The Adolescent (1875)

This book has been overlooked to an astonishing degree, even by fans of Dostoyevsky, and perhaps I could understand why. But it is not bad by any means - compared to the rest of his books, a merely interesting book can seem awful in comparison.

The plot concerns an adolescent (although the translation is still up for a fine-tuned debate) who is illegitimate and something about a mysterious letter. It is not exactly full of the grand philosophy and debate that Dostoyevsky employs, but what he does have is still as good as ever. The narrator's voice is surprisingly convincing. The ambition and soul of a ninteteen year old is well done.

Worth reading if you're already a fan of Dosty. I would not recommend this to people who are not used to him yet, though. ( )

O elefante esquecido - pelo menos pelas traduções brasileiras, até agora.
( )

I waited a number of days after finishing this book to gather my thoughts and to be able to give justice to Dostoyevksy's genius in this remarkable novel, which is not as well known as "Crime and Punishment", "Brothers Karamazov", and "The Idiot"... And still I think I would fail at this task. I was, of course, overjoyed to have read it in original. The language is remarkable. Dostoyevksy's craft of describing his protagonist's sentiments, aspirations and ruminations is unparalleled. It's rare to see agony manifested in a more poignant way. We also come to know of the author's own thoughts on many problems of his day. In short, it was quite an experience to be immersed in this novel. ( )

Old Prince Sokolsky is nearing the end of his life, and already his family and hangers on are vying with each other to become the heirs to his immense fortune. Chief among them are his daughter, Katerina Nikolaevna, and his friend and companion of his final years, Anna Andreevna, who has managed to persuade the old man to marry her and legitimise their relationship. These two women compete for the old man’s affections with a bitterness and hatred their frosty politeness and protestations of undying love for each other only just manage to mask.

Andrei Petrovich Versilov is a gentleman of the superfluous generation of the 1840s. Widowed at an early age, he has spent his life alternately living with the paramour of his youth, one of his serfs, Sofya, and running away from her to live abroad in Europe. He has four children, two of them with his serf ‘wife’, and two of them from his late legal wife, one of whom is Anna Andreevna. Although Versilov loves and admires his serf mistress and his two children by her, he is obsessively in love with Prince Sokolsky’s daughter Katerina Nikolaevna.

To avoid the scandal of her youthful seduction by Versilov, Sofya had been given away in marriage to another serf from Versilov’s estate, a much older peasant, Makar Dolguruky, who has conveniently been absent as a Holy Wanderer all over Russia for much of his life, but who has now come to Petersburg to die in the home of his nominal wife. Once he dies, Versilov will be able to marry Soya and legitimise their life long union and their children. This causes a crisis in his relationship to Katerina Nikolaevna.

These plot strands are woven together and presented to the reader through the memoirs of Versilov’s illegitimate son, the adolescent of the title, Arkady Makarovich. He has been brought up away from his family, first in the home of a kindly couple in Moscow, and then in a Dickensian school (the arc of Arkady’s early life has striking similarities to David Copperfield’s). He has come into possession of certain documents which, if revealed, could bring the struggle for Prince Sokolsky’s inheritance as well as his natural father’s position, to a nasty head.

Arkady, through a series of misadventures, falls in with a gang of blackmailers, headed by a former schoolmate, who learns of the existence of Arkady’s documents, and unbeknownst to him, steals them, replacing them with empty pieces of paper. The gang attempt to blackmail both Anna Andreevna, and Katerina Nikolaevna. Each women attempts to use Arkady, again, without his knowledge, to protect herself.

The last full length novel before the final masterpiece of Karamazov, The Adolescent has been unfairly overlooked and even maligned by some Dostoevskyans. While it is true that it lacks the powerful focus and hallucinatory strength of some of the other novels, it is an essential work for understanding (the development of) Dostoevsky’s ideas concerning the nature of consciousness and of the self. It also represents his most fully worked out attempt at a bildungsroman, that quintessentially 19th century, Romantic genre.

Read the full review on The Lectern ( )

Echoes all of the themes one knows and loves in Dostoevsky, albeit with a plot that's a little harder to follow (as my notes in the back of my book attest). One thing I like about this particular edition is the introduction by Andrew MacAndrew; it's the best analysis of the forces that shaped Dostoevsky that I've read.

I won't try to capture the plot :-) but excerpt many great passages:

On atheism, transience, living in the now:
“With the great concept of immortality gone, they have to replace it with something, and the immense reserves of love that before were lavished on Him who was immortality are now directed toward nature, the world, fellow men, every blade of grass. The more clearly they come to realize how transitory and finite their own existence is, the more ardently they grow to love the earth and life, and that special love is different from anything they’ve felt before. They start noticing and discovering in nature moments and secrets that they never suspected until then, because now they look at it with different eyes, with the eyes of a lover looking at his beloved. On awakening, they rush to kiss one another in their haste to love, constantly aware that the number of their days is limited and that there is nothing left for them when these days are spent. They work for one another and each of them gives up all he has, and this giving is happiness in itself. Every child knows and feels that everyone on earth is like a father or mother to him. ‘Let this be the last day of my life,’ every one of them thinks, gazing at the setting sun; ‘it doesn’t matter, for after I die they’ll still be here, and after them there’ll be their children…’”

