petrovitch writes, ‘they only punish him and ensure society against the evildoer’s further attempts on its peace and quiet.’ This idea is central to ideas of prison abolition as expressed by activists such as [a:Mariame Kaba|8156101|Mariame Kaba|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] or [a:Angela Y. Davis|5863103|Angela Y. Davis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1643594354p2/5863103.jpg] who wrote:
‘Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings…Prison abolition requires that we challenge our thinking about what constitutes punishment, for whom and why.’
The who and why is key to Dead House, as the narrative observes how these are people being forced into exile and hidden from society, put in conditions so harsh they may likely not be able to ever return (and many immediately find themselves resentenced upon release).
‘In the criminal himself, prison and the most intense forced labor develop only hatred, a thirst for forbidden pleasures, and a terrible light-mindedness. But I am firmly convinced that the famous system of solitary confinement also achieves only a false, deceptive, external purpose. It sucks the living juice from a man, enervates his soul, weakens it, frightens it, and then presents this morally dried-up, half crazed mummy as an example of correction and repentance. Of course, a criminal who has risen against society hates it, and almost always considers himself right and society wrong.’
It does not reform a person, he argues, only solidifies their hatred for society. It disappears people but not the problems that lead to them either.
‘What are we here for? We are not alive though we are living and we are not in our graves though we are dead.’
The passage of time in Siberia is both boring and brutal until even the brutality hardly registers. Haha It is show how the worst torment of prison, however, is not the violence or the hard labor, but the utter lack of freedom and meaning.
‘‘if they wanted to crush, to annihilate a man totally, to punish him with the most terrible punishment, so that the most dreadful murderer would shudder at this punishment and be frightened of it beforehand, they would only need to give the labor a character of complete, total uselessness and meaninglessness.’
He also spends much time discussing ‘one more torment in prison life that waqs almost worst than all the others,’ which was the ‘ forced communal cohabitation.’ Criminals of all walks of life were forced into tight confinement and were forced to create a society of themselves. Our narrator, of noble lineage like Dostoevsky, is initially outcast for his parentage but comes to be trusted as we see how time erodes any differences between inmates. But it is a harsh world with harsh neighbors where stealing is common, though I enjoyed the aspect of his one friend stealing constantly ‘without any embarrassment, almost unconsciously, as if out of duty, and it was impossible to be angry with him.’ So much of everything just becomes the mundane, and even punishment or informing to the guards barely registers with anyone. It’s just how it is.
I did greatly enjoy the aspects on how their society worked such as the smuggling or trades that were kept up despite being in prison. It was viewed almost as a resistance and a way to bring life into the camps and when people were caught, punished, and their goods taken from them, they just go right back to it. ‘Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him,’ he writes and resilience is championed even in all the drudgery and bleakness. This is not to say it was comfortable and the experience had horrific lasting effects of the mental and physical health of all who endured it. They can survive but even the strongest ‘submits and suffers the cruelest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.’ There is a big lead up to a performance put on for the benefit of the prisoners and our narrator observes this rare moment of warmth in humanity that reverberates through the prison during this time. Though this is immediately followed by some of the harshest scenes which drives home the point that these were fellow humans, people down on their luck but just like anyone else, and they were dehumanized and suffering to nearly unspeakable degrees.
These are the people the literary community should always be putting our support behind. What is the good of art if it isn’t being used to uplift those in need? Dostoevsky wasn’t the only one with this stance, and later [a:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|19771050|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1574793149p2/19771050.jpg] would write about the traumas of the gulags, [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1686463588p2/957894.jpg]’s [b:Reflections on the Guillotine|2653858|Reflections on the Guillotine|Albert Camus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1480549012l/2653858._SY75_.jpg|2678626] would condemn capital punishment and [b:Are Prisons Obsolete?|108428|Are Prisons Obsolete?|Angela Y. Davis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320521835l/108428._SX50_.jpg|104488] by [a:Angela Y. Davis|5863103|Angela Y. Davis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1643594354p2/5863103.jpg] would help spearhead prison abolitionist movements that center addressing social ills over disappearing people. Though I always think of [a:Victor Hugo|13661|Victor Hugo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1415946858p2/13661.jpg]’s statement on why [b:Les Misérables|24280|Les Misérables|Victor Hugo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1411852091l/24280._SY75_.jpg|3208463] will always be necessary when the poor are oppressed:
‘So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilisation, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age — the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night — are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.’
A powerful statement. And the same can be said of Dead House.
You might have noticed this is a rather bleak and burdensome read, but there is still a light that shines in its championing of the human spirit and plea to treat everyone with dignity and respect. That Dostoevsky was writing stories of the poor and criminals was rather progressive at the time and we can really see how his experience in Siberia lead to many of his themes and strengthened his faith. Notes From the Dead House is a powerful work that feels heavy to ready, though it is because Dostoevsky excels at instilling strong emotions in the reader and making them share the struggles of his characters. A chilling read that wasn’t my favorite by him but does have lasting value—it was later adapted as an opera by Leoš Janáček so someone with an actual attention span please check that out and let me know how it is—for its look at social issues, the human condition and as a key source of understanding for his entire oeuvre.
4/5
‘Every man, whoever he may be and however humiliated, still requires, even if instinctively, even if unconsciously, respect for his human dignity. The prisoner himself knows that he is a prisoner, an outcast and he knows his place before his superior; but no brands, no fetters will make him forget that he is a human being. And since he is in fact a human being, it follows that he must be treated like a human being.’
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
Notes from a Dead House is Dostoevsky's account of his time in a Siberian prison camp. It is an absolutely remarkable tale, from its rich character development to its insights into prison life. The stories of the prisoners can be saddening, inspiring, or anywhere in between.
This was my favorite quote from the book:
This was my favorite quote from the book:
I must say it all: these people are extraordinary people. They are perhaps the most gifted, the strongest of all our people. But their mighty strength perishes for nothing, perishes abnormally, unlawfully, irretrievably. And who is to blame?
That's just it: who is to blame?
informative
reflective
medium-paced
dark
reflective
slow-paced
These are very much Dostoevsky's notes, not a novel. Chapters tend to cover topics (Christmas, punishment, animals, a particularly horrible one detailing the graphic domestic abuse and murder of a convict's wife) rather than narrative beats; the prose is often repetitive bordering on self-indulgent. Part of this comes down to its serial publication over the course of a couple of years - it just reads differently than modern books do. However, comparing Dostoevsky's writing in Notes with Crime and Punishment, also published in the papers just a few years later, the difference in quality is noticeable. Despite being a relatively easy read for Dostoevsky, it drags.
Embedded in the repetitive and sometimes triggering material, however, are Dostoevsky's trademark insights into human nature. The final chapter and the appendix, "The Peasant Marey," brought me to tears and make the read more than worthwhile.
Embedded in the repetitive and sometimes triggering material, however, are Dostoevsky's trademark insights into human nature. The final chapter and the appendix, "The Peasant Marey," brought me to tears and make the read more than worthwhile.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Domestic abuse
Minor: Animal cruelty, Antisemitism