This second book in a three-volume work on the young Fyodor Dostoevsky is a diary-portrait of his early years drawn from letters, memoirs, and criticism of the writer, as well as from the testimony and witness of family and friends, readers and reviewers, and observers and participants in his life. The result of an exhaustive search of published materials on Dostoevsky, this volume sheds crucial light on the many unexplored corners of Dostoevsky's life in the time between the success of his first novel, Poor Folk, and the failure of his next four works. Thomas Gaiton Marullo lets the original writers speak for themselves—the good and the bad, the truth and the lies—and adds extensive notes with correctives, counterarguments, and other pertinent information. Marullo looks closely at Dostoevsky's increasingly tense ties with Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolai Nekrasov, Ivan Turgenev, and other figures of the Russian literary world. He then turns to the individuals who afforded Dostoevsky security and peace amid the often negative reception from fellow writers and readers of his early fiction. Finally, Marullo shows us Dostoevsky's break with the Belinsky circle; his struggle to stay afloat emotionally and financially; and his determination to succeed as a writer while staying true to his vision, most notably, his insights into human psychology that would become a hallmark of his later fiction. This clear and comprehensive portrait of one of the world's greatest writers provides a window into his younger years in a way no other biography has to date.

"The second volume in a three-part work on the young writer, this diary-portrait of Dostoevsky's early years is drawn from the letters, memoirs, and criticism of the writer, as well as from the testimony and witness of family and friends, readers and reviewers, and observers and participants in his life"--Provided by publisher.

Fyodor Dostoevsky—Darkness and Dawn (1848–1849), the third and final volume on the writer's childhood, adolescence, and youth, seeks to disclose, in a detailed and intimate way, Dostoevsky's last two years before his exile to Siberia. Together with the first two volumes, it attempts to present for the first time a complete and congruent picture of the writer's first twenty-eight years. Thomas Gaiton Marullo first examines diverse responses of the Russian church, state, and citizens to the French socialists, in particular, Charles Fourier, and to the revolutions of 1848 before he moves to lively debates on Dostoevsky's socialism and new attacks on his writings. He then considers the dynamics of the Petrashevsky and Durov circles; fresh assaults on Dostoevsky's works; and the increasing desperation of the writer himself, particularly with Andrei Kraevsky. In the final sections of the book, Marullo sheds light on Dostoevsky's readings of Belinsky's letter to Gogol, the arrests of Petrashevsky and company, including Dostoevsky and his brothers, Andrei and Mikhail, as well as his responses to members of the Investigative Commission for the Petrashevsky Affair, his eight months in prison in the Peter-Paul Fortress, his mock execution on the Semyonovsky Parade Ground, and his departure to exile in Siberia. This volume will be of interest to scholars, students, and devotees not only of Dostoevsky, but also of Russian and European history, culture, and civilization.

Gary Saul Morson brings to life the intense intellectual debates shaping two centuries of Russian writing. Dialogues of great writers with philosophical wanderers and blood-soaked radicals reveal a contest between unyielding dogmatism and open-minded wonder, rendering the Russian literary canon at once distinctive and universally human.

Vladimir Nabokov described the literature course he taught at Cornell as "a kind of detective investigation of the mystery of literary structures." Leona Toker here pursues a similar investigation of the enigmatic structures of Nabokov's own fiction. According to Toker, most previous critics stressed either Nabokov’s concern with form or the humanistic side of his works, but rarely if ever the two together. In sensitive and revealing readings of ten novels, Toker demonstrates that the need to reconcile the human element with aesthetic or metaphysical pursuits is a constant theme of Nabokov’s and that the tension between technique and content is itself a key to his fiction. Written with verve and precision, Toker’s book begins with Pnin and follows the circular pattern that is one of her subject’s own favored devices.

