Culture and runs through Dec. 17. Dostoevsky’s life is fascinating, even independent of his literary output. Barker observes that “there is no other writer whose life is as catastrophically tragic as Dostoevsky, who was sentenced to death by firing squad and spent four years in Siberia, but there is also no other writer whose life is as transcendently luminous as Dostoevsky. The man who was sent to Siberia by [Tsar] Nicholas I became the spiritual advisor to his son’s children and became the prophetic conscience of the nation.” Taking the astounding arc of Dostoevsky’s life as its spine, the exhibition is divided into four chronological sections: “Rebel,” “Convict,” “Gambler” and “Prophet.” These cover, respectively: Dostoevsky’s youthful literary forays and utopian-socialist radicalism; his sentencing to four years of hard labor in Siberia on the basis of that radicalism; his eventual reabsorption into Iowa City prepares to honor the bicentennial of Dostoevsky and his rejection of Russian life and subsequent devastating gambling addiction; and, despite all of this, the conunquestioned authority. BY NICHOLAS DOLAN summation of his probing intellectual life and litn March 13, 2020, five days after the of 19th-century Russian literature, Fyodor erary genius in the string of five so-called “profirst confirmed COVID-19 cases in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1879). phetic” novels which concluded his career. Of Iowa, Anna Barker texted UNESCO The “100 Days of The Brothers Karamazov” these last novels, Crime and Punishment is the City of Literature director John Facebook group is set to be a lively place this most widely read and The Brothers Karamazov Kenyon, with her trademark triple-exclamatory fall; the reading hasn’t started, yet the group is the dizzying crowning achievement. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously said enthusiasm: “Call me call me call me!!! I have has already been joined 460 times. Sales of the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation in advance of War and Peace that “there are no dark corners an AMAZING quarantine book idea!!!” Barker, a professor of Russian literature at the of the reading also led Amazon to run out of its in Tolstoy’s universe” (The Hedgehog and the University of Iowa with a broad and deep human- stock of copies for the rest of the month. This Fox, 1953). Dostoevsky’s universe, in contrast, ist streak, had devised the idea of a large-group reading has the potential to be the largest and consists almost entirely of dark corners, both material and psyreading of the Decameron by Renaissance poet chological: the tenBoccaccio. (The Decameron is an alternately A GREAT DEAL OF DOSTOEVSKY’S SUCCESS ements and hovels bawdy and tragic anthology of stories written of the Karamazovs’ during, and narrated by survivors of, the Black AS AN ARTIST IS IN THE SHEER DRAMA provincial town and Death.) Participants would read one tale each (CRITICS OFTEN THINK OF DOSTOEVSKY AS the yearning, sufferday, and convene over Facebook for discussion ing, hateful or saintand Barker’s explication and curated suppleDRAMATIZING THE FORM OF THE NOVEL, OF ly characters that mental material. TOLSTOY AS RENDERING IT EPIC) BY WHICH inhabit them. A great The “100 Days of Decameron,” sponsored HE EMBODIES MENTAL CIRCUITRIES, PATTERNS deal of Dostoevsky’s by the UNESCO City of Literature, was a success as an artist success, peaking at 311 members—not to be OF THOUGHT AND FEELING, WHICH WE is in the sheer drama sneezed at for a late medieval text running RECOGNIZE IN OUR OWN SELVES IN LESS (critics often think of 1,072 pages in the Penguin Classics edition. (HOPEFULLY LESS!) EXTREME FORM. Dostoevsky as draThrough the rest of 2020 and into 2021, other matizing the form of online readthroughs led by Barker have folthe novel, of Tolstoy lowed, so far including Paradise Lost, the Epic as rendering it epic) by which he embodies menof Gilgamesh and the entirety of Leo Tolstoy’s most ambitious yet. The online reading is complemented by a tal circuitries, patterns of thought and feeling, War and Peace, the Facebook group for which acquired nearly a thousand members from 28 new exhibition in the University of Iowa Main which we recognize in our own selves in less countries, from Iowa City to Canada and Mexico, Library Gallery curated by Barker (and coordi- (hopefully less!) extreme form. The plot of The Brothers Karamazov is perthe United Kingdom and Australia, Malaysia and nated by Sara J. Pinkham). “From Revolutionary Outcast to a Man of God: Dostoevsky at 200” haps familiar. The jacket copy of the Pevear and Pakistan, Brazil and several countries in Europe. Starting Sept. 1, Barker and the City of explores the entirety of Dostoevsky’s life and lit- Volokhonsky translation calls it a “murder mysLiterature will follow up War and Peace erary career in anticipation of his 200th birthday tery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of with a reading of that other vast masterpiece this November. The exhibition opened Aug. 16 erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs
Rebel, Convict, Gambler, Prophet
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