Dostoevsky: Poor Folk

For those who will be reading D'sky's major works in chronological order and wish to start with his first novel, this is our thread...

From http://www.online-literature.com, a quick background:

Written in 1845 and publised in 1846, Poor Folk is the natural beginning point for anyone who reads Dostoevsky. The novel occupies a position of particular interest and importance in both the history of Russian literature and Dostoevsky's work as a whole. Several lines of development in Russian prose intersect: sentimentalism, naturalism, the physiological sketch, and the phenomenon of Gogol, with whom Dostoevsky maintains a dialogue throughout the novel.

Thanks, deebee! I'll probably wait until next week to get started, though.

Thanks deebee. Is anyone else starting here? I ordered Poor Folk from Hesperus Press earlier this week when I saw Mr. D. had such a lead, so I should get it soon and be able to start sometime next week.

I'm starting with Poor Folk (I'm going in chronological order too. I have to hunt up a copy, first, though.

You can find free copies for most (if not all) of Dostoyevsky's works on multiple sites, including:

ManyBooks.net

Project Gutenberg

The Literature Network (the site mentioned by deebee)

I think I'll use these sites to read his novellas and shorter novels, and purchase the longer ones and the ones I want to keep in my library.

I'm planning on reading chronologically.

My library has a book "Poor people, and A little hero" by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Translated, with an introd., by David Magarshack. I am hoping this is "Poor Folk". I'll go to the library over the weekend and see. I was trying not to buy any new book for three months (just a trial adventure).

Looking at the wikipedia page on Poor Folk, it mentions that it was inspired by Gogol's short story "The Overcoat" and even mentions it in there. It's easily found online if anyone wants to use it as a companion read.

I'm starting Poor Folk today.

Have read Poor Folk but not "The Overcoat." May read the Gogol story later in the week, but busy with Aphra Behn teaching prep at the moment. I'll check in later...

I recently read Poor Folk and reviewed it on my blog (if i might humbly alert fellow readers...)

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2008/12/poor-folk-dostoevsky.html

I also wrote about the influence of Gogol on early Dostoevsky here:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2008/12/fragment-512.html

and here:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/01/fragment-0128.html

I embarked on a year long read of Dostoevsky at the end of last year, and have been blogging as I go. I hope some of you might find this useful in your own pursuit of Dostoevsky.

I have a very nice little hard back edition of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Stories which some dear soul gave me for my 21st birthday re-printed in 1977. It was published in Russia by Progress Publishers and Poor People and the translation is edited by Olga Shartse and Julius Katzer. This edition also includes White Nights, A Faint Heart, A Most Unfortunate Incident, The Meek One and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.

My husband dug out Penguin editions of The Brothers Karamazov Volumes 1 and 2 reprinted in 1969 with a translation and introduction by David Magarshack. We also have a Penguin edition of The Idiot reprinted 1967 also translated by David Magarshack.

So I'm away. I've never read Dostoyevsky before so I'm looking forward to it. I've just finished Steven Conte's The Zookeepers War which was set in Berlin at the end of World War II ending with the Russian soldiers conquering East Germany so....a nice segue perhaps. It will be a real challenge for me to get through this and my 50 reads for the year but what's life if there ain't a challenge - huh?

> thanks for those inputs, tomcat. will certainly keep an eye out for those reviews...

Great review, Tomcat! It helped confirm some of my impressions from reading Poor Folk in December, and suggested new lines of thought... I shall have to bookmark The Lectern!

* a modest bow* Thank you.

Has anybody read the Kjetsaa AND the Mochulsky biographies? I would love to hear a comparison.

I plan on starting with Poor Folk after I finish my current book. I am really looking forward to working through Dosoevsky's books in chronological order. I have never approached literature this way and think it has the potential of greatly enhancing the depth of understanding the reader can gather along the way.

I can really recommend this approach, hemlokgang. Reading one author like this in chronological order is very revealing and fascinating. I hope you enjoy Poor Folk.

Okay, well I'm going to be the first to weigh into discussion as I feel the most ignorant so I'll probably say some great clangers that will get discussion started :) I finished Poor Folk about ten days ago and am now on to Netochka Nezvanova so I want to write about Poor Folk before it gets lost in the mists of time. My first response was probably impatience - the concerns of the main characters seemed so trivial....so much was made of so little...everything was so laboured...also very victimish...poor me...obsequious...bowing and scraping to each other...terriby sentimental stuff...but, you know, I kept reading. This is always a good sign. So I started to think Dostoevsky's not so bad at building up a character rather like a sculpture - bit by bit. Sometimes it made me want to scream but by the end I was feeling like a psychologist wondering what made these people tick. What had led them to this point. Would I be like this if I lived in their circumstances? There you go - that's enough - over to you.

alexdaw, I am just starting the book and your comments provide excellent food for thought as I dig in. Thanks.

Oh and a question - who do you reckon is living off whom - to use appalling grammar? Makar Devushkin to all intents and purposes is intent on "saving" Varvara Dobrosyolova. But is it really the other way around? Or does she in fact save herself? Are these people as naieve as they seem or is there a lot of game playing going on here? Okay so that's four questions!

Nothing is what it seems in that book. It might help to think about what they do not say to each other, and why they don't say it, rather like the way we all evade certain things when write letters to people we want to to impress, or people we need.

Hmm tomcatMurr - a very good point indeed. Obvious when I think about it. I keep feeling that what appears to be a quaint relationship has a more sinister or darker side or is it just a desperate side? Thank you for your blog too. I found it very helpful and am half way through the Overcoat. I am interested in their discussion of literature and what literature should be - are the letters a kind of conceit for this discussion I wonder - if that's the right term to use....

thanks Alex! I'm glad you found it helpful.