On brotherhood and love of fellow man:
“You know, my boy,” he said, “it’s impossible to love men as they are. And yet we must. So try to do good to men by doing violence to your feelings, holding your nose, and shutting your eyes, especially shutting your eyes. Endure their villainy without anger, as much as possible; try to remember that you’re a man too. For, if you’re even a little above average intelligence, you’ll have the propensity to judge people severely. … There’s a passage in the Koran where Allah bids the Prophet look upon those troublesome creatures as upon mice, do them good and pass them by. It may sound rather haughty but it’s the right way. … It’s impossible to love one’s neighbor without despising him. I believe that man is physically unable to love his neighbor. The very concept of ‘love of mankind’ is completely misleading from the start, unless ‘mankind’ is something he has created in his mind…”

On communism:
“Tell me, how can you prove to me that it will be better when you have things your way? What will you do if my human dignity revolts against your barracks-like world? … You’ll have barracks, communal dormitories, le strict necessaire, atheism, communal wives, and no children – that’s your final goal, I’m quite aware of it. And it’s for that sort of thing, for the small share of your miserable welfare that will be assured me by your rational organization, for a morsel of food and a small heated corner, that you’re asking me to sacrifice my individuality!”

On death:
“There’s a limit to how long a man is remembered on this earth. It’s about a hundred years, that limit. Less than a hundred years after a man’s death, he may still be remembered by his children or perhaps his grandchildren who have seen his face, but after that time, even if his name is still remembered, it’s only indirectly, from other people’s words, and it’s just an idea about him, because all those who have seen him alive will by then be dead too. And grass will grow over his grave in the cemetery, the white stone over him will crumble, and everyone will forget him, including his own descendants, because only very few names remain in people’s memory. So that’s all right – let them forget! Yes, go on, forget me, dear ones, but me, I’ll go on loving you even from my grave. I can hear, dear children, your cheerful voices and I can hear your steps on the graves of your fathers; live for some time yet in the sunlight and enjoy yourselves while I pray for you and I’ll come to you in your dreams…Death doesn’t make any difference, for there’s love after death too!”

On democracy:
“…whenever all citizens are granted equal rights, there is a general weakening of the sense of honor and, therefore, the sense of duty. Selfishness replaces the old unifying system, and the whole system breaks up into a multitude of individuals, each with a full set of civil rights.”

On enlightenment, and happiness:
“We spent the night, my friend, in an open field and I awoke early in the morning when everyone else was still asleep and the sun hadn’t even peeped out from behind the forest yet. I lifted my head, my boy, and looked around, and everything was so beautiful that it couldn’t be put into words so I just sighed. It was still and quiet, the air was light, and the grass was growing…Grow, God’s grass, grow!…A bird sang…Sing you little bird of God!…A little babe squealed in a woman’s arms…God bless you, little man, grow and be happy, dear child!…And for the first time in my life I became conscious of all that was going on inside me. I put my head down again and went back to sleep, and it was so nice. It’s so good to be alive, my dear boy! If I should get better, I’ll go wandering again come spring…And if there’s mystery in the world, it only makes it even better; it fills the heart with awe and wonder, and it gladdens the heart…”

On judging others:
“…Once an intelligent woman told me that I have no right to judge others because I don’t know how to suffer and that, in order to qualify as a judge of others, I must first earn that right through suffering.”

On lies:
“The first type is all enthusiasm: ‘Just let me tell my lies and you’ll see how nice everything will be!’ The second type is all gloom and lack of imagination: ‘No, I won’t allow you to lie. Be specific: Where did it happen? What year?’ In short a man without a heart. You must always allow people to lie a little. It’s an innocent pleasure. Even a lot, sometimes. First of all, it shows that you’re tactful and secondly, it’ll enable you to lie too…”

On memories:
“…I still think we should agree on one point: even if some day we should disapprove of each other, if we should become spiteful and nasty and horrid, even if we should forget everything else, let us always remember this day and this hour; let us vow never to forget this day when we walked side by side, laughing and feeling so gay and happy.”

On nihilism:
“…In our society today nothing is clear, gentlemen. Since you deny God and deny saintly self-sacrifice, I want to know what blind, deaf, or dumb force of inertia could make me act against my own interest? You may argue that behaving responsibly in society is to my advantage. But what if I consider all your reasonableness unreasonable, what if I find nothing so reasonable about your communal dormitories and phalansteries? What the hell do I care about all that and about the distant future when I have only one life to live here?”

On religion:
“…They choose God so as not to submit to their fellow men without, of course, acknowledging the underlying reason, namely, that it’s less humiliating to submit to God. Some of these people become ardently religious, or rather thirst ardently for religion. But then they mistake their desire for faith for faith itself.”

On the younger generation:
“…Oh, mon cher, the problems facing a child are really frightening in our day…First, for a while these innocent little faces framed by their golden curls look at you with their innocent eyes and radiant smiles – they’re just like God’s angels or beautiful birds…But later…later it may turn out that it would have been better if they’d never grown up.”

“Our time,” he said slowly, “is an age of the golden mean and insensitivity, of a cult of ignorance and idleness, of an inability to do anything, and of a longing for the ready-made. No one stops to think; hardly anyone can work out an original thought…”

“Indeed, recently the process has been reversed: no longer is human jetsam latching itself on to our elite; instead, whole batches of our best people are tearing themselves away from it and lightheartedly joining the roving packs of the disorderly and the envious. Moreover, it is no longer so rare to find fathers and heads of our culture-bearing families mocking and ridiculing values that their children may still have been happy to believe in.”

On youth:
“You worry too much about these things. If you think you shouldn’t have said what you did, don’t say it next time. You’ve still got fifty years ahead of you to correct your mistakes.” ( )