Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

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The House of the Dead ( Russian: Записки из Мёртвого дома, Zapiski iz Myortvovo doma) is a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1860–2 [1] in the journal Vremya [2] by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It has also been published in English under the titles Notes from the House of the Dead, Memoirs from the House of the Dead and Notes from a Dead House, which are more literal translations of the Russian title. Many of the characters in the novel were based on real-life people that Dostoevsky met while in prison. However, there was a degree of alteration or embellishment in some characters and events for the sake of imparting greater depth to his themes. [6] I do not think Petroff can have ended well, he was marked for a violent end; and if he is not yet dead, that only means that the opportunity has not yet presented itself. Our prison was at the far end of the citadel behind the ramparts. Peering through the crevices in the palisade in the hope of glimpsing something, one sees nothing but a little corner of the sky, and a high earthwork covered with the long grass of the steppe. Night and day sentries walk to and fro upon it. Then one suddenly realizes that whole years will pass during which one will see, through those same crevices in the palisade, the same sentinels pacing the same earthwork, and the same little corner of the sky, not just above the prison, but far and far away.

One of literature’s definitive prison memoirs is given new immediacy in this sturdy translation by the team of Pevear and Volokhonsky (Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, 2007, etc.). Dice en otra parte del libro: “Así pues, había vivido sin libros, encerrado en mí mismo, planteándome cuestiones, que intentaba resolver, y cuya solución me atormentaba frecuentemente… Pero jamás podré expresar todo esto…” Orlov is a particularly terrifying character, and he stands out as the worst of those imprisoned alongside Aleksandr. He is defiant and has hardened himself to pain. His arrogance almost leads to his death. Isaiah Fomich Zapiski iz Myortvovo doma= Souvenirs de Ia maison des morts = The House of the Dead = Memoirs from the House of The Dead, Fyodor DostoyevskyAlmost all the prisoners talked and raved in their sleep. Curses, thieves’ jargon, knives, axes most often came from their mouths when they raved. “We’re beaten folk,” they used to say, “we’re all beaten up inside; that’s why we shout in our sleep.” During the first weeks, and naturally the early part of my imprisonment, made a deep impression on my imagination. The following years on the other hand are all mixed up together, and leave but a confused recollection. Certain epochs of this life are even effaced from my memory. I have kept one general impression of it though, always the same; painful, monotonous, stifling. What I saw in experience during the first few days of imprisonment seems to me as if it had all taken place yesterday. Such was the case"

Here there is a world's apart, unlike everything else, with laws of its own, its own dress, its own manners and customs, and here is the house of the living dead - life as nowhere else and a people apart." And the story of this living dead is what Dostoevsky brings to us readers. Based loosely on his own prison experience, this semi-autobiographical novel chronicles the ten-year prison life of Alexander Petrovich in a Siberian prison. As with all these memoirs, there is some fictionalising, shaping, rearranging, but the point of The House of the Dead was to tell the truth. So there is no plot. It’s not a novel. Many chapters are Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). Notes from a Dead House. Translated by Pevear, Richard; Volokhonsky, Larissa. Vintage Books (published 2016). ISBN 978-0-307-94987-5. Prison Life in Siberia. It is a phrase synonymous with misery and suffering. Below zero temperatures. Hard labor. Isolation. Physical punishment. It is everything that reminds me of how fortunate I am to be reading Dostoyevsky’s semi-autobiographical work instead of actually living it. It paints an image of prison life that is a hundred times more primitive than many of the lazy country club prisons of today’s western world. Just how bad was it in 19th century Siberia? My curiosity found this novel irresistible. I just had to find out what this lifestyle was in a bygone time in a country that has had a very troubled and complicated past. I was ready to enter the House of the Dead. For 6 months I did not go to them: laziness, thoughtlessness, fear. The books would change me somehow, I knew, and I wasn't too prepared to let go of whatever they may ask me to let go of. No, not unless the sentries of my rational mind were welcoming and unsuspicious.Very often among a certain highly intelligent type of people, quite paradoxical ideas will establish themselves. But they have suffered so much in their lives for these ideas, and have paid so high a price for them that it becomes very painful, indeed almost impossible, for them to part with them.” In 1849, Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison camp for participating in a socialist discussion group. The novel he wrote after his release, based on notes he smuggled out, not only brought him fame, but also founded the tradition of Russian prison writing. Notes from a Dead House(sometimes translated as The House of the Dead) depicts brutal punishments, feuds, betrayals, and the psychological effects of confinement, but it also reveals the moments of comedy and acts of kindness that Dostoevsky witnessed among his fellow prisoners. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). Notes from the House of the Dead. Translated by Jakim, Boris. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (published 2013). ISBN 978-0802866479. Aleksandr is a former convict whose posthumous narration of his experience in a Siberian forced labor camp reveals startling insight into the nature of incarceration. A nobleman who has fallen from grace for the murder of his wife, Aleksandr is a complex and well-educated man. His observations are true to life and faithfully describe the inmates as they were. Aleksandr is a deeply philosophical man, and he spends much of his time incarcerated musing on the rhythms and patterns of prison life, trying to decode the social dynamics which inform the relationships of prisoners to each other, to guards, and to their circumstances. Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1915). The House of the Dead. Translated by Constance Garnett. William Heinemann. p.6. ISBN 9780434204069.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). Notes from a Dead House. Translated by Navrozov, Lev. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House (published 1950). The first part was published in 1860 and the second one in 1862. The novel's first complete appearance was in book form in 1862. The appearance of any new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is always an event in a literary season. . . . [A] powerful new translation.”— Open Letters MonthlyThis felt to me like a brother version of Solzhenitsyn’s 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich', but with less of the bleak, fully clear, almost documentary-style narrative. To be fair, the book moves around genres really well, shifting fluidly between fiction, philosophical meditation, and memoir. I was expecting something more hard-hitting, and emotionally draining from the reader's perspective, that would long live in the memory, but it fell short of this. There are however, for Dostoyevsky fans plenty of lovely philosophical musings, where the narrator ponders the nature of freedom and the importance of hope, the inequality of punishments for the same crime, the gap between appearance and reality, the nature of free will, and other heavy themes. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1862). Memoirs from the House of the Dead. Translated by Coulson, Jessie. Oxford University Press, Oxford World's Classics (published 1983). ISBN 9780199540518.