dostoevsky the seeds of revolt 1821 1849

What is not generally known to the casual Dostoevsky fan (which is what I would call myself I certainly could not hold forth with Michael at Pink's for any length of time*) is the details of why and how this pivotal event came to happen. I might say it's as impossible not to know Dostoevsky was sent to Siberia as it is not to know that he wrote The Brothers Karamozov and Crime and Punishment, but then I run the risk of wandering into bless-me-what-do-they-teach-at-these-schools-ism.

This should not be a spoiler for anyone this fact and its timing (1849) are quite possibly the best-known and most-talked-about biographical detail in all Dostoevskiana, mentioned in every introduction, foreward, sketch and essay I've ever seen about the man. Though the event is not actually depicted or described in Seeds of Revolt, the specter of Russian uber-novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky's arrest, mock execution and sentence to Siberia looms large over this first of Joseph Frank's five-volume biography of the man.

Dostoevsky the seeds of revolt 1821 1849