I think you are right, about the letters being a conceit. if I remember rightly, someone calls Makar a Lovelace, which is a reference to Richardsons's novel of letters Clarissa. these kind of novels were all the rage in the early 19th century, but the ironic thing is that most of them were about aristocrats or moneyed people. Dostoevsky was trying to do something different by telling this kind of love-story-through-letters between two of the 'small people' of Petersburg...
In fact the two lovers spend most of their time writing about the books they are reading. The book is as much about literature as anything else. If you've finished your reading of The Overcoat, I'm sure you're realising Dostoevsky's debt to Gogol.

do you think the letters are all complete? I mean, do we have all of them, or might some of them be missing? it seemed to me that there might be some gaps between them.

I am about halfway through the book and I am completely intrigued, somewhat annoyed with the characters, only a little sympathetic. I definitely am interested in reading on in case there are more indications of what makes them tick. Clearly they are both survivors. I cannot help but compare their experience to that of many people in poverty today. Do you think there are similarities? Differences? Is poverty an equalizer?

Just some random thoughts along the way.

You raise a good point Hemlokgang. I read The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao last month and it would be tempting in a way to compare the two - particularly the vernacular. I resisted the language of Oscar Wao because it was so "hip-hop" for want of better terminology. So - and now I'm going into really uncharted and probably controversial territory - but hey let's go there....one could argue that in Dostoevsky's day the poor were aspirant middle-class so were trying to ape their betters by talking about literature/love but now the poor have created their own language/culture and talk about love in their own way....okay everyone...let's get into it!

several things:
I'll agree about Barbara being a survivor, but I'd argue Makar isn't, really. He goes from being a poor but respectable worker who can provide for himself (sort of - I think we meet him after his downward spiral has already started) to a disheveled drunk who borrows money from Barbara. His clothes are falling apart, no one will lend him money (even at high interest rates): despite what he tells Barbara in his letters, his situation becomes dramatically worse in the course of the book. I see Barbara as saving herself - as bad as being married to whats-his-name will be, she at least won't starve or have to work the streets. We don't know what happens to Makar next, but I'm guessing it isn't pretty.

Am I really supposed to believe that his love for her is entirely paternal? I think that is not true, and said mainly for her benefit (so he doesn't scare her off).

Now alex's point about language - that is a really interesting idea and I think you may be on to something. The language they use is so sentimental and flowery that it does seem more like they are writing the way they think people should write letters, and not how they would actually speak. I found the language in the novel pretty off-putting, much more so than Oscar Wao. So sappy, although Barbara's letters get less sappy as her situation becomes more dire.

Well, this was Dostoevsky's first novel. Not bad! The novel consists of a series of letters between a middle aged man, Makara, and a distant relative who is a young woman living near to him, Vavara. They are both poverty-stricken. As time passes and their circumstances ebb and flow, the reader comes to know them through each other's eyes. Frankly, it is an odd situation. Their lives are so bitter, and at times they come close to destitution. In the end, one remains destitute both financially and emotionally, while one finds an out, although the reader is left to wonder which one is the real loser in the situation. Themes include: poverty, love, sacrifice, loss, grief, social class differences, and envy.

Just finished Poor Folk, hour is too late and eyes are too bleary to write anything coherent, so just a few notes. Read the Hogarth translation from 1915.

Thought there might be a Gogol reference in the mention of The Cloak, but not familiar with that version of the title, gratified to see that confirmed above.

B's letter of 3 September describing her memories of the country put me in mind of Cather's prairie--so vivid.

Reference to the Paul de Kock novel almost woke me up. What's up with that? Paris to St. Petersburg to Dublin. Is there a group read somewhere of PdK? He must be phenomenal. Does this explain the phenomenon of Twilight?

Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

Haven't read Poor Folk yet so I'm not sure what the reference to de Kock specifically is, but it made me want to look him up. His wikipedia entry is terribly short and leaves me wanting more.

>30 Sarasamsara: Makar reads a book by de Kock and mentions it to Barbara, as a book that's not fit for her to read. I was taken up short because I'm also reading Ulysses and Joyce, too, mentions de Kock: Molly Bloom wants another of his to read, remarking, Nice name he has.

Dostoevsky cuts to the heart of poverty's curse, describing some of the same characters we see in Balzac's Pere Goriot and Hugo's Les Miserables. M & B don't have the wherewithal to raise themselves up, not having a Rich Dad to whisper advice in their ear. A hundred rubles does not help Makar, he immediately squanders it. Only lifting Barbara bodily from urban poverty and dropping her into landed gentry can help her. Even so, her life is not likely to match her childhood memories of country life.

More musings in my LT review.

I'm getting into Poor Folk now and waiting to see the references to de Kock and Gogol. Well, not counting that giant fact that Gogol and Dost both write about poor folks who can't afford good overcoats. I mean a specific named reference.

I agree with those who have commented that the language seems affected. Early on, Makar and Varvara seem to want to elevate themselves and their relationship above the ordinary masses. Oh, no one would understand how we feel about each other if they knew, there would be so much gossip, etc etc. Then there's the way that Makar goes beyond his means to try to woo Varvara with gifts in the manner of the rich. Imitating the flowery style of aristocratic love letters is just another way to add a bit of class to their relationship, to make it more seemly than just a poor old man trying to hook up with his young neighbor.