Mystic terror - "Dostoevsky - A Writer in His Time"
DUR
In the mid-1950s, the young critic Joseph Frank, having
been invited to give the Christian Gauss lectures at
Princeton, settled on the then fashionable topic
"Existential Themes in Modern Literature." Since Albert
Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre both regarded Fyodor
Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" (1864) as a
central text of existentialism, Mr. Frank naturally
plunged into an intensive study of that novella. His
fascination with its anguished protagonist � who on the
first page brazenly proclaims "I am a sick man, I am a
spiteful man" � eventually led the critic to learn
Russian and to plan a short book on the sociological
and ideological roots of the Underground Man's self-
hatred. But as Mr. Frank's fascination with 19th-
century Russian culture and social thought grew, so did
his project. In 1976 there appeared "Dostoevsky: The
Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849," followed by four further
volumes of critical biography, culminating in 2002 with
"Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881."
All five installments of this work � invariably and
rightly described as magisterial � have now been
reduced to a single massive volume. Editor Mary
Petrusewicz cut the full text by roughly two-thirds,
and the result was then read and approved by Mr. Frank,
now 91 and a distinguished professor emeritus of Slavic
and comparative literature at both Stanford and
Princeton. "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time"
(Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/Dost1 ) thus immediately
becomes the essential one-volume commentary on the
intellectual dynamics and artistry of this great
novelist's impassioned, idea-driven fiction...
Continued: http://xrl.us/Dost2