Grossman's "Dostoevskii" Summary and Comments - Authoritative and hard-hitting biography of Dostoevsky from the Soviet Union.
Today we introduce Leonid Grossman's "Dostoevskyi," translated by Nobuyuki Kitagaki and published by Chikuma Shobo.
This biography is quite hard-hitting, as you can see from the picture on the cover.
The author, Grossman, was a prominent Soviet scholar born in Odessa in 1888, and this biography, first published in 1963, is considered definitive with a second edition that was substantially revised by the author in 1965.
The distinctive feature of the biography by Grossman comes from the fact that he is precisely this Soviet scholar. Let me quote from the afterword.
Grossman's biography is based on an abundance of original documents, as well as newly discovered materials, knowledge accumulated over many years, and facts obtained directly from Dostoevsky's wife.
Chikuma Shobo Publishing Company, translation by Nobuyuki Kitagaki, Leonid Grossman, "Dostoevskyi," p. 429
The Soviet Union has a vast amount of Dostoevsky materials preserved. Moreover, new materials have been discovered over time, and the ease of access to these materials is clearly different from that of researchers in other countries.
I have read and compared various biographies, and Grossman's biography is described differently from other biographies, and how do you know all that? I have read and compared various biographies of Grossman.
In the scene where Dostoevsky was detained as a political prisoner and interrogated by the Secret Board of Inquiry, even the faces of the interrogators are described in detail. I was surprised at this. I thought that in the Soviet Union, not only the names of secret interrogators, but even their faces and detailed interactions were recorded in the documents.
Although it is not clear which source this is from, I believe that this uniquely detailed description is one of the features of this biography.
There is also another feature of this biography. The same is quoted from the afterword.
（The distinctive features of Grossman's research methods are his parallelism of authors with the culture of their time, his consideration of literary phenomena in relation to other artistic fields such as painting, music, architecture, and theater, and his strong interest in the creative psychology and individuality of writers.
Chikuma Shobo Publishing Company, translation by Nobuyuki Kitagaki, Leonid Grossman, "Dostoevskyi," p. 428.
This was a very gratifying read. It was one of the pieces of information I was very interested in knowing about what literature Dostoevsky was influenced by at the time. This biography gives us a focus on what Dostoevsky read, what he thought about, and what he created from it.
In that sense, this biography, as hard-looking as it is, may be a very useful biography when trying to study Dostoevsky.
In fact, we often see Dostoevsky books from which this biography is cited. It also seems to have a well-established reputation as a basic research document.
The book is large in size, and both the content and text are solid, so I would not recommend it as a casual read, but I think it could be an important resource for research.
These are Leonid Grossman's "Dostoevskii.
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