More than a century after his death in 1881, Fyodor Dostoevsky continues to fascinate readers and reviewers. Countless studies of his writing have been published—more than a dozen in the past few years alone. In this important new work, Thomas Marullo provides a diary-portrait of Dostoevsky's early years drawn from the letters, memoirs, and criticism of the writer, as well as from the testimony and witness of family and friends, readers and reviewers, and observers and participants in his life. Marullo's exhaustive search of published materials on Dostoevsky sheds light on many unexplored corners of Dostoevsky's childhood, adolescence, and youth. Speakers of excerpts are given maximum freedom: Anything they said about the writer—the good and the bad, the truth and the lies—are included, with extensive footnotes providing correctives, counter-arguments, and other pertinent information. The first part of this volume, "All in the Family," focuses on Dostoevsky's early formation and schooling, i.e., his time in city and country, and his ties to his family, particularly his parents. The second section, "To Petersburg!," features Dostoevsky's early days in Russia's imperial city, his years at the Main Engineering Academy, and the death of his father. The third part, "Darkness before Dawn," deals with the writer's youthful struggles and strivings, culminating in the success of his work, Poor Folk. This clear and comprehensive portrait of one of the world's greatest writers will appeal to students, teachers, and scholars of Dostoevsky's early life, as well as general readers interested in Dostoevsky, literature, and history.

"I love life in its living form, life that’s found on the street, in human conversations, shouts, and moans." So begins this speech delivered in Russian at Cornell University by Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. In poetic language, Alexievich traces the origins of her deeply affecting blend of journalism, oral history, and creative writing. Cornell Global Perspectives is an imprint of Cornell University’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. The works examine critical global challenges, often from an interdisciplinary perspective, and are intended for a non-specialist audience. The Distinguished Speaker Series presents edited transcripts of talks delivered at Cornell, both in the original language and in translation.

‘Novel in Nine Letters’ is an incredibly inventive short story by Dostoevsky about a comical miscommunication between two friends. The story unfolds through letters as we learn that Ivan is unsuccessfully trying to collect money that he loaned to Pyotr. A comedy of errors ensues as neither man understands the other and Ivan becomes paranoid that Pyotr is avoiding him. Their world becomes a labyrinth as they attempt to connect but consistently fail due to unfortunate mishaps until a shocking final letter reveals what their previous correspondence could not. This story, which is one of Dostoevsky’s earliest, shows why he would become one of the most celebrated Russian writers of all time. It creatively blends farce and social commentary and has two compelling characters that readers can root for and against. ‘Novel in Nine Letters’ is as relevant in the social media age as when it was written, and its satirical nature makes it a perfect read for fans of ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a famous Russian writer of novels, short stories, and essays. A connoisseur of the troubled human psyche and the relationships between the individuals, Dostoevsky’s oeuvre covers a large area of subjects: politics, religion, social issues, philosophy, and the uncharted realms of the psychological. He is most famous for the novels ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’, and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. James Joyce described Dostoevsky as the creator of ‘modern prose’ and his literary legacy is influential to this day as Dostoevsky’s work has been adapted for many movies including ‘The Double’ starring Jesse Eisenberg.

Few modern thinkers have been as convinced of the necessity of recovering the past in order to redeem the present as Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). Benjamin at once mourned and celebrated what he took to be an inevitable liquidation of traditional culture, and his determination to think both of these attitudes through to their conclusions lends his work its peculiar honesty, along with its paradoxical, antinomial coherence. In a landmark interpretation of the whole of Benjamin's career, John McCole demonstrates a way of understanding Benjamin that both contextualizes and addresses the complexities and ambiguities of his texts. Working with Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the "intellectual field," McCole traces Benjamin's deep ambivalence about cultural tradition through the longterm project-an immanent critique of German idealist and romantic aesthetics-which unites his writings. McCole builds a sustained reading of Benjamin's intellectual development which sheds new light on the formative role of early influences—particularly his participation in the pre-World War I German youth movement and the orthodox discourse of German intellectual culture—and shows how Benjamin later extended the strategies he learned within these contexts during key encounters with Weimar modernism, surrealism, and the fiction of Proust. The fullest account of Benjamin available in English, this lucid and penetrating book will be welcomed by intellectual historians, literary theorists and critics, historians of German literature, and Continental philosophers.